I was interviewed by Lisa de Nikolits for All Lit Up about my novel, The Society of Experience (along with authors Andrew Battershill and Erna Buffie) as part of a series on emerging authors explaining their craft and process. I try to be candid (and I think it comes across). Read the Q&A here.
The Proust Questionnaire: An Eclectic Q&A
I was recently assigned the task of answering the Proust Questionnaire for Open Book Toronto. While Proust himself did not conceive of this battery of eclectic, often personal questions, it carries his name (for more on the history of this, go here).
So, if you would like to know my favourite colour, what makes me miserable, and what my favourite virtue is, please have a look.
An interview with The Brantford Expositor
I recently did an interview with The Brantford Expositor, talking about the The Society of Experience and the recent media attention. Link: here.
The Society of Experience has a website
Just a quick note to say that there is now a website for my novel – available now and launching tomorrow night in Toronto – The Society of Experience. You can find it here. It comes complete with a streaming audio playlist of songs and artists featured in the novel, as well as a map showing where much of the book takes place. Please enjoy responsibly.
The Society of Experience Chosen As Must-Read By Harper’s Bazaar
I cannot believe how the stars aligned for this, but Harper’s Bazaar – a massive, Hearst-owned fashion and lifestyle magazine – put out a list of their Top 15 “must-reads” for the fall of 2015. And I’m #11. Along with Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Patti Smith, Isabel Allende, David Mitchell, and I’ve lost my mind. It’s the only debut novel on the entire list (and the third Canadian title)!
Link: http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/g6211/best-fall-2015-books/
Author Q&A With Open Book: Word On The Street, and Ontario vs Toronto
In anticipation of Word On The Street (September 27th, Harbourfront) and the release of my book, The Society of Experience, I was asked todo a Q&A with Open Book. It was a refreshing exercise, seeing as they were just as interested in Ontario as where I lived, Toronto. The thing is I’m qualified to speak of both: I moved a lot as a kid, from town to town. I’ve only lived in Toronto since 1995 (20yrs this month). It got me thinking about my influences growing up, among other things.
Have a read here: http://www.openbooktoronto.com/news/word_street_interview_series_matt_cahill
Book update
My debut novel, The Society of Experience, is a mere month away from being available in print (the exact date, I’m unsure of). I’m supremely excited. I’m particularly pleased with the two endorsements I received:
“Matt Cahill’s debut novel The Society of Experience explores the dangers of magical thinking in a most entertaining way. Both thoughtful and humorous, twisty and fun, this is transporting storytelling (in more ways than one).”
— Andrew Pyper, author of The Demonologist and The Damned.
“A swirling confident debut, supported by crisp prose without misstep, and containing many more original ideas than books three times its slender size. Sly and slippery fun – I thought of Ben Marcus and JG Ballard… writers who say don’t worry I know what I’m doing as they break from the pack.”
— Tony Burgess, author of Pontypool Changes Everything and The n-Body Problem
I’m going to be presenting The Society of Experience at Toronto’s Word On The Street festival, on September 27th. This year it will be at Harbourfront, which I think is a wonderful new environment for it.
The official launch will be October 8th–details to come. My author site will also have details on this and other works.
Too Much Change
So much has happened…
– sold house (add to this: renovated house)
– bought condo (add to this: mourning house, moving)
– moved psychotherapy practice to newly-leased office (add to this: find office space, renovate, move)
– had my application to the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario accepted
– began intense revision process on novel (coming out in September)
So there you have it. I also hope to have a new short story published around the time my novel comes out, so yeah. All hands on deck at the moment.
I leave you with the cover for my novel, The Society of Experience:
January 1, 2015 11:58am
I look out my window and the first thing I see is a black cat–our black cat’s spirit guide perhaps, but most likely a regular black cat–on the neighbour’s pigeon coop. This cat long ago gave up figuring out if there was a way inside the coop, but instead uses it as a means to traverse several abutted properties from a conveniently high vantage point.
The wind is intense, heaving and insolent. Seed pods which remain on skeletal tree limbs appear soulless and huddled, perhaps sensing they were abandoned by natural instinct to drop to the ground in autumn.
The sun is a conscience which fights to make itself clear, to see for itself what is real through battleship grey.
Red roof. Brown roof. Grey roof.
Now
Right now, it’s about keeping my energy and clarity in some sort of balance with the demands of reality, whose shifting path I have been navigating for the last while.
I am, by all rights, completing work on the last film I will ever work on. I say this with understandable trepidation since walking away from something you’ve done for 20 years, swinging to a new vine which depends solely on me and me alone: intimidating. Also experiencing the predictable though nevertheless white-knuckle bullshit of completing work on a film.
My psychotherapy practice is humming along nicely, which I am grateful for.
I am awaiting editorial notes on my novel, The Society of Experience, and hoping that they are neither too overwhelming nor the window I am given to do them within too short. Nobody wants to publish a bad book–that’s the good news and the bad news.
I am gratified by the progress I have made as a writer this year, not only in that I had a short story published, but that I feel I have turned a corner with respect to my writing process and the way I approach the development of stories.
I still have bad habits, but that’s what keeps life interesting.