Author Archives: McPhedran

Big Ideas in Tiny Rooms

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I like the bathroom for its clean lines and tight confines. I like closets and storerooms too. I think about staying in there for days and days, the rest of my life in this safe little place, the opposite of claustrophobia.

That’s where I leave the orphans from my book, alone in their room where they must stay:

They watched the ranger and two of the others amble toward the dead moose, the other one vanish from view, and then moments later, a pickup truck come careening through the grass.

“These boys are up to this tomfoolery? The ranger boy included.”

“I don’t like this, Tommy.”

“None of it is good, my love.” They moved quickly down the path, across the beach and were just getting to his camper truck when the pickup appeared behind them on the road.

“We’ll just keep walking, Deirdre. Same pace and that. We know nothing of them.”

“You’re the one who has to keep his cool, right?”

“As the Bay of Fundy.”

The truck pulled alongside them, the ranger in the passenger’s seat. “Glad to see he’s back on the leash.”

“Just like you said,” Tommy replied quickly.

“What the hell is that?” A high-pitched voice called from inside the truck. “A goddamn leopard?”

Dee walked just ahead of Tommy, her eyes on the ground; they were almost at the camper.

“Seriously.” The truck stopped and the man got out. He wore dark sunglasses and had close-cropped hair. “What is that?”

Dee looked at him briefly. “A serval.”

“A what? Never heard of that. What is he like? African? Looks a hell of a lot like a leopard. Or maybe a puma-like. Can I pet him?”

Dee pulled Apollo close to her legs as Tommy unlocked the back of the camper. “He doesn’t do well with strangers.”

“You come here from Newfoundland?” Another had got out and stood by the first. He was taller with a thick head of hair and beard. “Quite the place, I hear. Hell of a lot of moose up there, right?”

Tommy opened the door, and Apollo jumped inside.

“You two on a trip?” The first one moved closer, rifle in hand. “Driving up the coast?”

“What’s your hurry, huh?” The second man leaned toward Dee. “Have a beer with us before you head on.”

“We would like that,” she replied. “But we’re supposed to be somewhere.”

“My name’s Steve, all right?” He turned to the man beside him. “This is my buddy, Dale. And that’s Carter driving. You already met Alex. He’s the big ranger.”

“Nice to meet you fellas.” Tommy nodded back.

“You see our moose?” Dale waved to the back of the pickup where the hind legs and antlers were visible above the brim. “Nine hundred pounds easy.”

“Have a beer with us.” Steve turned back to Dee. “We’ll carve you up a steak.”

“We have to go.” Dee pursed her lips. “Like we said.”

“Who breaks camp at the end of the day?” He leaned on the camper. “We can chill and then you can split.”

Dee went down the side of the camper and climbed in the passenger seat.

“Hey, you can be polite, right?” Steve had followed her down; his face got hard, stupidly so. “Aren’t you Canadians supposed to be friendly?”

“I’m from Pittsburgh,” Dee replied.

“You all right?” Alex, the ranger, held onto the driver’s door of the camper as Tommy climbed in. “You seem upset about something.”

Tommy stopped, one leg in. “No.”

“We just have to get going,” Dee added.

“There’s nothing going on here,” Alex replied.

Tommy tried to close the door but Alex held on. “I’m not getting your meaning.”

Alex sighed. “Maybe I should impound the cat.”

“Why would you do that?” Dee demanded. “We’re leaving.”

Tommy started the engine.

“I’m sorry.” Alex leaned toward the keys in the ignition.

“Listen, b’y.” Tommy elbowed Alex’s hand off the door and put the truck into the gear, gunning it down the rutted road, his teeth clenched, getting the door closed as he glanced in the side mirrors. “Is he coming? You see anything?”

Dee turned back, waiting to see a cloud of dust. “I can’t see anything.”

“Fucking hell.” Tommy laughed angrily. “Fucking hell, those boys. Up to no good, that’s what they were. No good.”

My Father Was Dead.

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My father was dead. Or he was just out wandering somewhere. Maybe he was still alive. I didn’t know. But my mother had decided to take the tiny house at the top of the hill with a remarkable view of the bay and live in a giant bed with a lesbian much younger than her but with ratty hair. Their bed was positioned at a picture window and my mother wouldn’t get up. She was trying make me uncomfortable but I wasn’t.

I mean, I had just been caught masturbating by a group of strangers and I had shit smudged on my ass and legs. I still had to go to the bathroom, and so that’s where I went, through a maze of rooms, all of the bathrooms full or broken, until I was out and flying like I used to have done, under electrical towers, skimming over the water, getting too high, on a plane that would never take off and then it did and I was surrounded by the nightmarish staring-faced people that would never stop until I was dead. And so I woke myself up.

Anori Edit: Killing the Precious Ones

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It took me ten weeks to process Tennessee’s notes, but at long last I have begun my eighth (ninth?) draft of Anori. Tennessee (my editor) made excellent suggestions related to killing characters – a terse goodbye to Valerie and Robi – as well as complete restructuring, which means sideways, headache-inducing thinking and no more scenes in Newfoundland like this precious little one:

Flagstones, newly dug, and boards bent into the red earth, led down a narrow path, following the base of a rocky ledge to a meadow. Fitz walked ahead, his windbreaker too small, pants heavy and large. The archeological site was deserted, a wheel barrow with shovels and picks lined up at its side, standing by a row of tents, the one at the far end with its front entrance unzipped and flapping in the wind.

“A bit of sloppiness that.” Fitz bent down to the tent, head-first into a man, middle-aged, as he backed out. “Watch your—Unh!”

“That’s the irony,” Eileen whispered behind Dee.

“You all right there?” The man zipped the tent shut before standing up.

“Looking about for Tommy Baines.”

The man adjusted his glasses. “He must have gone with the others, an hour or so ago.”

“Off to the pub, that it?”

“Don’t know about that.”

“We’ll just show the girl around before he makes his way back.”

“You’ll need Tommy to take you through for that.”

“We’ve been around the heath, seen the pit, the chunks of slag,” Fitz replied. “We know where not to put our feet.”

“That a leopard you got there?”

“He’s a serval. His name’s Apollo.” Dee smiled at him. “He won’t bite.”

“Aim to keep my hands intact, thanks.” He gave them a wide berth as he headed up the path. “Evening to you.”

“That’s his spot.” Eileen pointed out the yellow and blue flagging tape in the distance. “They’re saying it was an iron ore camp, set up to make their nails for the ships.”

“A lot of theories about the Vikings could be gutted with a place like this,” Fitz added. “They’ll be looking up and down the coast and across to Nova Scotia next. See what they can find.”

Dee watched the wind churn the distant water into a wash of whitecaps, each chasing after the thick grey clouds low in the early evening sky.

The Sentience of Po

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The final book of The Cx Trilogy is centered on Po, a being-non-being borne of a catastrophic deceleration from close-to-light speed to gain orbit. Po has human sensibilities of the temporal – desperation, uncertainty – yet remains indifferent, aware of the immensity of the whole.

Po’s story – and of the humans on the planet Mina with it – is diametrically opposed to the space operas centered on the ceremony of civilization. It is instead of irrelevance, accepting and dissolving into that, an antithesis to humanity and its childish aspirations

Tiny Door. Little Door.

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It’s a longish short story of a relationship that starts with a connection, direct and funny. And then an angry step daughter arrives, sexually taunting. “How did you get here? What did you do to be standing here? I knew how fucked up everybody was when I was a kid. And that never made sense to me. The world was huge. It was beyond anything I could imagine. And then I went out and realized that it wasn’t all that. Don’t fuck with my mother.”

After that, the story of the relationship isn’t as wise or wonderful as survival. “Life might be done with me, but that’s because I called it out on all of its bullshit.”

Liking People Less and Less

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I realize that I am getting older and less patient and all of that, but I am certain that people are getting weirder and more fucked up on some exponential scale. Masks are my proof. Why can’t people just wear a fucking mask? Isn’t this like wearing a shirt or pants? We figured that out when we were kids. Most of us anyway.

The point of wearing the mask to slow the spread. This is not about the people that ate paint chips on their Count Chocula. I am talking about people with brains, that accept medicine and science and humanity and all of that, and they still can’t seem to wear a mask. It’s either on their chin, especially when they’re trying to focus on their social media feed – be it dunks or pumps – or just below their nose.

How can they not understand that the issue of breathing is related to both the nose AND the mouth? Isn’t that, like, grade two bio? Anyway, I’m getting sick of these nitwits and it helps that the mask mandate is coming to end where the stupidity of the seemingly educated is so baldly on display.

Black Panthers: As Relevant As Ever

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The only culture worth keeping is the revolutionary culture. Black culture must not be something that the enemy enjoys, appreciates or says is attractive. It must be repelling to the slave master. It must smash, shatter and crack his skull, crack his eyeballs open and make water and gold dust run out. (George Mason Murray, Black Panther Minister of Education, 1968)

When we talk about becoming free, we have to talk about power, getting all the goods, services and land, and returning them equally to the oppressed and enslaved Mexicans, Blacks, Indians, Puerto Ricans and poor whites in the U.S. and to the rest of the oppressed and hungry people of the world. (Murray, 1968) 

The racist dog oppressors have no rights which oppressed black people are bound to respect. The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or night. (Bernadine Dohrn, Students for a Democratic Society Secretary)