Something happened as 2012 rolled it: after a decade of writing fiction, I’ve finally figured out how to craft a proper novel.

Something else happened, as 2012 rolled in: I haven’t been writing (unless two short stories counts) half as much as I’m accustomed to.

Salty Ink is fabulous and I enjoy it more than anyone. But it’s 40 hours a month of plotting, crafting, posting, and promoting articles … about other peoples’ work. And if I don’t have time to make it a fun and engaging and insightful site, then I don’t want it to drag on like a bad Hollywood trilogy. (Not to mention, it’s hard to turn down paid opportunities to review for magazines and papers, because I’m trying to keep up on Atlantic Lit).

I need to devote the next four months to intensively starting a third, and finally, solid novel. Third time’s a charm and all that. Until now, I’ve relied on emotionally engaging readers, and driving the story along on tragedies and inter-character tensions. That’s fine. But I need to start embedding that formula in a stronger story/plot. The first 50 pages of a first draft are the hardest to get down, and summer is publishing’s downtime … so tah tah till September and thanks for following.

Want one suggestion for summer reading? Riel Nason’s The Town That Drowned is a very well written novel, currently on THREE shortlists. Most notably, she’s one of three Canadians on This year’s International award: The Commonwealth Book Prize.

I can’t quit my odd need to plug other artists altogether. I launched a new, lower maintenance website this week, that I’ll run  all through the summer, maybe forever, that plugs one good writer, musician, artist, or filmmaker every day. Like a glorified tumblr. Not in depth, but highly reliable, should we share tastes. it’ll be mainly music though. My first true love. (In fact, I’m writing more songs lately than fiction). Click the image to check it out (There’s a Facebook Page to follow along too): http://somethingdaily.com/

Visit http://audioboo.fm/BrickBooks for a whopping 515 poetry podcasts that feature close to 600 poems read aloud (typically 6 per book). The project was created by the admirable Book Madam herself, Julie Wilson.

There’s also 97 poetry podcasts  included on their YouTube channel as well, featuring some  interviews with their authors and their books. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/brickbooks

Authors featured in these initiatives include:

Agnes Walsh | Al Moritz | Alexander Hutchison | Ann Scowcroft | Antony Di Nardo | Barry Dempster | Brian Charlton | Brian Henderson | Carla Hartsfield | Carolyn Smart | Catherine Greenwood | Chris Hutchinson | Colin Browne | Cornelia Hoogland | David Bromige | David Seymour | David Waltner-Toews | Dennis Lee | Derk Wynand | Diana Bryden | Don McKay | Douglas Smith | Eve Joseph | Frances Itani | Heather Cadsby | J.A. Hamilton | Jan Conn | Jan Zwicky | Jane Munro | Janice Kulyk Keefer | Jennifer Still | Jesus Lopez Pacheco | John Barton | John Donlan | John Reibetanz | Julia McCarthy | Karen Connelly | Karen Enns | Kim Maltman | Lorri Neilsen Glenn | Lyn King | Lynn Davies | M. Travis Lane | Margaret Avison | Marianne Bluger | Maureen Harris | Maureen Hynes | Meira Cook | Michael Kenyon | Naomi Guttman | Neile Graham | Nico Rogers | Pain Not Bread | Patrick Friesen | Randall Maggs | Rhonda Batchelor | Ross Leckie |S.E. Venart | Stephanie Bolster | Steve McOrmond | Steve Noyes | Steven Price | Susan Elmslie | Sue Sinclair | Sue Wheeler | Terry Humby | Tim Lilburn | Nadine McInnis | Monty Reid | Brenda Leifso

Whiteout (ECW); By George Murray

Whiteout Made Quill & Quire‘s poetry bestsellers’ list 2 weeks before it was even on the shelves, and yes, it’s that good. I got a review copy in the mail yesterday, and a bout of strep throat has me slowed down enough to really savour it. This is Murray’s sixth book of poetry, and he’s won or been shortlisted for several awards. He’s also regularly introduced as The Bookninja Guy, but My God should that be secondary to his being one of the top 5 poets in a country crawling with talented poets.

Kudos to publishers for all the short fiction I’m seeing this year — it was never the reader saying we didn’t want this stuff.

Also: what a  trend towards wacky CanLit in 2012.

Ablutions (Anansi), a novel by Patrick DeWitt

2011′s big book of the year — and a personal favourite — was undoubtedly DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers. Anansi have just released his first novel, Ablutions. I don’t think it’s been available in Canada until now?

Ablutions is a dark, boozy, and hilarious tale from the LA underworld. A nameless barman tends a decaying bar in Hollywood and takes notes for a book about his clientele. Initially, he is morbidly amused by watching the regulars roll in and fall into their nightly oblivion, pitying them and their loneliness. In hopes of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with them. He also knocks back pills indiscriminately and treats himself to gallons of Jameson’s. But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to lose himself, trapped by addiction and indecision. When his wife leaves him, he embarks on a series of squalidly random sexual encounters and a downward spiral of self-damage and irrational violence. To cleanse himself and save his soul, he attempts to escape …

A Blessed Snarl (Breakwater Books), a novel by Samuel Thomas Martin

Sam Martin moved to Newfoundland after an undergrad degree sparked an interest in Atlantic fiction, namely Michael Crummey and Alistair MacLeod. Since moving here, his work’s been very well received, and his last book, This Ramshackle Tabernacle, was a finalist for the Winterset Award for Excellence in Newfoundland Writing, and a finalist for the ReLit.

Patrick Wiseman moved his wife and son back to Newfoundland to start a new Pentecostal church, but when his wife Anne leaves him for a man she meets on Facebook and his son Hab moves in with his girlfriend Natalie—a burgeoning alcoholic with a fiery past—Patrick takes a suicidal leap of faith that brings him face to face with his estranged father Des, a Catholic mystic who might be covering up an old crime.  While Patrick wrestles to come to terms with his failed marriage, Hab struggles to hang on to his tenuous relationship with Natalie. But when a woman is almost burned alive in a nearby house fire and a neighborhood drunk is beaten within an inch of life, Hab begins to wonder if Natalie and her housemate Gerry know more than they let on.

Mad Hope (Coach House), Short Fiction by Heather Birrell

Heather Birrell is a three-time Journey Prize finalist (and 2007′s winner). Not much more to say to entice you to check out her new collection. Except that she’s been shortlisted for National and Western Magazine Awards as well, in addition to other accolades. There’s already a lot of hype swelling around this one.

A science teacher and former doctor is forced to re-examine the role he played in Ceauşescu’s Romania after a student makes a shocking request; a tragic plane crash becomes the basis for a meditation on motherhood and its discontents; women in an online chat group share (and overshare) their anxieties and personal histories; and a chance encounter in a waiting room tests the ties that bind us. Using precise, inventive language, Birrell creates astute and empathetic portraits of people we thought we knew – and deftly captures the lovely, maddening mess of being human.

An Instruction Manual for Swallowing (ECW), short fiction by Adam Marek

Adam Marek won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship and was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. This story collection was also  nominated for the Frank O’Connor Prize in 2007; this is the Canadian release.

An engaging new voice in absurdist fiction. A new North American edition of an acclaimed short story collection, Instruction Manual for Swallowing explores what happens when ordinary people collide with bizarre, fantastical situations. A man discovers he has testicular cancer on the day that a Godzilla–like monster attacks the city he lives in; a kitchen–hand is put under terrible peer pressure in a restaurant for zombies; a husband and wife discover they are pregnant with 37 babies; and a man travels into the engine room of his own body to discover Busta Rhymes at the controls. The 14 stories are grotesque, hilarious, unnerving, and moving. No matter how outrageous the subject matter of the stories, they have at their heart genuine human experiences that are common to us all.

The Land of Decoration (HarperCollins), a novel by Grace McCleen

Musician Grace McCleen’s debut novel might be one of the most hyped books of the spring. Elle Magazine called it rapturous, ” The first sentence sets the tone for this rapturous, daringly imaginative tale of love, loss, and salvation.”

Ten-year-old Judith McPherson is a believer. Her world is carefully constructed around her faith: nightly scripture reading with her father, weekly gatherings at the Meeting Hall and daily proselytizing to the lost. With no TV and no books “of the world” to entertain her, she passes time by creating The Land of Decoration, a model in miniature of The Promised Land which she has made of collected discarded scraps—divine treasures that she squirrels away.

But Judith’s troubles are mounting. At school, Neil Lewis’s relentless terrorizing has reached a feverish, dangerous pitch and, in town, a strike threatens the factory where her father works. One Sunday night, terrified of the violence that awaits her in the halls on Monday, Judith conjures a snowstorm in The Land of Decoration made of shaving cream, cotton and cellophane. The next morning the ground outside her window is a crisp, dazzling white. Judith can perform miracles. In fact, she might just be God’s chosen instrument. But with power comes weighty consequences, and Judith must face them head on to keep her faith—and her family—alive.

With its intensely taut storytelling and gorgeous prose, The Land of Decoration is a harrowing story of good and evil, belonging and isolation, faith and doubt, and it introduces us to a classic new heroine. It’s a novel that gives us many incredible gifts, but its most exciting is the gift of Grace McCleen, a brilliant, heartbreaking new voice in fiction.

The Last Hiccup (ECW), A Novel by Christopher Meades

Meades’ last book — The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark — was well known for being a product of the 3-Day Novel Contest that actually went places. In 2009, his short story “The Walking Lady” won the Advisor’s Prize in Fiction, and Meades has also won a 2008 fiction contest staged by the Vancouver Province.

A darkly funny, tragic, and ultimately heroic novel set in 1930s Russia, The Last Hiccup is the story of Vladimir, an eight–year–old boy stricken with a case of the hiccups — that lasts over a decade. Put through a series of extraordinary, often bizarre treatments by a famous physician, Sergei Namestikov, Vlad is spirited away from his rural home and doting mother to a hospital in Moscow. But Sergei’s chief medical rival, the brilliant Alexander Afiniganov, believes that beneath Vladimir’s mirror–less eyes lurks a pure, unbridled evil, and Vlad is removed from polite society. Isolated from everyone and everything — save his hiccups — Vladimir grows up to find inner peace among the hiccupping. On his way back into the world he once knew, through a country now in the midst of war, he encounters many strange people and situations, and worries about what would happen to him should a cure for his now–comforting affliction be found.

Floating like the Dead (McClelland & Stewart), Short Fiction by Yasuko Thanh

The title story of this collection won the 2009 Journey Prize, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Prairie Fire, Descant, PRISM, and Vancouver Review. She was a finalist for the Future Generations Millennium Prize, the Hudson Prize, and the David Adams Richards Prize, which recognizes unpublished manuscripts.

In this sharply observed and erotically charged debut collection, Journey Prize-winner Yasuko Thanh immerses us in the lives of people on the knife edge of desire and regret, hungry for change yet still yearning for a place to call home, if only for a little while.
 
In a story set in 1960s Germany and crackling with sexual tension, a young woman on the verge of making a life-changing decision is sent to work as a homemaker for a farmer and his family while his wife is away. When his dying lover becomes convinced he is being visited by a ghost, a man is forced to confront his own fears about being left behind. In a Mexican resort town where anything goes, a woman searching for a place to belong pushes herself to the limits of love and despair. And in the Journey Prize-winning story “Floating Like the Dead,” a group of Chinese lepers spend their last days dreaming of escape after they are exiled to a remote island off the coast of B.C., at the turn of the twentieth century.

Many of the characters in these stories are expats, outlaws, and outsiders, some by choice, others by circumstance. Yet in their struggles to be themselves and to belong, they remind us of our own deepest longings and desires. With this seductive and emotionally compelling collection, Yasuko Thanh announces herself as an exciting new voice in Canadian fiction.

The Rest is Silence (Goose Lane), A Novel by Scott Fotheringham

Scott Fotheringham used his experience as a research scientist in New York to write this novel … he holds a PhD from Cornell University in molecular genetics, and left Manhattan and a life in science to live in the country.

In the backwoods of Nova Scotia, a man slowly withdraws himself from the world. He fills his days with planting a garden. Building a cabin. Carving out friendships. Falling in love. His nights are for storytelling. A saga of youthful passions, of idealism and hope, of science and rebellion. Outside the forest, news reports trickle in. A worldwide catastrophe is brewing. People are frightened. Governments are in turmoil. The future is uncertain. And as the story unfolds, we learn the consequences of believing we were ever ready to open Pandora’s Box.

Bold of theme, sensual of language, and astonishing in its implications, The Rest is Silence is a stunning achievement.

People Who Disappear (Freehand), Short Fiction by Alex Leslie

Leslie’s short fiction has been published in many Canadian literary journals and in the Best Canadian Stories anthology series. She has won a Gold National Magazine Award for personal journalism and a CBC Literary Award for fiction.

An oil spill on the West Coast coincides with a loved one’s death. An enigmatic young musician experiences the rise and fall of his career, as told through videos posted to YouTube.

Sometimes romantic, sometimes elegiac, Alex Leslie’s coastal stories take place in ocean inlets and city streets. Haunted as much by technology as by their own ghosts, Leslie’s characters face the disappearance of sanity, love, and landscape. An electric, poetic debut.

Russell Wangersky is the multi-award-winning author of The Hour of Bad Decisions, Burning Down the House, The Glass Harmonica, and as of this month, Whirl Away.

Read Salty Ink’s review of Whirl Away here: http://saltyink.com/2012/04/04/salty-ink-on-russell-wangerskys-whirl-away/

In what ways has being a journalist helped you be a better writer?

Being a journalist – particularly in print – has helped tremendously, first, because it means I’m always working with words. That helps with finding the right language, with pace and pitch, it’s just a huge value to other writing. The other thing it helps with is concentration: every newsroom I’ve ever worked in has been noisy and chaotic – if you can write in that clamour, slipping into a story in the relative quiet of your own home seems far easier.

The authenticity of your characters is both commendable and notable, like how Dennis in “McNally’s Fair” knew everything that can go wrong with a rollercoaster and how to cheat your way into passing a safety inspection. Is it just a matter of meticulous research, an inherent need to be accurate, or has your day job made you an all-around trivia buff know-it-all?

My day job involves paying attention all the time, and poking into scores of things that I find interesting. I worked with a firefighter for several years who was a pressure vessel inspector – it sets you to thinking about what that involves. In order to do my job, I have to see things, and I have to talk to people about what they do, how they do it, and what they find irritating. Luckily, that’s become a skill I never turn off. It bugs family members sometimes, who wonder why I have to talk on and on with everyone I meet, but it’s hugely valuable.

Pick three stories from the collection, and tell us where the idea came from or what you were setting out to capture:

“Echo” — it’s a story that started while I was out running, when I ran past a small boy who said as clear as a bell “You don’t care what I think.” That made me wonder: what is his world like? Where do those adult words come from? Most of my stories start that way: trying to answer the question “what if you took that to the logical extreme?”

“Sharp Corner” — The idea actually came from a small piece of road just outside of St. John’s where there have been a series of accidents on what should be a relatively easy-to-navigate gentle curve. There’s a house right on that corner, and, after passing it a few times, I began to wonder what it would be like to live there.

“I Like” — I actually quite like cooking, and wondered what a relationship would be like if someone began to replace their need for physical contact with a kind sensual relationship with food.

You’re writing both shorts and novels – when an idea or character comes to you, how do you decide whether it’d be best served as a short or a novel?

I almost always think things will end up being longer than they are — if I think an idea might be a 5,000 word short story, even if I think it’s going to be that length right while I’m in the middle of writing it, it tends to come to a relatively quick end as soon as I understand just how it’s going to end. I like to make the characters, let them do their thing, and bring the piece to a close when they’ve decided what’s going to happen. I’m not a writer who does long-term planning of narrative arcs with maps or models – I don’t enjoy that, because I always feel that you end up forcing your characters to do things that they might not, if you let them do the talking. So, I guess that, in reality, I let the characters and the issue decide whether it’s a story or a novel – and I’ve only had limited experience with novels.

I find, personally, delivering a powerful short story is harder than writing a powerful novel. Why do YOU think that is?

I’m not sure I do: I think it’s harder to deliver a powerful collection of short stories, because there are so many different kinds of readers, and it’s hard to deliver a collection that people consistently enjoy – everyone has favourites, and ones they don’t like. The beauty of short stories, to me, is that as a writer you can sit and work and hold the whole thing in your head – you never lose your place or have to go back and see where and when things happen.

Do you have any favorite short stories, collections, or short story writers?

Oh, that changes a lot. Right now, I’m really taken with three short-story collections: Dan Chaon’s Stay Awake, the horrendously harsh but intriguing Guilt — Stories by Ferdinand von Schirach and Zsuszi Gartner’s wonderful Better Living Through Plastic Explosives.

Is there one book you wish you wrote, or, learned a lot from as a writer?

I think the book I learned the most from was Alistair MacLeod’s The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, which I first read in high school. It was the first book that actually sent the message that the things that were happening in the close world around me could actually have a broader value to others.

There’s certainly a thematic link in all these stories – people with one foot past their tipping point. Was this intentional, to write a suite of stories around a concept, or are you always writing stories, and grouped these together for their theme? Do you prefer themed collections as a reader?

I think themed collections and linked stories seem to be more popular with publishers — perhaps because they feel that it’s one way to try and subvert readers who the publisher believe are more attracted to novels. In Whirl Away, the theme came after the stories – they just seemed to naturally group together after the fact. I like both kinds – except sometimes, you run into collections that stretch too far to make the theme work. And that can actually weaken the package.

What’s the one story from this collection that’s stayed with you the most? Any reason why?

For me, “Echo” — just because the boy in that story seems to be so caught in the way his whole life will unfold. And that’s a tragedy.

You’ve done very well with awards recognition, and have been well-reviewed. But what’s been one comment from media so far that you just couldn’t wrap your head around?

I know that journalists and reviewers have busy lives and many other duties — by far the strangest comment I had to deal with, in terms of just leaving me stunned, was when I was on private radio in Halifax for my memoir Burning Down the House. I was on a call-in show, and the host sat me down, an ad started to run, and he said “I haven’t read anything except the back cover. You’ve got 30 seconds to fill me in on what it’s about.” I think I wasted 10 of those seconds with my mouth hanging open.

This is your third book in a row by the fantastic Thomas Allen. Have you worked with the same editor each time, and is that a good thing, that familiarity with each other?

I’ve worked with Janice Zawerbny for all three: she is a very gentle editor, although one that just politely won’t give up when she sees a problem. We get along very well, and it is a good thing – you get an idea when either of you is uncomfortable with something. You also get to know the mechanics of the publishing house pretty well, and that helps a lot if anything gets in a jam – you know who and when to call.

You’re writing books at quite a pace: 1 every 2 years since 2006. You’ve probably got another one well underway, do you?

I’ve just finished the first draft of a novel – but a first draft that still has a lot of work to be done, because it is quite a peculiar thing. I like writing much more than editing – and I like to be working on something all the time. It means the house doesn’t get painted, but I do manage to get potatoes in the ground in the spring.

Every year The John and Margaret Savage First Book award is awarded to the very best of Atlantic Canada’s new voices. This year in particular I commend the jury’s good taste and eye for fresh new fiction …

Heather Jessup currently teaches “really smart and stylish students ” in the English Department at Dalhousie University. Before that, she was co-editor and publisher of Delirium Press chapbooks with Griffin Prize finalist, Kate Hall. In addition to being up for this award, I think her bio on her website should win an award. And congrats to her for being shortlisted for this year’s PRISM International short fiction award.

Click Here for an interview with Heather

The Lightning Field follows the lives of Peter and Lucy Jacobs from their post-war courtship through marriage and child-rearing in the suburbs. Though spanning four decades, the book pivots on the events of a single day: October 4, 1957. On this day, the Russians launch Sputnik into orbit, the Avro Arrow—the most advanced jet plane of its time, whose wings Peter Jacobs has engineered … in a nearby field, Lucy Jacobs is struck by lightning on her way to the event. In the aftermath of that day, Peter struggles with his wife’s hospitalization and recovery, the care of their children. Their children—Kier, Andy and Rose—grow up in the sheltered cul-de-sacs of their Toronto suburb, troubled by the disappointments of their parents’ world, yet drawn to the infinite possibilities inspired by Laika the space dog and the mysteries of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. If so much of what their parents hoped for in life seemed ultimately out of reach, how will this next generation of dreamers find their way? The Lightning Field is about loss and unexpected offerings, personal dismantling and reassembly.

Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned is also on another shortlist over at the Canadian Library Association’s awards. Her short fiction has been published by The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review, Grain, and The Dalhousie Review.

Click here for a chat with Riel about her book

Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast. What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town — buildings and people — floating underwater. Then an orange-tipped surveyor stake turns up in a farmer’s field. Another is found in the cemetery. A man with surveying equipment is spotted eating lunch near Pokiok Falls. The residents of Haventon soon discover that a massive dam is being constructed and that most of their homes will be swallowed by the rising water. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and secrets are revealed. As the town prepares for its own demise, 14-year-old Ruby Carson sees it all from a front-row seat. Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home. Deftly written in a deceptively unassuming style, Nason’s keen insights into human nature and the depth of human attachment to place make this novel ripple in an amber tension of light and shadow.

Michael Murphy has been published in The Fiddlehead, The Windsor Review, and filling Station. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, and is currently studying at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University.

He also put out an album with his brother (and frontman of the band Wintersleep) in 2010, under the name Postdata, which I’ve written quite a bit of fiction to. Here’s ‘Tobias Grey” off that album

After Morgan Wells’s wife leaves him, a postcard from France arrives. It is addressed to a Morgan Wells—but not the Morgan Wells who receives it. Desperate to be led out of his despair, Morgan decides to read the postcard as a sign and embark upon a surreal journey to find, observe, and meet the other Morgan Wellses in the city of Toronto. On the day that a 2003 citywide power outage submerges Toronto in darkness, a teenage boy finds a missive of his own: a copy of Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, one of the first science fiction novels ever written. The boy, obsessed with the Choose Your Own Adventure series, interprets the coincidence of finding the book during the blackout as a premonition, and begins looking for proof that the end of the world is near. A Description of the Blazing World interlaces two narratives in a novel about the city in the new millennium: a crowded space that incubates signs of an apocalypse that never quite materializes. But it is this very threat of imminent danger—that everything could go up in blazes—that drives a reclusive man and a lonely boy to search for their respective revelations.

Don McKay wins the 2011 BMO Winterset Award!

Stellar poet and essayist Don McKay is up one more award today, and it’s a big one, for his collection of essays, The Shell of the Tortoise: Four Essays and an Assemblage. These essays “continue his investigation into the relationship between poetry and wilderness.”

The prize is worth $10,000, plus $2,500 to the other two finalists, making it one of the richest regional awards in Canada. It rewards the very best book out of Newfoundland & Labrador every year, based solely on excellence of writing. Considering it considers all genres, in a province known for its outrageous literary talent, this is one of the most flattering awards to win, period.

He had, as always, stiff competition on the shortlist, trumping Ed Riche from being the first male to win this award twice, with Easy to Like. Fellow poet Mark Callanan, one of the country’s finest under 40, was marked by many as the one to take it this year, with Gift Horse.

This year’s jury of 39 books was a damn good one: Noreen Golfman, Kevin Major, and Lisa Moore. This was also the first year a book of essays won this award

Don McKay is a poet, teacher and editor. He has published about a dozen books in a career that spans four decades. He has twice won the Governor General’s Literary Awards for poetry and the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip in 2007. His previous essay collections include the GG-shortlisted Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness and Deactivated West 100. McKay lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.

List of Previous Winners

2010 — Russell Wangersky – The Glass Harmonica
2009 — Jessica Grant – Come, Thou Tortoise
2008 — Randall Maggs – Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems
2007 — Kathleen Winter – boYs
2006 — Kenneth J. Harvey – Inside
2005 — Joan Clark – An Audience of Chairs
2004 — Ed Riche – The Nine Planets
2003 — Robert Mellin – Tilting
2002 — Joan Clark – The Word for Home
2001 — Michael Crummey – The River Thieves
2000 — Michael Winter – This All Happened

This year’s shortlists for the Atlantic Book Awards are just out. I’ve noticed two things:

1.) There’s some great fiction here you should all check out

2.) The heavy hitter, the $20,000 Thomas Head Raddall award for the best novel by an Atlantic Canadian, is missing, as is the Atlantic Poetry Prize. I’m hunting down an explanation. Maybe they’ve gone their own way? I hope they haven’t simply vanished.

Here they are, minus the children’s and non-fiction ones (genres outside of Salty Ink’s scope):

APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award, sponsored by Friesens
Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada by Chris Benjamin (Nimbus Publishing)
Salmon Country by Doug Underhill, photographs by André Gallant (Goose Lane Editions)
That Forgetful Shore by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole (Breakwater Books)

Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction), presented by Boyne Clarke
Mary Rose Donnelly, Great Village (Cormorant Books)
Bruce Graham, Diligent River Daughter (Pottersfield Press)
Frank Macdonald, A Possible Madness (Cape Breton University Press)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
Heather Jessup, The Lightning Field (Gaspereau Press)
Michael Murphy, A Description of the Blazing World (Freehand Books)
Riel Nason, The Town That Drowned (Goose Lane Editions)

Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Fiction
Gerard Collins, Moonlight Sketches (Creative Book Publishing)
Kevin Major, New Under the Sun (Cormorant Books)
Patrick Warner, double talk (Breakwater Books)

FOR ALL SHORTLISTS, SEE: http://www.atlanticbookawards.ca/

The 2012 Atlantic Book Awards and Festival runs May 10–17 with free literary events taking place in all four Atlantic Provinces. Details are forthcoming. Winners of the 2012 Atlantic Book Awards will be announced at a special awards show on the last night of the week-long festival, Thursday, May 17, at 7:00 p.m. at the LSPU Hall in St. John’s, Newfoundland, marking the first time this event has ventured outside Nova Scotia. Newfoundland comedienne Amy House will host the awards celebration, which also features a performance by Andy Jones. Tickets for the awards celebration are $12; as of April 1, they will be available at the LSPU Hall box office, by phone at 709-753-4531, or online at rca.nf.ca.

UPDAtE: “Nominations for the Raddall Fiction, Richardson Non-Fiction, and Atlantic Poetry Prizes will be announced just after Atlantic Book Week (May 10-17) wraps up, with related events throughout the summer and a presentation in the fall.”

Also worth reading: One agent goes to bat for authors on The Book Seller

And two great authors — Lynn Coady and Russell Smith — debate the big question of, To write sex scenes or to not write sex scenes. Valid arguments on both sides.

Kerri Cull is has been a bartender, bookseller, waitress, administrator, radio show host, columnist, instructor, and is the creator of The Book Fridge. This is her first book. it’s a concept collection broken into three parts; I asked her to explain this concept.

Soak follows the life of one woman from childhood to death.  From finding a turnip on the side of the road and bringing it home to regretting one last meeting with a dying relative.  Divided into three sections, the collection asks questions about the nature of identity, our connections with place and home, love and death.

The first section is called Stretch which refers to stretching toward something, growing and reaching.  Its poems are about first experiences, innocence, and imagination.

Sample Poem from Section 1: “Make Up”

Braille dots of mascara line her eyelids,
a hint of hazard for those
paying attention.

Hair, a question-mark ponytail,
except for one piece curved to the slope of her head
crossing her forehead and secure behind her ear.

Jeans rest on her bursting flesh, keeping her together.
She used to look like a doll, wore glasses at three:
big innocent eyes had no idea what they would see.

They say it happens to half of us
but did they include you in that percentage?
Brother, cat, dog, thirteen years
and all the rest of it?

The poems in the second section Run are about running toward what we will become, that part of your life where you have your first adult experiences, the time when you feel strong, powerful and certain.

Sample poem from section 2: “Opening”

The newly single woman sits next to her
plush orange sofa pillows
flipping magazine pages
as if asking questions.
She presses the spongy tip
of her gloss applicator to
her perfectly posed mouth.

This newly single woman makes chicken parm for two
and saves half for tomorrow’s lunch.
She sits with the TV on in the background
and enjoys the taste of food folding
over her tongue.

The single woman goes shopping for no reason
but to find that perfect kitchen mat and returns it
the next day when she finds it’s half an inch too short.
She has her fridge stocked with walnuts,
peaches, turnovers and plums.
She has the perfect reading lamp next to her bed
and glasses lie sleepily over the open book.

The single woman drinks tea after supper
and watches the news,
calls her sister to have a chat,
makes her own space
and sits in it
honestly.

Bend, the last section, hosts poems that are about bending toward the end of something such as a period in your life, a relationship, death, be it yours or someone else’s.  The last poem tells the story of the speaker on the day of her own death.

Sample poem from section 3: “Skating”

I could not
understand why
when he lay dying
my father would watch
figure skating
over
and over
again.
………Then
he told me
his childhood
was spent outside,
skating

on fragile
frozen ponds.

They’ve done the same with a Top Ten List of the Best Fictional Bookstores of All Time

And here’s Kurt Vonnegut, in less than two minutes, laying out how to write the perfect short story:

The Winterset Award celebrates excellence in Newfoundland and Labrador writing, and packs a $10,000 prize, with 2.5 grand each to the other finalists. There’s also the honour of being crowned the best book out of Newfoundland in a year, considering it’s the country’s literary goldmine. To make it more difficult and meaningful to win, the award considers all genres, as exemplified by the spread on this year’s shortlist: essays, fiction, and poetry.

The winner will be announced at Government House on Thursday, March 22^nd , and this year’s jury was Lisa Moore, Kevin Major, and Noreen Golfman.

Notable: This could make Ed Riche the first male writer to win Winterset twice. Joan Clark, however, has already been there and done that.

About the 2011 BMO Winterset Award finalists:

The Shell of the Tortoise: Four Essays and an Assemblage (Gaspereau) is exactly what the subtitle says it is, and written by one of the country’s most well decorated poets (a two-time GG winner, and Griffin Prize winner!) These essays “continue his investigation into the relationship between poetry and wilderness, particularly into the characteristics of metaphor as a tool.”

Easy to Like (Novel, Anansi) by Edward Riche. Whether writing for the stage, page, screen, or radio, Ed Riche has always been a wise and witty satirist, but with Easy to Like, he crowns himself the Atlantic Canadian king of satire by tackling open-ended questions of modern taste. As he knocks everything from Hollywood trophy wives to cheap tricks in winemaking to the inner workings of CBC, the satire flirts with slapstick humour, and the funniest thing about the novel is this: it’s all based in truth. Click here to read Salty Ink’s review of Easy to Like

Gift Horse (Poetry, Vehicule) is Mark Callanan”s second full-length collection of poetry, and “was largely written following a near-fatal medical emergency in 2007. The poems offer up the story of a young man whose gratitude at being alive is undercut by Lazarus-like confusion and ambivalence. Brandishing a newly acute sense of mortality.” Click here to read a Salty Ink Article on this book that features two of its poems.

List of Previous Winners

2010 — Russell Wangersky – The Glass Harmonica
2009 — Jessica Grant – Come, Thou Tortoise
2008 — Randall Maggs – Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems
2007 — Kathleen Winter – boYs
2006 — Kenneth J. Harvey – Inside
2005 — Joan Clark – An Audience of Chairs
2004 — Ed Riche – The Nine Planets
2003 — Robert Mellin – Tilting
2002 — Joan Clark – The Word for Home
2001 — Michael Crummey – The River Thieves
2000 — Michael Winter – This All Happened

It takes a minute or two for him to set himself up, but you’ll be clapping by the end. Grab some popcorn.

David Adams Richards has written numerous novels, most recently, Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul, and perhaps most notably, one of my favourites anyway: Mercy among the Children.

Whirl Away: Short Fiction by Russell Wangersky

I’m extremely excited for this one. Russell’s writing is crystalline and affecting. Quite often: flawless. And this multi-award-winner is at his best with short fiction.

“Brutal and gentle. Funny and cruel. Timely and timeless.” – Giller winner, Joseph Boyden

Everyone has something they’re good at: one particular personal skill that they use to keep their lives moving forward when their worlds suddenly become difficult or near-impossible. For some, it’s denial; for others, blunt pragmatism. Still others depend on an over-inflated view of self to keep criticism and doubt at bay. In his new short story collection, Whirl Away, Russell Wangersky—author of critically-acclaimed fiction and non-fiction including The Glass Harmonica, Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself and The Hour of Bad Decisions— looks at what happens when people’s personal coping skills go awry. These are people who discover their anchor-chain has broken: characters safe in the world of self-deception or even self-delusion, forced to face the fact that their main line of defense has become their greatest weakness.

Read More at Thomas Allen’s Website

Soak: Poetry by Kerri Cull

I’ve had the opportunity to read Kerri’s manuscript, and I really liked the evocative, universal, and accessible nature of her work. You might know Kerri as the curator of  The Book Fridge.

“The poems are remarkable for the balance they strike between self and world.” – Patrick Warner, two-time winner of the EJ Pratt Poetry prize

Kerri has been a bartender, bookseller, waitress, administrator, radio show host, columnist, and instructor. This collection focuses on physical experience and contemplates the beauty of everyday life – the objects, the stories, and the people that drift in and out. It finds the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Read More about Soak at Breakwater Books’ Website

Why Men Lie: a novel by Linden MacIntyre

This new novel by CBC’s Linden MacIntyre is not only his follow-up to the 2009 Giller-winning novel, The Bishop’s Man, it features a female character from that novel as its protagonist. (The novels are unrelated.)

Random House Big Wig Anne Collins raves a little here:

A brilliant, deeply wise and challenging new novel. Why do men lie? Effie MacAskill Gillis, a self-sufficient woman of her time, is confident she knows. She learned the hard way—from a war-damaged father and a troubled brother who became a priest, through failed marriages and doomed relationships with weak and needy men. Men lie to satisfy the needs they never can articulate: for sex, for love, and reassurance.  Now at middle age, she feels immunized against the damage men can do and enjoys a hard-won independence. But then a chance encounter with a man on a subway platform changes everything—an old friend looks like he, like her, has evolved into an assured and confident maturity. That he seems to have outgrown the need for telling lies is irresistible, and Effie gambles her emotional resources as she never has before. Only to learn that men must lie, and that the consequences of an unexpected lie can be disastrous.

Read more at Random House’s website.

Paradoxides: Poetry by Don McKay

Don McKay is a Griffin Poetry Prize winner. He’s known as the country’s finest nature poet, and the title, Paradoxides, is a genus of trilobite: his new book “enters the astonishments of deep time lying in the rocks around us. “Who needs ghosts when matter/ nonchalantly haunts us?”

Don McKay is known, among other things, as Canada’s foremost poet of the natural world. Readers have come to expect a playful extravagance in his poetry. Most recently, he has opened himself to the mysteries of geologic wonder. “Who needs ghosts when matter /nonchalantly haunts us,” he writes. In his new book, perhaps his most stunning yet, it’s fossils and deep time that provide the awe. The landscape of Newfoundland has taken his linguistic virtuosity even further, sharpened his wit, and given him a lyric energy that sometimes feels as if he’s lifting the planet into song.

Read more the McClelland & Stewart’s website

A Matter of Life and Death or Something: A Novel by Ben Stephenson

Ben Stephenson, only 25 yet thriving in the Halifax literary scene, wrote his first book at age 7. Later, took a break from NASCAD to write this one.

“Ben Stephenson takes us down the rabbit hole into the refracted and hilarious world of a child on a very serious quest. A Matter of Life and Death or Something will leave you less grown up — and all the wiser for it. Curiouser and curiouser. A marvel of a book.” – Jessica Grant

The big-hearted story of a ten-year-old boy, a notebook and the meaning of the universe. Even though he’s only ten years old, Arthur Williams knows lots of things for sure. He knows all about trilobites, and bridge, and that he doesn’t want to be Victoria Brown’s boyfriend, and that tapping maple trees causes them excruciating pain. He knows his real dad is probably flying a hot-air balloon across the Pacific, or paving a city with moss. And he knows that Simon, the guy who pretends to be his dad, does absolutely nothing interesting. But when Arthur finds a weather-worn notebook in the woods behind his house, all he has are questions. Why was its author, Phil, so sad, and why does it end on page 43? Suddenly, there are other questions too: Why do people abandon people? Why do they abandon themselves? A Matter of Life and Death Or Something marks the exciting debut of an inventive and gifted storyteller.

Read more about A Matter of Life and Death or Something at Douglas & McInyre’s website

The Port Inventory: Poetry by Donald McGrath

This is Donald’s first book of poetry in 17 years. He’s been maturing like a good port in the meantime?

The Saint Lawrence River glides beneath high windows while, close by, schoolchildren’s bright winter coats glow in Parthenais Prison’s shade. In a hotel on a cliff above Biarritz, a man peers down into a darkened courtyard and thinks he hears low sobbing through the plashing of a fountain. In an east coast fishing village, a bedridden child experiences heightened lucidity in delirium. A slum landlord in Prince Rupert gives lessons on the British Empire. These are a few moments in The Port Inventory. Spanning the distances between the Newfoundland fishing village where he grew up and Montreal, the city he has made his home, McGrath’s poems drop a ladder into memory’s root cellar and find it luminescent.

Read more about The Port Inventory at Cormorant’s website

Shandi Mitchell Wins The Kobzar Award

Shandi Mitchell’s already multi-award-winning novel, Under this Unbroken Sky, got more multi-award winning with this week’s win of the bi-annual Kobzar literary award. It’s a $25,000 prize for the best book in any genre with the strongest Canadian-Ukrainian theme. I’ve always thought there should be more award with specific mandates, like “best first book of shorts” or “best characters.”

Read more about her novel at Penguin’s website.

Riel Nason Shortlisted for a Canadian Library Associations Award

Riel Nason’s debut novel, The Town That Drowned, has made the shortlist for the CLA’s elusive YA award. This shortlist often includes adult novels that sit well in the YA market too. The award “recognizes an author of an outstanding English-language Canadian work of fiction that appeals to young adults between the ages of 13 and 18.”

The winner will be announced on May 31 at the annual awards reception.

Read more about The Town That Drowned at Goose Lane’s website

Heather O’Neil’s Tips on “How to Date a Writer”

Chad Pelley Takes The Proust Questionnaire

A book shopping list of “The New Face of CanLit” from Amazon.

Newfoundland’s Breakwater Books are hiring a Sales and Marketing Coordinator

Don’t lose interest in the meantime, hey? This slow, 1 or 2 articles a week won’t last. March should be great. More chats with writers and publishers, etc.

Born in 1945, The Fiddlehead, based in UNB’s English Department, is Canada’s longest living literary journal, and honestly, one of the best curated in the country. The short stories, the poetry, the essays, the reviews: all worth subscribing for. As their website states, “Do not look at this journal as old! It is experienced; wise enough to recognize excellence; always looking for freshness and surprise.”

So I talked to two great guys/writers on the Fiddlehead Fiction Team about all things Fiddlehead, and more. Enjoy. Subscribe. Submit. Also, read Jarman and Beirne’s work, like My White Planet, 19 Knives (Jarman) and Turtle or Games of Chance (Beirne).

Note!: In the fall of 2012, The Malahat Review and The Fiddlehead will celebrate the writing of each other’s regions, with the former publishing an East Coast issue and the latter a West Coast issue. Writers with strong connections to either or both regions are invited to submit to the issue that will best provide their work a most apt and safe harbour. As well content submissions are invited for our joint East Coast/West Coast website. Submission deadline is 15 May 2012. For more information go to the East Coast/West Coast: Call for Submissions.

If you had to say it in just few sentences, What are you looking for in a piece of Fiction for Fiddlehead?

Mark Jarman: I hope that we’re open to any kind of story that is compelling and shows intelligent choices.  Martha Sharpe was my editor for 19 Knives and Ireland’s Eye and her test was to read on a crowded streetcar and see if she was pulled in despite the distractions.  I like voice and work on language and imagery and I like reactions that show the psychology of the narrator or character, eg a piano falls from above: how do they react?  I’m a big fan of Carver who shows little reaction, but I also like writing that can imply history and character and layers and knowledge.  I appreciate a mix of tones too, like Lorrie Moore who can be sad and funny at the same time.  But I hope we’re open to anything that works; that’s the litmus test.  There are so many ways to write a story.

Gerard Beirne: “How could you explain a balding man in an ill-fitting suit aiming his clarinet at the sky: Benny Goodman? How can you explain that? And he’s gonna be rocking the joint, he’s gonna be sweatin’, and people are gonna be movin’ to him, and falling in love with him on a deep level. How could you ever plan for that? The only way we can see it is once it’s happened.” – Tom Waits

Just take out your clarinet and play. I’ll listen, and if I start movin’….

Without choosing favourites, what’s a story or two (and by whom) that you’ve published that really fit that bill?

Jarman: The Summer Fiction Issue (2011) has many gems and stars, but I recall “The Lone Wolf” by Wayne McIntyre: something grumpy about the voice and the family that appeals.  “Annabelle’s Angel” by Andrew Smith is about a very awkward male hustler.  Sheila McClarty’s “Stolen” is the only story I know about stealing horse semen (Winter 2011).  Winter 2012 has “Naked Girls & the Grinch” by Christopher Meades and there is a lesson: write about people drinking coffee or write about naked women on stage performing How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  These are your choices as a writer.

Beirne: Jill Sexsmith’s “A Box Full of Wildebeest” (Spring 2010). Who could have planned for that? Unpredictable language, an unexpected sequence of events, unimaginable territory.  We spend most of our lives doing ordinary things, and yet the act of living is quite extraordinary. Good stories reveal that.  Watch out for Jill – no one else writing quite like her. ML West, “My Daughter of the Dead Reeds” (Summer 2011) – created its own world, a murky-swampy sort of place where we stomped in the shallows looking for clarity and ultimately found it. Good stories do that – create their own distinct worlds, pull us into them and point the way back out but with no guarantees for our safety.  Sheila McClarty’s, “The Government Ditch” (Winter 2010). Great characters constricted more and more by their circumstances until they have to buckle under or explode, and they explode. Another thing good stories  do – constrict their characters, push them up against walls and into corners, box them in. it’s the nature of the form.

How long have you been at Fiddlehead now?

Jarman: I arrived from Victoria in 1999 for what was I thought was a temporary stay.  Ross Leckie was working here and Norm Ravvin and Bill Gaston had been editing before us.

Beirne: Just over two years now as an editor – was a reader before that.

Is there anyone you’ve proudly published at the beginning of their career who’s gone on to publish some great book(s) you enjoyed?

Jarman: It’s always nice to see people show up in Best Canadian Stories or The Journey Prize anthology, and I’ve published people that went on to do books with Penguin or M&S, but there are also writers and stories I really like that do not get recognition, so I’m going to skate around this question.  My first three poems and two stories were published in the Fiddlehead decades ago when I was in Edmonton; never knew I’d end up here.  Many writers started in the pages of The Fiddlehead: Anne Simpson, Atwood, Purdy, Pat Lowther, Carol Shields, Ondaatje, Alistair Macleod, even Anne Sexton.

Beirne: Well Sheila McClarty went on to publish a very fine book of stories High Speed Crow (Oberon Press). I’ve known her work for many years before I was involved with The Fiddlehead – from my time in Manitoba where she is from. So it was a pleasure to see it all coming together so nicely in that story and in the subsequent book.

Some writers seem to stop submitting to journals once they’re “established.” I wish they wouldn’t. What are your thoughts on this?

Jarman: When I was younger I was in an issue of Prism that also had Ray Carver and I was thrilled, so I vote to keep submitting until you die.  In the Summer Fiction Issue (2011) I was very happy to have writers like Clark Blaise, Elisabeth Harvor, Bill Gaston, Leon Rooke mix with less established writers.

Beirne: Well, for some writers, there may be what they consider ‘better’ opportunities open to them – magazines with a bigger audience, more money! Some may have agents involved. Others may feel that they don’t need to ‘compete’ in the selection/rejection process anymore, and that’s reasonable. Some may even feel it is unfair to less established writers. So there are many reasons for this. I think it is a good idea for a journal to have a mix of established and emerging writers, beginners too if their story is good enough. That seems like a healthy self-sustaining environment.

How did this East Coast / West Coast collaboration with the Malahat Review come to be? 

Jarman: That came from editors John Barton and Ross Leckie wanting to do something together, in a spirit of cooperation, rather than mags competing or undermining each other.  I can’t take credit, but I did hire John Barton to be our Writer in Res at UNB and the idea was hatched while he was held prisoner here.   By the by, our current writer in res is Sue Sinclair, and starting next September the writer in res will be Joan Clark from NL.

There’s certainly a diversity in the fiction coming out of Atlantic Canada, yet I think a subset of it certainly shares a few traits. Do you agree, and believe there is something of an Atlantic Canadian identity in some of the writing coming out of the east coast?  What qualities does it exhibit?

Jarman: I don’t think in terms of regions, though I love it when a place is not homogenized, is noticeably not the same as another part of the country.  I’m sure there are traits, perhaps even in setting and dialogue and humour, but writers are individuals.  Wayne Johnston seems a different writer to me than Lynn Coady, though both really use the setting, and both are funny.  And finally, I’m not even sure that Fredericton is part of the Maritimes.  We may be a Swiss Duchy.  Not too much squid-jigging goes down here.

Beirne: I’m at a loss here. It’s a bit like asking about ‘Irish’ fiction. I’ll go along with the theory that it can share a few traits, and I do believe that the geographical landscape, climate and overall cultural environment can shape the writing, but the territory of the mind, the imagination, does not necessarily share the same borders – all this coming from a writer born and reared in Ireland, who is also a Canadian citizen, included in an anthology of Manitoba writers, and  is now a board director of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick.

Ignore that there’s overlap in these attributes: As a reader, what percentage of each of these traits would you allot, in building a perfect short:
1.) Fresh language & shining sentence-level writing,
2.) Originality of story and/or character and/or narrative.
3.) Effectiveness of the author to pull off the story they set out to tell (Did they use the right tone, POV, narrative structure, etc)
4.) Enjoyability / narrative hook

Jarman: I like all of them, but ball park I’ll say 30% each to 1 and 2, 20% to 3 and 4.

Beirne:

You know there must be law against this sort of question, and if there isn’t, there ought to be.

No percentages – but firstly, I want to be entertained (Dubliners is entertaining, Ulysses is entertaining. Finnegan’s Wake is not). I want to get to the end. Very many of the stories I read are simply uninteresting, dull. The characters have little life in them. They may be suffering from some terrible disease, splitting their family apart, but I don’t really care, and I know our readers won’t either. As Richard Ford said in his Paris Review interview, “it’s fiction’s business to try to enlarge our understanding of and sympathy for people.” I am looking for originality/voice something that makes that particular story stand out. And, sure, it’s a combination of all the things you have mentioned above, but there isn’t one particular  mix. Ultimately, however, I want that enlargement of understanding. To do that, the writer has to take risks – risks with plot, risks with characters, risks with the choice and sequence of words. By this I do not mean that they should be writing in a weird or abstract way just that they do not follow the worn path. Writing is an act of discovery. It requires courage, feats of daring-do.

How does Fiddlehead hash out which 3 stories it’ll submit to the Journey Prize every year?

Jarman: This is not a science.  We ask everyone on staff which they prefer.  I like to remember something visual about a story, some hook, or it might be a theme that seems worthy.  This year I had input on National Magazine Awards, then Gerry Beirne suggested very different stories for The Journey Prize, which has different rules, and we went with his picks on that one.  It can be arbitrary.

Beirne: You know that Randy Quaid  line to Ryan O’Neill in Paper Moon out in the backwoods (when Quaid used to just act as a simpleton instead of ….) – “I’ll wrastle you for it.” Well Mark, Ross and I, the woodlot … you get the picture.

No, people just put forward a number of stories they recommend, and usually there is some overlap. If someone cares enough for a story to go to bat for it, they won’t find many objections.

Photograph (C) Denis Sinyakov/AFP/Getty Images

In the above photograph, it’s clear that piracy advocate and international bestseller Paulo Coelho is not hurting for money and attention. He’s sold millions and millions of his many, many books. He’s also joined forces with the notorious free file sharing website, Pirate Bay, where you can get just about any eBook, movie, song, TV show, or software program with the click of a button. By joining forces, I mean he’s shouting, “pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written.”

Why? Because if Russia has proven one thing to the world, lately, it’s this: Piracy is seemingly not hurting authors. Or publishers. Coelho’s The Alchemist was Russia’s number 1 pirated book for several years there … and has sold a whopping 12 million copies to date.

How? Piracy is about discovery, not thievery. We live in the age of Internet samples: YouTube and Grooveshark are ways to sample music, IMDB and movie trailers inform us on movies … but books? it’s only recently some publishers are wise enough to offer a first chapter online. This I guarantee you: that’s not giving anything away for free. It’s letting me sample, and if I like I buy. But if I can’t sample, I don’t buy. Why would I? I don’t trust critics and jurors, they’re not me. And backcovers, meh. Sampling is like the first date: is there chemistry between me and the first page? Do I want another page/date? Without access to a sample, I can’t tell. That’s how I’ve come to understand how piracy and sales are going hand in hand. That and the sheer convenience of piracy: Any book, music, movie, or show I want, right there right away. I equate it to the mixtape days. I never made a mixtape for my crush to steal royalties from Kurt Cobain, I shared his music out of sheer enthusiasm, so people would go buy his records. Do I like the idea of being pirated? Not really. But what I’d hate more is being unread and inaccessible to anyone interested.

“If I wasn’t a pirate I never would read your books! I consider it a preview, if you like it, buy it!” – Guy on Pirate Bay in reaction to Coelho’s partnership with them

A large part of Coelho’s argument is simply that writers want to be read, and being accessible makes that easier. In turn, publishers making file sharing impossible, in the interest of their and their authors books, is strangely and counterproductively damaging for exposure of these books. To quote the man who has opened my mind on the subject, Sean Cranbury, “What we call piracy is a basic function of the Internet.” But copyright protection and its people have not yet accepted that reality. Or embraced it in the fruitful, productive ways the music industry has.

Here’s Neil Gaiman on why he’s converted to be pro piracy:

Robbie MacGregor, Publisher at Invisible Publishing, on Piracy

Piracy concerns me not at all. I’m the head of a publishing firm that owns the ‘exclusive world right’ to publish, distribute, etc. the words of a bunch of authors, forever-and-ever, and piracy concerns me
not at all.

Digital systems facilitate sharing, they make the act of copying utterly trivial and have since sometime around when the unix command ‘dd’ came into popular use (approximately ten years before I was born, and some 25 years before something resembling the commercial internet really got rolling).

It doesn’t make sense to enumerate all the new and interesting ways in which users can share and copy a set of bits, losing sleep over the myriad ways your files could end up in the hands of unknown others for free. A job like that would be way too big, hopelessly futile … and it would be wrong-headed to boot.

In my opinion, producers, promoters, creators, should be focusing on ways to deliver better service, better files, to make things easier. When someone searches for an album, a book, whatever, make sure they find you first. Have the file there, ready to go, and don’t stick too many obstacles, logins, etc. between visitors and the stuff they came for. That’s how you win on the aggregate. It’s not that complicated. What’s the alternative? To engage in some massive, and likely futile attempt, at terraforming the web? The internet wasn’t built for commerce. Attempts to reshape it, to make it reflect and support more traditional ideas of exchange or protect the established business models of media companies will fail. Those who support these kinds of projects will invariably end up looking impotent, ignorant, stupid. Again, I’m saying this as someone who runs a fairly traditional media company in many respects.

It seems more sensible to accept the network’s biases, try to realize some net benefit in (unauthorized) sharing, in so much as it might facilitate discovery or supplement direct promotional efforts, maybe try to get your files/ideas/stories into the mix. That’s probably the best you can do.

Kimberly Walsh, All-around Industry Insider, on Piracy

Personally, I agree with Gaiman. Obscurity, particularly for a debut or new author, is a challenge. In a way, we can think of illegal copies as marketing in these cases. It costs money to make money. At BookCamp in Halifax this year, I was part of a break-out session that discussed the correlation between book purchasing after reading frees copies. Librarians, book bloggers. readers, and booksellers all said that if they enjoy the book, they’ll buy a personal copy. I’ve been in the same situation where a friend has loaned me a book and, if I loved it, I went out and bought a copy even if I wound up not reading it from cover to cover again.I don’t think I’ve seen any quantitative data on this hypothesis but the theory is that people who do “steal” your work and never pay for it are the ones who never would have paid for it to begin with. That’s not a lost sale. In some cases, piracy is actually about distribution channels. We’re living in a society of instant gratification. If a reader can’t get a book at the moment s/he wants it, that’s a lost sale. Sometimes we’re talking about bridging a gap with a “pirated” copy until a legal one can be purchased.

Here is a list ofthe most stunning bookstores in the world, with the photos to back it.

Here are 25 tips on opening a bookstore.

And here’s why Barnes and Noble are not supporting Amazon as a publisher, by not stocking their titles.

If Goose Lane isn’t Atlantic Canada’s finest publisher, it’ll give any competition a run for its money: a standard for quality literature and good-looking books, that get national media attention, with some wild success stories, like Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven, Joan Thomas’s Reading by Lightning, and Douglas Glover’s Elle. They also happen to be Canada’s first independent publisher: admirable.

In 1994, before everyone had computers, let alone the Internet, these guys made history by becoming one of the first publishing houses in the world to launch their own website. Since that time, they’ve continuously made changes to it, to evolve and meet your needs and industry demands. Like being able buy ebooks right off their site (which you ought to be doing, when you buy any book, by the way! Buy direct).

As of today they’ve officially launched a sleek, pleasure-to-browse website that makes discovering and buying book a breeze. It’s got new features, like ongoing staff blogs, new content, like sample chapters, and a new promotional kick-off. Exciting stuff.  To celebrate the launch, they’re extending a special offer. For every day the week of January 30, they’ll be offering one book a day at a special discounted price. Every day of the week one of these titles will be “drastically discounted to help celebrate the new website and attitude,” so get it then. Roadsworth, YOU comma Idiot, The Famished Lover, Miller Brittain, The Black Watch, Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy, and Ganong: A Sweet History of Chocolate 

Like a good workout, there are perks to writing, but like a good workout, it’s exhausting once you really get into it. I’m not the first writer to occasionally ponder why I’m even doing this. George Orwell once likened writing to a curse, an addiction he tried to fight against. One of the reasons I keep at it came up in Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s new book. Lorri is a former Haligonian Poet Laureate. Her new book, entitled, Threading Light: Reflections on Loss and Poetry, contained a quote I thought I’d bounce off a handful of writers.

In Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s new book, Threading Light, she says, ‘Language is a hinge that connects us to the flesh of our experience.’ Much of my own writing is a conversation with myself, on a topic I’ve steeped in the guise of a story. At the end of the day, what is it that compels you to write? What percentage of the urge is an attempt to better understand the world?”

Kathleen Winter (Annabel, BoYs)

“There’s an underground stream running through my body, underneath the contact my body makes with life and the earth, and that underground stream contains inchoate material from two sources, like estuary waters: inchoate material or silt from within myself, my inner life, and inchoate material from the world that appears to be outside myself. These two kinds of silt or stardust swish around together and form incoherent messages which grow more and more insistent. What are they saying? What do they mean? Before they ignite and blow me to pieces, I try to catch them and join them in a delicate line which, if I’m lucky, become words, become some sort of message, become my writing …”

Chris Benjamin (Drive-by Saviours, Eco-Innovators)

“There is a push and a pull factor at work. The push is a love for reading and stories that is either innate or developed at a very young age in me. I wrote my first story when I was six. It was about a dinosaur, and it was essentially a ripoff of Danny and the Dinosaur, a children’s book about a dinosaur and boy who paint the town red together. Within a few years I was more creative but still aping, writing stories about the age-old person-monster war. I loved a good yarn, and was equally adept at telling my friends tall tales on the playground. And in high school I discovered poetry and realized how you could play with form and the words themselves, twist them and make them mean different things than even you intended, bring them alive. When I sit down with a pen and blank paper the thrill is the same, the excitement that there is something in my head and heart and eventually something will be on the page, possibly similar but only writing it down will tell. It’s fun.

The push factor is that stories are everything. They are what we think and feel, and how we understand the world. They are our passions and beliefs. We think ourselves rational but that’s just a story – we’re making 99 percent of our decisions based on stories we’ve learned and thus values we’ve internalized, memories we have of what felt right. If I’m not part of that conversation, who is? Whoever they are they’re really fucking things up. My stories are my way to study that question and understand not only the way things are, but how they got this way, and how we fix them. And it’s also my wee little attempt steer this vessel away from the monsters. ”

Russell Wangersky (The Hour of Bad Decisions, Burning Down the House, The Glass Harmonica)

“I don’t know that I write to try and better understand the world – I think it’s more that I’m trying to explain. Explain what I see, explain why I behave the way I do, explain myself – and I think I need to do it because I’m remarkably unable to explain myself in spoken words, especially to the people I care about. If language is a hinge, it’s a hinge on a door that I otherwise keep closed, simply because I find it really hard to let people open it and look inside at me in any sort of real time.”

Leslie Vryenhoek (Scrabble Lessons, Gulf)

“Not so much an attempt to understand the world–more an attempt to understand what the hell it is I really believe. That’s close to 90% of the impulse, anyway. Most of the rest, of course, is an attempt to convert others to my way of thinking once that way has revealed itself to me. Either that, or it’s to ask forgiveness for thinking such things.”

Lorri Neilsen Glenn (Combustion, Lost Gospels, Threading Light, and many more)

“What compels me to write?

Paul MacDonald of Cox & Palmer congratulates Randy Drover, winner of the inaugural Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award

Randy Drover is, in my opinion, one of the best emerging writers in the country. And I’ve been a fan for years. In 2008, to grow as a writer, I took a creative writing course at MUN,  and on the first night there, Randy read a piece. It was some of the best writing I’d ever heard.  Not a word out of place: evocative, lush, and perfect enough that I felt pretty small as a writer, and fondly jealous of the guy. I wrote an article in a local paper at the time, saying he’d be one of the next big names out of Newfoundland, filling the daunting shoes of our Lisa Moores, Michael Winters, and John Stefflers. And since that time he’s won some awards, published some poems and short stories, and is currently the poetry editor for Canada’s hippest new literary Journal, Riddle Fence. He’s an old soul and the exciting new voice out of Newfoundland.

This Sunday past, Randy won the inaugural Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award. It’s an award for a current or recent graduate of Memorial University’s Creative Writing Program who seems set for success, and there were many to choose from. MUN’s creative writing program is taught by the likes of Mary Dalton, Larry Mathews, Robert Finlay, Jessica Grant, and Don McKay, among others. The award, sponsored by the law firm, Cox & Palmer,is given out as part of the annual SPARKS literary festival in St. John’s every year. SPARKS is a fantastic, day-long festival, broken up in to 4 sessions with 4 Newfoundland writers a piece, that was borne out of Memorial’s Faulty of Arts, and is spearheaded by the admirable, internationally acclaimed poet, Mary Dalton. It started in 2010, and since then, has featured more than 30 of Newfoundland & Labrador’s finest writers, alongside our newest writers. Mary and others have been building more and more excitement around the festival, including video productions, radio broadcasts, and two awards: one for the best haiku involving fire imagery, and now, as they’ve committed to doing this again, the Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing award. I could not be more impressed with Mary Dalton for spearheading what St. John’s had been truly  needing, and for going so far above and beyond.

Randy agrees. I sent him an email of congrats and a few questions about the award and SPARKS in general.

Mary Dalton’s effort in bringing this festival to life is nothing short of extraordinary. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of this festival since its inaugural year, as a reader, a volunteer and audience member, and the crowd drawn each year certainly lends credence to the fact that this is something that St. John’s needs. When you mix emerging writers with multi-award winning novelists, playwrights and poets, you attract a diverse audience, and offer a great escape on a cold January day. There is such a rich arts community in Newfoundland, and to have a yearly showcase for this talent is merited and incredibly worthwhile.

Earlier, I mentioned the calibre of caring, insightful, and talented professors MUN”s creative Writing Program has amassed, of which Randy had this to say, “The creative writing program at MUN is responsible for many of the successes I have seen in my writing life. The program offers a variety of courses in many disciplines and when testing these waters you really find your niche. Working with peers, writers, and professors on a weekly basis makes these courses a joy to participate in, and lends encouragement to any emerging writer. And a little encouragement stretches a long way when beginning.”

Poet, MUN professor, and SPARKS’ festival co-ordinator Mary Dalton shares my enthusiasm for Randy’s bright, crisp work. “Randy Drover is a gifted young writer,” she says, “who has done outstanding work in  the creative writing program. This award will buy him some time and foster the writing energies, we hope.”

While I wasn’t surprised Randy won the Cox & Palmer award, I’m glad to hear he was surprised and excited. “More than anything, [I was] awakened. To win an award like this is a huge motivation to continue. Thanks go out to SPARKS and Cox and Palmer for their support of the arts community and my future within it. It’s an exceptional boost for a fledgling writer.”

Without further ado, since he’s ambi- or -tridextrous, like most people coming out of MUN’s creative program, I’ll close this with a poem and a short story of his …

Before Going Out
……………………Two Tankas

Ten lines to doll-up
the hearsay woman, old crow
with gimlet eyes. Ear
to the telephone, hands on
the clothesline. Patch quilts, patch quilts.

Five now, to straighten
jars and jars, pickles and jam,
turn the moose soup down.
Juice glass with lilac perfume.
Homemade cream near the face pan.

Of Sidney

The mill is always cold, even on days where lightning-beaked gulls snatch ice cream out of sweaty hands. The paint has faded and is rotting with the wooden exterior. Those boards were sawed and shaved by grandfather’s hands. There is no electricity now, and when the kerosene lantern is lit, the inside stone walls appear dusted black. Light reveals wooden pulley wheels and still saw blades, sharp as they were twenty years ago. The engine room is a museum of rusted thumb wrenches, files, moonshine bottles of oil, and the engine that hasn’t started since Sidney died.

Rumor is that Joseph Tad dug up the corpse one late night in July. Carried Sidney in a wheelbarrow, over seaweed and lichen, and laid him in the water. Many believe he should have been buried at sea. After all, he was born on a trawler. It was a pleasant surprise for grandfather, dancing over rolling logs to see his son. The happiest log driver’s waltz. Men say that Sidney had gills. He could dive deeper than any man, swim farther and faster. He is Jonah. He is Nemo. A pirate, with lobster pots out all year. The fables and books conjure images of him. Sixteen, though he lived ten years longer, fit and trim like the photograph that hangs in the mill.

…

When the water was still innocent, and the days were bright and salty, I would perch on the flat stones before the tide swallowed the landwash. Rob was always with me, and we had makeshift bamboo rods and a tin can full of bent hooks we picked up from the wharf. We wanted cod, but usually caught sculpins. We’d beat their heads off rocks then throw them at each other, barbed backs ripping our old shirts.

When the water began to lap at our shoes, we headed to the stage. We could already see bobbing skiffs coming in for dinner. Father was among them, and grandfather, motoring out from some narrow cove. Grandfather was first, and had the most fish. He wore a tailored suit each day under his oilskins. Father followed with Percy, Popeye-grin on his face. I sat watching on blue barrel in the corner of the stage, scales flying like flour at a bakery.

We all had napes for dinner, and afterwards, the men would head out again, leaving us to wander. We would go farther each day atop the jagged and craggy cliffs. The water was infinite then.

In June, we spotted a shack in the distance, down between the hills. It was small and orange, likely abandoned. A short dock with rotting planks, tin chimney flute. Clear water carrying colorations of the sea.

The connection I felt was magnetic, as if I had lived there before, or wanted to. We followed the slender goat path down. It was a clubhouse then, our own. A perfect place for smoking the cigarettes Rob lifted from his parent’s store.

…

April, years later, the sky seemed as if it had gotten dark, but it was the mood that darkened. The water was treacherous, snow still, and flurries. I sat in the front of the dory, cold and sick from the waves and the breeze off the water. It was Easter, and we were not after cod. I was now part of this annual excursion. We motored past the narrows and up past Nelly’s Arm. Percy took bearings from the cliff face that looks like a lady, and pointed out her features. An ear, nose, deep craters for eyes. We traveled east from there, to an abandoned wharf in a small patch of high cliffs. The shack had changed. It had aged.

It happened here twenty years ago, they told me. This was where Sidney died. I wouldn’t tell them that I knew this place well. We docked, and the boat crashing against the rotting wharf chipped splinters of board that floated past in the water. Percy told me that Annie Sheppard used to live here, and always had bread and lassie for anybody who came out this far. We laid a wreath for Sidney and saved one flower for Annie.

Percy took the guitar from the boat and sang Fiddler’s Green. They told me that they were all here when he died, and grandfather was with them. The only day they saw him cry. After the boil-up, they all set out for an afternoon of fishing. Sidney jumped in the boat first, and an errant plank was tossed up, seesaw-like, throwing him onto the jagged rocks beneath the shallow water. The damage was enough then, to hospitalize him. The water though, was what did him in: bobbing underneath the wooden dock.

It was a sad spectacle; a long lament for a man I barely know.

On the way home, the men sensed my uneasiness. When Percy spotted a small shark ahead of the boat, he decided to lighten the mood. He revved the engine and chased it for a quarter of a mile, father leaning from the stern trying to stab it with a grappling hook. When the hook pierced its gills, the fish thrashed, water dyed red. We were poachers, like Sidney, and it felt right.

We stopped then, under the mountains, to clean the shark and cut it into sections that would fit neatly in our coolers and rubber boots. We heard the sounds of livestock from atop the mountain – Ned Angel’s farm. The harsh angle of the cliffs made it impossible to see. Peering over, though, was a kid. Light brown and white. Glancing once out over the ocean and then back again, it leapt, nearly ninety feet down.

We heard the harsh sound of bones ripping. It slid off the rocks, floated towards us like a ragdoll. The guttural bleating came next, from a Billy peering downwards, searching. It wanted to jump, I’m sure, but had other kids, a mate. The bleating continued, long after we hauled anchor and left that morbid place.

…

Sometimes, when the sky is like a beaten tin plate, and heavy with fog, I go there. I don’t take the boat – I never take the boat, but climb over rocks and brambles until I am at the dock. Days like this, when the calm sea carts fog on its back, I can see it drifting by, bleating.

Today, though, father and I are painting the mill. Grandfather has been gone a year now. After dinner at grandmothers, I lie on the old sofa and nap. Sidney is with me. He rows an old dory, the one upturned in the lumberyard. We talk for a while, until he tells me he’s fine. He is searching, though, for his father. For grandfather. I tell him I know where to find him.

In the afternoon, after the second coat is on, we wander inside the mill and open the windows. Light shines on the wooden beams, chiseled with the names of grandfather and Sidney. It has always been grandfather’s pain, never Sidney’s. I know that now, and I know he is here, as Sidney is in the ocean. The engine will start today, I’m sure of it.

The esteemed Patrick Crean, who spent the last dozen years making Thomas Allen one of the country’s finest publishers — recent hits including this year’s Giller winner, Half-blood Blues, last year’s Giller finalist, This Cake is for the Party, and Russell Wangersky’s latest books — will be stepping down. Stepping up to the plate will be the reputable Marc Côté (Who will remain on staff at Cormorant as well. More here.

The latest book book craze is in full swing: CanLit is Sexy, which takes book titles and tries to make them sexy. Warning: it favours quantity over quality, to the point of obscurity.

And, here’s a dozen theater-bound Hollywood adaptations set for 2012.

January needn’t be a bore, in the wake of December’s holidays. Kerri Cull, book blogger with a poetry book out very soon (Soak) is having 5 Newfoundland Artists answer 6 questions about a book by a Newfoundlander they think everyone should read. Then, they all vote — not for their own. They’ll privately rank their adversaries picks 4,3,2,1, and Kerri does the math and you buy the book. Follow it all month-long at http://www.bookfridge.com/

Salty Ink Bestsellers!

One of the survey questions was which specific books have you bought because of Salty Ink, and what a thrill to see responses like, “‘I’m a librarian and have probably purchased about $1000 worth of books in the last 8 months based on Salty Ink rec’s and info.”

Here’s the top six responses in no particular order …

Nicole Lundrigan’s Glass Boys
Samuel Thomas Martin’s This Ramshackle Tabernacle
Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise
Gerard Collins’ Moonlight Sketches
Jamie Fitzpatrick’s You Could Believe in Nothing
Craig Francis Power’s Blood Relatives

Buy one if you haven’t yet! I vouch for them all, honestly.

Surprising Finds … Call for Guest Posts from publicists, etc:

96.6% of you like Salty Ink’s casual, informal tone. Phew. Because half of the other 3.4% got nasty about it. I don’t mind those 1.7% of people casting their haughty eyes elsewhere.

The favourite “type of post” was author interviews, according to 74% of you. Who knew. Let there be more mics-in-faces in 2012.

Thanks for kind words and for the constructive feedback too. “Fewer typos in 2012.” That’s funny and fair and doable, and at least 10 people said so. It does look sloppy on the website and I can’t hide behind “I write these posts in a rush” when it only takes a quick second spell check. Others feel there’s a Newfoundland favouritism. I’ll keep my eye on that. It’s just, I live here, and there’s so many writers from here (statistically, more than any province, hence the slant, to some degree?). But I will be more inclusive of the maritimes. And by all means, I scan publishers catalogues, but if I miss a book this year, get in touch. And perhaps I’ll do a mid-month round-up of open contests and competitions and workshops and the like, since you’ve asked so kindly. I did that in the past, but cut it out for some reason. There’s also a few people who’d like Salty Ink to cover genre fiction. I’m not opposed to genre fiction. I am concerned with branding the website to a certain kind of fiction, but that certain kind of fiction can be genre, absolutely.

The door is now wide open for guest posts. If you’re a publicists at a publisher, tell us all about your new books, if you’re a writer with a new book out, or you just read a great book, whatever. email posts to me: chad@saltyink.com. Publicists: Please prod your authors into writing guest posts … about anything at all related to them or their book.

Happy Holidays, dear readers.

So, 2011 was a great year for books, and strange year for Salty Ink. There was the disappearance in the spring, and the occasional lull as I got distracted with other fleeting blogs, like the On the Line Magazine incident. I really appreciated all the feedback to bring it back and keep it alive. Anyway. Salty Ink wants to return to its 2009/2010 glory days, and be better than ever. To assist, please take 5 minutes to fill out this survey. It is 100% anonymous. You can answer all 9 questions or just a couple, but please do follow the link. Its goal is to make Salty Ink a better thing in 2012. If you’re going to be reading this blog, you may as well like what you’re reading …

Click here to take survey

See you in the New year, January 2nd, and we’ll run through 25 days of the very best of 2011 by Atlantic Canadians. Enjoy the holidays and read yourselves blind.