After an absence

It`s probably a common occurance in the blogging community that those times when our lives are busiest and most exciting are the times when we are least likely to blog about them. Such have been the last few months for me and I`m going to try to start this blog over again. A few days ago, I received a call from my publishers (the excellent Oberon Press of Ottawa) who have decided that they`re going to publish my book this autumn, rather than next. Almost exactly five years ago, this manuscript began as an exercise for the 3-Day Novel Contest. In a little more than a month, it will be out of my hands. Ah, so many memories, so little time.

I've also decided on a change of title. The working title was originally Omniscience, spent a couple years as Mind Rat, Body Rat, then back to Omniscience, and has finally emerged as Correction Road, which Janine came up with during a canoe trip down the Middle Red Deer (an auspicious place for literary inspiration, being the setting for Kroetsch's excellent Badlands). I'm very fond of Correction Road as fascinating little gem of rural planning. From the novel:

Hugh comes to the correction road, the southern border of his jurisdiction. One grid ends, another begins, offset a short distance to the east. Proof that the earth is round. Were it flat, the road could continue without correction to the northern and southern borders of the province. Instead the northbound roads draw ever closer together, would intersect if extended all the way to the poles. So this correction road is a concession, a February 29th: a small victory for the plains and the cartographers and the mathmatics of pi, as all these things persist along this line. Hugh drives east along the latitude, and then south upon the longitude. He's into unfamiliar territory now.