Into the fall...

Alas, the 'ber months have arrived, temperatures have cooled, and mushrooms have sprouted everywhere thanks to the morning dew. Shortened days make the remaining weeks of above-zero temperatures all the more special to enjoy outdoors (fishing season for me, but some good hiking and biking as well), and it's finally cool enough in the house to sleep soundly through the night. Oh, and the mosquitos are gone. Happy news.

I'm always pleased at autumn's arrival, my only reflection on summer being: did we get out enough? Did we swim in lakes enough? Were there enough BBQs and meals outdoors? Did we have fun and spend time with the ones we love? It's a question of volume. The Canadian summer is so short it becomes that sacred season in which the hoped-for outcome of its measurement is how much of the good times you packed into it. Winter is measured by its length, ideally as short as possible but with lots of snow. Spring only lasts a few weeks in most places in Canada so it's almost entirely forgotten, whereas the quality of autumn, like winter, is measured in its length ... ideally as long as possible to shorten winter.

You know, for a winter nation we sure don't like winter much, do we?

Anyway, welcome back to my mostly-monthly newsletter, here's what's new:

Media Coverage / Interviews

I joined fellow author S.A. Schneider on Alex Lewczuk's Afternoon Drive radio show in the UK to chat about YA fiction, The Dungeoneers and the Treasure of Roan and how to approach fantasy from the perspective of humour, action and page-turning (which I like to think my debut novel is).

It's a good conversation about all things writerly. Check it out here: Joel McKay, S.A. Schneider, YA Fiction, Storage issues & Electrical Safety | southsidebroadcasting

Also in August I joined A.F. Stewart with Crystal Lake Publishing for a conversation about short fiction. We talked a lot about how short fiction hones your craft for longer works, and also how horror should show up differently in a short piece versus a novel or novella.

You can watch it here: Short Fiction and Horror: An Interview with Joel McKay | Shadows and Ink Podcast

Here's a Q&A I did with Heather Wiedner for her #WriterWednesday blog: #WriterWednesday with Joel McKay — Heather Weidner, Mystery Author

And then IndieView conducted an interview with me about The Dungeoneers and the Treasure of Roan - you can find the link to it here: IndieView with Joel McKay, author of The Dungeoneers and the Treasure of Roan

What I'm Writing

I returned to short fiction in August and wrote two new, original stories - one about the dissection of a zombie and the other will serve as the third story in my ongoing tales of the luckless cowboy John Hawes.

The zombie piece has been on my mind for a while but I didn't have a way in. Suddenly, I did. This seems to be happening more frequently now, likely because my workload is a lot less now that I've left the university but also because my personal life has settled in nicely. It's a good feeling.

The John Hawes story picks up where "At the Spider God's Altar" left off (you can find that one in my short anthology It Came From the Trees). The first John Hawes story appeared in Brigids Gates Press' weird western anthology Blood in the Soil, Terror on the Wind - it's called "Hands." It's good to get back to the weird old west. This latest piece needs a good edit and then I'll start subbing it out to find a publisher, same with the zombie piece.

I'm now working on a follow up story to "The Warrior's Task", which also appeared in It Came From the Trees. This one picks up where we left off with Mutt, and instead of honour and a liminal romance, the tale will explore friendship. P.S. - Mutt stories take place in the same world as The Dungeoneers and the Treasure of Roan, the characters just haven't quite come together yet.

Elsewhere, I'm chipping away at the follow up to Wolf at the Door, have started to shape out a second Dungeoneers novel, and will very soon be back to editing short stories, finishing a film script and editing the novel I wrote for my MA thesis.

No new articles this month, though I did type and submit two for publication this fall - one to The Horror Tree and the other to Uncaged Magazine. Links should be up for both in my next newsletter .

Lastly, this month will be my debut as a sometime host of CFIS radio in Prince George. I was brought on as a filler-in when the other hosts can't make it. It would be nice to work some literary topics into it, but the thrust of the show is community and issues and I'm more likely to lean into the economic development topics that have been the subject of my columns published at The Line Canada. Anyway, tune in September 23 at 0900 to hear me fumble through my first show!

What I'm Reading and Watching

Janz shines with this witch/gorgon/succubus story

Some excellent reads in August:

• Brian Keene's Entombed

• Jonathan Janz' Marla

• Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree

• Mary Beard's SPQR: A History of Rome

I've been a fan of Bradbury's The Halloween Tree since the cartoon adaption first appeared on TV in the early 90s (I was just the right age for it). I got around to reading it and the book, unsurprisingly, is even better. It's an excellent example of narrated storytelling style for young adults. You can hear Bradbury's voice and that alone makes it a worthwhile text to pay attention for the cadence and caliber of his writing.

Janz's Marla was a ton of fun as well. It's a page-turner. What I liked most about it was the blend of a procedural crime story with a supernatural monster that's never wholly explained. It felt a lot like Stephen King's The Outsider. If you haven't read Janz, I recommend you do. He's reliably good with a similar style to the late-great-Andrew Pyper.

You can't go wrong with Bradbury

A great follow-up read to Brian Keene's Dead Sea

Keen's Entombed was a great follow up read to Dead Sea. Together they helped me find the door way to my own zombie short story I mentioned above. What's interesting about this tale is how Keene plays with the morality around murder, specifically: when is it okay to kill?

Lastly, Beard's SPQR has been on my TBR pile for a long time. It's a lengthy history of Rome but a very readable one, and one that puts a lot of the common perceptions and myths about the empire and its leaders in doubt (maybe Caligula wasn't so Caligula-ly, for example). I'd really recommend it if you're trying to piece together the history of Western Civilization in your head for every day reference ... as one does.

Shows I watched included:

• The White Orchid (S1-3) - great show. S2 is my favourite. It's kind of ... low-key horrific isn't it?

• We finished Welcome to Derry - I thought this was the best yet adaption of King's work. Pennywise is truly terrifying, the characters are interesting and it does a good job of taking us through another plucky-kids-style adventure, which I always enjoy.

• Silo S3 - just getting underway. Enjoyable so far.

Rounding out the summer, here's Felicia and I enjoying the Vancouver Aquarium recently and Daphne Moon the Maine Coon standing on her hindfeet waiting for pets. You can't tell here but the cat is almost vertical (she's tall ... cranky too).

Chat next month!