‘The first time Jeff Topper realized that something odd was happening, he had been trying to return a wallet to a person on Bank Street. He’d run up to the person and handed it back. No response. The person had just kept walking. Jeff had waved his arms and dangled the wallet in front of […]
The Link Between Conspiracy Theories and Racism
Am I Unbalanced? I have dozens of boxes of books in my basement. This week, I put up bookshelves, and went through those boxes, deciding what books I would keep, and what I would discard. I found an old copy of The Sound and the Fury, and remembered how much I loved that strange, unbalanced […]
Balloonfest ’86
There were several ancillary matters of interest surrounding Balloonfest, a fundraising event sponsored by the United Way in Cleveland, Ohio on September 27, 1986. During the main event, one and a half million balloons were released into the air from a central containment structure that measured the size of a city block. Netting was anchored […]
Mad World: Two Versions
The book or the movie version, the original or the remake. Questions I ask myself, as I wonder which side of those coins I sit on. Am I the book or the movie version? Am I an original or a remake of something? Orzabal Roland, through some strange compulsion, wrote a bouncy, upbeat song in […]
CBC Short Story Prize Longlist News
Hi all, I managed to make the CBC Short Story Prize longlist this year. The 33 longlisted entries out of the 3000 submissions are located here: https://www.cbc.ca/1.5970008. My individual page is here: https://www.cbc.ca/books/literaryprizes/titan-arum-by-trent-lewin-1.5976780 This is my third straight year being longlisted. Feeling awfully humbled and a little overwhelmed. But really happy. If you’d like to […]
On Birthdays
The first child’s name was Mali. Jen had always wanted to go to Africa, but had been afraid of planes, so she’d named her daughter after an African country. Brad had gone along with it. Most truck drivers didn’t care about Africa. “Do you want to make me a popsicle?” asked Brad. “You don’t just […]
How Writing Dreams Begin, and End
I don’t have much to say today. I sat down yesterday and plotted a few short stories to write over the next few weeks, as well as work on a next novel. My work life has been all-consuming lately. Three straight seventy-hour weeks, but that will abate now. My writing dream began when I was […]
Author Interview with Me!
I’ve been very busy at work lately, and accumulating thoughts for my traditional March writing surge! Hoping to relay some great writing news in the next little while – forthcoming! In the meantime, my friend Taryn Ambrose did the following author interview with me. I think it’s somewhat insightful, but more importantly, very funny. Enjoy! […]
51,000 Words
I’ve been thinking about the art of writing, where I fit for genre, and what’s next. New Stories No new story this week. It’ll be a while before I post a new one, which doesn’t mean I’m not writing. I am. This week, I got feedback that I couldn’t enter a contest because I don’t […]
Of Mountains and Matadors
Ezra met Sonny at a shit factory. It was the type of place that took shit from sewage plants and mixed it with chemicals and steam, to make a fertilizer. To make shit bio-available to crops, a recycling of human waste to grow food that people would ingest… and turn into more shit. Ezra worked […]