Blog Changes and News

Hello dear readers,

I have decided not to update this every day -- it as becoming just too mundane and it was taking too much time. So I will keep posting periodically: weekly if I am able. Once I get my website revised and running, I'll be posting updates there too.

News: I was awarded an Alberta Foundation for the Arts Literary Grant -- for work on my next novel tentatively titled " The Fiction Writer." It was much needed and greatly appreciated. It will provide me the chunk of time I really need right now to start shaping that first draft into shape.

As for reading, I've been zipping through many books, Foremost is The Bicycle Eater by Larry Tremblay. I've just finished a best book I've read recently blurb for the Calgary Herald. I tried out Platform by Michel Houellebecq, which I hated -- a mix of "will I get my travel business going" combined with progressively graphic Penthouse letters. It was just ugly. I have no idea why this got any decent reviews. I suspect it's that old men who couldn't get Viagra (this link shows everything) were the reviewers. Other books have been lackluster -- The Voice is the Story a theoretically good looking book with interviews of Canadian writers -- but the author wanted to discuss gender rather than writing. I've pretty much had it with identity politics as the only subject -- it was so late 80's. I guess if you weren't in NYC as I was, it's more meaningful because it's finally hitting the hinterland? But I refuse to believe that. Canada, and especially Calgary is not very far behind. I'm currently into H.L. Mencken's essays and just finished some works by Capote -- I especially wanted to see how he treated Breakfast at Tiffany's since I'd seen the movie but not read the novella. And I've been reading a slew of short stories from a bunch of books.

Writing lately has consisted of a a few reviews and the magazine sort of stuff -- and my quality time has been spent on a short story that I've been engrossed with for a few months now (off and on.)

Happy holidays to everyone.