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This past Sun­day I had to run a cou­ple errands. As I left the house, I noticed there was a police car parked fac­ing the wrong way on the street in front of the house a cou­ple doors down.

When I returned there were about four police cars. I went up the back alley, plan­ning to loop around and park in front of my house. But there was police tape strung across the back lane, and anoth­er police vehi­cle block­ing the way. I backed out and parked fur­ther up my block. I made a men­tal note to check the police web­site lat­er, to see if there were any details in the dai­ly media release as to just what was going on.

Well, there were:

On Sun­day morn­ing at approx­i­mate­ly 07:52am, Police were request­ed to attend to a res­i­dence in [my block] for a female who had been stabbed mul­ti­ple times in the arms, legs and mid-sec­tion. Police learned sev­er­al items includ­ing the victim’s vehi­cle were stolen at the same time. Police believed two male sus­pects were involved [note: turned out it was a sin­gle sus­pect] and may be armed with firearm. […] At approx­i­mate­ly 6:10pm, the sus­pect was observed leav­ing the res­i­dence on [anoth­er street]. Police con­duct­ed a high risk vehi­cle stop and the sus­pect was arrested.

—Police media release

So yeah. Wow.

Pho­to by Tam­my Gann on Unsplash. Not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the police cars around town.

A friend of mine, Steve Groves, was a tal­ent­ed writer and an amaz­ing car­toon­ist. I think he had a hard time believ­ing it, though.

For a while he drew a week­ly strip for a local news­pa­per, called The Grove, that fea­tured humans and ani­mals in a small town. The main char­ac­ter had moved home from the big city and would often ques­tion just why. The humour veered between gen­tle and bit­ing, as all the best satire does.

A sam­ple car­toon is at the top of this post. I often told Steve that The Grove remind­ed me, in tone and in exe­cu­tion, of Bloom Coun­ty. He’d always mum­ble some­thing in an embar­rassed voice about how it “can’t be that good”, but it was.

(He would some­times tell me that he found my suc­cess in writ­ing inspir­ing, and I’d mum­ble some­thing in an embar­rassed voice, because I know how much rejec­tion I’ve col­lect­ed, how much fur­ther I feel I have to go. So I guess that par­tic­u­lar knife cuts both ways.)

Steve died last year after a bat­tle with can­cer. A mutu­al friend, one T. Kei­th Edmunds, set about on a project to gath­er some of Steve’s work into a memo­r­i­al col­lec­tion. Mine arrived on Thurs­day, and it’s gor­geous. 96 pages of car­toons, draw­ings, sketch­es, and notes for projects that run the gamut from “kid’s book” to “night­mar­ish mon­ster hunter”.

Thanks, Kei­th. And of course, thanks, Steve.

Unfin­ished Sto­ries: The Art of Stephen Groves is avail­able for pur­chase, as are select prints of Steve’s work.