In Toad's Parlour last Sunday

Arian Knops is an interesting man--a good man--kind, community minded, a loving husband, and good friend. But lurking somewhere in the depths of his mind is curiosity--he is curious about things he would never, ever, wish to experience. 

To satisfy that curiosity (I think!) he writes.  He is in the middle of writing a book that contemplates suicide and the development of a character who has been diagnosed as criminally insane. And this past Sunday, at Toad House, he read from his newly published novel, Eight Five. This novel pursues the motives and methods of a serial killer and the characters who try to find him.

If you are brave and not easily offended by its realistic language, you can find the novel at the Ladysmith Visitor's Center and at Toad House or directly from Arian. The book was printed at Publisher's Express Press and can be purchased on Amazon. 

If you find him, Arian will sign the book for you in blood! (Well, not in blood--that was just my imagination running away with me!)

Next on the docket in Toad's Parlour is an author event with Dave Gourdoux's book Ojibway Valley.  The book is about a fictional community, and chronicles the lives of people, largely forgotten now, who have either directly or indirectly shaped the present. It tells the stories of native Americans, famers, eccentrics, drunks, and the refugees and exiles who came to the valley in hope of either eradicating or memorializing their own tragic pasts. It tells of the undiscovered secrets they carry with them, and stories about love lost and found, about heartbreak and triumph. There are murders, horrific accidents, tornados, blizzards, and foreign wars that they must endure as they intersect and collide in the hills and woods and fields, the ridges and the rivers, the farms and small towns.