Patrick

News

Posted on by Patrick

It’s been a month since I had any­thing to say here. That month has been very busy at work, and I know more about Word­Press than I did last month; that’s about all I’ll say for now.

I sent in my author pho­to and my bio to the Tesser­acts publishers.

Judo has start­ed up for anoth­er year.

I now have the sched­ule for this year’s Words Alive fes­ti­val, and I’m read­ing on the Fri­day evening. Once the sched­ule’s online at the Words Alive site, I’ll post a link.

And now I’m going to do some writ­ing, before this long week­end slips away entirely.

Contract

Posted on by Patrick

The con­tract for my Tesser­acts sto­ry arrived in my email inbox today, as well as the lay­out ver­sion of my sto­ry for me to proof­read. Awe­some. If you need me, I’ll be proofreading.

Hey, does any­one know — can you spell Ouroboros with a low­er­case “o”?
Update: Yes.

One more hit in Google

Posted on by Patrick

Oh hey look, Edge Pub­lish­ing has added details about Tesser­acts 14 to their web­site. So that’s one more place my name will appear when I go ego-surfing.

Looks like it’s ready for pre-order­ing, too:

Bran­donites: Pen­ny­wise Books
Canucks: Amazon.ca
Amer­i­cans, and the rest of the world too: Amazon.com

(Hint hint. Also, aside to Kei­th, if you’re read­ing this — if you’ve got a pre-order email address or some­thing, I’d be abun­dant­ly hap­py to add it to the head of this list.)

I’m pret­ty excit­ed, all over again! Also: I’ll be read­ing from my sto­ry “Heat Death, or, Answer­ing the Ouroborous Ques­tion” at Words Alive this year. If things work out, I’ll also be able to sign books there, just like a Real Prop­er Author.

Woo-hoo!

The game’s afoot

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I’m not going to say too much about it yet — I’m still in the open­ing moments — but it seems that some pret­ty seri­ous lib­er­ties have been tak­en with the copy­right on a poem I had pub­lished way back in 1997. I found out about it by acci­dent, from a rel­a­tive in Chi­na, and ini­tial­ly assumed that it was part of the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pira­cy that Chi­na is, fair­ly or unfair­ly, known for.

Nope. Turns out the copy­right infringe­ment hap­pened in my own province. In the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, no less.

So now I’m look­ing deep­er, and try­ing to fig­ure out what my next set of steps should be.

#

As for tonight, I’m writ­ing, and then I’ll be run­ning, and prob­a­bly writ­ing a bit more lat­er. I need to find out about late 17th cen­tu­ry embalm­ing prac­tices — did they use cam­phor, for instance? — and funer­al rites. Any suggestions?

Review: Black Bottle Man

Posted on by Patrick

Black Bottle Man

Black Bot­tle Man

Rem­brandt is ten years old when his life is turned upside-down.

It’s 1928, and the Great Depres­sion has yet to begin. Rem­brandt’s entire world is his extend­ed fam­i­ly, three house­holds of farm­ers who live very close to each oth­er, as farm hous­es go. He’s the only child in three fam­i­lies, and his aunts both want a child very badly.

So bad­ly, in fact, that they’ll cut a deal with the Dev­il to get what they want.

To save his aunts’ souls, Rem­brandt, his pa, and his uncle Thomp­son have to take to the road, nev­er stay­ing in any one place longer than twelve days. Because on the thir­teenth day, the Black Bot­tle Man will come for them…

* * *

This one took me by sur­prise; it built so steadi­ly, and so qui­et­ly, skip­ping from Rem­brandt’s youth to his 90-year-old dotage, that I did­n’t real­ize until the end just how much I had invest­ed in it. The cli­max caught me off guard with just how much emo­tion it wrung from me. Not many books have made me tear up. This one did­n’t, either, but man it was a near thing.

My only com­plaint would be that I found a few gram­mat­i­cal quib­bles, here and there, but on the whole this book is high­ly recommended.

Writ­ten by Craig Rus­sell, based on his radio play of the same name, Black Bot­tle Man is pub­lished by Great Plains Teen Fic­tion, an imprint of Great Plains Pub­li­ca­tions. My copy is signed because I went to the book launch at Pen­ny­wise Books here in Brandon.

Get it…
from the publisher
from Chapters/Indigo
from Amazon.com

Interesting, to say the least

Posted on by Patrick

I got a new watch from my wife for my birth­day last month. It’s a great watch, and I like it rather a lot.

My new watch

Today on my lunch break, for no oth­er rea­son than “because I’m a nerd”, I punched my watch’s ser­i­al num­ber into Google, expect­ing to find — I don’t know, maybe its incept date*. Noth­ing much, anyways.

Instead, I found a US Mar­shal for­fei­ture auc­tion list­ing that includ­ed my watch.

My watch's lot

That’s it in the bot­tom mid­dle of the lot.

The things you learn.

[update] Appar­ent­ly, the auc­tion com­pa­ny in ques­tion “sells all the jewelry[etc.] seized and for­feit­ed nation­al­ly for the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice.” So… do I have a drug deal­er’s watch? Was it seized in a tax fortei­ture? The rather shal­low mys­tery deep­ens a very lit­tle bit.

[2nd update] As it turns out, there’s no mys­tery here. What I took to be a unique ser­i­al num­ber was appar­ent­ly in fact a glob­al prod­uct num­ber. So it was­n’t my watch in the prop­er­ty auc­tion; just a watch just like mine.
____

* See, there’s that nerd thing creep­ing in again.