Author Archives: Peter Darbyshire
Am writing
It’s a beautiful day outside, with cherry blossoms and a blue sky and yellow sun and breathable air and all that. I’m at my desk, writing. Sigh. Well, maybe I’ll take a break to play some Frisbee with the older boy. By play Frisbee I mean let him hurl the Frisbee as hard as he can into my legs. Parenting. You’re not doing it right if you’re not bleeding.
Nimoy is dead but Spock lives on
I just learned a few minutes ago that Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock in the original Star Trek TV series and the early movies, has died. I feel so incredibly sad.
Some of my earliest memories are of Star Trek. In fact, I can remember the first chapter books I ever had were Star Trek books my older brother gave me for Christmas one year. I couldn’t have been older than five. Maybe I was four. I’m not sure. I didn’t know what they were, but when I read them things changed for me forever. I was taken away into Gene Roddenberry’s magical, semi-utopian future. (It would have been utopian if not for all the Klingons and Romulans and weird space entities!) Star Trek was the drug that kickstarted my imagination.
I don’t know how old I was when I discovered the TV series. I was definitely still in elementary school. I watched them all, even though they were a forbidden fruit. I grew up in a bit of a violent household, and my father didn’t approve of Star Trek. I don’t know why. He had a hard upbringing himself and was all about working all the time and working hard. He was the hardest working person I’ve ever known, in fact. I was a whiny little brat who just wanted to read books. Some things never change. I would sneak Star Trek onto the TV when he was outside, working in the garden or building something in the shed. Every now and then he’d come in and catch me watching those shows where anything was possible and the machines did all the work for you. We’d clash, and I’d lose.
I’m OK with all that now. My father mellowed out before he died a few years back, and we had a much better relationship. I don’t think we ever became close, but I developed a deeper appreciation of what he had been through in his life and how strong a man he was before a series of strokes reduced him to memories. I have respect for him now, because I’ve learned how hard it can be sometimes to be a man and a parent.
Those Star Trek shows and books were an escape for me, the vehicles that carried me away from a life I didn’t want to be in. They took me away from that home with a violent father, a bed-ridden and absent mother, a sister who died far too early and a brother who found his own ways of escaping. They led to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and all the other classic works that fuelled my imagination and made me dream of other worlds that were, if not better than mine, at least different. Star Trek was the gateway drug. If not for Star Trek, I might not have read those other books. If I hadn’t read them, I might not have discovered Roger Zelazny and all those other writers that turned me into a writer myself.
Hearing the news of Nimoy’s death triggered a flashback through my life, returning me to that childhood day where I sat in my pyjamas under the Christmas tree, holding those Star Trek books in my hand. It’s the earliest moment I can remember right now. I think it’s the first moment of my life that leaps out at me because it’s the moment where my life truly began, where the person who I am now was born.
Looking back on my life, I see now that Spock was always there. He was there in my childhood, in those books and TV shows. He was there in my teenage years, coming back in the movies when I perhaps needed him most. He helped coax me out of my damaged shell when I joined a theatre group that did improv Star Trek comedies in my early adulthood — that was when I actually learned how to interact with people like a normal human being. He returned again when I was an adult, in the reboot movies, when I began to have children of my own. And now he is gone.
Except he’s not. Leonard Nimoy is gone, yes. But Spock is still there. Spock is there in every moment of life in some form or another. All the Star Trek characters are. Even the redshirts! (I always kind of saw myself as a redshirt, to be honest.) Spock will live on in my imagination. Spock will live on in the imaginations of millions of people around the world. And he will keep living on in the minds of others long after we are all gone to our own graves.
Thank you for reading this. Now I’m going to watch some Star Trek with my son.
Live long and prosper.
The best way to buy my new book
I’ve had a number of people ask me the best way to buy my new book, The Dead Hamlets. Normally my response is to say buy it at your local bookstore or favourite online site. Unfortunately, while Chapters sells the book through its website, it isn’t carrying many copies of The Dead Hamlets in stores. (U.S. readers: Chapters is the national bookstore chain in Canada — sort of like a Barnes and Noble only with more pillows and picture frames. The book is available at Barnes and Noble stores.)
I’m not entirely certain why this has happened. Part of the problem is likely Chapters’ ongoing shift to a cultural lifestyle store, which means they’re carrying fewer books for a shorter amount of time. Small publishers like ChiZine are obviously going to get hurt by this. At the same time, ChiZine’s main distributor, HarperCollins, decided to get out of the distribution business in Canada right around the same time the book launched. I can’t help but think that The Dead Hamlets got lost in the shuffle. So the book got hit by a double whammy at the worst possible time. It’s almost like there’s a witch’s curse or something….
I’m not really blaming Chapters here. People are ordering more books online or simply giving up on print altogether and ordering ebooks. Unless you’re a bestseller or have bestseller potential, it’s becoming harder to get shelf space in bookstores. As for the distribution changeover, well, that’s the way the industry goes sometimes.
I am kind of crushed by this development, however — every author wants their new book in bookstores, after all. This is kind of the author’s life, though. Business happens.
So that gets to the question of how you should buy my book. A number of people have asked if I’m selling them directly at events. I am, and you’re welcome to buy a book from me in person. Seriously, if you see me walking down the street, just come at me with money in your fist. I will almost certainly stop to talk to you.
But I would prefer you didn’t buy the book directly from me. Instead, I would appreciate it if you buy The Dead Hamlets — or any of my other books — from a bookseller. Why? Well, it’s good for the cultural ecosystem and all that. So there’s my public service announcement of the day. But more importantly, it’s good for the author. If people order the book at Chapters bookstores or even order it online from the Chapters website, where it is available for sale, then maybe Chapters might think twice and stock more copies of it in stores.
Similarly, if people order it from Amazon or Kindle or whatever, that also helps me. Every sale on Amazon boosts my sales ranking, for instance, which helps more people to see the book. Plus, whenever someone buys a book through Amazon, the algorithms send that out through the system and populate other people’s recommendation lists with the book. So if you buy say, A Game of Thrones book and The Dead Hamlets, then The Dead Hamlets will show up for other people who go looking to buy A Game of Thrones book. Or something like that — the Amazon system can be a bit of a mystery sometime.
You can always buy it from your local indie bookstore, too. They’re often the ones with the best selection, and they need support in these times more than ever.
The point is buying a book from a retailer helps me way more than buying a book from me in person does. This will be especially important when it comes time to publish the third book in the Cross series.
Wherever and however you find The Dead Hamlets, I hope you enjoy it. If you do like it, please consider giving it a shoutout on social media or a review on Goodreads, etc. That sort of thing really does help book sales.
Thanks for reading!
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Cthulhu selfie!
Actually, it was very cool to see the poster for The Storm Crow Tavern Reading Series beside Cthulhu. I’ll see you there in April, if the world doesn’t drown first.
The Real Vancouver Writers Series celebrates five years in an unreal city
Over at that weird newspaper thing I do, I talked to Sean Cranbury and Dina Del Bucchia about the Real Vancouver Writers Series. We cover it all — the origin story, the villains, the new hope for the future. You can even hear Sean and I drink coffee!
It was kind of a weird interview. I took a Cthulhu selfie before the interview started, and my recorder stopped working after that. Luckily Sean was recording. Then it started raining. In Vancouver! Coincidence? I think not.
“We created the Real Vancouver Writers Series based on the fact that when the eyes of the world were on Vancouver, when the biggest spectacle in the history of the city was going to occur, we were going to represent for the city, for the publishers and independent presses, for the people we knew,” Cranbury says.
“I think that there was a sense in the city that [while] the Olympics were happening, a lot of people felt like this city wasn’t itself … That’s why we call it Real Vancouver. It was a Vancouver that was true to itself and true to the streets and the neighbourhoods that make up the city that house the writers that make the art.”
The Dead Hamlets is featured on The Hook
I had the distinct pleasure of kicking off The Hook, a new guest post feature on Alex Shvartsman’s site. Alex is the author of Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma, which is perhaps the best title for a book ever. And it’s only $5 and change on Kindle! Why are you still reading this and not buying the book?
Anyway, Alex just launched The Hook, which lets writers explain why they opened their books the way they did. So click the link to find out why I began The Dead Hamlets on a dark and stormy night!
Thanks, Alex!
There’s a long tradition of dark and stormy nights in the theatre — lots of blackouts and thunder sound effects. The first stage directions of Macbeth, for instance, are “Thunder and lightning.” So I was hinting at the subject matter of my book in its opening lines. Shortly after that initial scene, I have Cross stumble into a theatre full of the dead — at which point things really get dark and stormy!
What’s your Moment?
I’ve really enjoyed some of the guest posts I’ve done at other blogs recently in support of my new novel, The Dead Hamlets. It’s been great to be a part of the Big Idea, My Bookish Ways, Eating Authors, The Hook and Unlikely Influences. I love reading what makes other writers tick, and it was an interesting process of self-discovery to think about my own works and writing processes a little harder when I wrote my guest posts. I hadn’t even realized how much things like the Gaudi church or mortality or other writers had affected me until I started talking about them on other people’s blogs. And, of course, it’s also great to reach out to the broader community for a little discussion — this writing thing can be a lonely business sometimes.
I thought it would be interesting to come up with my own version of those things, so I’ve created a space for other creators on my site. It’s called The Moment, where writers, artists, musicians, whatever can talk about the big moment that changed their lives. Here’s the general info:
Introducing The Moment
Every creator has a moment that changed their life — something they read, saw, experienced, heard, whatever. Let’s hear your moment. Tell us about what changed your life.
How to be considered
Send me a message at peter.darbyshire@gmail.com with “The Moment” and your name in the subject line of the email. Tell me what you’d like to talk about in the message. If it sounds good, I’ll get back to you about the details. I’m looking for around 250-1000 words.
Obviously, this is a chance to publicize your works. I don’t want The Moment just to be a self-promo feature, though. I’d like creators to genuinely talk about important moments to them. It can be about your new work, sure, but please make it about more than that at the same time. On the other hand, it doesn’t have to be about your work at all! I’ll do some promotion for you in the intro I provide, where I’ll list your new works, etc. So please think of it as a chance to share something rather than shill.
Who can contribute
Anyone who’s a creator — writer, artist, musician, you name it. To start with, I’m going to limit it to people I know in person or online, just to cut down on requests from random bots online. We’ll go from there once it’s up and running. I hope you like the idea. Let’s see what happens.
Read This! – The Devil You Know
The Devil You Know follows Evie, a young reporter working on the breaking Paul Bernardo story. (For those of you who don’t remember Bernardo, he was a serial killer and rapist who terrorized the Scarborough area in the 1980s.) Evie is haunted by the memories of a childhood friend who was murdered — which parallels author de Mariaffi’s own life. She spends her time researching other murdered and missing girls, to the point where she spends more time with the dead than the living.
Evie is also being stalked by a man who lurks on her fire escape, just outside her kitchen window. Or is she? The stalker is a phantom, never truly seen. He may be a killer waiting for the right moment to strike or he may just be someone she’s dreamed up. To say any more would be to give away too much of the story.
The settings of The Devil You Know are modern-day gothic: a newspaper vault that bears more than a passing resemblance to a tomb, the eerily empty cottage at the edge of civilization — hell, the man on the fire escape invokes the spirit of the vampire at the window. It’s a creepy, eerie book, one that’s made all the more powerful because it makes you realize that this is simply the daily life for many women around the world. The Devil You Know is the devil we all know.
peter darbyshire 