Author: craig-spence@shaw.ca
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Harry
Ninety-nine years old, Harry has accepted the inevitable, and is approaching the end stoically. He is concerned to put his affairs in order, and not leave anything undone that should have been. Truth-be-known, he wants to die before Bernice, but is ashamed to admit it. His two greatest fears are to become mentally or physically…
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Buddy
In the throes of early retirement, Buddy confronts the meaninglessness and purposelessness of human Being. A journalist for 40-plus years, he decides it’s time to fulfil a germinating desire to write a novel, loosely based on his own life experiences, but starring a fictionalized hero that can easily be denounced as ‘not at all autobiographical’.…
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Gloria
As their marriage unravels, the tension between Leanne and Buddy will bring Gloria’s latent attitudes to the surface. Will she have to choose between them? A young, up-and-coming, professional woman, Gloria embodies the progress of feminism and is determined to make that new consciousness part of her persona and world. Much as she admires the…
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Leanne
Leanne has transitioned from the role of wife and mother, into her career as a driven real estate agent. She is a top selling realtor in Victoria, a persona she works at sustaining and building every minute of every day. She is conscious of how hard she has had to strive to achieve notoriety; she…
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Jenny
‘Aggressively insecure’ describes Jennifer. For her entire life she has been terrified of being ‘wrong’; the converse of which, she always has to be right, and will go to just about any lengths to uphold her version of reality against all comers. This isn’t a trait that she has learned. She was born that way.…
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Revision Notes – Photographic Memory
20211119-0609 The photo in this episode is never mentioned again in the novel. It should become an iconic image, reminding Buddy frequently of what he’s left behind. He will have it with him in the Matrix when he attempts to do himself in. His uncertainty what to do with the photo reflects the confusion he’s…
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Why go Direct-to-Web?
Direct-to-Web is more than just a digital format that allows publishers to distribute and share books cost-effectively and in an environmentally sensible manner, it also makes possible intriguing new connections between authors and readers. Why should we experiment with D2W as part of our literary mix? A D2W book can be read on a mobile,…
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Dead air?
The phone summoned. Angrily, it sounded to him. GLORIA HOPE, the screen informed him in glaring Helvetica. Buddy watched it in the palm of his hand, felt its panic. Couldn’t cope in that instant. So he let its plea go unanswered, until it lay silent, a useless piece of technology, a complicated instrument that would…
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Charting future history through the Captain’s Glass
My Mural Gazer story, The Captain’s Glass, is a piece of period fiction, a genre I sometimes stumble into, and a place where I experience a sort of personality split, part of me wanting to live the life of other people in other times, another wanting to free myself from the constraints of historical accuracy.…
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Charlie Abbott
Where did all the stones for the Hermit’s Trail come from? Imagine Charlie Abbott shifting them, a few at a time, in a wheel barrow, from wherever he might have found or quarried them, to the network of walls and trails he built stone by stone, year by year in the woods above Chemainus! The…