canadian fiction

What if the world ended, not with a bang, but a slow squelch? 

That’s sort-of the premise of The Marigold, the brand-new novel from Andrew F. Sullivan. In this book a slow apocalypse is corroding Toronto. Above ground, urban development is driving ecological disaster, whilst in the basements and dark places a new fungal menace is squirming from the shadow. You may never look at your own athlete’s foot the same way.

Andrew and I talk about many things, mushrooms and mycology, the weird ‘third life’ of fungus and the cosmic horror to be found in the soil and loam. We also look at how grimy 80s exploitation movies influenced his book, and I discover an awful lot about raccoons.

A great conversation about a unique book. 

Enjoy!

The Marigold was published on April 18th by ECW Press

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

• Annihilation (2014), by Jeff VanderMeer
• What Moves the Dead (2022), by T. Kingfisher
• The Deluge (2023), by Stephen Markley
• Follow Me To Ground (2018), by Sue Rainsford
• Night Terror: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It (2023), by Alice Vernon

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This week we’re dissecting spectres and excavating the haunted house in Ai Jiang’s word-of-mouth smash, Linghun.

Ai’s novella is a blast. A read-in-one-sitting tale of grief and greed and ghosts and what the word HOME really means. We go deep, talking about different cultural iterations of the supernatural, the impact of location on writing style…and the horrors of the Edinburgh vaults. 

Enjoy!

Linghun was published on April 4th by Dark Matter INK

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Interview with author Carolyn R Parsons, author of the The Forbidden Dreams of Betsy Elliott from Flanker Press and Desolate from Engen Books.

Carolyn R. Parsons is a Newfoundland & Labrador author with a background in freelance journalism and is the owner-operator of Cabochon Manuscript Services. She served on the board of the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador until 2021 and is the author of six published books including The Forbidden Dreams of Betsy Elliott released by Flanker Press in 2019 and The Key of Impasto novella, a Slipstreamers book by Engen Books in 2020. In 2021 she was chosen as one of 125 authors from around the world to have her entire body of work launched to the moon on the Peregrine Mission via SpaceX and NASA as part of their lunar time capsule Writers on the Moon payload. The launch is scheduled for June 2022. She married Kent Chaffey in front of 18,000 people in the Zamboni Corner during the first intermission at a NHL hockey game in New York City in 2012 and together they have raised four children.

Pick up Betsy Elliot using this link to help the channel: https://amzn.to/3EjSytA

Originally broadcast on August 05 2019 on CHMR 93.5 FM in St. John's, and on other great stations across the country. 

Check out As Loved Our Fathers, the latest book from Write Project host Matthew LeDrew: https://amzn.to/3HB7BAB

It's a hunt for the Holy Grail taken on by an American Anthropologist and a Newfoundland History professor that unveils hidden secrets within Newfoundland history!

Listen on CHMR online at http://www.chmr.ca/​

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This recording copyright © 2023 Matthew LeDrew