Merry Christmas... to me? No, to you!

With December drawing to a close, and an embarrassing number of OAC Writers' Reserve Grant applications sent, and my first story ever accepted for publication finally in print (in The Nashwaak Review), and a few hours already spent during my two weeks off work for Christmas/writing (mostly writing), I came back today from the café down the street where I do a lot of editing - currently, I'm well into Year Two of my battle with a story called "The Seven Confessions of Constable Tom Burford", from Projections, and it's turned a corner this month - and I found an envelope in my mail from NōD Magazine, the undergraduate English publication at the University of Calgary, to which I sent my very short story, "Respect" (since retitled "Funeral," though I may change it back now), in April, for their Deface theme issue. Inside the envelope was no letter, no information slip, nor even a subscription order form, just this, (great cover), with my story at the very bottom of the table of contents! I guess it launched in October, according to their Facebook page.

I had inquired about the story by email, with no response, and was already sending it elsewhere (I have been for a while). What a great Christmas gift - much nicer than the "Please withdraw" emails I've now got to start sending. I'll be sure to send a thank you, too... a card, by lettermail, this time!

There are still submissions pending, and of course, the 15 stories that ought to make up Projections aren't all finished yet, but to my mind, this brings 2011 to a perfect ending. In my first year out there, I've published nine stories - seven from what will be my first book - and enjoyed the support of so many friends (over 100 of you on my Facebook page), and colleagues, and, strangest of all, editors and "real" writers, who have published books and everything, who've welcomed me as one of their own - even when they've not accepted my work. Thank you all for a wonderful year, and have a great holiday. I'll be back in 2012!

Reading: "Big Man" at the echolocation launch Tues., Nov. 29

Two stories for the price of one! Come by the echolocation launch this Tuesday, Nov. 29, 7pm, at The Ossington, 61 Ossington Ave., just north of Queen St. W., and pick up your copy, which includes my short story "Tabaco Babies."

Plus, if you stop by Book City in the Annex and get the last issue, echolocation #10, then present your receipt at the launch, you'll receive the new issue at half price - just five dollars!

And, because you'll be getting "Tabaco Babies" in the magazine, I'll read something else: "Big Man," from Prairie Journal #57, an advance copy of which just turned up on my doorstep last week.

Hope you can make it!

"Osvaldo's Guitar," now online!

As promised long ago, the 2011 issue of Hart House Review has gone live, including my short story "Osvaldo's Guitar." Click here to read!

"Tabaco Babies" in echolocation: launch date, and an excerpt

Issue 11 of echolocation, the graduate English literary journal at the University of Toronto, launches Tuesday, November 29, 7pm, at The Ossington, 61 Ossington Ave.

Can't wait? Neither can I! In the meantime, here's an excerpt from my story, "Tabaco Babies," on the magazine's brand-spanking-new site.

Word has it...

...that White Wall Review #35 is out! Officially launching in November, this fine magazine - published by Ryerson University's English Department - turned up at a Word on the Street booth in Queen's Park (Toronto) this weekend, and it features lots of great poetry and fiction, plus my story "Bondo," on page 12. Ask your local (independent!) bookstore when it's coming in!

Two more new stories, from Projections!

My first short fiction collection, Projections, is on a roll - and it's not even finished yet.

First, two weeks ago, indie Toronto online Wooden Rocket Press accepted "Ode," to its Sunday Paper feature, in which a four-part story is serialized every Sunday morning for a month. Part One of "Ode" goes live Sunday, October 2

And then, this week, The Prairie Journal (Calgary) accepted "Big Man." More details to follow as to when this will hit your local (independent!) bookstore.

Six of Projections's 13 stories have now found homes in Canadian litmags, which leads to one question: when the hell will the whole book be done? I have my sights set on a manuscript contest that closes December 31 - my birthday - and I can't imagine a better gift than my first book, sealed and sent off. That'll be a party.

More info on my new publications - and with any luck, some more good news - will be along soon. Like my Facebook page for updates, as well as cool links and, at the start of next month, another round of my quarterly book reviews. Thanks again for reading!

"Comets" now available online!

Great news to come home from Lithuania to: my newest published short story, Comets, is live now, in super-cool Toronto online The Broken City. I'm on Page Four. Click here to read!

Also, I'm using my Facebook page more and more often, sharing not just my own writing updates but fun links, friends' work and more. You should join! Click here, and then, click Like, to stay in the loop!

Still to come this fall: new stories in The Nashwaak Review, White Wall Review and echolocation. A handful more are finished and circulating, which means my book, Projections, is almost done, too(!).

And finally: Vilnius, Lithuania is a place everyone should visit. It's expensive to get there but affordable to live in, and the young people are fantastic (and generally, speak English, to the detriment of my flailing attempts to learn Lithuanian). Thank you to all the new friends at SLS for a great program, including workshops and other literary/cultural events, and for the inspiration and encouragement that naturally comes from being surrounded by other writers, at all levels of their careers. I did my first public reading (still hunting for pictures), and I came home with that story finished (it's called "Hamburger"), another one on the brain (wrote it Saturday and Sunday, called "Chaser"), and a poem that's called "Spiders," for now. It's the first poem I've written since undergrad! For the moment, I'm e-workshopping it with peers, and hoping something great will come of it.

This and many more updates are on the way this fall, it's going to be a busy one! Thanks again for reading!

Two new publications, and a trip to Lithuania!

The hot, hot summer continues:

• "Comets," another short story from Projections, has been accepted by cool Toronto online The Broken City. A special thanks to Leo Furey at The Antigonish Review for the kind feedback on the story.


• Have you been keeping up with my quarterly reviews? At the beginning of July, I posted a new batch, and I'm happy to report that one of them - You Comma Idiot, by Doug Harris - has stretched to about a thousand words, and will soon appear in The Antigonish Review.


• Coming soon to the Facebook page: daily dispatches from the Summer Literary Seminars program in Vilnius, Lithuania, where I'll be workshopping with Joseph Kertes and Josip Novakovich, not to mention all the writerly types in the courses!


• And, coming soon to the blog: some thoughts on book reviewing. I'm yet to publish a book, but here I am critiquing other writers... publically. Three words: fear of reprisal.

Thanks again for following!

Tonight: Green Door Cabaret

My writing teacher, Richard Scarsbrook, is celebrating his 2011 White Pine Award win for The Monkeyface Chronicles tonight at the Lower Ossington Theatre with his amazing Featherless Bipeds Band, MC'ed by yours truly. The show gets underway at 9:30 - click here for tickets!

A Silly Little Bit of Encouragement, for the Downtime

Proof was recently found in a Book City store in The Annex, in Toronto, that people are (theoretically) exchanging money for a litmag featuring one of my short stories ("Osvaldo's Guitar"). Neato! Don't live in Toronto? Click here to find out where you can get a copy!

Don't worry, reader. The purpose of this photo, and this trip to the bookstore, was not to tell you yet again how to get my work; it, and to an extent, this whole post, are mostly for my own encouragement as I linger in this odd place where I find myself. I'm calling it downtime.

It's not like I have nothing to submit. I'm waiting on responses on two stories right now: "Comets," which features some of the same characters as "The Expiry Dates," and the very first thing I wrote in Richard Scarsbrook's creative writing course at George Brown College, an extremely short story called "Respect."

And it's not like I'm not working on anything. At the moment, I'm nearly finished "Ode," about a dead young man's oldest friend and new-ish girlfriend reluctantly collaborating on his eulogy, and I've long been working on "Projections," the frustratingly hard-to-finish title story of my collection, about a small-town guy who moves away for university but comes back to re-open the town's movie theatre. Plus, I recently added two new stories to the group: "Hang-Ups," about a fractured family spread across Canada that takes place almost entirely in phone conversations (thanks, Braydon Beaulieu, for the recent edit), and another called "The Walk" (for now), about a father's misguided attempt to teach his son a lesson.

Downtime is a funny concept for a writer, but I think it applies here. Most stories I've been working on since 2009 are finished, some await publication, and as a result, I'm mired in that period of sporadically picking at several stories at once, flailing around in half-finished or frequently-abandoned drafts for the one that finally breaks through. My process is such that I don't fully commit until a story shows some promise; and when it does, I work only on the piece in question, obsessively, banging away until it (and I) can take no more.

Until Sunday, "Ode" was nearing that point. I was going back to it more and more often, and I was into the fourth round of revisions of the week. And then, while reading Sherman Alexie in Christie Pits, and getting a sunburn as I sort of watched the Maple Leafs baseball team get routed, the seed of "The Walk" came to me. Next thing I knew, I had an 800-word "memo" in my Blackberry - the first quarter of the story - and it was enough to bump even the almost-finished "Ode" out of focus.

So, suddenly, the downtime is back. It's ok, though. Any excuse to go to a bookstore.

New story, "Bondo," to appear in White Wall Review

Thanks, White Wall Review, for taking on "Bondo," one of my favourites among the stories I've written.

This, (for me, anyway), is a big one. I've been revising this story for a year exactly, and it's come close a few times. I don't think it would have ever seen the light of day without the feedback I received from Aspen Gainer (Other Voices) and Matthew Firth (Front & Centre), or even the recent encouragement I took from Julie McArthur's mention of those stories you refuse to give up on. Thanks also to first readers Marshall Bellamy, Marcin Mokrzewski, Eric Johanssen, and of course, to my amazing girlfriend Sidonie Wybourn, whose improv chops have taught me a ton about "raising the stakes" in a scene, and whose support for me and my work is unflagging.

Thanks also to you, for reading my work and my website. The issue's set to come out in November, 2011.

New story, "Tabaco Babies," in Echolocation!

My fourth short story, and another from my first collection featuring The Expiry Dates, has just been accepted for publication by Echolocation, a journal run by graduate students in the English Department at the University of Toronto. Forthcoming in Fall, 2011!

On Sale Now!

The Hart House review has just gone national. The 2011 issue, featuring my story, "Osvaldo's Guitar," is now available in these fine stores!

Retro Review: The Animal Library, by Jason Camlot

Issue 50 of Broken Pencil is online now, including my Retro Review of Montreal poet Jason Camlot's debut, The Animal Library. Click here to read it, and be sure to check out the rest of the magazine!

Hart House Review Launch Party

Great big thanks to André Babyn and the team at Hart House Review for a fun soirée last night. The issue looks great, and the guest readers - Tim Prior, Rebecca Rosenblum, Prathna Lor and talented U of T undergrad Tommy Leonard-Roy - were excellent choices. We were hanging off their every word! Find out more, and read some selections, at www.harthousereview.com, and to keep up with me, like my Facebook page at right.

"Osvaldo's Guitar" comes out April 15!

Two New Publications
My new short story "Osvaldo's Guitar" launches in print on Friday, April 15, in the Hart House Review! Plus, it will soon be online. Stay tuned for more details on this and "Aria di Gelato," coming this summer in The Nashwaak Review!

Death Match
Also, in case you missed it, congratulations to my new friend David Griffin Brown, who beat out my first-round opponent Colin Brush for a cool $300 in the final of the 2011 Broken Pencil Death Match - a prize he's using on a rain water catchment project in Buena Esperanza, in Panama. Go here for more details. And, you can still read my story, "The Expiry Dates," by just clicking here.

Book Reviews on Facebook
Calling all readers! My quarterly book reviews are moving from my personal Facebook page to my fan page, join to keep up with my reading and writing! What? I have fans? Cool!

2011: Year of the Short Story!
I've recently started work on a novel, because as great as short stories are, and though they're my preferred form, there's a myth out there that collections don't sell. Often, even if all the stories have run in magazines, a publisher won't take on a collection from an author who hasn't made a name with a novel.

Some Canadian writers have thrown themselves into debunking this myth, and proving me a sucker. I've got their backs, and their manifesto is here. Once you've read it, go buy Cathedral by Raymond Carver, or Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro, or The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, or...

Thanks again for stopping by Daniel Perry Fiction, and for supporting my work.

New story, "Osvaldo's Guitar," in Hart House Review

My third short story accepted for public consumption, "Osvaldo's Guitar," is forthcoming in 2011 edition of the Hart House Review: www.harthousereview.com. It's a story set in Western Nicaragua. Updates to follow about publication date, and the launch party, which usually features public readings. Eep!

Thanks again for all of your support, in general and in the recent Broken Pencil Death Match. My story, "The Expiry Dates," is out, but Round 4, between "Fatty Fat Fat Fat" by Jeffrey Ross and "Deathmatch" by Martha Tuff, is neck-and-neck going into the homestretch. Read and vote at www.brokenpencil.com/deathmatch, and as of Monday, watch for the semi-finals between "Free Therapy" by Colin Brush and "Field Guide to Kleptoparasitism," by Braydon Beaulieu. It's shaping up to be a knock-down, drag-out war!

If you've stumbled across this, thanks for stopping by! Here are two more links:

Read "The Expiry Dates"
http://www.brokenpencil.com/deathmatch/view.php?id=1

Daniel Perry Fiction on Facebook
http://cy-gb.facebook.com/pages/Daniel-Perry-Fiction/312152847761

Final 48 hours to vote

Until Feb. 7, at midnight, you can read AND VOTE FOR my short story "The Expiry Dates" at www.brokenpencil.com/deathmatch. This competition has been a gruelling war of Facebook lists, and it's been 50-50 for about four days. But seriously - my story is better than my opponent's! Come check it out!!

You can vote up to once per hour, per IP address. Smartphone users, you're twice as nice.

If you like what you read, leave a comment on the board saying so. Thanks for all the support!!

VOTE DAN: Broken Pencil Death Match IV!

Dear friends,

My second short story (the first one I wrote), "The Expiry Dates," goes live at www.brokenpencil.com/deathmatch tomorrow, Monday, Jan. 31. Yes, only the publishing world could set this right, accepting my first story second but still publishing it before the first one appeared. (Aria di Gelato will be in The Nashwaak Review in Spring/Summer 2011.)

But for now, please (read and) vote for The Expiry Dates in this ultra-cool, online elimination tournament, and help me rise to the top of the Indie Writers' world (in Canada, this week).

Voting runs Jan 31 to 11:59pm Feb 7, and you can VOTE ONCE PER HOUR, PER IP ADDRESS, so get those smartphones ready.

Thank you for your ongoing support. Oh, and enjoy the story!!

-Dan