Bricks Without Straw

My life was abruptly altered. It started in June 2014, when, at the end of the month, my father died. roughly three and a half years after I had lost my brother to cancer. My sister and I hastily arranged both their funerals, with the greatly appreciated assistance of our cousin, a retired Anglican priest. My brother was only a bit older than I am now when he died. But my father was old - nearly 98 - and so, while unexpected, his passing was not unanticipated. My emotions around his death were conflicted. I had only visited occasionally in the last 15 years or so because my family and I lived about 3000 km from my parents, who never traveled. Work, budget, and selfish lack of interest on my part all contributed to reduced visits. We were not distant from each other, but we weren't close, either. We never had easy conversation. We never really "got" each other, even though we understood each other reasonably well. My mother's passing, in 1998, had had a more direct...

August was a bit strange, winding up with vein surgery on the 30th. It was the first time I'd had a general anesthetic since I was eight, and I found that quite a fascinating experience, specifically because having your consciousness simply switched off is like nothing else you might experience. You experience - nothing .

I'm really happy to report that my short story, The Opium Eater , has been accepted by Grim Corps Magazine , and should appear in Issue 2 later this year. I wrote The Opium Eater  in 2008, shortly after completing Trajectory . I picked up a small volume of De Quincy's essays from my bookshelf that I had purchased from a used bookstore in Toronto sometime around 1970. I read a good portion of his essay The Spanish Military Nun and then wrote the story. I wanted to work in some historical family details as well. As an example, my great-grandmother, Agnes Blizard, founder of the YWCA in Canada, makes a brief appearance. It's a dark, twisted tale with elements of horror and ghost stories in it.

I'm a bit late posting this, because I've been tremendously busy, working 50-60 hour weeks. A bit worn out now, with still a couple of weeks remaining in the contract. No rest for the wicked, as they say. Having said that, my short story, WHEN MAMMA COMES TO VISIT is in Grim Corps Magazine 's debut issue. It's available in both print and e-formats. This was a lot of fun to write - a fairly traditional "return of a dead family member" story, but focusing on the strange relationship of a brother and sister long-grappling with what to about Mamma, who must be very wicked indeed. You can buy a copy here , or on Amazon. Shortly after it came out, I became an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association , that fine organization of horror authors from around the world. Once the big work-push is over, I'll be taking off on a two-week spring break, where I plan to do not much other than read and eat.

Happy New Year! I'm pleased to announce that Morpheus Tales #19 is now available. This issue contains my story Killing Wallace Crawton . You can buy it in a variety of formats. Check out the free preview on Issuu.com. The ebook in various formats is available on Smashwords , or at Amazon for the Kindle. The printed digest size edition is available here , and the printed Large Format Collector's Edition is available here  (both 10% off until 1st of February).

I have two questions only, today. One: Why do people give credence to future predictions from ancient civilizations (if, in fact, those civilizations can be said to predict anything at all), but not science? Two: Why do people not understand that the end of one Mayan long count cycle is immediately followed by the start of another, much as December 31 is followed by January 1?

My short story, When Mamma Comes to Visit , was just picked up by Grim Corps Magazine , a new speculative/dark/horror fiction magazine (print and epub). Mamma is one of those classic tales of a very bad relationship with a very dead relative. I wrote it in January of this year, and went through a touch-up re-write after each rejection (seven altogether), taking the many editorial remarks to heart. It's also a story that continues the Mill Town world which is the focus of Killing Wallace Crawton (coming January 2013 from Morpheus Tales) and The Downstairs Man . Mill Town is a blend of the many places I've lived, but I don't think I've ever come across anyone like Allison and Stanley, the odd brother-sister pair who deal with their mother in very different ways.

One of the premises of TRAJECTORY is that the CIA creates organizations within itself for special purposes. This is a common trope in espionage tales - because it is true. Doing research for TRAJECTORY, way back in 1979, I learned about Operation CHAOS: Americans spying on Americans. Launched by Richard Helms, the goal of the operation was to ascertain foreign influences active in the United States. But because of the fall-out from Watergate, CHAOS was shut down in 1973. Of course, in TRAJECTORY, CHAOS didn't really shut down. It simply transmuted into the Department of Foreign Influence Studies (DFIS). It is not a far reach, even for non-conspiracy-theorists, to imagine that the official position and the actual position of intelligence organizations are quite divergent. It requires only a very small lacuna to imagine that even something as repulsive as CHAOS was reformulated and allowed to continue. You can find a pretty descent overview of CHAOS on Wikipedia. And, of cour...

Anarchy Books is running a promo for TRAJECTORY, and fellow Anarchy author Theresa Derwin 's book MONSTERS ANONYMOUS, starting September 1. ANARCHY BOOKS SIZZLING SEPTEMBER SUMMER PROMOTION In association with GEEK SYNDICATE www.anarchy-books.com www.geeksyndicate.wordpress.com In celebration of our two September releases, TRAJECTORY by John. S. Barker on 1 st September, and MONSTERS ANONYMOUS by Theresa Derwin on 30 th September, Anarchy Books is offering a FREE EBOOK every single day of September. We’re also running a competition with our very good friends, GEEK SYNDICATE, to win Anarchy Books’ entire digital catalogue of ebooks and their associated specially composed soundtracks, and our Geek Ninja Buddies will also give you exclusive info on where to find some of the hidden links and free books available from Anarchy this September. For more information during every Sizzling September Promo Day, visit Anarchy Books and Geek Sy...

Just got a book trailer for TRAJECTORY up on YouTube. Check it out!

I received the Advance Reading Copy files for TRAJECTORY today from Anarchy Books , in EPUB, MOBI and PDF forms, and using Adobe Digital Editions, immediately put the epub on my Kobo. Anyone interested in receiving an ARC copy for review purposes should contact Anarchy Books directly at anarchy-books at hotmail dot co dot uk, or post a comment here.

I just received word from my publisher that review copies of TRAJECTORY are going to be available in the next couple of days. About a hundred will be sent out. That thought is a bit scary, a bit like getting on a giant roller coaster after having downed a Big Gulp root beer. But, I'm in my seat and the bar is down. The wheels are clacking against the track as the coaster starts its climb. Okay. You get the picture. Partly to prepare myself for this electronic diaspora, I re-read the last 50 or so pages of the book today, which I haven't looked at for more than a year. So, fortunately, I still like what I wrote. I still think it asks some significant questions, and spins a good yarn. I think I have, as St. Paul wrote, "fought the good fight". An interesting and embarrassing side-note, today, too: I complained to my publisher that I couldn't place the text appearing in the background of the cover art, that it didn't seem to be from the book. Well, it isn...

I just returned from a little six-day holiday in Oregon, where moody grey days are offset by brilliant sunny ones and the constant breeze freshens your skin with salty air. It wasn't a perfect vacation - no matter where I go, work seems to haunt me like a zombie corpse - but I did manage to finish reading Peter Straub's A Dark Matter and then got well into Jo Nesbo's Nemesis . (I like a wide variety of reading material; what can I say?)

With Trajectory  on track for a September 1 publishing date, I started work on my next novel, a horror story entitled The Downstairs Man . I'd been working on the outline since October of last year, and finally felt ready to dive in a few weeks ago. I expect the first draft to be completed sometime around September or October. In between working and writing, I try to get some reading done as well.

It's been a very, very long time coming, but I've just signed the contract for TRAJECTORY, to be published by Anarchy Books later this year.

There are few things as deflating as getting rejections. In the context of writing, it's a giant bash to the ego, when you've convinced yourself that what you've written is great. Here's the truth: Maybe what you wrote was  great. Maybe it wasn't  so great. There is an enormous amount of written material that has been published, most of it not great, some of it great, but all of it published. You want to be published? Follow the 3-P plan: Persistence, Patience, Practice.

For the past couple of months we've been battling a squirrel determined to nest in our attic. We've had birds in our soffit before, and, except for the mess, I'm pretty much happy to let nature take its course in that regard. Squirrels, however, are another matter. The basic issues with them are, first, they are simply large rats with fluffy tales, and second, they can destroy wood in a matter of seconds and wiring in a matter of, well, seconds.

I am not a technology writer, and don't expect I will ever be. However, I was a technical  writer for many years (about 10), and in my early days of trying to be a writer, I was torn between choosing a journalist's path toward a professional writing career, and choosing a technologist's path.

Another post in an on-going series of irritants...

Thanks, Morpheus Tales, for picking up my story, KILLING WALLACE CRAWTON, which is tentatively scheduled to appear in e-book format in MT #19 (January 2013). This is one of my favorite stories to-date, partly because I wrote it shortly after reading TRUE GRIT, and partly because it fills in some history for my fictional town, Mill Town, Ontario, which figures in several stories (both horror and literary). You can read a bit about KILLING WALLACE CRAWTON here, in a post I made just after writing it in May, 2011.