I knew it wouldn’t be.

How could it?

I’d spent most of the month indulging. August was really good to me in almost every way that matters in terms of nourishing my soul. (Okay, and filling my stomach. And working out my liver).

I was working on manuscript edits on both a forthcoming traditionally published book, and a self-published book, signed two contracts for short story sales with smaller publishers, and was back-and-forth on edits for another short story sale for an anthology with a major publishing imprint. On top of that, I got to spend times with many of the friends and family who are dearest to my heart.

Dear friends descended into town at the beginning of the month from Colorado, Ottawa, and Sudbury for two different Rush shows in Toronto. That resulted in a series of back-to-back late night food, drinks and conversations (far more than just “an evening with a drink and a friend” as Neil Peart eludes to in the Rush song ‘Time Stand Still’), the kind of laughing where you can’t breath, and a lot of lost sleep.

Immediately after I headed for Calgary, Alberta for When Words Collide, which is less of a conference and more like a reunion with some really cool people I love hanging out with (and yes, drinking and indulging and laughing), and hundreds of other cool people I enjoy seeing every year. (A highlight from that trip, apart from a fun whisky and absinth room party that led to that conference’s almost annual “blanket fort” of giggles and ghost tales was being in a sketch-comedy workshop with Kevin McDonald from The Kids in the Hall).

The day after I’d unpacked my When Words Collide suitcase, I was packing another one to head to Newfoundland with my partner and best friend to spend four days of sampling the local hospitality, music scene, mountainous hiking trails, local breweries, and what I can definitively call a series of dishes of the best fish and chips I’ve ever had in my life.

And the day after we returned, I was 227.4 pounds.

Sigh.

At the start of August I was 218 pounds. In three short weeks I’d back-tracked almost ten entire pounds.

Near the start of August it was so pleasing to be down to that from the 255 pounds I’d measured in the middle of November 2025.

And I got to that weight the long, boring way. No magic bullet. No super-hot or trendy diet or fad. No over-the-top exercise training regiment.

The a-hah moment for me came when my buddy Jim Azevedo and I were enjoying vegan burritos for lunch one day at Author Nation, an annual Vegas conference where I also tend to regularly indulge. We were talking about exercise, diet, and health. Jim is in peak physical condition and I . . . well, I enjoy food and drink. I’m what you might call “well nourished.”

But I was listening and learning. And in that conversation he said something I’d forgotten to pay attention to. The fact that weight management comes down to the math done when you count calories in and calories out.

I returned from Vegas with a new determination to get back to something I’d been trying to do since . . . er, well since my first marriage ended in early 2014.

BTW here’s an excerpt from the opening line of a personal journal I wrote back then.

Thus began a two-page essay where I outlined my grief, quoted the serenity prayer, and determined to control what I could. At that point, it was my weight.

Admittedly, I did lose some decent weight. Which worked out nicely when I got back into the dating scene and met my now partner. (We’re both good and bad influences on one another. First, we’re both procrastinators, so we don’t give the other a hard time for being last minute about EVERYTHING. We also both really enjoy craft beer. So we never give the other person a hard time about having “just one more.” But, ultimately, the good far outweighs the negative. Life is, simply, better with her.)

But that’s really just to illustrate that my “weight and health” goals have been a long-term thing for me. And not just for vanity reasons. High blood pressure is a genetic thing for me, and I’ve struggled with high blood pressure since my late twenties. In my late thirties I was no longer able to control it with exercise and diet, so I started on blood pressure medication. But I do know that a reduction in weight, and focusing on a healthier diet, and proper sleep can have significant improvements on my blood pressure.

But back to this boring daily tracking of exercise, steps, and consumption. (Tracked, for those who enjoy learning the tools I’ve been leveraging, via a FitBit, Google Health, Lose it! and Untappd. Okay that last one is tracking new craft beers, but hey, when I get serious about tracking something I’m as anal as a guy who irons his socks).

That math, applied consistently, tracked over months, has helped me. (I suppose the fact I started recording my daily morning blood pressure measurements allowed me a dedicated spot to also start recording my weight, my sleep, the daily step count, etc).

And it worked. At least right up until those stretches when it didn’t.

In 2026, for example, there were times when I suffered from a respiratory infection and a bad case of shingles. Those were weeks when I was too weak to operate at a daily 500 caloric deficit. Or I was too sedentary and miserable to care.

Every single one of those stretches (or the over-indulgent “fun times” stretches) resulted in all of that hard work I’d achieved rolling back . . . right back onto rolls on my belly.

But here’s what I keep having to relearn, and remind myself. I have lived this exact story with words and with my writing.

I’m sure every writer has.

There are months where the words flow, where the pages stack up, and when you hit your word count before the sun crests the morning sky. Those are days when you feel like you’ve “cracked the code.”

And then there are other times—days, weeks, months, where you might be sick, or traveling, or grieving, or perhaps just simply staring at a blank manuscript page, or searching hopelessly for a storyline that has wandered off into some territory where you don’t know how to possibly call it back home.

Or perhaps the words come. But they’re not the right words. At least for that particular project.

The temptation, when that happens, is to read today’s word count, today’s numbers, as the final verdict in your writing life. But that’s a dangerous, and self-defeating thing to do.

I felt like I’d stalled a little in my writing, where in 2022 and 2023 I didn’t release as many books as I had in the previous years. In 2022, I published 3 books. In 2023 I published 2. (And in those two years, 2 of those 5 books were co-authored). Because in 2021 I published 7 books.

2024, however, saw me back to 5 books. And 3 in 2025.

But this year, I’ve published 2 so far, with 3 more on their way. (One of those books I’ve been working on for almost four years now and have finally finished it. The the other one I’m significantly behind on). I’ve also signed contracts for 4 different short stories, one of which was already published this year, and another (coming in 2027) is with a major publisher.

There are highs and lows. In the long run, those “dry years” still ultimately, add to the long term total.

Also, reflecting back to that really low early part of 2014 when my marriage had ended . . . admittedly, it was a really hard time. But later that same year I met my partner Liz. We had our first date in late July of 2014. And on the tenth anniversary of that first date, we got married in Central Park (important because we loved visiting the city together near the spot where Michael Andrews, the main character in my Canadian Werewolf series, often morphs from man to wolf and back in Central Park).

But, to go back to my weight storyline, a single-day’s weight is often a combination of salt and water variances. And a single day’s word-count could be chalked up to lack of sleep, or mood, or even having the time to get those words done.

Each one of those is a moment. But neither of them is the complete story.

The story is the line you can trace only when you take the time to go back far enough. The full week, or month. The six-month line. The year. The decade.

Because that’s where the truth endures. And that long-term truth is often a lot kinder that the obsessive daily readings might suggest.

Rush has a song called “Marathon” that I’ve quoted numerous times in my essays here and on my Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing podcast.

Among other things, “Marathon” is a reminder that a lifetime holds a great number of things, a great deal of accomplishments, so long as you don’t set yourself on fire (and go down in flames) in that first mile of the journey.

I didn’t hear that song in the awesome live sets I enjoyed from Rush while hanging out with awesome friends earlier this month after spending a king’s ransom on tickets and beer that none of us could properly afford.

But seeing this R50 (50th anniversary tour), of two best friends (Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson), joined by the talented Anika Niles and Loren Gold, after having suffered the loss of a dear friend and fellow “guy from work” (Neil passed away in early 2020) to return to the thing they’ve loved doing more than anything else their entire lives, inspired me. And reminded me.

Reminded me of that Marathon that Neil wrote about. Reminded me of “The Garden” (the last song Neil wrote on the last track of the last Rush album—and perhaps the most powerful message about the measure of a life well-lived. And you can be darned-sure they played that song, and that I bawled when they did).

So what if the scale went up a few pounds?

So what if the manuscript I thought I’d be done by now has stalled?

Neither one of those is a permanent verdict.

Tomorrow, I’ll log the breakfast and coffee. I’ll open the Word file and put some words down. One by one. Word by word. Sentence by sentence. Paragraph by paragraph.

I’ll take those next steps. I’ll write those next words.

But I won’t worry how many I get done tomorrow. I won’t let that get me down, particularly if there are none, or only a few words.

I will, however, track, at the end of the year, how many I completed.

And I’ll let that lift me up!

In it he explores how he is a mild introvert who sometimes masquerades as an extrovert.

And he hit the nail of the way I operate right on the head. Or perhaps he pinned that tail right on the arse of this stubborn donkey.

Or, to mix metaphors, he hit the nail dead center on my tailbone. Because in that same way when you fall on your tailbone and you feel that white-hot flash of pain, often followed by wave after wave of echoing pulses for hours afterward, I kept thinking about that all day.

And wondering about the term I’d adapted to help describe myself to people.

Terry talked about having to inhabit a different part of himself when speaking at a writer event. And how it’s not “acting” or a “masquerade” as much as it is slipping into a different persona of the same person.

By default, as many writers are, Terry likes the solitude and introverted nature of writing. He gets a recharged from that alone time. But when put on the stage, he feels the need to “step it up a notch” and can also get a charge from that too.

He used a term he’d recently discovered—Ambivert—to describe it.

I have, for years, used the term Omnivert to describe myself. And, apart from being completely unqualified at self-diagnosis, and also someone who derives the most incredible pleasure for more than 40 years of making shit up—er, I mean writing, crafting eloquent prose and fascinating characters who are put into incredibly dynamic situations and seeing how they either get out of them or fail miserably within the worlds I’ve created and the obstacles I keep throwing at their heads—I thought I had made up that term.

I’d been thinking about dinosaurs. I mean, c’mon, I’m still just a big kid at heart, and most kids are fascinated with dinosaurs. It was when learning about dinosaurs, after all, where I first remember the terms herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore.

An omnivore is an organism that eats both plants and animals for nutrients and energy. It is derived from the Latin terms omnis (all) and vorare (to devour or swallow) and thus means “all-devouring.”

So I was having fun with wordplay, as I like to do. I figured if I was able to bounce between introvert and extrovert as needed, then perhaps I wasn’t either, but, instead an omnivert.

Little did I know that the term already existed.

If only I’d had access to thick books where I could look up words and their meaning or perhaps even some sort of desktop electronic that connects me to a world wide web of linked computer systems, or maybe even, if I dare dream, a handy device that I could easily carry around with me all the time in order to receive and send phone calls and messages that could also connect me to vast resources of information and articles and virtually almost anything I could ever want to look up along with millions of things I would never watch to see.

But yesterday, upon reading Terry’s article, I did some searching into definitions for the term. Yet another rabbit hole when I suppose I should have been writing. Oh well.

Simply Psychology describes an omnivert as an individual who fits into both extremes of the extroversion-introversion personality spectrum as defined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Below is a quote from that article.

They say that an omnivert might be initially hard to spot as they have the tendency to react entirely differently from how they may have presented themselves in previous situations. That they can be social, quiet, spontaneous, and pensive, depending on the situation and their mood. But that they don’t show these qualities at the same time. When, for example, they feel extroverted and social, they may show no sign of their introverted side. And vice versa.

I suspect, because I don’t comfortably linger between the two, but rather tend to drive to the two extremes, I accidentally adopted the proper term. I believe that I’m less in control of where I end up on the spectrum than the situation is. Or, perhaps, what I know is expected of me in a situation.

I can be horribly sky and awkward in most social situations, particularly when I don’t have a purpose. When I walk into a room filled with people and I don’t have some sort of goal or purpose I’ll often gravitate to the back of the class, the darkest, quietest corner, happy to be hidden and not visible. I’m happy to be a fly on the wall that nobody notices.

But if I see someone I know, when I walk in, I’ll gravitate toward them. I’ll find energy in that familiar face. I can cling to them for the comfort I need.

Of course, if someone approaches me, I’m perfectly fine to interact and engage. In fact, I prefer it when some brave soul approaches me. Because their approach gives me that purpose I need to come out of my shell.

Despite this default tendency of a turtle/snail who relishes hiding inside that shell, when I have an actual mission, a purpose, a goal, I can instantly shift into full extrovert mode.

I would rather, for example, walk into a crowded room at center stage than have to walk through that crowd without a purpose. Because if I’m on stage, I usually know what my goal or my mission is. It’s to inform, inspire, and perhaps even to entertain. And that I can do.

Once that’s clear, I can adapt into the role needed of me. And since it’s just storytelling, the thing I love most in this world, it’s something I fully enjoy and embrace.

I did, of course, have to overcome extreme anxiety as a speaker. It used to make me so nervous I’d have to throw up before going on stage. I didn’t just have butterflies. I had pterodactyls in my stomach. It took decades and plenty of “exposure therapy” but I did finally manage that anxiety.

I wrote about that a while back.

Repeated exposure to being on the stage helped me to reduce most of my anxiety. I still get nervous, I still often feel like throwing up as I wait in the wings of the stage. But I know that once I’m on stage, once I’m in the role, once I’m doing my duty, the job, the mission, the goal takes hold, and the anxiety slips into the back corner.

I realize, of course, that they way I operate in social situations kind of parallels how I get writing done too.

I write to deadline. Mostly. Having a deadline is what motivates and energizes me to get things done. I’m a PRO-crastinator. A contracted deadline wins every time. (Heck, I’ve given myself a weekly “Monday” deadline to write a new Substack article, and that’s been working since the fall of 2025. And for my Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing Podcast, I haven’t missed a single weekly Friday episode since I launched it in January 2018.)

Deadline. Purpose. Contract. Mission.

As Neil Peart wrote in the RUSH song “Mission” a spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission. (I mean, c’mon, how could I not quote the greatest lyricist this world has ever had?)

The nugget of wisdom for other writers to pull from this rambling article (which is really just me performing a bit of self-therapy), is that if you’re struggling when attending some event, and if you do have introverted tendencies, perhaps having some sort of mission or purpose that you have pre-defined, and even written down, can “give you the legs” you need to get through.

I’m saying that because my default is to be shy and quiet and to hide in the corner. But if I have some sort of mission or goal, it allows me to slide over into the extrovert tendency part of my personality.

For example, let’s say you’re a writer who has never attended a writing conference before or you’re simple anxious and nervous about social situations. But you’ve invested time and energy and expense into getting there. So you want to make the most of it. You might want to consider ways to give yourself a specific goal or mission to complete. As big or as small as you’re comfortable with.

Here are a few ideas. Again, these are a few I came up with. Like any writerly advice you look at take a look at them and see if they inspire something that works better for YOU and your personality/preferences/situations.

1. Set a Conversation Quota. Give yourself a number of conversations to engage in. Three for example. And with that goal met, you can reward yourself by leaving, going back to your room, or even the back corner of the room for a while, and recharge. (Also, remember, as introverts we abhor small-talk, so do your best to get INTO something meaningful). One way is to approach someone whose book, story, or article you’ve read and ask them something about it. Or maybe it’s an interesting piece of clothing, t-shirt with a band name or brand you like that you can compliment them on. It gives them something they’re likely interested and/or passionate about, and you immediately become fascinating to them. (Because let’s admit it, we’re all a little narcissistic)

2. Take up a role instead of a place. If you’re able to prior to the event, volunteer at the registration desk. Offer to moderate a panel. Or perhaps to run the mic during a Q&A. Help an author with managing their signing line. Having a role usually comes with a built-in script and gives you a legitimate reason to talk to people. It gives you focus and a purpose and a reason for being there.

3. Be an interviewer. Arrive at an event with a list of questions you’re actually curious to know something about. Introverts are often strong listeners and asking a good question to the right person can shift the labor of the experience to the other person, allowing you to be more comfortable in listening, and importantly, learning. (Hint, hint: one of the reasons I have a podcast is it gives me a great excuse to be able to talk to so many different awesome people).

4. Adopt another shy/quiet person. I was never good at math, and learned more about it when I tutored those who struggled with it a bit more than I did. The same could work for you recognizing another introvert simply by scanning the room and observing someone doing what you’re doing. Approaching one insolated person and introducing yourself (no small-talk, remember), is far easier than trying to get into a conversation with a group, and you likely just helped someone else feeling awkward and shy. Perhaps even starting up a real friendship since you might be kindred spirits.

5. Play lynchpin/connector. I love this one. If you know that person A offers this and person B offers that, you might just be the H. B. Reece who decided to combine peanut butter and chocolate. Given the opportunity, introduce these two people together and explain why you thought they might want to connect. It’s a solid mission, and it’s a giving thing, to two people at once. It allows you to perhaps create a little bit of magic and even allows you the opportunity to escape to solitude once they hit it off, if that’s how you need to recharge.

6. Collect for following-up in the way you’re more comfortable. Gather up a handful (three to five) business cards of people you chat with, making some sort of note about what you discussed. Commit to emailing them within 48 hours of the event with some sort of follow-up. A link to a video, article, or meme related to what you discussed. Some common ground, or perhaps even something that you believe might help them. Again, you’re giving them something, and doing it in a way you’re likely far more comfortable doing - writing.

The key is to remember that unstructured social time with no defined edges, no specific goals and missions, is terrifying. At least, it is to me. Adding some sort of structure, goal, mission, or deadline, can provide the base that you can stand on to prosper (or, to at least get through the situation with a reduced amount of anxiety).

It’s so interesting how, for me, writing and reflecting is a way for self-analysis.

For example, in composing this article, I think, for the first time I just realized yet ANOTHER reason why I have been a fan of Peter Parker/Spider-Man my entire life.

I always thought it was because of my tendency to be a shy and quiet nerd. Like Peter Parker. Who then puts on a mask and costume and becomes a wise-cracking superhero.

I hid behind a typewriter instead of a mask, but was always drawn to parallels between myself and Peter Parker. He was a nerd and a loner. He was raised by a loving aunt and uncle who coddled him and were overprotective. I was a nerd and preferred my solitude and alone time. I was adopted by two loving and overprotective parents. (And also, yes, despite being terrified of heights, if I were to gain the super powers he had, I’d overcome it all to swing between buildings and help fight crime and other injustices).

But I realize now that one of those other reasons I was likely drawn to Peter Parker/Spider-Man is because I alternate between those two alter egos as the situation dictates. I’m a quiet and shy nerd who can be compelled to “leap into action” and entertain, inform, and inspire.

Like nerdy, quiet Peter, I lived most of my younger life as that nerd. But I was able to step into a class-clown role in elementary school, relishing in making others laugh.

And at high school, while still relatively quiet and shy most of the time, I enjoying writing articles for and editing the school newspaper (that role gave me a purpose in talking to and interacting with other people), I loved performing skits and even took on the role of Student Council President, despite not being one of the popular kids. (It was a really small school, with about 300 students, so it wasn’t hard to take on numerous roles at the same time.)

I suppose that’s another reason why I’ve been drawn to writing my entire life.

For one, I can’t not write. It’s in my blood. It pulses there. I love story. I love consuming and telling stories. I think I’m a born storyteller. But two, I’ve long known that writing itself is very therapeutic for me.

I write true ghost stories and horror because I’m afraid of the dark, what monsters and ghosts might be hiding in the shadows, and researching and exploring these types of stories is a kind of therapy for me.

I realized recently that my urban fantasy Canadian Werewolf tales have been ways for me to explore my own alter-ego effect, and even part of the ‘black-out’ experiences I had growing up with epilepsy. (My hero, Michael Andrews doesn’t only leverage his enhanced abilities with a “great power/great responsibility” fashion, a la Peter Parker/Spider-Man, but he also suffers from an uncontrollable change into a wolf, times when he loses control and completely blacks out).

I suspect that became more and more obvious as I was writing Only Monsters in the Building, a story where Michael, my werewolf, goes to a secret resort in Upstate New York that that treats a group of Paranormals who aren’t able to live up to who and what they are. He is a werewolf who can’t control his changes (like the two other werewolves he has encountered), he is in group therapy with a mermaid who repels men, an extroverted troll who invites people under his bridge instead of scaring them away, a vegan vampire, and a few other misfit monsters. Putting Michael into therapy took me on my own very obvious writing/therapy journey.

Writing has always been one of the ways I can analyze things, chew on ideas, reflect on things in ways that might be easier than straight out therapy. I mean, really, I’m just talking to myself, telling myself stories, explaining things to myself. Sometimes other people read those things. And most of the time, it helps.

Even when I’m not conscious of whatever it is I’m exploring, the act of writing does something, triggers something in me, that is pleasing. I’m often miserable when I’m not writing, or creating, or storytelling in some way.

Which leads back to this article. And why I wrote it.

I set myself a mission to create content that might help other writers. I usually am prompted by something I saw, read, heard, or experienced in some way and wanted to reflect upon more.

I don’t wait for the muse. I attack the idea with the hope that, as I explore it, I come up with something that might be useful for other writers. It gives me the purpose, the goal, the drive, to get it done.

And somewhere along the way, I also do a bit of that self-therapy that writing has always been for me.

At the end of it, like the way I feel right now, there’s that sense of pride that I’ve created something new, and that I’m sharing it with the world, and that, hopefully, it has helped someone else.

I think it was an appropriate topic for both of us, as we’ve been published authors for a combined total of about three quarters of a century. I think Rob’s first published work came the year before my own first rejection which was in 1984.

Among the bits of advice we shared with the packed-room of authors included the value of writing things that are personally interesting, that spark your own curiosity, or that you have passion for.

Because, ultimately, publishing is a fickle world, and you’d have a better chance walking into a casino and walking out richer than you went in than finding financial success within the writing and publishing world.

I’ve long shared with authors the importance of writing with passion. You can read more about it in this article…

. . . but, in a nutshell, the satisfaction of investing your blood, sweat and tears into a project you are personally excited about working on is one of the only guarantees you’ll get in that writer journey. Because most books don’t sell that well. So it means you win just creating the book. And if it happens to sell, you win AGAIN.

But it also leads to something another good friend of mine, James A. Owen often tells other writers. “I believe in you, and I won’t let you fall.”

Sometimes, when toiling in the fields, a writer loses that faith, struggles with that passion, and begins to doubt themselves, and stops believing in themself. That hurts me to see. And it’s one of the reasons why I do my best to go out of my way to lift up other writers wherever and however I can. (And I don’t mean blowing smoke up their ass—but instead, appreciating their passion and enthusiasm, and finding ways to help them)

As James A. Owen also says: If you really want to do something no one can stop you. But if you really don’t want to do something no one can help you. James also speaks about how when you’re enthusiastic about something, and determined, people will often find ways to help you.

For example, when I was first self-publishing back in 2004, I remember how my friend and mentor Robert J. Sawyer cautioned me about what I was getting into. (Back then it was even before the “wild west” of self-publishing, and a major way for a writer to lose respect. But, even though Rob cautioned me about what I was getting into, he never stopped supporting and helping me, even offering me a blurb for that first self-published horror story collection). He saw my passion, and helped prop me up.

I’ve also tried to help other writers. And I’m really following the example of awesome folks like Rob and James, and so many other writers who take the time to offer a bit of support, encouragement, and belief in other creators. I mean, really, what does it cost us to pay it forward in whatever little ways we can?

Because sometimes, that little bit of faith, encouragement, or belief might be the thing that the other author needs. That small grace might get them through a challenging moment of self-doubt. And help remind them of the value of believing in themselves.

Also, this morning, when I went to open Microsoft Word, I found the remnants of something I’d drafted about authors who believed in themselves, who experimented, who didn’t take the book industry’s “No!” for an answer and charted their own unique pathway through publishing.

It was a bit of the backstory of another writer friend: Terry Fallis.

And as I was reading through my notes and thoughts about Terry’s unique and unorthodox journey into publishing (a fantastic example of someone who wrote with passion and didn’t let the traditional publishing road blocks get in his way) I realized I did play at least some small part in that journey. (And no, before I go on, I’m not going to break my own arm patting myself on the back. But Terry has shared with me the small but perhaps important role I played in that journey because, as a bookseller, I believed in him)

But, speaking of Terry’s journey, I’ll try to compose a bit of a brief look at it.

(Though, admittedly, my version isn’t only extremely short, it’s nowhere near as entertainingly written as Ter’s version. Go check out Terry’s own multi-part storyline about it. Here are the links. Part 1: In the Beginning. Part 2: What pushed me over the edge to start writing? Part 3: But how do I write a novel? Part 4: Striking out with the publishing establishment f. Part 5: A Book Making Its Way. Part 6: My Leacock shock. Part 7: Post Leacock: A whole new world. Part 8: Canada Reads 2011. Part 9: What? A TV miniseries? Part 10: And a stage musical, too?)

Terry, a lifelong creative person from a creative family, had written a satirical novel about Canadian politics called The Best Laid Plans. Agents weren’t interested. Editors weren’t interested. Publishers weren’t interested. How could anyone be interested?

Honestly, I’m not sure if the topic area could be any higher on the scale of “boring” and “not interesting.” I know that I, for one, felt exactly that way when I first heard about it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Needless to say, Terry met roadblocks when it came to traditional publishing. But, as mentioned, he’d been a singer and writer his entire life. He wasn’t going to let something as minor as “nobody was interested in this book” stop him.

He was, after all, quite fond of his particular “fish out of water” storyline of Angus McLintock. It had moments of humor and tenderness. The narrator was also someone who worked in Canadian politics. (Terry had worked in the past as a script writer for the Canadian government and was familiar with that world)

With a background (and a day-job) in marketing, Terry leveraged his creative and advertising-world skills to record an audio version of the book which he released chapter-by-chapter in podcast format.

He followed that with a print-on-demand version of the book (paying one of the world’s largest vanity press outfits. Before you judge him, this was the VERY early days of self-publishing. He was doing this in 2005, pretty close to my own first self-published book in 2004).

This was also the earlier days of podcasting. A few other writers (like Scott Sigler) had leveraged podcasting in a similar way. And Terry’s podcast caught on. He had listeners from around the world.

I was one of them.

Reluctantly, at first.

At the time I was the Book Operations Manager for Titles, the bookstore at McMaster University. I’d rec’d an email message from Terry letting me know he was a graduate of the university (Engineering) and that he’d self-published a book and was curious to know if I’d be willing to carry the book.

Though I’d long been an advocate for local authors, I’d already had almost fifteen years of experience as a bookseller seeing enough hastily compiled and unedited self-published books with ugly covers to instantly roll my eyes.

But he was a graduate of the university. I figured I’d owe him at least a look at what he book was about. Oh no, another cringe. Because I could hardly imagine a more boring topic that was the furthest from anything I was interested in.

So I moved on with my day.

But Terry was persistent. A few days later I came back to my office to a voice mail message from him.

I sighed. Then went off to search for his website.

And that’s when I saw he had a podcast of the book. I had been a podcast listener for several years already and back in those days there weren’t nearly as many available. So I figured I’d check out his book by downloading the first episode, side-loading it to my little mp3 player, and listening on my walk from central campus to the furthest parking lot. It was about a fifteen minute walk.

I figured that would be enough.

It was a well-produced audio, and Terry’s voice was pleasant to listen to. But then the story hooked me almost immediately.

I was captivated by the humor, the tone, the characters. It had elements from two beloved writers. It reminded me of John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my all-time favorite novels. I only later learned that it was also a fave of Terry’s) and some of the humor from Robertson Davis in his ghost story collection High Spirits. (I think at some point Terry also shared with me that Robertson Davis was another of his favorite writers).

The first thing I did when I got home was download the rest of the available episodes.

And the following day I called Terry back to tell him I’d loved what I’d read of the novel so far and would be honored to have him come to our bookstore and do a launch for it. And then I binged the rest of the book.

I then I went on to Ingram (the POD book was available to bookstores as a non-returnable title), and ordered 45 copies. I didn’t care that they were not returnable. I loved the book, and knew that if they didn’t sell at the launch, I’d hand-sell them to people.

A few weeks later, Terry came out to McMaster and several faculty members and other folks who worked at the university came out to support him. The Daily News and student newspaper covered the story.

Terry was such a delightful author to have at the store. He was entertaining, pleasant, funny, and kind. He won me and the staff over so heartily. On that launch day we sold almost every single title brought in that day. I immediately went and ordered more stock for the story so that we could always have the book in stock. It was, after all, a recent favorite of mine, and I knew I’d be putting it into the right readers’ hands if they were looking for a fantastic humorous yet touching novel.

Little did I know that the enthusiasm I’d shown to Terry and his novel had a positive impact on him in the fact of the giant uphill battle of the self-published author.

Terry had enjoyed his experience at the store, and when he got home, he felt inspired enough to submit his book for consideration for that year’s Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor. Two things worked in his favor. He had exactly five author copies of the book on hand. And they didn’t have any rules about self-published books not being allowed.

Long story short: The Best Laid Plans went on to win the 2008 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. It is Canada’s most prestigious award for comedic writing. He even beat out Canadian heavyweight names like Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson.

So this same novel that no publisher was interested in had suddenly won a major national award.

An agent and publisher connected with Terry. (Interestingly, he never mentioned this book to friend Douglas Gibson, the head of McClelland & Stewart and the Douglas Gibson imprint, then operated by Random House Canada). In 2011 the book went on to win CBC’s Canada Reads, crowning it “the essential Canadian novel of the decade.” The book was adapted into both a stage play and a CBC television mini-series.

Terry has gone on to win more awards, and publish ten novels, with his eleventh scheduled for November 2026. He is one of a handful of writers whose books I buy on sight. And I’ve loved every single one of them. And I know he and his books are a gift to both Canada and to the world.

But none of this would have happened if Terry didn’t believe in himself, and believe in a novel that was based on the things he knew (speech writing for the Govt, engineering, teaching, marketing) and to persist through the hurdles thrown in his face.

Perhaps my own enthusiasm for Terry and that first novel—my own belief in him—played a small role in helping pad his confidence at a time when he needed it. He was on a bit of a book-launch high, after all, when he submitted the book to a contest in which became a bit of a life-changing contest win.

And that, to me, is the reminder, as both a bookseller/book industry professional and as a fellow writer, to always take the time to pay attention to, to listen to, and to cheer on other writers. Whenever and wherever I can. Including the conference I’ve just returned home from.

Sometimes, all it might take is a bit of genuine interest, a bit of a kind word, a thought, a willingness to sit in the moment and to listen to someone when they are talking passionately about their art. Then they make the art. And that art makes the world better. You never know what sort of different that little bit of something that costs you so little can make.

I’ve learned such things from friends and mentors like Rob Sawyer, James Owen, and so many others. It doesn’t really cost that much to spend a few moments listening to someone, and saying to them through your actions, without stating the actual words “I won’t let you fall” or “I believe in you” or “I believe in what you’re doing.”

Because sometimes that might be all that it takes to help fill the bucket of another creator. No major gestures needed. Just a kind ear or eye. Just a pittance of time. But it could make a world of difference.

And it might be the fuel that can help that creator rekindle the passion and the belief in the project that they were drawn to with passion. It might spark more of the much-needed persistence required to get beyond the many more hurdles that are likely to come their way.

If you’re curious about Terry, you’d be doing yourself a huge favor to check out his novels. And you can also read his own articles, thoughts, reflections, and musings here on his Substack at A Novel Journey.

And for the past two years we’ve engaged in a little post-mortem discussion around an evening fire that has turned into episodes of my Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing Podcast.

This article is a bit of a pre-reflection from last night’s discussion, and will appear in Episode 487 this coming Friday.

My post-interview reflections for each episode are typically only a few minutes. But here I can reflect for a bit longer and also take a few tangents. (Although, let’s be honest, my long-time listeners will know that I take more tangents in my reflections and personal updates than a high school geometry textbook, and like most of those I often don’t lead to a point).

This year’s Aurora Awards celebration was no exception. Not long after the livestream had ended, and we’d enjoyed a few beers and some sharable food items at one of our favorite local haunts, Arabella Beer Park, and we sat in the light of a gas fireplace on the back deck off our bar area and did what people who care about craft often do: we picked apart the work, the performance, the broadcast; we talked about the highlights, the things that went wrong, what went well, and what we might do differently next time.

Somewhere in the debrief in the dark last night she said something generous about my writing and storytelling. It was a flattering offer and gift to me. But then, in almost the same breath, she casually waved off her own creative genius in all the constructive and creative work she’d done to make the broadcast a success, the way you might wave off a compliment about a really cool shirt that you got on sale.

But here’s the thing about this magnificent woman who says she isn’t a storyteller.

She can take a long, meandering recording and find the ninety seconds inside it that actually matter. She can edit it and clip it down to those twenty-two seconds that count, or that contain the right heart. And in the cutting, she captures the essence of what’s there.

She knows which camera angle carries the emotion of a moment and which one flattens it; and she does that in conjunction with the “must” and “must not” shows based on the limited budget (ie, there is NO budget), and props we have available.

She knows where to cut so that a pause lands like a punchline, and she knows when a glance between two people can do more work than anything either of them speaks in dialogue.

That isn’t just evidence of solid editing skills. It’s a solid narrative instinct. It’s the ability to manage a story and timeline instead of a manuscript.

And, to a pantser like me, who, early in the process of recording our livestream’s “cold open” (a humorous “behind-the-scenes” moment or moments of what might have been happening before the broadcast started—often a funny misadventure of some sort that always ends in just getting to the broadcast on time) found myself complaining that we didn’t have a script to follow (because she was directing me and our friend Cliff, who often plays a role in the show’s “cold open” by suggesting an improv of a moment or scene without necessarily telling us the larger picture), she inspired me even further. And I’m a dyed-in-the-wool pantser myself.

I mean, you have to drag me kicking and screaming to a plot outline. Ask my good friend Julie Straus who dragged me, against my will, I might add, into leveraging Plottr when we co-authored two of the books in my Canadian Werewolf series: Lover’s Moon and Hex and the City.

(I might add, BTW, that Julie taught me how to love using Plottr. And I’ve continued to do so, not necessarily for proper plotting the way real adults do it, but leveraging the bits and pieces that work for me. You can hear more about how pansters can use plotting techniques in a great chat I had with Paul Austin Ardoin in Episode 482 of my podcast: Outlining for Novelists Who Don’t Outline.

I think, also, if you talk to Joanna Penn about how my inclination to not plan caused a bit of unnecessary friction, anxiety and less relaxing during the co-authoring of our book The Relaxed Author, you’ll also hear some amusing stories.

I am, happy to report though, that both Julie and Jo are still dear friends. My nasty habit of being a PROcrastinator and PANTSER weren’t enough to destroy solid friendships built on mutual respect and parallel passions for writing and reading and books.

Oh, BTW, speaking of tangents, notice how I opened a parenthesis a few paragraphs up and am only closing it now?)

I also, cheekily wonder how many of you stopped reading to go back and double-check that. Also, how many of you noticed and wondered if it was a typo? But I again digress.

Let’s get back to my reaction to Liz’s compliment of me and pshawing of her own talent.

As an educator, Liz does something I’ve watched with genuine awe and deep-rooted admiration: she uses story to pull teachers, support staff, students, and families together into something unique and that helps make them feel like they belong to something.

Yes, as the school principal, she has to manage policies and send out memos, and keep things run like a tight ship. But within that she creates an interactive community and a shared narrative that people can find a comfortable spot for themselves inside.

Anyone who has ever tried to build community out of a group of exhausted, overcommitted human beings knows exactly how hard that is, and how rarely it’s recognized as an act of storytelling.

But time and again, as she has moved through half a dozen schools since I’ve known her, I’ve admired her commitment to building something solid, an overall flat organization where everyone is recognized for the integral part they play in a child’s education.

And then, then there’s the stuff she builds with wood; the stories she tells in the build, in the design, in the display.

It’s as powerful, but in a different, and perhaps even more subtle way.

Liz built the decks in our back yard. They are three different decks with three different purposes and feels. And yet they work together in the way a classic rock trio like Rush can captivate souls. Our backyard is a most sacredly beautiful space, and one that we enjoy as often as we can.

She redesigned my entire office—the place where I spend the majority of my time on my writing and consulting. She custom build a stand-up desk with bookcases built into it, a sit-down desk attached to that, and a wall of floor-to-ceiling shelves that wrap around the corner and carry on halfway down the next wall, running under the window.

I work in that room every day, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand, through Liz’s carefully crafted design and subtle hints, that the room itself is making an argument about the person who works in it. The sightlines, the order of things, what your eye finds first and what it finds after—those are choices.

Those are the same choices I might agonize over when I’m deciding which scene opens a novel, or what words each character will use to fully ratchet up the tension between them.

In the living room she designed shelving built directly onto the wall, with the baseboard trim carried through so the whole thing looks as though the house was actually built that way.

They looked fantastic, and I was in awe. But then she filled it, and blew my mind again.

She collected, from all across the house books grouped by era and subject, threaded through with objects from our own pasts, and from the accumulated bits and pieces of our parents’ and grandparents’ pasts and lives. She directed and choreographed colors that echo each other quietly enough that you can feel the harmony before you notice it.

Nobody who might stand in front of that area of our living room will think: “That’s a nice space for storage.” Instead, they’ll stand there and read it. Not all that different than someone might read a book in the chair she carefully placed on an angel near one shelf and in a way that perfectly catches the morning sun for reading. The display on those shelves has a beginning and a middle. It has foreshadowing. It has characters who have been dead for decades and are still quietly whispering to us when we sit or stand there, or even walk past it.

That is a story. It just isn’t, in the way that I often tell stories, made out of sentences.

I’ve spent most of my adult life in and around books, and one of the hazards of that life is a quiet, unexamined assumption that story lives in prose and everything else is decoration.

It doesn’t, and it isn’t.

Story is the permanent thing. The vessel by which it arrives into the heart, mind, and soul is temporary, and endlessly negotiable.

A song is a vessel. A photograph is a vessel. A ninety-second video cut with a merciless eye is a vessel. A wall of shelves that holds your grandfather’s woodworking or your mother’s jewelry box at eye level is a vessel. Ink, paint, timber, sound, silence—we have been telling each other the same handful of true things through whatever material was closest to hand since long before anyone thought to write any of it down.

We contain multitudes, as Whitman reminded us, and one creator can absolutely work in more than one form. The novelist who takes photographs isn’t just dabbling. The teacher who builds decks isn’t merely compartmentalizing. Those are the same faculty, the same types of storytelling passion pointed at different materials.

Which brings me, as so many things do, to the mantra I borrowed years ago from Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch: “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”

I’ve mostly invoked it in a professional and writerly context—a reminder that when I stand in front of a room of writers, there is no one in that room I can’t learn something from. Not the thirty-year veteran, not the person who hasn’t finished a first draft yet. Everyone in the room is carrying something I don’t have. And it’s a reminder for me to properly and fully attend to that as much as I can, so I don’t miss out on a fantastic learning opportunity.

But I have long also reminded myself to not apply it too narrowly.

Because if everybody counts, then it isn’t only other writers I can learn craft from. It’s other artists, other musicians, other builders. It’s the film editor’s understanding of rhythm, which is really an understanding of how much an audience can hold before they need to breathe. It’s the woodworker’s understanding of the joint you can’t see, which is really an understanding of structure—and of how much of your best work is supposed to disappear into the thing it’s holding up. Every one of those is a lesson about writing, delivered by someone who has never thought of themselves as a writer.

That is perhaps, one of the reasons why I’ve had numerous other types of creators on my podcast as guests over the years. Because there’s something they all have to teach me, and my listeners.

Everybody counts. Which means every storyteller counts. And a great many more people are storytellers than are willing to admit it.

I mean, when you think about it, everyone is a storyteller. It’s part of the things we share with one another. The discussion around the dinner table about how one’s day at school or work was. The tale shared of the interesting anecdote of something that happened on the way to a lunch meeting with a colleague who works on a different floor of the office. The animated nostalgic multi-voice and perspective retelling of something that a group of friends experienced together twenty-years earlier that takes twenty minutes and numerous laugh-breaks to share.

So here’s what I’ll ask you to do. And know that I’ll be doing the same.

Think of a person in your life who perhaps deflects when you call them creative. The one who says “Oh, I just…” and then names the thing they do beautifully as if the word just could shrink it. Ask them about it. Ask then what they were going for, and why they chose that and not the other thing.

You’ll most likely get a most awesome story. Even if they don’t recognize their own power, their own passion, for sharing a story.

And thank them for the gift of the story they shared with you.

Click on the link at the end of this sentence to watch the full livestream of the 2026 Aurora Awards. You can also watch just the cold opens for 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, and 2022. You can also listen to Liz and I discussing this year’s awards on our post-mortem discussion in Episode 487 of the Stark Reflections podcast.

But after sharing it, I kept reflecting on it. Not just the “it” of the experience I was talking about in that post. But also the “it” of everything about that post.

Sometimes, I like breaking things down. Like I did in previous posts like Anatomy of an Author Photo: Beyond the Standard Headshot.

First, let me share the text of that Instagram post. (And yes, I’ll have expanded on it a little, since, you know, that post was a “first draft” sort of thing. You can read/see the original post here if you’re curious to what I tweaked in this second draft of it)

Updated/Edited text of the original Instagram post:

It’s funny. Just sharing the original post, and then making some tweaks to it, make me want to write about some of those learning experiences in more detail. (Again, derailing the initial intent of this post. Sigh, such is the life of an undiagnosed ADHS writer).

But back to my reflections on the post and the image.

Because when I looked at it post “publish” I realized a few things I had done.

And sometimes, I really like breaking those things down so I can understand the things I perhaps did subconsciously, or even consciously.

First, I took two photos before I was happy with one to share. Here they are:

Let’s first start with the photo itself. And my thoughts, which will appear in italics. That’s my attempt to be as transparent as possible about the things I was conscious of when staging this photo.

I consciously considered where to take the photo and if it should just be the photo of the mug itself. Perhaps the mug on the counter near the coffee machine. The mug on my desk. But as I arrived upstairs with it filled with that magic steaming blend of dark roast, I figured: why not show off the cool new bookshelves and desk that my awesome partner built for me?

So I considered where to place the mug and whether I should be in the shot, or just have the mug.

I looked at the shirt I had on. Western Colorado University, where I got my M.A. in Creative Writing / Publishing in 2024. Cool. That’s nicely on brand for me. No need to change into something else.

Then I sat at my desk and thought a nice book backdrop is perfectly on brand for me. Both my “book industry” persona as well as my “writer” persona.

So I positioned my camera up against my standing-desk upright, turned on two of the lights I use for doing livestreams, and repositioned one of them so the lighting was better (the morning light coming in from behind me created too many shadows).

Then I set the timer to 2 seconds, and snapped the first pic.

Oh no, wait, before I did that, I took some time to align the camera to show things on my desk, and the bookshelves behind me.

• I moved a tissue I’d cleaned my glasses with out of the frame. (Oh yeah, I also took my glasses off for that shot. Most of the time, when I leave the house, or for photos I share, I have my contact lenses in. I’ve never liked the way I look with glasses. Again, that’s not part of my curated look).

• There was a sheet of paper on my desk that was visible and cluttering things up. I moved that out of the frame as well.

• I slid the old rotary phone decoration (it’s a remnant from my mom’s house and makes for a killer weapon as it weighs a good ten pounds—Actually, I stopped writing this to weigh it. It’s 6.6 lbs) over so the mini skull tower would be more visible.

• I pushed my keyboard away from me a little to be more visible as well.

• I slid a notebook and pen more prominently into the photo.

• I aligned the mug so that the logo and tagline were clearly visible and prominent in the front.

Then I sucked in my gut, leaned over the desk a little, pressed the “take photo” button (BTW, I spent way too much time confused as to what to call that button before deciding to just write something and move on), and quickly slid the same hand that pressed the button (whatever its name is) to grasp the coffee mug handle.

That first shot was okay. No visible dandruff/dead skin flakes in my eyebrows. My gut wasn’t showing. Both good. And I had a bit of a wry smile on my face. Serious, but almost a smile. Approachable. Maybe even likeable. Cool.

But then I realized a few things that could be improved. If I leaned forward a little, that really cool skull on the shelves behind me would be more visible. Skulls are also a part of the “Mark Leslie - Chills & Thrills” writer brand.

So I looked at the placement of things and took my “second draft” attempt.

Leaning forward felt awkward, so I figured I should rest my head on a hand.

I did that.

In the second one, I do look a bit more serious, but that was likely because I was straining to maintain the pose that helped the skull on the shelf be more visible, and the fact I could barely make out how the image looked on my phone’s screen, and was wondering if this was working at all.

The shot was good, but here are a few thoughts that hit me:

Too serious. You look like a bit of a jerk. Smarmy? Cocky? Ahh, who cares. Maybe it’s that pensive, thoughtful author look. It could work.

It’s nice that so many of the books on writing are visible in that shot. Chicago Manual of Style. New York Public Library Desk Reference, The Canadian Style. Dictionaries. A book on query and cover letters and manuscript format. Even a few of my own books, too. Cool.

Darn, the 2024 second edition of One Hand Screaming isn’t visible on the shelves behind me. Ugh. Aww, I’m the only one who cares about that. Nobody will notice. It’s fine.

Hmm, I don’t think I remembered to suck in my gut in that second shot.

Oh man, look at the time. I have a podcast to edit. A bestseller list and analytics to run for Draft2Digital. Meetings to prepare for. Good enough.

So I posted it.

Then I looked back at the photo.

And that’s when I caught a few other things that I don’t think I was conscious of, but work towards the branding (and that’s because the shelves were pre-branded as they’re a backdrop to a lot of images and meetings and livestreams).

There’s the “mini me” Mark on the shelf holding a Canadian flag. That’s playful and fun.

There’s a shelf that has books that are meaningful to me. Stephen King’s On Writing, some books that were sentimental gifts from important people in my life, a modern reprinting and an early expensive printing of Christopher Morley’s The Haunted Bookshop. A really expensive first edition of Thoreau’s Excursions (which I used for my M.A. “thesis” project publication of Walking and Other Excursions). The books Earth Abides and Different Seasons. (A Prayer for Owen Meany deserves a place there, but I lost the mass market edition I’d been hanging on to since the mid 90s—I think I loaned it to someone and never got it back).

So there you have it. My attempt to be authentic. But also, be aware that every word here was carefully chosen in terms of my brand as a book industry guy, and as a writer.

How does sharing this make me appear? How will it be interpreted? Is this too self-serving? Too self-reflective? Too navel-gazing?

Will people who only read me on substack for my “business of writing and publishing” approach be impressed by all the books about writing that I have?

Will I appear serious in the image and even in this article? Or just too cocky?

Will some people be intrigued by some of the books on my vanity shelf? The horror novel I, Death. Will they wonder why there are three? It’s the ARC, the original publisher’s version, then the 2nd publisher’s version.

Will they be intrigued by the true ghost story books visible in the image?

Will some readers even be compelled to check out my fiction and non-fiction that’s not related to the business of writing and publishing?

Will anyone wonder why I posted this on a Wed when I normally post longer articles to Substack on Mondays (a habit I’ve been keeping for many months now). Or would anyone even notice that? Am I the only one who cares/pays attention to that?

I have done my best to be authentic in my reflections about that original Instagram post, and even this post itself. Some of the many thoughts racing . . . no, not racing. Bouncing. Slamming around. Chaotically performing a combination of roller derby, a demolition derby, and . . . ugh, what’s a good work that denotes some sort of atomic-level slamming of elements together that could work here? Sigh, I give up, get back to the damn article and post it already.

But even in my attempt at authenticity there are things I’m choosing to share and things I’m not. Things I’m keeping private within this muddle, confusing head.

All of this. All of most of what you see, has been carefully curated.

Even the “honest” bits and pieces. They were still chosen. Like these words. Carefully. Okay, sometimes not all that carefully. I’m sure an editor would have a really good time helping me make this article SO MUCH BETTER. They always do. But I think you get the point.

Perhaps this is really just a long and rambling reminder—particularly when you’re playing that debilitating game of comparisonitis—that the reality is that most of the things we see both in the world, and on social media, have been creatively staged—sometimes consciously, sometimes not.

So when you’re being hard on yourself, cut yourself some slack.

Okay, there. I think I got to the point. But did I? Did this article offer anything useful to readers? Did my attempt to share insights actually help someone learn? Did it remind people to go easy on themselves? Did it remind them that we often judge our unedited/raw selves against some else’s “polished” drafts?

Did I even stay on point with my title? Great Books Are Just The Beginning. Should I go back and change that title. Will I? If so, then I’ll have to cut this bit too.

Sigh. So many thoughts. So much second-guessing. Even in an article that’s trying to remind people to stop doubting or second-guessing themselves. Writer, health thyself!

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