Lucky 7

I've been writing for a very long time.

In the fifth grade, I wrote a short story called The Hiccuppy Monster. It was about a monster that had the hiccups and couldn't shake them, and a few friends suggested ways to get rid of them. It took a kid scaring him to end his hiccupping fit.

One friend came up with the idea, another friend drew the illustrations (he was quite talented), and I wrote the story. Our teacher liked it so much that he had me read it to kids in a couple of first-grade classrooms.

In the sixth grade, we had creative writing each week, and my teacher, Bill Townsend, encouraged me to challenge myself. He liked my writing so much that at the end of each week, he'd have me read my work to the rest of the class. He told me that if I chose to be a writer, I'd do well.

Bill Townsend was one of my most influential teachers.

In my late teens, I continued to write short stories. This was at a time that I devoured spy novels by Len Deighton, and when I created Roland Axam. I was inspired by Deighton's Game, Set, and Match trilogy and thought I would write an entire novel for Axam.

My first novel was a spy thiller called The Spy's The Limit. It featured Axam, in Berlin, as an agent with the Canadian Security Intelligence Services. He was assigned to assist his controller, Charles Townsend, who used to work for British MI-5 and who, himself, had been invited to bring a long-time agent back to the west, from the Soviet Union. Townsend had been in charge of the West Berlin portfolio and was the only person the agent trusted.

Axam was to be an observer only, but Townsend had other plans. I won't tell the story because I don't want to spoil any surprises, should I ever revive that story.

I actually turned The Spy's The Limit into a trilogy, taking Axam from Ottawa to Berlin, from Berlin to North Berwick, Scotland, and back home. When I finished the third book, Clear Spies Ahead (the second book was called Spy Will Be Done), I read everything, from cover to cover.

And wasn't happy.

I felt the story was too simple and not believable. I decided to shelve the trilogy and maybe revisited it after I had more writing experience under my belt. But I had completed three novels.

Sadly, in the moving that DW and I have done over the years, I've lost the manuscripts. I was upset but figured that perhaps I wasn't meant to be a spy novelist.

I moved on to another novel soon after. It was about teenage suicide. JT was about a teen, Joseph Thomas Smyth, in his final year of high school, and deals with the pressures that face youths. Written from the viewpoint of JT, it follows his last two weeks of life.

This novel, I thought I could get published, so I sent it to several publishing houses. Every one of them rejected the story with a lovely form letter that essentially told me to fuck off. But one of those letters was covered in hand writing around the margin, apparently by the person who actually read JT.

The person said that she actually enjoyed reading my manuscript, felt the main character compelling, and was touched by the emotion the book set. And while her company wasn't interested in this type of story, she encouraged me to keep writing.

Four books written: zero published.

The next novel that I wrote was started in 2001, after DW and I had returned from South Korea, where we taught for two years, and after we bought our first house and started a family. The book was based on our experiences in Korea but as seen through my eyes.

I should note here that all of my short stories and all of my novels were written in first-person prose. Though my sixth-grade teacher never encouraged this writing point of view, it was something that interested me.

Also, none of my books have happy endings. I just don't like them. Sorry.

It took me more than 10 years and three iterations to complete my fourth novel. I eventually brought Roland Axam into it, as the main character, complete with a sad backstory, and made him the person who experienced the things that I had while living in Korea.

Plus some fiction, for good measure.

That book did get published, although it's self-published. It's Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary.

Five books written: one published.

When I wrote Songsaengnim, I initially planned to write it to cover the span of my two years in Korea. But as the story progressed, I realized that the book was getting long, so I decided to split it into two stories: one, the first year of Roland in Korea, with his backstory as a second arc; the second story would follow Roland in his second year, where he teaches at a university.

I also decided to add parts of The Spy's The Limit—or at least what I could remember of the lost manuscript—as a secondary arc. There are actually three arcs in Gyeosunim, the sequel.

I got about two-thirds through writing Gyeosunim before I lost interest. It took 10 years to finish Songsaengnim and I didn't want to take another 10 years to write the sequel. I was bored of the characters in the main arc and needed to do something different, so I shelved my work.

For now.

Five-and-two-thirds books written. Let's say six.

My seventh book is Dark Water and is my first murder mystery, which is a departure from my other books. It's my first book that is not written in first-person prose (it's in third-person) and it's one of the few books that doesn't feature Roland Axam (JT is the only other novel that is Roland-free).

I have friends who think I'm a novice writer. Heck, I have friends who sometimes forget that I'm a writer (even though I worked for 25 years, writing documentation for various companies). I do lack confidence in my writing ability but I look back to my fifth-grade teacher, who liked The Hiccuppy Monster so much that he had me read it to younger kids (and I think he kept the only copy of that story), to Mr. Townsend, who encouraged me to write, and to that unnamed reader at a publishing company, who told me not to stop.

I'm having a lot of fun writing Dark Water and think it is probably my best work yet. Maybe, it'll be my Lucky 7.

Happy Friday!

Partially On the Wagon

If you've been reading The Brown Knowser for a while, you know that it's no secret that I love beer.

And yet, recently, I've sort of been off beer, avoiding the beer section in our friendly neighbourhood LCBO and not ordering from my favourite local craft breweries. There hasn't been any beer in my mini fridge since late May.

I still drank beer, but only occasionally. For the first couple of weeks, while attending my local karaoke venue, I gave up having my usual pint of IPA from Ottawa beer shop Overflow Brewing, opting for ginger ale to keep my vocal chords lubricated.

It threw the bartender, Kevin, who was reaching for a cold can of ale as he saw me approach. He wondered if I was okay.

I find that my overall alcohol consumption has seriously waned over the past few months. Not only have I not had the desire to drink, I also find that if I have more than one or two drinks in one sitting—depending on the beverage—I feel it the next morning.

I don't mean that I'm actually hung over: I simply feel tired, dehydrated (even though I usually drink water between drinks), and my head feels a bit heavy. Booze makes me feel weighted down.

I don't like waking up that way.

Lately, I've limited my drinking to times when I go out for a social event, like karaoke night, or meeting up with friends. And starting this month (though, we're only a couple of days into July), I'm going to limit myself to only one drink during those outings.

I asked for a G&T.
Didn't expect it to be blue.

Last night, for example, DW and I went out in celebration of our 31^st wedding anniversary. We decided to try a nice restaurant in Westboro—Brassica—which was excellent. Usually, when we dine out for our anniversary, we'll order a nice bottle of wine, which gives us three glasses, each.

At dinner, however, I didn't really want to drink, but old habits die hard and I did have a gin and tonic. But only one, and when DW suggested afterwards that we find a patio where we could watch the sun set and have a drink, I said I wasn't interested in having another drink, though I was up for finding a place to watch the sun set.

We went to the new Kìwekì Point, and it was a great venue for the sunset. More on that place in a future blog post.

On Canada Day, we had some sangria, and when we visited my folks for dinner, I was offered a pint of Innis & Gunn, which is pretty hard to say 'no' to.

Because there had been several hours between the sangria and beer, and because after the beer, I stuck to water, I felt fine the next morning (although, when we got home, that night, DW accidentally closed the rear gate of our Niro on my neck, so that was throbbing when I woke up, yesterday).

I don't need to stock my fridge with beer. For more than a month, I've filled it with flavoured sparkling water, of which the whole family goes through a lot. We prefer it to sugary drinks.

At this time of year, I would usually end my work day by grabbing a can of beer from my fridge and enjoying it on our front porch. I haven't even had the urge to do that, let alone have the beer to sip on it.

I had written all of the blog posts for this week, except for today's post, last week. Today's post was meant to be a Beer O'Clock review, that I would have gone shopping at the LCBO, brought home a new brew (new to me, that is), and tried it. But when the weekend came up and DW and I did our shopping, I didn't feel like popping into the liquor store. I had no urge to get beer.

For more than a year, I've been starting to feel my age (notice how I didn't say act my age): I have aches and pains; I'm not as strong as I used to be; and, since last year, my lungs have given me trouble. Maybe a lower tolerance for alcohol comes with the territory.

I'm not saying that I'm on the wagon. Not fully. But I can see a time where I'm no longer drinking alcohol or, at most, enjoying it rarely and sparingly.

Does this post mark the end of Beer O'Clock reviews? We'll see.

Thirty Plus One

I had to do some math.

There's no such thing as a perfect marriage but I'd say we've had a lot of fun, despite the imperfections. All of our travels, our kids, and the life we've built together.

All worth it.

We've been married for longer than I've been unmarried. I said that last year, too. We've been together for much longer than we've been without one another, and I could never imagine being without her.

Happy 31st anniversary, baby!

Canada Strong

The other weekend, when DW and I were cycling along the Thousand Islands Parkway, between Butternut Bay and Rockport, I received a notification on my phone that read "Welcome to the United States." Apparently, we were close enough to the American border to ping off a cell tower that was across the river.

"Fuck you," I said to that message. I looked across the water to the tree-lined shore and thought to myself, I'm glad I'm not over there, in that dumpster fire.

I'm glad to be Canadian. We're not a perfect country—there's no such thing—but compared to our neighbours, we're about as close as you can get.

Happy Canada Day!

Image: theflagstore.ca

Training for a Ride

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 sure that we're in shape for the cycling part of our trip. We haven't cycled great distances in a long time and want to be sure that our legs (and butts) can handle multiple days of 50K.

The other weekend, we drove down to the St. Lawrence Seaway with our bikes in the back of our CR-V. We stopped in Prescott, for breakfast, before continuing to the Thousand Islands Parkway. We parked our vehicle at a free parking lot for the waterfront trail (there's a bathroom there, too), near Butternut Bay, and cycled westward, to Rockport.

On our handlebars, we mounted some carriers that we had purchased in 2020, when DW and I were planning a cycling trip from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to Bruges, Belgium, naively thinking that the pandemic would be over by autumn of that year. We've never used these carriers until this bike ride.

In our carriers, we carried swimsuits and towels, and I also threw in my drone. I plan to document our Saguenay trip and am hoping to get some aerial shots of us on our bikes.

The trail along the St. Lawrence is about as challenging as what we expect for the trek around Lac-St-Jean. It's mostly flat with a couple of gentle but long hills, and we think that the wind off the St. Lawrence could be similar to any wind we'd get off the large lake.

In Rockport, we stopped for lunch at a café that was in the harbour and had a patio that looked out into the river. The food was decent but not very expensive, and the stop gave DW a chance to rest, as it was her first time out on her bike for this season.

On our ride back, we stopped at Brown's Bay to cool off. It's a paid day-use beach that costs $21 for cars and only $5 for both bikes. The fee gives you access to a change room, with showers and toilets. We set our bikes up against some lounge chairs and we took turns going into the water, to cool off, while the other person watched our bikes.

The beach is close to the parking lot where we left our SUV, so we were still feeling refreshed when we made it back. The total distance for this round-trip ride was just shy of 40 kms, which was good for DW's first ride.

I also got a chance to use my drone, setting it in one of the automatic modes—Follow—and riding for about five minutes while it stayed behind me, despite other cyclists around me. I think it'll be a great addition to our trip and I'd like to try other modes on future rides.

Summer is our time where we get out in our kayaks almost every weekend, so we have no fear that we'll be ready for the Saguenay River in September. We hope our friends will have built up their confidence, too. And we're hoping to get more rides in, adding fully-packed paniers to the back of our bikes, to simulate what we'll be carrying as we cycle around Lac-St-Jean.

We have about two-and-a-half months. There isn't a moment to waste.