... and this time, not just from the regular kind of radio silence, either. Just spent a week at the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts at Hanlan's Point on the Toronto Islands, reading and critiquing and writing with a band of very fine writers from the U.S. and Canada. Gibraltar Point is one of several artists' residences in Toronto, operated by the Toronto-based non-profit organization Artscape. It's the only one of their residences I've spent any time at, but man, it's worth going back to. It's housed in an old school building, now converted into a sprawling collection of studios, meeting rooms and residences operated with genial efficiency by veteran Artscapers Ray Stedman and Lisa Cristinzo. Filled up with painters, photographers, sculptors, musicians, writers -- and, for a week each year, us.
Using the boot-camp Clarion method (write, read, critique - repeat), it's intensive and productive and a lot of fun.
This year, it was also a great relief.
See, that story collection coming out next year, which you might recall was going to be called Monstrous Affections... well, after some talk, we decided on another title.
A title, according to Sandra Kasturi, that more properly screamed DAVID NICKLE.
A title that really needed a story underneath it to anchor the whole collection.
A title that now, thanks to Gibraltar Point (and a week before it, a cabin at Lake Herridge, near Temagami, Ontario), I can confidently say has that story.
And so, in 2009, I invite you all to go out and buy my story collection:
Pants Are For Company.
Labels: Gibraltar Point, Pants Are For Company