It’s Not Rabies

We had an absolutely amazing trip last week (see below). As noted last week it started out with one of the most terrifying moments I’ve experienced lately when Tesla got out of her sitter’s yard and we spent hours driving around randomly until The Mrs happened upon her randomly. In the fourteen years she has been with us she never ran away. The closest she came to this behavior was when she and Titus were puppies. Tesla dug her way under the fence and then stood on the other side mocking Titus while he lost his mind barking at her (after that I extended the fence a foot under the ground). Even here at the New House™ she has never tried to wander despite the fact that there is no fence here. She seems to know exactly how far “her” yard extends and does not go beyond that limit.

It was absolutely terrible. I cried myself sick while she was missing, then spent an hour just holding her after she was found. And yes, I did order a GPS tracking chip for her collar (a real GPS one, not one of those Bluetooth things with a limited range). Since my mind can only go to the absolute worst situation, I had convinced myself that she had some horrible illness and was looking for a place to go to die. Apparently, she just wanted to go on a walk about.

I still shudder just thinking about it.

In much happier news, I spent last evening at The Redford Theatre, one of my favorite places, where I attended an autographing of Josh Mallerman’s new book. Mallerman always has amazing release events (my favorite is still sitting blindfolded in the Ferndale Library while he and his band performed excerpts from Bird Box) and this was no exception. The book (see below) talks about watching with The Evil Dead with his wife to be. Then we all watched the movie—for those who are unaware, The Redford was the first place that The Evil Dead was shown.

So, now that I have watched The Evil Dead this year, I guess the Halloween season has officially started for me.

Listening To: We spent a lot of time driving through Canada. In the process we consumed a number of audiobooks including all three seasons of Unlicensed, the story of an unlicensed PI in LA performed as a radio drama, finished Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas, and Killer on the Road by the always amazing Stephen Graham Jones. This last is a horror filled road novel which had me looking side-eyed at every 18 wheeler we encountered on the 401. I just started Nick Cutter’s The Queen today.

Currently Reading: Watching Evil Dead: Unearthing The Radiant Artist Within by Josh Mallerman. OK, I only got a few pages in while waiting for the show to start, but I’m looking forward to Mallerman’s dive into non-fiction.

Current Obsession: Healing. I seriously messed myself up getting in and out of the canoe. I mean you should see how jacked up my right leg is. It’s still swollen and that wasn’t even the one that was bothering me.

As noted briefly last week, I forgot my laptop which I was going to take with me so I could get some work done while on vacation. I was a little sleep deprived after looking for our little Houdini dog when we did our final car packing. I’ll be trying to catch up on things as the week progresses.

The good news is that Here There Be Horrors should now be available for order in analog (paperback) at all of your favorite retail locations online and IRL.

We’ll be diving back into the final sweep of It’s Dark In Here as soon as we finish this post.

After that we will turn to the edits for this year’s Erie Tales anthology.

In a week and a half (27-28 Sept) we will be in the Vendor’s Room at Fantasticon in Waterford, MI.

We continue to look for our Substack replacement platform, but again, this was hampered by my lack of a computer last week.

I went over some of this in last week’s super brief post, but as you can see from reading this (unless The Mrs wrote this as a cover for her nefarious deeds), I survived my trip into the wilds of Canada. After our “excitement” on Monday, we headed out to Huntsville, ON. Cute town, cute accommodations. Tuesday we got up early and went on an all day canoe excursion, part of The Mrs’ never ending quest to see a moose in the wild.

Sidenote: I have no idea where her love of moose (mooses? meese?) comes from, but this has been an obsession of hers for quite a while. So far the closest we came was when we visited Isle Royale National Park. While we saw neither moose nor wolf on this trip, we did see a moose sized spinal cord that someone had dragged down to the lakeside to chew on.

Anyone who knows me is aware of my almost legendary lack of coordination. I simply could not get out of the canoe without falling. This resulted in a twisted ankle, a severely scraped up leg despite wearing jeans, and some clothing that absolutely reeked of lake water. We did flip over the canoe in the middle of the lake while we were on our own, but our guide and tour mates got us righted and we finished the trip, then headed back to the motel. The Mrs swore that she wasn’t trying to drown me. She also swore that this would be the most strenuous activity we would endure.

She lied.

Wednesday and Thursday were absolutely amazing. We stayed on site at Parc Omega in Quebec in a glass walled cabin which had a pack of wolves sitting outside. Thursday, we spent the day in the park, a former exotic hunting ground which has been turned into a wildlife safari/sanctuary. We saw a gazillion animals including wolves and moose (which don’t count because they were not in the wild, sigh), fed deer, elk, and caribou, and generally had an amazing time.

From there we travelled to Quebec City, which is built on a hill in such a way that no matter where you are headed, you are walking uphill. Even if you turn 180 degrees and follow your own footsteps, you are still going uphill. At least that’s how it felt. We toured Aprikol, a distillery which has its own bee hives from which they make mead, gin, vodka, and rum. We stayed in another super cool hotel, which unfortunately had no parking AND the world’s steepest staircases. We were on the top floor. Hauling our luggage up those stairs was actually the most strenuous thing we did.

On Saturday we took a 3 hour bus ride out to the St. Lawrence to go whale watching from a Zodiac. I was a little nervous hearing this, give our whole tipping-over-a-canoe-she-tried-to-drown-me-once thing. This was not the little inflatable craft I was thinking of but the kind of thing the Coast Guard might use to go out on a rescue mission (I was serious picturing those black or orange things that commandos use sneak on to shore and then puncture before rescuing hostages in some crap 80s action flick). Again, absolutely amazing experience. We were given rain-proof weather gear as the temperatures on the lake were near freezing despite it being unseasonably warm on the shore.

The drive back included stops in Montreal and Toronto to pick up Armenian food and books (check out Little Ghost Books if you are in Toronto). Then one night in Norman Bates’ cousin’s motel before heading home. Ironically, this last place despite being the kind of place I stay to save money, was the only one where we were given key cards. All the other stays had actual keys.

I’ve attached a couple of photos here and there, but the bulk of the pictures were taken with our SLR and I haven’t gotten around to downloading them yet. It may take a while before they show up, as I legitimately took around 2000 pictures over the course of the week. Thank Cthulhu that we’re not still shooting on film.