Release Date for my upcoming novel I WILL TELL THE NIGHT:
TUESDAY, JANUARY 7th, 2025!
You can pre-order the KINDLE VERSION of this title on Amazon now!
Follow Finn Barker as he makes his way home from Toronto to New Brunswick to see his dying mother one last time. Stick around to see if he can mend all the broken fences he plowed through thirty years earlier when he left home amid a cloud of scandal and chaos.
It’s happening! My 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon novel, I WILL TELL THE NIGHT, is being released. This is the novel that won me the BEST ADULT NOVEL AWARD for that year. It was originally scheduled to be released from the same publisher who published my novels SUMMER ON FIRE and PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE, but that publisher closed its doors before the release.
After unsuccessfully attempting to find another home for this baby, I have decided to self-publish this one. It would seem that it’s difficult to find a publisher for LGBTQ Literary fiction. This is especially true when there is zero heat level in it.
I have very strong feelings for this novel. So much so that I feel I can’t move forward before first putting it out into the world. The release date will be JANUARY 7th, 2025! So I have some work ahead of me, as we are about to go on vacation and I want to do a one-last-pass edit on it before I release it. Just know that I have done everything in my power to make it the best possible story I could make it. I’m super proud of this one…it feels…real. I want to get it as polished as possible before releasing it.
I have had so many readers and edits on this manuscript…so many eyes that I’m not sure there’s anyone left who hasn’t read it.
I really have to work on the cover blurb for this, so for now you will have to settle for the query letter synopsis.
Finn Barker escaped his family in Miramichi, New Brunswick decades ago for the anonymity of Toronto. Now is his chance to reunite with the strangers they’ve become. But going back will awaken a hell of a lot of ghosts Finn’s not sure he’s willing to awaken. With no time to decide, his split-second decision to jump back in has him driving across the country, with his boyfriend Steven behind the wheel. Along the way, Finn begins to unpack the mess he left behind. There’s the grandmother, MyImogene, he adored, the twin brother who died of cancer when his own parents would have preferred to lose the other twin, and the scandal he created with a teacher that gave him the reason he needed to flee. It was almost all bad.
Finn makes it in time for goodbyes, but then there’s the still very active strife between him and his father, the funeral, the family, and the secrets that shed new light on the cause of the rift between his parents and his beloved MyImogene. Every family carries secrets. Finn discovers they’re the one thing you can’t escape, no matter how far away you run. Secrets always catch up. Often, it’s death that has a way of bringing them back into the light of day. He was able to make peace with his dying mother, but can Finn make peace with all the rest…or is it time to run away for another thirty years?
I have some work ahead of me. Watch for updates on the release, etc. All I have now is a finished manuscript that needs one last edit, and a cover.
I WILL TELL THE NIGHT – COMING SOON
Pre-Order links will be in my next post…which will be going live later this morning!
Last week, I did a reading at Glad Day Bookshop for Brockton Writers Series(click the link for pics). I read from two of my books, The Camino Club and Pride Must Be A Place.
I thought I would share the blog post I contributed to the Brockton Writers Series blog prior to my appearance. Here it is in its entirety.
Walking My Way into Creativity
One thing you should know about me is that I perform feats of magic simply by walking.
One of the novels I plan to read from at the upcoming Brockton Writers Series at Glad Day Bookshop is The Camino Club. It’s the story of a group of delinquent teens who literally walk across Spain as participants in a youth diversion program. Think The Breakfast Club, only with a much more diverse cast. And instead of spending one Saturday in the school library, my characters spend weeks walking across Spain together.
There’s been a number of studies in recent years looking into the link between walking and creativity. This is something I have always sensed intuitively, but never really thought all that much about. Until, that is, the day I brought my backpack to Spain and walked across the country on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route.
When I set out on the Camino in May of 2014, I did so with the intention of brainstorming The Camino Club. I put faith in the concept of the link between walking and creativity. While I walked, I gathered all the ingredients needed for a novel—characters, scenarios, plot, everything. Essentially, I walked the story into existence one footstep at a time.
Michael and I waving our tubed compostela certificates in the air in front of the Cathedral in September, 2019. Victory!
As I walked, my creativity took on a life of its own. It felt as though I was in some kind of hyper-intense creative mode for the entire duration of the trip. In the quiet moments on the path—when I wasn’t meeting and getting to know people from all over the world—I walked and talked my way through the entire novel. I didn’t write much down. I was certain the movie-in-progress that played out in my mind’s eye would remain intact for later. I created a tapestry and I carried it with me until the walk was complete, confident the ideas that formed would come back to me once I sat down in front of my laptop back home in Toronto. I was certain of it.
The walking worked! By the time I was ready to write the novel, I knew exactly what it would look like. Every step I had taken on the Camino de Santiago was another word, another sentence, another paragraph, another chapter. All I had to do was type it out.
Two years after Spain, I would once again resort to walking to help me complete a novel. I wrote most of Pride Must Be A Place at that year’s Muskoka Novel Marathon. As this 72-hour novel writing marathon is a sit-down event, I was left with some creative struggles with the story. I knew exactly what would cure the problem. Having incorporated walking into the creation of The Camino Club, I was ready to explore this device again.
Once the marathon was over, my partner Michael and I spent a week at his sister’s cottage. Together, we walked mile after mile after mile as we discussed Pride’s plot problems and worked out all the kinks. By the end of the week, the novel was completed. Walking had once again propelled my creativity. This experiment was even better, as I had someone beside me every step of the way. I bounced ideas off of Michael and he bounced them off of me. While walking, we both had some amazing creative moments that eventually took the novel in new and exciting directions.
With this full week of walks behind me I had confirmed that, for me, foot-meets-earth is the creative path to novel writing I require. Whether I’m struggling or just working out my next novel idea, I take to the streets or the trails and I walk my way through. I find it doesn’t matter if I’m in nature or surrounded by concrete and glass… the walking stimulates creativity.
What I discovered about the link between walking and creativity is that freeing myself up from the impetus to write everything down actually helps with the creative flow. I can sense the ideas swarming in my head as I walk. It’s like I leave the desk with an empty glass, and the further away I get from the keyboard, the more the glass fills. Soon, it’s overflowing and I’m ready to write again.
A photo of my desk at the Muskoka Novel Marathon, where Pride Must Be A Place was mostly written.
The best part of walking with creative intent is that it promotes divergent thinking. This means I’m free to go madly off in all directions. I can generate copious different concepts and explore each one while walking. For me, walking promotes the “what if” of creativity. Whether I do it alone or with someone else, I find that the more my feet take me away into a walking adventure, the more my think-tank fills with ideas.
From the Creativity Walk at the annual Muskoka Novel Marathon…
Last year, Michael and I walked all of Paris. I carried with me the kernel of an idea for a young adult novel set in Paris. As I walked the streets of Paris, the novel was the ghost at my side, willing itself into existence by the power of my own two feet. I’m getting that novel down on paper now. If I ever get to the point where I’m not sure how to continue, I’ll just take a step outside and go for a walk. I might even bring Michael along with me. He’s my perfect “what if” walking companion.
The city of Paris percolates…weaves its way into my fiction.
Do me a favour and bookmark the BROCKTON WRITERS SERIESwebsite. Support them by attending their bi-monthly events at Glad Day Bookshop. And support Glad Day Bookshop while you’re there.
KEVIN CRAIG 