There is too much. Let me sum up.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, because life. The biggest change is that since the last blog post, I’ve moved. After decades of bouncing around the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, all very much in the temperate rainforest type of climate, my wife and I are now genuine partakers of the Great White North style of winters. What do I mean? Well, how does -42C sound? For my American friends, that’s pretty much the same in F; -43.6.
As my agent said, “that’s not weather, that’s a natural disaster.” But we love it, because we’re a bit mad.
We get to partake in this smack-your-face, here’s-a-Christmas-card-photo-op-that’ll-kill-ya-quick style of winter because we moved up to a small town in the Cariboo region of BC. This gives us a few things. First and foremost, it gave us the ability to buy a house for less than the price of a moon made of platinum. House prices in the Lower Mainland would make Midas scream for mercy, so that’s not achievable for mere mortals like us. But up here? We have a beautiful 5-bedroom home with a big backyard that backs onto a forest for less than a third of the price of a small, run-down condo in Vancouver. Where do I sign?! Well, actually, I know where I signed. Lotsa places. Mortgages are lonnnnnnnng… Anyway. It also let us move my amazing mom and amazing brother and their also-amazing dog into our basement suite, which is fantastic. No more worrying about them and temperamental landlords!
And it gives us those Canadian winters you’ve heard so much about. What do I mean by winter? I’ve gone from being a guy who MAYBE wore gloves occasionally to someone who has six different snow-clearing implements, from brooms to shovels to snow blowers. Because this:
That was one of the roads we took when we moved on December 20th. We could normally have taken a different one, but in case you hadn’t heard, November 2021 was a rough one for British Columbia. We had rain and flooding and landslides, and the Lower Mainland, where we lived at the time, was cut off from the rest of Canada by road or rail. My wife and I traveled back from inspecting our soon-to-be-home on roads that would be either underwater or covered in mud and rocks the following day. We were very lucky; many others weren’t, and were stranded for long periods of time. Five people died, and damage was later estimated in the area of $10 billion Canadian.
That’s the city of Abbotsford. The curving line in the center is not a river; it’s the Trans-Canada Highway. Some highways didn’t reopen for a year.
So yeah, getting up there was an adventure. But we made it and I can’t believe my luck living here. Something about taking coffee out on the deck and watching the deer go by in the forest makes for a happy writer.
Actually, that’s not the only big change. I also have, for the very first time in the history of ever, an agent representing me for fiction! Rick Lewis of Martin Literary Management represents me and I could not be more pleased. We’ve got exciting things coming, and I’m looking forward to telling you all about them. In fact, how Rick and I connected will probably be the subject of a blog post some day.
In the meantime, here’s another big change. Some of you will remember George, our lovely old grey cat. He passed away earlier this year, but not before getting to enjoy a sunny yard up here in the interior, and also not before meeting his new fuzzy brother, Zeus. So I’ll leave you with a picture of 100 pounds of Bernese Mountain clown. Thanks for reading, and see you soon.
