CBC Metro Morning interview for PRIDE with Angel John Guerra, Friday May 31st, 2024

 

Interview link here. 

Meet My New Publisher, Open Road Media

I'm delighted to be able to share some exciting news, as well as some new book covers

Early in 2020 we were approached by Open Road Media about acquiring the publication rights for my fiction backlist, the novels Enter, Night, Wild Fell, and October. These novels, originally published by ChiZine Publications, have consistently remained in print since 2011 when Enter, Night was first published. 

A French edition of Wild Fell was published by Editions Bragelonne in Paris in 2016.

Open Road Media is America's premier global backlist publisher. Their roster includes legends such as Joan Didion, William Styron, Alice Walker, Dee Brown, Pat Conroy, Paul Monette, Joyce Carol Oates, Gloria Steinem, Octavia Butler, John Jakes, Pearl S. Buck, Walker Percy, and Sherman Alexie. 

Closer to home, I'm honoured to have my books appear alongside some of my favourite speculative fiction authors, including Graham Masterton, Robert McCammon, Thomas Tryon, Poppy Z. Brite, Elizabeth Hand—and of course, the elder gods: Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, J. Sheridan LeFanu, Ann Radcliffe, among many, many others. 

Best of all, the partnership with Open Road Media assures that my three novels will remain in print for the foreseeable future—certainly as e-books, but also as print-on-demand paperbacks and hardcovers further on down the line. 

The e-books are up for pre-order on Amazon. They will be released in October 2020.

Riding the Peace Train

The thing about the interiority imposed by self-quarantine, particularly for a freelancer, is the loss (or at least the reduction) in daily markers. I used to joke that weekends for a freelance writer just meant a day when FedEx didn't deliver. The concept of a "weekend" exists only in relation to our intersection with the lives of "normal" people. Saturday and Sunday were two days to work on a deadline when we knew an editor wasn't going to be calling and wondering why whatever we were working on wasn't on their desk yet.

Before the self-quarantine, I used my husband's getting to, and coming home from, the office as a marker of not only time, but of days of the week.

Much like the timbre of light in the sky or "morning sounds" vs. "evening sounds," or Beckett's feeding and walking schedule, his movements through the tunnels of air that make up our days ad night have always been a reliable way to keep track of time. But of course, for the foreseeable future, I'm going to have use an alarm clock and an agenda like everyone else.

Now that he's working at home too, it's like having two freelancers under the roof instead of just one. I'm not sure what I think of that, not that it matters. It just is what it is.

I just went downstairs and made an offhand remark about how I couldn't believe it was Friday again already. He informed me that it was, in fact, Saturday.

So, I apologize to the editor I emailed earlier about a pending deadline in an attempt to get everything tidied up before "the weekend"—which was clearly already here. Sorry darling, my bad. Entirely.

In the past few days I've been revisiting the music I've loved.

In 2010, when I was writing my first novel, Enter, Night, which is set in 1972, I submersed myself in everything of the era I could find—I read the magazines, I smelled the scents (yes, I found bottles of 70s-era perfumes on Ebay, both to evoke memories of the time and to add to the my inner mental map of the character of Christina Parr, the female protagonist) and I listened to the music.

I loaded up my iPod with everything from pop and folk to the metal of the time. Some of it was an enjoyable revisiting of my earliest musical discoveries. Some of it was pure work—I won't need to listen to Deep Purple's Machine Head again until I decide to tackle a sequel to Enter, Night. But at the end of the day, it was about immersion in an an era in the service of the writing of my first novel. And when it was over and the book was written, I just put it away and went back to my real life, and my real life's tastes.

This past week, I've been felt drawn to some of that old music again. It started with a re-listen of some Joan Baez. I've always loved the gritty earnestness of her voice, particularly in songs like "Diamonds and Rust."

From there, I gravitated to Janis Ian's Between The Lines, still probably my favourite album of all time.  The phrase "soundtrack of my life" is a woefully overused one, but in this case I have to cop to it. I can place myself emotionally in every song of that album. It's the easiest route to memories of heartbreak, of feelings of inadequacy, of yearning for love, of being convinced that love was something for other people, for "girls with clear-skinned smiles, who married once and then retired," as well as for "normal" kids, among whose number I could often not find a place for myself.

Two days ago, it was Carole King and her Tapestry album, which features her version of her song "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman." Like most people with a pulse, I am devoted to the Aretha Franklin version, which I consider the pinnacle recording of this song. But at my school in Switzerland in 1974, all the American girls who were my friends had this album, and it's as evocative of that time in my life as the scent of their Love's Fresh Lemon cologne.

Last night, I lit a fire in the fireplace, made a pot of mint tea, and indulged myself in a watercolour wash of Judy Collins' pellucid voice, a voice that still seems like a miracle half a decade later.

Today—Saturday, not Friday—has been all about Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam.

In 1970, my American grandparents bought transistor radios for my brother and I, with cases in two different shades of grey to make them easy to distinguish. My parents were obsessed with the idea that my brother and I would fight over things. When we fought, it was very rarely over an object, and I don't ever recall the radios being an issue.

His was a darker grey, mine was a light graphite, and we never swapped.

How well I remember the nights of falling asleep listening to the miracle issuing from the tiny leather-encased box on my pillow. I was seven, and I believed all the music I was listening to was being recorded live down at the local radio station. (The discovery that the songs were all on records was both thrilling and devastating—I was thrilled that they were available in shops, but devastated to realize that rock stars weren't all visiting downtown Ottawa for the evening.)

"Wild World" haunted me. Even at seven, I recognized that someone was very, very sad to be saying goodbye. The first few times I listened to the song, I wept a bit at the thought of the loss. Upon later listenings, I was both attracted and repelled by the idea of a "wild world" where "a lot of nice things turn bad out there." But, ever the optimist, I focussed on the fact that love was driving this sad goodbye, and if someone could love the girl in question to hope she "has a lot of nice clothes to wear" and "makes a lot of nice friends out there," then it was probably all going to work out for the best in the long run, and always being remembered as "a child, girl" clearly wasn't a bad thing, particularly from my point of view as an actual child.

Later, in 1974, when Dad was at the U.N. and we were living in Geneva, I met Nancy, the American girl who was hired by my parents as a babysitter. I wrote about Nancy in the Huffington Post (you can click the blue link and read the essay "For My Sister On Her Birthday) in 2016, as well as in some of my non-fiction books.

From a chance cancellation by our usual babysitter came possibly the earliest defining relationship of my life. Plainly speaking, I adopted her as a big sister, and she adopted me back.  Forty-six years later, the only adjustment to that relationship has been a deep patina of shared experiences and shared love that has only grown in the four and a half decades since that fateful night.

We spoke this afternoon about how each of us were handling the self-imposed quarantine on opposite sides of the continent. As the conversation went on I was reminded again, as I so often have been over the years, how permeable the veil of time is when two people have our history.

When I listen to "Tea for the Tillerman" as I did this afternoon—an album Nancy owned, and one to which she introduced me—that's her for me. Music, like scent, is a time machine. It's a temporal barrier-breaker. I close my eyes and I'm sitting on he bedroom floor with my eyes closed, listening to the music flow over me, igniting my imagination like a fuse, feeling loved, feeling safe, and feeling connected.

And all the while, the music was writing itself into my history.

Nancy could play the guitar, and eventually she learned "Father and Son." We sang it together. Being Nancy—a young woman of incomparable patience, and possessed of a wry sense of humour—she allowed me to sing the third-verse background parts of both the father and the son, though by rights I should have only been allowed to sing one or the other.

This week, as an adult revisiting that personal soundtrack, I find that this music still has the power to map my life. My life today. It feels almost miraculous  It doesn't make me feel younger to revisit it, to connect the various threads that bind this music to the memories of my life, but it certainly makes me feel present in my life now. Present, and grateful.

In an moment as uncertain as the one in which we find ourselves right now, that's pure gold.

If these songs were a dream, I'd want to linger a bit longer before waking up.

The View From Inside

And here we are, on the first perfect day of spring, and we're inside, looking out. It's a glorious afternoon. The flowers in the graveyard where I walk Beckett every day are making shy debuts.  The air is soft, for the first time in months. The earth is waking up slowly, stretching, and even smiling in the newly-yellow sunlight.

Last year at this time, I would have been outdoors all day—walking the dog of course, but also maybe shopping, or meeting friends for dinner after a day of writing, or going to the gym, or walking through the University of Toronto campus, which is always rich with memories for me at this time of year. Or wandering around downtown, marvelling at how much healthier and happier everyone looks in spring. Or any number of other things that I previously took for granted.

Freedom of movement, freedom of interaction, freedom of association. Freedom to hug someone, or to kiss their cheek. Freedom to let children pet Beckett in the park while I exchange pleasantries about the weather with their mothers and fathers, as neighbours do.

This past March, I published a short story in a groundbreaking anthology edited by Matt Bechtel called The Dystopian States of America. Some of the finest horror writers in the business set themselves to the task of sketching fiction about life under the current regime in the United States, or its aftermath. It's not an optimistic collection by any reckoning, but neither was it intended to be prophetic, and yet here we are, trying to remain indoors while a virus that appears to defy science is literally ravaging the world.

What we are asked to do is stay at home and restrict contact with others. It's not much.

Those of us who have the privilege and the luxury of being able to do that have, to my mind, even more of a moral obligation to do so. Inexplicably, some of us find this an impossibility. Even as I look out this window, I see children playing in the schoolyard across the street. I see groups of people sauntering past on the sidewalk as though it was the spring of 2005, not the spring of 2020, and I wonder what in God's name it's going to take for people to take this seriously.

I think of my many young friends in the restaurant industry who were barely making do before, and who now have no income to speak of. I think of the teachers who are learning new ways to teach, pretty much making it up as they go along. I think of the doctors and nurses who literally put their lives on the line every time they go to work, trying to save people who may or may not have laughed off the urgings of politicians and medical professionals to stay home.

I'm fortunate to have my husband at home with me now. His work has proved to be surprisingly mobile, and it has allowed him to turn his home office into command central. Ironically, we're spending more time together of late than we ever have in the 35 years we've been married. The fact that we each have home offices means we're not on top of each other, and are in no danger of killing each other. I like to hear his voice behind his office door, and I love the sound of his muffled laughter. After three and a half decades, my heart still flutters when I hear it.

When I was a child, people said I was "too sensitive," which was turned into the ultimate derision when adults used just the right tone of voice. It meant I felt things too deeply, or took things too personally, or too seriously, and that I was too "emotional." It was all code for "feminine"—the worst, most lethal insult that could be thrown at a boy in the late-60s and 70s.

It's taken more than half a century, and some excellent therapy, to realize that being "overly sensitive" (what does "overly" mean, anyway?) isn't my problem, it's my strength. It  allows me to feel the empathy required to write what I write, and to love as I do.

But yeah, there's a cost, particularly during these days of the new plague. Like many of us, I feel all of this. And I'm frightened, as most of us are, even as I'm genuinely optimistic.

I'm taking care of the people around me. I'm reading books I'd put off reading, and watching some excellent television. I'm working on a new book of my own, and finalizing the details of a potential film adaptation of one of my novels from a brilliant indie director in Los Angeles, of whose work I have been a fan for years.

I'm writing cards and letters by hand, and reaching out to friends with whom I've been out of touch. I'm focussing on love, forgiveness, and kindness, because our thoughts become our character more than ever in a dark time.

The other day someone reached out to me from Rosedale United Church, a church I attend less frequently now than I'd like, but for whom I have great affection and solid, joyful memories of winters of volunteering at a homeless shelter. Other friends have called or written, and I find myself sending and receiving more DMs than usual on Facebook. One of my beloved sisters-of-the-heart sent flowers the other day, with likely the most incomplete sense of how much joy and colour they brought me.

Social media—so often a nightmare world populated by vindictiveness and the wanton destruction of lives—has become a lifeline: a virtual phone-tree. It reminds us that we're not alone.

I don't watch the news anymore, because I already know the situation and it's like wallowing, naked and wet, in a bathtub full of broken glass. If something happens, pro or con, I'll hear about it. I don't have any profound, philosophical insights to share about life under COVID-19 self-quarantine, so I'm just going along as best I can, trying to help out whenever I can.

And staying home.

But it I have one takeaway, it's this familiar one: love and kindness are never wasted. Also, that you never know how blessed you are, or how much you take for granted, until it is taken away from you, either by force or circumstance.

When this is over, and it will be over, that will be my new life mantra.

Be kind to each other. We'll get through this together, one way or another.

Enter, Night: Reader Review by Cody Skillen

 [When I was in Winnipeg this past December for a book signing at my favourite bookstore, McNally Robinson, in the week following the launch of Wild Fell, I was fortunate enough to meet a university student and military man named Cody Skillen, who has since become a "friend of the work" as well as a new friend. He recently took the time to jot down some of his thoughts on my first novel, Enter, Night in the form of this review. With his permission, I'm republishing it and sharing it here on Forever October.]

Enter, Night Review

by Cody Skillen

 This is perhaps the most interesting vampire book I've read in several years. The vampires do not sparkle, they do not engage in absurd romances, they do vampire things. Drinking blood and killing people has apparently gone out of style for the mythological undead, and in that way they've become quite defanged.

            
The opening chapters demonstrate the kind of tale you're in for, and lead to my personal favorite scene. There is a kind of mastery over the social and personal struggle that grabbed me immediately and infected me with the kind of  nostalgia-for-something-unexperienced that we've never quite developed a word for in English. The bus scene was the defining moment for me, the point at which I knew I was on board with what was going to happen. It latched onto my subconscious with such force that I even had a dream about it. Scary in its own right.

            
The rest of the story mostly focuses on a family adjusting to life in a small town in 70's, and really that's the major strength of it. The vampires are really less of the focus, and like good monsters primarily avoid hogging the limelight. They are definitely there, but they aren't the point, which I guess in a way is the point.

            
So what is the story about on a deeper than surface level? It feels too easy for me to say something like 'the vampires are religion'. That seems to specific for the surprisingly complex character relationships. Just as each character has a different struggle the vampires mean something different from each perspective.

            
For Jeremy for example, they could represent the stigma of mainstream culture towards homosexuals, especially Elliot. The pressures of 'what is normal' transform the cop from a past love interest into a manipulative bloodthirsty monster who destroys everyone he comes into contact with.

            
Then there is the situation with Adeline Parr and just about everyone else. It is clear that she has infested the town like a parasite abusing her position of authority for decades. There is a special type of evil in the way she self-righteously abuses the people closest to her. Yet at some point it is hinted at that she's suffered her own abuses, in a way mirroring the supernatural infection that seeks to self replicate. While she herself was married into the family she cannot accept Christina into the family. In a way she too is the embodiment of the mining industry that wastes itself away even as it grows rich, replacing value with something counterfeit, something hollow.

            
Billy Lightning's version of the vampire revolves around the cultural persecution of Aboriginals under the Canadian government, and cultural prejudice in general. Despite being a doctor he is constantly harassed by the authority figures and his personal achievements are constantly attributed to anything but his personal capabilities, with a few exceptions.

            
With Finn and Sadie the infection is of the world in general. They suffer a death of innocence and are transformed into something that is not fully living and not fully dead, not unlike the average cubicle caged desk slave of today.

            
Really the vampirism is more of a metaphor for the world itself, for all the cultural norms that press you into a narrow band of existence that is easily categorized and neatly labeled in all it's bland mediocrity. Once the disease takes root they begin to behave as the soulless parodies of people handed to them. Sure religion can serve that purpose, but so can fashion magazines and corporate culture, I think the important part is that they don't have to do that to us, but if we let them hold too much sway over us, they would all be happy to dictate our roles to us.

I really liked the story overall, but my personal taste in blood sucking undead tends a little more towards the folklore side, and there were aspects that drifted more into the vein of Hammer films. While this is perfectly fine, and it was handled well, it was a bit of a shock when the vampires burst into flame and flee from crosses. I guess that juxtaposition between expectation and execution kind of created a bit of humour for me but beyond the initial jolt of recognition flowed well with the narrative. I'm always a sucker for the ancient evil calling out to be released kind of setup and this had an excellent payoff. I'd like to think that there is still a town full of evil somewhere in northern Ontario where they're still wearing their awesome 70's attire.

            
The case file at the end was one of the more interesting aspects to me, since I was really interested in how this situation started up in the first place, and there are a couple seemingly impossible aspects. How does a vampire who appears to be a priest avoid crosses and holy water for example? How did he end up where he was? Really this is the kind of story I love, lots of isolation, fear and strange circumstances. Kind of like a compressed version of Heart of Darkness condensed and sprinkled with demons.

Overall it was well written with interesting characters, and at the same time it had some depth. Not the kind that beats you over the head with a silver platter of morality until blood comes out, just enough to leave a bruise and make you think about it. This is probably my favourite recent vampire book, and that's despite my normal aversion to vampires that combust in sunlight. (Perhaps they should switch to Gain or something)

What Are You Re-Reading This Summer? A Partial List

My second novel, due out from ChiZine Publications in the fall of 2013, is a contemporary ghost story. As I did with Enter, Night, I'm re-reading some classics in this particular genre, as well as some newer works that come highly recommended, and some personal favourites. Of course, during the writing of Enter, Night I plodded through the complete Jesuit Relations in addition to the cool vampire stuff, so this particular reading marathon is going to be a lot more fun

This (very partial) list includes The Mammoth Book of Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories (Richard Dalby, Ed.), The Literary Ghost (Larry Dark, Ed.) 50 Great Horror Stories (John Canning, Ed.), A Pleasing Terror,the M.R. James omnibus edition from Ash-Tree Press (a glorious, glorious, luxurious book to own), October Dreams (Chizmar and Morrish, Eds.), Northwest Passages, by the brilliant Barbara Roden, and of course, Peter Straub's classic Ghost Story. I posed the signed limited edition hardcover of Ghost Story from Hill House in this stack (it's one of my most prized possessions) but I'm toting around the paperback in my briefcase.

Susie Moloney's terrifying contemporary ghost story, The Dwelling, deserves its own review here, and will get one. There's a copy of The Haunting of Hill House around here too somewhere, or else Beckett's made off with it.

(Author's Note: My books aren't usually stacked up like this on my desk, nor are my owl bookends usually separated from each other, or perched theatrically on a stack of supernatural fiction. They've mated for life, like night-flying dolphins. The photo of my buddy Ian Rogers, whose short story collection, Every House is Haunted, will be read by all the cool kids this fall, however, is permanently installed on the edge of my desk. Truth in advertising, my friends. Truth in advertising.)

First Post: "Jesus, It's Hot."

Welcome to Forever October, my new blog. 

I'm Michael Rowe, a novelist in Toronto, Canada. I hope you visit it again soon, and often. You'll find a variety of information here about works in progress, the writing process, horror movies, the occasional book and/or film review, and a schizophrenic collection of glimpses into my life on and off the page, all broadcast from my office on the top floor of the old Victorian farmhouse in Toronto that the Ball and Chain, Beckett the Black Labrador,and I call home.

The world needs another "writer's blog" like it needs a hole in the head, so here's your hole in the head, dear reader.

Earlier this week, I received the news that Enter, Night is a finalist for the Sunburst Award, Canada's premier spec-fic book prize. Coming, as this news does, on the heels of the news, earlier this spring, that the novel is also a finalist for the Aurora Award, I'm feeling more than a little gobsmacked, and also quite humbled, especially considering the cut of the company of co-finalists in both prestigious awards.

The best part of these award nominations: my co-finalists. Hands down the best part.

On Wednesday of this week, I went to the ChiZine Reading Series at the Augusta House "resto-bar" on Augusta Avenue in Kensington Market, to hear my friend David Nickle (also up for both awards for awards for his novel, Eutopia) do a reading from his new novel, Rasputin's Bastards. And a week ago tonight, I had a party for my visiting American friend, Scott Bramble, the Cowboy, which was attended by Caitlin Sweet, whose novel, The Pattern Scars, is also up for both awards. Both Dave and Caitlin are ChiZine authors too,

In related news, Jesus Christ it's hot!

I'm just in from running some errands downtown, and I wanted to take Beckett out for a walk. I don't think the heat is good for a year-old black Labrador puppy out on a day like this. Picture the temperature of blacktop, then add a couple of bright eyes, a foolish smile complete with a lolling pink tongue the colour of an English rose, then wrap it in a black mink coat, and you have Beckett.

Poor Beckett, I think he's going to be in lying on my office floor for a bit longer with his chew-toys until the temperature cools a bit. At least he doesn't eat horror novels, though I could toss him a couple of "paranormal romances" and see if he has too much good taste to sample them.

I'm betting he does. Labs are classy that way.