Damn you, Halton Stoves….

…damn you right to hell.

Maybe some of you don’t know Halton Stoves. Consider yourself lucky. This man (and I use the term generously) once petitioned Webster’s to have his picture placed under (“or in the general vicinity”, his words) the definition of degenerate. Upon Webster’s refusing such an absurd request, Stoves was arrested in Booklore pasting wallet-sized photos of his ugly mug into dictionaries, encyclopedias and even in thesauruses (under the word “gadabout”, for the love of Mutt). His writing, while beautiful and thought-provoking, has been known to cause cerebral Herpes Zoster, or brain-shingles. I overheard him once in a bar calling himself a “modern day mix of J. P. Donleavy and the team who wrote for The Littlest Hobo“. While I couldn’t have put it better myself, I found it to be quite pretentious, especially when considering that he was talking to a gumball machine.
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Greetings from Halton Stoves

Hey there fellow authors, hope you’ve got your heads screwed on straight. Stoves here. So I haven’t been two hours out of the hoosegow when my agent calls me up & says I’m washed up if I don’t get my ass in gear and write something on the quick to justify printing my name on his lousy agency masthead. It transpires that everything I’ve ever published is now officially out of print, the last 20,000 unsellable crates of Rawest of the Groins having been committed to the pulper just last month. Here’s to that! I can’t say that it’s my favourite work, although my editor did mention she drank only marginally while working on it. I suppose it’s time to replenish the coffers and restore my legacy. No matter, there’s more where that came from.

So I stroll into my agent’s office and say this, with a great deal of flourish and pomp: memoir. Halton Stoves tells all. From the gutters to gilded greatness and back again. Volumes one through twelve, hardcover, gorgeous filigreed spine, gold leaf and the whole kit. He threw up all over his desk a couple times, but I happen to know he’s not a well man. I expect to hear from him with all due enthusiasm very soon. Also the cheque I sent him in recompense for my bail money bounced. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.
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Lights Out In Wonderland

Lights Out in Wonderland, the new novel by DBC Pierre

That’s right, literati. The best author no one talks about, DBC Pierre, has just released his third novel, Lights Out in Wonderland. It is, according to Pierre, the finale of a trilogy. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the first two books seeing as they have nothing to do at all with each other—not characters, not theme, not even style, really. You should read the first book, Vernon God Little. You should run to your bookstore and order it (because they probably won’t have it). Then you should devour it and marvel at how Pierre wraps the story up with possibly the best ending in modern fiction. Then you should try (not as hard) to read Ludmila’s Broken English, his second novel. It is really quite good and if VGL hadn’t been so damned amazing, I would have truly been blown away by it as well. Then you should go back to the bookstore where you were smart enough to have ordered all of these titles at the same time and get two copies of Lights Out in Wonderland, one for your own brain and one as a thank you to me for changing your life by introducing you to such great work. I prefer hardcover, but a nice trade paperback would suffice.

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Lessons from Last Year: Narrative Mode and Voice

The great thing about NaNoWriMo is that you very quickly learn your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I learned very quickly last time around that I am terrible at writing dialogue. The reason for this is that all of my formative writing experience was writing academic essays in university. I probably didn’t write a word of fiction at all between 2004 and 2009. This means I can formulate an argument well, but I can’t for the life of me write three characters having a conversation without it turning into:

“____” he said
“____” she said
“____” I said

Dreadful.

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High Literature

Just got high and thought of an awesome idea for a story about a guy who always gets high and has awesome ideas that would make millions if he could only remember them the next day and act on them. He continuously gets high in order to remember the amazing ideas but never does and/or gets bored and watches Hell’s Kitchen or something equally ridiculous on the talkingbox. When he finally decides to take notes whilst high, he reads some the next day on a blogboard for amateur writers and thinks they are absolute shit. He gives up thinking his plans are awesome. He does not, however, give up weed.

Notable Quotes: On reading, writing, editing, and the publishing industry

booksWe’re all embarking on this grand project (or folly) together, so I thought I’d share a list of quotes on reading, writing, editing, and publishing to get us all into the spirit of things.

As with most of the content I’ll be putting up here before November 1 —Wri-Day, if you will— this list was posted over on my own blog some time ago, and is published here at the gracious invitation of our kind editor and benevolent dictator. A fun fact? This list has generated over 10,000 unique page views on my blog since it was published exactly 364 days ago, thanks in large part to the picture you see here: It seems when people googled an image search for ‘Books’ a link to my blog’s copy of this public domain graphic appeared on the first page of results for a number of months. Google seems to have some mechanism to spread the love around, because I haven’t seen a disproportionate interest in that particular post in months now, but perhaps we’ll get lucky again here at Stranger Than Truth, and this image will draw thousands of readers to our content.

Anyway, without further ado, the quotes.

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I’ve been instructed to say hello

It’s always an interesting decision—what do you say to introduce yourself? Not really knowing the audience makes it a lot harder.

I’m not sure I’d call myself an author. I have a published novel, but I published it with my own publishing company, so I’m not sure it really counts. Publishing my own novel was not the point of starting a publishing company, but we needed a starting place, and that seemed like a good choice. The book I published was my first NaNoWriMo novel, which I wrote back in 2002. This will be my ninth NaNo. I’ve won six times.

This year, I will be attempting to finish while also tending to a two year old and a five week old. I think it’s going to suck, but at least my wife is supportive. I’m going to write a story in which a person dies in each chapter. In the next chapter, the person who killed the person in the last chapter will die. I’m not sure where it’s going to end up, but it’s going to start with a squirrel.

I plan to cheat, if necessary

Every time I run into a literary wall, my main character is going to pull out his weathered copy of Atlas Shrugged and read the giant speech near the end out loud. Doesn’t matter if he is on the subway or in Subway. Ayn Rand. Loud. In full. And, as the man hunched over the keys trying to tell you this character’s story, well, it would only be fitting for me to transcribe the speech as he gives it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing the character justice. I wouldn’t be doing my job. And goddammit, if there is one thing I take serious in life it is writing real life stuff about real life people and if my main character wants to read the giant Atlas Shrugged speech ten times throughout the course of my (huge fake in-the-air finger quotations) novel, well then, it is my right…no, my duty and obligation, to allow you, the reader, the chance to multiply the cheat-factor and just skip it (like everyone in the entire world actually does with said part when encountering it within the confines of said book). And if you, the reader, the general public, don’t like it, tough tittie. Write a chapter about it in your own book.

Hello from the Yukon

Hey Everyone. The winter is here. Maybe not for you guys, but for me it is. There has been snow on the ground for months already and the sun rarely comes out. I’ve been working 7 days a week now since August and its starting to drain on me. However, since the sun is so scarce, we are cutting back on work and it looks like I’ll have some free time and some money to throw around in the next few months.

My job means that I am constantly having adventures. As a kid I used to canoe around my parents cottage and imagine that I lived in the woods. I guess I lost that part of myself at some point and I became a city slicker. Anyway, now I’m back into the bush and I’m loving it. I use my axe all day long for making posts (which are used to identify a land claim) and for chopping down trees. I’ve gotten really good at chopping down a tree because I have to clear so many out for the helicopter to come and pick me up at the end of the day. Often I find myself pushing through thick alder trees or leaping over dead fall. Last week I ran into a bull moose. I waited for him to walk away and then continued my day. He was a big guy.

Anyway, I’m back in town for this month and taking days off and I’m hoping to write some stories. My real life is probably more wild then any story I could write, so I may include some truths as well. I like what I’m reading here and I look forward to reading more of everyone’s work.

— your good buddy Tim

False Starts: Supertanker

I know wasn’t the only one who found it somewhat surreal when pirates suddenly became a daily topic. South Park tackled the subject brilliantly, but long before that episode aired I had an idea for a story about a man who, upon discovering the re-emergence of piracy on the high seas, goes quite mad and attempts to become a pirate in Lake Ontario.

As is often the case with these whim’s of mine, I didn’t get very far. But I think the beginning is quite fun, so I thought I’d share it. Here goes:

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