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Peter Darbyshire on Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber
3 Playsin 7 hours
Author Peter Darbyshire joins the lads to champion the classic Roger Zelazny fantasy series, The Chronicles of Amber.
A writer of fantasy and literary fiction himself, Peter encountered the series when he was in elementary school.
This is the second time that Zelazny has come up on the podcast.
“For me, Roger Zelazny is one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer,” says Peter. “It was coming across The Chronicles of Amber that changed everything that a book could be. They’re the best noir-fantasy-scifi-horror-political-thriller-family-drama-literary-fiction-metaphysical-inquiry that I’ve read,” Peter quips.
For more information, check out the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
Contact us at [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction and Unusual Questions
00:00:09
Speaker
Mr. Rayner. Mr. Mahoney. How's it going? I'm good. I have questions. That is so weird. It's so weird. It's unusual.
Dreams and Nightmares
00:00:21
Speaker
Actually, I got a battery battery of questions. Oh, is this the question episode? Well, you dream, obviously. Everyone dreams. But do you remember your dreams? Oh, yeah. yeah And do you dream in color or black and white? And do you remember the difference when you do?
00:00:39
Speaker
I feel like it's in color. You know, I think there's some good solid technicolor dreams happening there. Certainly vivid in terms of action and emotion and yeah, crazy dreams. Like my dreams.
00:00:52
Speaker
yeah me too Not too much in the way of nightmares fortunately so far not good ah good okay so that's my follow-up question have you been visited by the night hag. Well if by night hag you mean a nightmare or unless you mean something no it's actually very specific it's it's a scientifically it's called something called sleep paralysis.
00:01:13
Speaker
So, you know, the mechanism of sleeping is that our, our body is actually, our brain kind of shuts off our voluntary muscle movements when we're sleeping. So we don't hurt ourselves. And sometimes that mechanism goes a little awry and I'm probably not explaining this perfectly in terms of but the biology, but sometimes it goes a little awry. And so our, our brain turns off our ability to move, but we're still conscious.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yes, so I'm familiar with those sleep paralysis and no, I don't think I've never had that. Okay, good. I'm glad for you. But I just have to call you out on something like a night hag. that sounds doesn' it Isn't that like a derogatory? I don't think so. That's a folk term from Irish mythology. Well, what is the male equivalent of night? I don't even want to say that. Well, I think the Christians would call it demons. They they would be demons, male demons.
Guest Introduction: Peter Darby Shire
00:02:07
Speaker
so I think it's time to to bring in today's guest, Peter Darby Shire. Welcome to the podcast. ah Yeah, thanks. ah'm Glad to be here. How are you? like Do you have any of these issues with dreams? Night hags. No, I mean, you're... you're You're making me think of like my mind is running through all sorts of like myths now and and trying to pin down that that actual like sort of whatever that folklore tradition is. I mean, I did. I didn't know what you meant by that sort of character of of the night hag. But and weirdly, just today, and and this is not myth, but I read a story about a a news story about a guy who was it was ah declared brain dead and but then woke up in the middle of like his his organs being harvested.
00:02:53
Speaker
Whoa. Oh, my God. this This crazy story. Yeah. And and the the the craziest thing with the story was it didn't it didn't tell you what happened. It just said, oh, my God. And I'm like, what happened to this guy? Right. So I'm still like trying to find out like this, like this is like a literal nightmare scenario. Right. Yeah. And I and i don't know the outcome of it. And so, yeah, sorry. No. Was that in a ah in a newspaper or? It was online. It was like, you know, The Guardian or someplace. I can't know where I saw it.
00:03:22
Speaker
I mean, it probably didn't end well. Otherwise, you know if it had ended well, they probably would have had a quote from the guy. There was no quote from the guy. Tell us a little bit about ah about yourself. and so We know that you're a writer of several books like us. I believe you're mostly, if not entirely traditionally published. Tell us the whole gamut. like Where do you come from? What do you do?
Transition to Genre Writing and Publishing Journey
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, so Peter Darish, our writer living near the Vancouver area, just outside Vancouver, former journalist, have published six books so far and counting. The most recent ones are my Book of Cross supernatural thriller series with Popular Press, which is an imprint of Wolsack and Winn, the Hamilton publisher. So those books that are Mona Lisa sacrificed at Hamlets and Apocalypse Arc. They're kind of, yeah, supernatural thriller, urban fantasy, whatever genre label you want to,
00:04:12
Speaker
put on those. Will second wind also published my 2017 short story collection has the world ended yet, which I think, in retrospect was a horribly naive title, given everything that has happened between and then yeah now and 2017 and I just think yes, it probably has ended and we're just um living in the aftermath and haven't figured it out yet. And then the world is always ending. The world is. Yeah. Well, I sort of think, you know, William Gibson has that quote about the the the future is here. It's just unevenly distributed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's sort of think about the end of the world. And even it's a little distributed apocalypse. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And before that, I'd published a novel called um ah The Warhol Gang with Harper Collins and another book called Please with Raincoast. And and then, yeah, whack a
00:04:59
Speaker
short stories and and and that sort of thing and in various journals so you've moved from from publisher to publisher and so why is that is that because you're pitching different publishers or Yeah, partially. I mean, I started off writing you know what we'd call literary fiction. Please was yeah very literary fiction, the sort of chronicles of ah of a you know disaffected young man wandering around urban landscape and getting into and getting into mischief. And so very much in the literary fiction camp. ah Warhol Gang was, um I was working as a journalist at the time and I kept
00:05:33
Speaker
coming across just weird, weird stories, like the one I just mentioned about, you know, this guy looking up during his, you know, organ harvesting. And I was always wondering, you know, what would happen to these people. And and and it was sort of like, they always felt kind of futuristic to me. i You know, I felt like I was working in ah in a JG Ballard story a lot of the time, right, with with some of the stories i was I was reading. And so I wanted to write a novel that was kind of set in our world, but there was kind of like the headlines of tomorrow. And so that was the the Warhol gang. that was kind of a ah ah ah It was a book about a guy who works for a neuromarketing firm that he basically gets stuck in an MRI tank all day and and they watch how his brain responds to ads, potential ads, right? And so they can try to figure out like the right ad to put out. It's probably anticipating AI a little bit before you know like the various iterations of AI and how it works before it actually happened.
00:06:23
Speaker
But then I started writing genre stuff just because I wanted just a sort of mental change of pace. And I had originally started publishing these Angel Gunslinger stories that I've actually got sort of turning those into a book that's Angel Gunslinger. But I also published or started writing these these cross books and and they were they're a little out there. So I didn't go with it um kind of ah traditional large publisher. I went with the boutique publisher instead initially and they were they were published with a press called Cheezing out of out of um Toronto. But that's then that press you know sort of just went under a few years ago and I had this kind of orphaned series and I had written like the fourth novel in it. and this So three books have been published and I'd written the fourth novel and I had a short story collection that had written and I was like, oh, what am I going to do? Should I
00:07:08
Speaker
Should I self publish them? But I'm not, that's not my strength is self publishing. I've done, you know, a couple of stories that way and that kind of thing. But like, it's a whole yeah special that I don't have. and and have a day job. And so I kind of didn't have the capacity
Career in Healthcare Communications
00:07:22
Speaker
to really learn it. So ideally, I was like, it'd be nice to find another publisher. right And I'd published by this point, has the world ended yet with Wolsak and Wynn? And and um the publisher Noel Allen contacted me one day and asked you know what's going on with the series. And I was like, oh, I thought you'd never ask. And we were able to sort of talk about you know her picking up the series. and And they're using it now with their popular press imprint, which is kind of their um speculative fiction imprint.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, first three books are being reprinted, new editions, October 2024. And then the next novel is coming out, I think we said 2025. I'd have to look at the contract again, but yeah. And then hopefully you can do something with the short stories as well. So yeah, so I've started writing it again because it was kind of a lull when I wasn't sure what was happening. And so it was really nice to sort of jump back into the world of these characters in this series because it's kind of my favorite thing that I've done. And what's the day job? Can I ask that? Yeah, I work in communications and healthcare in BC. Oh, great. Yeah. So I sort of jumped from journalism when journalism was starting to sort of have its troubles. And I'd been writing healthcare columns sort of
00:08:35
Speaker
randomly enough. um i've I've got two sons and both had pretty significant encounters with the healthcare care system. So when I was a journalist, I ended up starting to, you know, write these healthcare columns because I was interested in it. And then when I started about thinking about making the move, it was just like an easy leap to, you know, easy mental leap to to work in healthcare communications.
Literary Interests and Favorite Books
00:08:53
Speaker
And this was back in 2017. And I remember thinking, Oh, it'd be nice to be like working in a quiet calm environment that's not breaking. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
00:09:02
Speaker
the pandemic had and i was like oh was like brother So tell us what's on ah on your t-shirt. Yeah, I have ah of a brand new t-shirt from from threadless that says it's emotionally attached to fictional characters. um And I thought I have to have to wear that for for this show. um Because the the ah books I wanted to talk about the series of books, The um ah Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, I've been emotionally attached to since i think I was trying to think earlier today, and I think it was elementary school. I read them for the first time. yeah i out In the 70s. I think I read them when they were brand new and in the 70s.
00:09:39
Speaker
So I think we all have a, uh, you've read the Chronicles of Amber, right? Yeah. About the same time too. I think I was probably 12 or 13 when I read the first, first one. Yeah. yeah I love those books so much. oh Yeah, absolutely. I encountered them in, uh, in university and my roommate introduced me to them. Fantastic. Yeah. So, and you're the second person we have in the podcast who's actually brought up, uh, Zelazny, but I think we're happy to talk about, uh, Zelazny, um, as much as our guests want to. So yeah, the I am.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, for like for me, it's it's Rogers and Lassney is the reason I'm a writer, I think, um because like I always wanted to be a writer. And I remember, you know, when I was young, before reading Chronicles of Amber, I was reading, you know, Lord of the Rings, Conan, you know, the Star Wars novel adaptations. And I remember seeing the Star Wars movie and thinking, oh, I like I want to write that I want to write, you know, the sci fi books and stuff like that.
00:10:36
Speaker
But it was it was coming across the Chronicles of Amber that just I think just changed everything for me because it changed what I realized a book could be. you know It's a series of books. There was actually two series of books because it was like the first five books and then he came out with another five later on featuring the protagonist's son.
00:10:55
Speaker
that, you know, to to more mixed reviews. But the first five books are sort of, ah you know, classic. um but Classic was interesting because it's like when I was z young, I think they were sci-fi. I think they were marketed as sci-fi. And I think they're probably in the fantasy camp now. I would say, yeah. Yeah, or fantasy. That happened to Michael Moorcock too, right? Like a lot of his books were sci-fi and then they're in fantasy now. Yeah, yeah because they' they were sort of part of the same new wave yeah movement, right?
00:11:24
Speaker
And I was thinking, like i i think how do I describe but these books to somebody who hasn't heard of them before? And I thought you know the thing I came up with is they're the they're the best you know noir, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, political thriller, yeah family drama, literary fiction, metaphysical inquiry that I've read. yeah and that was And that was a thing. like these These books are you know they're they're so complicated across so many genre boundaries. And for people who don't who don't know them, there they follow this character of Corwin.
00:11:53
Speaker
who is a member of a royal family of of Amber, and Amber is like the sort of ah one true place in in the universe. it's um It's kind of like a multiverse novel before multiverse was trying to go. I think War Clock, as you that you mentioned, was probably doing multiverse stuff around the same time. But there's these, essentially these two poles,
Exploring Amber and Chaos in the Multiverse
00:12:13
Speaker
there's Amber, and then there's the Quartz of Chaos, and they're kind of like the opposites of of each other.
00:12:18
Speaker
And it's it's initially presented that Amber is like the the only kind of real place in the universe and that all the other realms or worlds or whatever you want to call them in this book. They're called shadows are are copies of that. And the farther you get away from, from Amber, the, the more sort of distorted the the shadows get until eventually you read the course of chaos, which is exactly what it sounds like a place of just, you know, sort of utter insanity. And there's another ruling family in chaos who, you know, don't have really have fixed forms, you know, and they have all sorts of different avatars and the place is constantly changing. And
00:12:52
Speaker
As it sort of turns out, as the books progress, you realize or you learn that chaos is actually kind of the true state of affairs and that Amber is kind of this aberration that this guy Oberon, a refugee from the courts of chaos created. and He basically inscribed this magical pattern using his own blood in chaos somewhere. and Then that created order kind of for the first time and Amber kind of sprang up around it, the city of Amber, and then Amber cast all these shadows.
00:13:22
Speaker
that are other, other realms. And they're just always at conflict because they're, you know, it's oil and, you know, oil and water or whatever, you know, whatever those combos are. Right. And the hero Corwin is a prince of Amber. So the first book is called Nine Princes of Amber, and he's one of the princes. But the great thing about this series is he doesn't know any of that at the very beginning. And the book starts with him waking up in a hospital bed with like amnesia.
00:13:51
Speaker
having no idea who he is or or what he is. No memories, basically. You've got a couple of scrambled memories, but not enough to sort of make sense of anything. um But he realizes he's being imprisoned there. I think he's like you know he's he's being sedated, right and he figures it out. So it actually starts as a noir mystery, in a way, um with this real sort of existential to it.
00:14:14
Speaker
And so it was just fascinating to me. I remember when I was reading it, because I bought this book on the on the you know promise of the cover, which is it was this Black Avon edition. I think you know they were like $1.50 or something like that back at the time. And it had like this sort of 1970s art that just I was trying to think of like yeah a reference for it. And the only thing I can kind of compare it to is Judas Priest album covers. like of vi of art you know And on the cover, there's this guy and in shining armor and he's sort of standing in the middle of this road and and he's holding his hands up and in one hand he's got a sword and the other hand he's got a gun.
00:14:50
Speaker
um So I was like instantly, I was like, oh, it's like fantasy, but there's a gun, like like it's fantasy sci-fi, like what is this? And the city of Amber is on one sort of side of him and there's a road that goes to the other side of the of the cover and there's like this horde of monsters that are like heading towards towards Amber, which kind of represents some stuff that actually goes on in the in in the book. But so I was like, oh, I'm gonna read this cool sci-fi fantasy thing and then I pick it up and I'm like, what? is It's it like a detective story or mystery story or something. yeah And so I didn't know what to make of that, but very quickly it gets into, he he manages to escape and he realizes when he escapes this place that he's sort of superhuman because he's able to overpower them the orderlies who are you know the goons, right? And and very easily.
00:15:34
Speaker
and he gets some contact info for a sister, goes and visits his sister. She starts talking about, like she doesn't realize he's amnesiac and she starts you trying to figure out where he is in the middle of their family political drama. And that's when you start to get like this family conflict between all the princes and and all that kind of stuff. And he has still at this point, no idea what's going on. So it's ah it's a wonderful kind of perspective for the reader because it's it's a really unique, weird world and you're discovering it with you know the narrator and it has a very literary style. So it wasn't like anything I was, you know, like I said earlier, I was reading like Conan books. which Well, he's such an excellent pro stylist. It's the last name. Yeah. and and And just the allusions to myth and, you know, He'll drop lines from Hamlet Inn and there's all sorts of mythological ah things. There's like references to like the War of the Roses and Song of Roland. I didn't know any of that when I was younger, which is why it's so rich on rereading. Because you know when you come back to like a university, like you said, you read it and you go, ah like I get this reference. right and yeah and
00:16:43
Speaker
And it becomes even richer because of like, it's in this just conversation with with other books and other myths and and and all that kind of stuff. And it all makes sense in the context of this this universe that he's that he's presenting too, which is, you know, so much of it is.
00:17:02
Speaker
storytelling and you know and creation is like artistic creation. So that's like a really interesting angle. like When they travel, the royal family can travel between these shadows, so nobody else can. So like you or I would not be able to to travel between shadows. We wouldn't be able to get to Amber. like or I would have by now. We would have left at 2017.
00:17:24
Speaker
He can travel through shadow, um which is and and the way that he does it is he just sort of says, okay, like I'm driving down the road, I want to see a white tree around the next corner. And he comes around the corner and the white tree's there. And then he's like, behind that white tree, I want to see a graveyard, and in one of the graves, I want my magic sword to be buried, right? And and that's all there. And the books are like wonderful in that they don't actually ever tell you if He is simply, and and the members of his family are simply able to just travel through one of these many infinite shadows to find the one they need or if they actually create them. And that's like, that's real uncertainty. And I think that's one point they actually mentioned they don't know, like if they're actually creating these shadows or if they're just able to travel to the ones that they want. Did Zelazny even know how much of this was he making up as he went along?
00:18:10
Speaker
I think, ah I think probably ah like a tremendous amount, um because I don't think what and I'm no Zalazny expert, you know, I'm i'm a ah you know Chronicles of Amber enthusiasts, but I'm not as a Zalazny expert. yeah yeah and I think that he think he was interested in the storytelling.
00:18:29
Speaker
um not in the i got to get like it was It's not hard sci-fi where you're like, I got to get all everything right. you know This has to make sense and physicists are going to be able to come at it and go, yeah, that I totally buy that. That's exactly how it would work right if we had the yeah technology. and that's not That's not his thing. he He's he's giving giving you cues. A lot of the time, it's it's cues to let your own imagination do the work. It gives you enough to like, here's how I'm going to advance the story. You you can figure out the background. right That's up to you, which I love because that's that's like largely what I do as a writer too. Then that was sort of learning that that lesson from him and learning the lesson of, it was the first one that was set in first fantasy sci-fi book that was set in my world.
00:19:15
Speaker
Conan wasn't my world, and lord of them yeah none of those things were were my world. I love them all, but they they were somewhere else. right But this was like this you know actually starts in my world and and then becomes a fantasy story. And I was just so blown away that but by that, it you know my element elementary school years.
00:19:35
Speaker
and And that's the direction I ended up going as ah as a writer when it came to my own speculative fiction. Largely, my Angel Ben Slinger series is not set in this world, but ah but my cross books, the same thing. They're they are set in the modern world and through our history and and mythology and cross is often sort of wrapped up in the origins of a lot of are the myths we've inherited and stuff. He sort of plays ah a role in them. But i yeah, I really learned a lot of that from from the Chronicles of Amber.
00:20:02
Speaker
Now, before we get back to the Chronicles of Amber, the books that you just mentioned of yours that you wrote, give us the elevator pitch of those so that we know exactly what you what you write and and then we can talk later about how Zelazny might have informed that. I would say it's Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber meets Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber meets a Hellboy meets emberto e So I try i like i try and literary genre fiction that's you know informed by myths and other books and you know the the characters I have in my book, my character Cross, he's an immortal, he's the yeah it It actually came from ah from an old English poem, the whole the whole book series. When I was in university, I studied this poem called The Dream of the Rude, which tells the early Christ crucifixion from the perspective of the cross that bore him. And I remember like just being
00:21:02
Speaker
just blown away by like, like, I never encountered like that point of view before. And, you know, we spend our entire lives steeped in, you know, Christian mythology, whether we want to or not, but I'd never seen that, that angle. And so, uh, so that was fascinating. and And it was just talking about like the, the, it's the first person perspective of this cross, talking about what an honor it is to bear Christ and what an important responsibility it is and and all that kind of stuff.
00:21:28
Speaker
And you know I was sort of just thinking one day, like like what like what happened to that cross? right you know are You're always seeing the the stories about somebody trying to sell a relic of the the you know the one true cross or whatever it is. But we don't actually know what happened to it. And of course, it's you know probably long disintegrated and and whatever by this point.
00:21:46
Speaker
but I was thinking about that that notion of that you know that vessel that was used to carry him being being left behind. And then I started thinking about the idea of of you know Christ as the Holy Spirit. And then I thought about the idea of, well, what if that physical body of his was the equivalent of the root of that cross? And it was sort of similar and it was left behind.
00:22:08
Speaker
You know like the physical body left of the physical world and the spirit moves on and then I just thought like what if another soul pops into it, right? Somehow and then and then I just had this wonderful creative tension because whatever the other soul is gonna pop into it cannot ever live up to you know the original soul. um So I have this character, Cross, who very much like Corwin, who pops into his body and doesn't know why he's there, who he is, what his past is, if any. He's a drunk, he's a rogue, he's a thief, he hunts angels and kills them for their heavenly grace, which he needs for to sort of power the magical abilities of his body.
00:22:45
Speaker
And it's like the Chronicles of Amber. It's kind of full of like myths where he's in, in sort of, uh, in the short story collection he's that I've done. He's, he's caught up in the, in the Grendel myth between Grendel and Beowulf. He's sort of largely responsible for that. He hangs out with the Grimm brothers and gives them ideas for their, for their fairy tales. And, uh, he hangs out with, you know, I'm dead Christopher Marlow, who is a turned out. It didn't stay dead when he was, when he was killed all those years ago. Yeah. I hung out with Shakespeare a bit.
00:23:16
Speaker
with fairy with literary characters Alice from the Alice in Wonderland tales and Frankenstein's creature and and Jules Verne and Herman Melville and All those sorts of characters and he and he kind of gets into trouble over and over He keeps saving the world ah sort of against his better judgment in the moment Lisa sacrifice. He has to stop ah a War among the angels is kind of the the background to the book and he gets caught up in that. There's a bit of an an antihero yeah Yeah, but he keeps doing the right thing. He just kind of sees it as a character flaw. He doesn't really want to, but he's usually manipulated into doing the right thing because it's helping his friends. Or in the Mona Lisa sacrifices, actually, it's sort of a quest for vengeance because an angel comes to him and says, look, I need you to find the Mona Lisa for me, like the real Mona Lisa, not the not the fake thing that's in the
00:24:05
Speaker
in in the museum. and And in return, I'll give you the location of Judas. And so Judas is the one that you know obviously betrayed Christ, but in in these books, Judas is a trickster God, not just ah like a human who happened to betray Christ, but he's somebody who's actually trying to keep humanity down in the muck and the blood, as he puts it. And so getting rid of Christ was like you know key key to that. So so Cross kind of has like this sort of vague memory of like really like not being happy with Judas. And then Judas, as it turns out, was responsible for the death of his um ah this sort of one true love and their and their daughter, their unborn daughter. And so he really wants to exact vengeance upon upon Judas. So the first book, The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, is largely driven by sort of a thirst for revenge. But then in The in the Dead Hamlets, he's actually trying to protect his
00:24:51
Speaker
His unborn daughter is actually ah being born um to the fairy queen Morgana who is sort of crosses sometimes lover sometimes nemesis and she's given birth and this sort of magical birth to to his daughter just to kind of get even with them for something that happened in the past.
00:25:08
Speaker
And the fairy would like to put on productions of of Hamlet and sort of for their own own amusement. But something is haunting these productions and killing members of the production. And so there's a danger that his daughter is actually going to get killed again. And so then he has to try to solve the the ghost story, figure out what the ghost wants in the dead Hamlet. So in that one, he's gone from being driven by your revenge to trying to protect his his his daughter. And then in the apocalypse arc, he sort of put at odds with Noah, who in in my books isn't sort of the savior of humanity, but is God's jailer. So the arc is the where God stored all of his mistakes before he got it right with you know humans and everything else. And Noah has sort of been sort of condemned to to you know imprison them for for the rest of time. And he's gone mad and he's trying to end the world to put an end to its suffering. And he wants to
00:26:01
Speaker
um and the world using this sort of Lovecraftian monster that's located in this sunken city that he has to find and and so cross in his his um crew are basically the only ones that can that can stop him. Now, given your thematic material, are you a ah ah man of faith yourself or? I am, i am ah how do I put it? it's Sort of like uncertain. I think, I often appreciate a lot of the faith and ah and i and I struggle with a lot of the you know political manifestations of it in in our world and um you know the same things I think associated with it that many people many people struggle
Personal Stories and Spirituality
00:26:42
Speaker
with. right and But i I have that spiritual impulse and so i I sometimes struggle to find a home for it. And where I've sort of most been at home is when I go to, in Vancouver there's a Unitarian church I go to sometimes,
00:26:57
Speaker
And I like that one because it doesn't try and give me a ah dogma or answer. is it just It's sort of home to people who are spiritually inclined or spiritually questing and and just sort of tries to you know guide you to a good life, I suppose, using whatever tools are are sort of available. And it and does you know doesn't hesitate to pull in things from other religions that are faiths or whatever that that may fit. So it's kind of like like my writing. I'm always pulling in you know myths and stuff like that. I was just thinking that, yeah. my spiritual impulses are are are the same way. And, and, you know, I find definitely like the, the older I get, the more, I i think, not surprisingly, and most people probably follow that path, you sort of get more spiritually inclined.
00:27:41
Speaker
ah especially once I had kids and kids with health problems and it's just, you know, you realize like you want there to be more and you want you want to have that sense of of of something bigger than yourself because the whole the whole act of parenting is is its yeah so daunting and and and does require that community but also requires that kind of mental and emotional community as well as like the physical one, right? And and you just want, yeah, you want something different than the sort of, I guess, like the the nihilism of atheism that you know was sort of present in my university days. you know It was very, very trendy to be an atheist then, right? But I always felt there was something kind of kind of lacking about that too. So, yeah. And I'm guessing you're roughly the same vintage as
00:28:26
Speaker
Me and mark 56 about to turn 57. Okay. Yeah, and I'm 59 and mark is that what are you? yeah out of your twenty s yet mike i've I'm 26 So, are you comfortable telling us a little bit about ah your kids and what you're up against there or Oh, yeah, sure. it was um my my My first son was ah just had a lot of um respiratory issues. And so as um he had what we would we called or the doctors called reactive asthma. But it was just was very, very severe. And so we would we have scenarios where you know he'd be in the hospital, he'd get the cold, and it would just like
00:29:12
Speaker
he'd be in the hospital for like five days um you know on oxygen and and that sort of stuff. And it was always very difficult for me because I had a um ah sister that had passed away before I was born from from exactly that that kind of issue. So she had passed away, you know this would have been in 65, I think, in post-war Germany you know and and obviously the you know, medical knowledge wasn't the same and the infrastructure wasn't the same. And I'm very sort of grateful my my son had access to the medical care that he did because I think there were certainly some, you know, the doctors told me there were some close calls, you know, a couple of times. And then he just outgrew it, which is um kind of what happens with that. And then um my my second son was was born with a, with a, essentially like a heart murmur. And so he needed a heart procedure at at at three months.
00:30:02
Speaker
But it was, that was kind of the ideal scenario. There was, um, there was, you know, situation with, uh, early testing that we just didn't know if he was going to be viable or not. And they were like, you know, these are the sort of things that can be the result of what this tests are. And, you know, one of them was like a heart defect, but the other ones were yeah quite severe. Right. And, and so it was a, it was a stressful situation and I had, you know, a lot of encounters, the whole family had a lot of encounters with the,
00:30:29
Speaker
but the healthcare care system with BC Children's Hospital who were you know just unbelievably professional and compassionate and and brought everything they could to to try and help us through figuring out what the issue was and then coping and and you know did every test imaginable. and It was just like it was like a profoundly transformative experience for me and and was you know one of those reasons I started writing about healthcare and then eventually shifted to healthcare.
00:30:59
Speaker
was you want to pay it back somehow. You spend all the times in ER with a sick kid who's like throwing up and, and then you go away and they never see you again, you know, or they do see you again, but he's sick and throwing up again. And, you know, and it was just all those experiences. I just went like, yeah, I just, I wanted to be, you know, a part of that team that was making a difference. And I no longer felt in journalism, I was, I was making a difference. Um, you know, as like all those cuts started to happen and you know,
00:31:27
Speaker
all that kind of stuff. So so yeah, it was it was transformative for my career, but also got me sort of going down that that spiritual path. it was It was a book I read actually by Christian Wyman. I'm not sure the pronunciation of the name of the poet. And he wrote this book called My Bright Abyss, Meditations of a Nonbeliever or something like that. And it was about his return to, he'd he'd been raised as a as a Christian and then, you know, had moved away from that. And then later in life, um he had ah terminal cancer diagnosis. um I think he's still alive, but he sort of rediscovered his faith. And then he wrote this book about like, a series of essays about but that kind of process. And because he's a poet, they're just like these incredibly beautiful meditations on faith and death and living well and and all that kind of stuff. And it just
00:32:18
Speaker
And it just made me think at the same time I was encountering these health issues with with my oldest son, that that position of um you know atheism that I had kind of just fallen into for for a really long time just didn't fit for me anymore. How are your sons doing now?
00:32:36
Speaker
Yeah, they're doing great. Yeah. Um, my, the, the one who was in and out of hospital, he's taller than me now. Um, you and you're what four foot seven, I'm trying to guess. Well, I am shrinking, shrinking every year. I think and he can run way faster than you too. Right. Well, I didn't know about that, but the little guy can. Yeah. So the one with that, with the heart issue, you know, I sometimes joke that they fixed it too well because he's a little soccer player, a little star soccer player. And, um, yeah, I can't keep up with them at all. Like he just runs me into the ground. So.
00:33:06
Speaker
Yeah, so they're both doing really well. Thanks for asking. That's good. Yeah, that's good. And so has has any of this made its way into your fiction and and writing? Yes and no. um like i with With the Cross books, I wanted to be really careful that I didn't write sort of an anti-religious or anti-spiritual kind of you know rant. right like So Cross is, like I said, a you know he's a drunk and ah and a killer and a thief and all that.
00:33:39
Speaker
in this holy body. And i was I was always a bit concerned about people you know getting offended by it and all you know and all that sort of stuff. But I really wanted to you know make sure that he was always kind of doing the right thing and not doing the right thing by biblical standards, but doing the right thing by sort of you know human mortal standards. and And so I would say his his kind of philosophy, you know he'd be a stoic.
00:34:07
Speaker
um That's kind of the the the, you know, kind of faith i I would give him. Okay. Does he spend any time with Marcus Aurelius? Not yet, but we'll see. um But yeah, I mean, I mean, well, yeah, no, but I can't talk about book five. He you know, that's, it's, it's a thing that's given me a lot of comfort stoicism. And it's, you know, I've suffered a lot from anxiety. And it's one of those things that really helped me deal with it.
00:34:35
Speaker
and And so I've read a lot of Ryan Holiday's sort of takes. I don't really read the originals. I read Ryan Holiday's obstacles away and still listen to the key. And it kind of collects stories of people who embody stoic philosophy throughout the throughout the ages. And then you know what are the lessons from that? And so Ryan Holiday's books have been you know quite meaningful to me. And as was Oliver Berkman's 4,000 Weeks, which I read a couple of a couple of years ago.
Stoicism and Philosophical Insights
00:35:01
Speaker
Damn it, Mark, our pile is getting longer and longer. That's what I'm gonna add to Peter's. You gotta read the meditations though, man. It's great. Marcus Aurelius, it's it's it's still real. I'll give the original try, but I feel like ah I've read so many excerpts from them now that you know I i might might have the gist. Well, the best part is it will make you laugh because he's like, you know, we're not going to live forever and you're going to be forgotten. It's like, OK, buddy, you got to you got to recognize we still talking about you or whatever. yeah But he would probably be surprised by that. He would be surprised by it, I think. Yeah, he would be. Yeah.
00:35:36
Speaker
And Berkeley's 4,000 weeks is a similar idea, right? He takes, I think it's a stoic idea that you know we are only going to live for 4,000 weeks, so you know roughly, right? So like right those you use those weeks well, use your time well, and live your life well, and pay attention to like you know what's going on in the moment, which is which is hard, right? we're so Distracted by our phones and the news cycle and and you know, it's really really hard to be present right now I want to go back to your book because I had a question because it's like it just seems like a lovely Literary inversion your character is inhabiting a holy body but his spirit is corrupt and
00:36:19
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Whereas it's the opposite in Christian theology, really. It's the the spirit's pure, but the body is corrupt. Was that something that you thought about when you did that or? No, it was an accident.
00:36:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say happy accident. and And I wouldn't say he's he's corrupt. he's He doesn't want to be there. But he can't die because whenever he dies, his the body just resurrects. Yeah, yeah exactly. there So you know he tries to kind of forget the world. And he's been like you know an addict and a drunk and and all those kinds of things. and And he's got a pretty cavalier attitude about you know human life and isn't hesitant to murder somebody or murder an angel or or you know whatever it is.
00:37:03
Speaker
But yeah, like I said, he he keeps kind of doing the right thing. And the right thing is usually about his circle of friends, but that kind of starts to expand out from there as as well. And I think that's, you know, it's that that idea of, you know, being the change you want to be in the world is, is it starts with your immediate circle, right? And and that's really what cross Cross is kind of doing. And he does it for selfish reasons sometimes. And, you know, he's not not the most noble, but there is sort of a bit of an arc to him where he, and I don't want to call it a redemption arc, because it's not quite that, but um where he does sort of,
00:37:44
Speaker
move from being a creature of just pure revenge and, you know, and anger to, you know, something more stoic. So back to Zelazny, how many times have you read ah The Chronicles of Ant? I don't know the number anymore, but I'm i'm guessing it's like probably somewhere in the 20 range, because i like I've read it so many times. Yeah, and I would read it like multiple times in a year when I was a kid. Well, yeah, because your synopsis was... I mean, I've read it a couple of times, but it's been a while since I've read it, and I was quite impressed with your synopsis, which
00:38:18
Speaker
You know, pretty detailed. Does any of it consciously find its way into your writing or do you allude to it or? I think. there's no There's no direct, I don't think there's any direct illusions. I think it's sort of the the biggest thing would probably be like the first person style because I like to write um first person, at least with this cross series and a couple of my other books. Some of my other ones I don't, I write third person. but So there's that sort of that sort of parallel. and And then like I said, all the you know the the the literary illusion, you know the myths, the history, and and I think the the kind of thing he does where he, where I said earlier, like he lets your imagination do the work. And I know this irritates people sometimes, but other people like it in my work is when I'll, I'll do like a sort of a throwaway a bit about, you know, the, the backstory I have with this, you know, this, this character was, you know, that time that, you know, we went into that dwarf tunnel and oh my God,
00:39:16
Speaker
And then it just never explained it, right? And it's like, let the reader like picture what happened in that dwarf tunnel, right? I can't remember. i Actually, I have a dwarf tunnel in the book or not. But um but you know, that's the sort of idea, right? You just give that throw away, you know, like, are you still mad at me about those dwarves, right? And then just never explain it and let the reader kind of craft that story for themselves. And that's something that Lasny does. and And I kind of think of it and as a sort of a model of collaborative storytelling.
00:39:42
Speaker
You know, a lot of books are just really a one way. Here's the world. Here's how it is. Here's all the details you need to know. Here's the magic system or the science system or whatever it is. And I like to be just like, here's the story. And here's a bunch of backstories that you can fill out in your own and come up with your own, your own version, your own fan fiction in your, you know, in your head or whatever it is, right? Your parallel text in your head.
00:40:08
Speaker
And to me, that's very rich because I always liked that, you know, when I was reading, not just Elazany, like, you know, William Gibson did it sometimes too, right? In his, in his Neuromancer books. And you can just create this whole history or something that, you know. Because if you get the, the reader's imagination and going and engaged, then that's kind of what creates that, that magic spell, I think.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah. And then they're bringing this whole sort of back world they've created to to the to the story, which you know hopefully fits, right? And then it just becomes a richer world because of that. Yeah. So you're amongst ah writers here. what What are your tips? how do you How do you make it work for you?
00:40:49
Speaker
What are my tips? um the you know The biggest thing I learned was you don't need to write in order. And that was in in my second book, The Warhol Gang, I'd hit a point where I was just like, oh, I don't know what happens next.
00:41:05
Speaker
because i was I didn't have things totally out. like I'm much more of an outliner now, and I just i just didn't have it then. and I swear i was like I didn't write for like six months or something because I just didn't know what happened next. Finally, I was like, um I got to jump ahead because I just got to finish this book. right and i I'll come back and work on this later. and then i you know ah because I knew there was like a scene. I had the ending of the book, so I knew I could jump ahead to that right and and sort of work backwards if I had to.
00:41:31
Speaker
And so I jumped ahead to another scene I had. And just that act of doing that made me go, Oh, this is what I need. And that previous scene, I can't think this way because once I write the scene, I need, Oh, I need X, Y, and Z to happen. and So that can happen back here. And so that was huge for me because then anytime I was just like, you know, I try and write linear fashion, but anytime I hit that roadblock,
00:41:55
Speaker
yeah I just jumped to a different part of the book and then figure out what's missing, you know, that I can't think of sort of, you know, once I've got that, that other, that other stuff. So that was a big one. The other big thing for me was creating a a system for writing and which is sort of manifested in in a few different ways. But the the most important one was like, I had to reimagine my writing space. Um, so I'd gotten to the point where I was,
00:42:24
Speaker
writing felt like work and sitting down at a desk. I'm working all day. I come home. I sit down at a computer. I work some more. You know, I wasn't happy. Like things were going on in my life. Like it was just like, it wasn't, I couldn't, I wasn't writing much cause I was, I didn't want to sit at the desk and write.
00:42:37
Speaker
And I read James Clear's Atomic Habits. And he yeah he has this thing in there where he talks about, like look, goals are great. You need goals to give you a direction. But systems are how you get things done, right? And you have to put a good system into place. Because if your system isn't its running well, you never hit the goal. I was like, oh, I need a writing system for my desk, right? And it has to be like, ah essentially, it came to the realization I needed a happiness system. Yeah.
00:43:03
Speaker
So i I cleared my desk of you know all the clutter and stuff like that. And I got a bunch of framed, I bought a box of D and&D postcards because I like playing Dungeons and Dragons. And I find like the artwork of D and&D makes me really happy. And so I bought a bunch of these postcards, put them in frames, put them in my desk, bought a little tin tin rocket, you know those red and white rockets from Explorers on the Moon. I had paid a stupid amount of money for like a little tiny rocket that I could put on my desk.
00:43:29
Speaker
But looking at it makes me happy. And so suddenly i'm I'm sitting at the space where I'm like happy. And now I'm lingering there and I'm more willing to sit down and more willing to, you know, once you sit down, you the work starts happening, right? and And more willing to sit there for a longer period of time. And I found that little simple like hack of like make my workspace happy, which is You know, sounds incredibly obvious, but isn't too many of us made a huge difference in how much I was, I was able to produce. Like I started producing more, more writing.
Writing Tools and Publishing Reflections
00:43:59
Speaker
And then another friend of mine, the writer, Sebastian de Castel, got me onto to using Notion as sort of a second brain. It's the idea of using, I don't know if you know Notion or not, but it's like this online like database system ah that is incredibly customizable and and very, very simple to use. You can use it as.
00:44:17
Speaker
you know, simply as you want is like a checklist, or you can create elaborate databases, you know, if you want, like it's entirely up to you what you want to do with it. And I just use that as kind of, I put story ideas there, I keep track of all my publications there, ah you know, feedback I get. um And it was just having, instead of having a bunch of notes, you know, that I was constantly losing and going, Oh, the great idea for a story last week, where did I put that note, right? umve I've got everything. It's a good database.
00:44:46
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Yeah, so I highly recommend it. and I use it for work as well, like in my in the communications job. But I found like, yeah, I can actually keep track of my ideas now. Yeah, you wake up in the middle of the night, you write it down, you lose that post it and that idea is gone, right? And so now I've actually got like ah like a sort of archive of ideas. Okay, so that's how to to write a book.
00:45:06
Speaker
Uh, which I think we can all agree is the easy part. How do you sell? Oh yeah. That's the, that's the easy part. Damn you. Damn you Damn you. Damn your own eyes. ah Clearly podcast. Really the podcast is the way to go. Yeah. Yeah, well, I can testify that I know for a fact that I have sold at least one book after publishing, what, 55 podcast episodes? We're getting up there towards 60. Yeah. yeah i know i i had to
00:45:38
Speaker
stop paying attention to that side of things because I found it affected my my writing and it would get me depressed because I would be like, when you know, you have the you have the dream to like, oh, I should be able to assault some books, I should be able to make a living as a full time writer, you know, want some grants, like whatever it is, you know, and maybe in certain parts of the world, you can i live in Vancouver. So, you you know,
00:45:59
Speaker
I'm not sure if like, you know, Stephen King could like write full time here, right? It's so expensive. But um it's it's, you have to kind of, at some point, just tune out like the publishing side and just go like, what's going to happen is going to happen and you'll you'll do everything you can to sort of, you know,
00:46:18
Speaker
um support it, but you have to kind of do what you're comfortable with too at the same time. And and at a certain point, you just can't worry about it. like like So much of it is out of your hands. I had had an experience once where somebody compared Rob Wearsome, a Victoria writer, a wonderful writer and reviewer, compared Mona Lisa's Sacrifice, my first cross book, to one of Neil Gaiman's books on on CBC's, one of this shows.
00:46:44
Speaker
and you know It went to like number one on Amazon and you know all this kind of stuff. And I was just like like, fantastic. But it just pointed out to me how random it was, right? I didn't even know it was happening. It was the biggest thing ever to happen to my book because of like the you know the platform that he had. and Because Rob is just just like wonderfully like he's so enthusiastic about talking about but literature. He's a wonderful, wonderful guy.
00:47:09
Speaker
But it just made me realize, yeah, i I don't have any control over any part of this process, but you know once the writing's done. um and And so I had to you know embrace that stoicism and go, what what will be, what will be, and I need to you know worry about the things I can worry about, which is writing the next thing, right?
00:47:25
Speaker
Right, yeah yeah. Good advice, that's great advice. Yeah, I like that. im I'm a little bit upset we haven't talked about the trump cards.
00:47:35
Speaker
it now tell what I think that's in the first book. yeah You see that. It is. ands yeah It's one of the first clues for Corwin, who is going under the name Cory at this point because it isn't, you know. Yeah, it isn't always Corwin yet.
00:47:49
Speaker
It's one of the first clues that something weird is going on and we should, you know, make clear for, for listeners, Trump cards are like, they're like, they're tarot cards, not, you know, tarot cards. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, he finds when he goes to visit his sister, he finds this, this deck of cards and it's got these illustrations of people who seem familiar to him. And when he, when he basically kind of stares at them for a moment,
00:48:14
Speaker
It initiates a sort of contact. They're essentially like, you know, iPhones for across the realm where you can – Interdimensional iPhones you can step through. Yes, yes. So you can have a conversation with somebody or you can also – they can basically open a portal or you can open a portal and – Or you can pull someone through, yeah.
00:48:33
Speaker
There's a very, very interesting thing in the second series, which follows Corwin's son, Merlin, through various adventures, where he has a Trump contact with somebody, and I think it's a woman, and and the person he's having contact with, is she's dreaming.
00:48:50
Speaker
um and so he's in but basically in contact with her, with her dream. And then there's this whole sort of philosophical kind of angle he has on like, Oh, what happens if you, if you got pulled into somebody's dream, like you initiate contact and you, and you go into their dream and it, you know, it gets back to that clever storytelling and it follows it up. But like, you know, in my head, I'm like, Oh my God, totally want to read that. Yeah, exactly. That's me too. Yeah.
00:49:17
Speaker
And and you know his father is in prison, Corwin's in prison. He's trying to find him. I remember at one point I was thinking, oh, is he like was this like the the the clue? Like he's actually in somebody's dream, right? But it turns out not. It's something different. but Yeah, this is the trump cards the other, you know, they're basically these magical magical terror cards that are kind of always in the background and play pretty important roles. and They are actually a pretty critical function in terms of the storytelling in terms of the the structure of the plots. The trump cards really matter quite a bit. Yeah. But I just love them as an idea. Like it was just such a fun idea.
00:49:50
Speaker
Well, they're great because it's, again, this is one of the things that made the book so different for me because, you know, he's got a magic sword, Grace Wander, in in the book, but it's a really minor item in this in the scheme of things. But these are like the the Trump cards, I think, are the are the sort of big magic items next to the pattern itself. Yeah, exactly. um Which is a magical thing, in which in the second series it turns out is actually a sentient thing, which sort of divides defines the fan base.
00:50:20
Speaker
um there's the that The second book is sort of, as it turns out, it's kind of a like a war between the pattern and the logress, which is the the chaos equivalent of the pattern. And they're both these weird sentient creatures that are making all these royal families like you know basically fight their war by proxy for them. I just actually finished a reread of that a couple of days ago, and I'm i'm still kind of I'm uncertain on on that. but But yeah, like the magic items, they're not, you know, Lord of the Rings and and Conan, you know, it was all like wizard stuff and and magic swords and stuff in here. It's like cards and patterns. And yeah, it was, it was again, totally totally unexpected. Magic guns at one point, you know. Have you read other Zelazny? Yeah, i've read I don't think I've read everything of his, but I've read ah quite a bit. Oh, there's the one that would be
00:51:12
Speaker
Trending right now, probably it's a night in the loads in October. A bunch of sort of literary and historical characters trying to stop the great old ones or whatever it is from from entering the world and ending
Zelazny's Influence and Encounters
00:51:26
Speaker
it. And it's kind of like a Halloween kind of favorite, right? And it it actually is told, if I'm calling it correctly, it's been a long time since I read it. It's told from the perspective of like Jack the Ripper's dog. And Jack the Ripper is like, is a bad guy, but he's also one of the people saving the world. And he's got a reason for being a bad guy.
00:51:42
Speaker
So it's kind of an interesting book. I need to reread that one. Lord of Light was so like a really popular one of his about ah but a spaceship that gets sort of stranded on this planet. And then the the crew kind of set up this Hindu, I think it is caste system using their technology and they sort of become these these gods that kind of keep everybody down, but it's gods through through actual technology and then it's the the The hero of the book is the the one who's kind of fighting back against him, who's kind of like a Buddha figure. um Yeah, I quite like that one. Yeah. and the the One of my favorites is a short story collection called Unicorn Variations. um And there's a couple of really like fun stories in there. And the the title one is great. It's this guy who's like hiking, and he comes across this sort of like deserted like village, essentially like an old mining town or something like that that's been abandoned. And I think he finds like a chess set, and he starts like
00:52:32
Speaker
playing chess while he's like sitting around drinking there, you know, like after a day of hiking. And something starts playing chess with him. um And, and so the story is basically it's like he ends up playing chess against a unicorn who like wants to, you know, keep playing him. And so he comes back, but he, he goes and finds, like, I think it's a Sasquatch to help him learn how to play against, you know, play chess against a unicorn. It's just this totally bizarre, weird tale, but like so much fun and so creative and so like sort of typicals of Osny and
00:53:04
Speaker
And then he had another one that was like the Perseus versus sort of Medusa myth retold and in the present day. And this one called ah the George Business, I think was also in that collection of ah the dragon and the knight sort of cutting a deal and sort of traveling from town to town to kind of like, you know, ah take advantage of, of you know, of of people and make some make some coin. So a lot of his a lot of his books are like, or a lot of his stories I find are quite fun like his books so often um take on a more serious tone you know it deals with like big big heavy subject matters but his book his stories tend to be a little lighter and and there's a little more room for sort of play and whimsy in them that I that I quite enjoy. So Peter we could talk to you all night I think about about writing and and Zelazny but we'll have to cut it off I think at this point but I want to ask you one last question do you think at this point that you're writing
00:54:00
Speaker
How does it compare to Zalazny? Have you reached Zalazny levels or are you happy with ah how far you've come? oh No, no, no, no. I could never make that comparison. And and you know, I just try and i just try and write.
00:54:14
Speaker
the best weird little books that I can write. And i love that you know you know, it's funny. I like I was actually in the same room with him once when I was young and I just couldn't bring myself to go and and introduce myself to him because I didn't have anything written at that point. Right. And I just didn't want to didn't want to bother him. I'm also sort of glad I didn't because, you know, I think sometimes it's it's nice just to have that relationship with the book. And, and you know, like, what if you don't like the person as a writer and and all that kind of stuff? Right. So like the books are The books are always just going to be the most magical thing I ever read because it's the you know the books that changed everything for me as a kid. And so you know my own work is never going to be able to compare to that. but
00:54:52
Speaker
Hopefully, you know, my books could be that for somebody else, you know, somewhere down there. That's the idea. That's right. 20 or 30 years from now, if not much sooner, somebody will be doing the podcast about your books and yourself. That's the dream. I have to ask it. Now you've prompted another question. Under what circumstances were you in the same room as the last name?
00:55:14
Speaker
Oh, it was a science fiction convention. He was at, uh, it was a Montreal, I think a very long time ago. I can't remember which one it was anymore. And we were just eating breakfast in the same room. And, and it's like, I saw it, but I realized who it was. And then my, my girlfriend at the time was like, Oh my God, you got to go over and like talk to him. And I was like, no, like I can't, um, you know, can't bug the man eating it. Like, it so was it wasn't like, you know, eating ah pancakes, leave them alone.
00:55:37
Speaker
Yeah. And I'd had one experience earlier where I'd sort of, you know, been in a, been at a convention with a writer that I'd liked and then the the writer, his work I'd liked, but then I didn't, I wasn't really in love with the writer after that. And so I just really just wanted to avoid all that and just be like, I just want these books to remain the magical thing they are. yes yeah So obviously they still do. Mark, any final thoughts? No, we talked about the Trump cards, so I'm happy. ok I was really worried we weren't going to talk about them.
00:56:05
Speaker
Peter Derbyshire, thank you very much for being on our podcast, Recreative. You've been listening to Recreative, a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it. Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney for Donovan Street Press, Inc., in association with Monkey Joy Press. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney, web design by Mark Rainer.
00:56:54
Speaker
You can support this podcast by checking out our guests' work, listening to their music, purchasing their books, watching their shows, and so on. You can find out more about each guest in all of our past episodes by visiting recreative.ca. That's re hyphen-creative.ca. You can contact us by emailing joe mohoney at donovanstreetpress.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.