It’s done! I’ve just sent the final edit of the text of my collection of short stories, Paradise & Elsewhere, to Biblioasis. Years of work go into a book; sending it out ushers in a delicious cocktail of emotions, which may include (but is not limited to) satisfaction, lassitude, excitement, euphoria, anxiety, and exhaustion. The net effect could be summed up as a feeling of deliverance: I’m free, now, to explore something new.
I’m delighted that Paradise & Elsewhere has found a home with small but beautiful Biblioasis (Such a lovely name! And so appropriate to this book!) of whom a Quill & Quire reviewer recently wrote: “If there is a gold standard for Canadian short fiction in the new millennium, it is probably set by Biblioasis. The press has been at the forefront, season after season, of producing collections by some of the finest practitioners of the form, both veterans and newcomers.”
Biblioasis is a small team of exceptional people absolutely committed to the books they produce. In this instance they have been brave enough to take on a set of stories pitched somewhere between myth and realism and verging on impossible to define or describe. The collection spans human time from its origins to its later days: in the beginning, there may have been a garden, an oasis – or perhaps an island. And there was sex, money, and a bargain of some kind, though between whom and how and exactly what was done, why, and what the consequences have been: you’ll have to read the book to find out. It comes out in the spring of 2014, which is not so very long to wait.
