Not too long ago I got word that The New Quarterly is going to publish another story of mine in their summer issue (#131). The story is called Spread Low on the Fields. It involves a middle aged man coming back to his hometown to handle his father’s affairs after the old man is killed. Pretty quickly he gets tangled up in some ugly stuff while trying to make sense of the unusual circumstances that led to the killing.

This is my second story in The New Quarterly in 2014. After giving me a shot with a longer story that needed some real work (Hunted by Coyotes – TNQ #129), Pamela Mulloy turned this new one around quick, and I can’t say enough about how impressed I am with TNQ after going through two very different sets of revisions with them now.

Spread Low on the Fields will be out later in the summer, toward the end of July. That’s what I hear anyway. So keep an eye out.

Last week I also found out I’ll be getting a story done in Joyland. I’ve been sending them my work for a long time, and nothing ever stuck until recently. That story is called Shape of a Sitting Man, and it was a finalist for the The Malahat Review Open Season Award earlier in the year, and whiffed at another prize before going out for regular submissions. That one is about a beef between two rural families, leading to a little bit of mayhem and a manhunt for the main character through some marshland. It’s a quick and dirty one and I’m glad it’ll get to see the light of day.

I’ll know when that story is going to land a little later on, but it will likely be sometime this summer also.

Still working on some other stuff that I can’t really speak to yet. If I get that sorted out soon it’ll be on here as well. Otherwise, you’ll notice that I’ve got a tab for Manuscript Assessments up on the site. After getting clear of my nonsense day job I’m branching out into freelance work, including the assessment service. As of now I have a few spots open, and am actively taking on projects, so if you have a line on any writer looking for some assistance with their manuscript, or if you are actually that writer, go ahead and fire me an email at hardcastleassessments@gmail.com. I’ll happily read any queries sent to that address.

In the meantime, thanks for reading. More to come soon…

Cheers,

Hardcastle

First off, I’d like to thank the folks that came out to the EW Reading Series the other week, and especially Jess Taylor, who runs the whole deal and got me up there. I read the middle part of the story Old Man Marchuk, which appears in the current issue of EVENT. All in all it seemed to go swimmingly. Below is a picture that I stole from the EW facebook page.

Hardcastle reading from Old Man Marchuk (EVENT), at the EW Reading Series

That same story still has some legs apparently. As I recently had John Metcalf call me up and let me know that he wanted to include Old Man Marchuk in the Best Canadian Stories anthology that he curates for Oberon Press. Metcalf is a renowned writer, critic, and fiction editor (currently at Biblioasis), and he collects these stories by reading every single issue of every literary journal published in Canada in a given year. I am honoured to have that story chosen and will pass more info along when I get some. As far as I know Best Canadian Stories is published at year’s end. Writers who have appeared in BCS include Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Rohinton Mistry, Timothy Taylor, Lisa Moore, Patrick Lane, Zsuzsi Gartner, Marjorie Celona, Zoey Leigh Peterson, Lynn Coady, and the notorious Amy Jones.

Last week I also got word that a new story I wrote, called Debris, has been accepted for publication in Shenandoah, a leading US literary journal out of Washington & Lee University. I have been trying to crack the US journal scene for a long while, with just a few online publications so far. This story was almost picked up a couple of times with some very kind commentary on how it narrowly missed. Nonetheless, the good folks at Shenandoah, and especially their editor Rod Smith, read and accepted this story quickly and I’m told it should be set for October, in their fall issue. Landing this one made me pretty damn happy. Perhaps I’ll be able to find a few more journals south of the 49th that are willing to print some of my newer stuff.

That is the most of it for now. I am working on other secret moves that I can’t talk about, but I’ll say something to that end if or when I can. In the meantime, thanks for reading and for keeping the dream alive.

Hardcastle

This week I’ll be doing a reading for the first time since I got kicked out of my writing MA at Cardiff due to poverty, as part of a hilarious evening for the Emerging Writers Reading Series.  This month’s reading is called Meat Locker March, and also includes Seamus Ogden, Christine Ottoni, and Dave Proctor, who is a special guest and Meat Locker Editions author. This is an anniversary show for the EW Reading Series, and there will likely be much drinking and ballyhoo.

This excellent series is masterminded by Jess Taylor, who does a hell of a lot of work to put this event on every month and give emerging writers a chance to put their stuff out there in front of proper audience. Most of whom are a shit-ton better at reading than I.

So, come by and watch me read a chunk of story where an old man shoots the hell out of a bunch of burglars and then has his hillbilly clan-folk terrorize the local RCMP constable tasked with putting the old man away. That’ll likely be what you hear, unless I flip out and change it up at last minute.

Here is the Facebook link to the event. It’ll be at Duffy’s on the westside of Toronto, near Dufferin and Bloor, starting at 8pm. It is all pay what you can, and you should scrape together some scratch for Ms. Taylor and her assisting people so that this series can keep on happening.

Hope to see a bunch of your ugly mugs there. At the very least it is a prime opportunity to heckle me offstage and/or throw clods of dirt in my direction. Leave the other readers alone though. They deserve your attention and respect, and some free beers.

Thanks. KH.

As of this week you should be able to find all three of my latest stories on the shelves, or, for those who can’t get to bookstores that carry lit journals, you can order them all online, whether in print or as a digital type deal.

The first story to show up is called Hunted by Coyotes, published in The New Quarterly, issue 129. The theme of the issue is ‘The Wild and Unwonted,’ and the story is introduced briefly in the issue’s foreword…

‘In “Hunted by Coyotes,” Kevin Hardcastle’s startling and gritty story of a modern day peddler selling electricity door-to-door, coyotes roam the subdivisions—a frontier of sorts.’

This story is a long piece that got a lot of good attention from Pamela Mulloy, who had the patience to work with me on revisions and help narrow it down to the stuff that counts. You can grab a copy here on TNQ’s site, and can learn more about the other great work in there by clicking the ‘Welcome to this Issue’ link.

If you haven’t had your fill of prairie mayhem, you can have a go at this other story in EVENT issue 42/3, called Old Man Marchuk. It involves an RCMP constable stationed out in the middle of nowhere, trying to handle a situation involving a trigger-happy old man and a county that favours frontier justice. For more info on the other contents, or to grab it online, go here to EVENT‘s brand new site. 

The third story, One we could stand to lose,  appears in the pages of the venerable PRISM international, issue 52.2. This happens to be their theme volume for the year, the ‘Love & Sex Issue.’ I managed to sneak into this one with a story that is probably stretching the boundaries of the theme by not really involving any sex whatsoever and, probably a tenuous claim to the love part as well. But I think I got lucky by being published in this issue rather than a later one, not only because of the other writers involved, but also because of one of best covers going for any journal. PRISM folks run it down as follows…

‘Kevin Hardcastle’s “One We Could Stand to Lose” tells the story of an isolated man’s complicated love for the decrepit flop house where he has worked for years.’

Get this guy here at PRISM‘s online store.   Huge thanks to Jane Campbell for her work on this, and for the insanely quick turnaround from submission to publication.

If anything else turns up I’ll write about it on here, and no doubt will be tweeting nonsense about all manner of things as well. In the meantime, I hope people manage to read some of this stuff and keep on supporting literary journals throughout the country. They keep writers honest and often give them the encouragement they need to continue grinding on. This past year that has been of real significance for me, I can promise you that.

Thanks all for the support and for reading my work. I appreciate it always. Hardcastle.

Happy New Year everyone. I gotta get behind 2014 and hope this year will be a good one. 2013 was a real son of a bitch in a lot of ways and I’m pretty glad to see it go. Nonetheless, despite some of the nonsense that last year brought, I wrote a fair bit and met a lot of good writer folk around town, and that kind of kept me alive and sewed some oats to prevent murder and jail in 2014. So yeah, no regrets. And thanks to all those who put up with my raving over the year…

Just before the holidays I got word that another new story, “Thought you were fast,” has been taken on by The Fiddlehead, one of Canada’s most hallowed literary journals. Not sure when it’ll show up yet, but I should hear more shortly and will get that info out when I have it.

“Thought you were fast” is a story is about a contractor in a small town who has a run of bad luck while trying to put food on the table for his family, and seems to be outmatched by the universe in being able to impress his young son on terms that the boy will understand. In the end he reaches a breaking point when his buddy, in a similar position, decides to pack it in, and eventually the whole story comes to a head by the rampaging of a mad bull and a good, old-fashioned car-fire.

So yeah, standard Hardcastle fare all around.

I’ve been trying to crack The Fiddlehead since 2007, and had a few stories come back with excellent notes and the chance to rework them for possible publication. It didn’t turn out after all, but one of those ended up being my first print publication in subTerrain Magazine (which you can still read online right here). Either way, this story went out for submission way back at the beginning of 2013 and got passed over while some newer stories were snagged by other journals. I liked this one, and I’m very happy that The Fiddlehead took it in the end.

There are some other story developments that might happen with the folks there based on my last run of short fiction, but that’s to be reported on later if and when it all shakes out. Until then, I’m just proud to have got a nod from another of Canada’s great literary journals and will keep at it until I can maybe talk them all into printing something. Then I’ll probably bombard them with more stories again…

Otherwise, there should be a quick and dirty run of Hardcastle fiction out there over the next month or two. I mentioned them before. But here’s what they are and where:

“Hunted by coyotes” – The New Quarterly, Issue 129 (Late Jan 2014)

“Old man Marchuk” – EVENT, Issue 42/3 (Jan 2014)

“One we could stand to lose” – PRISM international, Issue 52.2 (February 2014)

My work aside, there are some very good writers in all of those issues, and it would probably be a real good idea to buy all of them and see what kind of magic goes on in those pages. Without journals like these we’d all be sunk as short story writers, and I know that I’d be banging my head against the wall considerably more than I should be. So, thanks to all of the people who work so hard to get good fiction printed in this country. For my latest set of stories, that means Pamela Mulloy at TNQ, Jane Campbell at PRISM, Ian Cockfield/Christine Dewar at EVENT, and Mark Anthony Jarman at The Fiddlehead. Also thanks to all the readers and other staff that battle those story-piles and put in their time and two-cents over and over to make sure good writing gets noticed.

In the same vein, I gotta thank the two journals that started everything off last year after the Journey Prize ruckus. The mighty Little Fiction, owned and operated by Troy Palmer, published my story “We gotta save the leg” back in June 2013. And The Puritan, run by Tyler Willis and Spencer Gordon (with a great editorial/production staff behind them, including young Hank McCoy, aka Andrew Sullivan), published “Bandits” in July. These were the first stories I actually had published since 2011 (before I got down to finishing the latest book I was writing), and they seem to have broke down some doors for the others that followed. I thank you all for that sincerely. No fucking around, for real. Thanks all.

That’s it for now. I’ll be on here with more news hopefully sooner rather than later. Take care. KH.

A little while ago I wrote about my story “Hunted by coyotes,” coming out this January in The New Quarterly. I just finished the final edits on that sucker, with the editorial help of the very wise Pamela Mulloy, and it will be along shortly. I talked on that story at length in the last post, and the difficulties I had getting it done, but I am goddamned glad to see it show up anywhere, let alone a leading literary journal like TNQ.

So here is more hilarious story news that showed up over the last month…

In mid-October I got word that another tale of prairie mayhem would be published by EVENT, another excellent journal out of Douglas College in BC. That story is called “Old Man Marchuk” and it involves an RCMP officer stuck in buttfuck nowhere Alberta, trying to diffuse a volatile situation amongst the locals, after the titular old man goes out a shoots a bunch of guys trying to rob him. It devolves into a sort of standoff between the outnumbered officers stationed there and the old man and his kin, who have blood ties that run deep in that country.

I guess it wont come as a shock to anybody who has read any of my work that this is stolen flat out from a real life thing that happened out there. By god I didn’t always love the prairies when I was stuck out in Edmonton, but I got some great material and learned some things I’d never have known about parts of this massive country and its many regional histories and particulars. This story should be out in the Winter or Spring issue of EVENT, depending where they ultimately decide to situate it.

That was a good deal as is, and then I got another acceptance on November 1st from these folks…

In the quickest turnaround I’ve ever got from a print journal, editor Jane Campbell at PRISM international got a hold of me to let me know that they were going to publish my story “One we could stand to lose” in Issue 52.2, scheduled to come out this February. The edits were finished up early this month. All in all, from submission to completing edits, the whole process took just over six weeks. That is pretty fucking incredible for a print journal, especially one as respected as PRISM. It blew my mind to get that one picked up so quick. I’d likely kill to get that kind of turnaround more often. But, hell, when you get a break like that you gotta take it and say thank you. So yeah, thank you to everyone at PRISM international who helped push that one through. 

To give a brief rundown of it, “One we could stand to lose” is a story about an older fellow who clerks the desk of a historical hotel in his city that has gone to ruin slowly over the decades. The old man holds the place together with a kind of surrogate family in the younger staff and deals with the chaos and curiosities that come up in his day to day as he lives and works at the place. When it comes out I’m sure some folks will posit exactly what spot it was based on, but I’m supposing that there are a bunch of them out there with likewise stories and strange people who populate them. So cherish the ambiguity folks, and the use of the word shillelagh.

Otherwise, I’m still on the hunt for publisher for this latest goddamned novel, called “Work.” Trying to see if there is a US publisher willing to take the chance that Canadian houses wouldn’t. I’m also trying to get a collection done on this side of the border, and if any good comes outta that I’ll tell you all about it.

In the meantime, I gotta thank all the writers I’ve come across this past year for reaching out and letting me drink beer with them and say awful things. A bunch of us went down to the Writers’ Trust Awards this week, where we watched Naben Ruthnum take it to the house and win the 25th annual Journey Prize for his story “Cinema Rex.” There were a lot of talented writers in that room, and all the free wine and beer you could pour down your gullet. From someone who didn’t really have any experience with that community just a year ago, these developments are a pretty big deal, and also make it a hell of a lot easier when you gotta fight off the black dog. Anyway, I’m out, but I’ll leave you with evidence that I know people who write things. So long for now.

At the Writers’ Trust Awards – Andrew Sullivan, Naben Ruthnum, Kris Bertin, Amanda Leduc, Kevin Hardcastle

(Holler at ’em: Andrew Sullivan, Naben Ruthnum, Kris Bertin, Amanda Leduc, Kevin Hardcastle)

The story I told you about earlier this year, “Bandits,” was published today in The Puritan, an ejournal out of Toronto that is run by Spencer Gordon and Tyler Willis. It was supposed to come out a little earlier, right around the same time that my story “We gotta save the leg” was published by Little Fiction, but there were some technical issues that slowed it down. Works out pretty good in the end though, as now I get to write separate posts about the new story and harass people online in a whole other set of aggressive emails, posts, and tweets.

You can read the story online, for free, if you click on this line. Also, you should probably download the whole issue as a PDF, and read stories by Amy Jones and Eric Lloyd Blix, as well as a bunch of poyems and a couple of reviews. A lot of work goes into these journals, whether they’re print or digital, so reading some free awesomeness is a pretty painless way to lend your support.

I did a ton of other content for the guys at The Puritan, including an audio clip you can listen to by clicking the little speaker icon you find partway through the story. This will take you to the reading if you click it. Or you can click THIS, and head right there. Enjoy my manly voice, hoser/hillbilly accent, and the sound of a man trying to record and edit audio on Garage Band in his living room between beers.

The rest of the content, including a bunch of questions I answered for those fellows about the history of the story, the process of writing it, and about writers and stories that matter, will be made available at some point on The Town Crier. Which is the blog that The Puritan folks run year round. I’ll post more as the content shows up, but you can always check out The Town Crier right here and perhaps it’ll be on there. If not, they also post a bunch of stuff about literary events and whatnot around Toronto. So if you’re in or near the city you might want to have a look periodically to see what is going on around here.

Lastly, I got to thank Andrew Sullivan. An Oshawa bred and Toronto based writer who works as an associate editor for The Puritan, who pulled this story from the slushpile and got it to Spencer and Tyler. It is a longer story and those are hard to land, so I couldn’t be happier about it ending up in The Puritan: Issue XXI. The Little Fiction story seemed to get a fair number of eyeballs on it, and hopefully the same goes for this one. Anyway, thanks to all of the people that worked on this story. As far as the guys I just mentioned, Spencer and Andrew both have collections of stories out there, and Tyler just took part in a very good interview in Open Book Toronto about the local literary journal scene. Here are the links: Sullivan. Gordon. Willis.

So yeah, give the story a read and see what you think. For Simcoe Country veterans, the subject matter that the story is based on will probably be awful familiar. And there is a shit-ton more of that kind on nonsense to work from. Probably almost too much of it. For everybody else, please ponder the mysteries of this bizarre geographical region, and give me a high five some day for making it outta there in one piece, more or less…

Like I said, I’ll post more when I see it. Thanks to all those who take the time to read the story or these posts. Everyone else can get bent. Nobody likes them anyway.

Cheers,

Hardcastle

Today a story I wrote called “We gotta save the leg” was published by Little Fiction. You can read the story online here, or download it to your mobile phone, tablet, e-reader, or Commodore 64. For free. Like all of my stories about upper middle class city strife, this work is not at all based on anything that ever actually happened. There is no possible way that I was nearly murdered by a rattlesnake before it got lit up with a boulder. You sure can’t prove it anyway…

Thanks the most to Troy Palmer, founder and publisher of Little Fiction, for all of his hard work on getting this sucker to press. And thanks to any other readers and editors on his team that had a hand in this. It is the first story I’ve had out since “To Have to Wait” and, based on science, it has 100% more chance of winning something like The Journey Prize (because I lost, and I am unfortunately not a looper).

For real though, I am proud to have this story in print (or e-print) and I hope some folks get a chance to read it and that some of them like the thing. I am also proud to see it beside the likes of Andrew Sullivan, Esq., and his story. Hell, it was his month on Little Fiction that I partially hijacked, so thanks for sharing some of your considerable thunder Sullivan. Everybody read Andrew’s story now. Here.

Keep your head on a swivel for my next story, “Bandits,” to be published soon by The Puritan. I have at least five or six other stories under submission all over Canada and the U.S., and will be writing many more over the summer, so perhaps this is the start of a hilarious year in writing and moderate poverty. If all goes well, I might be able to move up a notch to mild poverty. If so, I will try to have a wider rotation of pants.

As always, thanks to all that read my work, and to those who will read these new stories over the next little while. I’ll see if I can’t land a few more of them this year.

Cheers,

Hardcastle

Earlier this month I learned that a new story of mine, called “Bandits,” has been accepted for publication in The Puritan, a very good online literary journal. So far this year I’ve gone two for two with online journals. As I mentioned in a previous post, my story, “We gotta save the leg,” was accepted by Little Fiction and will be published sometime this year. By the looks of it “Bandits“ is going to be out first.

So keep an eye out for The Puritan: Issue XXI, which is their Spring 2013 edition. “Bandits” is a story about a family of outlaws with a unique approach to robbery, held together by serious blood bonds . I heard it said that the editorial board likened it to “Northern Exposure meets Deadwood.” I’ll take that.

I have been doing a bunch of supplementary material for The Puritan, including a post for their blog, The Town Cryer. I also managed to record myself reading a five or six minute chunk of the story, which is something they are also putting out there. I can’t promise that something I recorded on Garage Band between beers and UFC fights is gonna be awesome, but it does exist. That is for sure.

I’ll post again when the supplementary stuff drops, and for sure when the story comes out. It is a longer story and I didn’t know if it would find a home. But I’m glad it did. I spent most of 2012 working on my second novel, which is now to be forever known as “Work,” right as it goes out for U.S. submissions, and I realized I didn’t have a story out last year to qualify for another run at the Journey Prize, or any other such thing. Now I know for sure that I’ll have at least two stories out there in 2013. These online journals are quick to the punch and they are gaining clout everyday, so hopefully we’ll be able to get a bunch of eyeballs on this work. Last year, The Puritan had one of their authors, Nancy Jo Cullen, chosen for the Journey Prize Anthology, for her story “Ashes.” Another excellent online journal, Joyland, had fellow finalist Andrew Hood in there for his story “I’m Sorry and Thank you” (though Hood had two stories in there, that fucking jerk, with “Manning” chosen as a finalist for the prize). So, that is proof enough of the quality and reach of the new breed of online lit mag, and I’m very proud to have had work chosen by such excellent journals.

As far as other things I did on the internet, and whatnot, I was interviewed by Will Johnson, a writer and serious champion of other good writers. Will has a site called Literary Goon in which he interviews many of the authors he has met on his travels, and where he ponders the mysteries of life, and also budgies. He set me up hard to come off like a surly asshole and I took the bait. I regret nothing….

Click on this line for the link to that interview on Literary Goon.

Moving on…

I also wrote a post for Little Fiction and their ongoing Short Story Month stuff, where they asked a bunch of writers about short stories, and posted those answers for the earth to see. You can click this link to read what I wrote about short stories: Why I dig them, who I dig the most, why the form is so important, and whatnot. Or click the logo above.

I’ve been cranking new stories out all year, and I think some of them are pretty good. If any others get picked up I’ll let you know, and I’ll post info about these upcoming publications when I get it. In the meantime, I’ve got the novel, “Work,” being sent out to a bunch of publishers throughout the US. Not a one Canadian publisher has had the wherewithal to give me a shot on it, at least not yet, so perhaps I’ll be circumventing Canada entirely if it keeps up like this. It’s tough to burn two novels in your home country, especially when you’ve finally found an editor with the guts to work on it, just to see the book get shot down by their pub board. But hey, it ain’t over yet. I’m pretty much willing to work with anyone who has the testicular fortitude to work with me (literally or figuratively).

I even sent the novel to McSweeney’s, as they have an open submission system for novels. A couple years back I got a favourable response for some of my short stories from an editor there by the name of Jordan Bass, which was pretty sweet, and I’ve submitted the odd story every since. That would be a hell of a long shot for the book, as they probably read roughly four to five billion novels through this system each year. But hey, stupider things have happened for way less reason.

In the words of the sorely missed Cort McMeel, written after I first told him about my uphill battle selling a novel in Canada: “Its good that youre a little bit angry with the idiocy of the publishing world..get used to it, but let that foster and breed hard work and contempt: a happy writer is usually a bad one…”

Man, do I miss talking to that guy. He was the best guy you could ever hope to have with you in the trenches.

So, that’s all I got until I hear more about the upcoming stories. As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for all of your support, be it verbal, physical, financial, moral, or alcoholic…

Hardcastle