Fear Itself collection dedication to my sister

I am distracted and pensive and sad today. It is my sister Kim's birthday. She would have been fifty-five.

This is the weekend, a year ago, when everything changed and we could see time running out on her five-year, stage-four lung cancer prognosis. Me and my family raced home to take care of her and help out my overwhelmed brother-in-law. It soon become a dark time and darker still, but I will always be grateful  I could be there for her with my other sister,  the health-care pro in her element, my brother-in-law, my nieces, and my parents as well.

Kim always believed in my writing, even a giant-bug-themed story I penned in high school. I set the piece at local Camp Kagama. As my protagonist tries to evacuate the camp because of the insectile invasion, another character makes an offhanded reference to my sister, the staff nurse, making out with a cute camp counselor.

(My writing has improved markedly since.)

I am dedicating my short-story collection, Fear Itself, coming out November 15, to Kim.

I'm Back, Baby: Short-story collection, Fear Itself, coming this fall!

I have another book coming out.

It has been a long road, but I am beyond excited to announce my first short-story collection Fear Itself is at last coming from Lethe Press this fall. It's a special blend of mainly horror, with a soupçon of fantasy and sci-fi. Fear Itself includes nine stories in all, a ghost novelette, and story notes. Many pieces have a clear local setting and feature LGBTQ1+ protagonists. While they generally do not meet tragic, pulpy ends, my characters do not make it out unscathed, either. 

I will be talking or, rather more accurately, teasing out fun facts about the stories in future posts, and describing some of the road that led to the book's publication, but for now, here's a quick little teaser about one story in the collection. 

In “Crag Face”, recently divorced Ray Morley is driving the back roads of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry to Cornwall for a funeral. His deceased friend always believed in his writing, despite never publishing his novel these past few decades. But Ray is waylaid by a sexually-frustrated (and cat-fished) creature of fantasy who has stumbled into our world from a portal in the Back Forty. And it is looking for satisfaction, one way or another.

Fear Itself is available for pre-ordering here on the Lethe Press website.

Benched

So, having recently tested positive for Covid-19 has more than put a dent in my semblance of a summer schedule for over a week. I think I had contact in Niagara-On-The-Lake during our recent Ontario vacation, the first such vacation in about three years. The virus is still out there and even though we were diligent, while many others went unmasked outdoors and in, we caught it. Coming through it even now, but this will take time. More to follow once I have more full recovered.

Thor: Love and Thunder: Big, loud, stupid summer-popcorn fun

I kind of dug Thor: Love and Thunder, particularly for the music. Let's just say that a character even names himself Axl.

Director Taika Waititi was clearly chomping at the bit to get this flick out and have fun with the toys he grew up with. He obviously had a blast, even including some fun queer representation (and polyamory) as part of the story.

Much of Love and Thunder is played simply for laughs and it carries a lively, over-the-top, self-mocking tone (particularly Thor's character) with some serious, heartstring-tugging drama at heart with a surprisingly complex antagonist and a beloved recurring character. The film doesn't jive well with other Marvel Studios film continuity in many ways, and not only because the tone is like Thor: Ragnarok on speed (or cocaine). But I think that's entirely forgivable because it's big, loud, stupid summer-popcorn fun. Imagine if Monty Python did super-powered space opera on a massive budget with a kick-ass late 1980's/early 1990's rock soundtrack.

The person I saw it with kept questioning it; I just strapped in for the ride and kept laughing and enjoying the surprises. Very entertaining summer fare.

P.S.: You get to see a ripped Chris Hemsworth shirtless if that is any enticement.

Waxing Gibbous: A Study in Moonlight

Sometimes I take pictures of the moon. It's a thing I do.

Here is a photographic study and experiment from last night's Waxing Gibbous Moon. That is both moonlight and some ambient streetlight thrown off the gate in front of me.

Derecho storm knocks out power

So, the short version ... the power's back on. 

And the long version ....

We lost power due to the derecho that rocked (in a bad a way) the nation's capital Saturday, May 21. 

CBC stories are here and here.

Electricity returned May 24, only for our block to lose it again the evening of Thursday, May 26. 

Power returned yesterday, May 30, at about 4:30.

We had to say goodbye to a friend, and have been been parenting,  juggling teleworking, running our home offices, planning for imminent surgery and generally just trying to get through. Stressed, but okay.

Did we miss much?

Grief, twisting and turning

You can try to avoid grief, and push it back, but it remains, fixed,  immutable. How you talk to it is about all the control you have, like trying to reason with a drunk.