I’m a Canadian writer, freelance editor, and sometime lecturer. I’m also a submissions editor with Apex, as well as a book reviewer for The Globe and Mail, ChiZine and Innsmouth Free Press. And since 2010 I’ve been the editor of the Friends of the Merril Collection outreach publication Sol Rising (and was nominated for a 2012 Aurora Award for same).
I’m a published writer. You can see the Biblio. (Fic) and Biblio. (Non-Fic) pages for more information on what I’ve published and have forthcoming.
I’m also a former artist. You can see some of the work I’ve done in the past at my DeviantArt page: ComesTheNight.
I recently clarified my reasons for writing – because people keep asking me – in a post called Intermission (Battle Cry). I have reposted that information here:
-
A writer’s job is to make you uneasy; to force you to face what you don’t want to see.
It’s a transgressive life. One filled with people who turn their heads away from the darkness, too afraid to look into its face and fight. But you have to fight. Far beyond the too simple “fight or die” battle cry that the sedimentary masses raise to the heavens, there is a headier, more raucous call to be answered.
Sometimes my job is as simple as showing you what is out there, looming in shadows that stretch long and devour the lost – those living on the outskirts – before you ever really even notice they’re gone. I do not give answers. I don’t always have them. But I do know what is out there, and I will paint its face for you, and in measures by turns obscure, brutal, esoteric, and blunt, I will show it to you.
Writing is guerrilla warfare on complacency; on hatred; on abuses both visceral and less tangible. It is a constant struggle to take hold of someone’s skull and turn their face back to the things they’re too ashamed to admit exist.
I am not a soldier. I am not a man of war. But I do carry weapons. These words go before me, honed and sharpened blades excising the necrotic flesh from the tissue of society. I am one voice, but I am legion: the world swells with my numbers, friends and colleagues, strangers and oracles; children of voice all. Let the chorus rage.
This is my battle cry. What’s yours?
-
The “Self Portrait” image pictured above is © Michael Matheson. Please refrain from using this image in any capacity.
