I am very pleased to announce that Within This Darkness is out!

The cover artwork was done by Mark Resmer, and the front cover is a work by Mark titled "Waiting", which was done on wood board with oil paint and spray paint. I hope that readers get a "crafted by hand with love" feeling about both the cover and the book itself, because in both cases it is very true.
Within This Darkness is here on Goodreads, and if you're in Canada, there is a March 2025 giveaway contest for the book:

I'm still unsure how to describe this book to someone, which was also a problem with Close Your Eyes. In my own head though, this is how I think of Within This Darkness:
- young adult, with the sweet spot probably being within a 13 to 15 year old range.
- has magic, but it's not fantasy.
- has an "outdoor adventure" feeling to it, like one of the old Farley Mowat classics like Lost in the Barrens.
- Also has a thoughtful side, especially in Jeremy's feelings of grief and loss, that probably stem from my appreciation for books/stories like The Dead by James Joyce; The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, and Butcher's Crossing by John Edward Williams.
- Has a historical timeline that dates back to World War I and World War II, and this historical timeline becomes more important in books two and three of the trilogy.

Within This Darkness is book one of the Douro-Zamość trilogy.
Douro is the fictional town in Ontario, Canada, where most of the story happens, and Zamość is a town in south-eastern Poland where much of the historical action happens.
Book two of the trilogy will be out in 2025.

After being too cautious for too long (and also looking for a traditional publisher for too long perhaps), I have decided to release Within This Darkness, Book One of the Douro-Zamość trilogy, this month, February 2025.

I am still tinkering with the book blurb, but as of now, this is what I have:

Still shaken by the death of his older sister, 14-year-old Jeremy Gardela is sent on a mission by his panicked aunt, to find a family secret she believes is buried in the dark forests which surround their small rural town.When Jeremy returns, he is leading a mysterious stranger who represents a vein of magic which has run for decades within the Gardela family. Within This Darkness is a deeply felt story about loss, and friendship, and finding something, or someone, to hold onto, when you’re lost and drifting in the night.

Hmm. I have to fix that use of "loss" and then "lost" in the last line...

The pictures above are mine, from winter 2024/25 thus far.

If you have read one or both of Close Your Eyes and Festival, I think you’ll understand when I say that Within This Darkness will be a teen book unlike almost anything else in this genre… full of the emotion and loss that is felt by the characters in both of my previous books. I hope it works - and that people like it! 
But… as I’ve gotten closer to releasing the book, I’ve been thinking of that old J.D. Salinger line about writing, which was something close to this:
If you’re going to write, think about the book that YOU would most like to read, as a reader, and then go ahead and write that book yourself.
Within This Darkness is what  I would have read over and over, when I was a young reader.

More on this in a subsequent post, but I am beyond proud, and sincerely honoured, to say that my old friend Mark is doing the cover art for this trilogy. Mark’s website can be found here.

Thank you everyone, I will post again in the near future, and let everyone know when the book is ready.  Best wishes.

Chris

Orillia has been running Summer Saturday Nights this year, where downtown is closed to vehicle traffic, and the stores and restaurants set up out on the street.
Manticore Books invited local authors to do "meet and greet" sessions with visitors, as their part of these street festivals. And I'm happy to say that I was the local "meet and greet" author for Saturday July 6.

I had a great time hanging out with my 11 year old on Saturday night and meeting a few visitors to the street festival :)  I can't wait to do it again!

And here are a couple more photographs from my morning bicycle commutes to work. Best wishes everyone .

To begin, some recent photos from a life of waking up early and getting out to see the sunrise via a bicycle or a kayak. The old wooden piling photo below was from kayaking on Monday May 20; the photo of a fence with trees to the left was taken during a longer bike ride this past weekend, and the "geese" photo and the sunlight through the tree photo are from morning bicycle commutes to work over the last week and a half or so.

I have a tiny bit of summer news that I will post about later, once something fun arrives in the mail. But otherwise I'm still puttering away, trying to find a traditional publisher for the young adult "Within This Darkness" trilogy. I sent Book #1 to a Canadian publisher in western Canada in the winter, and received a fairly polite "no thanks" in reply. I was kind of charmed by that publisher actually, because they still requested an old school "paper" submission (as opposed to submitting your manuscript electronically via email etc). They also responded fairly promptly and actually seemed to have given the manuscript a good careful look, so I appreciated that as well.

Just late last week I sent Book #1 to ANOTHER Canadian publisher, and expect that with these folks I might be waiting up to a year to hear from them. Neither "young adult" or "fantasy" are really in their wheel-house, but they quite obviously look for quality and originality, so I have some hope that they will take their time with the manuscript. If these folks decline, I suspect I will be self-publishing again.

Best wishes everyone!

I've done a few readings from Close Your Eyes in the past (they can be found in this post on my website, and include a walk along the boardwalk at sunrise), but I've never done a reading from Festival - until now!
Festival is a coming-of-age novella set in 1990s London (England), and Toronto. There is a very kind review here on the Reader's Favorite site  ( The ending of the book left me heartbroken. I still have not made my peace with it. But the end somehow fits the story. I loved this book.  ) and there are definitely people who have enjoyed Festival more than Close Your Eyes, which has been my more broadly popular book.
​In this video I do a brief reading from one of the Toronto scenes.

Festival is here on Amazon US (and is on most international amazon sites), and is also enrolled in Kindle Unlimited if folks subscribe to that.

In other writing news, I participated in NaNoWriMo this November (despite the controversies that sprang up 1/2 way through the month) and after months (years?!) of prep work and background reading, finally hammered out a first draft of Book TWO of my young adult trilogy.
I continue to hold onto Book One by the way, hoping I can find a traditional publisher to take it and the trilogy as a whole.

​Best wishes everyone :)