Psychedelia Gothique

Swallows Playing Chicken is a vivid metaphor. Swallows are beautiful, graceful, free and fragile – a state humans can only ever really approximate when we are children. The game of chicken – for anyone who doesn’t know, is where two fast moving, human piloted objects approach one another at top speed – on a collision course, until one, both, or neither lose their nerve and veer off course at the last moment Even a near miss can send one or both players careening out of control in random directions with results almost as catastrophic as a head on collision. Swallows are probably the fastest and most agile of songbirds. Their ability to evade one another is mindboggling. But the results of a mid-air collision would be like two bullets meeting, probably resulting in a tangled wreckage of bones and blood and feathers. And if the bird they are challenging is their own reflection in a window, their death is blunt and assured. The impact is always devastating. I, for one, am glad that Dav...

The BioGrid is  a vast biological computer housed in the root network of a forest. Following the disaster that wiped out most of humankind, the BioGrid was almost destroyed. In the process of recovery, it forms into factions. One faction calls itself The Free-Thinkers and considers itself humanity's heirs. All of the knowledge and referents including their sense of society and community comes from the civilization that the humans built. They want nothing more than to be human. In the course of their recovery, they discovered and resurrected Raine Naidu, a human (and son of the director of the BioGrid project) whose personality matrix was uploaded before the disaster to help make the BioGrid more relatable to humans. Raine is, in effect, their human template. The largest faction of the BioGrid calls itself The Core. It believes itself to be nothing more than a computer – a tool that humans built for their own use and benefit. While waiting to reconnect with humanity and re...

  I’ve made a couple of observations this fall that may point to something real or may be as magical as the subjects of the observations. Observation one: The ranks of conspiracy theorists are burgeoning, growing larger and seemingly more gullible with each day. The website “Livescience.com” claims that 29 per cent of Americans believe in a “Deep State.” More than 50 per cent of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy. This did not come out of nowhere. In fact, it’s human nature. In the early twentieth century, when technology was on the rise and everyone pretended that superstition was a thing of the past, spiritualism was actually making a huge resurgence. The Order of the Golden Dawn was a secret society of British gentlemen, Aleister Crowley was beginning his campaign as the most evil man in the world; belief in ghosts and spirits was so pervasive that it ran rampant through all strata of society. William Lyon McKenzie King, the Prime Minister whose likeness graces the C...

Sometimes, it's painful to be right.  On July 17th, in my blog post titled "The Publishing Paradigm Shift is No Longer Coming, It's Here," I was bemoaning the loss of another notable Canadian small publisher. Since that time, I've actually been encouraged by the appearance of a flurry of new small presses and magazine titles. There will always be publishers, although the value of being one of their authors diminishes as companies gets smaller and their professionalism, reach and distribution clout decline. There is no doubt that being published by anyone other than yourself has its perks - ie: someone to do some of the grunt work; a stable of other writers to give you more sense of community; more direct contact with the people who actually do the work of publishing and marketing.  But the subdivision of small publishers into micropublishers comes with an equal number of drawbacks; ie: negligible advances if you're even able to get one, less prestige, limited...

If William Butler Yeats and Lewis Carroll had a baby (the question of whose uterus they would employ remains an open poetic question), it might open its eyes and read aloud from; When Nonsense Rules Ululating out at me  from the branches of a tree a loon’s voice screamed in fractured cries Something here is not quite right   I peer through darkened canopy For water birds, I cannot see Forsaken now by lake and sea And stranded on a blood dimmed tide   Whales drift like clouds through clotted air While slithering down the thoroughfare Songbirds writhe on filthy wings And from the hedge a wart hog sings Nothing here is as it ought With nightmares, our paradise is fraught   Cars and trucks dance down the street With ominous and warlike beats Fenders clashing on concrete Wheels spinning skeins of lies. And the blood dimmed tide does rise.   All the world is on its head. All our politics are dead The populace has l...

Here’s my advice for someone who has just written her first novel and is wondering how to proceed. Should she submit it to an agent or a major publisher? Sure. Professional publishing credits have far more cachet than self-publishing credits. But don’t hold your breath for a response – if you send out twenty queries, you may hear back from a few of them in a reasonable time. 1)        Agents are difficult to get. They are of diminished use in an overcrowded, over-booked market; and many of them are tired of beating their heads against the wall in the current market conditions.  Som experts like Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith think agents are never a good idea. But I think they can sometimes land you a bigger deal than you could get for yourself, and relieve you of the administrative burden if you have a hugely successful career.     2)        As a writer you may be better off submitting your work dire...

Have you written the most groundbreaking new book on the market? Me too!  We have so much in common.   My first published novel, The Human Template , is now available at all major online retailers! I'm celebrating with a Zoom launch this afternoon, where I get to thank my wonderful beta readers and friends and family and new fans and anybody else who wants to stop by.  The worst thing I could do now is simply forget about it and redirect all my energies somewhere else. Every snowball begins as a collection of snowflakes. They just need to find each other. It's my responsibility to get that ball rolling! I will be working hard to get the sequel, The Carnivorous Forest, out on schedule (by next summer), without losing focus on the immediate goal of turning as many readers as possible onto The Human Template . I can't get discouraged by tepid early sales - because that has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the book. I need to encourage everyone who has read and e...