This week's story was to be set in a bookstore, and include a random six words form a list of twenty. I got broken, music, mechanical, grubby, backpack, and cowboy. I've bolded the six words in my story. It took me much to long to get started, but I am happy with the result.  917 words, many of them good. 

Note:  These stories used to be posted on my Ravensview blog, but I'm going to start putting them here.

I started this site as a way to market my writing, but haven't done much marketing - or writing - in the past year. Other passions got in the way. 

But I've now rejoined ROW80, a group designed to both focus your writerly pursuits and help you stay accountable.  That's for me, as a writer.

And for you, as a reader? I've started a weekly Flash Fiction challenge, and will post links to the stories here for you to read. Constructive criticism is welcome. I'll also share links I find about interesting books.  And, finally, I'll keep you up to date on the novel(s) I am working on. I have several drafts of sci-fi/fantasy novels waiting to be massaged and tweaked - stay tuned!  

50% off!!

In honour of the spooky season, both my ebooks are on sale at Smashwords, until November 1st.

Read all about a cop in a small town as he uses his magical power to solve crimes and battle an evil spirit.  And when you're done, please leave a review on the Smashwords page, and/or Goodreads. 

Kirk's Landing

Dave, an undercover cop, is busted when his cloaking power fails in the middle of a biker gang meeting. Forced to hide out as detachment commander in Kirk's Landing, a small Manitoba town, his only goal is to continue as a loner and lay low for a year. He learns it's hard to stay a loner in a small town, though, especially with everyone, including his new First Nation's friends, eager to meet him and enlist his help with their version of the local issues. Dave finds his detective instincts pulling him into an unsolved disappearance, corruption in the local high tech paper mill, and pollution of the local lakes and rivers. When Dave tries to use his invisibility to help him in his investigations he discovers there are darker forces at work-forces that are now targeting him, changing him. It's now up to his friends to decide if he can be saved in time. 

Return to Kirk's Landing

Dave Browne, a former big city undercover cop, is hoping to finally settle into a peaceful new life as police chief in a small northern Canadian town. When he'd first arrived in the middle of winter, he’d relied on both his ability to disappear, and his new First Nations friends, to solve an unsolved murder, expose corruption at the local mill, and defeat an evil spirit. Now it’s summer, and he’s planning on being just a regular cop, worrying about things like jaywalking tourists and loud cottage parties. Unfortunately, parts of his past reappear, and he’s confronted with a biker gang, drugs, another murder, and a demonic possession. It's now time for him to face the benefits and limitations of his unique ability, changing both it and himself in the process.

I've already published two of my novels, Kirk's Landing and Return to Kirk's Landing. You can buy print or ebook copies from Amazon, Chapters, Ingram-Spark, Smashwords, iBooks, Kindle, etc. Or perhaps find a copy in your local library.  I've also written over 100 quick little Flash Fiction stories over the years, all up here on my blog. 

I'm thinking of doing a podcast of these - maybe a chapter a week, or a story a week, or both. Free of course. I'm told I have a good 'radio voice' so would do these myself, using my headset mic and Audacity and SoundCloud. Nothing too fancy. If it works out, I'd get better equipment, redo/repackage, and sell as audio books.

Interested? 

We're all familiar with the issue of cultural appropriation, and how inappropriate it is. Usually. Whether it's kids at Halloween in Indian saris, or actors in black-face, or a First Nations mascot, we've learned (hopefully) to avoid it.    

But there have some articles lately discussing this from the point of view of a fiction writer. As we explore our characters lives, their goals, challenges, we explore other cultures, other peoples, other life-styles.  I might imagine my protagonist as a single overweight young black gay trombone player, and yet share very few of those characteristics myself. But by drawing on my relationships with friends, my own experiences, research, and some empathy, I might create a good story and successfully explore some of the issues that person might face. However, by dressing myself up, via my characters, in another culture,  am I showing disrespect for it? If it's a great story, and gets snapped up by a publisher, am I depriving someone else, that might be more like my character, the chance to publish about their own experience? Should I only write from my own life,  as a memoir?

Just asking, folks. Here's one article, from Writer unBoxed, by Keith Cronin, and another, from Vice, by Sarah Hagi.  

I read an interesting article today on the therapeutic benefits of writing, especially fiction. The author, Jessica Lourey, writes:

I came to call this healing process “rewriting my life,” as I was taking real events and repurposing them to fit a fictional narrative. The power of this process is transformative. Writing fiction allows you to become a spectator to life’s roughest seas. It gives form to your wandering thoughts, lends empathy to your perspective, allows you to cultivate compassion and wisdom by considering other people’s motivations, and provides us practice in controlling attention, emotion, and outcome. We heal when we transmute the chaos of life into the structure of a novel, when we learn to walk through the world as observers and students rather than wounded, when we make choices about what parts of a story are important and what we can let go of.

And of course, the aim is not to publish this for the world to see - although that might be the path you choose.  It's the process that's important, so you can burn your novel, stuff it in a drawer, shred it, bury it in the backyard - whatever.

Try it, dear reader, and let me know how it goes. 

My second book is now available at the Ottawa Public Library, here.  If you're in Ottawa, I hope you will take it out,  read it, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends. Maybe even buy a copy for you or someone else, via Amazon or Chapters. 

For the rest of the world, if it's not in your own local library, please request that they order a copy. It was published in 2016, by Deux Voiliers Publishing,  ISBN 9781928049470, 314 pages paperback, Fiction - Adult. Don't worry about me losing sales. Being in a library means more readers, and the Canada Council of the Arts has a program that compensates authors for books they have in libraries. 

Like many authors, I have several ways to get my books into the hands of my adoring fans. Who number in the dozens, I'm sure ;-) 

Libraries and bookstores can order paperback copies wholesale from Ingram Books in the US, or overseas, or from Red Tuque Books here in Canada. Regular customers can order online from Amazon or Chapters/Indigo, or buy a copy direct from me at a book reading or writer's festival. Or if they bump into me on the street or in a pub or cafe, I always have a few copies with me. Of course. Or they can read it via their library. Only the Ottawa one so far, but I'm asking other libraries to order it, and readers can certainly request it on their own. Ditto for finding ebook versions - online, for Kindle, Kobo, iBooks, etc  - with no DRM protection so it can be passed on to others.  Or teh ebook may be in your library too. 

So which is the best way? 

For readers, a face to face purchase means they get a discount, on a signed copy, with a chance to chat with the author. Bookstore or online purchases are more expensive, but more convenient. And the library is both cheap and easy.

For me, the author, online or bookstores are simpler, but - since I have to sell to them wholesale with returns - my profit is much smaller. Face to face, even with a discount, gives me twice the profit, plus a chance to talk to my readers, and remind them to leave a review online somewhere. As for libraries, I get still the small wholesale profit, but the Canada Council of the Arts has a program that compensates authors for having their book in libraries. Plus this increases my readership.

Which is the best for me? Whatever gets my books out there, to be read, reviewed, and recommended to others. 

It seems a lot of science fiction now is not really that unbelievable.  Kim Stanley Robinson writes  in New York 2140 of a decidedly dampish city. 

"It’s spring in New York City. At Twenty-sixth and Park, the waves shine in the sunlight, and the breeze is briny with seaweed. Morning commuters are boarding a crosstown vaporetto. Out on the canal, finance guys in speedboats weave between the bigger ships. Workers in an inflatable raft are repairing the Flatiron dock; a superintendent, in diving gear, is checking his buildings for leaks. The super-rich live uptown, in a forest of skyscrapers near the Cloisters. The poor live downtown, in Chelsea, which is half-submerged."

If you want something closer to now, you might try Infomocracy by Malka Older.

"Infomocracy is a intellectually stimulating thriller that follows a handful of characters who work for various political parties and election systems. The story hinges on how a voting public receives and interprets information — and how parties manipulate that perception. It’s a book that’s all too relevant in 2016." - the Verge

Or you could always ignore reality and lose yourself in a Lovecraftian murder mystery/satire,  I Am Providence, by Nick Mamatas. 

Here are three YA books that might be of interest: Graffiti Girl,  Love and Vandalism, and Shadowshaper. The Goodreads reviews I've linked to are mixed, but take a look. 

Photo is mine, from Toronto Roncesvalles area, Oct/2015