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