C. K. Kelly Martin

October Shantallow Sale

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:19:50 +0000

E-copies of my literary horror Shantallow are on sale for $2.99 across major online booksellers for October. If teenage exes kidnapped for ransom and held in a malevolent abandoned house sounds like your thing this one's for you.

When Misha sees the girl from his recurring nightmares—a girl he's never set eyes on while awake—in a neighbour's front lawn he can't believe his eyes. The two tumble into an intense but ultimately toxic relationship.

Months after it's over, Misha still can't entirely let go. Driving past Tanvi's house he witnesses a kidnapping in progress—hers. When he attempts to intervene he's beaten, bound, and thrown into the back of a utility van with Tanvi, her ten-year-old cousin Lauren, and another teenager. The four are driven to a decaying, remote house, and told no one will be hurt if they cooperate. But soon the entire group is under siege from something far more sinister than the captors themselves.

As the house grows more hostile and the supernatural violence escalates, the fate of the kidnappers and the hostages entwine. Misha must not only fight for his life, but come to terms with the things he's done and the long shadow his father's abuse has cast over his life.

2025 Book Re-Releases

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 23:37:00 +0000

Rights will soon be reverted for three of my young adult books so I've been working hard on cover art plus print and ePub files. With any luck these new versions of The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, Delicate and Shantallow (the latter published under the author name Cara Martin) should be available from major online booksellers within the next ten to fourteen days. Voila the new covers below!

Most of the text within hasn't been changed, aside from an updated section regarding intimate partner violence at the end of Delicate to include some fresher stats and resources. Unfortunately, since Delicate was first published in 2015 intimate partner violence in Ontario has increased substantially. "But most cases of domestic violence still go unreported. In fact in 2019, 80% of those who experienced intimate partner violence did not report to police."

Other things you'll see dealt with in Delicate are a dangerous peanut allergy, and a case of chlamydia. It's not the end of the world when one of the main characters, Ivy, catches chlamydia from having sex with her ex-boyfriend sans condom, but it really sucks. Or more accurately, it burns. The second cousin, Lucan, she barely knows at the start of the novel is having an exceptionally crappy summer too (losing patience with overhearing his mom and her new boyfriend have sex)—something the two bond over, until even that gets complicated . . .

Meanwhile in The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing fifteen-year-old Serena and her friends are intent on fighting the sexualization they continually face from many of their male classmates, including Serena's ex, as she tries to cope with the absence of a beloved older brother who is estranged from the family (whereabouts unknown) because of his unwillingness to undergo treatment for drug addiction. Enter down-to-earth nineteen-year-old Gage who feels like a breathe of fresh air among the fray, except that he's bothered by the age gap between himself and Serena. Something he doesn't even know the whole truth about.

Unlike the other two novels, Shantallow isn't contemporary YA but it does share some DNA with them in the form of an at first heady young relationship that later verges into abuse. The toxic relationship between Misha and Tanvi (the girl he has nightmares about before he ever sees her in real life) is enfolded into the horror tale of a kidnapping for ransom gone wrong when the remote, long abandoned house the kidnappers confine the young couple and two others in violently turns on all of them, determined to drag its warped past into the present.

Shantallow marks a shift from writing mostly contemporary fiction about young people to focusing on adult speculative novels, which is why I've chosen a different pen name for it and more recent books. Although Shantallow and Rise, Tomorrow Girl both feature seventeen-year-old main characters I think of them as crossover novels rather than strictly being YA in nature. Subsequent horror and sci-fi novels written as Cara Martin will primarily focus on adult characters, but I'm not entirely ruling out the odd speculative crossover. On the other hand, if I ever write more contemporary YA (which I'm not eternally ruling out either) it will likely be under the name C. K. Kelly Martin.

Canada's Choice: April 28th

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 01:03:00 +0000

So much hangs in the balance here in Canada and we have a whole weekend plus most of Monday to get through. Hold your nerve, Canadians, and for those who haven't voted yet, support whoever can beat the Cons in your riding. Keep authoritarians out of power.

If you're not sure who stands the best chance to block the Conservative Party in your area, you can use votewell.ca.

At this point, Pierre Poilievre is well known for declaring a war on 'woke' and vowing to defund the CBC. The broadcaster has long been an integral component of our nation, reflecting Canada's evolving identity back to us. Thanks to Stephen Harper (who fundamentally changed the media landscape by allowing the foreign takeover of Postmedia) far too many of Canada's outlets are rightwing media hedge fund owned and that bias increasingly shows, making the CBC's survival, in both English and French, even more crucial.

During Poilievre's federal election campaign he's restricted media access, limiting access at campaign stops by only allowing handpicked reporters to pose questions. Unlike Canada's other major political parties, the Conservative Party of Canada refused to allow journalists to travel with Poilievre on his campaign bus and plane, "ending a decades-old tradition of reporters embedding with a prospective candidate to lead the country." Poilievre's demonizing of the press and his disturbing restricting of reporter access is far from new. His ongoing war on journalism demonstrates a marked lack of respect for a cornerstone of democracy. This should concern all Canadians.

There's a reason why Poilievre's Elon Musk's choice for Prime Minister and that Canadians are being bombarded with rightwing disinformation on X as well as Meta. Given the chance, Poilievre intends to make Canada over in the U.S.'s image from the inside. A slew of regressive changes delivered with a sneer. He's continually courted the far right, playing fast and loose with the truth while fermenting rage that he's hoped to ride to power. His own record and recent campaign promises starkly demonstrate his malicious intentions. Tax cuts at the expense of keeping our healthcare system and social safety net strong, scapegoating rather than nation building.

Poilievre was a leading defender of the “Fair Elections Act,” a voter suppression Bill that "impaired voting rights, reduced political participation, injected partisan bias in election administration, increased the influence of money in elections, diminished transparency and accountability, and seriously undermined the integrity and fairness of the electoral process." Here are some other highlights of his voting record as an MP.

Let's not forget that soon after securing his own government pension, Poilievre voted to raise the retirement age for others to 67. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when asked about the CERB benefits that kept many Canadian afloat, Poilievre admitted "We're Conservatives we don't believe in that."

Unconcerned about everyday Canadians, unsurprisingly Poilievre also shares Donald Trump’s cruel indifference toward the rest of the world's welfare. The Conservative leader's costed platform, released Tuesday, reveals the almost complete gutting of foreign aid. A reduction of $9.5 billion over four years (that's a whopping 85%). This "will mean defunding critical health care, slashing development assistance, axing disaster relief, and ending a litany of other life-saving and security-building programs. Just like Trump." A humanitarian disaster in the making. "Poilievre’s Conservative Party opposes all significant federal measures to address climate change" and frames "ecological protection as an assault on freedom and prosperity." In his is twenty years as a Conservative politician, he's voted against environmental protection 400 times, and a mere thirteen times in favour.

If you'd like to read more about why Poilievre is perceived as an authoritarian threat that would destroy Canada as we know it if given free reign, here's some further reading material for you.

● The Tyee: Six Policy Areas Where Poilievre Mirrors Trump

● Charlies Angus/The Resistance Substack: Take Nothing for Granted

● Policy Options: (the digital magazine of the Institute for Research on Public Policy): Voters must not allow Poilievre to import Trump’s war on science

● Greenpeace: Politics of Exclusion: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s Voting Track Record 2004-2024

● The Vajenda (Dr. Jen Gunter's substack): Dear Canada, Pierre Poilievre is Coming for Your Reproductive Rights

● Greenpeace: Pierre Poilievre’s positions on climate change, biodiversity and social justice

We've seen where voting for Populist politicians who vociferously feign being a friend of the common man while actually representing a select few elite and disenfranchising and impoverishing everyone else gets you. That's not democracy. That's not the kind of Canada most of us want.

Oh Canada

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0000

If there's anything more Canadian than a Canadian band (Our Lady Peace) covering another Canadian band (The Tragically Hip) in an arena called the Canadian Tire Centre in the nation's capital it's starting a singalong of the national anthem, which happened last night too!

A clip from OLP's cover of Locked in the Trunk of a Car last night:

Anyone who has lived in this country awhile is these days no doubt experiencing much the same thing as I am, which is a unity and demonstrative pride in Canada unlike any I've ever seen outside of Canada Day, the Olympics or hockey games. Much as Canadians love this nation, we're not ordinarily showy about it. With few exceptions Canadians are traditionally not flag-wavers, and when we sing the national anthem aloud (which is not often) it's generally underneath our breath.

An antagonistic United States, making threats to our sovereignty and repeatedly disrespecting our Prime Minister, has unleashed something inside us that won't be put back in the bottle anytime soon. We're shopping Canadian, avoiding U.S. products and travel, and wearing our hearts on our sleeves.

I don't know how well you can make the sound out on the below video but OLP's Raine Maida had the CTC audience singing the national anthem late in their show in Ottawa last night. I've never seen anything like this at a rock concert before. The emotion in the arena was incredible.

Here are a couple of other clips from Our Lady Peace's amazing show in Ottawa last night. I always find myself thinking of Finn, from One Lonely Degree, during Clumsy in particular. She was fifteen when the book was released in 2009 which would make her around thirty-one now, but I know she'd still be hitting Our Lady Peace concerts.

True North Strong and Free

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 21:34:00 +0000

Russian Mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya wrote these words in 1888, and the message holds true across miles and years. Stay true. And in this case also, elbows up, Canada. I know Canadians will do what they can to support their neighbours and countrymen during this difficult time. We will never again feel the same way about the United States, a once valued friend and ally, no matter what happens from here on out. We will, however, do what we must for our national sovereignty. Because Canada is not the United States. We value different things, and we will control our own destiny, no matter what that costs in dollars and cents.

Like The Tragically Hip's Gord Downie sang in Wheat Kings, "You can't be fond of living in the past, 'Cause if you are, then there's no way that you're gonna last." Together we will move forward from where we currently stand, mindful of what matters, and we will weather the storm.

This country isn't perfect, but it has never stopped striving to be better. Canada is beautiful, strong, and free. And it's ours.

Bye-Bye, Meta!

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 22:02:00 +0000

With the same moderation changes that resulted in a torrent of hate speech and disinformation on X now set to roll out on Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) it was time to pull up stakes and spend time places that respect facts and people instead. As for what you can expect at Meta moving forward:

Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality . . . The policy also now allows for content arguing in favor of “gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs.”

I've already left Facebook (and Twitter/X before that) and am currently in the process of packing up my Instagram account. Many of my favourite photographs from 2007 to the present have moved to Flickr. My final day on Instagram will be January 19th.

Here are some other places you can continue to find me:

✮ Bluesky: caramartin
✮ Spoutible: CaraCKMartin
✮ Mastodon: mstdn.ca/@ckkellymartin
✮ Tumblr: ckkellymartin
✮ Flickr: ckkellymartin
✮ Goodreads: C. K. Kelly Martin

Once Bluesky's photo-sharing app Flashes is available I'll post photos there too. And of course there are always my websites:

www.ckkellymartin.com
www.caramartin.ca
www.justlikeyousaiditwouldbe.com

You can find up to date links to the social media networks I appear on at each website.

Prime Minister Trudeau Resigns after two years of character assassination

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:24:00 +0000

I’ve never doubted that Justin Trudeau loves this country and am gravely disappointed that he’s leaving under such fraught circumstances. We’ll never know what his fate might've been if Canada still had a free mainstream media (not owned by a foreign extreme right constantly in attack mode) and a hardcore social media disinformation campaign hadn’t been waged against Trudeau, in particular, and progressive movements in general. As one BlueSky user aptly described the mainstream media and social media onslaught: "2 years of character assassination."

A politician’s political life doesn’t last forever, but it shouldn’t have ended this way. Trudeau had a bright, optimistic and inclusive vision of Canada and at this point the party ahead in the polls stands for the polar opposite.

In happier days, at the Montreal Pride Parade, August 2016

In 2015 Trudeau ushered in Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet, evenly split between men and women. He helped see Canadians through the early days of the COVID pandemic with the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) which was instrumental in keeping Canadian COVID fatalities markedly lower than those of the United States. In recent years Trudeau increased Old Age Security (OAS) benefits for seniors seventy-five and older by ten percent, launched a national $10-a-day child care program, and a dental care program for seniors and under 18s with an annual family income of less than $90,00.

The new social programs are unlikely to survive under a Conservative government and cuts to others, including healthcare funding, would likely be harsh. Poilievre voted to stop the dental care program, and a pharmacare program providing free diabetes and birth control, and in 2023 he voted to cut funding for surgery and emergency room wait times by $196.1 billion. Under a Conservative federal government pensions would be slashed too. Poilievre has already voted to increase eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement eligibility from sixty-five to sixty-seven. In 2021 he also voted against the ten percent increase to OAS for seniors seventy-five and older. (Read more about Pierre Poilievre's record on pensions here.)

35th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique Femicide

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 20:09:00 +0000

Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

Thirty-five years ago today the fourteen young women pictured above were fatally shot at École Polytechnique in Montréal because of their gender. The pain of this day never ends. I was attending university in Toronto on the day of the massacre and will never forget it. Your boundless hopes, dreams, ambitions and adventures, some men—having internalized to greater degree than others the patriarchal values and toxic masculinity that still course through our society—don't want you to have these things and would cut you down rather than watch you thrive.

As a nation we haven't really begun to deal with the misogyny behind this massacre decades later. Femicide should have been added to Canada's Criminal Code many years ago. I hope it will happen now. Recently the Ottawa Police force made a move in the right direction when they used the term to describe the murder of Jennifer Zabarylo at the hands of her husband.

Misogyny and violence against women should have no place in Canadian society and yet women in Canada are still assaulted or killed daily simply because they are female. Women are more likely than men to report experiencing violent crime at some point since age fifteen. Women are five times more likely than men to experience sexual assault. Women are more likely to experience elder abuse from a family member and account for 58% of senior survivors of family violence. For girls and young women in the north, the rate of violence against them is exceptionally—four times higher than in Canada’s overall population. (See these stats and more at Canadianwomen.org)

Between the years of 2018 and 2022, the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability estimates that at least 862 women and girls have been the victims of femicide in Canada, with that number increasing by 24% over that time." - Megan Walker, former head of the London Abused Women’s Centre and a longtime advocate for ending violence against women.

You can read more about each of the young women killed in École Polytechnique 35 years ago on the CBC feature, Remember the 14.

COMING SOON: Rise, Tomorrow Girl

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 19:13:00 +0000

Anyone interested in speculative fiction might want to check out my upcoming sci-fi novel, Rise, Tomorrow Girl, which I'll be releasing as Cara Martin. In the near future seventeen-year-old Canadian Leanne Khoury watches a second twenty-first century global pandemic—this one highly fatal in young adults—steal the life of her best friend. When Leanne is stricken ill too her affluent parents have her cryogenically frozen in a facility performing experimental procedures. Reanimated and cured of virus years later, Leanne isn’t the same. Her awareness intermittently ‘disconnects’, stalling her body and mind. But it’s more than that. Snatches of memories from evolutionary ancestors bleed through her consciousness, leaving her feeling as unnatural as Frankenstein’s monster on the inside.

Over a billion people perished during the pandemic, decimating a generation, and when Leanne's released from the cryo facility she struggles to integrate into a Canada and world that has technologically and socially moved on without her. Although the virus is no longer a threat, Leanne is far from safe. In the United States organized extremists threaten legitimate government, regularly committing attacks on U.S. soil. Then radical American expansionist soldiers invade parts of Canada and Leanne, along with others not accepted by the radical invaders, must fight for her survival.

Book release date: June 21, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-7383458-0-9
EBOOK: 978-1-7383458-1-6

Amira and Darragh envisioned (updated August 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:06:00 +0000

Back in 2016 I purchased a couple of photos from iStock and edited them in my ancient copy of Photoshop to approximate what I imagined Amira and Darragh looked like, mostly for personal reference but also potentially for the book cover. By then I'd been writing Just Like You Said It Would Be on and off for seventeen years. At one point it was a trilogy and the first novel in the series was called The Start of Something. I even placed top ten in Writer's Digest Best Writer's Web Site competition way back in October 2001 with www.thestartofsomething.com. I probably should've held on to the domain name as it's for sale for $9888 USD as of July 2026! If you're curious, you can have a look at bits and pieces of that old site by doing some archaeological digging via the Wayback Machine Internet Archive.

I Know It's Over was the first novel I finished after The Start of Something trilogy and there were many C. K. Kelly Martin YA novels published after that, but I never forgot about Amira and Darragh (who in fact started out as Aziza and Conor). Over many years, and in between working on other books, I rewrote their story as a single novel, then rewrote it again and again, each time out gaining a better understanding of what the book was meant to be until it truly felt finished and wholly itself in 2017. If you happened to purchase a copy of Just Like You Said It Would Be close to ten years ago you might recognize the above young woman from the cover. Inside the book contents are the same as they were in 2017 but the cover has changed multiple times, as has been the case for most of my novels. I enjoy the cover creation process too much to leave them alone for long and a couple of extensive desktop publishing courses I took in the late 90s, in what was then known as the Dublin Institute of Technology (but has since evolved into Technological University Dublin), gave me a solid grounding in desktop publishing skills and Photoshop.

Much later, when Microsoft Designer was in free preview in early 2024, I fooled around with the software—purely for my own amusement—and fell down a rabbit hole generating AI photos of Amira and Darragh. I wouldn't use them professionally in any capacity for ethical reasons concerning AI's impact on the arts. Nine of my books were ripped off to train language models without my permission—something I would never in three thousand years have actually agreed to had I been asked and will probably be furious about until I die. I firmly believe that AI shouldn't be used in professional or academic writing (whether we're talking about penning essays, music, prose, non-fiction or movies), and in terms of fiction research, that AI should only be utilized sparingly and with extreme caution, with any information obtained from AI double or triple-checked against human sources. Similarly, AI should never be used to substitute for human-created visual arts, but I'll admit the Amira and Darragh photo exercise felt like an entertaining time sink for a short period in early 2024, before AI slop started to show up everywhere, like ashtrays and litter in the 70s.

There were ALOT of the usual issues with the way the fake couple in fake Dublin locations looked as well as some not atrocious results, but the two images below are my favourite AI created Amira and Darragh pairings.

I see more than a hint of early Jenny from the Block in this incarnation of Amira on the Trinity College grounds.

In Temple Bar at night. Pretty cute and with fairly natural looking expressions.

I Know It's Over 15th Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 23:34:00 +0000

Today is the 15th anniversary of the release of my first book, I Know It's Over. To celebrate I've designed and released a fresh cover and put e-copies on sale for $1.99 U.S. (or equivalent in other currencies) at Apple, B&N, Kobo, Amazon and Google until October 15th.

If I Know It's Over was set in Ontario, Canada today Sasha would likely seek a prescription for Mifegymiso, undergoing a medical abortion rather than a surgical one. At the time I wrote I Know It's Over sadly this option was not available to Canadian girls and women.

However, there are no laws restricting or criminalizing abortion in Canada and it's a publicly funded procedure in most provinces. You can read more about that here:

https://nafcanada.org/abortion-coverage-region/

And if you want to learn more about accessing abortion pills, which was approved in Canada in 2015, please see the below resource:

https://teenhealthsource.com/blog/faq-can-i-get-the-abortion-pill-in-canada/

Included here are previous covers for I Know It's Over, including the Bulgarian edition which was named "Ще си останем приятели, нали?" This translates as "We'll stay friends, right?"

Social Networking Update

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 17:21:00 +0000

I'm temporarily deactivating my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts for a much-needed social media break. I expect to be back on at least some of these platforms late next month. In the meantime, if you're interested in what I'm reading you can see that on Goodreads.

My Misadventure Experience with Post Airline Travel Canadian Covid Testing

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 18:44:00 +0000

After arriving home in Ontario last Friday (June 3rd) I received an email from the federal government Monday morning saying that I’d been randomly selected for Covid testing post-travel (news to me!) and that if they didn’t have my results within the next twenty-four hours they might contact me by phone. I promptly called the government public health number listed in the email. The first thing they asked me was how I’d gotten their number (Huh? You emailed me). After asking where I was calling from they instructed me to contact SwitchHealth to arrange testing. From the email I could see SwitchHealth was the wrong lab but when I read the email message back citing LifeLabs as responsible for Ontario testing the person on the phone insisted SwitchHealth was in charge of Ontario testing.

Let me tell you, SwitchHealth is not currently in charge of Ontario airport testing and only handle testing for Alberta and Atlantic Canada. Apparently, SwitchHealth were previously involved with Ontario testing but that changed at the beginning of June. After contacting LifeLabs (who perform the Ontario testing) LifeLabs informed me it would take 3 or 4 days for the test to arrive via FedEx and that I’d get robo calls from the government in the meantime.

The next day the harassing robo calls threatening $5k fines for non-compliance started with no opportunity to speak to a live person to explain what had happened. Day 6 my test kit arrived via FedEx mid-afternoon. The next available online test was for the following day. I finally had the virtual appointment yesterday (day 7) and the epic ridiculousness didn’t end there. The person who observed my online test instructed me to store it in a cold dark place away from sunlit, preferably a fridge, until FedEx could come pick it up. Supposedly they have to pick the sample up the same day or it’s no longer viable.

I called FedEx directly after my appointment, and they told me (knowing what it was) to leave the package outside my apartment building with a note attached explaining that it was a covid test so no one would steal it and said they’d pick it up anytime before 5. This was at ten AM. I repeated what I’d been told about keeping the package in the fridge and away from sunlight until they arrive and the FedEx employee somewhat wryly said they don’t have any fridges. Not wanting to give them an excuse not to pick the kit up, I did as close to asked as I was comfortable with, leaving the package between the inner and outer doors of my building where a FedEx driver wouldn’t have to endure contact with me to retrieve it. I checked on the package several times and it was still there at 3.30 but gone by 4.35, meaning my sample sat outside the security doors of my building for at least 5.5 hours!

I don’t disagree with Covid-19 testing. In fact, I took two rapid antigen tests (on day 4 and 5) after my dodgy return WestJet flight as there were many unmasked and sniffling people sitting near me on the plane and flight attendants weren’t enforcing federal masking rules. But when the random airport PRC testing that’s supposed to happen on day 1 doesn’t occur until day 7 I fail to see how it’s useful in any way. This entire experience was nothing but aggravation and ineptitude.

Repealing the Eighth/Saving Roe v Wade

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Tue, 03 May 2022 20:04:00 +0000

Since I’m not an Irish resident I had no vote in Ireland’s 2018 Abortion Referendum but I was in Dublin when the vote to overturn their abortion ban came in, and I rejoiced at the nation’s long overdue decision following far too many years of Irish women and girls being forced to continue with pregnancies they didn’t want or travel to England for abortions. Along with thousands of others, on Saturday May 26th, 2018, I travelled into the Dublin Castle grounds to mark the historic day.

Speaking from Dublin Castle on May 26th, 2018, Tánaiste, and then taoiseach, Leo Varadkar said it was “a day when we say no more”: “No more to doctors telling their patients that there’s no more can be done for them in their own country, no more lonely journeys across the Irish Sea, no more stigma as the veil of secrecy is lifted and no more isolation as the burden of shame is gone.”

Even on that day, standing among a gathered Irish crowd, I experienced a surreal feeling of both relieve and creeping dread that as a victory for Irish women’s bodily autonomy rights was won those same rights were being chipped away in the United States of America. And here we are, four years later, a leaked draft opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the top court’s precedent-setting Roe v Wade ruling.

We must be prepared, everywhere, to continue to fight for a woman's right to choose, again and again and again.

* Read a history of the Eighth Amendment from 1983 to 2018.

* Read my Blog for Choice entry from 2008.

Photos from Dublin, May, 2018

Occupation of Ottawa: Day 16

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 01:13:00 +0000

I don’t know understand how this has been allowed to continue for so long but we’re on day SIXTEEN of Ottawa’s occupation. I’m not sure how much people from outside the area understand about what’s going on in the capital. The Ottawa Police force, who has been a disaster from day one of this occupation, say they need more resources to disperse the convoy while the Prime Minister counters, "I don't accept the contention that the city of Ottawa has exhausted its tools and its resources." In this city there’s a general belief, due to the police’s lack of enforcement, that they are in collusion with the occupiers. Whether this is true or not what most certainly is true is that Ottawa residents have been left to stand alone.

The injunction to stop honking (which had previously been relentless at all times of day) is not longer being heeded by convoy members. The extreme noise is back distressing residents and the convoy’s idling trucks have dropped the city’s air quality into the toile t. A measure of one air pollutant hit a level more than fourteen times higher than the city’s average. We’ve also discovered that a quarter of trucks have kids in them so children of convoy members are also being subjected to a horrendous and potentially damaging level of noise and air pollution.

Counter protest in Ottawa today

There’s been an ongoing campaign of intimidation, harassment and assault waged on city residents, particularly those wearing masks, which has necessitated the financially devastating closure of countless downtown businesses for their employees’ safety. The estimated cost of the closure of the Rideau mall alone is now $40 million. 911 has at times been unreachable as the convoy flood the service with fake calls, leaving actual emergencies to go unanswered. When residents do get through, they are frequently met with paltry excuses instead of help. Many people able to leave their homes have abandoned them for the time being; others don't have anywhere else to retreat to. Response time for ambulances and fire trucks is woeful downtown where parked convoy vehicles block countless streets. It will be surprising if no one dies waiting for emergency services This situation has gone on far too long already and there’s no end in sight. We have no functional police force in Ottawa and have been let down by all levels of government except for a few treasured local politicians, among them Councillors Catherine McKenney and Shawn Menard, and Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden.

I’m posting an assortment of tweets from the past forty-eight hours that illustrate what the situation is currently like in Ottawa.

Ottawa Occupied

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 23:23:00 +0000

Trump 2024 flag carried on horseback in Ottawa's occupation.

Things are deteriorating even further in occupied downtown Ottawa. The city councillors and MPPs doing safe community walks downtown three times a day to make people feel more secure announced they had to stop them today because of extremists in the area looking to commit violence.

Here are some links to video footage and photos documenting the local situation.

The convoy chasing off Ottawa police in downtown Ottawa last night:

https://twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/1489964859450134528

A Trump 2024 flag being carried along a downtown Ottawa street by a man on horseback:

https://twitter.com/hsinskip/status/1489989417477496834

CTV news photos from the command centre the convoy has set up at the RCTG baseball field (which is also near the Tremblay LRT stop for the train station):

https://twitter.com/JCharronCTV/status/1489984829143891973

And this is from a few days ago, a Carleton Professor’s twitter thread with photos showing the extent of the convoy's organization and infrastructure installed downtown:

https://twitter.com/alexmcclelland/status/1489690231745953794

Yesterday evening I was on an Ottawa townhall Zoom session held by an Ottawa Centre MPP to discuss community safety and support needs. Near the beginning a racist a-hole jumped on the chat and entered a horrible racist message a dozen times while a black resident and activist was speaking. The entire chat feature had to be shut down. During the chat news also emerged of another downtown business that is shutting until at least next week (many of them including the entire Rideau Centre Mall and numerous restaurants have been closed for a week now because of similar issues) due to, "One of our staff was physically assaulted on their way to work today, blocked on the sidewalk by two men and shoved to the ground for wearing a mask."

Finally, on top of the horns the convoy have been honking all through the day and night as psychological torture for residents (you can hear it here https://twitter.com/glen_mcgregor/status/1488905393199890432), last night they added air ride sirens.

There is no sign of this ending yet. The building the convoy erected in Confederation Park (a makeshift kitchen to feed convoy members) across from City Hall on Thursday hasn't even been taken down yet. It's unbelievable.

The convoy wants a coup d'état, their demands call for the Senate, Governor General, and convoy organizers to take control of our democratically elected government. There is no protest here in Ottawa. It's occupation, extortion, and attempted treason by white supremacists.


Ottawa residents demanding an end to the hostile occupation of their city.

Canada's Capital City is Under Siege

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 20:16:00 +0000

For the third day in a row Ottawa City is being held hostage by a convoy of white supremacist fascists (and their sympathizers) seeking to oust a democratically elected government. The convoy "accomplishment" list (by https://twitter.com/lrt_and) itemizes some of the abuse. The latest to add to this is confirmation protesters in a truck that was part of the convoy hurled rocks at an ambulance over the weekend. "When the paramedic got out to check for damage, protesters began to yell racial slurs at him, said Jocelyne Marciano, operations commander for the Ottawa Paramedic Service."

Police are continuing to ask city residents and workers to avoid going downtown. The Rideau mall will remain closed today out of concern for workers as will a downtown school. Many other inner core businesses will also remain closed for the same reason as there have been countless incidents of convoy members threatening retail and restaurant workers. This means a hit to the pocketbook for already challenged businesses.

I'm including a selection of tweets from Ottawa residents and workers so that everyone can see what the capital has been dealing with. If you want to know more here's an informative thread from an Ottawa teacher: https://twitter.com/Haligowan/status/1487782431570731018. And invaluable info from investigative reporter Justin Ling about the treasonous, racist roots of this convoy https://twitter.com/Justin_Ling/status/1487112260636053509.

If you want to help counter hate and harassment in Canada please consider financial support for the following noble causes, institutions & symbols of which have been abused & attacked by the convoy this weekend: Ottawa shelter Shepherds of Good Hope https://www.sghottawa.com; nationally the Terry Fox Foundation https://terryfox.org/, the Royal Canadian Legion https://www.legion.ca/, and last but not least, independent and nonpartisan nonprofit Canadian Anti-Hate Network https://www.antihate.ca/.

February 5th Update

* Here are some other amazing organizations severely impacted by the occupation of Ottawa who could really use your support: Highjinx (a community hub for vulnerable neighbours); Youth Services Bureau (servicing vulnerable youth in the downtown core); nonprofit Centretown Community Health Centre; Cornerstone Housing for Women; SAEFTY Ottawa, an independent youth group run entirely by and for trans and gender diverse youth.

November 3rd

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 23:43:00 +0000

Ottawa Book Awards 2020

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 23:26:00 +0000

If there's one time of year you want to lose yourself in a book that will make you shiver, it's October, when the light is fading and the spirits raise their voices loud enough that we can hear them.

It's also the month that I was thrilled and honoured to be a finalist for the Ottawa Book Awards in the English fiction category for my YA horror, Shantallow. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists in the event which happened on Zoom and was aired on Facebook live this past Wednesday!


Award night jitters in my apartment before signing in!

Enormous thanks to the Ottawa Book Awards and the Ottawa Public Library for including me! Here's the jury statement for Shantallow: "With its sparring prose, inclusive cast and difficult themes, Cara Martin’s Shantallow  is crackling YA. It addresses themes of revenge porn, abuse, drugs and sex, but at its heart is a message all young people should hear: there’s life after transgression, and while it may not include forgiveness, personal amends can be made, behaviour changed and community rediscovered."

Shantallow

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 23:00:00 +0000

I was incredibly thrilled to learn my latest novel, Shantallow (published under the name Cara Martin), has made the longlist for the 2020 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic! Incidentally, I started reading Karen McBride's debut novel, Crow Winter, nominated in the adult category, the day before hearing the good news and am relishing Hazel's emotional journey. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Chantel Moore

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 19:34:00 +0000

As people across the U.S., Canada and numerous other countries around the world protest racism and police brutality, Chantel Moore, a young Indigenous woman from B. C., was shot dead by a police officer during what has been referred to as a “wellness check” in Edmundston, New Brunswick Thursday. "Nora Martin, Moore’s aunt, told Global News that her niece’s boyfriend called the police because somebody was harassing her and she felt scared."

Chantel was a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, on Vancouver Island BC, living in New Brunswick with her 5 year old daughter and mother. Her mother and daughter are in need of family support during this tragic time and 6 members of her family are planning to travel to New Brunswick to support her and practice traditional Nuu-Chah-Nulth grieving protocols.

Thousands of Indigenous women and girls have been murdered or disappeared across Canada in recent decades. Twenty-six-year-old Chantel Moore should still be with us today, instead she died alone with the police officer who shot her five times. If you can offer financial support to Chantel's surviving family members, please visit the Go Fund Me for family of Chantel Moore. "The funds are for the family travel, funeral costs, and any remaining funds will be given to her mother and daughter. The family has received authorization to travel to New Brunswick amidst provincial Covid restrictions."

Also please sign the Justice for Chantal Moore petition demanding the city of Edmundston hold this officer accountable for not attempting to deescalate the situation.

The Cover is the Thing

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Wed, 13 May 2020 23:41:00 +0000

About six months have passed since I finished up my previous cover version of Just Like You Said It Would Be. Between the coronavirus pandemic and other worrying things going on in my life it's been pretty difficult to write. Progress on my WIP has been sadly negligible.

I see some hopeful signs that's beginning to change but in any case, somehow working on covers always feels like some kind of vacation or escape. When I can't write I can STILL work on cover art. So here we go again, again, again—voila the newest cover of Just Like You Said It Would Be.

If you want to read about messy first love, movie love (God I miss going to the movies!) and falling in love with Dublin, Ireland, this might be your kind of book.

Here's another new cover design, this one for the Yesterday duology packaged together as one book.

Finally, Finn Kavanagh is still one of my favourite characters so of course she deserved a cover change too. This one retained alot of the elements from the previous One Lonely Degree redesign.

I hope you're keeping safe and well wherever you're seeing out the first phase of this global pandemic. Also that you're taking it easy on yourself if you're not able to get certain things done during this worrying, strange and intense time. We'll get through this day by day, doing whatever we're doing, even if that means spending an inordinate amount of time designing new book covers while we should be writing!

Bill Withers

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 01:08:00 +0000

Bill Withers, 1976 | public domain photo

I was so sad, this morning, to hear of the passing of the great Bill Withers. I was feeling edgy walking down narrow pharmacy aisles yesterday trying to pick up all the things on my list. Some of the aisles were closed off for restocking and there were people in others so I had to circle around and come back when they'd gone. All in all it was taking ages and the longer I had to remain at the store the more nervous I felt about being out among even a small number of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then Lovely Day came on over the speakers and it felt like a sign, I relaxed.

Thank you, Bill Withers, for all the amazing music. It's made a difference in the lives of so many people and will continue to do so. In fact, in this crazy, uncertain and terrifying time we need your music more than ever.

Paddy's Day 2020

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 18:54:00 +0000

Happy St. Patrick's Day! It's by far the strangest one any of us have ever seen but we can still celebrate Ireland. Here's one of my favourite Irish songs in honour of the day.

I can't get twenty seconds into it without feeling overwhelmed by longing for Ireland! Normally we're in Ireland every May and by the time we get there this year (which remains to be seen) I'll be so happy to see Ireland again that I'm likely to kiss the green ground!

Also in honour of St. Patrick's Day, I just bought & downloaded Niall Horan's new album, Heartbreak Weather. I loved his first album Flicker & can't wait to hear his new stuff.

Finally, here I am in Kilkenny in 2016 above.

Stay safe and stay home everyone. Together we're going to flatten the hell out of that curve!

The Kind of Books I Want to Write (and the kind I don't), Part II: the 2020 edition

noreply@blogger.com (C. K. Kelly Martin) — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 01:26:00 +0000

Eleven years ago I spent a lot more time blogging than I do these days. MySpace had just lost its place as the largest social networking site in the world, Barack Obama was the President of the United States, Lady Gaga and The Black-Eyed Peas had the highest selling tunes of the year, and Avatar was the highest grossing movie. 2009 is also the year my second young adult book, One Lonely Degree, hit shelves. It all feels like a very long time ago now. Uber and Airbnb were in their infancy. The #MeToo movement hadn’t happened yet, Instagram wouldn’t spring to life for another year and Donald Trump was still just a C-list celebrity with an epic comb-over and a string of business failures behind him. Billie Eilish was eight years old and Netflix had a mere three million users (by October 2019 they’d reached 158 million).

Back in 2009 I posted a blog entry about the kind of books I was interested in writing, exploring my thoughts on penning character-driven contemporary young adult fiction that centres on people carrying some pretty heavy emotional baggage. I’m still drawn to those types of novels, both as a reader and a writer. “What I hope I'm doing, what I'm striving for, is to write books that reflect the reality of teen lives,” I wrote back then. But since shortly after posting that blog entry I’ve actually been writing outside of the boundaries of contemporary fiction as often as I’ve stayed within them. Of the fifteen manuscripts I’ve completed (twelve of those novels have been published so far) only seven sit solidly in the contemporary fiction camp. Interestingly, even two of those books feature presences that could be described as ghosts. The most recent manuscripts I’ve worked on are a young adult horror (Shantallow, published under the name Cara Martin), a speculative YA, a middle grade sci-fi and a middle grade horror. Since 2011 I’ve also had two young adult science fiction novels, a middle grade sci-fi, and a book told in the alternating points of view of a living teenage boy and a dead-but-not-gone teen girl published.

My venturing away from contemporary fiction doesn’t have a lot to do with the differences between 2009 and 2020 society that I described above; it doesn’t have much to do with contemporary YA not being a hot sell right now either. There are chiefly two reasons that I’ve gone from writing mostly YA contemporary to expanding my horizons. 1) At the start of my writing career I tackled the contemporary stories and situations that were calling to me and now those stories are out in the world, mission accomplished. 2) The pull I’ve felt towards science fiction, horror and stories featuring other fantastical elements is lifelong. I was the kid curled up on the couch reading ghostly tales and devouring Choose Your Own Adventure books about aliens, time travel, and spirited adventures set in places half a world away from the sleepy Toronto suburb I grew up in. In grade two I wrote and illustrated my first two picture books—one about time travel and the other about outer space. No one except my family and my grade two class (where they were placed in the classroom book carousel for anyone to enjoy) ever had the chance to read them, but at seven years old I was only writing for myself.

I still primarily write for myself and you will never hear me say that I’m done with contemporary fiction because I know in my bones that’s not true. I have more contemporary stories in me—maybe about teenagers, maybe about kids or maybe about adults. But for the moment, the stories I’m drawn to are ones about things that lie beyond our known realm. “Now, the stuff each writer is dying to tell you is going to vary,” I wrote eleven years ago. Basically, between 2009 and 2020 the scope of things I’m dying to tell you has widened considerably.

However, there are certain things from my 2009 post that remain true. “The character is king in my books. You or I may not like some of the things he or she do or say during the course of a novel but, to the best of my ability, they are the things a given character would say and do, according to their nature.” For example, Shantallow is probably one of the most character-driven horror novels you’ll ever read, Misha’s struggle to avoid his inner demons and become the person he longs to be is at the heart of the book. It also happens to include a possession and a malevolent house intent on hurting both the kidnappers and victims of kidnapping that end up within its threadbare remains.

Some of my books, new and old, are fairly open-ended not because I’m out here planning sequels galore but because, as I wrote back in 2009, “Life is long and there are seldom neat resolutions to complicated situations.” With certain exceptions (a main character dies or all of humanity faces its demise), the end of the story isn’t really the end of the story, it’s just the moment we close the book, and walk away, leaving the characters to get on with things.

Probably the largest difference between my fiction then and now is that the following statement regarding my writing is no longer accurate: “There aren’t a lot of Jack Bauer trying to save L.A. from a terrorist attack type moments.” Some of my books do and will focus mainly on a character’s emotional life, and others (like the Yesterday books) contain their fair share of scenes that wouldn’t feel out of place in an action movie. The possibilities are thrillingly endless.