Alex Carrick’s Blog

Griselda Beamish was happier than she had been in a hundred years. While others of her kind were having trouble adjusting to modern times, Zelda embraced the new. All of the most recent advances in technology made her life simpler. There were opportunities that she could never have imagined before. Take her job for instance. […]

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The following are a dozen good reasons a proper young lady should never date a vampire. (1) There’s not much point to installing a mirror over your bed. (2) Your blood pudding will never measure up to his mother’s. (3) When you tell your BFFs about his mother, they’re disappointed you think she’s an old […]

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The following is an edifying tale wherein a king learns a valuable lesson from his queen and the whole nation is better off as a consequence. The court jester plays a pivotal role as well, although he probably came to wish he’d stayed out of it.   There once lived a king who was always mad. […]

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The following are the jounal entries of Mr. Justin Smythe, a gentleman hobby farmer living outside the lovely theatre community of Stratford, Ontario where a widely-known Shakespearean festival is held each year. Mr. Smythe’s life proceeds quietly as he tends his cattle and occasionally takes walks in 30 acres he has set aside on his property for […]

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Now that he was dead, Norman Watts was in possession of certain information that someone in the living world would have given an arm and a leg to discover. Forget Halloween or Dia de los Muertos or any of those other days of the year when the departed are supposed to be revered. They might have been […]

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Gerry Westerfield was the kind of 25- to 30-year-old who disappears into the background. He grew his mat-black hair long, cultivated a beard and was perpetually attired in denim. He’d studied computer science at Sir Wilfred Laurier University but hadn’t quite earned his degree. There was no question he was a savant when it came to […]

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It’s a terror nearly as elemental as the fear of dying. It can bring strong men to their knees and turn the smartest of women into incoherent babblers. Maybe you already know where I’m headed. It’s public speaking and there’s nothing else quite like its scary prospect. Many people would rather go through a spinal […]

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Frank had learned how to control his dreams. He’d never experienced nightmares before. That’s why the past several months were so disturbing for him.   His power over dreams first came when he was a little boy. He saw a magazine photo of Michelangelo’s famous scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome’s Vatican. […]

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The devil and God were having lunch at the Zeus and Apollo restaurant on The Danforth in Toronto. The devil was partial to Greek food and, while God preferred Middle Eastern fare, He was content to let the devil have his way.   The two didn’t like each other much. But God didn’t see how […]

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My family – wife and two daughters – had already re-located to Calgary. My job in the energy sector was taking me to where the action is, Alberta’s oil patch. I was staying behind temporarily to spend time with our real estate agent, trying to sell our townhome. It was mid-fall and we’d been conducting an […]

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