There are cracks in this pandemic

To paraphrase the poet Leonard Cohen, there are cracks in this pandemic, where the light is creeping through. At least I hope so. The days lengthen. March 14 looms as the date Daylight Savings spring ahead. A snow moon, I just discovered, peaks this very weekend, bathing the land in light as bright as day, but more potent.

I have gone through a hard-working week, editing this bear fiction anthology, further learning the fundamentals of The Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS, for us pros), the handyman and his crew working here most days to fix the interior wall of the master bedroom and the causal ice damming on the roof and the broken dry wall resulting from water leaking through into the furnace room.

I have almost successfully organized most days, due to pulling up on my evenings a little. The three P’s are still in play, like trickster constellations.

Being incommunicado after my annual conversation with someone, a  friend - well, much more than a friend, actually - of years ago, has also been  a tricky adjustment. There was soul-baring and confessions and looking at the truth of a thing. I even managed to see some admittedly adorable and enticing gifs and posts from them on social media that had a 'public' privacy setting. But now the cutting-off of contact has occurred, the door has closed, and we try to carry on in the pandemic.

I had visions of blogging or writing a piece of first-person narrative fiction in installments about a protagonist enduring rehab. I would have incorporated many spices from real life, but reconsidered the idea. I thought that perhaps this story might be misunderstood by any or all readers, particularly if they felt they were depicted in a certain light that diminishes the hero, which would not be my intention. The hero has been engrossed by certain other fictional characters, who may resemble persons or readers living or dead (coicidental, of course, as the old disclaimer goes ....!). This is a fine but significant distinction. The other fallacy I considered with such an undertaking was that the work of fiction may be misconstrued as myself actually being in rehab for sex addiction or marijuana addiction anger management. I thought that that might also be problematic, to say the least.

But as this week comes to a close, at last, I think I will satisfy my journaling here with this entry.

Had an unequivocally unusual and successful video chat with my publisher earlier this week. We plotted many things, including the bear-fiction anthology release, the publication of my first short-story collection, and even my contribution to the bear-fic anthology, which he has suggested including in my short-fic collection.

Tentatively titled “Three”, it is a hopeful, modern fairy tale. Three goateed friends, one a burly bear fellow, of course, walk from Gatineau to Ottawa over the Alexandria Bridge. It is May. They are celebrating the end of the pandemic six month previous. Of course, the trio encounters a troll. 

But make no mistake; this is not horror, but a whimsical, magical story filled with hope, friendship, and a hint of darkness about local Ottawa queer history. It’s my first crack at a intentionally modernized “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”, a fable I have always loved, from the goats to the bridge to the bridge. It's also my first attempt at lighter fantasy fare. I have been meaning to delve more into sci-fi, which I have always adored but not written much of these past years, and it seems that first I will take a sideroad into the fantasy genre. I feel that an utterance of hope, of a doorway a runner can run through, is more what I want to accomplish than scaring or horrifying readers. My horror-writing is not done. Far from it (still revising my second horror novel), but I feel I have a thing or two that I must say about hope and about friends and even about anger management.