Where I’ve Been
Orlando. Weather. Disney Springs. Operationally challenging. But I came home with a functioning light sabre. Totally worth it.
The Short Version
For anyone that reads this blog on the regular, you may know that I’ve had my first short story/work published in a Whistler writing magazine titled, The Lupine Review. It’s available for purchase and is an eclectic showcase of the artists and writers of the Sea to Sky corridor. What I’m very excited about is my first public reading of my own work! I’ll be at READING EVENT 3 at the Whistler Public Library, Oct 30 at 7:30pm as part of the 2025 Whistler Writer’s Festival. Readings are something I should have been doing lots more of (or any, really) during the release of The Sequence. However, the reality of the Covid restrictions in 2021 meant that just traveling, let alone booking a venue was a major hassle. But this is totally different. The piece is only 249 words long and packs a punch. Enough to land me 6th place in the group. The story is available in The Short Version section but I’m pretty sure it’s paid content.
The contest was in 2024, the NYCMidnight 250 word micro fiction. The assigned genre was Drama. The action was slowing. The word was bargain. I wrote a very short piece about a difficult meeting in a playground and ran with it.
Rusty swings groaned in lazy arcs against aging playground steel.
Concrete sensory imagery. Writing in these compressed formats under a tight 48 hour deadline definitely requires a lot from me. Gone are the nights when I could toil away beneath the perpetual synthetic dusk of a Whistler crawlspace until the project was done and I could sleep the next day until noon. Now it’s 6am and/or daylight and “Daddy! Daddy!” plus 4am phone calls assigning me flights to places that don’t register until I’m halfway to the airport. Sleep and time, I’ve decided, share the title of life’s only true currencies.
Plus the screaming at bedtime. If only it wasn’t every, single, night.
Let’s have another!
Katie isn’t due for another few weeks but things are happening. The boy wants out. Fingers crossed for us cuz we are set up for an October delivery not mid September! Keep the bun in the oven! Recent quotes include, “I’m going for this massage, and when it’s over you better still be pregnant.” We both harhar’d. It’s our schtick and it’s why we get along so well.
What I’m Reading
I’m dabbling in some William Gibson to keep my head in line with his writing style, but I’ve also begun re-reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It was heralded as “the top echelon of science fiction noir that’s heavy on technology and futuristic grit,” which is my writing jam, so I feel it’s important for me to revisit these legends of the 80’s and 90’s every so often to catch the vibe of their writing styles.
What I’m Up To
Parenting. Declan is a character and a half and pulls stunts like the above image at the local Walmart every single day. He loves to kick “the ball in the net” with his Dad and play Hot Wheels and read books and watch “the stomp stomp stomp” and he is on for twelve hours a day. I love it and it is exhausting. Time management is key.
Toddler of the Year. We saw some heavy competition happening as the final round of group voting came to a close. There was a family decision to only pursue unpaid votes at the end as there were clearly some people with deep pockets or thousands of voters participating in our group. Needless to say we had lots of fun being part of the of the contest and contributing to the Toys for Tots charity. Third is pretty good!
Writing. Those spare minutes are becoming less and less available. I’m gunning for a September completion, even if the manuscript isn’t polished. Sent to the editor in a coherent but rough around the edges state now vs submitting an incoherent mess in six months because of sleep deprivation and a newborn in the house sounds like a decent plan. Everything can be fixed in edits.
The Sequence
I’ve been getting some traction with the book lately, I’m not sure where the interest is coming from but I’ll take it. The very slow buildup to hopefully a successful co-re-lanch with False Ignition.
Summer is winding down and with the weather change I’m finding more excuses to sit in my office with the blinds closed and the lighting dim to simulate the perpetual synthetic dusk where I wrote The Sequence.
False Ignition
Inches ever closer to completion. Amidst the ongoing stress of assimilation and change, words continue to flow onto the screen and a viable ending (that I hope the reader will enjoy) has emerged. Two characters stand out, Anders and Hendricks. Which one shall be chosen, well we’ll have to wait until the release date for that.
–wink–
A blurb, unfinished.
A body in a forgotten cemetery. A whisper of contagion. Two Hong Kong detectives who are already on the clock for something they can’t yet see.
Under the China Ferry Corporation, in a sealed room beneath the harbour, evidence evaporates.
On another front, geneticist Kit McKee runs atonement at a dead sprint, while a skip–tracer named Orlando cuts through networks for a prize worth more than countries. Each step narrows the gap between human intent and artificial ambition.
FALSE IGNITION is a razor-edged techno-noir about ethics, leverage, and the price of innovation in an age of editable genomes. The story starts with a corpse. It ends with a question:
When you can copy the future, who gets to keep it?
Peace!