A note about the note

I recently added a note to the welcome message at the top of this here blog:

A small request: I don’t have a Patreon, and I’m not interested in placing ads here, so ultimately whatever time I spend posting here I do on my own time and dime. I would be so thankful if you could visit my Goodreads page and, if you like my work, please consider rating it. You don’t have to write a review if that’s not your thing (although that’s mighty appreciated).

Allow me to show a slice of publishing’s sausage factory. I don’t like corporate behemoths for many reasons, but for the purpose of this argument it comes down to anti-competitiveness. And yet, unquestionably, Goodreads equals traffic and visibility for authors. That’s the reality. When people provide positive ratings and/or leave comments, that boosts the odds of more people discovering my work. Goodreads is a nice way to say hey thanks (or whatever your version of that is) if anything here interests you. I’m not going to stop you from trying it out, however I’m also not going to slam you over the head with this sort of request.

There are other ways to get the word out, of course. I mean, while I’m here, there’s nothing more awesome than bumping into someone who’s read one of my books, so feel free to spread the word the ol’ fashioned way: word-of-mouth. 

I also accept that, despite being a bit of an introvert, I could do more to get the word out, like advertising this blog a little more on social media. The irony is that I feel self-conscious driving people toward my blog, this place on the internet where I post things for the general public to see. Anyhoo, that’s me.

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Yay Surgery

I have a genetic condition, called Dupuytren’s Contracture, or perhaps more cool, Viking Disease. Below, you see two photos. The first is my left hand, unaffected. The second is my right hand, very much affected.

Left hand (normal)
Right hand (bad)

A hallmark of the disease is a thickening of the tissue in the palm of one’s hand (though it also can affect the pads of your feet, which I also have, yet it’s not serious). Normally, as it gets more pronounced (it’s chronic), the thickening of the tissue ends up pulling the fourth and fifth fingers inward, making it eventually difficult to operate equipment (or shake hands!). What makes mine a little more odd is that it’s affecting my thumb, pulling it inward. In the above photo of my right hand, that’s literally as far as I can expand my hand, whereas my left can go much further (not exactly pictured).

And so, at the end of this month I have surgery booked. I trust the surgeon, who specializes in this type of procedure, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m going to be without effective use of my hand for upwards of three months. I have no clue when I’ll be able to comfortably type using my right hand, which means that — you guessed it — when it comes to writing it’s going to be difficult. I might try voice-to-type software (which comes with most laptops and phones), but I’ll be honest: I’m not looking forward to any of it.  I don’t like surgery, period, and I sure as hell don’t like invasive cut-open-your-hand-with-a-small-risk-of-nerve-damage surgery. However, my options are…bleak. The worse this gets, the higher the likelihood the skin around my thumb will contract given there’s less room for it to move, which means permanent contraction.

This all said, I’ve been lucky. The last time I had invasive surgery was the removal of all four of my wisdom teeth when I was at the tender age of eighteen. I’ve never broken any bones (but boy have I been close) and I haven’t had to have anything stitched in this time.

Anyhoo, I hope to keep posting here, but perhaps without the regularity…or perhaps more regularity if I find it keeps me sane. Wish me luck!

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Pankaj Mishra

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing journalist and essayist Pankaj Mishra deliver a rousing speech at the Royal Ontario Museum, as part of his being awarded the 2024 Weston International Award. Mishra most recently wrote an excoriating piece for the London Review of Books on The Shoa After Gaza. In his writing and arguments I really appreciate his combination of intellectual principle, and clarity, two things that don’t often combine as elegantly as in Mishra’s prose.

His speech was wide-ranging, and I would do it injustice to attempt summarizing it. That said, broadly, it was about the problems with Western media and it’s inability to capture situations such as what’s happening in Gaza without appearing to sanitize the language used to talk about inhumanity, or to display a complete lack of curiosity about the welfare of brown and Black bodies. How difficult it seemed for mainstream American journalists to talk plainly about the militarized crackdowns on protests in their own country.

One of my takeaways is that there are a lot of mainstream journalists and institutions who are beholden to a liberalism that attempts to peddle a singular neutral truth and is completely unable to work with complexity (such as multiple perspectives).

Personally, there are two current journalistic trends that drive me crazy:

  1. Talking about smartphones and their effect on youth, where “smartphone” for all intents and purposes is clumsily subbed in for what is largely “social media”. By using it as a catch-all I feel we’re shielding social media companies from social responsibility. There’s no compelling research that shows an adverse affect on youths with smartphones — they can distract, but they can also help people connect.
  2. Columnists who trip over themselves to make sure that the left and right are equally to blame for what ails society, despite widespread right wing terrorism on the climb, a literal fascist running for re-election, and all the while the people who own our social media accounts — some of whom, like Facebook, prevent people in my country from distributing news articles to each other — are libertarian billionaires.

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Book Three Reveal

So, as I mentioned last month two months ago, I had delivered Book Three to my agent. He has since added it to his fall catalogue, in time for his yearly trip to the Frankfurt Book Fair. So, in light of the fact that this is now real and legit, I thought I’d (finally) reveal what Book Three is.

The real title is The Stars Align for Disco Santa.

The synopsis I wrote for the catalogue is as follows:

“Marcus is living the dream. Quite literally, it turns out. One fateful day at his tech startup, he finds a sticky note on his desk containing a cryptic message about his ex-girlfriend that draws him into a labyrinthine quest through chaotic film sets, sailing the violent waves of Lake Ontario on a virus-infected author cruise, destined to land on Monster Island . . . only to discover he’s been working in a stupor as a bookstore employee all this time, under the effects of a powerful medical prototype that has created a life-like inner world for him to experience, a world drawn from his and others’ memories, including his ex-girlfriend, Marta, and his mysterious half-sister, Jocelyn, who happens to be the architect of the experiment.

Evoking the hit Apple TV+ series Severance and reminiscent of Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Stars Align for Disco Santa is a heartfelt satire of misplaced desire and the limits of our control, a fast-paced novel that is as much about family and grief as it is an offbeat joyride through the not-so-funhouse of the psyche, asking the question: What matters?”

The cat is out of the bag now, and I no longer have to use “Book Three” to describe this! I am released!

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Priorities

Being in-between projects, I’ve had some time to reflect on a number of what’s next ruminations. Such ruminations aren’t always healthy. There are a lot of people out there who don’t know how to kick back, and feel the compulsion to thrust themselves into the next thing, whether or not that’s what’s best for them.

I’m a fairly compulsive writer. When I don’t have a novel in the works (in whatever stage) I have a short story kicking around. That said, it’s also mid-August (so much for weekly blog entries — sorry, folks) which is historically, in my professional world as a psychotherapist, the time of year when people take stock. Summer is fading, vacations have been taken, the world of work is growing louder after a prolonged period of sunshine and chilling. For those with children, school is beginning. For those in corporate settings, the fourth quarter looms to the degree that there might as well be a target on December…even though it’s August. And because I’m human why shouldn’t I experience some of this?

Sure enough I’ve begun to give some thought to where my priorities should be. As a shrink, I’d like to advertise my Business Therapy side project more, as it’s steadily gaining traction and promises to keep me engaged (after twelve years I needed something to mix things up in my practice). As a writer, I’m weighing applying another grant due in September (and no, my previous attempts this year haven’t borne much fruit), but also looking for markets that offer a venue for satire (so far: not many explicitly are looking for humour, which kinda sucks). Personally, I want to find the right balance between staying active (because I’m half-cattle dog, basically) without over-committing to activities that I won’t be able to fulfill to my satisfaction. I like growth, but don’t want to find myself exhausted in its pursuit.

Balance, man. <- this is a line from the beginning of my recently-delivered novel (aka Book Three), which stands in contrast to what the protagonist, Marcus, ends up experiencing. I have to say that this book feels like the most honest thing I’ve ever written (outside of my short story from 2015, Second World). It’s ultimately about figuring out “what matters,” even if the answer is something that doesn’t get 150 likes on social media. As I wrote in my notes, it’s about being okay with what might end up only being “ok.”

On this note, I hope you’re holding up okay, and taking moments for yourself to take stock, even though that can be intimidating.

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Book Three Delivered

A quick dispatch while I’m away at a cottage for some long-needed R&R. Last week I delivered Book Three to my agent. In no way shape or form is it “done” (without going into the vagaries of getting published, let’s just say that — to use a picture editing term — it’s “locked” until it’s not).

I’ll be unveiling the title of Book Three once my agent incorporates it into his upcoming autumn catalog; then there’ll be no excuse.

It’s been a great ride working on it, and as much as I’m sorta sad to let it go (once you read it I’m sure you’ll get why), I’m like to clear my desk for other things. Or, for now, to enjoy a sense of accomplishment before moving on to something else.

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Retreat

I had the pleasure of spending a week as a guest (and sort of alumni) of The Pouch Cove Foundation, an artists’ retreat located in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland. While only about twenty minutes outside of St. John’s, it might as well be in the middle of nowhere, in the best possible way.

I went there to work on final changes to Book Three, and it was very productive. So much so that I’m hoping to hand off the book to my agent at the end of the month (fingers crossed). I was also happy to be sharing the retreat with a handful of visual artists who were preparing for a showing of their water-themed paintings in-progress. Writers and painters are different kinds of artists, insofar as painters come across as regular people when they’re not painting and writers tend to remain mumbly introverts when they’re not writing, not that we weren’t able to get together for the occasional beer and a chat in the evening. The good news is that we were all there to work and the setting was ideal for our tasks. And when we weren’t working, it was easy to step away and go on a hike along the East Coast Trail (in the course of one hike I spotted a pod of whales nearby and found myself tracked by a fox), or simply go down to the shore and admire the many gorgeous views.

Pouch Cove is one of the most beautiful places I’ve had the pleasure of visiting, and this marks a return for me after 20 years. Back then I was still working in film/TV but trying to get my act together as a budding author. A work colleague suggested I check out the retreat at Pouch Cove which, it turned out, her father operated. I was only able to get away for a long weekend at the time (because broke), but it was my first introduction to an artists’ retreat and I was able to develop some of the ideas that made it into my first novel, The Society of Experience.

James Baird, who runs the Pouch Cove Foundation, has been a tireless supporter of the arts community in Newfoundland for decades and is an extremely generous host to artists from all corners of the world. I’m very appreciative of his support and enthusiasm, and grateful to have had the opportunity to return.

It was hard to leave.

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Three Books

I asked for (and received) a couple of books for last Xmas: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, and The Rigor of Angels by William Egginton. The first is a wonderful collection (sometimes interwoven) about the weird and wonderful (but weird) world of of physicists, mathematicians and chemists as they flirt with madness trying to come to terms with things like the would-you-believe basics of quantum theory. The latter is about the intersection of three great minds — philosopher Immanuel Kant, physicist Werner Heisenberg, and author Jorge Luis Borges — and how their shared interests in the struggle to understand how it is that we can’t always comprehend certain aspects of the world — were informed. I should mention that I received a third book at Xmas, from my partner, who thought I would like a collection of short fiction and essays from…Jorge Luis Borges.

Let’s just say that it’s been an intense ride, twisting my mind not only around the paradoxical ideas that quantum theory suggests, but also some strong narration and themes that rise from well-drawn portraits, the intimate (and wonderfully weird) lives of otherwise brilliant people.

Those first two books, by Labatut and Egginton, are very well done and I highly recommend them, by the way.

Speaking of Borges, I am truly amazed sometimes at his ability to distill entire universes with such economy; some of his work left me flabbergasted and dizzy. Some of it can also be front-loaded with a lot of geographical or historical weight and so it’s not exactly “diving in” literature; it’s a little like going to the gym, to be honest. But boy, the rewards.

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Interview: The First Thirty, courtesy of Junction Reads

This is super last-minute, and I apologize for the late notice, however tomorrow (!) I’m going to be interviewed live (!) on Instagram. Junction Reads is an established (since 2014) Toronto reading series that brings attention to so many great authors. I’m going to take part in Junction Reads’ cool offshoot, The First Thirty, which is designed around speaking with authors about — you guessed it — how the first thirty pages of their published work came about.

From their website:

Writers know, and readers too, the first pages are the most important in any novel, memoir or story. And I want to talk about it.

The First Thirty is an Instagram Live series where I will meet authors for a quick chat (30 minutes) to talk about writing, and how they shape those first pages to be a warm welcome to the reader; to include the hook that makes a reader want to keep reading, and to give us the characters we either want to love or really hate.

You can hear me talk about my latest novel, Radioland, tomorrow (Monday, May 27th) night @ 7pm EST on Instagram by tuning-in to @junctionreads!

UPDATE: You can watch the interview here. I’m really impressed with the depth of Alison’s questions and if this is the last bit of promotion I do for Radioland then I’m happy to have it be this.

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Goodbye April

I haven’t had the opportunity to post here, however I hadn’t realized that it was over a month since posting something substantial. I wouldn’t say that there’s anything different going on in my life, so much as that, upon reflection, perhaps I’m spending a bit more time seeking comfort where I need it.

I got back into a martial art that I started before the pandemic, called baguazhang, or simply bagua (pron. bahg-wah). It’s a little idiosyncratic compared to more mainstream forms like karate, taekwondo or BJJ. I’d say it’s somewhere between what we in the West call “kung fu” (external) and tai chi (internal). Let’s just say there’s a lot of walking in circles. That said, I needed something that allowed me to move/train my body in a way that was different than going to the gym or distance running, which can feel static. Bagua is anything but static. Also, crucially, the very place that teaches it is literally across the street from my office in Chinatown. It centres me and its choreography is demanding enough without the more wild kung fu-style kicks etc. It’s also nice to do this with other people — something I was also sorely needing (ie a form of socializing that wasn’t chatting with someone at a pub)

I also started Book Four (I know, I know), which is coming along. I can’t really say much about it because it’s very early, however I’m liking its shape. What’s funny is that my previous long-form entry here was about not wanting to be stuck with Author/Psychotherapist in publicity material…and yet the protagonist of Book Four is exactly that. It’s also nice working on a book where the protagonist is a woman. Radioland had two protagonists — male and female — and The Society of Experience had an intermittent female narrative in the form of Seneca’s diaries, however I’m looking forward to keeping things female this time around. Book Three is in revision-mode now, for the last round I think.

I’m trying to keep myself informed of what’s going on in the world, but the world is too big and there’s too much. I think the curse of social media is that there are so many perspectives on so many things that it can be paralyzing to even log-in some days, so currently I’m not. I’m very thankful that I re-subscribed to the London Review of Books this past summer because their coverage of what’s happening in Gaza is extensive and authoritative, without the self-censorship or bad faith arguments that have poisoned coverage of this conflict in much of the mainstream media. I’m not a prolific magazine subscriber, however I can’t help but think of how lucky I felt when I happened to subscribe to Harper’s just prior to the towers falling on 9/11, the drums beating towards a disastrous war. Reading informed, well-written arguments isn’t going to stop the worst of humanity from manifesting, but at least I can form my opinion from a source that isn’t compromised by a fear of spooking advertisers or an editor casting a dark shadow over someone’s shoulder.

Yes, and reading. Lots of reading. Let’s see…Labyrinths (a collection of Jorge Luis Borges stories and essays), Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World (which is fabulous), The Rigor of Angels by William Egginton and Audit Culture: How Indicators and Rankings are Reshaping the World by Cris Shore and Susan Wright.

I hope this finds you well.

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