Category Archives: Journal
New stories on the way
I’ve had a lovely month on the writing front and have signed contracts to publish three new stories in some of my favourite magazines: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Trollbreath and Black Cat Weekly.
Check out the magazines today and read some of the great stories published in them while you wait for my new tales.
Love, death and angels
I had a lovely time talking to Hollay Ghadery for the New Books Network about The Wonder Lands War, my fourth Cross novel. We discussed the origins of Cross, his relationship with Alice, the importance of putting some magic back in our world and love and loss. Give it a listen at https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-wonder-lands-war!
We used to live in Heaven: The April 2026 Bibliofiles
I found myself on a bit of a literary horror and current politics reading binge this month. Perhaps the two are connected?
Fiction
We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
I love the story behind the horror novel We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer. The book was originally published on the No Sleep subreddit, where it generated praise and attention. Netflix acquired the rights to it, and then the original tale was later adapted into the novel. Every writer’s dream!
I love the story in We Used to Live Here as well. It’s a creepy, slow-burning chronicle of a woman’s descent into madness. The story is mostly told from the POV of Eve Palmer, who is renovating an old house she has just acquired with her partner, Charlie. A family shows up on the doorstep one day claiming the father used to live there and asking for a tour.
Note: If anyone ever shows up at your home asking for a tour, say no!
The family are a little weird and get weirder as time goes on. And time does go on as things keep happening to stop the family from leaving. One of the kids plays hide and seek in the home, a storm snows them in, Eve hits her head and needs care, and so on.
The longer the strangers are there, the more disturbing the house gets. Physical features of it change. Eve and Charlie’s dog gets agitated by things they can’t see. Ants march to a secret space in the basement. It’s all the more suspenseful because the house is still new to Eve and she doesn’t know it nearly as well as the family — or as much as they seem to anyway.
The book is intercut with documents which explore various supernatural theories — police reports and Internet posts and so on. All of it contributes to the growing sense of the supernatural around the house itself.
But it’s not just a haunted house story. Eve’s sense of reality begins to break down and the reader finds themselves in an uncertain situation. Is the house actually haunted? Are the strangers supernatural in some way? Or is Eve crazy and getting crazier?
If horror is your thing, then you’ll want to check out We Used to Live Here. Just don’t read it at night if you’re planning on getting any sleep.
Link: https://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/We-Used-to-Live-Here/Marcus-Kliewer/9781982198794
The Marigold by Andrew Sullivan
The Marigold is weird literary horror for a generation or maybe generations at this point raised in the nightmare of unaffordable housing markets and gig economies.
In The Marigold Toronto has been built on the blood of innocents — as in the developers use actual human sacrifices to ensure the smooth construction of their projects. The Marigold goes on to implicate the entire western system of capitalism as exploitive and coming with a high cost: “Everything you own comes from bodies and blood, one way or another. Your phone. Your clothes. The good things you have are primarily drawn from the misfortune of others. Blood, sweat, and tears. All of it literal.”
There is a strange counter to this in the form of the Wet, a sentient mold that is spreading throughout the city and absorbing both the dead and the living Borg-style. It doesn’t exactly offer hope of turning things around, but it does undermine the existing system of abuse by the powerful and corrupt and offer instead possibility for change, as mysterious and uncertain as that change may be.
Link: https://ecwpress.com/products/the-marigold
The Sacrificials by Andrew Kozma
An eerie little tale about what happens when strange beings visit a city and everyone decides to celebrate.
Link: https://flashfictiononline.com/issues/march-2026/#the-sacrificials
Ladder to Heaven by Katie Welch
Katie Welch taps into some of the apocalyptic anxieties that permeate the West Coast with her novel Ladder to Heaven. The book is set slightly in the future, after an earthquake has shattered society. It’s also changed the world in very strange ways. People can suddenly talk to animals and the protagonist, Del, spends much of her time in a post-apocalyptic world telling a pair of sea lions the story of her life. The sea lions are puzzled but also intrigued by her tale of addiction, isolation and rebirth. It’s a complicated book that doesn’t have easy answers to the questions it raises but suggests there is always goodness to humanity no matter how bad things get.
Link: https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/ladder-to-heaven
False Bodies by JR McConvey
Looking for some seriously strange squid lit? Try JR McConvey’s False Bodies.
When an entire crew of oil rig workers off the east coast are found dead with sucker marks on their bodies, an oddball detective nicknamed Yeti decides to investigate.
He soon finds the mystery is even more eerie than it seems. The dead bodies get a little tentacley after death, he’s plagued by weird visions and even weirder visitations, and there’s a crazy cult lurking behind the scenes of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
It turns out the oil company is run by a former tech bro of the deranged prophet genus and the rig was drilling for more than oil. When will we learn that just because we can doesn’t mean we should?
Worth the read just for the scene involving a squid and a Terry Fox statue!
Link: https://breakwaterbooks.com/products/false-bodies?_pos=1&_sid=00804c9ca&_ss=r
Non-fiction
Canada Is Already at War with the US – We Just Don’t Know It Yet by Patrick Lennox
“In the eyes of the Trump administration, Canada is just another big blue state—another Minneapolis. This is because we are a liberal, democratic, multicultural mosaic, because we believe in minority rights and public health care and the right of a woman to choose. We believe in a free press and a fair vote. We believe in the rule of law and the principle of police independence. We believe in science and objective reality. And because of this—and because of our small population and enviable natural resources—we’ve become its target.”
Link: https://thewalrus.ca/canada-is-already-at-war-with-the-us-we-just-dont-know-it-yet/
How Alberta’s Separatist Movement Could Shake North America by Christopher Hernandez-Roy and Randy Boissonnault
What is behind Alberta separatism and what could it mean for Canada and North America?
Link: https://thewalrus.ca/how-albertas-separatist-movement-could-shake-north-america/
Canadians Love a Conspiracy Theory by Lucan Way
Is Canada’s democracy in danger?
Link: https://macleans.ca/politics/canadians-love-a-conspiracy-theory/
Before Paris, there was Toronto— where Ernest Hemingway learned to write by Joseph Frey
Take a tour of Hemingway’s Toronto residences and learn how the city shaped him as a writer.
I was lonely and let an app pick my friends. Here’s how it went by Amarah Hasham-Steele
A new wave of apps is looking to help you find friends — for a price.
Link: https://thewalrus.ca/i-was-lonely-and-let-an-app-pick-my-new-friends-heres-how-it-went/
The Write Life: Research but don’t research too much
Almost every novel or story requires some amount of research or lived experience on the part of the writer. The closer it is to our world, the more this becomes important. But even fantasy novels typically involve research for sword fighting techniques if nothing else. And if you have lived experience of sword fighting, well, you’ve led a more interesting life than me.
Some novels are all about the research. I once took a class in university on the modern mystery novel where the prof theorized that a major appeal of the mystery genre was writers researching the hell out of a subject and putting it in a book — forensics, birding, rare coins, etc. It was one of the better theories I encountered in university.
Research is critically important if you want to get a detail right or even just ensure the setting is accurate. For instance, I set part of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice in the Great Depression and I needed to get it right because the reader has to believe the world of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice is our world or the whole story falls apart. If the scenes set in the Great Depression era read as false, then the reader isn’t going to believe the parts of the book that feature angels moving among us in our world or faerie hiding out in abandoned pubs.
And in an age where everyone has unlimited information a phone away, you simply can’t bluff as a writer anymore or hope no one will notice an inaccuracy because it’s such an obscure detail. This actually came up when I was editing The Mona Lisa Sacrifice for publication with Wolsak and Wynn. The editor pointed out something I had gotten wrong in a scene set at the British Library. When I’d originally written it, I’d been relying on my memory of a visit there. But now there are video walkthroughs of the place available on the Internet. Which made it easy enough to fix that erroneous detail.
So if you need the reader to believe your world, then make sure you research the things that matter.
At the same time, don’t research too much. Sure, this may sound contradictory, but I contain multitudes and all that. (It’s Whitman – research it.)
The danger of research is that it can get in the way of creativity. A writer can research the subject so much that it kills their interest in the story because all the details of reality fill their mind and don’t leave room for the story, or contradict it in some way. Or they just get tired of the whole thing and the story loses its magic for them.
The key thing to remember when researching for a work of fiction is the research should serve the story not the other way around. Get the details you need right to make the story work and don’t worry about the rest.
Of course, you can always take liberty with facts and change the details to suit your story. We’ve all seen author’s notes that flag they have altered history to make a more compelling story. Just make sure you do flag it, or readers may think you haven’t done your research.
Related
- The Write Life: You need a second brain
- The Write Life: Make your desk a happy space
- The Write Life: You can’t do it alone
- The Write Life: Support your community
- The Write Life: Plotting or pantsing?
- The Write Life: How’s your focus?
- The Write Life: Write wonder
- The Write Life: What kind of book is this?
- The Write Life: Why use word trackers?
Roger Zelazny honoured with Infinity Award
The news that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is honouring the writer Roger Zelazny with an Infinity Award has me feeling all sorts of emotions.
Zelazny was the first writer to really make an impact on me as a writer, way back when I was still in elementary school. I still remember reading Nine Princes in Amber for the first time and being completely blown away — and completely changed by the experience. For the first time I saw how poetic and lyrical writing could be, how different genres could be mixed together to make something completely new, and just how creative and fun a story could be. Zelazny was one of the first writers to make me want to become a writer, and you can see his influence in almost everything I’ve written. I’ll forever be grateful for encountering his works at such a young age.
Here’s what SFWA has to say about the award:
The SFWA Infinity Award was created to highlight the life and work of creators who achieved a distinct and tremendous legacy in science fiction and fantasy. Although they are no longer with us to celebrate this honor, these writers helped to lay the foundation for today’s science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. Their memory abides not only in the works they published, but also in the worlds they inspired fellow and future writers to dream up in their wake.
SFWA President Kate Ristau reflects fondly on the power of Zelazny’s worlds:
“One of my first deep dives into science fiction was the Chronicles of Amber. Zelazny drew me right into the story with his world-building and world-breaking. Characters could manipulate their reality, walking between worlds, and they didn’t always make the decisions you wanted. There were heartbreaking moments and series-wide challenges that were epic and unforgettable; they lingered with you. Zelazny’s impact lingers on with us, shaping how we think about multiverses and how we create characters that are complicated, nuanced, and sometimes deeply flawed. I am honored to present him with this year’s Infinity Award.”
I talked to the Re-Creative podcast about my love of Zelazny a while back, so check it out if you haven’t heard it already.
The everyday monstrousness of Frankenstein
It’s nice to see Frankenstein having a moment again. The classic tale of science run amok mixed with the mysteries of life and death, the wonders of creation and the deeply personal yearning to belong is so well suited for our age — or any human age, for that matter.
In fact, the Frankenstein tale may be perfect for our time. While Mary Shelley wrote it during the Industrial Revolution, perhaps with the new technocrats in mind, it applies just as well to our new AI overlords who are creating things they don’t quite understand and which may one day border on life. It speaks to our anxieties around progress and what sort of responsibility the tech elite and scientists have to society.
Of course, Victor Frankenstein and the creature are not just ciphers for ideas about technology and progress. They are also compelling characters because of their complexity and human condition. Who among us hasn’t wanted to stop death from claiming those we love? Certainly Shelley’s own personal tragedies are reflected in the book here, as she lost her mother shortly after childbirth, a half-sister committed suicide, and two of her children died before the publication of Frankenstein.
I suspect most of us in the current day may identify with the monster, an articulate, philosophical but lonely creature who can find no enduring role in society, who seeks love, enlightenment, belonging — who seeks more — but is thwarted by others at every turn. The monster is an everyman, a stand-in for all of us in our ragged humanity.
Sadly, all those who fear the monster for its difference and seek to drive it away, to banish it from their community, are also us in this undying tale.
Frankenstein is an early tale of science fiction, a Gothic horror, a philosophical inquiry into the meaning of life and death — and perhaps what constitutes a good and meaningful life. As much as the book is a conversation with science and philosophy, though, it is also a tale preoccupied with literary creation and influence. It is a book of contrasting stories, with Victor and the creature each telling their own tale, while infused through with mythology (Prometheus, the Bible) and literary allusion (Paradise Lost, Inferno, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). The novel was even born from a literary contest of sorts among Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori to come up with ghost stories. (Polidori came up with one of the first vampire tales from the same contest.) The entire book is stories within stories.
The literary magic of Frankenstein is why I decided to include the creature in The Dead Hamlets, the second book of my Cross series of urban fantasy thrillers. It’s a tale of Shakespearean ghosts and literary creations that won’t die, so who better to help the immortal rogue Cross track down a mystery ghost born of a work of literature than another mysterious undead character born of a classic of literature?
(If you’ve read The Dead Hamlets, then you may be pleased to learn that Cross and Mary Shelley’s most famous character will cross paths again.)
Frankenstein speaks to so much in our culture – anxiety around death, the mysteries of life, the wonder of science and technology but concern about how we use science and technology, the act of creativity, the longing for connection, the magic of storytelling and so much more. At long last Frankenstein’s creature has found a new life for himself as an integral part of the human community he so longed to join.
The Write Life: Why use word trackers?
If you’re not using a word tracker when you write, you should be. Word trackers are simple yet incredibly useful tools that should be an integral part of every writing process.
Accountability
Word trackers help you hit targets like daily word counts (or weekly or monthly, etc.) This gives you something to work toward, which in turn keeps you accountable and more likely to sit/stand at your desk and write until you’ve hit your goal.
Consistency
Accountability can lead to consistency, which is one of the most important factors in finishing a project. When you know you’re hitting a thousand words a day or whatever your goal is, you’re most likely to have a sense of progress, which in turn is more likely to keep bringing you back to write more.
Patterns
Word trackers can help you identify the times of day you may be most or least productive. Everyday distractions and stresses can sometimes be invisible. Using a word tracker can make the patterns visible.
Milestones
Word trackers can help you break large projects down into manageable milestones. For instance, it’s much easier to approach a project when you’re working toward writing 10,000 words in a month rather than writing 100,000 words by deadline X.
Word trackers can also help with a project’s internal milestones, such as act structure. If you know you want the first act of a book to break into the second act at 20,000 words, you can build toward that properly when using a word tracker.
Momentum
Word trackers can help you build momentum when writing. If you set yourself a modest daily goal, every time you surpass that goal it gives you a bit of creative energy.
Similarly, reaching certain points such as the halfway mark can also give you a creative boost and generate more motivation and momentum.
Accomplishment
The hardest part of a project is usually the beginning, when nothing is yet written. The more you keep track of what you have accomplished by using a word tracker, the greater the sense of achievement you have. That in turn transforms into the desire to create more.
Word trackers are about reaching goals, yes. But they are also about highlighting your achievements to yourself and generating more creative desire and momentum.
Different types of word trackers
There are as many types of word trackers as there are books. Some are simple number trackers, while others provide visual progress markers in the form of charts, percentages, etc.
I’ve used a range of apps for different projects: Word Keeper, TrackBear, Notion and more. If none of those work for you then you can make your own word tracker. Create a spreadsheet, use post-it notes on your wall, tattoo it on your arm. Whatever helps you finish that work and bring it into the world.
Related
- The Write Life: You need a second brain
- The Write Life: Make your desk a happy space
- The Write Life: You can’t do it alone
- The Write Life: Support your community
- The Write Life: Plotting or pantsing?
- The Write Life: How’s your focus?
- The Write Life: Write wonder
- The Write Life: What kind of book is this?
Play This: Horrified
The Horrified series of games have become my favourite board games since the original Horrified launched back in 2019. The games are wonderfully cooperative and intriguingly different in each version — or even each gaming session. They’re also beautifully designed and a pleasure to interact with. I’m not the only one who thinks so — almost everyone I’ve introduced the game to has ended up buying one of the versions of it. I’ve become an evangelist of horror!
The premise is simple: work together to defeat the monsters before the monsters defeat you. In the original game you are defending a town against classic movie monsters: Dracula, Wolfman, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein’s creature and his Bride. The monsters move around the board and cause mayhem according to monster cards, which are full of surprises sure to derail player plans.
Each character chooses a different hero character with special abilities to help in the fight against the monsters: the mayor, the archaeologist, the explorer, the courier, the professor, the scientist and the inspector. The trick for players is using these special abilities well to complement each other. Collaborate and plan and you will have a chance to save the town. Play as a lone wolf and the monsters will surely prevail. As a former academic, I have a soft spot for the professor but they all have their advantages.
Different items are scattered around the beautifully designed board for players to use, either in defending themselves against the monsters or satisfying certain requirements to defeat the monsters. For instance, to defeat Dracula players must find his four coffins in the town and destroy each with items they have collected, then track down Dracula and destroy him with a different set of items. Haven’t been collecting enough items? Enjoy watching Dracula feast on townsfolk.
Each of the monsters must be destroyed in different ways, which means the players can’t simply use the same strategy for each. To make it even more challenging, there’s a time limit of sorts. A terror marker gets moved each time a player or one of the townsfolk gets killed by a monster. Reach the end of the terror track and the players lose. So the players feel the pressure rising as the game goes on and they get more desperate.
The townsfolk are mostly helpless victims that can’t defend themselves, but they do provide help to the players in forms of perk cards if the players escort them to their desired safe locations. The perk cards can be used to prevent monsters from moving, giving the players extra actions, and so on. You can win without the cards but it’s that much more difficult.
Each game session is remarkably different thanks to the randomness of the cards that determine the monster actions and townsfolk appearances. There are also different levels of difficulty, where you can play against more challenging monsters or greater numbers of monsters. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve played Horrified, but it’s almost always the first pick for my gaming crew.
So check out Horrified today and get ready to have a horrifyingly good time!
The Wonder Lands War on Transactions With Beauty
I’m thrilled and honoured to see my latest book, The Wonder Lands War, get a shoutout at Transactions With Beauty!
Transactions With Beauty is run by the amazing writer Shawna Lemay and offers thoughtful mediations on art, books, calmness, culture, music and lots of other subjects. It’s long been one of my favourite reads, so this is truly special to me.
The Write Life: What kind of book is this?
Before you begin writing your book, it’s important to know what kind of book you’re writing. Is it horror, sci-fi, fantasy, romantasy, literary fiction, etc.?
It’s important to know the nature of your book to help you and others understand how it fits into genre categories and thus the marketplace. If you care about such things, that is. No judgement from me if you don’t, as I often don’t think of the marketplace at all. But trust me when I say your life as a writer will be easier if you do consider the marketplace before you start writing.
If you don’t like writing to genre categories, you can always mix things up a little and create a hybrid. Romantasy came out of the fantasy and romance genres, after all, and it’s the biggest thing in publishing right now — maybe even ever.
Once you have the basic genre established in your mind, you need to consider the book’s form, its defining structural or stylistic feature. Here’s a quick overview of some of the more popular ones and more or less contemporary examples.
Quest
A hero or group of heroes pursue a specific goal, overcoming obstacles to achieve the goal.
- Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Picaresque
A roguish, lower-class protagonist moves through society in an episodic manner.
- The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman
Epistolary
A tale told through letters, diary entries and other documents.
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Bildungsroman
A coming of age tale, often with moral development.
- His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
Kunstlerroman
A chronicle of the development of an artist.
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Unreliable Narrator
A tale told from the POV of a character that cannot be trusted.
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Story Within a Story
A tale that is often about storytelling itself because of its very nature.
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Historical Fiction
A tale set in a carefully researched past, often meant to highlight issues in the present day.
- Libra by Don De Lillo
Gothic
A story set in an atmosphere of dread and decay with supernatural overtones.
- Crucible of Chaos by Sebastien de Castell
Dystopia
An imagined society used to critique the present or at least present trends.
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Metafiction
A tale that draws attention to its own fictionality, often to mediate on creativity but sometimes to critique social or cultural issues.
- If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
Satire
A comic tale, often dark, meant to mock or critique some element of society or current trends.
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
There are many more forms of novel than this, of course. And writers often combine different forms and structures to create innovative new works and entirely new structures. But it’s important to have an understanding of the classics before you set out so you can have a vision for your own work.
Remember, you are entering a literary conversation of the ages! Make sure you understand the language first.
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peter darbyshire 