A collection of short stories where the humour runs dark and the slipstream bubbles up.
...imagine if Raymond Carver called up George Saunders and Joe Lansdale, and they all went drinking with Neil Gaiman.
“… it's clear that Terlson is way ahead of the curve in terms of crafting an engaging premise that reaches for elevated territory and reinvents enduring archetypes of action and suspense.” J. Schoenfelder
"Sometimes brutal, often demanding and always complex, this novel will repay the reader who likes their assumptions challenged and is happy to walk away from a book with minor questions unanswered but the big ones definitely dealt with! It’s likely to satisfy those who enjoy Hammet and/or Philip K Dick and who like their fiction very noir indeed." Kay Sexton
"I love a novel that you can't put down, and this is one of them." L. Cihlar
Tuesday, December 25, 2007 at 02:40PM 
The best shout of all time:
Merry Christmas and God Bless us everyone.
May all your shouts be merry.
Monday, December 17, 2007 at 08:58AM On the weekend my story, Rain Day went live at the audio mag Bound Off. It was fascinating to hear someone else read the story; not quite the cadence I would use, but the guy had a great voice.
In the mood for a baseball story?
Listen to it here:
Rain Day
Friday, December 14, 2007 at 04:43PM 
Seeing that it is the weekend already, I realized I haven't been blogging much. I am juggling a lot of plates this time of year. But the weekend promises mulled wine, good books, and curling up by the fireplace. Wait a sec... I don't have a fireplace! I guess I'll just need to lean in close to the lamp.
I've been reading a lot of short fiction from the Bass Collection (edited by Stephen King) and the New Granta Collection (edited by my literary hero, Richard Ford). So far the Granta has been the better of the two, weighing in at 750+ pages there is a lot to dig into. And the great thing about collections is you can open them anywhere. Classics by Carver and Cheever are mixed with Saunders and Gaitskill (I feel like I am reading a recipe book - add a dash of Munro and stir).
I've also been slogging through Pynchon's, Crying of Lot 49. Any moment now I am going to figure out what the hell is going on. Or so I hope.
So find a good chair, get a good lightbulb that casts some heat, a mug to mull over, and enjoy your weekend. And stay out of the mall!
Cheers.
Monday, December 10, 2007 at 10:37AM 
I am no birder, but I love birds. I don't keep one of those journals where you write down where and when you saw a different species. But I've always been amazed by the range of beauty in our airborne friends.
When I travel I am on the lookout for local birds that I won't find in my own backyard. In Florida, I stood amazed at the groups of pelicans that swarmed the dock near St. Petersburgh. For this prairie boy, Pelicans were mostly found in storybooks and Saturday morning cartoons. Up close these birds looked like they were from another planet, something Martin the Martian would cram into a spaceship.
This weekend at a friend's farm, I cleared brush, shovelled snow, and helped move a solar panel. Basically, manly man stuff. One of the highlights was sitting in his cabin drinking great hot coffee, soaking in the warmth of the woodstove and looking outside to see a group of birds that I'd never seen before. And this was my home province. The Pine Grosbeak are a gorgeous, gentle bird, we could almost walk right up to them. Best of all they have that sort of fat happy body that winter birds seem to share (I also love Chickadees). In minus 35 weather, you have to admire their type - and I pat my own round winter belly in solidarity.
I didn't have my camera with me, but the photo above is a good example. Come to think of it, my hair kind of stands up lke that too.
Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 10:37PM Well after much cheering, yaying and general ballyhooing, it's back to work for me - not that I spent a week celebrating the Rider's win (as my lack of blog posts may suggest). But Monday looms, in a good sort of way.
Advent is about waiting, and most writers can really identify with this. I have a lot of stories out there waiting to hear if they will find a home (even a manger will do). But I do need to March on, and let the rejections, and hey, the odd acceptances, trickle in when they may. Nanowrimo finished. I did not.
I did get a lot of work done on the next novel, but then life swept in and I found myself with one too many balls, plates, or Cocker Spaniels (!) in the air. Whatever the hell that means.
I've always liked the hope of Mondays, though. Email that has been waiting on someone's desk on Friday finally hits the out chute. And there is a full week ahead of creativity. Sure, some weeks by Wednesday that creativity has sunk into the sewer looking for albino gators - but you never know.
That's the beauty of Monday, you never know.