Carolyne J Montgomery - Reader & Writer

Carolyne Reads and Writes

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January in Comox

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Watermarked Series

This year, I’m publishing my series, Watermarked. Twelve interlinked stories, one each month, will be posted HERE. It’s a simple way for me to get them “out there.” To celebrate what I’ve learned from writing them and move on to new writing projects.

Subscribers will get an email notification. By December, the whole series will be accessible using the Watermarked link on the home page. You can subscribe HERE.

Woodcut Picture of Loon on lake with fall Maple.

This month, you will meet Claire and Michael in the story, “The August Regatta.”

I hope you will enjoy Claire, Michael, Brianna and Stéphanie’s coming-of-age experiences. Achieving maturity isn’t age-related.

Please invite anyone you know who might be interested in joining us. I look forward to your comments. Please remember that all these characters and situations are fictional.

Writing and Conferences

War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War

With the short days and long nights, it’s is a perfect time of year to update my website and read and learn more. The ninth annual North Island Writers Conference is next weekend, January 16th to 18th, at North Island College. Catch an interview with Susan Juby, our keynote speaker, being interviewed by the fabulous Sharon McInnes, for our local radio station, Dig FM (formerly CVOX), on the program Beyond the Page. Susan is a terrific example of the many roads to “adulthood.” She is a prolific and funny writer.

I’ll be taking the short story session, led by Claire Mulligan, who is currently the Haig-Brown writer-in-residence in Campbell River. She has an MFA in screenwriting. I’m curious to learn about the “Mulligan Method.”

An hour up the Island Highway, the Campbell River writers’ conference, Words on the Water is on March 13th-14th. I’ve never been, so a new adventure. The delightful Michael Crummey and Vincent Lam are among the speakers.

What Am I Reading

This fall, NIWC chair and my writing group member, Joline Martin, published War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War. Joline alternates interviews with resisters with chapters on the political context of the times. I was in high school in the GTA in the mid-60s, but I remember the street scene outside Rochdale on Bloor Street, a haven for dislocated resisters. It’s a history worth revisiting in 2026.

I hadn’t read Alan Hollinghurst since The Line of Beauty, where nearly every sentence is rich, dense, and exquisite like a dark chocolate hedgehog. But the nights were long, and I got lost in the life of Dave Win, a biracial boy, growing up in 1960s Britain in Our Evenings. He has a white, single mother, a seamstress (which I loved). He endures public school, racism, sexism (he’s gay) classism and the Thatcher era on his journey to become an actor. It’s long, detailed and delicious.

That’s all for now

Thanks again for dropping in. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and will read the first story of my series, Watermarked.

See you again in February. Meanwhile, I’m listening to the rain pounding the metal roof and the southeaster that’s rattling the front windows.

How I spent my summer vacation

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or

How to stay calm while monitoring the decline and fall of the American Republic from uncomfortable proximity.

(This may be too wordy for the title of a post)

It has been a great summer in the Comox Valley—long sunny days (but now rapidly shortening) days, a warm sea for swimming and brown lawns while the marrows establish their dominance in the garden.

The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival

In July, the annual Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival. (Should there be possessive apostrophes?) Check out the DIRWF site for complete details of the authors.

After my wander to the Sunshine Coast last year for a visit to their annual Festival of the Written Arts, it was great to be back on Denman—so many familiar faces, members of my former writing group, current members of the Comox Valley Writers society and old friends. And due to the intimacy of the venue, a chance to make new acquaintances.

I treated myself to Caroline Adderson’s workshop, Ending it All. The salient points are there must be a a good beginning and middle to your work or you are doomed to have an Insufficient or Bad Ending. What type of ending will satisfy your readers?

Bill Engelson and I applied Caroline’s algorithm to our current projects to tease out improvements. My protagonist’s motivations (to avoid shame and regret) were not clear enough. And I’m grateful that with structured guidance, I can see that now. Even better, and I think I know what to do to fix it.

At the Festival, Caroline Adderson read from A Way to Be Happy (longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize) treating us to some fascinating details of her experience at the BC Archives, where she was able to review case histories and process documents from a lower mainland psychiatric hospital in the 1920’s–research that she used in the final story of her eight story collection—a commentary on the evolving practice of psychiatry, culture, morality, feminism, human nature and chance. Masterful.

Fiona Tinwei Lam, a Vancouver poet, presented her poetry videos. Her poems are animated with dynamic visual media. My favourite one was Plasticnic. https://fionalam.net/poetry-videos/plasticnic/ This session was followed by lunch, where I regretfully drank an iced latté served in a plastic cup.

The graphic novelist, Sarah Leavitt, who prefers to be called a comic book artist, presented her 2024 comic memoir, Something Not Nothing, created after the 2020 MAiD death of her partner.

Cover of Something Not Nothing

It’s a tale of a loved one’s journey of living with a debilitating, progressive, chronic illness. It’s the tale of the decision to die by that loved one and the subsequent grief and recovery journey. It’s funny, poignant and honest. Importantly, it is self-compassionate.

Book Cover from Dundurn Press

Do you love Paris, gastronomy and don’t shy away from the stories of physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring nightly behind the two-way swinging doors of these kitchens? The Rise and Fall of Magic Wolf is for you. Perhaps think of Ralph Fiennes in the 2022 film, The Menu. And Timothy Taylor cooks. Check out his blog for the restaurant, Noma’s soil recipe.

John Vaillant shared vignettes from interviews with firefighters, workers, and civilians who escaped the 2016 Fort McMurray fire, as described in his 2023 book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast. If you haven’t heard him speak already, here is a link to his interview by Gaia Vince at the 2024 Royal Society of Arts and Commons. Definitely worth a listen.

When I read his book, two years ago,  I was in awe of the humanity of the citizens of that town as they co-operated with the astonishing evacuation along the single highway leading them south to safety. The vibe was, “Nobody wanted to be that guy.”

The basic human right to breathe fresh air is in jeopardy. This is no longer a remote threat, affecting only the developing world or major urban centres; it is now an expected seasonal risk here in Canada as our dessicated boreal forest ignites.

 A lot of sitting and intense thinking (three days) for this body and brain but I’ve been provoked, inspired, and challenged to get back at it, to improve my bad beginnings, saggy middles and unsatisfying endings in my current short story projects.

REJECTION

Meanwhile, in my writing journey, I continue receiving sporadic rejections of my short story collection (like the third minute of microwaving a bag of popcorn—the pops are fewer and the silence between them, longer)

And my favourite rejection so far—a lovely encouraging letter from Keagan Hawthorne, Associate Editor at Gaspereau Press. Soon, I must decide whether to pursue assisted publishing or post my work here.

SPORTY STUFF

The US Open

No rackets for me right now, but if you love tennis and the US Open it’s an exciting time. Nobody wants to be a “hater” but if you enjoy disliking Nole, check out this Substack, Sweater Weather, written by Brandon Taylor. Terrific writing and craft tips. Meanwhile, go Felix and Leyla!

On the Bike

Luck smiled on us for a four-day, supported ride from Jasper to Canmore.  Ben of Mountain Madness was a great host. It’s a blessing that I can still complete these adventures. You can’t buy the weather, and it can be pretty random in the Rockies but we lucked out with four mainly sunny days. I didn’t want to push my luck by complaining about the mind-blowing headwinds at the Athabasca Glacier.

Thanks for reading. Please continue to get all your routine immunizations. Coming up for me this fall, influenza, RSV and Covid. Follow the science. Until next time, take good care of yourself and your loved ones.

How about giving a book this holiday?

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Like many of you, I’m reluctant to buy books for myself. Here on Vancouver Island, the Regional Library service is excellent. I can find what I’m interested in reading but I enjoy receiving books as presents. (Are you listening Father Christmas?) Here are some suggestions for your friends. ( or to share with friends)

Tell Me Everything

Elizabeth Strout’s latest, Tell Me Everything, is set in the fictional Maine town of Brunswick. In her piercingly accurate, simple prose, told from multiple points of view, the reader inhabits the ordinary indignities, failures and temptations of her character’s lives. There is a murder story woven in too.

As Bob and Lucy visit the bench where Bob can sneak a cigarette without Margaret knowing, the reader wonders if they will choose a future together. Will Bob leave Margaret? They are surrounded by a rich cast of extended family and players with their problems, including a re-appearance of Olive Kitteridge.

What are the costs of cumulative betrayals by a loved one? Is reconciliation the same as forgiveness? And why bother? Are relationships the linchpins that hold us together? And how do we nurture our souls? How many of our damaging choices are made because we were poorly nurtured or abused in our childhood? There’s a lovely passage where a healthy soul is likened to a billowing, flashy, coloured spinnaker. (paraphrasing) This book would make a great present and book club choice.

Your Body Was Made For This

In the CanCon section, I enjoyed Debbie Bateman’s linked short story collection, Your Body Was Made For This. And yes, Debbie, parts of this book are screamingly funny. The ten stories address the realities of owning, operating and accepting a female body in the hostile environment of societal binaries. Bodies that leak milk, blood or pee—too much or too little at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Characters struggle with fertility–wanted and unwanted, body size and shape, and power struggles with partners and parents. The collection examines misogyny and competition from all genders. It questions the societal expectation of female caregiving at all life stages, at the expense of self.

Breasts—the character, Brianna, points out after her bilateral mastectomy. “The breasts are not a vital organ.” The middle-aged body is a “renovation project…off schedule and over budget,” but still the currency for acceptance. Join these characters making perogies with their mother’s recipe, surviving ectopic pregnancy, pumping iron in the gym, training for a marathon and struggling for power and acceptance in their lives. Sounds like another great present and book club choice.

All Fours

Publisher's Image of book

I have to say the title of Miranda July’s latest novel, All Fours, put me off. I imagined a collection of graphic passages of off-putting, violent sex, with little regard for the pleasure of the “bottom” person. When visiting a friend, I pulled the book off the bookshelf and settled in for a nearly non-stop read. It’s a quest story, a road trip but not a road trip. It’s funny.

You may remember her 2007 short fiction collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. My first encounter with her writing was reading her 2017 story, “Metal Bowl” in the New Yorker.

All Fours may fall into the scantly populated category of perimenopausal literature but it is so much more. It validates and honours female sexuality and desire in all its forms. (yes, many descriptions of female masturbation) But there is much more that the forty-five-year-old protagonist is struggling with. It’s funny and unabashed as it tackles the challenges and conflicts of being an aging woman in our society. I’m wondering how the Sally Rooney crowd finds it. A way to understand their mothers?

Notre Dame

If you are despairing of humanity with the impending holiday season and the state of the world, console yourself, with the triumph of the successful rebuilding and restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris over the last five years. Now there’s a story.

Happy Holidays to you all and thanks for reading my blog.

Adaptations and Memories

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Harvest Gourds
Comox Valley Saturday Market

The rains are here, providing grey-toned contrasts to the sunny moments bright with the reds, oranges and yellows of autumn. It’s time to let go of the warm pleasures of summer—the outdoor adventures and late sunsets viewed from the porch. After so many years, the routine changes and adaptations are expected and welcomed.

Unexpected, unwanted changes are inevitable but harder to adapt to, especially those associated with aging. Perhaps, more about that in another posting.

But for now, it’s a back-to-school atmosphere and gratitude for the ordinary. I’ve stored the summer clothing and brought out the warmer woollens. I’ve harvested the marrows and pruned (some) of the plants for overwintering. There are indoor classes at the recreation centres—Yoga, Pickleball (turns out, it’s a ton of fun) and Swimming. The Instant Pot is dusted off, and the aromas of the soups and stews fill the house. The writing groups start up again and the dark mornings are better for sustaining my writing practice.

Outdoor Pool Memories

Centennial Pool after Labour Day Weekend

But the summer was lovely. It was the 75th Anniversary of the local open-air pool and the community offered complimentary access. It’s an old-school heated pool, thirty metres long. An awkward length and I’m not sure why. The changing rooms are pokey and well-worn.

A regular cohort of soon-familiar bathers showed up most Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. In the crisp morning air, golden fingers of dawn stretched up over the East wall. The water transformed—glistening and diamond-filled, as we splashed up and down the lanes. Magical, like being a kid again.

I’m reminded of an outdoor pool in Ontario in the ’60s; two years before the national celebration of EXPO 67. My siblings and I, all under ten, with a few neighbourhood kids, trekked to the pool. Sometimes, a kid rode his banana seat bike. Not a minor feat, considering the route.

My older brother was in charge of the quarters required for admission. There were no sun hats, no sunscreen, no snacks, and no water bottles. There were no parents. Wearing our bathing suits, K-Mart flip flops and carrying our beach towels, we’d hike through the subdivision and then north on a narrow trail through the woods beside the Oshawa Creek. How far? Maybe a mile. We were an Imperial country then. At the place, where the water was shallow, we forded the creek to the pool, Somerset Pool. It’s filled in now. Repurposed. We’d wade across the muddy creek or hop from slippery rock to rock. Stones were thrown and skipped. We’d scamper up the grassy bank to the pool—a blue rectangle of water, sparkling on a dry, hot summer’s day.

Diving, cannonballing, pushing, running, splashing. Lifeguards shouting. Whistles blowing. The pool was evacuated for unknown reasons on an unknown schedule. Then, it would start all over again—diving, cannonballing, pushing, running, splashing. Kids flopping, exhausted on the hot concrete to warm up and dry off.

No one had a watch. Was there even a time we were supposed to be back? Somehow the decision was made. We’d slurp down a couple of mouthfuls of water from the water fountain and troop home. Sliding down the bank and wading across the creek, hiking down the root-crossed path, taking the tricky shortcuts through the neighbours’ gardens to get back.

Home with peeling noses, tender shoulders, muddy shins and stubbed toes. Swimsuits damp, and beach towels, heavy and muddy. To slake our thirst, a plastic jug of purple Kool-Aid—carefully made, trying not to spill the sugar or there’d be trouble. And sometimes a fight, deciding how to share the two remaining homemade popsicles. We’d collapse on the old couch in the cool of the basement.

Canadian Short Story Collections I’ve been reading

Picture of Book
September Reading

In September, I read a few short fiction collections, by Canadian authors and publishers. All are available at the Vancouver Island Regional Library—a fabulous resource. But if you can, buy these books

Carolyne Adderson’s A Way To Be Happy is an eclectic collection of characters in unusual situations. A pick-pocketing unhoused person at a New Year’s Eve party, male fragility in the setting of colonoscopy, missing dogs, phone sex, TOEFL teachers, sperm donators, fork-lift drivers. And my favourite, is the female character whose “excessive novel reading” results in her incarceration in an asylum.

In Caroline Adderson’s contribution to Resonance, essays on the craft and life of writing, edited by Andrew Chesham and Laura Farina, she writes “the character element…which …creates plot, is motivation.” Indeed.

Alex Ohlin’s We Want What We Want examines painful abandonments, rejection and loss. Mistaken loyalties and subsequent betrayals. Who has power and who is a victim? I enjoyed the drunken, palliative care nurses decompressing at their dart’s night in the local pub.

The author, Jann Everard is new to me. Her collection, Blue Runaways, explores dramatic physical losses (deaths and mutilations) in diverse settings. The stories are vivid and provocative. “The Robe” is so much more than your typical mother-daughter drama.

While not short fiction, Bad Ideas by Missy Marston, is loaded with lovable misfits in the Canadian setting of the St Lawrence Seaway. Fascinating history and great use of multiple POVs. Will Jules succeed in navigating his rocket car across the St Lawrence?

And what about an interconnected short fiction collection? Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva’s explores the absurdity of surviving in the Ukraine, pre and post-1989. Zaya, warehoused in an orphanage, with her socially unacceptable deformity, escapes and finds allies to help her make her way. But where and what is home?

Happy fall and happy reading to you all.

Open Secrets

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Many of us were shaken this week, Andrea Robin Skinner, (ARS), revealed in a first-person piece in the Toronto Star, that she had been sexually abused as a nine-year-old when visiting her mother and stepfather, Alice Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin in 1976.  And worse, when ARS told her parents, she received no support. 

I wondered what was up when Munro Books in Victoria (started by Jim Munro in 1963, but with independent owners since 2014) cancelled an Alice Munro celebration in support of ARS.  You can read their statement here.

In 2005, when ARS was in her thirties, Gerald Fremlin was charged with indecent assault and received two years probation in a court ruling in Clinton, Ontario.

After decades of isolation from her family in her late forties, after her divorce, ARS began therapy with The Gatehouse, a therapeutic centre for victims of childhood sexual abuse, in Etobicoke. The Gatehouse’s vision is “a future where those impacted by childhood sexual abuse can heal and reclaim their voices. Her piece survivor’s story from Oct 22nd, Andrea: To heal is truth and peace can be found here. There is also a video, So Let’s Talk About This, by ARS, crediting her sister Jenny Munro with production and Rebecca Garrett, who runs a media company, for camera, editing and direction. Subsequently, The Toronto Star published her story on July 7th. This article and several others by Deborah Dundas, Betsy Powel, Heather Mallick, Stephan Marche of the Star and Marsha Lederman of The Globe and Mail are behind paywalls.

The Writing versus the Writer

Learning that AM did not act to protect her daughter is a bitter pill to swallow. Can and should one separate the writer’s morality from the greatness of their work? 

While it would be a tragedy to erase her work from literary study, it is appropriate to examine what she wrote in light of this new knowledge—A mother who failed to protect her daughter and who remained married to the man who was abusing her youngest daughter. A mother, living with the knowledge that she failed to protect her daughter. A mother, whose actions led to her estrangement from her daughter. 

But why was Andrea not protected?

We can only speculate as to why AM made these choices. Fear? Fear of damage to her reputation and career? Fear of Financial loss? Fear of rejection or abuse by her husband?

Blame? Her daughter’s behaviour and not her husband’s. Blame the victim. 

Shame? And thus denial of the implications of the abuse?  

Impotence? A sense that she was powerless to change the situation?  

We don’t know AM’s story. Was she a victim of abuse? Is this an intergenerational story?

We can only speculate on the complicity of the CanLit world in protecting AM’s reputation. Who knew this secret but did nothing to help Andrea or AM?

Family matters—Fear, denial, diminishment, and impotence to justify doing nothing.

The literary community is re-examining her work, particularly the last story “Vandals”, published in her 1994 collection, Open Secrets. See Laura Miller’s piece, “The Writer and the Brute” in The Slate where she examines the story as possible atonement by AM.

Are there connections between the stories and the timeline of Andrea’s story? Are there clues as to why AM refused or could not help or protect her youngest daughter?

Our LIterary Heroines are not Saints

Sadly our literary heroines are not saints. We needily and blithely project our needs and wants onto them to be so.  There is a crushing sense of loss, betrayal and disappointment when they are found out to be fallible, flawed and messy like the rest of us.

I have deep compassion for Andrea Robin Skinner and her recovery journey after the immoral and unambiguous denial of her needs and safety by her family and society. I wish her, her siblings and her family all the best in their recovery journey.

And many thanks to my friends who forwarded me the various articles over the last few days.

A Letter to My Daughters

In 2013 after AM was awarded the Nobel Prize, I wrote a short piece about unexpected moral frailty. I’m sharing it below. Of course, it would have been different, if I knew then what I know now!

A-Letter-to-My-Daughters-Google-DocsDownload

“It’s more like a house” 

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May is short story month. I was celebrating finishing my collection of twelve interlinked contemporary fiction stories—Working title, Watermarked. My main event was sending the query letters to the first round of Canadian agents. “Tick” as we overly task-oriented people might say.  

The second most exciting thing, a long-kept secret, May is for Margaret! Margaret Atwood is coming to the Comox Valley. I managed to secure tickets to two events. Stay tuned for a post in June where I’ll share my experience with you. 

my photo of poster in Abraxas, the bookstore on Denman Island.

But then Alice Munro died

These events were overshadowed by the passing of dear Alice Munro, one of my short fiction idols. It was time to pause and reflect. To re-read. To appreciate.  With the publication of Dear Life in 2011, she warned us that this was her last collection of stories but one could still hope for an interview, some more wisdom or creative output. 

The media was full of tributes, accolades, and lists of her favourite stories. I gathered all my books and flicked through them wondering which are my favourites.

The media was full of tributes, accolades, and lists of her favourite stories. I gathered all my books and flicked through them wondering which are my favourites.

my photo

“What is real”

Many times, in various creative writing courses, I’ve been offered her advice to think of the short story as a house, but I’d never seen the entire quote.  

It originates in an interview titled “What is real?” from over forty years ago and was published in Making It New: Contemporary Canadian Stories by John Metcalf, originally published by Carswell Legal Publications. Methuen Publishing Ltd. 1982. The gist of the conversation is a response to the constant questioning about how much of her fiction is real (based on actual places, people and events) as opposed to created.  

 I haven’t read the original in the Metcalf but found it reproduced by this blog. The reference for the reproduction in the blog, Living in the Library World,  is Gary Geddes (Editor) The art of Short Fiction. Harper Collins, 1993. And if you are keen, a used library copy of the Metcalf is available on Amazon. 

In Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn, The Art of the Short Story. Pearson Longman, 2006 “What is Real” is partially reproduced as a craft essay, “How I write short stories.” It follows the 1974 story, “How I Met My Husband.”  And further down the rabbit hole, this is attributed to the Metcalf source. 

Many of you will recognize John Metcalf as the grandfather of the Canadian short story. His recent book Off the Record is a compilation of craft essays that includes several authors who have inspired my work—Caroline Adderson, Cynthia Flood, Shaena Lambert and Kathy Page.  

my photo

“It’s more like a house” An excerpt from “What is real?”  

“I will start by explaining how I read stories written by other people… It’s more like a house. Everybody knows what a house does, how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and presents what is outside in a new way. This is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story does for me, and what I want my stories to do for other people. … I’ve got to make, I’ve got to build up, a house, a story, to fit around the indescribable feeling that is the soul of the story…” 

The soul of the story. There’s something to think about. And I think that’s why I return to her stories. To feel those indescribable feelings and to examine the craft. “How did she do that?” 

A few of my favourite stories 

In no particular order:

The Children Stay

Silence

Miles City, Montana

What is remembered

Red Dress – 1946