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