David Antrobus's Blog: The Migrant Type, page 29
September 6, 2012
Drink for the Thirst to Come
I finished a book last night that I'm going to need to expound upon. A collection of short horror stories by Lawrence Santoro, it's intriguingly and even poetically titled Drink for the Thirst to Come. This is a book that jumped out at me from the endless conveyor belt of social network promotions we are subjected to at every turn, for two reasons: the aforementioned lyrical title, and a cover picture for which "creepy" is an altogether inadequate adjective. There is something about the face...
September 1, 2012
Excise
Felt like sharing an old poem I submitted once to a Canadian website named Poets Against War. I am wary of poetry as I hold it in such high regard that I feel completely inadequate in my admittedly rare attempts at the form. There's a purity to it that is almost intimidating. Anyway, this one is decent, nothing more. But since I am committing more time to my blog (two or three faint and hesitant cries of "yay" drift from the peanut gallery), I need to come up with more content, so consider th...
August 31, 2012
The Uber Cannons of Snark
© Miramax Films, 1994Okay, I’m going to go full douchenozzle in this post. You may know me for my mildly snarky yet oddly gentle sense of humour, but enough’s enough. Time on this occasion to unleash both barrels of the Über Cannons of Snark.
No messing about, here are eight dick moves for writers, and once you’ve read them, please stop doing them. Now. And I’m turning the barrels on myself, too: I’ve been as guilty as anyone with a few of these. Well, a couple, at least. Okay, one of them.
8....
August 29, 2012
Two 5 Star Reviews in Two Days
Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip was reviewed twice in two days this week, and both were of the 5 Star variety. They were also genuine, emotional and compassionate.
The first came courtesy of a promising Peruvian writer named Patricia Awapara whose own work is remarkable in that English is not her native tongue. The review is on Amazon, but I'm also going to link to Patricia's own website in an attempt to give her more exposure (although I suspect her blog gets more hits than my own). Anywa...
August 25, 2012
Off The Hook
You’ve probably already heard that wonderfully creepy urban tale about a teenage boy and girl making out in a car in some Lovers Lane in Anytown, USA, and how the boy starts telling the girl of the “Hook Murders” in the area, whereby amorous teens are being killed by an insane, escaped killer with a hook for a hand. Perhaps not the smartest move on the boy’s part, as his girlfriend gets all distracted by fear, going from initial anxiety to eventual near-hysteria, resisting his advances and de...
August 24, 2012
Fear and Loathing No More
Long before the interwebs dubbed them “epic fails”, I used to collect such stories in the dimly-lit, ironic laugh-a-thon I call my “mind”. Like the bank robber who wrote his holdup note on the back of an envelope that not only displayed his own name and address clearly and almost heartbreakingly, but also that of his parole officer, upper left corner, return address. Then… he left the envelope. Or a different guy—surely related via some spectacular yet hitherto undiscovered boneheadedness gen...
August 10, 2012
The Mirror's Gaze
© Thomas Harris“Here is a list of terrible things,
The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings,
The rabid bite of the dogs of war,
The voice of one who went before,
But most of all the mirror’s gaze,
Which counts us out our numbered days.”
― Clive Barker, Days of Magic, Nights of War
***
I did promise a while back that I’d return to the theme of horror fiction, undoubtedly my favourite genre. As a result, this somewhat horror-related post will be lacking the lighthearted humour of my usual fare, so pl...
August 3, 2012
Take Off, Eh?
I’ve read some interesting debates online recently pertaining to the differences between UK and US English. A week or two ago, Indies Unlimited's Stephen Hise highlighted the differences between the two Englishes when it involves the punctuation surrounding dialogue. Boy (George), do people take this stuff seriously. As well they should, though—our wondrous English language is as essential to us writers as pickled sheep’s eyes dipped in fruit bat guano are to pregnant women. Utterly indispens...
August 2, 2012
Satellites of Love
I have no enemies, but no real friends neither. My only friend, Julianne, I killed late last fall and now I’m waiting for the weather (can you believe it) to give me away, although before that happens I’m thinking I might just go and do myself in, make it all easier for everyone. Weird thing is, old Mr. Jankowski knows. I mean, he knows something, just not the actual details. Every time I come work for him, he looks at me with that sideways look he has, one eyebrow up like Jack fucking Nichol...
July 17, 2012
Erasure Poetry Contest
So Geist magazine right here in Vancouver is hosting a poetry contest. I've never entered a poetry contest. I rarely write poems—not because I don't like poetry, but because they are so damn hard to write well. So why did I enter this one? Well, first, for an entry fee of $20, they throw in a year's subscription to the print version of Geist, and it's a fine magazine. But also—and here's the clincher—the premise looked like a lot of fun. Basically, they provide a chunk of prose (in this case,...
