'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 21

“Village Fool” Officially Available Everywhere!

Today is the day! My latest Village novella, “Village Fool,” is now available widely at all e-tailers (here’s the link), as well as of course still being available through the publisher itself at the Bold Strokes Books webstore, where all the monthly releases are available early right on the first of every month.

Art via Inkspiral Design

Owen is only confident in two places: at work, supporting clients through IT woes, and when he’s sitting around a gaming table in the role of a smooth and charming bard. He’s never acted on the crush he’s had on his physiotherapist—and total cubcake—Toma. Even though Owen’s no longer Toma’s patient, and his crush hasn’t dialed down in the slightest, Owen can’t figure out how to make a move.

When a friend decides to play a prank involving Owen’s contact list, Owen spends the morning of April Fools’ day inadvertently texting smooth and charming thoughts about Toma… to Toma himself.

By the time Owen discovers the prank, things are completely out of control. Discussions of thighs and awards for the World’s Best Chest have been handed out—not to mention they’ve set an accidental coffee date—and there’s no taking that sort of thing back. When this joke finally gets told, Owen’s convinced he’ll be the punchline, but with a little luck and some nudging from his friends, the last laugh might be the best of his life.

“Village Fool,” ‘Nathan Burgoine

If you’ve not read any of my Village novellas before, don’t worry, you can jump in here. If you’re definitely a “must read in order” reader, I do have a handy-dandy post for you about the Village timeline, here, but I promise you don’t have to. Really. (It’s okay, I understand, I’m the same way.)

March Flash Fiction Draw — “Tulips, in the Key of Philip”

Hey everyone! Today is the second Monday of March, which means today is the deadline for the Flash Fiction Draw challenge that Jeffrey Ricker drew a week ago. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can catch up here, but the short version is he used a deck of cards to randomly select three variables (in this case, a ghost story, a tulip field, and a key) and anyone who wants to take part has a week to come up with a thousand-word flash fiction piece. This one is mine, and once again it’s over a thousand words, but this time only by a tiny bit. Ghost stories are another genre I’m not generally drawn to, or at least, not in the scary way, and while I was trying to think of something scary something not scary occurred to me, and then I had an idea for the key, and… well. I went with bittersweet instead.

Tulips, in the Key of Philip

Three autumns ago, Rani sings while planting, as always.

“If you keep singing, I’m never going to get anything done,” a man’s voice says.

Rani turns, shielding his eyes against the sun. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“You’re not distracting,” the man says, laughing and putting up his hands. Rani can’t actually see him, only the outline of him against the sun. “But I have this thing where I close my eyes when I’m listing to beautiful music—I can’t look at things when there’s something so wonderful to listen to, y’know? It’s hard to plant these bulbs when my eyes keep closing.”

“Oh. I… Uh. Oh.” Rani knows he’s blushing. “Thank you.”

“I’m Philip,” the man says, holding out a gloved hand covered in dirt.

“Rani,” Rani says, shaking it in kind.

“I’m going to get back to work now. Or at least try. I just wanted to thank you for making it impossible.”

Rani laughs, and when Philip walks back to his own spot in the gardens, he finally sees the man’s face.

It’s a beautiful face.

*

Three autumns later, Rani plants tulip bulbs alongside long paths throughout Commissioners Park. Meditative volunteer work, he is part of a large team of people, and while he doesn’t plant a bulb in each of the twenty-two plots devoted to the Tulip Festival, he does slowly work his way around the arc the park follows beside Dow’s Lake.

Now and then, throughout the planting, people have approached Rani. They speak softly to him, or put a hand on his shoulder—the shoulder pat being a realm especially for men, so many of whom knew no other way to communicate other than in this manner.

By the end of the day, the end result of this inability to use words shared by so many of his gender is a handprint of soil stained into his shirt.  

Rani replies. Thanks them. Offers smiles of every shade, lets them share their own tales of loss, and once they’ve parted, he picks up the next bulb and gets back to work.

If Rani seems unshattered, the wholeness of his state is put all the more to grief. No one claims Rani unaffected.

For proof they have only to listen.

For this autumn, Rani works silently.

*

Rani’s new apartment didn’t have much, though the space involved wouldn’t have allowed for more than the basics in the first place. Deciding against a bedroom had, it turned out, been the right choice not only financially, but also visually. His bed helped fill most of the so-called “sleeping/living” area, and a two chairs placed at the foot of the bed nearly gave the illusion of dividing the space.

The footprint of the room, an upper-case L, ended with the kitchen at one end and the bedroom at the other, the tiny bathroom tucked into the empty space left over to complete the square as a whole. Only one wall held windows—Rani’s apartment wasn’t a corner unit—but the full length was half glass, and so he could grow plants along the ledge and on the narrow balcony outside.

Rani didn’t have a television. Or a microwave. Or a computer—though his iPad had been engraved with his name. Where those might have lived he filled the space with small bookshelves, and on the bookshelves were those books with his name written inside, or battered covers obviously purchased second-hand.

In other words, things clearly Rani’s made it into the apartment.

Things not his?

Those vanished overnight.

*

While he plants, he thinks of a photograph of the two of them by this very field, lying together side-by-side, up on their elbows at the edge of garden thirteen. Behind them, of the 130 breeds on display, there should have been only buttery yellow Akebono tulips from Japan, but framed in the photo to appear just above their kiss are two princess-pink tulips streaked with orange, dark pink, and purple flame-like patterns along their petals.

It happens every year. Squirrels, perhaps.

Or simple mistakes.

Or first kisses in a crowd.

*

Planting tulips is faith. Most of the work is done months before the payoff, which perhaps isn’t unusual of volunteering jobs, but Ottawa winter stands between doing and seeing, and Ottawa winters are cruel and cold and bury everything in snow, ice, and darkness.

Rani doesn’t walk through Commissioners Park in winter, preferring the pathways alongside Dow’s Lake. He allows himself to be cajoled into a few outings on skates with friends who all now seem to exist behind an intangible wall of air.

He can still hear them. Still see them. Reaching out to touch them is unimpeded, even.

But they are still over there, in their pairings (and, in two exceptions, their throuples), while he is over here.

Without.

They ask him to join, usually for Karaoke.

Especially that.

He demurs, so they ask less often.

But still they ask.

*

May brings a perfect spring, never something to be counted upon in Ottawa, except this time Rani has felt a certainty for weeks. Rani takes time, starting at the Princess Irene tulips first, watching their pink-orange petals wave in the wind. From there moving to the next, and the next.

The Akebono are planted in the thirteenth bed. The little plaque tells him their name means “dawn” or “daybreak” and their beautiful yellow petals deliver on the promise of their name.

But there, in the middle of the sea of daybreak…

Two Pretty Princess tulips.

No accident. No squirrels.

Rani turns the photo of himself and Philip over, reads Philip’s writing. A haiku.

Tulips, soft to touch.
Yellow; Pink, orange, purple.
Two lips, soft to touch.

Snuck out in the pages of a book, during a funeral he was not invited to, held by a family that refused to mention Rani’s name in the obituary.

*

Rani sings.

It’s slow, like the time between planting a bulb and the start of a cruel winter, and for most of his song it remains so, as though his voice might not break through some barrier left by the snow or ice or dark.

Rani sings on.

The man in the grass is barely there, muted around the edges. He could be nothing more than a trick of light if Rani doesn’t choose to believe.

Rani sings, though. He sings in a key he believes in down to his bones.

The man in the grass smiles, and closes his eyes.

Village Fool links and updates

Hey all! As I’ve already mentioned, if you’re in the mood for some April Fools’ Day queer romance novella, “Village Fool” is available in all the e-formats from the Bold Strokes Books webstore right this very second. Bold Strokes does this awesome “early release” thing where the titles are available at the first of the month direct from the publisher. But, the other options are starting to populate for the March 16th release date (so far just Amazon) and so I’ve created my wee universal link thingie that you can click, here, to pre-order for the March 16th release if you are so inclined. As more stores become available, that link will automatically update. Technology is awesome. Y’know, unless someone is using it to mess with your contact list.

Also, if you’re a reviewer and you’ve got a NetGalley account, “Village Fool” has also shown up there as requestable, so that’s another option for the reviewer crowd.

Cover by the wonderful Inkspiral Design.

Owen is only confident in two places: at work, supporting clients through IT woes, and when he’s sitting around a gaming table in the role of a smooth and charming bard. He’s never acted on the crush he’s had on his physiotherapist—and total cubcake—Toma. Even though Owen’s no longer Toma’s patient, and his crush hasn’t dialed down in the slightest, Owen can’t figure out how to make a move.

When a friend decides to play a prank involving Owen’s contact list, Owen spends the morning of April Fools’ day inadvertently texting smooth and charming thoughts about Toma… to Toma himself.

By the time Owen discovers the prank, things are completely out of control. Discussions of thighs and awards for the World’s Best Chest have been handed out—not to mention they’ve set an accidental coffee date—and there’s no taking that sort of thing back. When this joke finally gets told, Owen’s convinced he’ll be the punchline, but with a little luck and some nudging from his friends, the last laugh might be the best of his life.

“Village Fool”—’Nathan Burgoine

Birthday Presence

It’s that day of the year again: I made it all the way around the sun without being eaten by a faster predator. I shall celebrate with cake later (my husband made me a cake!) and intend to be pretty much a sloth, but since I’m forty-mumble, I don’t really need any more things. So, I started a tradition years ago where instead of presents, I asked people to tell me about a book they loved instead.

When I became an author, I started asking people if they’d maybe take a moment to write a review about a book they loved somewhere. Just one book, and just one review, and only if they were up for it. (And, no, not mine. I’m not using my birthday to ask for reviews of my own books.) Making noise about a book you loved gives the book presence—get it, birthday presence? Sorry, I’ll see myself out—and word-of-mouth is pretty much the best thing ever.

Now, I’m not talking about writing an essay here. Truly. Back when I worked at the bookstore, we had these little “Staff Picks” cards that slid into acrylics, and they were pretty small, so by virtue of their size there was only so much room to write a review. It may surprise you to learn a lot of staff struggled to write reviews. They could hand-sell out loud in conversation like gangbusters, but writing down a review stopped them cold. So I came up with a quick and easy three-sentence review process, and it worked fine.

The Three Sentence Review

The cue-card review went thusly:

A sentence letting a reader know what to expect from the book (without spoilers). In romance, this is often where I likely mention the main trope of the book, drop a word about the characters, and give a general idea of the tone: Something like “ Bet Against Me is Fiona Riley’s excellent—and steamy—enemies-to-lovers pitting two high-powered real estate brokers in a contest to outsell the other.”A sentence talking about what was unique/awesome/moving/exciting about the book (again, without spoilers). Something you think really stood out about the book and speaks to why you loved it. Staying with Bet Against Me, I’d probably say, “Fiona Riley builds queer friend groups into her writing in a way I really love, and also explores family dynamics I rarely see in queer romance, but really appreciate.”A sentence that uses either a well-known author or some facet or genre as an example of the type of reader you think would enjoy this particular book. So, “Any reader of enemies-to-lovers will likely love this, and it launches a new series I think fans of Melissa Brayden’s Soho Loft series will really enjoy.”

So! It’s my birthday, and if you’re up for it, drop a line telling me about a book you loved. Or just link to a review you agree with. Or, heck, just drop a note saying “I LOVED THIS” with a link. All of these things are also super-valid and wonderful ways to do that whole word-of-mouth thing. Clicking a “like” or an “agree” on someone else’s review somewhere also helps. I don’t want this to be a guilt-thing, or an imposition. If you’re not up for it—it’s 2021, who’s up for anything right now?—that’s cool. No harm done, truly.

Ditto if you’ve already got your own method of writing reviews or gushing about books. That little blue cue-card up there is meant to be a helpful guide for people who want to write a review and feel stuck, not a form to fill in if you’ve already got your own, authentic style. (I feel like I keep saying “you don’t have to do this” over and over, but to be super, 100% clear: you don’t have to do this.)

Oh, I do have one more thing, though. By fun coincidence, I got the final blurb and cover of something yesterday, and so maybe I can also turn this whole birthday thing into an announcement and cover reveal? Is that cool? (No, seriously, is that cool? I’m old now, so I have no idea what’s cool any more. I bet “cool” isn’t even cool, is it?)

Ahem.

Another brilliant cover from Inkspiral Design!

According to Ivan’s sister Anya, Ivan’s tea leaves promise his perfect match is out there somewhere, just waiting to be swept off their feet. Ivan knows Anya’s always right—an annoying trait for a sister if ever there was one.

Ivan’s own knack with tea might not deal with the future, but it’s pretty good at helping with the here and now. When Walt, a tall, dark, and grumpy soldier shows up at his store, NiceTeas, in obvious need of a hand—and a dog-sitter—Ivan rises to the challenge and offers blends to make Walt’s life a little easier. There’s just no way he can help falling for the guy. But Anya says Walt’s not the one for Ivan, and the tea leaves don’t lie.

Is it worth steeping a here-and-now while waiting for the one-and-only? Ivan’s not sure, but everything tells him it’s all just a matter of finding the right blend.

“A Little Village Blend,” ‘Nathan Burgoine

Eee! Yep. “Village Fool” just released this week and there’s already another Village story in the pipeline? There is indeed. I don’t have more details than the above, but I wanted to share. And you may notice the differences there in the cover and blurb. This isn’t one of the holiday Village stories, and if you check out the teapot Ivan’s pouring, you’ll note the little sparkles of magic. This is 100% part of the Village shared world, but this time the magic is a little more front-and-centre, like it was in “A Little Village Magic” (which you can find in Of Echoes Born). That’s the difference between the “Little Village” Novellas and the “Village Magic” Novellas, but both are contemporary, both are wee little meet-cute queer romance novellas, and both share the same people and place, but one bunch are about holidays, the other bunch are about magic.

The Ever-Growing Village

Cover by the brilliant Inkspiral Design.

Given “Village Fool” released on the Bold Strokes Books website yesterday it occurred to me it might be a good time to revisit the entirety of the Village series of shorts and novellas in one place, in chronological order.

Now, I worked hard to make sure you can read the various Village tales in whatever order you’d like, but I also know saying “you can read them out of order” causes actual pain to fire in the nerves of many, many readers (you’re my people), and so, this blog post.

The last time I sat down to think about this, “Faux Ho Ho” had just come out and I realized just how long I’d been dipping in and out of the Village and the answer turned out to be: since the very first story I had published. But, to put this into some sense of order that might make sense for a reader trying to find their way through the Village, I’ll aim for something chronological from within the narratives themselves.

Now, because I also know posts like this are TL;DRs in text form, I’m going to start at the end. Here’s the current chronological order of the various Village stories and novellas:

“There & Then” (short story) in Of Echoes Born.“Heart” (short story) in Fool for Love, and reprinted in Of Echoes Born.A Little Village Magic (novelette) in Of Echoes Born.“Vanilla” (short story)* in Threesome: Him, Him, and Me.“Pentimento” (short story) in Of Echoes Born.Handmade Holidays (novella).Saving the Date (novella)*.“Negative Space” (short story) in Of Echoes Born.“Elsewhen” (short story)* in Riding the Rails, and reprinted in Of Echoes Born.“Here & Now” (short story) in Of Echoes Born.Faux Ho Ho (novella).Village Fool (novella).A Little Village Blend (novella).

(* Note, the asterisks up there are for the stories and novellas containing erotic content—the vast majority of the Village tales do not, but those three do. So, y’know, be aware.)

Now, I should probably explain what the Village even is, no?

A Dash of Magic (Sometimes)

My fictionalized Village is a version of Ottawa the way it sort-of is, with our small “Golden Triangle” that sits on Bank Street for a few blocks and is a short piece of queerness and queer history you can quite literally walk through with a few spare minutes. It’s heavily adjusted for some of my own nostalgia of what it was like in the days where the queer businesses thrived, and I should note there’s a wonderful movement, The Village Legacy Project, highlighting this past and making sure it’s there for future generations, especially as those small businesses fade in light of the net and social change—but not necessarily the education of queer history—makes forward motion.

In my version of the Village, there’s a dash of magic running through the world, and that all starts with a young man named Gabriel, and from there, the population of the Village began to grow. Some of it magic, some of it less so, but all of it queer.

But first, even before Gabriel, there was Ian (or Christian, as his parents named him, before he dropped the first six letters from his name). We meet sixteen year old Christian Simon in “There & Then,” the opening story of my first collection, Of Echoes Born, but the story takes place before he moves to Ottawa, so it’s almost a prelude to the Village stories. Then Ian shows up for half-a-second in my first-ever published short story, “Heart,” included in Fool for Love, which does take place in Ottawa, and by virtue of the main character, Aiden, having a gift for healing, becomes the first real story with that dash of magic set in Ottawa.

And then we get back to Gabriel, and the real birth of the Village occurs.

The Village Starts with a SymbolCover by the wonderful Inkspiral Design.

Gabriel works part-time at one of the small businesses in the Village, Third Eye, which is run by Bailey Haliburton (more on her later). Third Eye is a new age and occult store, and Gabriel, a student of religion and philosophy working toward a degree, finds it all fascinating, but doesn’t really believe in anything himself, least of all magic. He considers Bailey’s discussions of which crystals can help people with whatever problem a harmless bit of amusement, and mostly he just keeps his head down and his grades up and hopes for the best. Instead, in the novelette “A Little Village Magic” (included in Of Echoes Born), Gabriel discovers it doesn’t matter if you believe in magic when magic believes in you. A side-effect of Gabriel’s realization is a kind of revitalization of a spark in the Village in the form of a memorial mural, and that carries forward through the rest of the stories set there.

A little while later, Avery comes to the Village after the death of his grandmother, and decides to take a shot at re-opening his grandmother’s chocolate and fine gourmet candy store, Sweet Temptations. Avery has a gift of his own: when he makes art with his bare hands, the pieces tend to get a kind of “boost” that nudges them into magical territory, and it turns out this is no different when he makes chocolates. That short story, “Vanilla,” appears in Threesome: Him, Him, and Me. (This is one of the only Village stories I wrote with erotic content, as for the most part they’re G-rated. This one is absolutely not G-rated.) You also meet Pete Marlin here, the manager of the small chain of fair-trade coffee shops known as Bittersweets.

After that, a fellow named Michel, who owns the gallery in the Village, FunkArt, inherits something beautiful (but sad) when a mentor passes away, and his skill for artistic mimicry that sends change both forward and back throughout the Village in “Pentimento” (which appears in Of Echoes Born).

We Need a Little ChristmasWhat’s that? ANOTHER brilliant cover from Inkspiral Design?

Then we hit my first real deep-dive into the Village in the form of a novella, Handmade Holidays. Handmade Holidays is a contemporary queer chosen-family holiday romance, and it takes place over fifteen years in the Village, and follows Nicholas Wilson as he navigates being disowned for the holidays alongside some wonderful chosen family: “The Misfit Toys.” This is the first of these stories to not contain any specific magic, but there’s magic happening all around Nick and his friends of a different sort.

Now, since Handmade Holidays takes place over fifteen years, a couple of the other Village stories are kind-of/sort-of tucked inside that timeline, but Handmade Holidays starts before them, so it makes more sense to put them after in a chronology. Next comes Saving the Date, which I co-wrote with Angela S. Stone, and introduces Morgan, a young man who has reached a point in his life where the anniversary of a night of violence is something he wants to try and change. He signs up for a date through a matchmaking service, and ends up with more than a one night stand (and you get to visit with some of the Misfit Toys here, too).

The next two visits to the Village happen back in Of Echoes Born again, with “Negative Space” and “Elsewhen” spinning stories around two people in the Village who are new for their own particular stories. “Negative Space” introduces André, an artist who has access to information that could solve murders thanks to a hard-gained gift; and “Elsewhen” (originally printed in Riding the Rails, and the other Village story with erotic content) introduces two men named Julian, one of whom can interact with the past of the other, who has an opportunity to set things to a right that couldn’t be when they first happened.

Ian Arrives

Then we get back to Ian, who is now living in Ottawa, managing his second-hand bookstore The Second Page in the Village, and who has come mostly to terms with his gift for seeing auras and glimpsing the past or future. The final story in Of Echoes Born, “Here & Now,” belongs to Ian and brings the collection to a whole greater than the sum of its parts in a very Village way.

You guessed it, another fabulous cover from Inkspiral Design.

And after that? After that we get back to a holiday season with Faux Ho Ho, which not only revisits many of the Misfit Toys, but name-drops quite a few people who live in the Village during the course of Silas and Dino’s misadventures with their fake relationship and Silas’s sister’s Christmas Wedding and the nine months that lead up to them deciding they can totally pretend to be boyfriends for a few days.

That brings you up to speed on the who, and the when, of the Village stories that came before Village Fool if you want to be completely completionist about the whole thing.  There are stories I’d call Village-adjacent (most centrally all the other tales I’ve not mentioned in Of Echoes Born) which absolutely take place in the same shared present, usually with a dash of magic, but they’re not set in the Village, or they have characters who have yet to make an appearance in the Village (or who do appear in the Village, but are just mentioned in passing in the story without appearing, which brings me back to Bailey Haliburton, who does just that in “The Psychometry of Snow”).

So whether you’d prefer something chocolately from Sweet Temptations, or something caffeinated from Bittersweets, or maybe something a bit healthier from NiceTeas, I hope you enjoy a visit to the Village.

But wait, you might say. There was another title on that list up at the top there. Something called “A Little Village Blend.”

Huh.

So there was.

Looks like I’ll be heading back to the Village again soon, then, doesn’t it?

Today’s the Day! “Village Fool” Now Available at @BoldStrokeBooks Webstore!

It’s time toot the noisemaker! Today, on the Bold Strokes Books Webstore, my newest Village Novella, “Village Fool,” is available! You can get it in whatever e-format you need for your e-reading device (it’s a novella, so there’s no physical book), and you can do so two weeks earlier than it’ll be available everywhere else (so, if you absolutely shop at another online destination, don’t worry, it’ll be arriving a couple of Tuesdays from now).

“Village Fool” is the third in a planned quartet of holiday-themed novellas, and while the two previous were both based on Christmas, this one is a slight diversion into April Fools’ Day. I’ll let the blurb explain it:

Cover by the wonderful Inkspiral Design.

Owen is only confident in two places: at work, supporting clients through IT woes, and when he’s sitting around a gaming table in the role of a smooth and charming bard. He’s never acted on the crush he’s had on his physiotherapist—and total cubcake—Toma. Even though Owen’s no longer Toma’s patient, and his crush hasn’t dialed down in the slightest, Owen can’t figure out how to make a move.

When a friend decides to play a prank involving Owen’s contact list, Owen spends the morning of April Fools’ day inadvertently texting smooth and charming thoughts about Toma… to Toma himself.

By the time Owen discovers the prank, things are completely out of control. Discussions of thighs and awards for the World’s Best Chest have been handed out—not to mention they’ve set an accidental coffee date—and there’s no taking that sort of thing back. When this joke finally gets told, Owen’s convinced he’ll be the punchline, but with a little luck and some nudging from his friends, the last laugh might be the best of his life.

—”Village Fool,” ‘Nathan Burgoine

Poor Owen, eh? If you’ve read the other Village Novellas, you’ll get some time with Ru, Silas, Felix, and Fiona here, and if you haven’t, don’t worry. I write my Village stories with the idea that you can read them in whatever order you’d like. And if you’ve no idea what I mean by Village Novella, worry not! I can explain (or sum up). The Village is my fictionalized version of Ottawa’s Gay Village, with a heavy dash of nostalgia for what much of it was like when the local queer businesses were still flourishing. They’re meet-cute (or meet-disaster) novellas, with a heavy dose of found-family, friend-circle, nerdy-awkward, and queer community more-or-less based on my own lived experiences of being a queer guy (but especially the nerdy-awkward bit). The other Village stories are “A Little Village Magic” (found in in Of Echoes Born, my collection of queer spec-fic short fiction, and a few of the other stories are Village-adjacent), “Handmade Holidays,” “Saving the Date,” and “Faux Ho Ho.”

Canuck Authors: It’s PLR Time Again!

I get to register ‘Village Fool’ this year, as well as the new versions of ‘Handmade Holidays.’

Oh man, this year it feels even more wonderful than most. Last week, I checked my mailbox with increasing anticipation (because I’ve learned it’s often a Valentine’s Day surprise) and lo! There it was. The envelope from the Canada Council for the Arts, with the blue cheque from the Public Lending Right Program.

The what, you might ask? And hey, that’s awesome. Ask away.

The Public Lending Right Program was put into place by the Canada Council for the Arts as a kind of compensation for the presence of books in Canada’s public libraries. If you’re a Canuck (by which they mean a citizen or a permanent resident living in Canada) and an author, illustrator, translator, editor, or narrator you can head on over to the site, and download what you need to register for the first time.

The payout system feels a bit random, but my experience has been consistent. The PLR program checks a number of major libraries (this year it was eight) for all your registered titles, and each library they find your eligible titles in counts as a “hit.” And the “hits” equal payouts. This year, the “hit” for a recent title is $63.47, so if your debut novel showed up in four libraries? Ta-da, $253.88.

Now, “recent” means 0-5 years. The “hit” rate declines over time, but it’s a twenty-five year spread. My first novel, Light, just left the 0-5 years of eligibility, and is now part of the category II (2011 to 2015) so the hit rate there is now $50.78 per library. (Light was in three libraries, by the way, so that was $152.34). Basically, though, if you’re an author and you register all your titles every year as they come out, then every year chances are you—like me—will do better than the years before. It grows, in that “long-tail” publishing way.

Registering new titles is fairly easy, too. Alongside any cheque, you also get the form to add new titles. The downside is having to have photocopies of the copyright and title page (especially in a pandemic, given I don’t have a photocopier at home), but I figured it out.

As an author, I’ve always loved libraries. They’re magic. Libraries were a huge part of my freedom as a younger queer man, too, as a place I could find books without having to out myself to a bookstore clerk or—more importantly—a parent. The PLR is the cherry on top of loving libraries, and I find a lot of Canadian authors don’t know about it. So every year, when the forms show up I try to talk about it.

Registration is open January 1st to May 1st this year for print books, e-books, and audiobooks published between January 1, 2016 and May 1, 2021. It’s not a secret. And if you’re a small-pond, smaller-author like me (I mean, queer romance and spec fic, y’all), this cheque can often be the biggest income you see related to your work in a given year. And as someone who writes e-novellas quite a lot of the time, the fact e-books are included is fantastic.

The PLR is also another reason I try really, really hard to counter any discussions about how libraries might hurt authors, and how flipping amazing it is when I hear a reader has borrowed my book from the library. I mean, libraries are magic, as I said, for so many reasons, and of course any copies bought for a library are exactly that: bought copies, so it’s already a win. But as a Canuck? A reader asking a library to carry my book absolutely also helps keep me afloat financially beyond that single purchase, and I truly appreciate it.

(Side-note? It’s not just Canada: the United Kingdom, all the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand have PLR programs, too; so if you’re an author in those countries and you didn’t know, check it out and see how you go about registering.)

February Flash Fiction Draw — “Deceptive Expectations”

Hey there! Today is the second Monday of February, which means today is the deadline for the Flash Fiction Draw challenge that Jeffrey Ricker drew a week ago. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can catch up here, but the short version is he used a deck of cards to randomly select three variables (in this case, a thriller, a sewer, and a suitcase) and anyone who wants to take part has a week to come up with a thousand-word flash fiction piece. This one is mine, it’s totally not a thousand words. It’s over by quite a bit, and I was trying to cut it down but I’ve had so many headaches this week I decided to allow myself to go over. Thrillers aren’t necessarily my go-to, so I had a bit of a sit-down and a think about it, and randomly bumped into some Greek mythology, and this happened:

Deceptive Expectations

William hugged the narrow brickway on either side of the tunnel. For a tall wide man, running in the rounded passageway—why dissemble, it’s a sewer—would be impossible.

William wasn’t tall. Or wide. He’d been small his entire life by most measures, with significant exceptions, not the least of which directly led to him in this tunnel, with this suitcase, running from—

“There he is!”

—those men.

William knew better than to look back.

Looking back gave the people chasing you more power.

*

Mr. Yuen sat with him while they waited for his parents.

“Are you sure you won’t tell me what happened?”

Billy didn’t answer. He was thinking about their lesson. It had been with him all morning, even when the yelling and the pushing had started. He’d tried to run—he always tried—but he’d looked back and tripped and…

Well.

Mr. Yuen tried again. “I hope you know I’m on your side, Billy.” 

“Hope is bad.”

“Pardon?”

“The box had all of the plagues of mankind, you said.”

To his credit, Mr. Yuen realized what Billy meant. Mr. Yuen often kept up with Billy’s toughts. Not many could.

“Billy, that was a myth. From a long time ago.”

“But why was hope in the jar with all the plagues of mankind?”

*

Despite their age, Toronto’s sewers were remarkably maintained. Access was a different issue. Wealth had been the key to the metaphorical—and literal—lock.

As so often.

“Freeze!”

William didn’t. He hadn’t created Jar Innovations by freezing. Nor had he mapped the human mind with hesitation. He ducked into the side corridor where he knew he had roughly five more minutes of running time before he would be caught. The futility of it was likely lost on the agents chasing him, of course, as they probably didn’t have a map, but five minutes was five minutes.

He skidded in a damp spot, overcompensated, hitting his head against ceiling. He allowed himself seconds to recover, no longer. He didn’t feel blood.

That was something.

“He went this way!”

Four minutes at most, now.

*

“Your parents are here.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Yuen crouched. “Is everything okay at home?”

Billy looked up, his eye shockingly swollen. “They don’t answer my questions.”

“Can I let you in on a secret?”

Billy nodded. “Okay.”

“They don’t have the answers.” Mr. Yuen rose. “Your questions are tough.”

Billy got off the chair. As he reached the door, Mr. Yuen spoke again.

“It’s a bad translation.”

Billy turned.

“Hope. The word used in the earliest translations of the myth is closer to ‘deceptive expectation’ in English.”

Billy considered. “A lie?”

Mr. Yuen shook his head. “More like… a wish. Something we’d like to see happen. Or not happen.”

*

At the end of the tunnel, William took a moment to gather himself. The grating was exactly where it was listed to be, and even if he’d had a way to open it, the passage beyond was too narrow even for him, an intersection with an older—and smaller—waterway that had been, in its time, a creek bed. The city had buried it when it had been befouled by human waste, though now the water running through it appeared clear enough.

Deceptive.

He took a second with his clothes, which were fitted to his frame. The short jacket, lack of belt, and the high necklace he wore—a simple chain with the company logo on it—all tailored or chosen to add the perception of height to his five feet and three inches.

He’d never gone as far as including much of a heel. Deception was one thing.

A lie was another.

When the agents came clumping down the corridor and finally spotted him, he had a brief moment of amusement at how tall they both were, and how hunched they had to stand in the tight space.

“Nowhere left to run,” the first said. Weiss, he thought the man’s name was. He was from the United States.

“I’m not running,” William said. They were out of breath. He’d recovered.

“Put the suitcase down,” the other agent said. The Canadian one. It annoyed William that he couldn’t remember the man’s name. It felt overly typical that the American had taken up more of his consciousness.

When he raised the suitcase, both men took aim with their weapons.

It gave William a moment’s pause.

“Do you know the legend of Pandora’s Jar?” he said.

The logo of his company—Jar Innovations—sparkled at his throat, and was printed on the side of the suitcase as well.

“Hand over the suitcase,” the Canadian agent said.

Apparently, he didn’t care for mythology.

*

Mr. Yuen looked younger than William had expected, but then, he’d been a brand new teacher when they’d first met, and to a child, all adults seemed impossibly old. In truth, there was, what, a decade between them? Fourteen years? Something like that.

“Yes?” Mr. Yuen said, a slight frown on his face as he met William’s eyes.

William waited, a tiny smile in the corner of his mouth.

“Billy?” Mr. Yuen said, stunned. “I’m sorry. I mean, William.” He opened the door wider. “What..? I mean, come in, come in.”

William said. “I can’t stay long, but I was in Toronto, and I wanted to stop by. To thank you.”

Mr. Yuen laughed. “Thank me?” He shook his head. “The CEO of Jar Innovations wants to thank me. The man who mapped the mind?”

“You were formative.”

Mr. Yuen’s eyes grew a little wet. “I… Well. That’s incredible. Thank you. Or, you’re welcome, I suppose.”

William held out his hand. After a second, Mr. Yuen shook it. When he pulled it back, he turned the palm up.

“Sorry,” William said. “It’s wet out there.” He handed the man a handkerchief.

“It’s fine,” Mr. Yuen said. “Did you want a coffee? Or… I probably have something else I can offer, but I’m honestly a little star-struck.”

“No. I have somewhere to be.” William lifted his suitcase. “But believe it or not, my latest project began with you.”

*

William handed the suitcase over. The Canadian agent nodded to Weiss, and Weiss kept his gun aimed while he carefully opened the case. It wasn’t locked.

“It’s empty,” the Canadian said.

“What?” Weiss snapped.

“It’s empty.”

“I imagine you were expecting vials?” William said to the two men.

They both looked at him. The Canadian glanced down. “The sewers?”

William shook his head. “I did consider it. Which is why we’re all here. It seemed important to give you both the idea that there was… hope.”

Weiss swallowed, but his gun didn’t waver. “What did you do?”

“I deceived your expectations,” William said. “You believe I’ve released a toxin, no?”

Weiss and the Canadian agent shared another glance, clearly unnerved.

“Agent Weiss, you’re not going to shoot me,” William said. “I shook hands with your personal trainer two months ago. Nice man.”

“What?” Weiss said.

“You and he often touch each other—” William raised a hand. “I know, I know, your masculinity probably requires me to make sure I qualify that as ‘friendly’ touches, which is ridiculous, but I’ll pander to your need.”

“What are you talking about?” Weiss said, clearly angry now. But not furious.

“Try to shoot me, Agent Weiss,” William said.

“What?” Weiss scowled.

The Canadian agent glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Don’t.”

“I’m not going to shoot him,” Weiss said.

“Technically, post-transmission, Pandora only needs fifteen days on the average to take effect, but it has taken as much as thirty for some. No one has taken two months, though.” William started to walk toward the agents.

Both men aimed their weapons again, the suitcase forgotten.

“Stop.”

“Let’s make this even clearer,” William said, and reached into his jacket.

Both agents reacted, yelling, telling him to keep his hands down, but…

…neither shot him.

William smiled. “Are you getting it now?” He pulled the pen out from his inner suit pocket.

Weiss stared at the gun in his hand. “I… I can’t.”

“Don’t worry,” William said. “It’s not just you.”

*

In the car, Billy’s parents were predictable. His mother told him to just ignore the bullies—that particular method had already proven completely ineffective. His father remained stonily silent. He believed Billy needed to throw a punch back, but he’d only say so in private.

Alas, that method had also proven ineffective.

“If you leave them alone,” his mother said again. “They won’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Billy said. “I think they do want to hurt me.”

His father’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, and Billy thought that, perhaps, his father might want to hurt him as well, in some small way. Or the other kids. The ones that kept hurting him. It wasn’t clear.

“It won’t be forever,” his mother said. That was another tired refrain.

It seemed to Billy that wasn’t true either. In fact, it seemed to him that was a perfect example of the kind of hope Mr. Yuen was talking about today in class. Deceptive expectation.

People hurt other people. You’d have to change people completely if you wanted to make that untrue.

“Where is…” Billy paused, seeking words. It happened a lot. Often, he didn’t know the words he wanted, and had to spend time with the dictionary and thesaurus to find them. “Anger?” It wasn’t the right word.

“I don’t understand, honey,” his mother said. Boy, was that something he heard a lot.

“Inside,” Billy tried again. “Where does anger come from?”

“Everything’s in the brain,” his father said. “It’s all the brain.” He said it in the tone he used to close a conversation, so Billy knew he’d have to live with that for now.

What part of the brain, though?

January Flash Fiction Draw — “A Fairy Tale for the Little Acorn.”

Good morning! Today is the second Monday of January, which means today is the deadline for the Flash Fiction Draw challenge that Jeffrey Ricker drew a week ago. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can catch up here, but the short version is he used a deck of cards to randomly select three variables (in this case, a fairy tale, a studio apartment in a big city, and a potted plant) and anyone who wants to take part has a week to come up with a thousand-word flash fiction piece. This one is mine, and after a year of doing nearly no flash thanks to my wobbly arm, I have to say it was both nice to get back into it and perfectly clear how rusty my brevity skills had gotten. Either way, here’s my (exactly) thousand word piece:

A Fairy Tale for the Little Acorn.

“Once upon a time, there was a scared nymph and a handsome prince—”

“Ash. Really?”

“What? It’s right there in your name. And hush. She asked me to tell the story.”

“Fine.”

Dillon Prince had just watered the front row plants in the garden centre when a downward motion caught the corner of his eye. Any movement at all was rare enough during lockdown, but this?

A broad, bare-chested man sat on the grass, his back to the garden centre sign, leaning markedly to his left, like he could barely hold himself up.

Something clearly wrong.

Dillon bit his lip under his mask, his nature wasn’t to hesitate in the face of ill fortune. Out the door he went, lenses of his glasses fogging up thanks to his mask and the cooler air outside.

Not warm enough to go without a shirt, he thought. The man wore soft green pants—sweatpants, maybe?—but was barefoot, too.

No mask.

“Are you okay?” Dillon said, crouching down.

The man raised his head with visible effort. Deep brown eyes met Dillon’s, pleading. The man reached out his right hand, fingers tight around something. Dillon held out his own in reflex and the man dropped a handful of something onto Dillon’s open palm.

Keys. Not the metal sort, but rather seeds. Dillon eyed them. Ash tree seeds, if he wasn’t mistaken. Okay. Why not?

“Let’s get you inside.”

The man had no wallet—his odd sweatpants had no pockets—and couldn’t or wouldn’t speak, but when Dillon suggested an ambulance, the man shook his head.

He understood English.

He didn’t look ill: no sweating, no fever, his breathing clear. He just seemed weak. Wiped out.

It took effort to get the man into the garden centre, and even more to get him up the stairs to Dillon’s studio apartment. He lowered the man as gently as he could onto the sofa.

The man took Dillon’s hand at the wrist, and squeezed.

It was only then Dillon realized he was still holding the seeds.

“Okay,” he said.

It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

Given the ash bore beetles spreading through the city, Dillon had an odd sense of fighting a battle while he prepped pots, wet the seeds, and otherwise prepared them. As though daring to champion a cause unlikely to see success, he moved the pots to the balcony with determination. With so much of the world out of control right now—the streets of the city oddly empty and quiet around him under quarantine and lockdown, trying to satisfy the increasingly irritated customers of the garden centre via “limited curbside service”—every step taken for the ash seeds was choice, rather than concession.

Ash—that’s what he called the man who’d almost passed out on his doorstep nearly a month earlier—seemed stronger these days. Still nonverbal, Ash moved around the apartment of his own volition, ate and drank with Dillon, and wore the clothes Dillon had ordered online for him.

Dillon checked missing persons reports, daily. If a small voice tried to tell him it was folly to have let the stranger stay, he didn’t listen. Truth be told, it wasn’t hard to ignore given the current world around him.

He was alone, beyond brief, socially distanced customer interactions after phone or online orders, and Ash’s silent companionship was a balm.

And, okay, Ash’s brown eyes had a way of gazing at Dillon that made him feel important.

After work most days, he’d find Ash sitting outside with the potted ashes, regardless of the weather. Often shirtless. Which was…nice.

Dillon explained how large the seedlings poking free of the soil would have to be before they’d need transferring somewhere else. He had a spot behind the centre in mind. Ash listened, clearly understanding.

They read. Worked on puzzles Dillon ordered. Ate. And despite the studio apartment’s size, it never felt like Ash was taking up space.

At least, not until it was time to turn in for the night. Ash would take his hand, and draw him in for a long, warm hug…and lie down on the sofa.

Then, Dillon was acutely aware of how much space they shared.

He was running low on reasons not to ask him to join him in the bed instead.

“Thank you.” Ash’s words were rough, and awkward.

Dillon nearly dropped his coffee—and swore colourfully—but managed to recover the tiniest shred of dignity. “Ash?” He stared at the man, who smiled back at him in that sly, shy little way he had. “Did you just..? You can talk! Thanks? For what?”

Ash tilted his head, eyebrows dipping in amusement, like of course Dillon should know exactly what he was talking about. “Thank you,” he said again, the words still stilted, but clear enough. “For…” He tapped his own chest. “Better.”

When Dillon didn’t respond—he had no idea what to say—Ash took his hand and pressed it flat against his chest. Even through the shirt Ash was wearing, Dillon could feel the thumping of the man’s heart.

“You’re welcome,” Dillon said, in zero hurry to move his hand.

Ash smiled, shaking his head. Apparently, Dillon’s cluelessness was obvious. Ash tugged him lightly, and Dillon let Ash lead him out onto the balcony. He wasn’t surprised when Ash took him to the potted ashes, but when Ash took Dillon’s other hand and pressed it into the soil of one of the large pots?

He definitely wasn’t expecting to feel the heartbeat in the pot, echoing the one inside the man.

“Is that when you planted the acorn?”

“No, sweetie. You came later. After my trees were outside.”

“Tell me the acorn story!”

“It’s late, sweetie. Tomorrow night.”

“But…”

“You heard Ash. Tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

“Good night, little dryad.”

“No! You’re not done yet.”

“Pardon?”

“You forgot the good part.”

“Oh. Of course. You want to say it with us?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. On three?”

“One…”

“Two…”

“And they lived happily ever after!”

Sunday Shorts

Hello! I’ve still not 100% decided what I’ll be doing this year with the blog re: short fiction, but a weekly check-in of some sort is in the cards, and so I’ll start in that manner, at least.

What I’ve Been Reading

I’ve got a few anthologies and novellas on the go right now. I started Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn’t Die last year, and I’ve been nibbling at it and enjoying the heck out of it. Apocalypse through the lenses of queerness and hope is a heady mix and I’m really digging it. I listened to a short Audible Original novella/YA book this week, The Wierdies, and that was a balance of hit-and-miss. The hit was definitely the narration: Kate Winslet rocked it. The miss was in some of the choices the author made: I think they were going for an Adams Family kind of vibe, but when the children drugged someone and stole all their teeth I stopped being charmed—at that point it crossed into something closer to body horror what with the whole violent assault thing. I also got back to listening to How Long ‘Til Black Future Month, which I have to admit I’ve been sitting on too long now: I keep rationing out the stories instead of just letting myself gorge, if that makes sense? I’m listening to them on audio, too, which I’ve got less time for since husband working from home means we do most dogwalks together. Lastly, my bedside reading has been Common Bonds: An Aromantic Speculative Anthology. This has been lovely, as I drifted away from fantasy over the years and these tales have felt like warm, queer hugs. What have you been reading in the short fiction zone lately? Tell me your favourites (they don’t have to be new releases, I’m often years behind).

What I’ve Been Writing

In the short fiction lane, in 2020, I’d also been working on a YA novella, and I’m in the final stretches before a first draft is done. It’s called “Hope Echoes” and it’s about a young gay man named Fielding Roy, who had to more or less put his life on hold thanks to an illness in his family and some financial distress. He also has a little quirk—people who read my writing won’t be surprised by this—where he sometimes catches glimpses of the past, seeing “echoes” of important moments in people’s lives.

Fielding’s friends went to university, but he stayed behind to keep his uncle’s pet shop and pet rescue running and to help support his mother, and now it feels like everyone got to move on but him. He’s driving across Ontario to get to a convention where he’ll finally see his friends face-to-face, but ends up stuck in the middle of nowhere—a small town called Hopewell, Ontario—where his quirk kicks in and he finds himself trying to solve the mystery of an undelivered lesbian love letter.

Y’know, as you do.

More on “Hope Echoes” as I have information I can talk about, but yeah, that’s in the pipeline. And novella-writing seems to be well within my ability these days with my wobbly elbow/arm.

I’ve also got a Flash Fiction piece for tomorrow’s Flash Fiction Draw results, via the wonderful Jeffrey Ricker’s monthly draw challenge (details on that here). I don’t have a title yet (no surprise) and I’ve got some parts to smooth out, but that’ll be up tomorrow.

This cover. I love Inkspiral. I mean, just look at it!

Oh, and of course, I’d be remiss in not mentioning “Village Fool,” which you can pre-order from Bold Strokes Books. It’s my latest in my fictionalized Ottawa gay Village romance novellas, and is the story of Toma and Owen, who you might remember from “Faux Ho Ho.” It’ll be out in March, and this time the holiday in question is April Fools’ Day. Here’s the blurb.

Owen is only confident in two places: at work, supporting clients through IT woes, and when he’s sitting around a gaming table in the role of a smooth and charming bard. He’s never acted on the crush he’s had on his physiotherapist—and total cubcake—Toma. Even though Owen’s no longer Toma’s patient, and his crush hasn’t dialed down in the slightest, Owen can’t figure out how to make a move.

When a friend decides to play a prank involving Owen’s contact list, Owen spends the morning of April Fools’ day inadvertently texting smooth and charming thoughts about Toma… to Toma himself.

By the time Owen discovers the prank, things are completely out of control. Discussions of thighs and awards for the World’s Best Chest have been handed out—not to mention they’ve set an accidental coffee date—and there’s no taking that sort of thing back. When this joke finally gets told, Owen’s convinced he’ll be the punchline, but with a little luck and some nudging from his friends, the last laugh might be the best of his life.

That’s it for this week. See you next Sunday!