Advance Reviews for “The Vanishing Pill”

Posted on August 15, 2025 by McPhedran

Contrasting the dim of the city against the icy wilds of Greenland, The Vanishing Pill exposes the violent inner conflicts of our nature. As McPhedran’s liner notes state: “Dreams aren’t simple things; they’re the only fucking thing.”

The advanced reviews are unanimous…

Atlantic Tri-Monthly: “I ate it up like a rabid monkey. McPhedran stews his prose with a burning hot sauce that leaves you screaming for more.”

USA Tomorrow: “You have not lived until you have read this intoxicating yarn of lust and joy.”

NY1 Off-line: “New Yorker McPhedran’s latest explosion of prose lights up the city with a tower of anguish and delight.”

Foxy News on-line: “It’s a good book, even with all the big words.”

Not a Fan

Posted on October 8, 2023 by McPhedran

I’m not a fan of slippery slopes – figurative or literal – or being on the decline.

I’m not a fan of inconsistency or always doing the same thing.

And I’m not a fan of escaping the escape.

I need to know where I am if I’m supposed to get anywhere.

Greenland by Sea

Posted on March 11, 2023 by McPhedran

The ice sheets roiled up, the glaciers and jagged mountains blinding in the distant midday sun, all of it intermittently obscured by the wild tossed seas as we descended the immense trough and then rode back up, the terrifying magnificence there again.

I had come out to this vastness because I had failed at life. I was unable to moderate. Or so she said. It was immoderate of me to reply to a “friendly reminder” from work with a “go fuck yourself”, immoderate to have another when I had so far to drive, and most definitely immoderate to call her a bitch – worse actually – when she told me about her friend who had never thanked her for the thank-you card. “Never replied,” were the exact words, but there’s no point in going over that again.

I was adrift now, alone with my failures and losses, just as I had predicted too many times in my head. The rocks and ice were my only buddies now. I couldn’t even get a signal to watch the game..

Ice Rising

Posted on March 28, 2021 by McPhedran

I watched the ice rising up, like a submarine, baring its shiny hull, and then another crack and a fury, the iceberg disintegrating right in front of them, gone into snow and dust. It was shocking to see it there and then gone, a solid thing evaporated, the sky, crystal blue, where it had stood.

The remains spread out in the water, shards and chips, like oil, filling the bay, leaving two pieces bobbing, crashing into one another and then drifting amongst its refuse

Writing Process: Moment of Clarity

Posted on January 11, 2021 by McPhedran

I have an affinity toward Ilulissat, Greenland where I am left alone in the light with iceberg cubes in my drink.

It can feel like there is no time, no morning, no afternoon, no night, just light and more of it.

I was out on my little terrace at 3 am as a continent of ice floated down from the glacier and into Disko Bay.

It felt oddly like the end of the world, and not only because of the scotch. It was that right.

Anori Outtake: Not Waking Up

Posted on September 8, 2016 by McPhedran

Dee lay in the dark, watching Apollo chase a vole, giant and puffed, at the edge of the bed, batting it hard and then biting, the cracking squish of the skull like broken glass. She watched him sitting straight up in the corner, chewing his vole, breathing out the bottom part of his jaw. She tried to get off the bed and couldn’t and fought against the muffled paralysis. She was going backward. She couldn’t see properly. The lights were off. There was something turned the wrong way. She hated being stuck, unable to move, to even see, and grunted and spat and pulled herself out of the dream. “Jesus fuck.”

She moved her arm up and twisted onto her back, raising her other arm, both of them now straight above her. She wanted her kid-self back, exposed, naked against the rocks, in the long cold light, and so stripped and edged to the shore, putting her hand in as she planned her brief plunge off the slippery green ledge, reaching out with her foot to shove the smaller ice out and dive in. And so that was what she did, into the cold and dark, panicked and frozen, and stood there dripping, like the icebergs, ready to drop off shards, almost happy with herself for a moment. She was awake now. She was almost sure of that.

Ice Friday: Luis Bunuel’s “Last Sigh”

Posted on December 18, 2015 by McPhedran

Luis Bunuel’s memoir My Last Sigh offers reflections on art, politics and idle dreams:

One day on New York, in the 1940’s, my good friend Juan Negrin, the son of a former Republican Prime Minister, and his wife, the actress Rosia Diaz, and I came up with the notion of opening a bar called the Cannonball. It was to be the most expensive bar in the world, and would stock only the most expensive beverages imported from the four corners of the earth. We planned an intimate bar, ten tables maximum, very comfortable and decorated with impeccable taste. An antique cannon at the door, complete with powder and wick, would be fired, night or day, each time a client spent a thousand dollars. Of course, we never managed to realize this seductive and thoroughly undemocratic enterprise, but we thought it amusing to imagine your ordinary wage earner in the neighboring apartment building, awakened at four in the morning by the boom of the cannon, turning to his wife next to him in bed and saying: “Another bastard coughing up a thousand bucks!”

Ice Friday: Thordarson’s “The Stones Speak”

Posted on December 11, 2015 by McPhedran

Thorbergur Thordarson’s vivid memoir The Stones Speak recalls his childhood days spent in a remote Icelandic hamlet:

Large boulders stood here and there on the slopes. They appeared to be lifeless rocks if you just gave them a momentary glance. But if you stared at them for a little while, it was if they gained life and a soul of their own and quite personal features that reminded you of people. Some of them had looked out over the communities below in these peaceful poses for decades, others for long centuries, and it seemed to me that they knew everything that had befallen the folks below. I had great respect for these children of the Creator and I never peed on them or pooped behind them. I didn’t dare to, anyway, because of the hidden people

Nakka, the Greenlandic Sled Dog

Posted on August 24, 2015 by McPhedran

Nakka is a full-on Greenlandic sled dog that can go for fifteen hours straight, no food or water, through ice and snow.I realized that it might have been a mistake to bring him to New York when, on my first day at a Manhattan dog run, he herded the other dogs – pit bulls and all – jumping the fence and chasing the tourists into the river.

He hated city living – most of all our apartment, only 800 square feet – but also how everyone had to pet him. “Look at you! Little Nakka! You’re so cute!” They didn’t understand that he only bit because he needed space. Anyway, I had to take him back to his home to Ilulissat…where apparently some of the other dogs think he’s putting on airs.

The Sister Cities of Ilulissat and New York

Posted on August 17, 2015 by McPhedran

On first glance, Ilulissat, Greenland and New York City seem worlds apart. I have come to learn, upon further examination, that the assumption is inaccurate.

One commonality is that both places offer non-stop action. New York has 24 hours of lights and hype.Ilulissat has 24-hours light and calving ice. Taxis dominate each locale.As do throngs of tourists. One thing I will have to admit is that the graffiti in Ilulissat can be more direct.