Thursday, October 14, 2010

Fall update: PUBLISHED!

Great news: my short story "Aria di Gelato" will be appearing in The Nashwaak Review. Stay tuned to Daniel Perry Fiction for details - let's sell enough copies to make them publish me again!

In other news, another story that will remain nameless for the moment (in case reporting its rejections makes other magazines not want to run it), was almost published twice this summer. Once, it was very well liked by the Editor-in-Chief only to be summarily dismissed by the guest editor (I won't name names), and the second time, it was "shortlisted for publication," which I take to mean that it was a fallback in case what they really wanted had already been picked up elsewhere.

Not to worry, though. This first credit is such a shot in the arm, I'm on cloud nine.

As far as the actual creation of new work goes, the word I suppose is steady. I have the bare bones of a short story collection assembled (first drafts finished early Sept.). I was hoping to send the lot of them to the Metcalf-Rooke Award manuscript contest, but that was pure delusion. And, good thing, one more "close the loop" kind of story has since come to mind. I watched movies for about two weeks, but slowly, I'm resuming my work, editing them down to what I hope to be my book.

For the moment, I'm fully aware that I'm shouting in an empty room. As more of my friends (and future readers who are complete strangers?) join though, with a luck we'll start to hear some echoes. Thanks for reading and for the support. We've only just begun.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Two Great Events

If you're a young writer in Toronto, like me, you'll want to stick close to the Rivoli this month.

April 15
Book Launch
The Monkeyface Chronicles, by Richard Scarsbrook

Award-winning novelist and writing teacher extraordinaire Richard Scarsbrook launches his fourth book tonight. Entry is $15 and includes a copy. Great writer, great guy, this will be a great time.


April 28
Book Launch
Writing Without Direction (Clark-Nova Books)

The collection is subtitled "Ten and a Half Short Stories by Canadian Authors Under Thirty", and I can personally endorse twenty and a half per cent of the work: Matt Loney and Chad Nevett are both former colleagues of mine from my student theatre days at UWO. This strikes me as a great place to meet writers at similar points in their careers, and take note: submissions for this collection opened June 1, 2009. If this volume succeeds, maybe you and I both will have a chance to submit to Volume 2!

Welcome...

...to Daniel Perry Fiction, the official blog of... me, Daniel Perry, Canadian writer of fiction. Here you will find various dispatches about my fledgling writing career.

As an undergraduate, I published two poems, "A Winter's Morning Sun" in Grubstreet (2003), and "La Bonne Voix" in Propaganda (2005). My BA is in English and French, and my MA is in Comparative Literature, but aside from these two, short works, little to nothing has found its way out.

I used to write, in high school, but never like this. It's something I've always known was inside of me, but I think I may just have needed to live a little before I understood how (and perhaps more importantly, why) I might just want to let it out. It was Saturday in August (2009) when I woke up and said "Quit lying to yourself, you're a writer, just go take some courses". I haven't looked back.

The public isn't reading my work just yet, but with my second continuing education course winding down, I've received some great news: my first short story, "The Expiry Dates", was shortlisted in the 2010 SLS Unified Literary Contest (http://www.sumlitsem.org/slscontest.html) judged by Mary Gaitskill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Gaitskill). There were 1,200 total entries (fiction and poetry), and I was in the top 50. An encouraging start!

At the moment I am trying to place three others, but as they're all currently in contests where they're being judged blindly, that's all I can say for now. I hope to be able to reveal their titles alongside some good news. Thanks for reading!