walking on the moon

Published in 2016 by Donut Train Press Available in stores at Pages on Kensington, Owl's Nest, and Shelf Life.

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For my third novel, I decided to take the characters from Runaway Summer to University, employing a vast store of incidents from my time at York U in Toronto. I contemplated augmenting the back-end of the narrative with a 1973 European tour by prog-rock band Gingermuff, which I had put together after graduating. Never did get to convocation. I told them to mail my degree to my parent’s place. The tour involved a recording session, a seminal Moog synthesizer solo, helling around Manchester and environs in a British ambulance, a performance at the Man City social club, Ye olde Cock Inn, a space opera, a thousand and one pubs and enough fodder for several tomes on the proclivities of aspiring musicians. Anyway, I was about fifty pages in when a chapter on hitchhiking to Woodstock, featuring the comic duo, hosers Ralph and Billy, decided to take over the project. Now I had an opportunity to go to Woodstock but was too busy earning an honest crust at my summer job to pay for tuition, rent and food amongst other necessities, so I had to pass. One of my apartment mates returned from this once in a lifetime experience with a passel of tales and I’ve been kicking myself ever since. The resultant narrative is a Homerian journey about all the obstacles my twin protagonists must overcome to reach their intended destination. It’s a comedic saga, which was an absolute ball to write. The dialogue borders on the sublime, at times borrowing from Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s on first’ routines. One of my Monday Book Club compatriots recounted reading the book on a Calgary to Toronto flight and laughing so hard that fellow passengers were turned in their seats to see what the hubbub was all about. Like the previous endeavours, Walking on the Moon made it to number 1 on the Calgary Herald’s best seller’s list throughout 2016. Regarding the rest of the unpublished material, I have plans to finish the originally intended novel ‘York You’ in the future. Stay tuned.