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Logline for the next story

Posted on by Patrick
Writer's Tears Irish Whiskey

I’m work­ing away on my library-full-of-self-eras­ing books, and I have a nov­el to fin­ish writ­ing, but I’ve had an idea and I want to pur­sue it soon. (Actu­al­ly, it’s not a new idea; it’s a re-use of a con­cept from one of my nanow­rimo projects.)

“The Slow-Motion Apoc­a­lypse” is a “day in the life” por­trait of an aging wiz­ard who hap­pens to be all that’s stand­ing in the way of a nuclear blast oblit­er­at­ing part of Manhattan.

Inter­est­ed?

Steven Page in Concert

Posted on by Patrick
[photo of the concert ticket]

A cou­ple nights ago we went to see Steven Page in con­cert at the West­man Cen­ten­ni­al Audi­to­ri­um. It’s been a while; he has­n’t been to Bran­don in twen­ty-five years. He was on tour with Craig Northey of The Odds and Kevin Fox, a cellist.

The show was amaz­ing. I con­fess, I did­n’t know much of Page’s new­er stuff, but what I heard I liked. We end­ed up buy­ing a cou­ple CDs dur­ing the inter­mis­sion, so I look for­ward to hear­ing more of his recent work.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Steven Page in Con­cert” →

A friendly face

Posted on by Patrick

At the cof­fee shop this grey Mon­day morn­ing, the young woman behind me asked if I used to work at the research sta­tion. I said no, I’ve worked at the uni­ver­si­ty for 25 years¹.

“You look famil­iar, though,” she said. “Maybe it’s just that you’ve got a friend­ly face.”

It’s good to know that my Mon­day face was­n’t a scowl.

¹ !

Subvert all the expectations

Posted on by Patrick
Maman, the spider, with Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica behind

I came across this well-worn but still valid piece of writ­ing advice on Twit­ter yesterday:

If you plan on sub­vert­ing [expec­ta­tions], you need to sub­vert with the goal of some­thing BETTER.

And now today, on CBC’s Sun­day Edi­tion, they’re talk­ing about Robert Mun­sch’s game-chang­ing book The Paper Bag Princess, which came out in that long-ago era of 1980 and sub­vert­ed all the expec­ta­tions about what a fairy tale should be.

I remem­ber dis­cov­er­ing (or per­haps re-dis­cov­er­ing) The Paper Bag Princess in my twen­ties. As a young man who had heard a mil­lion fairy tales with the “and then they got mar­ried” hap­pi­ly-ever-after end­ing, it was a very dif­fer­ent end­ing than I was expect­ing: the princess does­n’t mar­ry the prince, not even after res­cu­ing him from the dragon.

It was a dif­fer­ent kind of end­ing, but still a hap­py end­ing. Maybe not so hap­py for the prince, but then he did noth­ing to earn a hap­py end­ing. It sub­vert­ed the trope and made a new, bet­ter thing from it.

So go: sub­vert the expec­ta­tions. Sub­vert all the expec­ta­tions. Make it bet­ter.

Head­er image: Maman, across the street from Notre-Dame Cathe­dral Basil­i­ca, in Ottawa.

Books I enjoyed in 2019

Posted on by Patrick
A bookmark painted by Hallie Bateman

Over on Twit­ter, Rose­mary Mosco asked about books read and loved in the past year. I took a look at my list, and here are some of the high­lights of the year so far, in no dis­cernible order:

  • This is How You Lose the Time War by Amar el-Mohtar and Max Glad­stone (reviewed here)
  • Peace by Gene Wolfe (Quite a nov­el, and slat­ed for a re-read some­time in the next few years)
  • The City in the Mid­dle of the Night by Char­lie Jane Anders (a first-con­tact nov­el unlike any­thing I’ve read before)
  • The Iron Drag­on’s Moth­er by Michael Swan­wick (a fit­ting cap­stone to a fre­quent­ly aston­ish­ing fan­ta­sy trilogy)
  • Son of a Trick­ster and Trick­ster Drift by Eden Robin­son (reviewed here; I can­not wait for vol­ume 3 or the CBC series) 
  • The Infi­nite Black­top by Sara Gran (the 3rd book in the Claire Dewitt series; absolute­ly worth it)
  • Get in Trou­ble, by Kel­ly Link (re-read; reviewed here)

How was your year in reading?