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Monday, April 30, 2007

Canada: why do you ignore me so?

Well, I received another rejection letter. This time it was Oolichan books rejecting my collection of villanellies, saying that it was "creative and well-executed, but not suitable for our roster." This sounds like most of the rejections that presses hand out. Not one editorial comment. I know that they have many submissions to wade through, but if they cannot martial the voluntary resources of literature-lovers to create time for the editorial board to make substantive responses to writers' submissions, then it's on them that writers like me are not getting published and overhyped writers like Atwood, Ondaatje, Martel are monopolizing the literary market. This is not to say that these writers are not worthy of their success, but it is to say that there is lots of raw talent not being published because of various forms of nepotism.

I get hits from all over the world on my blog: Finland, China, Japan, Korea, Spain, England, Slovenia, Germany. I think I have more readers in China than in Canada.

I am a gold mine waiting to happen. What publisher is going to get the privilege of publishing my first book?

Friday, April 20, 2007

Kyoto: took yo' toy!




The Canadian Government recently released a study of the costs of following through with Canada’s plan to accomodate the Kyoto Protocol. It said that such an act would cause the economy to shrink by 4.2 percent, equal to the recession in the early eighties. Well, this is ridiculous. First of all, the long-term costs of NOT accomodating the Protocol are greater than the inverse because much of Vancouver will be underwater within a few decades if we don’t implement the Protocol. Second, the study did not take the economic growth aspects of rallying around the Kyoto Protocol. My brother-in-law, who works at a fibreglass plant said recently that Fibrelaminations, a company I also used to work for, is starting to quote prices on wind-generator blades.

His company, should the Kyoto Protocol be followed to the letter, stands to gain from a business point of view because the taxes proposed to limit greenhouse emissions will increase the interest in greener forms of energy production such as the wind. Harper, an Albertan, and his government are looking to protect the economic growth promised by the oil sands. Ironically, it was Conservative Brian Mulroney who privatized Petro-Canada, which was previously a Crown corporation. Had Petro-Canada not been privatized, the government of Canada would be able to cut taxes even more than Stephen Harper has done.

Furthermore, the cost of greenhouse emissions on the health care system, largely unknown and unstudied, could undo any economic benefits that failing to live up to the Kyoto Protocol might bring.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Mass Murder and the Modern Age


There's lots of renewed interest in Hitchcock lately, perhaps the best filmmaker to never win an Oscar. You have Disturbia, a scarcely veiled remake of the master's Rear Window; you have Fracture which uses Hitchcock as a touchpoint in its marketing strategy (it is a suspense/thriller "in the tradition of Hitchcock"); and you have Vacancy a new "motel horror," a genre crowned by Psycho. I was thinking of doing work on Hitchcock for my PhD dissertation, but I'm reconsidering; he does have a whole academic industry picking him to pieces. Does this industry really need another gadfly growing up from maggot status in the master's corpse, oops, I mean corpus!

On the other hand, there are those people who were in the Hitchcock discussion group that I exiled myself from. Their analysis seemed so wishy-washy that it instilled me with a will to show them how it's really done. The discussion group was more like a cult; say a word against the moderator or his acolytes, and consider yourself hen-pecked. No thanks. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I want to pursue Hitchcock because he is eminently worthy of a creative and thorough eye and ear, such as mine are. Too many film scholars are epigones of epigones. I could complain, or I could make my own contribution; I think I would prefer to choose the latter.

Friday, April 13, 2007

A Humbling Experience


I submitted a partial manuscript to the legendary Coach House Press yesterday. It is a confusing place. I've passed it a few times, and I seemed to remember there being a door that opened onto bp nichol lane. Well, was I ever wrong. I walked around to the back, and at first found nothing but a tree and a door that didn't look much like a front door to a press. I returned to bp nichol lane, and saw someone working the presses through the window. I motioned to him, and he opened what was kind of like a door, but not really. I asked him about who made the decisions about which manuscripts get published. He didn't know, and he told me to go up front to find out.

No one was in "the front." There was a typeset office, and a crowded little compartment housing books and a computer that could have been an office had anyone occupied it. There was a narrow stairway leading upstairs, but I wasn't sure whether there was anything up there besides a bathroom. I looked around a bit, picked up a business card, and frantically tried to remember what the building looked like from the outside. Was there an extensive second floor? Finally I bit the bullet and ascended the stairs. I was stopped near the top by a fresh, earnest-faced woman named Alannah. I asked her about the protocols for submitting manuscripts, and suddenly I felt like a teenager again, approaching someone I'm crushing on. It wasn't her so much as Coach House Press itself. Their legacy is a little intimidating, I have to admit. I mean, bp nichol, Christian Bok, Darren Werschler-Henry, and Steve McCaffrey. Yikes!

Thankfully, Allanah cut to the chase and asked for the manuscript. I felt a little sheepish because I had only put my snail mail address on my cover letter, and they prefer to reply via email. But that's one of the advantages of going in person: you can compensate for such deficiencies by simply writing your email address on the cover letter.

When I think about it, I have manuscripts more appropriate for CHP than the one I handed over, but it's the project that has the most momentum for me right now. Yes, it's the collaboration with terminus' own Cecile Carriere.

You should check out Coach House's Websites, because they publish great books.
http://www.chbooks.com/