A Little P & R (pimping and rioting)

I have been avoiding TV and Internet stories about the rioting in England the past few days. It's a bit like a car crash, though, isn't it? You avert your eyes yet still take a peek on the way past to safer ground. I was shocked at the rioting in Vancouver after the Stanley Cup finals, but Britain has elevated it to a whole new level. I'm all for rightful protest and even a little civil disobedience where required but there seems no point to what has been going on in London...and Manchester...and Liverpool....and...

Anyway, I won't go on about it but my thoughts go out to my writing friends living in those cities and wish them all a quick return to normal (whatever one's definition of THAT may be).

I'll be out of town for a few days. As in no Internet access. Not quite living under plastic in the wilds but still no means of keeping up with the bloggy worlds of my friends. And speaking of friends...

I've been a lazy sod for weeks as far as writing is concerned. Not so for some of my longest running cyber-buddies:

Cate Gardner is a going concern at her blog. Her novella Barbed Wire Hearts will be published by Delerium Books in November 2011. Also...her novel Nowhere Hall will be published by Spectral Press in September 2011. Cate is a fine example of how hard work pays off, even for those that work a day job.


KV (katey) Taylor is a busy girl, what with the blog Spec Fic and Nonsense AND taking care of business at The Red Penny Papers, that fine quarterly electronic journal. Somehow she even finds time to write (I'm so jealous). Her debut novel Scripped, an Appalachian Faerie Tale, is available to pre-order from Belfire Press.

"In an attempt to escape constant arguing, Jonah Gray wanders away from the family cabin deep in the West Virginia wilderness. But he wanders too far, over the borders to a Faerie land that could only exist in Appalachia.

Faerie-napping, cold knives, underground oppressors, horror stories, and unwilling affections threaten to suck him forever into their desolate Company Town. If they do, he’ll lose himself in every way possible.

You might escape the fae, but you can never go home. Not really."



And finally, my pal K.C. Shaw's The Taste of Magic has been released as an ebook from Etopia Press.


"Analefa Miradwen has spent the last ten years avoiding vampires. She knows her blood is a delicacy, but she doesn’t want to share. Not after the last time, which nearly left her dead.

When the vampire mage Magnus begins stalking her, Ana turns to the King’s Enforcer for help. Vincent Ondarr has the manpower and the magic-power to keep her safe. According to him, Ana’s blood doesn’t just taste good, it enhances a mage’s magic.

The trouble is, Vincent’s a vampire mage too. If Ana wants to keep her blood to herself, she’ll have to figure out which one of them she can trust. And what exactly Magnus wants from her..."

Links and Photos

Not a lot to report about this weekend. I've finished my 101 word story for Michael J. Solender's Dog Days of Summer Contest. There's still plenty of time to enter, folks, so you can link to the contest rules here. It's open to all followers of The Not. I'm not ready to hit the 'send' button just yet. Big bragging rights are at stake here, so I'll want a second and third opinion. My mother says that it's amazing but hey, what the heck does she know!

One of the blogs I regularly follow is Spec fic and Nonsense by dark fiction writer KV Taylor. She is a big fan of vampires and her post on Friday had me laughing my ass off. It's a commentary on classic vampire films Nosferatu in 1922, Dracula in 1931, and Brides of Dracula in 1960. Rumour has it that it's the first of who knows how many. The catch to this is that the commentary is between two of the 'undead' from a current WIP of hers (perhaps she can clarify that point if I'm telling lies). Follow this link to some humorous dialogue.

Finally I present a couple of night time photos we took from the top of historic Signal Hill last week. One is looking down into the harbour and the city lights beyond. The other is a shot of Cabot Tower lit up. The third is courtesy of The Weather Network and is of a rainbow spanning the Narrows into the harbour. That was taken by Regina Downtown. The night photos don't appear as large as I had hoped. C'est dommage!

Necrotic MooseTissue...and a Moose

In my mailbox yesterday morning, I found...

No, not a quart of maple syrup or a bag of flaming dog crap. It was the latest issue of Necrotic Tissue. Number 10 to be exact. With trembling fingers I ripped open the bubble wrap to reveal it in all it's shiny, blue splendour. I was beginning to wonder if it was going to make it to the island. So many of you commented a while back about receiving yours already. The post mark indicates it was mailed March 26 from Minnesota. Perhaps it stopped off in Ottawa for a bit of sightseeing or Montreal for some fine dining.

At any rate, I'm ready to dive into the "40,000 words of yummy horror goodness" as noted on the cover. I am pleased that Aaron Polson has made the cut with his short story The Distillery and Katey Taylor is also in the ToC with her 100 word bite Hostile Takeover. Needless to say I'm giddy with excitement for both of them. Or perhaps I've had too much coffee this morning...at any rate, help out the small press and order up your copy today from the people at Necrotic Tissue.

Regarding the moose. As something of a PSA I should mention that we are fast approaching moose season with more of the beasts being spotted daily. I recall in the first few weeks moving here that I thought it cute that they did 'moose sighting reports' on the radio. "How quaint," I said to myself. I have heard that there's anywhere between 120,000 and 150,00 moose on the island. Most of them seem to lurk about the Trans Canada Highway, ready to prance out in front of unsuspecting vehicles. There are several hundred moose-vehicle accidents in Newfoundland every year (seriously). They really seem to be encroaching into suburbia this year. I guess that's only fair as we've been encroaching into their area for years.

I'll leave you with some kinder, gentler moose images taken by a co-worker of my wife's a couple of weeks ago. Notice how the crafty critter stealthily evades the fine members of the RNC. It's a baby...a calf or calve, or pup...or foal. Something like that...

Leave me alone! I just wants a walk in Pippy Park.

"Don't you dare crap on this taxpayer's lawn!"

I can beat you in a foot race any day, copper.

I'm not goin' for a ride with you...my mum told me to never talk to strangers.

Awards Night

It's late Saturday night and what could be more fun than getting dressed up in my tux for the receiving and giving of awards. Note that the Oscar nominations will be announced at 5:30am PT Tuesday. The awards I refer to are not quite so dramatic and, to be honest, the photo was taken on my wedding day over 15 years ago. My hair was a lot longer back then...and the tux was a rental. I may have posted the photo on my blog months ago but honestly can't remember. I know that I have it on FaceBook. Anyway, I've poured myself a wee Glenlivet (a double) and will move on with the show. Please forgive me if I schlerr my words or if I create a few tippos.


On Thursday, the very talented Laura Eno at A Shift in Dimensions with the 'You are my Sunshine Award'. The purpose of it is to acknowledge those that have a blog and spend endless hours ensuring that other bloggers get feedback on their blogs by leaving comments, adding themselves as a follower or dropping by just to let you know there are people out there. It was very kind of Laura to consider me worthy and I thank her very much. There are so many folks that frequent this blog that are quick with humour and a kind word. Two stand out for me that have been commenting here since my first couple of weeks blogging last spring. The award goes to:



KC Shaw at The Knotted Thicket and Natalie L. Sin at Written by Sin.

We now move on to the entertainment for the evening. I am playing a medley of David Hasselhoff songs with hand farts. I'm sorry that you at home can not enjoy it as much as I am.


The second award, the Honest Scrap Award, was presented to me on Thursday as well (suffice it to say that I was giddy with excitement at receiving two different awards on the same day) by Courtney Reese at her blog. Courtney and I are fairly new to each other's blogs but we both recognise the effort and honesty that each other puts into our blogs. Please check hers out, I know that I will continue to do so. Now, the easy part of this award is passing it on to a couple of worthy parties. Drum roll, please *my greyhound is entering the room carrying the envelope in his teeth. I remove said envelope, wipe off drool on sleeve of tux and smooth it out* The Honest Scrap Award goes to:


Katey Taylor at SpecFic and Nonsense and Catherine Gardner at The Poisoned Apple.

The more difficult part of this award is that I have to reveal 10 honest facts about myself. This may be difficult as I've been revealing a lot about myself (perhaps too much some of you may say) on this blog. I'll see if I can come up with some new lies stuff about myself.

1. I had a rock collection in the 5th grade and expanded to minerals and fossils and aspired to be a geologist. I was fascinated with the subject, but couldn't handle of the other 'stuff' that one needs to take in university to meet the requirements of a science degree.
2. In 1990-91, I was on a 16 week overland expedition from London to Kathmandu in the back of a Bedford truck with 19 other travellers.
3. I was once a dog catcher (note: this also includes cats, owls, raccoons, muskrat, a blue heron, a possum and pretty much anything else needed restrained or captured).
4. I once had to get the rabies series of shots after being bitten my a rabid cat (refer back to item #3). Side note...I used to be terrified by needles, but I'm not too bad now...)
5. I enjoy live theatre and had season's tickets to the Grand Theatre in London (Ontario) and saw shows in Stratford and Toronto.
6. Tattoos? No way, as I had always been scared of needles (see item#4).
7. Quirky movies I could watch 100 times? Hmm, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, A Christmas Story, Fargo, Diner...the list goes on.
8. I was raised Roman Catholic, but my parents stopped taking us to mass as they grew weary of listening to 5 kids whining about it. I subscribe to no particular religion and think that they all have their merits and drawbacks. I keep an open mind and listen to what they all have to say.
9. I am probably one of the most patient people that I know. I'm easy-going and some would say 'laid back'. I am quiet by nature and some mistaken this as having nothing to say. This is not true as I will speak my mind if and when the topic warrants it.
10. I once saw an object floating above a farmer's field at 5:30am driving from home in London to work, at the time, in Aylmer Ontario (no, I hadn't been drinking or any other such thing). I believe that we are not alone in the universe and we would be arrogant to think this small blue island in space is the only one of its kind.

Umm, sorry about #10. Ish probably the single malt talking...Actually, it's a crafty segue into my next post.

Snippets of this Week

Just a blog of little bits & pieces of this week. Nothing startling or earth shattering. I would be remiss if I didn't refer to the Leno vs O'Brien business. Townie Bastard (a Newfoundland blogger who now lives in Nunavut) had a link to a site where one can 'Conan Yourself''. The results of that are on the right. I'm sure that you are wondering, "Who is Alan, really? Last week he's trying to be Bob Ross, this week Conan." This is true, I may have a bit of an identity crisis going on.

I was always a Johnny Carson fan and Jay Leno grew on me after a while. I have watched Conan in small doses but found a lot of his shtick a bit juvenile. That being said, I think mock commercials and his skits on his resemblance to Finland's first female president Tarja Halonen were hilarious.

My writing productivity this week was non-existent. I attribute this to an on-going job for work that I still haven't finished, a couple of bouts of snow shovelling and general laziness. I was shovelling this morning and thought that a body part or two were about to drop off as it was -13 Celsius with a wind chill of -25. Winter is finally here, though there are many other locations in North America who have it worse, so I'll shut up now...

We got out to the Revue 2009 on Wednesday night. This is the 25th annual production where local actors/musicians/comedians perform non-stop skits for about 3 hours, mocking municipal, provincial and federal politicians. A great evening's entertainment. We also took the boy to see 'Daybreakers' last night. A few minutes into that, I was wondering if we had made a big mistake. He is a bit prone to nightmares and I thought the subject matter and gore would bring them on. He seems to have slept well last night (knock on the proverbial wood). I thought that the storyline was original and showed a lot of promise, but it seemed to slip into a gore-fest and relied on cheap scares throughout the movie. It was a bit short at 98 minutes and the story could have been expanded a bit more.

I'd like to refer you to a couple of insightful blogs from this week: Katey Taylor had a great blog this week regarding writers and genre, expanding on what Aaron Polson had started earlier in the week. She provides a link to WD Prescott's piece about "what horror is." Mercedes Yardley at 'A Broken Laptop' had an insightful blog about writers juggling the demands between work, family and, or course, writing. The funniest thing I read this week was an interview of the talented Laura Eno over at Miscellaneious Yammering by Karen Schindler. Hilarious stuff. Check those out if you get a chance.

I've got a few errands to run, so I'll stop rambling now. Perhaps this week I will write.

Odds and Ends and NaNo

Just a quick post to bring up some random issues.

• A reminder to everyone that I am still looking for questions to pass on to Kelley Armstrong (see previous post). You've got until the end of the day tomorrow in your time zone to get questions to me at awdavidson.nl@gmail.com. Every question is greatly appreciated folks (at the moment, including my own question, I have two....

• I have finally considered myself 'certified' insane and signed myself up for the 2009 installment for NaNoWriMo. I am a NaNo virgin and will need a lot of prodding and a friendly shoulder to cry on. Seriously. I mean it. I need all the friends I can get, so if you want to buddy me you can find me here.

• Katey Taylor had a great post last week about Banned Books week, with links to the Most Challenged list for last year and Frequently Challenged or Banned Classics. You can link to her blog here. This is, of course, a debate that has been society for almost as long as there have been books in print. It's by no means just a problem in the US. Please link to an article I read yesterday at Canoe.ca about the Toronto District School Board considering removing "To Kill a Mockingbird" from its system because of a complaint from a single parent. Wow! I wish that I weilded that sort of power *sighs and shakes head*.

The Movie Meme

The movie questions were courtesy of KV Taylor. It's a perfect morning to work on these as I'm a big video-phile (is that a word?) and the fog's still on top of us like a big, damp blanket. There's a crap-load of questions and a possibility of multiple answers per question so I may end up making up answers by the time I reach the end...perhaps I should have done this last night with a couple of rum 'n cokes in me...

1.Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times. Don't think I've seen anything that many times, but Ferris Bueller's Day Off is way up there. We saw Lord of the Rings at the movies and a couple of times on our box set as well. Also Highlander, Fargo, The Hunt for Red October and A Christmas Story are way up there (my son is obsessed with our James Bond box set and I've seen some of them multiple times as well...).

2.Name a movie that you’ve seen multiple times in the theater. Being Scottish, I have a hard time to part with cash to see something more than once...I broke that rule recently to see the new Star Wars Movie a second time. I probably would see some twice, but there's so many options out there with a limited movie budget...if only I could give up the single malt to have the extra movie money *sighs*.

3.Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a movie. As a kid, I was a big Sean Connery fan and always make it to his movies. Now if Johnny Depp is involved I usually go see whatever he's in (pretty much captured my attention since Sleepy Hollow).

4.Name an actor that would make you less likely to see a movie. David Spade always annoys me as did the late Chris Farley. You can add Tim Allen and any of the Wayans brothers to the list as well. Hmm, Paris Hilton (if you want to call her an 'actor').

5.Name a movie that you can and do quote from. I'm hopeless at remembering and telling jokes so remembering movie lines is just as bad. Dirty Harry comes to mind, "Well, do you feel lucky, punk? Ask yourself, was it 6 shots or just 5?" (I probably messed that up). Also from LOTR "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

6.Name a movie musical that you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs. I tend not to do musicals, but have made exceptions over the years. The songs that have stuck with me the most have been from Grease as I've seen the movie a couple of times and saw the play done twice on stage (once a high school production our school did). The Phantom of the Opera songs have stuck with me as well...yeah, they sound cool when I sing 'em in the shower...

7.Name a movie that you have been known to sing along with. Hmm...my lack of musical prowess is noted in #6. If I were to sing along with something, it would be from the Rocky Horror Picture Show (but y'all had better where ear plugs as I'm pretty tone deaf!)

8.Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see. I love the big, inspirational Oscar winners such as Gandhi and Chariots of Fire.

9.Name a movie that you own. The aforementioned Bond and LOTR box sets, Pirates of the Caribbean, and a bunch of questionable stuff gotten from Walmart at $5 a pop.

10.Name an actor that launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops. Hmm...I think Tom Hanks started as a stand-up comic and always impresses me. Kris Kristofferson impresses as well.

11.Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? If so, what? There's no drive-in movies here, but I had one in London for my 20years living there. I think I saw one of the Alien movies there (shh! What's that noise coming from under the car...)

12.Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven’t yet gotten around to it. We wanted to see The Soloist but it left the theatres so fast we didn't get a chance. Thank God for video rentals.

13.Ever walked out of a movie? Not that I recall. I research a bit before going (as noted, the Scottish in me doesn't want to piss away my money...) at Rotten Tomatoes. Also, as I do with people, I try to give the benefit of the doubt and sit through 'til the end in hopes of s0mething to redeem the questionable movie.

14.Name a movie that made you cry in the theater. Guys don't cry at the movies, they get something in their eye...the one I recall that put a lump in my throat was LOTR: The Return of the King.

15.What’s the last movie you saw in the theater? The taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Travolta was a pretty bad-ass dude in that. We were going to The Proposal last night (waiting until my son is around to take him to Harry Potter) but it was sold out.

16.What’s your favorite/preferred genre of movie? It's hard to put a label on anything. I don't like westerns, but I loved Pale Rider and Unforgiven. All of the genres have something to offer (but horror movies are the coolest).

17.What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater? That's tough, I can't even remember what I had for dinner yesterday...and high school is a blur. My cousin and I used to go see the Roger Moore version of Bond in the theatres. I remember my dad 'signing me in' to see the restricted Rollerball when it was released (1975).

18.What movie do you wish you had never seen? The Sound of Thunder was a wonderful concept of time travel, but the script and special effects sucked. Sir Ben Kingsley must have been desperate for the pay cheque from that one.

19.What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed? Edward Scissorhands was pretty weird. I would have to say Rocky Horror Picture Show was top of the list. I went in 1980 in a run-down theatre in Victoria where you could get away with the audience participation stuff. Nothing like toast and rice flying about at the movies!

20.What is the scariest movie you’ve seen? I recall getting the shit scared out of me seeing Jaws in the movies as a 14year old. As I mentioned at another blog this week, The Legend of Hell House could teach the slasher movies a thing or two about creepy atmosphere.

21.What is the funniest movie you’ve seen? Ferris Bueller is way up on the list as well as Spinal Tap. Umm...Meet the Parents; Planes, Trains & Automobiles ("those aren't pillows!").