My (mostly) true story “The Concentric Circle Method” is available on The Moose & Pussy

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)

My story “Climbing into the Sun” is now available from Little Fiction

Check it out here! Dragnet co-editor Andrew Battershill calls it a “Pynchonian clusterfuck,” so you know it has to be good. 

My story “Goodbye, Base Eight” will be Untoward Magazine’s Featured Fiction on December 15 

“Goodbye, Base Eight” is a story about love, cybernetics, and information theory. It is 2669 words long and you can read it on December 15 at untowardmag.com. 

Untoward Magazine is one of my favourite online literary magazines, and the editor I’ve spoken with, Matt Rowan, is a super cool guy, so I am excited to be featured! I previously had another story (“Nighttime Isn’t For Lovers”) published there, and Andrew Battershill, co-editor of Dragnet, has had two.

Here’s a teaser:

This is how human beings construct meaning when they talk to each other:

    I make a statement: “You are a fantastic person.”

    You make a statement according to what you understand from my statement: “I am involved with someone else. He is studying to be an engineer. He is smooth and precise and brilliant.”

    I compare my understanding of your statement with my original statement in order to judge whether your perceived interpretation matches my intent. I make another statement that incorporates an attempt to correct any errors: “That does not stop you from being a fantastic person.”

    You compare your understanding of my statement with your original statement in order to judge whether your perceived interpretation matches—

My story "Grandmother Two Tongue" appears in Front&Centre #25

My story “Grandmother Two Tongue,” appears in Ottawa’s Front&Centre magazine #25. Buy here!

Grandmother Two Tongue slipped 60 years of needles into our veins with steady hands. Her uniform passed through a kaleidoscope of shades but kept its razor creases, her hair always the same mahogany sculpture.

“Spike this vein for me,” the doctor would say to Grandmother Two Tongue.

“With pleasure,” she’d say and off she’d go down the assembly line—immunizations, blood samples, children, adults, all the same measured thrust downwards, the same smile, the same “be a good girl,” “be a good boy,” “don’t move, I’m trying to help you,”—a saccharin precision robot.