Writers, wrongly or rightly, wish they were able to compose songs. The highest goal of a writer is to make someone feel at all what they might during the meanest moment of the worst song. Capturing music in written form is difficult. But it is possible, as long as you don’t forget that to get […]
Audio Story – What I Sound Like When I’m Not Speaking
Have you ever wondered how long it takes to read a 1,500 word short story? Apparently, 8 minutes and 19 seconds. Below is a radio station’s reading of one of my short stories, the one that was short-listed for the CBC’s short story prize last year. It’s called Saad Steps Out. If you have a […]
Fragments Made of Fiction: Experiments in the Thursday Set
Open Strong            How I came to know that Drew Ramos regularly went to other worlds was nothing more than a bookmark nestled in a Harry Potter book (the sixth one, I think) that came spinning out when I happened to knock it off an end table. Drew was the type who would re-read Harry […]
How the Star Wars Teaser Saved My Shoes
On Friday November 28th, the teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was released (http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/lucasfilm/starwarstheforceawakens/). In the long tradition of celebrating Kardashian posterior, I’m pretty sure it blew up the internet. I found myself walking through downtown Toronto on the day-of, skirting skyscrapers and bagel shops, street meat vendors and cyclists. I […]
The Mighty Lies
     Nights. And Christmas lights. Tempers heave, the stress mounts, and then there’s snow. And mistletoe. In the morning, clouds. Celibate breakfasts and backwards driving on the lawn. Castles coated in ice flakes, meandering on the pond where once someone vanished and never did they find them. But there are still, […]
11 Fool-Proof Rules for Writing Fiction
If you haven’t noticed, I’m a writer. I only bring that up because it took a while to give myself the label. It’s funny what you can call a hobby. What is a hobby anyway, and when does a specific activity stop being one? ‘Hobby’ sounds like a disease, some kind of growth. Well, […]
The Brooklyn Legacy: Sparse Writing Now Found in Sugary Confections
“The only real love… is self-love.” I have three hundred fortune cookie fortunes at home in a scrapbook. I don’t know why I collect them. They mean nothing. They’re apparently written with no purpose than to get a laugh. To this day, the fortunes haven’t uttered a single prediction that’s come true, nor have they […]
Depression: The Motherland
Shattering.
Alaine
                 God finished developing a cure for cancer in the backyard lab late one night. The calendar on the wall was full; it would be 2022 until the cure could be unveiled on Earth, for in between were floods, elevated sea levels, and one very nasty dirty nuclear bomb […]
Fallow Wounds
      The first time I had the dream, my mom stayed with me until I went back to sleep. The second time it came, two years later, I sat by myself and stared at the ceiling. Then I went to the window and looked outside. It was cold, fall. I stayed […]