12/26/2009: "A Little News"

Hello All,

I very much hope all y'all's holidays went well, or are going well. I'm here at the folks' hacienda for a few days. A yule log burning in the hearth. My morning coffee is pleasantly 'rummed up.' No, no, kidding. I went to a Christmas party a few days ago, the old highschool crew, where things got severely out of hand. I had to 'purge' come morning. Pitiful, pitiful. I'm too old for that sort of nonsense. I felt like Mickey Rourke in Barfly, but lacking his alcohol tolerance and disheveled style. I was merely disheveled.

Anyhoo, here is some news:

ITEM #1: A story collection called SARAH COURT will be coming out next year with ChiZine Publications. It's 5 interconnected stories. Sarah Court is actually the street I grew up on in St. Catharines, which is sort of the place where most of my fiction has taken place---if not overtly set there, anyone who knows the area knows that, say, the story Rocket Ride was set there. Certainly THE FIGHTER was set there. So it's five interconnected stories dealing with five families who live on the street, and the way their lives twist into one another. And there is some dark, weird stuff going on, which I think is what interested Brett and Sandra at ChiZine ... for those not in the know, Brett Savory, the publisher of ChiZine---along with his wife, Sandra Kasturi---published some of my early pseudonymous stories back in the day. He, along with Dave Barnett at Necro publications (who published my first novel) are the people who helped me out early in my career and they do great work and are passionate as hell so it's great to have something coming out with Brett's new press. That's scheduled for next fall, I think.

ITEM #2: Film rights to THE FIGHTER were sold to Canadian filmmaker Andew T. Hunt. His first film, Sweet Karma, came out last year and it's a crackerjack. So that is great news. If the funding comes through---an issue for any film venture---I've been contracted to co-write the screenplay, which should be a great time as it's never something I've done and it would be a great skill to develop. So I will keep everyone abreast of how that's going as it goes along.

ITEM #3: On a sort of more personal note, for anyone who cares where the writer of ye olde blog is physically situated at any one time: I'm moving from Toronto to Fredericton. There's a Deputy Editor position with HERE newspaper that I'm slated to fill. This was a good opportunity, so you have to pursue it. I feel like I just landed in Toronto, saw my buddies, got my feet set and then---vamoose! But while I did teach at the U of T, and I did end up getting another job that I suppose I'd better not talk about for various reasons, and worked that for a few months before the work corroded my soul a little bit, or a lot, some things you can't fairly evaluate until you get a little distance ... all of which is to say, there were no real career-type jobs in the offing. And I'm 34, and I can only pull in some much from freelancing, so cobbling together the rent from sources A, B, C, D, E, and whatever can get to be a little tiring. So, yes, a fulltime job with benefits and so on is about what I need right now. I'm fortunate to have the opportunity, although it means packing my meagre belongings into a UHaul and hauling ass halfway across the country. But I like Fredericton, did my MA there, so it should be good.

Okay, that's that for now.

Have a happy New Year, compadres.

All best,
Craig.