Cover of the Sudbury Ink anthology by the Sudbury Writers’ Guild

I am proud to be included in this anthology – Sudbury Ink –  published by the Sudbury Writers’ Guild. The organisation has a long history of bringing together writers in the community in order to support each other, they’ve been around since 1992.

I’ve had the honour of being the co-chair of the group for the past two years along with my fellow writer Mat Del Papa. While I can’t claim the anthology was my brain-child, I can take some responsibility for helping usher it into print. After a long journey its been fantastic to unpack the books, hand them out to the authors who contributed to them, and also to get them into the hands of eager readers.

This past weekend I gifted a copy to my best friend from high school’s mother who was celebrating her 80th birthday. To see her eyes light up when I told her I had two stories in the anthology and that I had signed the book for her, was a nice reminder of why I ultimately do this. I want to connect with people. To share my stories. To see them off into the world, and to hopefully lodge into people’s brains (in a good way – not in a parasitic ear worm kind of way – KHAN!)

While the book has been available for about a week now, we still have a long way to go in promoting it. Locally you can find it in a couple of the books stores (Coles in the New Sudbury Mall and Bay Used Books on Elm). As well we are hosting our official launch this coming weekend Nov 12 at the Main Branch of the Sudbury Public Library on McKenzie Street. Facebook Event here – https://www.facebook.com/events/528043247395580/

Individual members are also selling copies, if you know any. (Hint – me!) Although my own stash is dwindling fast. An ebook version is in the works and should be available before Christmas – just in time for gift giving electronically!

I have two pieces in this anthology:

Frozen – , a flash fiction piece which originally came to me one cold winter evening while shovelling my driveway and remembering the many times I spent ice fishing in my youth. Ice fishing is not incidentally fishing for ice, but actually drilling a hole in the ice suspended above a frozen lake and jigging for fish in the cold waters below.

Mother’s Day is a longer piece that contains more traditional science fiction elements to it, but remains firmly rooted in family relationships and memories. Mother’s Day explores the question of what is the value of a memory and how clearly would you like to interact with those memories?

I’m looking forward to reading from them this coming weekend. This has been a great experience and with everyone’s support hopefully there will be a volume 2 that will feature more talented writers from Sudbury.