David Antrobus's Blog: The Migrant Type, page 28

The Lonely Room

Every Friday, JD "Dan" Mader opens his blog, Unemployed Imagination, to impromptu flash fiction writing, a generous gift to his fellow writers. Whether you participate or lurk outside admiring the entries, it's always a fun playground. This week, I started a piece and it kind of took over and, embarrassingly, it went way beyond the two minutes of allotted time. But it said something slightly different about something frightening and sad, in a way I hadn't captured before, so I thought I'd bet...

Writers Helping Writers Helping Others

Yes, I know. It's been a while. Quiet down. I'm here now, aren't I? Anyway, I have a couple of pimping promotional duties to attend to, awkwardly constructed blog post title notwithstanding.

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First off, the indefatigable Morgen Bailey featured me in her latest author spotlight, and for her pains received a volley of flagrant, barefaced lies. I really shouldn't be allowed out. You don't have to read it. Not only do you get a very shady bio, but you get my muddled, opinionated drivel about genre...

Seasons Now Published

If there were such a thing as a Writer Genie, I'd only have one wish to ask of it: please make me more prolific. Actually, that's not true. Since childhood, I've urged every character in every tale to ever feature the standard three wishes to simply ask for an infinite number of wishes, but to no avail. Why doesn't anyone ever think of that?

Ha. But anyway, where was I? Oh right. Prolific. You've heard the phrase "verbal diarrhea," right? Well, I suffer from the polar opposite. Consonantal con...

Dissolute Kinship Wins Readers' Choice Award

This is really a follow up to the last post. The two-week voting period for Big Al's Books and Pals 2013 Readers' Choice Awards is now over, and Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip was fortunate enough to receive the most votes in the Memoir category, enough to win it, which is a great honour and one for which I am humbly grateful. There? Did that sound like a gracious speech? But seriously, winning this award has been a glimmer of light in a pretty dark few weeks for me personally, so I am v...

Dissolute Kinship Nominated For A Readers' Choice Award

So, BigAl's Books and Pals received 1,400 books to review over the twelve months between February 2012 and February 2013. Now, my math is fairly rudimentary but that's over a hundred books a month. Of that number, they selected nearly 300 to review, so about 25 books a month. And of those 300, they have now selected just over 50 for nomination in twelve categories for BigAl's Books and Pals 2012 Readers' Choice Awards.

And my debut, Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip (yes it's on the right si...

Devil's Tower May Have Caused My Lover's Furrowed Brow

It was for you. All of it. Every mile of every road. Every beach combed, whether by boardwalk or by driftwood trails. For you. And it will never truly be enough, each tousled feral cat, each dripping cedar bough, each hardy tadpole in a mountain creek, each fake surfer, each dry phantom tree inundated by wetland, each misspelled signpost, each prairie dog gone tame by tourist handouts, each sidewalk busker, each sheer crag imposing, perched above a plain, a precarious god surveying the gather...

Endless Joke, Infinite Jest, Interminable Gag

Well, this is embarrassing. What on earth happened to all those posts between mid-September and now, you ask? Huh? Oh, that's right, I didn't write them. My excuse? None, really, other than the fact I've been very busy (so, nothing new there) and I went and published another book.

Ah... what's that? Yeah, I said a book. You forgive me? Good. Let's go get muffins. Huh? You hate muffins? Yeah, so do I. Whatevs, we'll improvise.

Back to the book. I was so caught up in the esoteric, arcane world of...

Summer Long

Summer decided that summer had gone on far too long.

The kids were back in school, the university halls packed with the heady pheromones of possibility. Labour Day already a waning memory. Yet someone had forgotten to inform the actual seasons. Achingly blue skies still dominated, the city's abandoned splash parks and outdoor pools turquoise daubs of melancholia beneath the bright gold of an endless late summer.

Unlike the season, however, Summer—for her part—did not intend to overstay her welc...

Theo

There have been far too many endings lately.

That trail up by the dams—a steep, winding kilometre uphill to the rocky vantage point overlooking Hayward Lake and all the way south beyond the wide Fraser River into rural America. That trail was one he particularly loved. Not for the views, since dog eyes are not made for grand vistas, but for the climb, the steady pace through the silent forest, over wet mulch and slick roots, beside fallen logs, waxy green salal, fragile trillium, ears and muzz...

Heads Up for the Slaughterhouse

So, I've mentioned it in passing, but I might as well make it a more *formal* announcement. For anyone (and I can't for the life of me think why they would) who wants to know what type of pale, awful critters make those scuttling noises down in the dim cellar of my subconscious, Richard Godwin will be interviewing me tomorrow (Saturday, September 8, 2012). Except "interview" is a wholly inadequate word for this monstrosity. Conducted on and off between March and July of this year, and running...