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My excuse not an excuse...

  • joelcmckay
  • Jun 27
  • 7 min read

Yeah, so I haven't updated anything on the site or written a newsletter in six months. Here's why:


  • I run a small city here in the northern interior of British Columbia and we've been short-staffed, to say the least. Plus, it's an election year. And every day something seems to go sideways that distracts from the bigger initiatives I'm trying to get to. Such is life in local government.

  • For the past six years I've been a governor (one of 15) at the University of Northern British Columbia, responsible for oversight of the finest post-secondary institution in all the land. For the last three of those six years, I've been the chair of that board, which, and it still seems odd anyone agreed to put the horror author in that seat, meant I was basically the boss of the university. That's done now. Here's a link to my outgoing message to the U via LinkedIn - To UNBC: An Outgoing Message From the Chair of the Board of Governors | LinkedIn

  • I've been doing my MA in English at said university since 2023, which culminated this spring in my thesis finalization / submission, defense, and then graduation. So that's done now too.


All this is to say it's been an intense period the last few years, which didn't leave a lot of time for the extras, be they writing, blogging, promoting, or even finding time to go to the bathroom some days.


But now I'm back! I hope.


On Writing


The thesis unpacked the first part of a new cosmic horror novel I've written titled The Forest Bleeds Black. It follows a young businessman who buys a ghost town on B.C.'s wild wet coast sight unseen and attempts to breath new life into it by restarting a dormant pulp mill complex.


The research paper that went alongside it zeroed in on industrial gothic traditions in B.C. fiction and non-fiction, and pulled in some place theory from the geography discipline to make the case that the manuscript adds to a nascent horror tradition here in B.C. It goes so far to suggest that the structure I created could be templated to some extent and used by other creators to build out this province as a gothic literary locale.


Check out the research paper and first part of the novel here:


Huge weight off my shoulders to have that done. And I received my MA - score!


Otherwise, I've been working on a follow up to my 2022 debut book Wolf at the Door. It's tentatively titled Kiss, Kiss, Fang, Fang (title is a nod to the movie, but that's where the similarity ends). Imagine if brothers Doug and Dan were infected with the werewolf virus. And imagine if, a year later, Doug is going through a divorce, broke, estranged from his kids and his jailbird brother Dan arranges for them to have a guys' weekend in a resort town to lick their wounds and reconnect.


And then imagine they run into a coven of vampires, and this all somehow turns into a metaphorical conversation about middle age and masculinity in the modern world.


It's The Hangover meets From Dusk Till Dawn set in a Canadian mountain resort municipality. I'm four chapters in and all I can share is that it's fun, more deranged than its predecessor and will be written in similar style and pace. More to come.


I have a couple short pieces written as a result of my MA program that I need to find a home for, one being a short horror story about graduate studies and another that's entirely dialogue without any attribution that needs an artsy outlet.


Elsewhere, I've been trying my hand at commentary again. My background is in journalism, and when you add to that more than a decade in the north overseeing an economic development organization, a university, and now a city, I have a few things to say about Canada and its current troubles. It seems the federal government has finally come around to my way of thinking, which is that you need to have a functioning economy to pay for all the things they've promised. Anyway, the good folks at The Line have bought a couple pieces from me, which are decidedly different than my fiction. You can find them here:




Unsurprisingly, my commentary received little attention in B.C. but I was a guest on two major talk radio shows for each column, one in Calgary and the other in Saskatchewan. Prairie people just get it, I guess. I don't know what the hell B.C.'s problem is ... oh wait, I do. More commentary to come...



Summertime in the North


We didn't catch a darn thing, but we had a good time all the same.
We didn't catch a darn thing, but we had a good time all the same.

It's the best time of year in Northern B.C. - summertime!


The days are long, the weather is warm, the mosquitos are out in droves, and the tent caterpillars are feasting on all the broadleaf around Prince George, leaving large sections of the forest winter-naked.


But the trout are jumping, the pines are fragrant amid the hot summer sun, and the loons serenade the evenings. All that means it's time to be outside more than in. My partner and I have been out as much as possible, be it walks, yard work, hiking, or whatever we can come up with. And the girls and I finally got out on the boat. More fishing, hiking, biking, swimming and family time to come now through to the fall, which is when the fishing gets really good, hunting kicks off and ... man, let me tell you, nothing beats autumn in Northern B.C. It's stunning.


Dog almost went into the raging Fraser River.
Dog almost went into the raging Fraser River.
I swear I'm not lost.
I swear I'm not lost.
















Publicity and Reviews

I've been keeping up with publicity and reviews as best I can, but there just hasn't been much time to do it as there has been in previous years. I also haven't been very good at getting the word out when I've appeared on a podcast, or one of my books has been featured somewhere.


If you're interested, which I assume you are because you subscribe to this newsletter, here's a smattering of Joel:




What I'm Reading, Watching, Playing

I typically try to read 40-50 books a year, following Stephen King's advice that it's nigh impossible to be a decent writer if you don't read a lot. So I have a discipline around it. Unfortunately, last year I logged only 26 books. This year I've read 28 so far. Here's the list:


  1. Empty Homes and Silent Saws, Zach Lowry

  2. Under Assault, Dennis Molinaro n(audio)

  3. Silverthorn, Raymond E Feist (reread)

  4. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones

  5. Ghost Eaters, Clay McLeod Chapman

  6. Unceded, George Abbott

  7. The Rise of Indigenous Economic Power, Carol Anne Hilton

  8. 21 Things You Didn’t Know About the Indian Act, Bob Joseph

  9. The HIstory of Hispaniola, Captivating History Series

  10. Mystery, Peter Straub

  11. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Checkmate, David Michaels

  12. Crossroads of Ravens, Andrzej Sapkowski

  13. The Only Plane in the Sky, Garrett Graff

  14. Value (s), Mark Carney (audio)

  15. The Stand, Stephen King

  16. Conan the Slayer Vol 1, Cullen Bunn

  17. Conan the Slayer Vol 2, Cullen Bunn

  18. Some Will Not Sleep, Adam Nevill

  19. Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan La Fanu

  20. The House on the Borderland, William Hodgson

  21. Bucky F*cking Dent, David Duchovny

  22. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, David Grann

  23. Caliban’s War, James SA Corey

  24. Died, Izzy Von

  25. Fables the Deluxe Edition Book 13, Bill Willingham

  26. The Case of the Missing Bubblegum Card, A Jarvis Mann Mystery, R Weir

  27. Dark Harvest, Norman Partridge

  28. Beast, Richard Van Camp


My top three so far this year:

  • Mystery - just an absolute page-turner of a book, which I happened to read while in the Dominican so it felt especially connective

  • The Wager - non-fiction history and also one that I couldn't put down

  • Dark Harvest - fun, front to back, stumbled across it in a used bookstore in Seattle and read it in pretty well one night


I'm currently sifting through a collection of Robert Frost's poems I found on my partner's shelf, and a sci-fi by Sam J. Miller called Blackfish City. I'm enjoying both.


For those of you who know me, King is my favourite author. But I don't mind telling you The Stand was my least favourite of his work I've read so far.


Watching

  • Widow's Bay - check it out

  • 90210 - a rewatch with my partner. It holds up surprisingly well, and is also enjoyable to poke fun at.


I recently hit the theatre with a friend for Backrooms. Pure nightmare fuel, in my view. Really well done.


Playing

  • Donkey Kong Bonanza - the most fun I've had with a platformer in ages. I'm taking my time with it.

  • Spider Man - you can't beat swinging through New York to fight bad guys and super villains.


That's all for now - I'll try to get back here for another update in July and get a more regular cadence going, workload/life willing!


Thanks for reading. Go buy my books - or buy them for a friend ;)

 
 
 

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