I just returned from a lovely time reading at the Soliloquies launch in Montreal! Here is my story in this issue. It’s really dark but at least it’s also funny sometimes.
We played a rousing game of spot-the-native as we passed through the town, as we often did on school trips. You had to shout “chug” every time you saw one. The game had much in common with Punch buggy, but Port Coquitlam had a lot more natives than Volkswagen Beetles. Tyler Courtnall won with a total of thirty-seven points. Sandra Bartz came second with thirty. Now the bus pulled up outside what looked like vacant property between an elementary school and a golf course. Mr. Hannah, our grade eight social studies teacher, had told us that this afternoon’s activity would take place at a farm. (more)
This is a story about childhood sex education and the XV Commonwealth Games. Check it out here!
Once I tried to make a sectional book of monsters as a present for my uncle. You know, the kind where the paper is cut horizontally into thirds, so you can create a mutant with the head of a fish, the body of a policeman, and the legs of a ram. I was probably six years old. I’m not sure why I thought my uncle would like a book of monsters, but once I finished it, my mother read through it and told me I shouldn’t give it to him. She told me that although she and my father were okay with looking at human anatomy, perhaps my uncle wasn’t, so maybe I should make something else for him instead. At the time I understood the subtext: it wasn’t appropriate for a child to give his uncle—or anyone else, really—drawings that depicted genitals. Even if the child represented both male and female genitals as a series of concentric circles, because he didn’t quite understand how to depict a three-dimensional item on a two-dimensional plane. (more)
Check it out here! Dragnet co-editor Andrew Battershill calls it a “Pynchonian clusterfuck,” so you know it has to be good.
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My story "Climbing into the Sun" will be available from Little Fiction April 4. -
My 9000-word short story “Climbing into the Sun” will be available from Little Fiction April 4. Exciting!
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again — it’s been an amazing start for Little Fiction. We’re approaching five months in existence and I can’t believe that’s all it’s been[…]
April will see stories from Dragnet editor Jeremy Hanson-Finger and (once again) Will Johnson.