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As many of you likely know by now, the great Denis Johnson died last week, at the age of 67. His work, and especially his short fiction, had a significant impact on my own writing, and I admired the man and his talents very much.

I’ve said something about Johnson the best way that I can in a piece that I wrote for the Globe & Mail, that ran on Friday. The books editor, Mark Medley, asked me if I wanted to write something, and I tried my best to do the man justice.

You can find that article here. I appreciate everyone who read it and said kind things so far. Many, many writers and readers were affected deeply by Johnson’s writing, and by his death, so I did what I could to honour the man and try to show how he shone in his craft and skill.

Take care, all. KH

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Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn’t know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that. – Denis Johnson (Dundun)

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This has been discoverable information for a little while on the internet, if you were to google the Journey Prize Stories 29, but today I’m posting to tell folks about being a juror for JPS 29, along with past Journey Prizer, and novelist, Grace O’Connell, and award winning author, Ayelet Tsabari.

We were all three asked to be jurors earlier this year by McClelland & Stewart/Penguin House editor Anita Chong, who I’ve known since I had a story in the Journey Prize Stories 24, back in 2012. Grace also had a story in JPS 24, and does not remember sitting across from me at the Writers’ Trust Gala, at the “fun table” of emerging authors, what with my large, unbearded fatbabyhead. It was the first real literary event I went to in Toronto since moving back from the prairies in 2010. And, it is a very strange first event to be at when you know nobody so I drank all the wines and woke up with my shoes outside my apartment…

So yes, it is kind of a full-circle story, and I was honoured to be a part of the process. Selecting the dozen or so stories in the JPS involved a lot of reading and an eventual fightclub at PRH headquarters. No matter, we figured out the book and the finalists and winner, and I got some meat for lunch. All in all, it was a good time.

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Anyways, I have to thank all of the McClelland & Stewart people, especially Anita, for their work on the JP, this year and every year. And, I must also thank, in equal measure, the fine humans of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, who have tolerated my behaviour at fancy events for five years now, including two failed Journey Prize campaigns, and a number of other bad personal showings at their events. That means Mandy Hopkins, Katrina Afonso, James Davies, Joe Goulart, and many more. The WT folks administer the prize, give up the monies for it, and make sure that JP authors feel like they are part of the literary community, and welcome at the weird CanLit parties.

They also sometimes get mad at you for submitting a headshot that is a 2009 MacBook photo of 400kb that they have to put on a twenty foot projector screen somehow, and then, out of frustration, they (Katrina) take your author photos on the fly for the next five years. So that is nice…

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Oh, there he is.

The authors and stories that are included in JPS 29 will be revealed one by one over the summer, with the finalists named after that. The anthology is officially out in late September, and the winner will be given their monies and hardware at the Writers’ Trust Awards in November. Probably, I will be at that, and that will complete the Hardcastle JP experience, when I possibly get up on stage to hand the award over to one of the many better behaved and educated young writers in the anthology, if I’m allowed in the building by Hopkins.

Until then, thanks to my fellow jurors, and to everyone who is involved in the Journey Prize Stories from beginning to end, not least the writers who sweat blood for their stories, and the journals who published those stories and sent them in for consideration. Most of the best writers in Canada have come to us by way of the short story, and I think we’ve only seen the beginning of it yet.

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That’s all for now. Take care and believe in your dreams…

KH

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At the moment, my publisher, the mighty Biblioasis, are down in the US trying to get some Yankees excited about their fall list. One of the lead books on that list is In the Cage, this novel that I wrote about redneck crime and Mixed Martial Arts and poverty and other nice things.

There isn’t much more to report so far, other than the fact that another set of ARCs will be going out soon, with the above featured cover on there, designed by the estimable Michel Vrana. This might get tweaked a bit before the final run, but you will see something much like this on the final cover of the book, I believe.

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There was a temporary cover that went out with the early ARCs to a few lucky/unlucky people. Those were mainly done up so that I could get something into the hands of John Irving and see if he was willing to put his good name and reputation behind another Hardcastle Hillbilly Mayhem title. Turns out that he did. Anyways, that one looked like this…

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Of course, there was one more magical cover that was the favourite of sicko Andrew F. Sullivan, amongst others. This “art” was made during my bacon-eating at my local place of bacon-eating and sometimes writing (where I am right now, writing this shit). If I sell more than 12 copies of In the Cage, perhaps we will do a special edition with this cover, and blow the minds of everyone in North America and perhaps France and Papua New Guinea…

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In any case, the book is online now on Biblioasis’ site, and in various other places like Amazon, Indigo, and Barnes & Noble. I have also seen a tweet from yesterday that tells Americans to look out for In the Cage on Edelweiss, which I understand is a place that people go for books and whatnot. So go to there and achieve it, if you dare.

I might have some other hilarious news for you in the next couple of weeks, should everything work out. But, I have to keep it all on the down low for now until it’s all official. Good stuff is on the way though, almost certainly…

Until then, take care.

Hardcastle