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Updates

Mad Scientist Journal’s Utter Fabrication – In Print

This has been a good week.

Mad Scientist Journal’s print anthology Utter Fabrication is now available. My speculative horror story “Koriolan” was one of the stories that made it through the grinder and into the collection.

It’s certainly a privilege (not to mention, exciting) to see to one of my pieces included alongside so many good stories and great authors – notably S.E. Casey, who’s probably my favourite contemporary horror author right now.

I’ve read about half the stories in there so far, and I can honestly say that I’m loving what made it into the volume. The shift in tone and setting from tale to tale was more varied than I was expecting, but it’s been pretty inspiring to see how many different ways other authors can spin the premise of the anthology.

I’ll try to update once again when I complete the collection, but I think my favourite story so far is “The Orpheus Well” by Dorian Graves. I love the way they re-spun the classic myth, making it urgent and modern all at once. We’ll have to see if any other story knocks it down a peg and takes first place.

The anthology was printed through Defcon One and should soon be available on Amazon, as both paperback and Kindle version.

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Updates

Presented at CREOR 2017

Over the weekened, I presented at my second conference this year. It was at McGill for the CREOR 2017 graduate student conference where I presented my paper:

Presence, meaning and the Christian Cross: Conspicuous Ambiguity during the 2013 Quebec “Charter of Values” Hearings.

The paper’s still a work in (slow) progress. I first began working on it some eight months ago, and presented an early version / similar version back in York in the spring. However, summer got in the way and the paper still isn’t done. Fortunately, I was able to collect feedback and trade ideas with several other scholars there.

My only regret, that I hadn’t brought a spare shirt. For some reason, September decided to drop a 30+ day on us. Spending it inside an old room with no AC, fans or windows that could open… well that was one sweat lecturin experience.

All the same, my thanks go out to the organizers of CREOR for having put it all together. As well as the free lunch.

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Opinions

Million Dollar Prize Spam Email – What Fun!

Every now and them I open my Junk Email folder and trawl through the trash like a man combing the beach during low tide. You never know what wonders you’ll find.

Most of the time it’s filled with the same sad messages begging for a bank account to deposit their money before moving to America. Or donors looking to give up their mega fortunes. Or flaccid ads about penis improvement.

But sometimes there are real winners – or, in my case, emails promises that I was the winner all along.

Titled simply “FYI” – a modest subject, as if reminded me gently that I had forgotten something – I received a spam email with a message informing me that I had just won “The Publisher’s Clearing House Draw for August 31st 2017!!!”

The case prize amount was no less than 1,000,000.00 USD!!!!!!

I’d love to meet an unnamed publisher who does random draws for a million dollars – especially when people who don’t even read their non-existent books.

Perhaps the kicker was that the spam came from a compromised email account (or maybe mail server) belonging to a law firm. In fine print, below the signature area, it still had a full paragraph of all the legal mumbo jumbo about client confidentiality.