Patrick Johanneson

In dreams

Posted on January 25th, 2022January 25th, 2022 by Patrick

I dreamed of summer last night, bike riding. When I woke up it was ‑33 before the wind chill.

Le sigh.

WiP updates

Posted on January 17th, 2022January 17th, 2022 by Patrick

I spent the last week or so updating the outline to “Praise the Torch When ´Tis Burned” (working title, but I’m pretty attached to it). I got to the end—a final confrontation between The Dragon and the ship’s-queen—and realized I didn’t know exactly how I wanted it to end.

Today, washing dishes, I had an interesting insight that might solve my problem. In the first draft, the story was told as a confession to an unnamed 3^rd party. As I started the 2^nd draft, I discarded that idea; it didn’t work, mechanically. But I still liked the idea of the story-as-confession, and now, I think I might have a way to bring it back in.

Also, as the idea unfolded in my head (while my hands were warm and soapy), it expanded my understanding of the ship’s-queen and The Dragon.

This could work. (I mean, it could backfire, too; but it could work.)

The title, for those that a) don’t know and b) would like to, is taken from a stanza in Hávamál, or The Sayings of Odin:

At evening praise the day, the torch when ´tis burned,
the blade when ´tis tested, the maid when she is married,
the ice when ´tis crossed, the ale when ´tis drunk.

…roughly. (Depending on the translation.)

This is also the source of one of my favourite sayings: “Praise ice when over it.” It’s a very wintry version, in my mind, of “don’t count your chickens till they hatch”.

Photo by Igor Lepilin on Unsplash.

Smitty’s Eggs

Posted on January 10th, 2022January 10th, 2022 by Patrick

This weekend was, more or less, the fifth anniversary of my dad’s death. So we went to Smitty’s and had eggs Benedict, and then I bought myself a very JJ parka.

Favourite images, 2021

Posted on December 31st, 2021December 31st, 2021 by Patrick

Some of my best photos (well, in my opinion) of the year that was.

Continue reading →

Awards Eligibility 2021

Posted on December 30th, 2021December 30th, 2021 by Patrick

I had two stories appear in markets in 2021.

First up, in the spring, my super-short story “The Atlas” appeared in Cloud Lake, Volume Two. “The Atlas” is 325 words long, and features an erased nation, a hunting knife, and a bottle of absinthe, among other delights.

Jennifer said her great-to-the-nth-grandmother came from Untille. The country, erased in some primeval war, existed now only in folklore. On the atlas page it bordered Iraq, Uqbar, Syria.
—“The Atlas”

And then, in the fall, my story “Summertime in the Void” appeared in Alternate Plains (ie, the sequel to Parallel Prairies). It’s got varicoloured pills, theft, confessions, road trips, ghosts, and an answer to “What happens if the Rapture (or the Singularity) doesn’t want you?” (And yes, if you’re wondering, I absolutely stole the title from the I Mother Earth song.)

The upside-down sun glared down on him from a cloudless blue sky. He’d tried explaining once to a friend what the sun looked like when it was upside-down. It hadn’t gone well. The best he’d managed to come up with was “You’ll know it when you see it.”
—“Summertime in the Void”

See you in 2022!

The Tree, 2021

Posted on December 21st, 2021December 21st, 2021 by Patrick

It’s up. It’s decorated. It’s not even Christmas Eve yet.

Inspiration is where you find it

Posted on December 12th, 2021December 4th, 2023 by Patrick

We’ve been enjoying the episodes of Richard Ayoade’s show Travel Man that CBC has been playing. If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this: Richard and another British celebrity travel to a touristy destination for a holiday weekend, take in the sights, do the tours, and make merry. The humour is high-brow, rapid-fire, and often more than a little meta. (eg: in this past week’s episode, Ayoade points out that “this show’s lack of success is predicated on editing based on slights” (trust me, in context, that’s hilarious)).

This week’s episode saw R. A. joined in Dubrovnik by one Stephen Merchant. They enjoyed oysters on the seashore, went on a tour that crossed mud-bogging in a dune buggy with possible death by landmine (“We’re not sure,” the tour guide explained, as they explored a WWII-era fortification, “that all the mines have been removed”), and took another tour of the locations where Game of Thrones filmed.

It transpired that neither comedian has actually seen an episode of Game of Thrones, but that didn’t seem to slow the guide down at all. Stephen Merchant pointed out that he enjoys seeing film locations, even if he hasn’t seen the film.

I laughed. Then I thought, That’d be an interesting character quirk for one of my characters; specifically, one of the wizards in “The Slow Apocalypse”. Ha ha, I thought, that could be a cute throwaway line. You’d rather see the locations where they filmed Lawrence of Arabia than actually watch Lawrence of Arabia.

But then I thought about it a bit more, and… I think it might actually be a perfect insight into his character. He’s got a talent for cutting straight to the hidden truth of things. A preference for reality over artifice would slot very nicely into that personality.

In fact, on my way to the grocery store, I envisioned a new scene, a flashback: he’s dating the woman who will later be his wife. They go to a movie about King Arthur. He’s so very irritated by the falsehoods, the blatant misrepresentations, that he has to leave the theatre for a while. (He’s immortal, or nearly so; he was there, in England, at the time, and most of what he’s seeing is bullshit. Some other city—Prague, Dubrovnik—standing in for the London of the day. And it’s so early in the relationship that he can’t tell her the truth, the why, of his reaction. Maybe it’s their first actual fight—I’m still mulling the scene. Workshopping it here, in fact, so if you’ve got comments on it, let me know.)