Issue #131 of The New Quarterly has just hit the shelves and has been shipped out to subscribers. The theme for this issue is War: An Uphill Battle, and there are some excellent works of fiction in there that relate to that topic, as well as some fine poetry and essays.

The story I got in there is called Spread low on the fields, and it is about a man coming back to his hometown to bury his father, who was killed under rather unusual circumstances in a nursing home. I won’t give it away too much, for those of you that have the gumption to read the story, but it gets into violent family histories and new battle lines that are drawn as a result of certain present-day deeds. It also has a bunch of drinking and cussing, because consistency is goddamn important.

Other than this story, I’m pretty damn excited to be sharing these pages with Tamas Dobozy, an incredible short story writer and the headliner of this issue. Justly so. A couple years back during the Journey Prize events of 2012, I was paired up with Tamas for a National Post interview where we talked about the craft of writing and a couple of other things. The folks at the Writers’ Trust who brokered this match (the relatively patient Becky Toyne and Elizabeth Cameron) got roughly 12548 more words of email back and forth than they asked for, with me and Tamas shooting the shit about writing and whatever else came up. In any case, he was one of the first writers that gave me the time of day and supported my writing since I started making some inroads with my work, and I’m honoured to be in the same journal. Back in those days I didn’t know anybody and sure as hell nobody ever heard of me. A lot has gone down since then, and this brings it full-circle to some degree. Anyway, after you read Tamas’ story in TNQ 131, go out and get his prize-winning collection Siege 13, if you haven’t read it already. If it doesn’t blow your mind you probably should just go take a nap.

So, do yourself a favour and grab a copy of The New Quarterly, Issue 131, and get some of this work rattling around your brainpan. Also, there is a little feature on the site, called Who’s Reading What, where a number of the authors in this issue talk about what they’re reading, or re-reading in my case, because I don’t like new things. Check it out and see what writers get into while they write stuff.

Massive thanks again to Pamela Mulloy, and all TNQ staff. Pamela gave one of my very long stories a shot last year, and worked with it pretty extensively to get it sorted out, and that is not the usual deal, as many writers will tell you. That story, Hunted by Coyotes, came out in TNQ 129, just two issues back, and this new story got a real quick turnaround to show up later in the same year. Probably it is safe to say that TNQ gets a look at the vast majority of Hardcastle short stories that get wrote going forward.

Both of the TNQ stories are going to be in my short story collection, Debris, coming out next year with Biblioasis, and by the looks of it they will be the only journal to repeat in that book. Hell, there is time yet before the books comes out, so maybe I’ll write and submit something magical soon and we can go for the threepeat. It’s worth giving it a go.

I still have work forthcoming in Joyland, probably this summer also, and a story in The Fiddlehead that does not have a release date yet. Also, Old Man Marchuk, from EVENT Issue 42/3, will be in Best Canadian Stories, curated at Oberon Press by John Metcalf, my editor at Biblioasis. Finally, the title story from my collection, Debris, will be published in Shenandoah this fall. Keep an eye out for all that. There is also a secret thing that I can’t tell you about. But I’ll drop it when I can.

Cheers,

Hardcastle

This has been in the works a little while now, but, now that contracts are all worked out and whatnot, I figure it is okay to let people in on some good news…

My first book will be published by Biblioasis in 2015. It is a collection of short fiction, tentatively called “Debris,” after a story of mine that is going to be published later in the year by Shenandoah.

As I talked about in an earlier post, John Metcalf gave me a call in March to talk about including a story of mine, “Old man Marchuk,” in the upcoming edition of Best Canadian Stories by Oberon Press. Mr. Metcalf scours all of  Canada’s literary journals to fill out that collection, and he read that story in EVENT and called me up. Like a lot of people, he didn’t know who the hell I was or where I came from, and asked if I had more stories. I had a bunch of them, and I sent them over to him.

Along with his writing and literary criticism, Metcalf is also fiction editor at Biblioasis, which turned out to be pretty fortuitous. After a couple months of writing and reading stories, and talking with Biblioasis’ managing editor Dan Wells, an offer was made and accepted.

So, after years of being told a load of weird shit by a bunch of people in this business, and a pile of rejections for stories and novels, this one little story read by the right person at the right time led to all of this magic. I always say that you should never be just sitting around waiting on other people to do something with your work, and, when you are waiting on worthwhile things, you should keep at the writing. Since 2012 I’ve just tried to lay down as many stories as possible, and to get better at it as I go. A lot of things didn’t work out the way I thought, but the stories kept on getting written, and people started reading them, and this is where it all ended up.

I don’t know whether the launch will be spring or fall, but I’ll report further when that is all sorted out. In the meantime, I’ve still got stories to be published this summer in Joyland and The New Quarterly, and that titular story this October in Shenandoah. Keep an eye out for those.

The stories will keep coming, and I think we are going to be able to build something solid over at Biblioasis, whether that means more collections or novels or both. A lot of really dumb things had to happen for this one great thing to turn up, but it worked out perfect in the end. I’m real impressed with Biblioasis so far, and especially with Mr. Metcalf and Mr. Wells, and I am pretty damn certain this is the right place for my work. For more about how they punch way above their weight class, you should read this excellent profile in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Pretty incredible stuff. Especially for a guy who thinks his writing might do even better on the south side of the 49th parallel.

Anyway, thanks again for all the support, and to everyone who continues to read my work and tell other folks that it does not suck. I appreciate it very much.

Hardcastle

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