DOGS IN HEAT coming together...

Second draft of Dogs in Heat completed today; I'm nearing the finish line. Will allow it a few months to percolate, go through it again and begin the third and final draft. Hoping to have it ready for submission sometime in 2017-18. It's my first attempt at speculative fiction and I'm excited about it. The idea came to me back in 2001 while working at Chapters during the Indigo takeover. Ernest Hemingway, Satan, and Vincent van Gogh collide in what will no doubt be my most ambitious novel yet.

Also excited to have The Moon is Real coming out this summer with Urban Farmhouse Press. I recently saw the photo being used for the cover and I'm very happy with it. Looking forward to holding the book in my hands. I have no idea why I write novels but there's a real sense of satisfaction seeing the result of months upon months of work, and the urge that comes soon after to begin something entirely new. 

The Day I Met Ernest Hemingway

In 1999 I traveled to Oak Park to celebrate Ernest Hemingway's 100th birthday, where I met his three sons. Below is the article I published about the experience. It has been 17 years since I wrote it and my knowledge of Hemingway today is far greater than it was then; I found a glaring error right in the beginning and now must correct myself...Hemingway placed the barrels (there were two) of the shotgun on his forehead, not in his mouth. 

 

from The Goon...

A Survivor's Guide to Engine Failure at 35,000 Feet by Lee D. Thompson

Your life will go down in flames and when you pull yourself from the ashes a great black boot will stomp you back into the soil, says Kaye Allan Warwick, the angst-ridden, ranting protagonist in Lee D. Thompson's 8,000-word story A Survivor's Guide to Engine Failure at 35,000 Feet.

 

Warwick is writing a letter to his doctor after he "went off the rails" in their recent appointment, in the hopes the doc will keep him on as a patient again; part audition, part apology, part confession, Warwick is a man humble enough to know he needs help dealing with the psychological weight of being one of two survivors of a horrific plane crash, yet refreshingly haughty in the aftermath of his pseudo-celebrity status that followed.

 

Stories that dare to delve into madness (or to the brink of it, in this case) run the risk of crashing and burning (too much ranting and you lose the reader; too little and it's not believable), but it's not the case here; Thompson holds a steady hand on the yoke. The humour is sparse and well-timed. Indeed, Warwick's voice is manic, yet altogether alive and authentic (imagine a Hunter S. Thompson / Barney Panofsky offspring and you're headed in the right direction). His memories of the crash are honest and raw, and utterly void of any writerly bullshit: 

 

Yes there were 189 others who didn’t make it, who were, as I saw first hand, though the photos were never released, torn to shreds – dismembered, beheaded, rendered unrecognizable as human, strewn about like doll parts. Blood pooled in the oddest places. 

 

Thompson's writing is so clean it makes me want to go back and edit my own stuff. This is a lovely, witty, imaginative piece of fiction. So buckle yourself in and get ready for take-off; you're in for a spectacular patch of turbulence.

 

You can read the full story HERE.

 

  

The Moon is Real to be published by Urban Farmhouse Press

I'm very happy to announce that my fifth novel, The Moon is Real (Winner of WFNB's 2013 David Adams Richards Prize), has been picked up by Urban Farmhouse Press. No publication date yet, but it's likely coming out summer or fall 2016. UFP is a cool and eager, up-and-coming press based out of Windsor, Ontario. I've put a lot of hours rewriting and reworking this story and it feels great to have found a home with such a cool press. Check out UFP HERE

The Moon is Real update

Some exciting news regarding The Moon is Real will be coming shortly...As for Dogs in Heat, I'm working away, almost finished the first official rewrite. From here I'll print it out and read through it, pen in hand. I'm hoping to have a first final draft completed by Spring 2016. It currently sits at 200 pages and is going very well. Hemingway, Satan, and van Gogh as primary characters...a bit of a stretch for me but am having so much fun.

Hemingway in Cuba, 1952

Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman

France's Patrick Modiano wins Nobel Prize for Literature

"His novels tend to be short, often 130 to 150 pages in length, and written in simple language...but they are refined and elegant in nature."
-CNN


Click here for the link to the CNN article...

First draft of DOGS IN HEAT complete!

I'm very pleased to announce that I've just completed the first draft of my wild ride novel Dogs in Heat. Now the rewriting begins. The way I roll, it'll be another two years before it's ready to go. But man, I've got a good feeling about it. As it stands, it reads very quickly. But for me, that's what a first draft is; a skeleton. I'll let it sit, let it percolate, then will start to put some meat on the bones.