June 24th, 2011

Up to date doings

A few things I am/will be/was up to:

Talking about punctuation in dialogue and John Metcalf’s (excellent) commentary on it, along with Cathy Stonehouse, on The Devil’s Engine on the Biblioasis blog.

I also participated in a discussion of Social Awkwardness Dread hosted by the lovely Jessica Westhead on Open Book Toronto. Hilarious and refreshing to see that so many of us are worried about the same sorts of things.

Upcoming is my story “Waiting for Women” on the wonderful short-story website Joyland around the middle of September, which I am very excited about! Yay!

And to provide some content other than just links, here is a short transcript of a conversation that took place in J’s car yesterday:

R: What’s that?
J: What?
R: There, on that Escalade? Above the name?
J: That’s a sticker. It’s supposed to look like bullet holes.
R: Seriously? They make stickers like that?
J: Yeah.
R: Well, it totally worked on me–I thought it was bullet holes. I am the target market for that sticker.
J: You seriously thought it was bullet holes?
R: Well considering it’s a minivan* and we’re in Scarborough…I was hoping to be wrong though.

*Internet research indicates an Escalade is not a minivan. But it looks like one!