That excellent photo was taken by Grant Munroe, at Biblioasis, and it is the first time a book I wrote ever became an actual object you can pick up, tear it half, or throw at another human that is texting during a movie.

I am in there with some very good writers (Anakana Schofield, Samuel Archibald, and Kathy Page) who are all part of the fall list from Biblioasis. They are known to make beautiful books at our fine publishing house, and I can tell you straight up that nobody in this row was disappointed. The covers are the work of Kate Hargreaves, and I owe her a beer and a high five. All these ARCs were all printed up to travel to Book Expo America, which took place last week.

Over the past few days there were some excellent responses online from people who visited the Biblioasis folks in the Consortium Books alley (as they are the US distributor), and that is pretty damn cool. It has long been my dream to get my writing down to the US and try to build a readership there. It makes a good deal of sense considering the vast majority of my influences are American writers from the south, or from other rural areas of the States. I know we are telling people that Debris is akin to the work or Daniel Woodrell or Donald Ray Pollock, but I am very interested is seeing how it will be received if it actually gets into the hands of their types of readers. There is a lot more work to do if this is ever to get that far. But Biblioasis is doing their damnedest to give this book the best chance it can get on both sides of the 49th parallel, and I’ve been hustling a fair bit as well to try to make sure it sticks when it is officially published.

All of this feels a little bit strange, moreso as we near the actual pub date for Debris, but I am going to keep on grinding it out until September 15th. There are some other interesting developments going on behind the scenes that will hopefully pan out, and get this book into other non-Canadian hands as well, but I’ve got to wait on that some and see what happens.

Finally, you might have noticed that my story Montana Border has been unlocked online from The Walrus, and you can read it here if you haven’t already. Massive thanks to Nick Mount and all the other Walruses that have been tweeting and sharing news of the story, and telling people it does not suck. I appreciate you very much for that. Same goes for everyone else who has been taking the time to read and tell people about this story.

There’s gonna be just the one last story from the collection published soon (unless the other lonely unpublished sucker gets hustled out last second), and it will be in the summer issue of The New Quarterly. The title of this story, the closer for my book, is Most of the houses had lost their lights. There is also a lengthy interview in that very same issue, where John Metcalf (my editor at Biblioasis) asks me various things about my work, how I go about my writing, and things he wanted to punch me for in the edits. I hope that is of some interest to readers. It is a long one and covers a hell of a lot, and I don’t think there are too many pieces out there quite like it. More on that later…

Until then, thanks for your support and your eyeballs. You are legends of the fall.

Hardcastle

If you subscribe to The Walrus, or saunter into a shop to buy it May 14th, you’ll notice that they’ve got a story in there this month called Montana Border. Turns out I wrote that story.

It is the penultimate story in my short fiction collection Debris, out this September with Biblioasis (and early new year 2016 in the States). The excellent fiction editor of The Walrus, Nick Mount, read a few stories of mine over the last while, and this was the one that really got his goat. At the time I was fairly surprised by that. But, as months go by and I’ve gone through various readings and edits of it, I do think it is one of the best stories I’ve written overall.

This story came about after I sent John Metcalf (Biblioasis’ fiction editor and champion) the latest draft of my second unpublished novel, now called In the Cage. He took it on to edit and publish later, but, in the meantime, he suggested that I mine some territory covered in the novel a little more as he found it quite interesting. The stuff of that novel, with its cagefighting and crime and chaos, always struck me as something that might not interest many readers as much as it interests me. But John thought it was worth exploring, and apparently Mr. Mount found it worthwhile enough to put it on shelves at your grocery store.

I am incredibly grateful to Nick Mount for his work on this story, as well as the other editors in-house, for bearing with me as I denied all commas and proper use of the English language during editing. I feel like I’ve already broke these sentences exactly the right amount and there’s really no going back. Nonetheless, I enjoyed going through the factchecking process and learning that Walrus staff sat there at their office computers watching regulated and unregulated MMA fights for research. If nothing else, at least this story accomplished that much…

All of this is something I’m very proud to be a part of, as I know what it takes to get into the pages of The Walrus. Luck not the least of these things. I’m looking forward to hearing back from readers about this story, and maybe seeing someone just standing there shaking their head at the news stand while I buy meat and coke zero. If you manage to get your hands on this one, I’d be interested to hear all the ways you either like or are baffled by Montana Border, and it being published in such a fancy place.

More story news to come soon. Keep your hats on.

Hardcastle