Hello all,
The new book, Canadian edition, with official cover:
CC Cover and description
It's a new cover; the first one, posted below, couldn't be used because the image was already in use for a book in the US.
Out September 3rd, 2013 in Canada. 2014 in other places.
All best, Craig.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
The Druid!
Hello All,
So I'm going to the Horror Writer's Weekend, the Stokers, in New Orleans in June. As some may know, I've written a few horror books under a nom de plume, and who knows? I may do so again. In any case, my lovely partner and I were thinking it'd be nice to go. We've got friends here in Toronto who we like a great deal who are going, and it's New Orleans, which is spooky and boozy and fun, and the hotel we're staying in is apparently haunted, and there's plenty of folks in the horror world that I've known informally for years but never met and my folks are coming to help with the baby, so it seemed like the thing to do.
But I had to sign up as an HWA member for the weekend; it's basically how you get into the event, the readings and signings and so on, and if you want to sign your own books, you need a membership to get into the dealer's room. Now I'm usually up for a hotel party or two, but it's rare that I spring for a membership at any Con. But in this case my publisher's got a whack of ARCs for me to sign and give away, so I had to get the membership.
The other day my publisher gets in touch and says: "Hey, dude, the HWA says you're not signed up. You need to buy a membership."
So I hunted through my email inbox and found the receipt for the membership, which I'd paid for last November. Curious, but certainly no big deal.
Today my publisher gets back and says: "Yeah, they checked and it turns out you're registered, but not as Craig Davidson. You were listed as 'The Druid.'"
I thought about it and realized that Colleen and I were goofing around as I'd signed up. The sign-up form asked how I'd like to be known on my nametag—which you have to wear around your neck at these things, letting everyone know who you are.
"Wouldn't it be great if I used another name entirely?" I said.
Colleen agreed and, in short order, I signed up as The Druid. It sounded fun to walk around New Orleans in my whiteboy clothes, not a goth-y stitch of clothing on me, the most inoffensive redheaded guy imaginable, with a nametag that read THE DRUID. How mysterious! I could be cooking up potions in the lobby bar bathroom, muttering incantations in the parking lot, whatever it is druids do.
Anyway, I totally forgot I'd done this, so it caused a fair amount of perplexity at first until they matched my credit card recepipt to THE DRUID.
It's still there, on the HWA membership roll call:
So I'm going to the Horror Writer's Weekend, the Stokers, in New Orleans in June. As some may know, I've written a few horror books under a nom de plume, and who knows? I may do so again. In any case, my lovely partner and I were thinking it'd be nice to go. We've got friends here in Toronto who we like a great deal who are going, and it's New Orleans, which is spooky and boozy and fun, and the hotel we're staying in is apparently haunted, and there's plenty of folks in the horror world that I've known informally for years but never met and my folks are coming to help with the baby, so it seemed like the thing to do.
But I had to sign up as an HWA member for the weekend; it's basically how you get into the event, the readings and signings and so on, and if you want to sign your own books, you need a membership to get into the dealer's room. Now I'm usually up for a hotel party or two, but it's rare that I spring for a membership at any Con. But in this case my publisher's got a whack of ARCs for me to sign and give away, so I had to get the membership.
The other day my publisher gets in touch and says: "Hey, dude, the HWA says you're not signed up. You need to buy a membership."
So I hunted through my email inbox and found the receipt for the membership, which I'd paid for last November. Curious, but certainly no big deal.
Today my publisher gets back and says: "Yeah, they checked and it turns out you're registered, but not as Craig Davidson. You were listed as 'The Druid.'"
I thought about it and realized that Colleen and I were goofing around as I'd signed up. The sign-up form asked how I'd like to be known on my nametag—which you have to wear around your neck at these things, letting everyone know who you are.
"Wouldn't it be great if I used another name entirely?" I said.
Colleen agreed and, in short order, I signed up as The Druid. It sounded fun to walk around New Orleans in my whiteboy clothes, not a goth-y stitch of clothing on me, the most inoffensive redheaded guy imaginable, with a nametag that read THE DRUID. How mysterious! I could be cooking up potions in the lobby bar bathroom, muttering incantations in the parking lot, whatever it is druids do.
Anyway, I totally forgot I'd done this, so it caused a fair amount of perplexity at first until they matched my credit card recepipt to THE DRUID.
It's still there, on the HWA membership roll call:
- Strand, Jeff , Tampa, Florida
Sundquist, Aric , Marquette, MI
Swanson, Stan , Largo, FL
Taff, John F.D. , Eureka, Missouri
Talley, Brett J. , Jasper, AL
Templeton, Patty , Des Plaines, IL
The Druid, Toronto, Ontario
The_Seer_King, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire
Tole, Pam, Yorktown Heights, NY
Turzillo, Mary , Berea, OH
Urbancik, John , Tallahassee, FL
Vander Laenen, Jan , Brussels, Brussels
Varnell, Kendall , Brandon, MS
So beware, all ye who attend the HWA weekend. THE DRUID lurks!
All best, Craig.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Some foreign book covers
Hi All,
Since the film, there has been a small swell of renewed interest in Rust and Bone. Here are a couple of foreign covers; interesting to see how publishers handle the same book, graphically.
JAPANESE:
SPANISH:
All best, Craig.
Since the film, there has been a small swell of renewed interest in Rust and Bone. Here are a couple of foreign covers; interesting to see how publishers handle the same book, graphically.
JAPANESE:
SPANISH:
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Gentleman Lavender Farmer
Hello All,
I just realized how long it's been since I updated this danged thing. No excuse for that, other than I'm a louse—a dirty stinkin' louse, to the core. I could tell you I've been busy with the day job, with the 10-month old, with edits to a few books and stories and magazine articles, all of which is true, but face it, I'm a louse.
FACE IT!
Anyhoo, I wasn't always this way. Back in 2010 I was living in Fredericton, working at a newspaper and thinking maybe I need a change in my career. I need to chart a whole new path, damn it! This is something I think about frequently but never quite have the gumption to follow through with, as yet.
But I was saying to myself: To hell with this racket! I'm going to get into biz for myself! F the man! Etc.
So I decided to buy a business. Why not, right? It's totally up my alley. I have zero business accumen, can't do any handyman-ish stuff, no math skills, no horticulture skills (I ripped most of the shrubs out of our garden and put down low-maintenance stones), no cooking skills (I threw most of the pots and pans out of our cupboards and put down low-maintenance stones), no real skills to speak of so yeah, going into business for myself seemed the ticket.
Of course I had the idiotic ambition most guys do (or maybe just me): start a brewery! A jazzy little microbrewery, with the small-batch copper kettles and all that razzmatazz. How hard could it be? I researched this for all of 7 seconds before discovering it was very hard indeed, and expensive, and I had no brewmasters skills and couldn't afford to hire one.
Thus, this dream died.
So instead I went here:
BUY A BUSINESS
I figured I could buy a business that was already thriving, a going concern—which, of course, is exactly the time a canny businessperson would sell it to me, most likely at a dire personal and financial loss to themselves!
I toyed with the idea of a bed and breakfast. But then I'm not always hospitable, especially in the morning, and don't like baking (ie: can't bake) and making beds isn't really a gas, so that dream died too.
Someone was selling a go-cart track way up in the sticks of northern Ontario, which at the time suited my isolationist notions, but I wouldn't know how to fix the go-carts should they break so within months I'd have to rent the track out to backwoods joggers who didn't want to get mauled by a bear on their daily run—thus, this dream swiftly died.
As did the notion of taking over the beleagured pizza parlour in the boonies (can't make pizza), the convenience store in Oshawa (who really wants to run a convenience store? Apologies to all whose dreams I just trammeled with that last sentence), the Pita Pit knockoff and others.
Then I saw it. The perfect business. Xanadu.
A lavender farm.
Yes, just outside of Couburg was a little parcel of land near the lake just teeming with lavender. There was a little farm, a little store, and acres and acres of lovely lavender. The little store sold lavender soaps and candles and sachets (all lavender, in case you were wondering although surely you weren't). The lavender grew as high as an elephant's eye.
I had to have it. I had some $ ratholed away, actually, after selling my house in Calgary. I want to make sure you understand that I seriously considered it. I was willing to put down cash on the barrelhead. I wanted to own a piece of land. And I wanted that land to be carpeted with lovely, lovely lavender.
I know what you're saying to yourself: You fool! Why didn't you DO it? DID you do it? Did you buy the farm on the sly, stashing it away in one of your many shell corporations, and do you go there on the weekends and romp through the fragrant lavender, laughing like a schoolboy?
No, no, you're likely saying: You just admitted to having no skills. Did you actually think you could run a farm, not to mention one that solely produces lavender?
Well, it was a near thing. I called my father, who is my de-facto advisor on all such things. The conversation went something like:
DAD: Say again?
ME: A lavender farm. I want to buy it.
DAD: Are you a moron?
Dad advised me to buy a Tim Horton's franchise. There seemed a much smaller percentage I'd screw that up.
Anyway, I became much more serious with my girlfriend, got a job offer in Toronto, she agreed to come with me (thank God) and as such the idea of the lavender farm faded. But some nights I wake in a lather, the phantom scent of lavender on the breeze and I ask myself what could have been ...
Then I see myself living in a radiator box in an alleyway, penniless, a dead lavender blossom stuck in my hatband—a caustic reminder of my folly—and realize I am a lucky man indeed.
Now, as the old gypsy woman in The Simpsons says:
You buy! You buy!
CATARACT CITY (BUY IT NOW—OR RUE YOUR FOLLY!)
All best, Craig.
I just realized how long it's been since I updated this danged thing. No excuse for that, other than I'm a louse—a dirty stinkin' louse, to the core. I could tell you I've been busy with the day job, with the 10-month old, with edits to a few books and stories and magazine articles, all of which is true, but face it, I'm a louse.
FACE IT!
Anyhoo, I wasn't always this way. Back in 2010 I was living in Fredericton, working at a newspaper and thinking maybe I need a change in my career. I need to chart a whole new path, damn it! This is something I think about frequently but never quite have the gumption to follow through with, as yet.
But I was saying to myself: To hell with this racket! I'm going to get into biz for myself! F the man! Etc.
So I decided to buy a business. Why not, right? It's totally up my alley. I have zero business accumen, can't do any handyman-ish stuff, no math skills, no horticulture skills (I ripped most of the shrubs out of our garden and put down low-maintenance stones), no cooking skills (I threw most of the pots and pans out of our cupboards and put down low-maintenance stones), no real skills to speak of so yeah, going into business for myself seemed the ticket.
Of course I had the idiotic ambition most guys do (or maybe just me): start a brewery! A jazzy little microbrewery, with the small-batch copper kettles and all that razzmatazz. How hard could it be? I researched this for all of 7 seconds before discovering it was very hard indeed, and expensive, and I had no brewmasters skills and couldn't afford to hire one.
Thus, this dream died.
So instead I went here:
BUY A BUSINESS
I figured I could buy a business that was already thriving, a going concern—which, of course, is exactly the time a canny businessperson would sell it to me, most likely at a dire personal and financial loss to themselves!
I toyed with the idea of a bed and breakfast. But then I'm not always hospitable, especially in the morning, and don't like baking (ie: can't bake) and making beds isn't really a gas, so that dream died too.
Someone was selling a go-cart track way up in the sticks of northern Ontario, which at the time suited my isolationist notions, but I wouldn't know how to fix the go-carts should they break so within months I'd have to rent the track out to backwoods joggers who didn't want to get mauled by a bear on their daily run—thus, this dream swiftly died.
As did the notion of taking over the beleagured pizza parlour in the boonies (can't make pizza), the convenience store in Oshawa (who really wants to run a convenience store? Apologies to all whose dreams I just trammeled with that last sentence), the Pita Pit knockoff and others.
Then I saw it. The perfect business. Xanadu.
A lavender farm.
Yes, just outside of Couburg was a little parcel of land near the lake just teeming with lavender. There was a little farm, a little store, and acres and acres of lovely lavender. The little store sold lavender soaps and candles and sachets (all lavender, in case you were wondering although surely you weren't). The lavender grew as high as an elephant's eye.
I had to have it. I had some $ ratholed away, actually, after selling my house in Calgary. I want to make sure you understand that I seriously considered it. I was willing to put down cash on the barrelhead. I wanted to own a piece of land. And I wanted that land to be carpeted with lovely, lovely lavender.
I know what you're saying to yourself: You fool! Why didn't you DO it? DID you do it? Did you buy the farm on the sly, stashing it away in one of your many shell corporations, and do you go there on the weekends and romp through the fragrant lavender, laughing like a schoolboy?
No, no, you're likely saying: You just admitted to having no skills. Did you actually think you could run a farm, not to mention one that solely produces lavender?
Well, it was a near thing. I called my father, who is my de-facto advisor on all such things. The conversation went something like:
DAD: Say again?
ME: A lavender farm. I want to buy it.
DAD: Are you a moron?
Dad advised me to buy a Tim Horton's franchise. There seemed a much smaller percentage I'd screw that up.
Anyway, I became much more serious with my girlfriend, got a job offer in Toronto, she agreed to come with me (thank God) and as such the idea of the lavender farm faded. But some nights I wake in a lather, the phantom scent of lavender on the breeze and I ask myself what could have been ...
Then I see myself living in a radiator box in an alleyway, penniless, a dead lavender blossom stuck in my hatband—a caustic reminder of my folly—and realize I am a lucky man indeed.
Now, as the old gypsy woman in The Simpsons says:
You buy! You buy!
CATARACT CITY (BUY IT NOW—OR RUE YOUR FOLLY!)
All best, Craig.
Monday, February 4, 2013
An interview, Roger Ebert's Review, and some news
Hello All,
So, very quickly: here an interview from The Chronicle Herald, the newspaper of record in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My thanks to Megan Power for taking the time to ask the questions.
Chronicle Herald
Also, Roger Ebert reviewed "Rust and Bone." I was hoping he would. He's my favorite reviewer, likely of anything. I'm glad he enjoyed the movie and his review is very kind. There are those who say that Mr. Ebert has gone soft of late, lots of 4-star lauds, which may indeed be true but my feeling—as a person who's never been through a fraction of what he's been through the last few years—is that, hey, a person can go one of two ways after such life-changing circumstances as he's faced: become a total cynic or see the silver lining on every cloud. It seems that Mr. Ebert's gone the latter route, and that's pretty awesome.
Roger Ebert's Review
You will see that a certain someone (hint: me) chipped in in the comments. Also, if you haven't read Chris Jones' excellent piece on Mr. Ebert, you really might want to make the time:
Profile on Roger Ebert
In other news, a new short story collection, untitled at the moment, has been picked up by Doubleday. The stories all take place in the Cataract City universe—which admittedly is a small universe, we're not talking Middle Earth here, and most people reading this post haven't even read word one of anything that will transpire in this smallish (2 book) universe: Cataract City, the forthcoming novel, and now the collection. So anyway, it's Niagara Falls! That's where both books take place! Huzzah! I have set a few stories in Niagara Falls already; "Rocket Ride," for sure, and "The Rifleman" was St. Catharines, so close; plus most of Sarah Court took place in and around the area, and The Fighter was sort of set there too. So overall, it's the place where most of my stuff it set.
I don't know when the collection will be out. It's still a little up in the air when the novel will be out too. Anyway, after the novel. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
All best, Craig.
So, very quickly: here an interview from The Chronicle Herald, the newspaper of record in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My thanks to Megan Power for taking the time to ask the questions.
Chronicle Herald
Also, Roger Ebert reviewed "Rust and Bone." I was hoping he would. He's my favorite reviewer, likely of anything. I'm glad he enjoyed the movie and his review is very kind. There are those who say that Mr. Ebert has gone soft of late, lots of 4-star lauds, which may indeed be true but my feeling—as a person who's never been through a fraction of what he's been through the last few years—is that, hey, a person can go one of two ways after such life-changing circumstances as he's faced: become a total cynic or see the silver lining on every cloud. It seems that Mr. Ebert's gone the latter route, and that's pretty awesome.
Roger Ebert's Review
You will see that a certain someone (hint: me) chipped in in the comments. Also, if you haven't read Chris Jones' excellent piece on Mr. Ebert, you really might want to make the time:
Profile on Roger Ebert
In other news, a new short story collection, untitled at the moment, has been picked up by Doubleday. The stories all take place in the Cataract City universe—which admittedly is a small universe, we're not talking Middle Earth here, and most people reading this post haven't even read word one of anything that will transpire in this smallish (2 book) universe: Cataract City, the forthcoming novel, and now the collection. So anyway, it's Niagara Falls! That's where both books take place! Huzzah! I have set a few stories in Niagara Falls already; "Rocket Ride," for sure, and "The Rifleman" was St. Catharines, so close; plus most of Sarah Court took place in and around the area, and The Fighter was sort of set there too. So overall, it's the place where most of my stuff it set.
I don't know when the collection will be out. It's still a little up in the air when the novel will be out too. Anyway, after the novel. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
All best, Craig.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
It Begins ...
Hi All,
Always a weird thing to print up a manuscript for the first time. This book was written over a year ago and very fortunately picked up a few months after that, but I'd never actually printed the dang thing up. Now that the time has come to embark on some rather serious edits, it seemed important to have an old-fashioned paper copy of the big bugger to work with. At 125k, it's the longest book I've ever written. That's peanuts for Steve King or George RR Martin, but for me it's pretty substantial. It won't make it to press at that shaggy length, though; there'll have to be some cuts and since I've had plenty of time to divorce myself from my delusions of grandeur, the sort every (or most?) writers feel upon completion of a book, I may prune the hell out of this until all that's left is a haiku. Let's hope not. Looking closely, you can see an empty bottle of wine and a trio of baby soothers on the table — these, I've found, are vital balms in the life of a new parent. The wasabi peanuts not so much, though they taste lovely.
All best, Craig.
Always a weird thing to print up a manuscript for the first time. This book was written over a year ago and very fortunately picked up a few months after that, but I'd never actually printed the dang thing up. Now that the time has come to embark on some rather serious edits, it seemed important to have an old-fashioned paper copy of the big bugger to work with. At 125k, it's the longest book I've ever written. That's peanuts for Steve King or George RR Martin, but for me it's pretty substantial. It won't make it to press at that shaggy length, though; there'll have to be some cuts and since I've had plenty of time to divorce myself from my delusions of grandeur, the sort every (or most?) writers feel upon completion of a book, I may prune the hell out of this until all that's left is a haiku. Let's hope not. Looking closely, you can see an empty bottle of wine and a trio of baby soothers on the table — these, I've found, are vital balms in the life of a new parent. The wasabi peanuts not so much, though they taste lovely.
All best, Craig.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Some Interviews
Hello All,
Hope everyone had a merry-ish holiday season. I weigh about 10lbs more than I did a few days ago, so that's always a good thing.
Do you want to read a bunch of interviews with yours truly? Of course you do! I'm sure you can't wait to be enrapt by my profound ruminations on love, life, the universe and other such sundry issues. My thanks to Nathan, Josh, and Scott for taking the time to talk to me.
All best, Craig.
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