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Short Fiction: “Second World”

I have a new piece published with Found Press, who last published my story Snowshoe. The new story is called Second World and, like There Is This Thing Of You (published last month), it takes things in a more experimental (for me) narrative direction. Whereas There Is… was written in second-person perspective (a departure from third or first-person which are most common), Second World features a triptych of perspectives – one for each of the three characters/narratives. Respectively, First person, third person, and second person.

I should state here that I don’t like gimmicks. When I wrote There Is… I wasn’t intending on writing something in second-person. It just came out like that. As did this piece. I’m extremely proud of Second World.

From the synopsis: “Portraits of people marooned within themselves, trapped by their past experiences, by uncertainty and anxiety — individuals for whom each new situation is a grueling journey towards the present, a place where action and choice are possible. In Second World, Matt Cahill illustrates, with honesty and empathy, how the most important breakthroughs are not the life-altering revelations, but rather the minor miracles that get us through each day.”

Please enjoy.

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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/

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Short Fiction: “Snowshoe”

I am extremely happy to announce that my short fiction piece, Snowshoe, is available for purchase and download through Found Press (and via Amazon).

I’m very proud of this story, as it is a concept I’ve been wishing to turn into a story for many years (“decades” is probably appropriate). I finally put pen to paper and out came, quite organically, the resulting story. Working with editor Bryan Jay Ibeas was a great experience in that he and I both seemed to be on the same wavelength, which is perhaps the best that any author can expect.

If you are interested, please (at the very least) check out Found Press’ Snowshoe page. Or, if you are feeling aggressive, go to Amazon and purchase it for the crazy-cheap price of $2 (click here).

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New Author Site

Hello all. In order to promote my upcoming book and to (eventually) be a hub for promoting any published works I do between now and then, I thought it best to have a standalone author site created: mattcahill.ca. This task was handily undertaken by Ingrid Paulson, and it looks great.

Eventually I will start adding pages to the site, to flesh it out (so that it is more than just a page, but an actual “site”).

The question currently stands: what will happen to this here blog? I’m not sure. The more I focus on writing gigs, the less time I have for blogging, and yet – paradoxically – I have more things to blog about because potentially I have more gigs. In other words, there is still a need for the blog, so imagitude will stay where it is and perhaps be linked-to from the author site at some point.

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My Psychotherapy Blog

As some of you (now more of you) know, I recently began a practice as a psychotherapist. I have a website, which gets a fair bit of traffic (allowing that summer is a traditionally slow time of the year), but recently I added an adjunctive blog.

The purpose was to get more of me out there, rather than have people rely on their preconceptions of what a psychotherapist is/does just by staring at my business card. I figured it would help both me and potential clients (including curious onlookers) deal up-front with questions that often go unasked yet which people would like answered.

For example: Do I need to know what’s wrong with me in order to see a therapist? Will I lose my creativity if I see one?

These are some of the things people ask, sometimes in passing, sometimes directly to me. I was inspired to address them, if only so that I could clarify the process of therapy.

That said, it’s a challenge. Unlike this space where I can tear away at preconceptions without concern for who I may be offending, I have to alter the timbre of my voice when blogging for the benefit of those who may be potential clients – it’s not always cut and dry. I ran into this recently with a post I wrote about men and how men tend to have preconceptions about psychotherapy (and how some of this may have to do with the language/imagery predominant in the latest barrage of public service announcements). My partner brought to my attention that what I’d wrote (and published) was in fact meant for this blog, not the one I originally thought it was intended for. So…I went back and changed the voice, as if I were revising a short story.

The lesson? Know your audience. People curious about psychotherapy don’t need to read hard-hitting op/ed-style commentary – the challenge was to go back and revise what I’d done so that, rather than focusing on a political critique of the way society isolates men from seeking help and agitating for personal growth, I retreated/reverted/went back to the more digestible core point of therapy is good for men, too.

Perhaps I will post both versions here to demonstrate how I revised it. In any case, feel free to visit the other blog (and tell your friends).

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Narratives & Messages

We live in an atmosphere concentrated with media: we are drenched so deep that we don’t often realize how integral it has become in our lives. In my fiction, which can be speculative and sometimes nodding to “the future”, I don’t mention this much. I was wondering if, by not speaking to this (awesome/scary) fact of life, I was missing out on saying something substantial about our lives; then again, a writer with the intent to say “something substantial about our lives” is often asking for more than they can deliver to begin with. Perhaps I intentionally avoid the subject. Perhaps I want, fictionally, to portray a world where the reader can escape our media fishbowl, not content to stare into our monitors and smartphones – into any one of the many shining screens around us. *

 (*This is not to say that, as someone who writes stories to be read, I am exempt from any of what I go on to describe.)

As Madge the manicurist in the Palmolive commercials used to say: “You’re soaking in it.” And we are.

My concern, as far as this post goes, is not the number of screens surrounding us, nor is it the gross subsidization of our environment by advertising (vis à vis self-interested parties). Content is king, after all. And, unlike ads and the proliferation of screens, I feel we don’t look at content very closely.

We are essentially surrounded by narratives.

Continue reading “Narratives & Messages”

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Why Psychotherapist (pt. 2 – tangent)

In the course of moving towards a practice (which has begun, if gradually), my wife and I have been renovating our basement for nearly the past year. Yes, one of those reno’s. The purpose of which was so that I could work out of the house as opposed to rent office space (which is not cheap in downtown Toronto).

It’s been a learning experience: learning about renovations, learning about doing long bouts of manual labour beside a loved one, learning about the ways in which two people can live together, be married and all that, yet have different approaches toward planning and executing large-scale operations. On this note, it’s also been about communicating, dealing with stress, and knowing when to take a break (from the basement).

Most recently, my wife – who is an amazing designer – designed a compact website for my practice: please visit. With the basement almost done, and a website online (heck, I also have business cards), it seems all of the hallmarks (and clichés) of “change” are ringing true.

Of course, the practice is in its infancy. I am still working hard on a Hollywood 3D dance film, and waiting to hear back from my agent (can’t get used to typing those two words) about the most recent revision to my novel that I submitted.

I will let you know how it proceeds.

Here’s an interesting question someone asked me, when they heard I was studying to practice as a psychotherapist. I will discuss this in an upcoming blog post:

“Do you feel pressure to be a better person?”

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Why You Should See "SUCK" (And Why It Shouldn’t Have To Be On DVD)

In 2008/9, I worked on the indie feature, SUCK. It’s a rock-and-roll vampire road-movie comedy directed by Toronto’s Rob Stefaniuk and produced by Capri Films’ Robin Crumley. For a low-budget feature (and I realize that’s not the best way to preface a compliment) SUCK is well-written, well-cast, funny, and in places very funny.

However, despite being well received at both the Toronto International and South-By-Southwest Film Festivals, it was denied any interest in a theatrical release by Canadian distributors. The longer I waited for someone to pick it up, the more I wondered what the problem was. Sure, you could argue that vampire films have saturated the market lately, but that’s seeing things from the late-summer of 2010 (SUCK was completed over a year ago). It was a no-brainer, even for a limited release: who wouldn’t like a rock vampire comedy w/ cameos by Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and Alex Lifeson (among others)? It’s the sort of smart-but-not-overly-self-conscious effort which seems perfectly balanced for a theatrical audience.

Nothing happened. Well, actually, less-than-nothing happened: a lot of crap was released in Canadian theatres instead. Crap like the widely-released and quickly forgotten Gunless, which begged the question: if nobody is interested in seeing Westerns in theatres, what could possibly have been the selling point of a comedy-romance-Western with (as you might have guessed) no gunfighting? The answer is that it doesn’t matter: this is Canada, and film distributors prefer to release crap like Gunless and GravyTrain than anything which could hold an audience’s sustained interest. Evidently, the point of film distribution in Canada is to go through the motions.

Well, it’s too late for Canada. While SUCK secured a limited theatrical distribution in the U.S., it’s out on DVD here (the US DVD release is September 28th). This means it will only be screened here through niche film festivals. While that’s not a bad thing, it pisses me off that a funny, well-produced film (rare creature that is) should be all but abandoned after a successful festival run. This situation is certainly not helped by SUCK‘s (pardon the pun) anemic website: it makes no mention of any upcoming film screenings, DVD release dates, or even contact information. Who the hell is the site for? This is what happens when you don’t have a distributor to help with publicity. Not even the local indie journals can help: NOW Magazine completely omits any mention of it, as a film or DVD release. How’s that for hometown support? Thankfully, The Toronto Star’s Peter Howell is the only mainstream film critic to put the DVD release of SUCK on public record (in glowing terms no less…and slagging Gunless ).

I want people to see this film. Not because I worked on it, not because I want to punish producers who keep banking on dead-brained populist Paul Gross vehicles, but because this is a worthy film. It’s not Sophie’s Choice, it’s not going to change your life. But you’ll laugh. I just wish it had been allowed the opportunity of a theatrical run, which it so clearly deserved. It works better in a theatre than on DVD: with a pumped-up audience rather than in the controlled confines of your livingroom. That said, I will be pleased if, by my writing about it, one more person will see this movie than if I hadn’t.

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