Another blast-o-rama today with fellow Canuck Chris Carolan joining me on this ridiculous adventure!

I connected with Chris a while back and funny enough, for some reason, I always thought he lived on the East Coast of Canada. Nope, turns out, he’s down in Calgary, just three hours from me. Good grief. One of these days I’ll need to arrange a get together for the Calgary and Edmonton and surrounding areas writers to meet up!

Please, do welcome Chris!

Steve: What does your writing time look like? Do you try and write at the same time each day? Do you have a word count you attempt to hit?

Chris: I wish I could say I write every day, but to be honest I’m lucky if I get time to write once a week lately. My day job has me on a very erratic schedule right now, I just wrapped up a marketing certificate program which soaked up a lot of hours, and I’ve got a two-year-old at home. My writing is done in stolen moments like lunch breaks, nap time, and those rare and random evenings when I’ve got a bit of steam left at the end of the day.

I don’t have a word count in mind when I sit down, as such, but I’m writing my current project by hand and aim for seven to ten pages of handscript in a sitting. I think that usually ends up somewhere around 1500 words, give or take. Writing by hand has really been a boon to my productivity. When I’m writing on a computer, I find I’m very inclined to edit and polish every sentence of that first draft as I go, and it really slows things down. But when you’re writing by hand the ink on the page is the ink on the page. You have to move on and – to borrow a line from my pals in the film industry – “fix it in post.” I just have to hope I can actually read my own writing when it comes time to transcribe.

Steve: You end up at an estate sale and discover an unpublished manuscript from an author you love. Do you keep it just for yourself or do you share it with the world?

Chris: Heck, I want to say I’d share it with the world, but let’s be honest… I have enough trouble getting people to read the books I love that are already in print!

Steve: Tell me about your newest release (novel/story/poem/novella) and why someone should read it!

Chris: By the time this is posted my short story ‘The Envoy’s Blessing’ should be out in the world. You’ll find it in Terrace V: Penitent’s Gold, edited by Sarah L. Pratt and Rob Bose at The Seventh Terrace. It’s the second anthology of theirs I’ve been a part of, the first being Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Coffin Hop Press, 2018). They’re great folks to work with. ‘The Envoy’s Blessing’ is sort of my first stab at a cosmic horror story, or at least that’s what I was going for. It’s set in the same world as my novel The Nightshade Cabal, but at the opposite end of the country with totally different characters. The protagonist, Nathaniel Garaven, is an American Civil War veteran who has spent the last fifteen years traveling the continent searching for the root of evil in the world, the corruptive influence that compels men to commit atrocities upon one another. It’s very much its own thing; you don’t need to have read my novel to understand this story. I’ll definitely be writing about Garaven again, and I kind of grossed myself out writing one particularly gnarly scene in this piece!

https://the-seventh-terrace.com/upcoming-releases/

Steve: Bonus Question! You wake up in a comic book. What is your comic book character and what is your super power?

Chris: My greatest nemesis in life seems to be time itself, in that there simply aren’t enough hours in a day nor days in each week. My power would be the ability to slow or suspend time just to give me a chance to get caught up on… well, everything. I’ll borrow a superhero name from one of my favorite Project Pitchfork songs… I am the Timekiller.

Fantastic! Thank you so much for doing this Chris!

To find more of Chris’ work – check the links!

Website: http://www.cpcwrites.com

Twiter: twitter.com/cpcwrites

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15556775.Chris_Patrick_Carolan