Ryan Turner

You can now check out the Quill & Quire’s review of What We’re Made Of under the “Press” heading above.

Own the Podium, the Coke commercial that culminates with ”we’ll show them whose game it is”… two days in and I’m already choking on patriotic rhetoric. Let’s cheer them on, great, but does it really matter that we didn’t win a gold medal in 1976? How many times do we need to hear this?

I now have twenty-nine appliances in my home. I’ve walked around counting all the things that plug in. A refrigerator, a dishwasher, a microwave, a toaster, a blender, a mixer, three clock-radios, three computers, a television, a stereo, a dehumidifier, an air purifier, a wood pellet stove, five lamps, two printers, an electric fan, a coffee maker, a DVD player, and two plug-in phones. When the power goes out – like it did one night last week – the house becomes eerily quiet. It’s a quiet I forget exists. A quiet that makes me nervous to pee at the thought that I might wake my next door neighbours.

Ten nights ago, with the snow coming down hard at 5am, a scream pierced that silence. For the past week I’d been dealing with a rat in my basement apartment. I’d set sticky traps, and the rat had kicked them across the room. I’d put down snap traps and the rat had nimbly eaten the bait without them springing. He’d gotten away with four carob chips, a piece of popcorn covered in peanut butter and a healthy chunk of havarti. On the night in question, I grabbed a flashlight and scurried downstairs. My tenant was standing in the dark with a hammer. There was a bit of blood on some paper at her feet. She whispered that the rat was in her good leather boot. If it would have been me living down there with a bleeding rat in the dark, I would have been long gone, but there she was with the hammer. I’d had nightmares about what to do with it if it ever got stuck to those traps, and now I had come to the moment of reckoning. I half-joked that if it screamed she was on her own. By this time I was wearing hockey gloves and holding an old ballhockey stick with a plastic blade. I pushed the blade down to keep the rat from coming out. I said, It’s bleeding in your boot. Do you want your boot back? And her look said definitely not. A moment passed as the two of us stood there, uncertain what came next. I had a yearning for the buzz of an appliance: the air purifier, my wood pellet stove. At the top of the stairs, out the window, I could see the white of blowing snow. I looked down at the silhouette of the boot. I couldn’t step on him. I knew I should – that it was the humane way - but I just couldn’t do it. I thought maybe if I stood there long enough the boot and the rat would burst into flames. Here is what I finally did: I got a bucket and put the boot into the bucket with the hammer and the hockey stick still pressed inside holding the boot closed. I took the boot outside in the 5:30 cold and I filled the bucket with snow. Then I got a box and put the bucket with the boot, the hammer and the hockey stick into the box. I cut a hole in the box so the hockey stick would come up through the top and I taped the box closed. The closest thing to me was a flower pot so I put that on top of the box and retreated inside to monitor my work from the window. I kept imagining him chewing through the boot, digging his way through the snow, prying open the tape but giving up at the weight of the heavy pot that it would have to topple over to escape. What if I piled snow on the pot? Or put the box into trunk of my car…. but then there was the hockey stick. If there would have been heat and noise and a bit of light, I like to think it would have all gone down another way.

Here are some photos from last night’s reading at Saint Mary’s University with me and Steven Galloway. There was a good crowd despite the snow.

photo by Brian Bartlett

photo by Brian Bartlett

Later this month I’ll have the amazing opportunity to read with Steven Galloway at the Saint Mary’s University Gallery Reading Series on January 20th at 7pm, and then the very next day, I’ve been invited to take part in a panel discussion and Q&A with Chad Pelley, Jon Tattrie and Lee Thompson as part of the Halifax Club’s Literary Luncheon series (12-2pm).

… chosen by Halifax Magazine’s editor Trevor J. Adams: http://top100bks.blogspot.com/2009/12/trevor-j-adams-top-ten-books-for-2009.html

Starting in January, I’ll be teaching a short fiction workshop at the Writers’ Fed, so I thought it might be a good idea to poke around the web and see what others have to say. So far I’ve found some gems. But I think my favourite is the book of 1001 character quirks: “If you have trouble making your characters come to life, this will be a boon! It’s a store of 1001 Character Quirks! Just like having a magic box of ideas for every character you could ever imagine … mix and match characteristics to come up with memorable characters for all your stories.”

For the writer without a shred of imagination, you can cut and paste these so-called character quirks straight from this wonderful book. I decided to start compiling my own list of 1001 (or maybe 5) character quirks in case writers out there have used up, and are at risk of repeating, the quirks in the above-mentioned tome.

1. if your character is elderly, give him or her a few nose hairs; have him or her wear a bathing cap when he or she is mowing the lawn.

2. give your character a sore neck that forces him or her to look down and have him or her comment frequently on the shape, texture, size, etc of other people’s shoes.

3. give your character a sore neck that forces him or her to look up and have him or her frequently run into unseen obstacles (ie. fire hydrants, lawn furniture, children under the age of six).

4. if your character is missing teeth, give him or her the ability to shoot peas at unsuspecting grocery clerks.

5. have your character believe that his or her pet has the uncanny ability to understand Mandarin, a language which he or she was prohibited from learning by his or her American (and staunchly anti-Communist) father.

http://herenb.canadaeast.com/reviews/article/861988

Things I packed for my three-day trip to St. John’s: my laptop, three pairs of boxer shorts, two pairs of socks, two shirts, a heavier sweater-type shirt, my miniature pillow that Erica calls the bean, an extension cord, my toothbrush, deodorant, a copy of my book to read from, two fancy book-signing pens (in case the first one gets lost I suppose), Orhan Pamuk’s memoir Istanbul, and finally, a medium-sized fan to create white noise while I sleep. The fan was larger than I expected and I had to force it down into my large backpack with the heel of my foot. I wondered if I were to bring it in my carry-on (it wouldn’t have fit anyway) what they would say. Could I cobble together some sort of weapon from the plastic blades?