Ryan Turner

Check out the ReLit longlist before they cut it in half.

The last eleven times I’ve searched the theatres to see a movie, the list has been shamefully bad. Even the Oxford is playing Hollywood garbage lately. What we need is a small independent theatre, on Agricola maybe. A 50-seater, like the one I saw in Budapest with a little book store and coffee shop attached. Or the Arnolfini in Bristol. Ah, to dream.

After returning from Banff, my days have consisted mainly of reading (The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, Diary of Interrupted Days by Dragan Todorovic, Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant) and daily work on my yet-untitled novel. I’ve spoken to writers who can’t imagine working on a book that doesn’t have at least a working title, while I’m the opposite. I can’t imagine working on something under a false name (and to me, any title would feel false right now). It’s like giving a baby a temporary name until you come up with something better.

I do, however, have some favourite words, so maybe I could use one of them: Tripoli, for example, or Botticelli or melliflous. Macadamia. Circuitous. I like the word impeached.

Banff has been incredible. I’ve had the honour of meeting some fabulous artists, and I’ve also been able to get a ton of work done on my new novel.

Side note: If you ever get the movie The Jerk in charades, apparently a suggestive hand motion from the midsection is the way to go (something I never considered). Communicating “sounds like” and proceeding to “lurk” behind pieces of furniture draws only odd looks from the group of 30 sitting around you. Trust me.

On Sunday I’ll have the pleasure of introducing Shandi Mitchell at Chapter’s in Moncton at 2pm. Then on Monday I’ll be reading at the Frye Festival at 8pm at the City Grill as part of the NB Emerging Writers Stage. On Wednesday I’ll be heading out west for six weeks at the Banff Arts Centre to continue work on a novel.

I thought I’d also put a link up to the article in The Coast this week. You can also vote for my book to be the first in The Coast’s twitter bookclub in the margin of the article.

I’m sick and it’s snowing - a fitting combination. I don’t think I’ll leave the house today. Instead I’ve made shredded wheat, also known as “big blocks of hay”. I’ve got a book and the fire… tea to follow. There’s also a fun article about a master thief in the new issue of Wired. On the side, he used his talents as a counterfeiter to forge fake VIP passes to concerts and sporting events. 

 There’s a new review of What We’re Made Of in Atlantic Books Today, which was an insert in this week’s Globe and Mail. Here’s the link.

Here is a link to another story I was recently part of in Atlantic Books Today.

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).