Long Time No See

Wow. I must apologize as I've been away from this website for a really long time. However, I have been really busy with things that were really exciting.For the most part, my time during the past 6 months has been focused on running for Ottawa City Council. Despite long odds, no money and few volunteers, we managed to put together an excellent showing in Capital Ward. Despite all of the long hours, I found that the experience was really worth it as I met some amazing people, campaigned on issues I cared about and worked hard to represent a community that has become my home. I'm not sure that I would ever do it again but it was well worth the experience!Following the campaign, I was hoping to participate in National Novel Writing Month but I found that I was simply too exhausted. I have for the most part been working on my next project, The Canvasser, a comedy screenplay which I hope to film on a micro-budget next year. I'm also working on a couple of other screenplays (tis the season of screenplays), namely I, Virus and an unnamed project over the long term while trying to find time to edit my 2012 NaNoWriMo project, Other than I, and my children's book,  Ballad of the Four Princesses, into novella format. Over the next couple of months, I also need to update my website so that it's less like a blog and more of a bookstore. I wish that I had more hours in the day.Next year will be a big one for me as I hope to finally focus on the promotional aspect of my writing career and go ahead and starting making and meeting new fans. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that I will be able to keep all of your updated.I don't think I've ever had as much fun writing as I have recently so I'll see if I can keep up the momentum into 2015. Thanks again for all of your support.

What I've Been Up To

Sorry everyone for the long time in between posts but I've been working on a lot of interesting things recently.Aside from non-book related activities and travel, I've been working on editing the manuscript that I developed during the 2012 National Novel Writing Month - Other than I. My current plan is to finish another edit on it over the next few months before I submit it to an editor. Aside from that, I don't have a lot of promotional events going on during the summer months and this project will take up most of my free time. In the meantime, I will have a number of Amazon promotions offering discounts on my previous novel: Evermore: Call of the Nocturne. If all goes well with Other than I, I should be able to start production on the next book in the Evermore series in November. The name is under wraps for now but I hope to have more news on this project soon.Until then, please enjoy your summer ... and buy my book if you haven't already.

Evermore: Call of the Nocturne Now 40% Off on Lulu

Great news for those of you who have not yet bought my debut novel, Evermore: Call of the Nocturne. Lulu, the site where I self-publish, is having a special sale where you can 40% of all of their print editions. I repeat ... 40%!All you have to do is go to the Lulu Bookstore, find my book, add it to your basket and then use the coupon code FALLSALE40 when you check out. It's that simple.So if you've been meaning to read it for a while, now's your chance. You'll have a great time and you'll save money.

Evermore: Call of the Nocturne Kindle Edition now 99 cents

Now that it's been out for a few months, it was time to lower the price of the Kindle Edition to 99 cents. I've spoken on this subject before in my blog post "The 99-cent e-book" and now it's time to try the price point out to see what impact it will have on sales. Hopefully, it will encourage more people to take the leap of faith on an unknown author and an unknown story.The Evermore: Call of the Nocturne Kindle Edition is available on the Kindle Store.

Blood Meridan by Cormac McCarthy Book Review

Episodic yet hypnotic, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridan defies classification or explanation, which makes its status as a masterpiece difficult to explain but easy to understand. Cormac's trademark staccoto prose makes it difficult to pull together a grander narrative or story, but that seems beside the point as Cormac focuses on humanity's violent underbelly. It's both hard to read but also impossible to put down. At one moment, you have graphic descriptions of some of the horrible actions put to print. Yet, in the next moment, you have moments of incomprehensible beauty (such as the burning tree in the middle of the desert). It's so hard to explain but I can't recommend it highly enough. Blood Meridan is a classic and deserves to be read, just make sure that you have an empty stomach.

Vacation Book Reviews

Sorry for the long delay between posts everyone. I've been extremely busy getting ready for my vacation to Hawaii. The vacation is over (sigh) but at least I got a tan and managed to read a number of novels that I had been interested in for a while.  I won't be giving a full review of each of the novels but I am going to give my quick impressions of them. The four books are Ready, Player One, Life of Pi, The Road and Run, Rabbit (unfinished).Ready, Player OneReady, Player One is a science fiction novel by Ernest Cline that follows Parzival in an economically collapsed future as he tries to win the fortune of the eccentric billionaire James Halliday through a scavenger hunt/puzzle in the virtual reality world known as OASIS (good name).  I was alerted to this book by some of my co-workers who noted some of the similarities with my own novel. Aside from the nightclub scene (we both conceived of nightclubs in the shape of a sphere where everyone dances on the inside surface of the sphere with the DJ in the middle - eerily similar but it appears to have happened in parallel. I wrote that scene long before Cline's 2011 publication date. I guess that great minds think alike), the plots and world are fortunately completely different. The story isn't complicated but it is really well done and it's extremely fun. I was continually pulled forward to see what would happen. It's a lot of fun and a great read. Highly recommended.Life of PiWow. All I can say is wow. I got interested in finally reading the book after watching Ang Lee's amazing movie. The book has been well-known for a while but I never had the time. I now wish that I had made the time. The book is stunning. It's unique, it's unconventional, it uses a number of interesting techniques like unreliable narrator and multiple perspectives to really pull together something that is special. It's an amazing book that forces us to consider our relationship to god and what it means. Outstanding and highly recommended. The RoadThe Road by Cormac McCarthy was somewhat of a disappointment. The story of a father guiding his son along the eponymous road in post-apocalyptic U.S., The Road was highly celebrated, highlighted by the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. After working my way through it, I really think that it was overhyped. It is a good novel but it's vastly inferior to McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. It does have some great moments of poetry and other moments of horror but it lacks the broader narrative that keeps pulling the reader forward. I would recommend something else instead.Run, RabbitRun, Rabbit by John Updike was a novel I just couldn't get into and ultimately abandoned. It's about a former star high school basketball player who has a mid-life crisis at age 27. Perhaps it was an important novel for its era (1960) but I just couldn't bring myself to care about a character who is so passive and reactive to the problems in his life. I got through about 60 pages and then I lost interest. Not recommended.That's it for the quick reviews. I'm working myself through Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridan at the moment. It's better than The Road  but still is a little too episodic and the protagonist is too blank for my taste but I'm still reading. I'll let everyone know more when I'm finished.

Thanks Everyone for the Great Book Launch!

Yesterday. I held the official book launch for my first novel, Evermore: Call of the Nocturne, at Black Squirrel Books in Centretown. It was a blast. We started off with about eight people and spent the first 30 to 40 minutes eating fancy cheeses, drinking tasty beverages and chatting amongst ourselves.

Then, I gave a short speech in which I thanked everyone who had helped me during the book's long production cycle. I followed this up with a short reading from the book. I choose Chapter Three as it was fairly short and gave everyone a pretty good introduction into the story and the main character, Blue. However, no sooner had I finished did another group of eight people enter the store. If only I had waited another 15-20 minutes. Some people asked me to read another section but I figured that one chapter would be enough. Anymore than that and it would have been too much. At least the latecomers got to eat cake.

Oh yes the cake! I had it specially made by the good folks at the Nutty Greek Bakery on Rochester. It was peanut butter and chocolate. They even made an edible copy of my book cover to adorn the top. Mmmm, delicious! I can still taste it.Then, we milled about and chatted some more. Lots of great friends bought books and got me to sign them. Nothing else could make an author happier than someone asking him to sign their book. Oh yeah, the cake got demolished.And then it was over. People went home. I helped the owners clean up. I returned the chairs the next day and that was it. I still haven't got rid of all the cheese. At least now I get a moment to relax and reflect and a wonderful experience.I would to thank everyone for coming. You guys are the best. I would like to thank those who bought books. You're awesome. I would also like to thank the owners, Vaughn and Stephen, of Black Squirrel Books for being such gracious and supportive hosts. I will be back.It was an experience of a lifetime and I was fortunate to share it with some of my best friends. Until next time.