Shrewsbury Road Ollie called Monday of the following week. Jeremy’s oldest friend in the world had turned his own life upside down since those long ago Vancouver days. Sold his company and started the fund. Let his marriage dissolve. Relapsed hard into booze as best Jeremy could make out. Now, among all those many other […]
Category: Blog
Video: W2 Real Writers & Culture Series reading
The W2 Real Writers & Culture Series was a great success. And the people who run it, besides being literary and enthusiastic, are also very tech-savvy. As a result, just hours after the event, they’ve already posted video of the final reading on Wednesday, February 24, 2010. Please watch the whole thing if you can. My short reading from The Blue […]
Notebooks: The Blue Light Project – Take5
Take5 was one of the first street artists I became aware of, during the writing and researching of The Blue Light Project. He was doing a serie of these beautiful chief’s head posters and stencils in the neighborhood around my office. There were many more than the map shows, but this reflects my dawning awareness that […]
Olympics at street level, Diyah Pera photographs
I went out with Diyah Pera, a photographer friend of mine, on Friday to watch the protests. She took some great pictures. I like the one above in particular. There’s hope and determination in the face. There’s another quality I’ll inadequately describe as “realness”. Experience, life lived. I don’t know about you, but I want to hear what this person […]
W2 Real Vancouver Writers & Culture Series: 24 Feb 2010
Pleased to be reading 24 Feb 2010 at 7PM as part of the W2 Real Vancouver Writers & Culture Series (112 West Hastings Street). I’ll be reading from “Sunshine City” a new short story that appears in the Zsuzsi Gartner edited anthology Darwins Bastards, coming soon from the ever-brilliant Douglas & McIntyre. In an evening hosted by […]
Candahar Photo Show: 22 Feb 2010
I’ll be reading at the Candahar, 22 Feb. I’m presenting photographs of “wall art” by the local street artists who inspired me during the writing of my upcoming novel The Blue Light Project. The show starts at 7 with a reading by poet Gregory Betts. I’m on around 8:30. Stay after my presentation for a screening of Murray […]
The Wilde Room: Chapter 3
The Signature Dish In the preceding chapters: Just before service in Chef Jeremy’s Dublin restaurant The Wilde Room, he gets a phone call. It’s Dante, a former business partner, calling from Jeremy’s long-ago hometown of Vancouver. Sad news about Jeremy’s father. The man everyone knew as “the Professor”, with whom Jeremy had difficulties over the years, has died. Cardiac arrest apparently, althogh […]
Wacky Pack Stories: Hostile Thinkies
My best friend’s name was Sten, as in Stendhal. As in Stendhal Beauregard-Vincent, his father having been important at one point in France. Then he (Sten’s father) had decided to grow a beard, become a boat designer and move to West Van. He designed sailboats for quite a few famous people, including the catamaran that song writer was later found dead in, floating off […]
Learning to live with the Suicide Machine
It’s hard not to twin the phenomenon of the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, as reported in Time this week, and the release of Jaron Lanier’s new manifesto against Internet hive think You Are Not a Gadget. On the one hand, you have long time technology analyst describing the ensnaring culture of the Internet hive-mind. On the other hand, […]
Wacky Pack Stories: Kentucky Fried Fingers
It’s 1972. It’s West Vancouver. It’s Gleneagles Elementary school and nothing matters more than Wacky Packs. The coolest kids have them. Your tomboy pal Carrie has them. So you buy gum just to get them. And you put them on your binders, your desk, your lunch box. Your parents hate them. That part is key. […]