The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife - Upcoming Readings

In just about a week or so, this will be released:

featuring my new short story, The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife.

You could pre-order it from Amazon, but I'm a big fan of supporting your local bookstore (or my local bookstore, if you're so inclined).

I've signed on for a few things, on-line and in the real world.

There will be an author chat book launch thing on the internet over at Bitten By Books on October 23rd.  I'll have more details as the date draws closer.

I'll also be at Bakka Phoenix Books in Toronto on October 19th for signings and readings with a number of other authors.  If you're in Toronto, please plan on attending.  I'll post more information regarding timing as details come to me.

A week later, at 2:00 pm on October 26th, please make your way to Roxanne's Reflections Book and Card Shop in downtown Fergus where I'll be signing, reading and answering questions.  I'd love to see you there.

Here's a link to the promotional flyer for the reading at Roxanne's.

Procrastination - at least while the coffee perks.

Today is the day the kids went back to school.  My wife has gone to work and I'm in the office, listening to the burble of percolating coffee with my faithful golden retriever asleep by my feet.  It's a whole new start into my writing routine but where to start?

Doc Merl's Rolling Apothecary is well under way with a good deal of life breathed into it during Clarion West's Write-a-thon.  There's also a short story called The Question, a little bit of political science fiction.  Then there's another short story, The Last Repairman, about run-down cyborg people after the fall of civilization.  Doc Merl is the one I'm in the mood to move on but both of the others are for anthologies that have deadlines so I'll need to flip a coin and get flying.

Listen to that - the coffee's ready.  Time to get to work.

The Porch...

Last year our front porch was showing its age.  It was drab and tired and the front steps were evolving from rickety and loose to downright dangerous.  The afternoon my son leaned on the railing and narrowly avoided tumbling with it onto the lawn four and a half feet below was my call to action.  I made a temporary fix that lasted through the winter but springtime illustrated that something a little more permanent needed to be done.

Last year, we had a garage/office built by an excellent contractor.  We knew who we'd ask to fix our porch.

This is how the porch looked shortly after we pulled down those deadly stairs and the aged and weathered siding.

Here's how it looks now, from pretty much the same angle:

We added a bit more deck area on the exterior landing of the porch.  Enough room for a chair:

And I've always resented the amount of wasted storage space under our enclosed porch.  I asked our contractor if there wasn't some way we could access that space.  We sussed it out and here's the solution:

If you look to the right of the steps you...well, you really can't see anything, can you?  Let's have a closer look:

This shot is a little blurred but the hardware is the only thing that suggests there might be a set of doors here.  Let's open them and take a look:

Access to all of the space under the interior and exterior parts of the porch.  He even came up with a hinged, fold-out ramp so I can roll the lawn mover and wheel barrel over the lip at the base of the porch.

Very pleased with the way the porch matches and compliments the garage.  There's still some landscaping to be done to bind everything together but we've got a good start on that.

Once the landscaping is finished I'll add some more pictures.