I’m very happy to have a story in the new issue of carte blanche. That “Merry du Terminus” exists as a story is thanks in large part to a submission deadline, of which carte blanche has two per year. For me, a submission deadline is a great motivator. It moves me to
finish things. I love deadlines, I need deadlines. Bring them on.
Prior to being moved to action by this particular cutoff , “Merry du Terminus” existed for about a year as a single paragraph and a vague note about how the story might finish in a file on my computer called “Terminus.” (If you read the story, it’s the paragraph that begins “His Adam and the Ants records clinched it,” or at least an earlier version of it.) The story also lived inside my head the whole time, marinating I guess, popping in and out of view on a regular basis, until a submission deadline got close enough for me to fill in the rest on paper. The great thing about finishing is that the story doesn’t live in my head anymore. It’s gone and I don’t miss it. There are all these other fragments, single paragraphs, and titles waiting for their own deadlines, real or (the way it should be) self-imposed. I’ve also got the phone number of a defunct pizzeria on Monkland Avenue in there but I haven’t figured out a way to get rid of it and I don’t know that I’d want to anyway.
Mark Paterson 