Over the last few weeks I’ve had a couple things show up online that might be of interest, or might not and you can just shake your head at them. Either way, I’ll post them below and you can take a gander if you choose.

I did a little seven question interview thing with Alix Hawley, author of All True Not a Lie In It, which recently won the Amazon First Novel Award. She sent me some questions about my story Most of the houses had lost their lights, published right at this second by The New Quarterly and soon to be on shelves or in the hands of subscribers. I answer Alix’s questions about the writing process, and see whether I should ever try to write a female protagonist ever again. The segment is called Storybrain and can all be read here on her blog by clicking this line.

Next, I was asked to participate in The Recommend at 49th Shelf, and, as I’ve done before, I recommend The Lost Salt Gift of Blood by Alistair MacLeod. It’s no secret that MacLeod is my favourite writer that we ever had in this country, and that I particularly admire his short stories. Click here and check that out, as well as recommendations by fellow writers Chelsea Rooney, Daniel Allen Cox, Chadwick Ginther, and Teri Vlassopoulos, 

The last little things are both series that The New Quarterly runs with the contributors of upcoming issues of the journal. I show where I write when I’m indoors and underground in my basement palace (pictured above this post in part), for the Writing Spaces feature. Finally, for the Who’s Reading What feature, I tell people that I’m reading books by Andrew Forbes and Sarah Gerard. So you can read that and then buy those books and read and cherish them…

Oh yeah, I also got some good news that the last straggler story of mine from Debris, called The Rope, will be published in the September issue of This Magazine. I owe their fiction and poetry editor (and general hero) Dani Couture for reading that and finding room for it, especially so close to the book’s pub date.

That is all of it. I’ll post again when the TNQ story is officially out in the world for everyone to attain. Cheers.

Hardcastle

If you are a subscriber to The Fiddlehead, or a sometimes buyer of it in stores, you will find a long-gestating story of mine in the Summer Fiction Issue, which has just been published. If you are neither of the things I said, maybe you should start anew, and let this particular issue of a journal into your life.

There are stories in here from Kathy Page, Cynthia Flood, and, one of my three favourite writers on earth, Daniel Woodrell. Not sure how that all shook out, but Mark Jarman did some outstanding wizardry to fill the pages of this issue.

As far as my story goes, Thought you were fast is an older one, written way back in late 2012, and submitted to a few places back then, before I had a run of stories in various journals and just let this one lie. After a long while, Jarman emailed to see if it was still up for grabs, and I did a few revised versions for him and just kept on with other things while waiting to see if he could find the right spot for it. Then, the other day, I saw a tweet by The Fiddlehead about this issue, and saw that it had been stuck in there with these other heavyweights. I’ve not had a story hang around for this long and find a home before, so that surprised me some and was also relatively hilarious. Thanks to Mr. Jarman for making room for it when the time came.

I have another story out this month, Most of the houses had lost their lights, in The New Quarterly, along with an “In Conversation” type deal between me and John Metcalf. That story is also Metcalf’s favourite one in my forthcoming collection, Debris. That is something I knew was happening this month for sure, and should be out in a few days, and possibly is already in the hands of some TNQ subscribers. Either way, I’ll post more about that when I’ve seen it officially switch over to their summer issue.

Thanks for reading everybody. I appreciate you all.

Hardcastle