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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 5: the Ecuador Acquiescence

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November 26, 2025

The plan went kind of sideways. And upside down and inside out, but fun the entire time – and that’s what matters.

The flight to Quito got delayed more and more, to the point where my cleverly planned timeline (landing before sunset) got scrambled and we touched down in pitch darkness. The customs lady couldn’t quite comprehend the concept of somebody flying this far to work for free. (To be fair, my New York sister also had a hard time with that notion.) Fortunately, one of her colleagues had heard of Workaway, and I got waved through.

There were no buses running at that hour, only a $25 taxi to the motel near the bus terminal, and another $25 for the motel itself, once I convinced them a) that I wasn’t a vampire and b) to raise their metal barrier and let me in, eh. Mucho dinero hemorrhage, and within just an hour of my arrival in Ecuador. Ho hum.

Ecuadorian bus terminals take a bit getting used to: there is the Ticket That May Not Be Lost, and a tiny receipt with the gate QR code. Gods help you if you lose either one, eh. My high school Spanish returned surprisingly fast, aided by Google Translate and a pocket dictionary. I spent a few hours waiting for my bus to Manta (the west side of the country) by people-watching (so many vendors!) and staying in close proximity to my two backpacks. There were quite a few cops walking around the terminal, twirling their batons, but why take the chance?

Free pro tip: if you’re traveling across Ecuador, take the night bus, not the day one. The projected 8-hour journey took 11 hours total, largely because of the 40-minute breaks the driver started taking toward the end, when there was only one other passenger besides myself. From Manta (again, past sunset), it was a pricey taxi ride to the beach community of Santa Marianita, and to the guesthouse (which will remain nameless) where I was going to volunteer for about a month.

The place was fairly big and cozy: many hammocks, lots of books, 22 cats, three dogs, a nice 85-year-old lady who owned the whole place, one other volunteer, and a couple of long-term guests. There was also the guesthouse manager, a Scottish-American fellow who used to be a CEO in Colorado…

The five-ish hours of work, five days a week, were mostly easy, until they weren’t: lugging around big bags of gravel (about 80-100 lbs each) without any equipment was no bueno. Painting and varnishing the fences was a bit more fun. The ocean, just a few feet away, was the saving grace. The nearby town of Manta (described in guidebooks as “there is nothing to see here) could be reached by walking to the highway and flagging down a truck for about a buck. (Ditto for the return trip.)

I spent one of my weekends on a trip to Puerto Lopez, a very touristy town where I booked a trip to La Isla de la Plata (aka “The Island of Silver” aka “Poor Man’s Galapagos”) where we all snorkeled (wayyy outside my comfort zone, but fun!) and hiked and admired lots of blue-footed boobies. Those birds are too goofy to be real: they look like cartoon characters that escaped into our world. That tour was worth every penny of the $41 I spent on it, eh.

My volunteer adventure came to an unexpected end after just 18 days. Each Friday, the guesthouse’s owner hosted a restaurant night for all the local expats. Beer, burgers – the works, and for a fairly low price. The guesthouse’s manager utterly lost his cool when faced with a larger-than-normal crowd: instead of the usual 15 guests, he had 25. They were all slow-moving, slow-eating, and slow-drinking pensioners, but he treated it like a national emergency. Consequently, he treated us volunteers as if we were contestants on a British cooking show. He launched many an F-bomb at us volunteers when we couldn’t quite make sense of his rapidly changing plans for fork arrangements. (No, really.)

At the end of the night, when we too feasted on burgers and beer, I very politely asked him not to insult his volunteers again, please and thank you. He reacted by storming off, saying he’d had enough with me, and telling me to leave the first thing in the morning. Right around that time, he also shouted at the guesthouse’s 85-year-old owner. In front of witnesses. He then took off to do some drunk-driving around the neighbourhood.

While I tried to make sense of it all, he sent me a series of Whatsapp messages describing how serious he was and how much he hated me in particular. The room doors in the guesthouse were thin and flimsy… I barricaded my door with furniture and couldn’t fall asleep till 3am. I slept with two kitchen knives by my side: an overkill, perhaps, but when dealing with an irrational agent who had clearly had more than just beer, can you really play it too safe?

Morning came. He disappeared, perhaps unwilling to look us in the face. The guesthouse’s owner tried to assure me I could still stay, but with such limited space, and with no way to avoid the guy, it would’ve been one mighty passive-aggressive environment. I packed up, had my last free volunteer breakfast (bagels and eggs), and left town. I don’t stay where I ain’t welcome. Later, I heard that the other volunteers left soon after me, as did one long-term guest. The owner’s US-based daughter messaged me to get my side of the story. Not sure what happened to that manager, but meh, he’ll get his someday.

I hung out in Manta and (being a smarter tourist this time) took an overnight bus back to the capital, to Quito. Workaway has the option to search for the hosts who seek last-minute volunteers, and that’s how I ended up arriving at a vegan anarchist compound near the rainforest town of Loreto. (Which was another seven hours by bus from Quito.) There were no other volunteers here, just the two hosts and myself.

Their reforestation project was noble. The fruit trees and tropical flowers were beautiful. The sunset was lovely. I even got used to eating only bananas and quinoa, while using leaves for toilet paper. But… One of the hosts (the one I spent the most time around) started making jokes (plural) about genocide, followed by a racist joke I wish I could erase from my mind…

Life is short, and it’s important to be careful what kind of inputs you allow into your brain, your heart, your soul. The people you surround yourself with will always influence your worldview. That wasn’t the kind of influence I wanted… I invented a flimsy excuse (a volunteer meet-up in Quito) and bounced out after just two full days and two partial ones.

With my volunteer plans dashed to hell, I decided to just spend my last two weeks in Quito, at the high-rated (and, at just $8 a night, quite cheap!) hostel: Community Hostel in the historical district. It was, without exaggeration, the best hostel I’ve ever stayed at. The view from the rooftop was glorious, especially at night. The Basicilo del Voto Nacional looked like something from a Disney cartoon when it was lit up in the darkness.

Much partying and exploration followed. Ecuador is not a rich country, and foreigners are advised to stay indoors after sunset (because, ya know, vampires) and to avoid most of the city even by daylight. The hostel was just a five-minute walk away from the presidential palace, but there were three-way knife fights and domestic violence happening right underneath our windows almost daily. We watched, and could do nothing, and stayed indoors.

I write this as I pace the hostel’s rooftop deck, looking at the wide street below, covered with piles of trash and flimsy blankets where the most unfortunate Ecuadorians sleep on the sidewalk. As I write this, a homeless woman is urinating on a palm tree. …now she picked up a stick and started poking the homeless person trying to sleep.

Ecuador is a beautiful country, but (and I say this as an imperfectly informed outsider) its social and structural systems are broken. Crime is rampant. The air is polluted from all the vehicle exhaust. It’s particularly bizarre when one of the many local municipal buses drives past you and belches a giant cloud of black smoke into your face. The only drinking water comes from large water canisters that are delivered daily, by truck, along with metal cylinders filled with natural gas for cooking. Local entrepreneurs drive those trucks starting 6am, each with their own little tune playing at top volume. There is no postal service anywhere in Ecuador as a result of some government shenanigans a few years back: only delivery companies remain.

Ecuador’s nature is beautiful, though – at least the parts that are protected from developers. A two-day trip to Mindo resulted in a ride on a cable car, a nice little hike to several waterfalls, and a visit to a butterfly sanctuary. (I leveled up as a druid when I learned how to lure those giant butterflies on my hands and nose. Huzzah!)

But not all is gloomy. Ten days ago, there was a national constitutional referendum. The government banned alcohol sales for that entire weekend. (Though the ban wasn’t enforced all that well…) There were dozens of armed soldiers all over the capital, prepared for trouble. In the end, the people voted to protect the environment and to keep the US from setting up military bases in Ecuador. No violence erupted. I carry two passports on my person, so I showed only the Canadian one, just to play it extra safe.

This country can be so cheap… There are tourist traps that can and will charge you $15 for a mediocre meal. But there are also cheap local places, like my favourite breakfast diner, where a local grandma cooks only one thing – an avocado omelet. It comes with coffee and freshly squeezed juice, and costs just $2.50. Combine that with the dirt-cheap, overabundant fruit and cheap hostels (mine cost $8 per night for a dorm bed; others cost far less) – and you can live here long-term for very very little money…

Quito is beautiful if you choose to look only at the pretty buildings. Cathedrals, museums, murals, the occasional parade – just ignore the cops beating the hell of a fruit vendor lady who dared to push them back. Ignore the waitress with a knife scar extending from her mouth across her cheek. Ignore all the many, many people who are missing eyes or have broken noses. Ignore the walls upon walls covered with “missing” posters: all genders, all ages. Ignore it all and spend and smile and laugh.

Meanwhile, I’ve made a few buddies at the hostel during my two-week stay. They taught me a few neat tricks about low-cost travel. I’ve also resumed writing my ambitious novel featuring apathetic space aliens – and finished a rather snappy flash story (950 words!), while submitting it and others to anthologies and magazines. Glad I decided to bring my old netbook!

I’m typing this last part in Quito’s international airport at 10:33pm, waiting for the first of my three flights. This airport features the world’s most expensive duty-free store. (If I really do buy those five boxes of wine for $160, do I get to turn that plane into a party plane?) It also sells tiny bottles of coke for $5 a piece. There’s the world’s most puritanical Victoria’s Secret. Alpaca scarves that cost 300% more than my local souvenir vendors charged. (Incidentally, I got an excellent deal on a poncho a few days ago.) I’m munching on a $4 bag of Doritos in protest of this price-gouging.

Weird place, Ecuador… I don’t think I’ll visit it again. I hope the people retake control and make their country more like Costa Rica and less like Russia. They deserve stable, peaceful lives, as do we all.

And meanwhile… My initial plan had been to spend a month or so in a different South American country. (Peru? Argentina?) But a lady friend I’d met at a Montreal party almost two months ago (and have stayed in touch with) invited me to Tokyo, in exchange for symbolic rent, for as long as I want. When the universe sends you that kind of invitation, how can you possibly say no? And so, I found the cheapest airline out there (ZipAir: $238 for a direct Los Angeles-Tokyo flight!), spent a few hours double-checking all the details, and now I’m about to board the first of my three flights.

I’ll spend a total of 22 hours in the air, with a big 24-hour layover in LA, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. Plans change all the time, but my current best bad plan is to hang out in Japan until the film festival season kicks off in February, and then my nomadic odyssey will continue.

Here is to more vagabonding.

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 4: the Colorado collage

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October 20, 2025

That very specific and unusual sensation when you’re traveling for more than 48 hours in a row (Ridgway, Denver, Quito, Manta) and you’re almost constantly in motion, across state lines and countries and continents and hemispheres. Untraceable and everywhere and nowhere…

Colorado was as fun as it was beauitful. Denver reminded me of Portland, only higher. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time there, but the parts I saw were creative and memorable. I had two days between film festivals, so I stepped wayyy outside my comfort zone, joined the Couch Surfing site (I didn’t even know couches could swim!), and got a free night stay in Denver. Major kudos to Tony, a cool Vietnamese-American guy who let me crash in his comfy attic. Going up and down on a metal ladder made the experience that much more surreal and entertaining.

If you ever travel across Colorado, I very highly recommend the Bustang bus: they accept cash, the buses run on time, and – unlike Greyhound – there’s zero smell.

My Couch Surfing request in Grand Junction didn’t work out, so I got an AirBnB room at the edge of town. The following morning, trying to be a good tourist and sidestepping the road construction, I fell into a ditch and got covered in mud. After a quick detour to the construction site’s portapotty and a very slow-motion clothes change (just like that Deadpool trailer with the phone booth), I emerged in my spare pants. (Later on, a washing machine reatored my jeans and sweatshirt to their original condition.)

That did leave a lot of mud on my boots, though… For the rest of that morning, until my 1:30pm bus to Ridgway, the locals kept giving me the stink eye. Haters.

My phone, which is almost but not quite waterproof, got quite a bit of mud into every single port. It was a bit touch-and-go there, but the phone camera came back to life fast, and the phone’s speaker and microphone went on strike before resuming their duties. One helluva mud ditch, eh.

On the upside, I met my first-ever supervillain-coded person! The locals know her as The Crusher: she collects all their unwanted electronics and gadgets (mostly printers) and then disassembles them. The valuable bits go to industrial recyclers, while the rest goes to the plain old recycling. That’s something I’ve always been curious about (see my 2020 lockdown posts), and it’s beyond exciting to learn someone out there has actually made a business out of it. May your salvage be ever fruitful, Crusher.

I noticed something odd while wandering around the downtown Grand Junction, muddy boots and all. That town of 71,000 people didn’t have a single diner that served an old-fashioned slice of pie. When I asked the locals, they got the “Mandela effect” look on their faces before saying that no, there aren’t any slice-o-pie places anywhere in town. How bizarre. Feels like that’s linked to the disappearance of third space, a la “Bowling alone.”

I settled for a giant chocolate chip cookie at some hippie-themed coffeeshop. It wasn’t bad. The barista was fun and flirtatious.

And then, at last, a bus to Ridgway – a dark-sky town of 1,000 people. They arranged a free hotel for visiting filmmakers, which is almost unheard of in our community. Fun little town. Lots of public art. (But no sliced pie. The mystery deepens!) Great mountain views. A truly dark sky. A stargazing party on a Saturday night: the brightest Milky Way I’d ever seen, and lots of locals with their telescopes, letting the rest of us look at the distant nebulas and planets. (Here’s looking at you, Jupiter.)

The festival itself was… It wasn’t perfect. It had many glitches during the film screenings. Its director was sick and unavailable for the duration, so maybe that was why. The award ceremony randomly got rescheduled and held 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. I hadn’t expected to win, and I didn’t, but it would’ve been fun to cheer for my new filmmaker friendos… As it was, we all sat through a full hour of local improv (they were enthusiastic, but that’s a lot of improv, y’all), after which everyone just got up and silently walked away. That, in and of itself, felt like some postmodern art performance. When some of my new buds explained the actual award ceremony had happened 90 minutes ago, I called them liars until finally conceding that yes, the facts did seem to fit their quaint narrative. Ah well.

But that was on sunday. On Saturday night, my short film’s screening had gone fairly well, and since I was the only filmmaker in attendance for that block, the Q&A section was entirely mine. That’s pretty rare, eh. I took the opportunity to edumacate the small but lively audience about all the cool public domain videos they could use for their own filmmaking experiments. The anxiety of small glitches had gotten to me, so I was in my “talking fast and gesticulating and grinning” mode rather than the “cool and suave foreign filmmaker” persona. For what it’s worth, the audience seemed to understand and appreciate my words. With any luck, I’ll get a do-over next year. Live and learn and improve.

After the non-award award ceremony, I used my political science skillz to corral all the remaining filmmakers into an afterparty at the hotel’s bar. (Great loaded fries!) That experience, with just the six of us sitting and sipping beer and talking about filmmaking, was the single best part of the festival for me. (Though, once again, the locals’ hospitality was wonderful.) We all headed back to bed once the bar closed for the night at 9pm. (Small town, eh.) Much fun was had.

And so my first-ever Feral Artist Nomad odyssey ends. Three back-to-back film festivals, two weeks, many new friends, an offer to crash at a new buddy’s place if I get into the Durango film festival. (I submitted my comedy sci-fi film just ahead of the final deadline. Toes and fingers crossed!)

…sometimes, I go two whole days in a row without thinking about her…

Typing this up on the bus headed to Denver – a long ride, but cheap, and with beautiful views. From there, a red-eye flight to Ecuador by way of Atlanta, and a night at a motel right across Quito’s bus station, and a looong ride to a beach town where my Workaway volunteer hosts await – because to hell with Canadian winters.

But that’s a whole different adventure.

Onward.

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 3: the Pennsylvania crunch

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October 14, 2025

Such a small world.

The bus that took me from New York to West Reading, PA had two other filmmakers: Vanessa and Kathleen, the co-creators of the wonderful “Five Flights.” We chatted a bit before boarding the bus and then shared an Uber to Marriott’s. (Reading Film Festival provided two free nights to every filmmaker, woot!)

Our names were on the VIP guest list, so the check-in took literally seconds. The organizers gave me a bag of festival swag, two filmmaker badges (alas, I had no companion… but that meant double the drink tickets!), and an XXL-sized T-shirt due to the L-size mix-up. If I ever get a gf who likes wearing oversized shirts as pajamas, this will work great, eh.

After stashing my loot in my posh suite, I joined the first of the three separate filmmaker happy hours that night. In between, there was a 2-hour film block, but I can’t recall what was in it for the life of me.

And so it went the entire weekend: fun films all day long, all the beer and wine we could possibly ask for, and delicious food. By my guesstimate, there were about 40 visiting filmmakers (the local ones didn’t get the free hotel suites), and many new friendships were forged.

I showed off my very first film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” to quite a lot of applause and a fun Q&A with the audience and the event’s host. Along the way, I talked about my technique (making films solely with public domain footage) and trash-talked AI (which was really too easy).

The film block just before mine was “Animation and AI.” Three real animated films, three that were AI garbage. The sole filmmaker from that block who attended the event gave a brave, passionate speech: he’d spent months of his life creating and perfecting his short film, and it was slotted with that slop… The audience gave him one helluva ovation. One audience member actually asked the host to clarify which of the six films were AI slop.

That was a recurring theme throughout the weekend. Lately, AI cultists have been either bribing film festivals to accept their slop or downright spamming their submissions with infinite pieces of AI-generated videos. Each film festival that surrenders and accepts AI adds a bit more legitimacy to those dishonourable thieves. We’ve recently lost Telluride…

As far as I can tell, the Reading fest has added that section for the very first time. (This was their 11th annual festival.) I don’t think they’d anticipated the amount of backlash and anti-AI sentiment they would get. I told the festival’s runner that it would’ve been great if all AI-made (or AI-assisted) films had had a little mark next to them in the program. (It doesn’t have to be a scarlet letter, but that’d be nice.) I’m curious to see if that will happen…

Along the way, during my 55-hour stay in that town, I took very quick trips to see an old firewatch tower, the pagoda built by an eccentric German, and a small but sturdy castle where we had our very last (and small) afterparty on Sunday.

I also took an early-morning walk through downtown: they have so many beautiful murals, so much random street art… There must be something in the water!

I didn’t win any awards (and honestly, wasn’t even expecting to), but on that Sunday morning, I found out that I won the second place in the “Best Comedy SciFi Short Film” category at Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival. My first-ever film festival win – I’m honoured beyond words, and will ride that high for a very long time. (Also, now I get to add “award-winning” to my artist bio – huzzah!)

That Sunday night, after all the goodbyes, and promises to visit one another, and cake, and beer, I stood at the same bus station I’d arrived at, awaiting the bus to Philadelphia for my red-eye flight to Colorado. While waiting there, I realized two things: the “made in Reading” part of the festival was rather enticing, and the area right around the dark bus stop was quite picturesque… That resulted in me jogging around the block (backpacks and all) and filming just about everything on my Android phone. Got about 3-4 minutes of footage out of it: I’ll see if I can transform that into a short urban fantasy film. (For added difficulty, it’d have to be edited entirely on my phone: my computers are in storage in Quebec.)

The bus ride to Philly went well, but I can’t say the same about my bizarre experience with the city’s transit system at 11pm… After the second train suffered an identity crisis mid-ride and dropped me off in a weird-looking neighbourhood, I finally called a taxi. The driver was over-the-top apologetic for the way his city welcomed me. Good guy. Tipped him well.

And then… A night – and not even that – spent at the airport. People – and I use the term loosely – who thought it was fine to play loud videos on their phones at 1:20am as we all waited for the ticket counters to open. A 5am Frontier flight to Denver by way of Orlando, as well as a reminder why I rarely fly Frontier. My backpack cost me $70 since it was a carry-on item. The woman next to me in line was moving, so she had five gigantic (and bright-pink) pieces of luggage. They charged her $900 to check all of that in. She almost started crying… But ultimately accepted their terms.

Such a strange little world.

And meanwhile, a plane was waiting to fly me far away, to the Colorado mountains…

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 2: memories of New York

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October 10, 2025

It’s 9am on a chilly Friday morning, and I’m about to bid New York adieu. The last 96 hours were eventful: an overnight bus from Montreal, followed by four days of mingling and touristing, as well as three nights of sci-fi films from around the world.

I love this city… In some other timeline, one where Amazon didn’t roll back its expansion, I would’ve moved here instead of Canada. So it goes. The subway, the busy streets, the grandiose and gorgeous monuments the locals take for granted – I’m not sure I could ever grow bored here.

I’ve done all the usual touristy things: the Grand Central Terminal, an overpriced lox bagel, several laps around Times Square, and hours upon hours of walking and gawking and taking pictures. (Hey, it’s a photogenic city.)

Elsewhere, one potential renter after another lies about their intention of renting my Quebec City apartment, and time passes. It sits empty, waiting. By now, I’ve figured out the landlord’s strange chain of communicaton, sending a message in triplicate each time another desperado messages me, aiming to rent an apartment they can’t visit, guided solely by the video tour I’d recorded and annotated in my pidgin French. With any luck, this latest candidate will comr through, or I’ll be on the hook for yet another month of rent on an apartment I have no intention to return to.

This film festival has remarkably more AI fanboys than last year. (And even one fangirl!) For the time being, they’re not in the majority, or even the plurality. When my film, “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace,” screened and when the viewers saw my note that I hadn’t used AI, there was some passionate applause – so I’ve got that going for me.

Last night was my film’s worldwide premiere. Not my first screening or Q&A, and not even the third. And yet the jitters never fully go away. Will they hate the film? Will they boo? Will they form a remarkably well organized mob and proceed to tar and feather me? (The odds of that are low, but never zero.) And then the film begins, and the audience laughs in all the right places, and seven minutes later, they cheer and clap. (And then they laugh some more once they see the Easter egg at the very end.)

Afterwards, a few of them walk by to tell me they liked it, to ask – with reverence in their voice – where they can find the story the film was based on, or whether they can follow me on Instagram. (But of course.) In turn, I encourage them to read Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel without a crew” and try to make their own low-budget films. I hope to meet at least one of them at the next year’s festival – as a fellow filmmaker, not as an audience member. (The odds of that are low, but, yet again, never quite zero.)

The dozens of short story submissions I’d sent out last month are coming home to roost. Only rejections so far, but that’s okay: I redirect them to other publications using my personal system. I’ve got time.

A small film festival from Stockholm emails me: they like my debut film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” and it’ll be part of their program. Neat.

An experimental musician who dabbles in 3D imagery performed at last night’s film festival as the opening act. Another short film idea – or maybe even more than that – popped up in my brain.

At film festivals, names and faces and tenses eventually blend together, mixing, combining, forming something better and stranger and new. Even more so when free beer is involved. (The free beer was great. The free gelato had been a lie. So it goes.)

During my final subway ride, in the tunnel by the exit, Wonder Woman plays the violin – one pop-culture tune after another. The violin has formed a blister on her neck. I help her apply two bandaids during a lull in foot traffic. I record a video I’m unsure I’ll ever watch. I leave a tip.

By the escalator, at the boundary between the artificial dungeon and the dull October sunlight, a street preacher practices his craft. “What part do I play in my own destruction?!” he shouts.

I board my bus to the next city, the next film festival, the next improbable adventure.

Onward.

Ever onward.

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 1

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October 5, 2025

The first part of my 2025-26 Feral Artist Nomad adventure is just about done.

It’s Sunday, and I’m enjoying the somewhat fresh air on a bench in the sun by the big bus station, awaiting the overnight bus that will take me from Montreal to New York and will depart in about seven hours. I’m quite sleep-deprived, but also happy with how things have turned out.

The big move on Tuesday, September 30th, was rough – but they always are. The two tall Ikea bookshelves were the hardest part, as usual. Driving the 15-foot Uhaul for three hours is a fascinating experience: it’s the closest that most of us will ever get to handling a tank. Montreal’s narrow streets and potholes were a bit of a challenge, and the truck may or may not have gone almost flying a few times. There were, fortunately, no cops in the vicinity.

It’s odd to know that everything you own can fit into a 5’x10’x8′ storage unit with quite a bit of cubic space left over. It’s secured with two padlocks and a magnetic card. I have no clue when I will access it next.

I spent five nights at the “Auberge Alternative du Vieux-Montréal” hostel, smack in the touristy part of town. Amazingly low prices, and you get used to the snoring of your dorm-mates eventually.

I swear I’m an introvert, but I made myself go out and attend events every night of the week. There was the literary open mic night, where everyone mourned the anniversary of their friend’s death, and where I performed my first-ever public reading of one of my short stories. (Some of the local poets and writers had grade-A material!) There was the weekly local writer meetup where only five people out of ~1,500 facebook group members actually showed up. They were an interesting bunch.

There was the karaoke party with a twist, where I met a fellow traveler, whom I got to know over the 36 hours that followed. My hostel bed probably wondered why I didn’t return. She’s flying back to Tokyo even as I type this. The bite marks make such beautiful mementos.

Exploring the city on foot is fun: always a lot to see, and my mental map of the place is slowly but surely populating. I’ve already found a popular local hole-in-the-wall that stays open till 2am. And a fun little store that sells random discarded Amazon items for a fraction of the price. I had to restrain my inner hoarder.

And now… I’ve put the last of my random and non-essential items into my storage unit (won’t need fancy dress shoes where I’m going) – I’ll start my one-man two-week film festival circuit very very soon. After that, straight to Workaway, probably. My clothes, fancy camera, non-fancy netbook, and harmonica are in my bulging Osprey backpack. My brand new CouchSurfing account has already secured me one couch in Colorado, for an overnight visit to Grand Junction.

Aside from the lack of sleep, I’m as ready as I can be. Let’s do this, eh.

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I self-identify as an adventurer

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September 29, 2025

Being an adventurer means taking all your stuff to a storage unit and embarking on an ill-defined, 5-6 month voyage of film festivals and tropical volunteering…

…while also setting aside one perfectly packed just-in-case backpack for an emergency Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike.

Strategy… Strategy.

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Alternatives and paths not taken

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September 26, 2025

This little town doesn’t want to let me go.

I aim to move from here to Montreal (or at least move my things) four days from now, at the very end of September. And yet… Uhaul is unsure whether it can rent me a one-way intercity truck. The person taking over my apartment lease broke every deadline and will technically move in before her application is fully processed. And the landlord, who outed himself as a xenophobic racist and sexist when I finally cornered him at the sketchy, unmarked office, has made every excuse in the book and blamed everyone but himself for his company’s rather impressive lack of customer service.

Splendid, eh.

I’ll get out of here one way or another, even if that means pulling a cart full of stuff all the way from here to Montreal, but damn, the escape velocity this move demands is really something.

I’ve lived in Quebec City for four years and one month: longer than I’ve lived anywhere since college. Too long…

When, somehow and at some point, I finally stash my things in a nice, heated storage unit in the big city, I will be technically homeless for quite a bit: a few days at a hostel, a couple of big, fancy parties (the kind that only Montreal can offer!), and then I’ll kick off my two-week film festival tour: a daisy-chain of three festivals in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. The first will involve crashing at my sister’s basement, while the other two provide free lodging to their filmmakers, huzzah! So many new friends, new experiences, new memories to bury the old…

That fortnight-long adventure will end on October 20th, after which (barring last-moment acceptance letters from the last two festivals in November), I’ll have absolutely nothing on my agenda for about four months, which means I’ll step wayyy out of my comfort zone and give Workaway a try. It’s a fun little setup: you find a host, pay for your plane ticket and insurance, work about 20-25 hours a week, and get a free place to stay and free food, as well as tons of natural beauty (or urban hustle, if that’s more your style). I’ve just sent an introductory message to an absolutely amazing farm in Ecuador, and if they actually reply… That’ll be amazing. (Giant-sized turtles! Organic fruit! Perfect night sky!)

And if they don’t, in fact, reply – well, my carefully curated list of favourite Workaway hosts (all based in South America, because these winters are getting to me) will set me up with more adventures.

Sometime around February, I’ll fly back to hit up more film festivals. Over the past few weeks, I’ve applied to about a dozen writer-in-residence openings and grants. (That involved typing up a chapter from my creative non-fiction proposal in record time, and then submitting it literally five minutes before deadline!) Frankly, no idea if I’ll get any of them. The odds are stacked against me, but aren’t they always? Can’t win if you don’t try. I figure that my list of film festival screenings (seven so far, with more on their way!) and published story credits has me firmly in the “emerging Canadian writer” category, and that ain’t nothing.

…but if I do not, in fact, secure any of those coveted writing/filmmaking opportunities, then there’s a very very good chance that, come April, I’ll open up my storage unit, drop off my stuff, pick up a carefully pre-packed backpack (tactics, eh), and fly out to San Diego to repeat my Pacific Crest Trail adventure. Unlike the one in 2022, hopefully it’ll involve a whole lot less yelling at my accountant every few days and a bit more fun. (Might even join a tramily!) In that particular eventuality, I won’t rejoin civilization until late August-ish, or just in time for the 2026 Worldcon. We’ll see.

I’m getting over the big breakup, but – as always – in my own way. For some reason, this month had quite a few deadlines for short story anthologies… So I went ahead and wrote a short story for each of them. All 10 of them. The grand total was roughly 26,000 words. Wordcount aside, this has been the single most productive month of my life, because my brain was in desperate need of a distraction. When you feed your subconscious mind 10 different prompts and tell it to get on it, the end result can be pretty amazing. I followed Charlie Jane Anders’s advice on writing: transmute your feelings into art, let them pass through you, and create something beautiful… Or something, in any case. Realistically, I expect at least three of those stories to get accepted. Almost certainly won’t get all 10. Five or more acceptances would be amazing.

Quite a few of my stories (three? four?) are coming out between now and New Year’s: the publishing industry’s schedule works in mysterious ways. I will, of course, share the links here with all y’all.

In another world, where my luck was a bit better, I would’ve finished the Continental Divide Trail thruhike right about now, give or take. That would’ve resulted in a very very different year… For one thing, my relationship would still be intact, though every bit as doomed. My short story portfolio would’ve been much smaller. I wouldn’t have attended the 2025 Worldcon, wouldn’t have written this essay that’s gone viral, and that, in turn, wouldn’t have opened some rather interesting doors for me… On the other hand, I would’ve had a whole lot more experiences and adventures and new friendos.

On some level, I’m pretty sure that all the stories I’ve written (and sold!) over the past four months have been an attempt to overcompensate, to do something worthy and productive after my much-anticipated hiking adventure ended far too soon. My life is quite a lot different now, because of everything I’ve done since my return from the desert, and my 2026 will be quite different as a result of that.

The other me, the one who (hypothetically) finished the CDT, would be gearing up to do the Appalachian Trail, aka every introvert’s nightmare (it’s where the entire east coast comes to hang out), and would be making a fair bit less art. Maybe. Possibly. Hard to tell for sure.

These last few days of September are filled with giddy anticipation: I want to fast-forward through the remaining time, to jump straight to September 30th, to get it over with, to start my new adventure. The type of giddiness and impatience that every nomad knows…

But meanwhile, I need to get ready for a little going-away party with my local friendos – one tonight, another one tomorrow. A fun way to pass these last few evenings, before embarking on my Feral Artist Nomad adventure of uncertain duration.

And so it goes.

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In which the author delves a whole lot deeper

Filed under: writing — 2 Comments
September 8, 2025

I’ve recently found myself burdened with an inordinate amount of free time and utter lack of responsibilities of any kind. I’m choosing to use this opportunity to tap into my creative side, to a point. Last week, I wrote two new short stories for upcoming anthologies. (There were quite a few anthology calls with September deadlines!) I’ve also submitted my earlier short stories to 14 different submission calls. (Huzzah for simultaneous submissions, eh?) And just now, mere minutes ago, I sent an application for my first-ever fellowship. It feels existentially terrifying, though I suspect everyone secretly feels the same way: fake it till you make it, put on your big-artist face, push on, and persevere. Or push on, in any case.

…two and a half years is a pretty good run for a relationship. She had promised to change. That was a lie. It was for the best…

As I wrote in my shiny new author thread on the Codex message board (you should join if you’re in the biz! It’s mighty active, and their archives are amazing), my filmmaking side and my writing side are in a constant competition. Funny, that, considering my foray into filmmaking had started out as a way to stay sane while querying literary agents. As it stands right now, my filmmaking forays outweigh my writing ones, even if you include the recent viral essay. It took very little time to procure a list of the five most recent screenings and honours. (No prizes yet, but quite a few “finalist” laurels.) And thus the fellowship application was for my filmmaker self, not the writer self. I have this interesting idea for a crowdsourced sci-fi-esque mockumentary, and all I really need is a big ol’ external hard drive and a few weeks of uninterrupted time with no cellphone reception. (An anathema to most Millennials, I know.)

…she was incredibly particular about her water. I always made sure to carry a bottle of her favourite brand in my backpack. Most times, she didn’t even touch it. Now I have 20 of the damn things left in my fridge. Forcing myself to drink them because when I break my lease and move out, it would be beyond foolish to pack them…

I’d sent out my very first agent query in March 2024. Completed my first short film in June 2024. My first screening: October 2024. My first red carpet with adoring fans shouting my name in the darkness: February 2025. My first viral essay (which opens up a lot of possibilities…): August 2025. Things are accelerating, and I don’t think there’s a way to get off this ride, much like a rollercoaster which takes your initial consent and terrifies you the entire way down, up, and down again, over and over, until you finally reach the end. There is no way to leave before the ride is done. No good way, anyhow. I hadn’t realized these aspects of myself had even existed. And now, as any self-respecting gamer, I want to follow that progression tree all the way to the end. How far can I proceed? Is there an end at all? A whole new universe – two of them, actually – both with a nearly infinite amount of shiny and delicious knowledge to consume, absorb, enact.

…she was the last reason for me to stay in this beautiful tiny town. The big city to the west has far more parties, and more cultural events, and a gigantic airport that would not require me to carpool twice and dedicate an entire day just to get there and back. I’ll break my lease any day now. I’m curious about spending November-January doing light Workaway labour in some tropical country, or more than one. I’m curious about many things…

I believe that certain actions permanently alter your personality. There is a version of you before and after losing your virginity. Before and after having your first drink, first drug, first communion. (If ever, that is.) This morning, I’d been the sort of artist who had never applied for a grant or a fellowship of any sort. Here and now, just a few hours later, I can no longer say that.

The future is terrifying.

But also fun.

Bring it.

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On the Nature of Non-Apology Apologies, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident, Continued

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September 3, 2025

It’s January 22, 2017, and Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway coins the phrase “alternative facts” during a TV interview while defending Sean Spicer’s blatantly false claims about the size of the inauguration crowd. The phrase goes viral. Within a week, the sales of Orwell’s 1984 go up by 9,400%. Conway gets mocked, becomes a meme, shrugs it off, and lives happily ever after.

It’s August 16, 2025. The two hosts of the annual Hugo Awards ceremony mangle many non-anglophone names, and giggle at least once while doing so.

It’s August 20. Host #1 makes a Bluesky comment, saying “For context I was high as a kite on pain meds.”

It’s August 21. My essay on the Hugo incident unexpectedly goes viral: 13,000 views and counting.

It’s September 2: 17 days after the awards ceremony, 12 days after the essay. The Seattle Worldcon Chair and the two hosts issue simultaneous non-apology apologies. They are… odd.

The easiest way to kill a lot of weeds or unwanted plants is to cover them with a tarp to cut off their sunlight. For best results, wait a week. Or two weeks. Or 17 days.

When you take 17 days to craft an apology, one would expect a masterpiece to rival Abraham Lincon’s Gettysburg Address, especially when those apologizing are professional writers. We did not get a masterpiece.

The Gettysburg Address was 271 words long. The hosts’ non-apology was 1,283 words long. The Chair’s non-apology was 401 words long. We are to believe that, on average, only 23.6 words of that statement were written every day.

Here is the shortest possible apology: “I’m sorry. I screwed up. How can I possibly make this better?” This took me 13 seconds to write. At this pace, working eight hours a day, for 17 days straight, my resulting apology would have been 451,938 words long, or only 6% shorter than Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

A few hours ago, Jess Nevins posted an excellent Bluesky thread about the lost art of apologizing. Just like me, he chose not to name the hosts.

I rather enjoyed his point #4:

“#4) I’m truly surprised I have to type this one, but….

DO NOT EVER SAY ANYTHING THAT CAN BE REMOTELY CONSTRUED AS ‘WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE, ME OR YOUR LYING EYES/EARS?’

It happens all the time that the offender and the offended remember events differently.”

This bit was also quite good:

“Because if you make your living crafting sentences and paragraphs and pages and chapters and entire books, you don’t need time to gather your thoughts or to articulate your apology correctly. You write for a living: putting together an apology shouldn’t be difficult for you or take much time.”

The non-apology from the hosts begins with, “We’re truly sorry that our work hosting the 2025 Hugo Awards Ceremony has caused anyone distress.” That is an unusual way to start, and is synonymous with “we’re sorry you got upset.”

The letter goes on to claim there’d been confusion with the pronunciation guides, all caused by the Worldcon staff, and that there’d been no time to rehearse the names. (But I suspect they’d found the time to rehearse the Hugo song. Priorities…)

Perhaps most interestingly, the apology states that host #2 (the younger of the two hosts) did not giggle while reading any names. Well, of course she didn’t. That was host #1. (For what it’s worth, I too hate watching videos of myself and have a hard time recognizing my own voice.) For posterity’s sake, here is that giggle once again. There were thousands of us in the audience. We all heard it. We all reacted instantaneously, turning to our neighbours, asking, “Did that just happen?”

But no, dear reader. No. Do not believe your lying eyes and ears. What good have they ever done to you? Don’t worry your pretty little head. Do as you’re told instead.

The non-apology apology goes on to say that neither of the hosts had felt comfortable insisting on a full run-through rehearsal, because they’d never hosted an awards show before. That said, they’ve both offered their advice and guidance to the future Worldcon organizers. Generous.

Their statement does not mention host #1 being “high as a kite on pain meds.”

Their statement does mention omitting Kamilah Cole’s name, but that section ends rather oddly: it says that host #2 has apologized to Cole, and that host #1 “needs to do that as well!” (I have not altered their punctuation.) That reads like an odd first draft. That does not read like a professional statement that had taken two writers 17 days to prepare.

I often wonder about the ratio of “time spent rehearsing the Hugo song” to “time spent rehearsing the names,” but it’s bad luck to divide by zero.

In their non-apology, the hosts repeatedly say that the pronunciation guide was either missing or incomplete. That is objectively false.

On April 6, 2025, the Seattle Worldcon released this video where professional announcers read out almost every name. They read those names without giggling. If you’re curious what the giggle-inducing name is supposed to sound like, here you go. (Egbiameje Omole, I do not know you, but I am so sorry.)

The list of the finalists was not secret. It had been released more than four months before the Seattle Worldcon took place. The full video is 22.5 minutes long. You could play it almost three times in one hour at normal speed. You could practice the names multiple times per day.

If you cared, that is.

That pronunciation video is cleverly concealed. To access it, one must go on YouTube and type in such secret, esoteric words as “2025 Hugo Awards.”

Verily, I say upon thee: there was no way for anyone to find it.

In their non-apology, the hosts complain that the title of Darcie Little Badger’s YA novel, Sheine Lende, also wasn’t in their pronunciation guide. It might not surprise you to learn that the title was also in that pronunciation video, just 78 seconds in.

The hosts chose to release their non-apology in a rather unusual format: not as a blog post, or a press release, or even a PDF. No, it’s a shared Google Doc file. Fun thing about those files: they cannot be archived by the Wayback Machine, and the people who own the document can go in and alter it at any time.

The internet is a complicated and chaotic place. It’s possible that something unexpected might happen to that file within, let’s say, a year. It’d be a shame if it disappeared. A real shame.

As someone who cares about the preservation of historical documents, I’ve gone ahead and saved a PDF copy. It’s timestamped and tamperproof. If some tragedy ever befalls that Google Doc, I’ll attach my copy of the PDF to this essay. Please, no need to thank me.

How to issue a slightly longer apology:

  1. Don’t start with “Sorry you got upset” or some variation thereof. Is it attention-grabbing? Oh yes. Is it conducive to your purposes? Oh no.
  2. Consider starting with a brief and honest summary of what had happened. E.g., “During the most important awards ceremony many of the finalists may ever attend, we…”
  3. Accept responsibility. E.g., “At least 50% of us were high as a kite. We did not prepare.”
  4. Acknowledge the other party’s pain. E.g., “I can’t begin to imagine how that felt” – but not “Sorry if our work has caused anyone distress.”
  5. Provide an objective judgment of your offense. E.g., “We failed at our main task” – but not “The staff failed us, and we were too shy.”
  6. State your regret. E.g., “We’re truly and deeply sorry. That will not happen again” – but not “[Host #1] needs to apologize as well!” Alternatively, depending on your mood and desire to shake things up, you may say “Yeah, I’ll probably do it again.” Not recommended, but hey – that’s an option. Free speech and all.
  7. Describe your future actions. E.g., “We will triple-check every name we’re not 100% sure about in the future.” Saying “we have a list of suggested remedies to pass along to the events team based on our experience” might not have the most impact.

Perhaps the most subtle aspect of this incident is the silence of the A-listers. Of all the bestselling authors I follow, to the extent of my knowledge, only Elizabeth Bear spoke about this entire incident. There were bloggers, of course: Cora Buhlert has made an excellent (as always) post on the nature of the two non-apologies. File 770 wrote about it here and here, though at one point the anti-name-manglers got referred to as “woke folk.”

There were many bestselling authors who sat in the same audience, and in better seats than the rest of us, probably, and who heard the mangling and the giggling, and then chose to say nothing. My best guess is that they didn’t want to make waves, didn’t want to upset their friends. Smile and clap and move on.

I suspect that by writing the previous essay, as well as this one, I might be sabotaging the odds of publishing my YA sci-fi novel, as well as any follow-ups.

Perhaps. But even if so…

Worth it.

When properly pronouncing people’s names becomes woke, only the woke will properly pronounce people’s names.

The non-apology from the Seattle Worldcon’s Chair, Kathy Bond, is much shorter – a mere 401 words. It’s quite good, and it almost passes for a true apology if you don’t look closely enough. It sure seems to follow the traditional format.

And yet… It has no mention of host #1’s odd admission of being high during the ceremony. It does not mention that host’s giggling while reading a non-anglophone name. It suggests creating a centralized “organizational structure responsible solely for the accurate handling of names” (or, in simpler terms, “name team”) without explaining why their own pronunciation guide video got ignored by all.

Perhaps the strangest part is that neither of the two non-apology letters even mentions the r/fantasy nominee for the Best Related Work. When the two hosts got to that slide, they saw the list of 20 or so names (as well as Reddit nicknames), and they both laughed in unison as they skipped it. That was not an ambiguous giggle. That was laughter. Was it nerves? Was it the same kind of classism that the AO3 folks experienced not long ago when the very nature of their platform wasn’t deemed serious enough? We’ll never know.

What to do if you didn’t rehearse any of the names and are faced with an unexpectedly long list of them:

  1. Read out the title. (Good job!)
  2. Consider reading the names.
  3. Consider asking for help.
  4. Consider treating the nominees with respect and dignity.

What not to do:

  1. Don’t laugh.
  2. Don’t goddamn laugh.

In my first essay, I asked the Seattle Worldcon these seven questions:

  1. How many times did they rehearse the Hugo song?
  2. How many times did the announcers rehearse the names?
  3. Was there ever a pronunciation guide?
  4. If not, why?
  5. If yes, what happened to it?
  6. Was there ever, at any point of the planning process, a voiced objection, or even a concern, that the popular awards presenter would not be able to pronounce foreign names?
  7. If so, what was the reaction?

I suspect the Worldcon people saw them while drafting their short non-apology. Only one of those questions got addressed, and even then, very briefly: “We provided insufficient organizational plans at the podium, including an inadequately designed pronunciation guide and other poorly designed materials.”

Translation: “We didn’t prepare.”

That admission is as much as you and I deserve, my friends.

If anyone ever decides to make a Fyre Festival-style documentary about this mess, it’d be pretty entertaining. I bet there’s at least one insider who doesn’t agree with the party line. I bet there have been some interesting Discord chats or text messages or even emails during those 17 days.

I bet I’m not the only one who likes to save things for safekeeping.

My blog will not fall prey to digital decay. I’ll keep it accessible for as long as I live – and then some.

You may be reading this in the future, in a year far beyond 2025. No, not you with the cat – you with the cyber-glasses. I hope you’ll find this essay useful, whoever you are. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe you’re insatiably curious. Maybe you’re working on a book (do you still have books in the future?) about the history of Hugo awards.

Perhaps, in whatever future you’re reading this, be it a week, or a month, or a decade from now, you’ll have more answers and more context and more clarity.

But meanwhile, here and now, in this slice of the time-space amber, this is the best bad truth that we mere mortals are allowed by our betters.

We deserve more.

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I once was…

Filed under: writing — Leave a comment
August 29, 2025

I once was a writer who wrote out of spite,
Converting the few free minutes
of long workweeks
into words.
That didn’t last.

I once was a writer who relied on a muse.
The words poured freely but rarely.
Rarer yet…
Then never.

And now I sit down
for a thousand
daily
words.
Time and again.
Habit and perseverance.

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