Through Darkness and Stars Launches Tomorrow

Watch this space tomorrow for the launch of the free 6 chapter preview of Through Darkness and Stars!

Delayed Releases

So October was supposed to see me launch a couple of things. First, the promised preview of Through Darkness and Stars, the second novel of The Omniverse Series, which was launched when I published The Unearthing, back in 2006.

Second, I had hoped to complete work on my next eBook, Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind.

Unfortunately, neither project is ready to launch. Nevermind is taking longer than expected to put together and format, and I was so engrossed in the work on that one that I never got around to compiling the aforementioned Through Darkness and Stars.

Here we are, mid-November and I've decided to put Nevermind back on hold for a while, so I can get Darkness out to you, dear readers, sooner rather than later.

I still hope to launch the Nevermind eBook before the end of the year, and Darkness by mid 2010.

Your patience will be rewarded, I promise!

Though I am loath to endorse any hyperlink that leads back to the dreadfully awful Montreal Gazette, the following story is both important and uplifting to anyone who believes that all Quebecers should have the same full, and equal, rights under the law. This should encourage anyone who believes in freedom of expression, of multiculturalism, and most of all, of courage in the face of overwhelming (albeit utterly discredited) opposition and even violence.

I reprint it here, without permission, solely to ensure that in the likely event the Gazette caves to pressure from a "special" interest group comprised of a goon squad of separatist racists.

One woman against the anti-Royal mobBy David Johnston, The Gazette

Photograph by: John Mahoney, The Gazette

She was a single lone woman up against a noisy nationalist mob tonight outside of the Black Watch armory on Bleury St., in the hour before Prince Charles arrived with Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

As the bright lights of national television created an something of a chilling aura around the 150 slogan-chanting Quebec nationalists, a small determined woman named Suzanne Reny walked up to the front lines of the protest and told them they were all a disgrace.

Speaking in fluent French and English, and carrying a well-known Scottish flag, the Rampant Lion, this petite daughter of a retired Canadian air-force pilot, and husband of a man of Scottish orgin, tore a strip off the protestors in front of a dozen cameras.

She called them ignorant and stupid, and she called them other things that can’t be printed – and the protestors were taken aback at first, until one man pushed her, prompting other protestors to intervene on behalf of her.

“If they are allowed to have their way in public, then I am allowed to have my say in public, too,” said Reny, the daughter of a father from the Beauce region and a mother from Trois-Rivières.

“If they are going to come here as a gang and say ‘We’re the Jeunes Patriotes’ and all that stuff and ‘we represent Quebec,’ well, I’m here to say they don’t represent Quebec,” said Reny.

Royal-family lovers who had come to stand outside the armory in the hope of greeting the royal couple looked on in amazement as Reny took on all comers and stood her ground in the glare of TV lights against the intimidating mob.

“Am I afraid? No way!” said Reny, who grew up in Lachine, LaSalle and Dollard des Ormeaux.

One of the protestors, a red-haired francophone woman named Danielle Fortin who said she was “a quarter” Irish and who was carrying an Irish flag, said to Reny, “Whose the real minority here? Don’t you know your history?”

Reny shot back, “Where did you learn your history? At the University of the St. Jean Baptiste Society?”

The louder Reny shouted the protestors down, the more the protestors in the background craned their necks to get a look at this woman who had come to stand them down. She was a one-woman counter-demonstration, and the royal couple’s and Black Watch’s strongest defender.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette