This summer has been a good one for fireflies. A couple of weeks ago we got spectacular natural fireworks. And the cicadas are literally drowning out the after-dinner traffic noise in my backyard, or garden as the English would say. But the master of them all here and everywhere, is the mosquito. This little insect has, as described in the book Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, killed billions of us over the centuries. And they haven’t stopped trying. Rode

It’s the first day of the rest of your life. And mine. One thing to say it, another to feel it deep down. One is left wondering what those years have worked on the mind and character. I read a fascinating article on that very subject this week. Here is an excerpt: The technician is deeply calm and reassuring. Probably, they feel, all problems in life are a bit like the technical problems they have mastered at work. Most things can be put right, if you don’t panic and work you

I retired from teaching this week. Or, I just left the profession. Or, I became a writer (although that was a part time thing before). Any way you slice it, I won’t be in a classroom in the fall for the first time in a long time. With my years in post graduate study and at work teaching in mind, my wife used to say that I knew more things that didn’t get me rich than anyone she had ever known. She got that line from a Spenser novel and until the latter part of my career, she

Picture removed. This is remarkable. The face you are seeing is computer-generated. It is a result of a new approach to programming which provides a database of celebrity images and then directs an artificial intelligence program to correct its mistakes, for lack of a better phrase, as it refreshes the image over and over in the process of creating a completely new persona. It gets better at it (because it judges itself) and thus makes the image less fake looking over time. U

My wife and I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario to see the Impressionism in the Age of Industry exhibit last weekend. It was not disappointing. Colour, movement and life burst from the canvas wherever you looked. There is so much beauty in the juxtaposition of sky, earth and man’s works. Not exactly romantic but not a condemnation of it either. These men and women were pioneers in how they painted and what they portrayed. Did you know that they were castigated because of the

The weather seems to have broken, at least for now. I was in Nashville last week on holiday and it got to 24 degrees on Thursday. It was nice to feel a soft warm breeze in the early evening, I can tell you. It was a great trip actually. Traffic did not get too bad coming or going, our hotel was right beside Martin’s BBQ and three blocks from Broadway, the main strip. Lots of good food, live music (Roberts WesternWorld a favourite) and friendly people. The BBQ and chicken and

It is still cold and snowing in southern Ontario as winter drags on. I have read that spring will come early this year, but it hasn’t yet. I recall that it didn’t come early in 2018, and when it did it was cool and wet. In any case, a warm, early spring would be a welcome thing around here. Have you ever heard of The Great Filter? It’s a theory that explains why, despite the billions of sun like stars in the universe, that we haven’t found any evidence of life outside of the

We got a ‘snow day’ this week. There was freezing rain for about 12 hours and they closed the schools. I still get that little thrill when I read the email or hear it on the radio. No school work for you today little boy. You are free. However, I spent the day in an out of consciousness as I am fighting a brutal infection that has left me with clogged sinuses and a cracking headache. I have been writing in the new library not too far from me. It was not built in the tradition

Losing is tough. Deciding on a career change is tougher.

Summer is the time for reading more than any other. I have six books on my bedside table. I have some authors I would like to recommend. One, Guy Gavriel Kay is a Canadian fantasy writer whose books are literate, romantic, lyrical and eerily historical. He does a lot of research I have read, so his invented civilizations are an uncanny echo of ours. The Lions of Al Assam and A Song of Arbonne are both fascinating and rewarding reads. Two, Pierce Brown, an American writer of w

We are staying in a farmhouse about 100 km north of Kingston, Ontario for a week. It rained continuously for three straight days to start, but I had a lot of editing to do and my wife has Netflix. There is no air conditioning in this place and although I think I knew it already, I have rediscovered that I am soft. And it a farmhouse so, of course, it smells and feels different than suburbia. It is however, a lovely place, quiet with lots of windows and it is very green outsid

Write hard, even when you don't feel it. Its summer so there is more time. No excuses. Before we get to that however, here is a picture of a beach we were on this week and some prose from a novella in progress about murder in the southlands, the setting for Almost a Myth and all the upcoming adventures of Conor and Gray. They carefully removed the woman's clothing. Viglis had been a policeman and a soldier so the task wasn't shocking to him. He didn't like it, but he wasn’t u

Finishing up the first edit of my second novel. No title I am comfortable with yet. It is a sequel to my first. My editor, whom I hired from Reedsy, has made many comments. Some of them are positive, most of them are not. It took a while to get used to this but most of the time I see his point. The major error consists of my assumption that the readers of the second book will have read the first one. Second, he consistently asks for more descriptive passages. These issues are

It has become apparent to me that if I let my desire to be a writer (meaning a writer who earns a more than an insignificant amount of monetary compensation for his/her work) overshadow the enjoyment I get from the creative process, then my work grinds to a halt. My daughter and I have spoken about this and she has done some research on the subject. I have done some too but most of what I have read, about the self publishing business anyway, disparages the perceived need for

I walked outside my workplace this morning, around 10 am. I wanted to know if the old key I had would unlock box the bases are in at the baseball diamond we have beside our football field. We start our exhibition games next week. It was a beautiful spring day, with the temperature in the teens. (Celsius) As it has been a long and especially cloudy winter, the sun and the fresh breeze were welcome. It suddenly made me aware that I would like my freedom. I have been working par

I saw the phrase 'third winter' on a web post as one of the eleven Canadian seasons. (Its right before 'mud season'.) We are in it right now. There is in people a state of suspended anticipation for warm sun and green leaves. It is so cruelly close and yet it feels far away. The second book is in the same kind of state. I put out a request for quotes on developmental and copy edits on Reedsy and got a couple back. No way its going to be done for June 30, which was my preferre

I'm going to try and write a weekly blog post. There is however, some doubt in my mind that I have enough original 'non-fiction' things to say for that kind of commitment. I have done some research on the topic and the advice you get on how to manage the social media side of an author website, or even the entire online presence is wildly contradictory. The best of these urge to go about it your own way. I have come to the conclusion that it is worthwhile, for lots of reasons.