The Brown Knowser

In September, DW and I will be joining some friends for an adventure in the Saguenay region of Québec. And we feel that we need to be prepared. Two other couples will spend about 10 days with us for an active vacation, where we will cycle 250 kilometres, over five days, around Lac-Saint-Jean. Each night, we'll stay in a different hotel, inn, or B&B, and will average about 50 kms each day. When we finish this cycle route, we'll spend three days kayaking on the Saguenay River, taking in the splendid high cliffs that make up the fjord and, with any luck, spying some beluga whales in the distance (but, you know, if they swim up to us, that'd be okay, too). We're sure that our Paddlefolk will have no issues in kayaks, and we'll be spending weekends, going out with our other friends, lending them our old kayaks, to get them used to paddling on larger bodies of water than the Rideau Canal . It'll be fun being out in so many boats. But DW and I also want to make su...

Previously, I've made all of my Friday Fiction posts about writing, when I've posted excerpts from some of my fiction. Starting today, however, my Friday Fiction posts will also be about the process of writing: my thought processes, my ideas, and the tools that I use to help with the story. We'll see how it goes. For the past couple of weeks, I've been reading my manuscript for Dark Water more than I've been writing. It's my first crime novel and I want to make sure it's a good one, and so I want to make sure that I have covered even the smallest of details. And, I'm almost reluctant to say, I've been relying on AI to make sure that I don't forget anything. Before I even wrote the Prologue, which sets up the overall arc under which the story follows, I created a spreadsheet that outlined the story, from the discovery of a body until the killer is found. And then, after getting this bare-boned story outlined, I started filling the spreadsheet w...

Kindergarten was a funny time. It was only a half-day in school, and yet there was a designated nap time, where all the kids in the class were told to lie down on mats, and the teacher would turn out the lights. I don't remember how long we'd be made to stay quiet but my guess would be 15 to 20 minutes. Maybe, even half an hour. I could never sleep during nap time, though I learned how to stay quiet and lie still. I was four, and had a pretty active life, already. I was used to running around with my friends, in the neighbourhood, when our moms would kick us out of the house and tell us to be back for lunch, only to kick us out again afterwards and not want to see us again until dinner. We roamed the neighbourhood and sometimes, beyond. I didn't appreciate a nap until after I became a dad. Of course, DW did the heavy lifting—getting up in the middle of the night for the baby's feedings and spending all day with our wee ones—but I was a light sleeper and would often...

I can't remember who it was but someone, some time ago, asked me to make a video where I paddle the length of the Rideau Canal Skateway. I mean, they didn't want me to do it in the dead of winter, when our canal is frozen over and turned into the world's larges skating rink. The person wanted me to cover that same area during the months where the canal is filled with water and the lockstations are opened for traffic. Although, I can now picture myself bundled up in the cockpit with skate blades strapped to the bottom hull. That'd be something. Because I'm between jobs (I'm not yet calling myself retired ), I have the benefit of taking my kayak out whenever I want to. And so, last week, I strapped my kayak to the roof of my Niro, threw my gear into the trunk, and drove to Hartwell Locks, near the Arboretum and the Central Experimental Farm. I could have called the Paddlefolk, who are officially retired, but I wanted to do a solo paddle. I just wanted to get in th...

It's somewhere we've been meaning to go pretty much since we first ventured out with our original kayaks, in 2020. In our very first kayaking video, where we put our red and yellow Deltas into the South Nation River, at Jessups Falls , we drove past the turnoff for Petrie Island, on the eastern limits of Orleans, in Ottawa's east end. DW and I mentioned that it would be nice to check it out—and in fact, we once drove onto the island to see about putting in our kayaks but didn't have them strapped to the roof of our Niro at that time. But we never actually returned with our boats. So far, this kayaking season, we seem to be making decisions almost last-minute about heading out on the water, and at that, we haven't really had places in mind. Our paddle out at Burritts Rapids was almost improvised, though we're glad we went. We thought we might go to Petrie Island on that day, but by the time we got moving and were able to mobilize our Paddlefolk, I felt it was...

On Monday, I left the house early-ish to go for a solo paddle on the Rideau Canal, through the heart of my city. I put my kayak in at the Hartwell Lockstation and paddled all the way to the locks that cut between Parliament Hill and the Chateau Laurier, and back. I have a YouTube video that documents the trek. When I reached Dow's Lake, shortly after setting out, I couldn't help but pause and take in how calm the water was. Naturally, I had to take a picture of it. I've taken countless images of this Ottawa landmark, and even though the background has more tall buildings, it seems, every time I visit Dow's Lake, I wanted to do something different, so that this image wouldn't be like every one before it. Did you notice what's different right away or did you have to take a second look? Using Snapseed, I gave the sky, water, and buildings a dramatic look. But that's not how I made this image different. Still not see it? I've turned the image upside-down and...

I couldn't stop laughing and I was worried. But it would have been a great way to go out. The last time I hung out with my brother, Chris, before the pandemic, was in a social setting with my family, his daughter, and our folks. We wanted to get out and do something that everyone could enjoy, at all age levels: Chris' daughter, Piper, was under 10; my kids were 18 and 16. We decided to go to Level One Game Pub, near the ByWard Market, because it had games for every age level and the adults could enjoy drinks, too. It was our first time checking the place out and I'm glad we did so, even though it nearly killed me. Much like fine restaurants have sommeliers to help you choose the best wine to go with a meal, there were experts at Level One that could determine the best games to play, based on age, level of complexity, and the interests of the gamers. Because there were eight of us, we had various games at our table and we split up the players into groups of four. At one poin...

As I said in yesterday's post , how I find it a challenge to visualize the characters in my books, and how I asked ChatGPT to create the detectives in my novel, Dark Water , based on my descriptions, I was finally able to visualize inspectors Mickey Calloway and Erin Hayes, which has actually helped me develop their characters more. Thanks, AI. For fun, whilst creating that post, I uploaded images of singer-songwriter Midge Ure and of myself, from when I lived in Korea, and asked ChatGPT to merge the images to come up with Roland Axam, the central character to my novel, Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary . Here's what it came up with: Image: ChatGPT Not bad. Not bad at all. Though the film noir feeling that Ure's portrait for his The Gift album cover suits him perfectly, I wasn't feeling it for Roland (though, as my novel tells, he has a dark past). So I asked ChatGPT to add colour to the image and use the background from the photo of me. Image: ChatGPT And while it still loo...

Midge Ure in 1985. When I created Roland Axam, more than 40 years ago, I had a clear picture of how I wanted him to look. My favourite band at the time was UK new-wave band Ultravox. Around that time, front man Midge Ure had started releasing solo albums, and the cover for his first one, The Gift , featured Ure in a black-and-white, slightly noir head shot. Roland Axam, in my mind, didn't look exactly like Ure but close enough to win a look-alike contest. Roland had a more-defined jawline and eyes that always looked half-closed, like he was either in deep thought or was sizing you up. If you ever looked at Roland, you would never know what he was thinking. And that was perfect for the short stories and trilogy that I wrote, in the late 80s, where Axam was a spy. Me, in 1998. By the time I wrote Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary , Roland looked like a cross between Midge Ure and myself, especially how I looked at the end of my first year whilst living in South Korea. I often visualized U...

I'm a lazy SOB. I bought my DJI Neo drone on Black Friday, last November, as an early Christmas gift to myself. And because it was my Christmas Gift, DW made me wait until December 25 to open it. In the meantime, I watched countless YouTube videos about the best settings for the drone and about the best way to configure the drone, and several reviews that put the Neo through its paces. And even though DJI doesn't recommend flying the drone in sub-zero weather, I saw one reviewer fly it in –20°C, in Saskatchewan, without any issues. I can do that, I told myself after watching the video. I live in a similar climate. As soon as I have some free time, I assured myself, and as long as the wind wasn't too strong (I find that it's much windier in the Ottawa area than it used to be), I was going to head out. Of course, I hate going outside when it's –20. I did drive out to the Experimental Farm, one weekend, to try my hand at my drone, using the automatic functions, w...

I didn't notice it until the day after I had taken the photo. I can usually park on Kid 2's street, and had I been able to do so, last Friday, I would have never seen the artwork, let alone what it concealed. But there was construction that had a huge swath of the road torn up, including in front of her house, so I had to keep driving and found a vacant spot four blocks away. It's hot in Toronto and our kid lives in a triplex where her bedroom occupies the third floor, and because heat rises, this room swelters. She had the same issue in the last apartment she kept, and so DW and I bought a small, portable air-conditioning unit that didn't draw a ton of power but kept her room cool enough to sleep comfortably. But when our daughter moved out of that place and was going to be staying in a new place that was too small to afford space for the AC unit, DW and I brought it back home, where we kept it in the basement, waiting for when she'd have a place that had room for ...

Sometimes, it's hard for me to believe that I've had my Kia Niro for more than five years. It was bought as a replacement for my Ford Focus, which suffered mechanical issues shortly after I bought it and continued having issues over the nearly seven-and-a-half years that I kept it. The Niro was going to be my new commuter vehicle and, being a hybrid, it was going to save me even more money because of its low fuel consumption. Of course, two weeks after bringing the Niro home, the pandemic forced us into lockdown and I had never returned to the office on a regular basis again. So yeah, the fuel economy to work was great. Despite working from home, we've driven this car a lot. We take it with us more than 99 percent of the time that DW and I go kayaking. I've driven to the GTA several times because Kid 1 and Kid 2 attended university down there and because Kid 2 still calls Toronto her home (more on that, tomorrow). Still, I've put fewer kilometres on the Niro than I ...

Image: ChatGPT I've been dying to get in the water for almost two months. Last September, DW and I drove to Frontenac County to test some kayaks . We were looking to upgrade our already excellent kayaks that we used extensively for five seasons on rivers and lakes all over Ontario and parts of Québec, and thought we could use longer crafts with rudders. Within an hour, we put a deposit down on two Delta 14s with rudders , with a pre-order that wouldn't see the kayaks arrive until spring of this year. Since mid April, when the snow had melted and temperatures were climbing, I anxiously awaited a call from Frontenac Outfitters to tell us that our kayaks were in. We had some good weekends and I thought it would be great to try out our new boats, even anticipating it by writing a chapter in my crime novel that fictionalized our first paddle . As May approached and I worried that we wouldn't get our kayaks in time before we left for our vacation in Peru , I called the shop ...

One of the great things about being a writer is that you think you have a story all figured out in your head (or jotted down in notes and storyboards) but then the story takes you for a surprise turn and you end up following it, rather than leading the narrative, yourself. That's exactly what happened to me, last week, as I was working on my crime novel, Dark Water . Image: ChatGPT Now, I have to be careful, here, as I can't tip my hand and spoil anything. I'll have to write this post in general terms and not leave any clues about who dunnit. Before I even wrote the prologue, I had a murder victim. I knew who the killer was and why that person committed the crime. I had suspects, I had timelines, I had primary and secondary characters. And I knew how the story will end. All I had to do, in writing the story, was to fill in the gaps by providing detail to the outline I had devised. As I said in a previous post, I needed to put meat on the bones. By the time I hit my fi...

We're pretty lucky: we have good neighbours. We've lived in our house for more than 25 years and have seen a lot of changes. Neighbours have come and gone, bringing new families from various backgrounds. There has always been a sense of community, especially in the circle at the end of our cul-de-sac. There aren't a lot of original owners left. Including ourselves, there are four original families. All of our kids were born around the same time and grew up together, and it's been great watching these individuals go from babies to adults. New families have come into our neighbourhood and for the most part, they've been a great addition to our street. There is a family, a few doors down, where the kids don't seem to understand boundaries and whose parents are quite noisy. Privately, I call the dad 'Foghorn Leghorn.' He's a loudmouth schnook. Our house is bookended by two families with young kids. We're the old folks in the middle. The kids are...

I shook my head as I walked out of the store. I shouldn't have gone in at all. Kid 1 didn't tell me that her toilet was broken. Unbeknownst to me, she's been lifting the lid of the tank, reaching into the frigid water, and manually pulling up the flapper to flush the toilet. I don't know how long she's been doing this but it was DW who told me that the toilet was broken. I avoid our kid's bathroom because, like her bedroom, it's always a mess. Items all over the counter; clothes piled up on the floor. I only ever go in every other week, when I empty her garbage pail as part of taking out the trash. But the other day, DW mentioned that our kid's toilet wasn't working properly. When I went in to investigate, I discovered that the rubber ring that holds the chain to the flapper was broken. It was an easy enough fix: replace the flapper. For years, we've shopped for home-repair and improvement items at our local Home Depot. There's a Canadian Tir...

I have enough clothes to go at least two weeks before I have to do laundry. I have a large drawer full of socks and underwear. On socks alone, I could probably go a month, but certain socks have specific purposes. I have my everyday socks, my winter socks, and ankle socks, for when I wear shorts or am on my bike. Same with t-shirts. I could easily go a month before I ran out of them. Pants are another matter, because depending on my level of activity, I can wear the same pants for several days, so I have enough pairs to go at least a month. I know that I'm running low on underwear when I get down to the four pairs of travel undies, which are lightweight and are able to hang dry in less than a day. I brought them with me to Peru and was laughing for 16 days: I'd wear a pair, wash a pair and hang them up to dry, and still have two back-up pairs available, just in case the humidity levels slowed down the drying time or I had an emergency. At this time of year, I know that I...