Éric has had an eclectic career which ranges from casino dealer to canal boat captain to radio station DJ. Since 2009, he’s worked as a desktop publisher for the federal government. During his off time, he works as a freelance typesetter for various Canadian-based authors and publishers, roasts gourmet flavoured coffee, runs several pen-and-paper role-playing games, writes, and helps run JenEric-Designs.ca (Home of the TravellingTARDIS.com).
He lives in Ottawa, Ontario with his author wife, daughter, and son.
As you might have heard on social media, River City Siren Press has agreed to publish my next book. The Copper Tarnish is a Sci-Fantasy inspired by classic monster movies and my own experiences growing up queer in a small town.
Until last summer, I was the most popular girl in school. Then I was accused of killing my boyfriend when he disappeared. Luckily, he didn’t die, but he wasn’t the same when he came back. Murder accusations are nothing compared to the rumours that I kissed said boyfriend’s sister. That rumor proved to be the real killer for my popularity.
Now everyone hates me except the gorgeous new girl who seems determined to ruin any chances of being popular by hanging out with me. There’s also a cute soldier hanging around my mom’s diner and freaky sounds in the woods.
Autumn definitely won’t be dull. All I need to do is graduate…and stay alive.
I’m realy proud of this book and it’s cover. It’s going to be released June 3rd and I can’t wait to have you read it.
A person masks when they don’t feel safe or comfortable being themselves. It’s a persona that you put on that isn’t quite you.
Queer Mask
Nathan Lane and Robin Williams in The Birdcage.
I grew up in a small town at the end of the twentieth century and any form of Queer was frowned upon. Gay was not something people were allowed to be. It was a schoolyard insult along with all it’s pejoratives. The few examples of bisexuality I saw in media were quickly erased (Willow from Buffy) or just there to titillate (Mirror Universe DS9).
That means as a teen I wore a mask of “straight male”; even if I didn’t fully understand who I was, I knew I wasn’t allowed to mention how cute Brendan Fraser was, wear too bright colours, stand with my hip out, walk with too much hip movement, like romantic comedies, or a million other things that would make people call me gay.
Despite having a very supportive family and an aunt who was gay, the society at the time was oppressive.
I’m still working on dropping this mask and I’ve mostly managed to shrug it off, but I still fall back on it when meeting new people. A lot of people, especially in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community still have prejudices against bisexuals.
Neurodivergent Mask
Hugh Laurie in House.
I’m still learning about neurodivergent masking but think of it like trying your best to not freak people out but those same people never tell you what freaks them out. Instead, you learn by people avoiding you, telling you you’re annoying, making fun of you, calling you names that trivialize mental health, call you a know-it-all, or nerd.
My natural expression is mostly neutral and I was teased for it by kids and teachers in grade school. In high school, I decided that I would show my emotions outwardly more. At first it was exhausting but after a few years it became second nature. Now when I’m with friends I still fall back into the, what feels like, over exaggerated part of me.
It’s just one thing that I have trained myself to do to avoid conflict or trouble. No one mistakes you for serious when you say sarcastic things in an exaggerated voice.
As much as I’ve masked in this way, I’m not great at keeping my infodumping or chattiness in check, to the point that I’ve had co-workers and bosses laugh about it. Because of autism, I’m never sure if they’re laughing at me or just laughing, and the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria tells me it’s always laughing at me.
Geek Mask
Jaleel White and Kellie Shanygne Williams in Family Matters.
Most likely tied to the other two is my nerdy/geeky side. I’m the absolute worst at hiding this but in grade school I was mocked incessantly for liking things. Seriously strange that our society likes to mock people for liking things. I had a Jurassic Park sweater that I would have worn until it died if I hadn’t been shamed into never wearing it.
Most new people, unless I’m at a geeky event, won’t hear about my geeky side. Not until they bring something up that triggers a mini rant or discussion.
It’s the mask that has never been worn with family and rarely with close friends. I will nerd out about all kinds of things.
What it means to unmask
Robert Downey Junior as Doctor Doom
Unmasking is the idea of being yourself and doing what makes you feel comfortable rather than what makes others comfortable. I’ve been trying my best to do this at home and be myself completely but there are still things that I have trouble letting myself be.
It’s also really exhausting to constantly analyze who’s safe, who isn’t, and about what. Some are okay with Bi people but think D&D is weird, others are fine with board games but think getting easily distracted is a personal weakness. When I say social interactions are exhausting, that’s what I mean. It’s hard hiding.
I know I’m privileged and safer than most, but that doesn’t change my experiences and traumas around who I am and how I hide it.
A fun take on The Prince and the Pauper. Like the other early Netflix Christmas movies, it avoids too much angst.
Score: 0.5
Characters
The male characters are pretty and adorable, but it’s Vanessa Hudgens that rightfully steals the show. The adorable littler girl does a good job too.
Score: 1
Dialogue
Clever and cute with a few good social commentaries. I don’t think we’ll be quoting this one much in the future but it was fun.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
Filmed at a real castle and in a place that gets snow so it was partially believable. It was however obvious that the majority of the scenes that weren’t bridging shots were filmed in summer..
The music was cheerful and unintrusive.
Score: 1
Fun
I expected a lot of awkward and angsty scenes but it wasn’t; it was fun and light and I really enjoyed it. The rest of the family felt the same.
Score: 1
Overall
A lovely Christmas romance with lots of flirting and little angst. Hudgens shows that excellent acting doesn’t have to only be depressing.
Chapter 1: My team saves the day despite themselves
Tuesday the 10th of October, 2006 – Sudbury, Ontario
“What the hell is that?” Grant screamed at me. His long brown hair was in a low ponytail and his normally round pink face was white in terror.
“That is a vampire. Specifically, it’s a Blood Vampire,” I, Albert, said, grabbing the Dracula wannabe by his collar before shouting, “Ga Bort!”
As soon as I spoke, the thing imploded with a sucking sound, leaving a little ectoplasm, or Aethergoo, behind.
I’m only in my mid twenties and have been told I look like a gangly librarian or English teacher. I’m also the only one in the group with a military background.
“This nest must be freshly from the Aether,” Clifford said with a sigh of relief. He was the oldest of the group and the one most in shape. He looked more like an action hero than a mid-forties architect.
The perfectly put together Ursula asked, “Are these the sparkly kind or the classic?” Her perfectly fitted suit and dyed blonde hair would be normal in a country club but in an abandoned factory in Sudbury, she looked out of place.
“Please don’t be the sparkly ones. I feel bad for returning those to the Aether,” Robin said, her black curly hair bouncing in time with her movements. She was the youngest, beating Grant by a few months.
They were joking. If the vampires were anything but blood-thirsty animals, they’d be considered Aetherborn and we wouldn’t be sending them back to the Aether. Sapient blood vampires were becoming more and more common with their portrayal going from monster to romantic lead. Sapience was really the only difference between Aether-creatures and Aetherborn.
Had they been Aetherborn, we would have helped them transition to our world. There were several separate communities of vampires, mostly in the far north to take advantage of the long nights.
These were not sapient, and we didn’t get time to quip further as a dozen more vampires ran at us. Each of us activated the magic necklace we wore and were suddenly armoured in matching plate mail suits.
The five of us are Gatekeepers. We take care of the barrier between our world and pure magic. We strengthen it, we deal with anything that comes out of it, and we stop people from flooding our world with magic.
That last one sounds like fun until you understand that magic, or Aether, only wants to devour, and when it comes close to a human it transforms into whatever the human was thinking about. Let me tell you, we humans are great at thinking about two things: sex and fear. Sometimes at the same time. Hence the lengthy list of vampire types.
Each of the Guardians is chosen, we don’t know by who, and then have to seek out the order and find a mentor. We usually train in pairs but we were special. Mostly that we were the most accident-prone knights in the history of the order.
Not me, I was the poor schmuck that was supposed to teach them how to survive while doing the whole knight errant thing. The other four had been called to duty in the past year. They’d done training and were now getting extra training so they wouldn’t die.
There were less than a thousand of us in North America and I was hoping that number wouldn’t get any lower.
A Gatekeeper knight is chosen when they do something heroic or selfless. When that happens, a magic sword appears in the closest body of water. Mine was a lake not far from where we were fighting the vampires, Robin’s was a fountain, Ursula and Clifford’s were swimming pools, and poor Grant’s was a urinal.
The moment you take the sword, you know to find a senior knight to train you. After six months of training, you are supposed to travel the continent to help people. If you survive that, you are given an assignment. Mine was to take care of these four.
Somehow Grant had managed to get his sword stuck in Clifford’s armour, Robin dropped her sword, and Ursula was trying to slap the vampires without pulling out her sword.
“Guys. Remember your training. Use your dismissal word,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. I held my sword high in the air and poured my will into the sword as I screamed again, “Ga Bort!” It’s bad Swedish for, “go away”.
My sword glowed with barrier energy and I started to slice through the vampires. When we get rid of an Aether-creature, its magical energy is sent to re-enforce the barrier.
The great thing about fresh Aether-creatures is that they haven’t the time to create any bodily fluids yet. Other than a few, which left some blood behind, they would just disappear with a pop. They were so fresh that they didn’t leave much Aethergoo either.
Once my team powered their swords, we cut through the vampires quickly, only hitting each other a few times. Thank goodness for armour.
When the vampires stopped coming at us we explored what little was left of the warehouse. We found what I was expecting: a young child hiding in a corner. They were maybe five years old and had their eyes closed while they rocked back and forth.
“Jo. My name is Albert. Your parents are worried about you.” I gestured for the other knights to spread out and stay back. They didn’t understand.
“But the vampires are coming,” the child said in a whimper. With his words, vampires appeared around us.
“We’re here to stop them and protect you,” I said. They opened their eyes. I had hoped they’d see me in all my glory and feel better. What they saw was my co-knights being caught off guard and falling all over the place like circus clowns. The kid started to laugh and the vampires popped out of existence.
I picked up the kid and they sighed, curling into my arms.
What my team lacked in combat, or coordination, they more than made up in their ability to shore up the barrier. They worked quickly together, and used their natural abilities to thicken the barrier so no one else would accidentally summon a monster.
For a regular human, to pierce the barrier and pull something out needs great fear or desire combined with a strong imagination. When the barrier is thinner, it means more accidental Aether-creatures.
Jo must have expended a lot of energy, because they stayed asleep the entire ride home and even transferred to their mother without a fuss. Back at the minivan, I said to the group, “We didn’t die, and we saved the kid. Good job. We’ll start more intense combat training in the morning.” I was still amazed that no one was hurt.
The story was fascinating and well set up, however the ending wasn’t great. They tried to find a middle ground between sappy Christmas movie and real life grit. It didn’t work at all.
Score: 0.5
Characters
Like most Christmas Carol style stories, the main character was a complete ass at the beginning and grows as the story moves along. The main problem with the likability of the rest of the cast is that we have no idea what happened to them, or if they even exist.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
Excellent and wonderfully played. I was confused as to why every member of the family had different accents but maybe that’s a British thing.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
The filmmakers did an amazing job at matching the style of cinematography from each decade.
The same can be said about the music, and although it was a little overdone at times, it was well done.
Score: 1
Fun
The ending kills any fun there was in the movie. It’s sentimental in all the wrong ways and I haven’t been as pissed off about an ending since the director’s cut of The Butterfly Effect (not that the cinema ending was any better).
All the adults agreed that the ending was terrible and the kids didn’t like any part of it.
Score: 0
Overall
This is a Christmas movie for those who don’t like joyful movies. It’s depressing and has one of the worst endings I’ve been forced to experience. The acting, music, and cinematography are fantastic, but they don’t save the film from being overly sad and downright horrifying if you think about it too hard.
It’s been an interesting couple of years for my health. I last talked about it in July 2024.
In short, I’ve been dealing with:
Pain in both my forearms
Dizzyness
Fatigue
Brain Fog
Tingling in my hands and feet
Numb and tingling on my left cheek
Blurry vision in my left eye
Pain in the joints of my hands and feet
Arms and Spine
I am doing exercises and stretches to help avoid pain. It still there in my arms but it’s manageable. I sometimes get pain in my neck that radiates down, but I double up my exercises and it usually goes away within a week.
Migraines
This is the big one. I’m currently taking Amitriptyline to try and prevent the migraines. So far I’ve been on it for two months with an escalating dose, and it hasn’t done much beyond make me sleepy and have terrible dry mouth. If this doesn’t work, there are other drug options.
I am starting to identify my triggers better. I know the following will trigger me:
Big change in caffeine consumption (If I have no coffee or if I have 4+ cups)
Alcohol (I noticed it with red wine and with cream liqueurs but I’m just cutting it all out.)
Changes in eating routine (If I don’t eat every 2-3 hours I start to feel faint and it can trigger)
Changes in sleep patterns. (Especially if the change is often)
Fluorescent lights
Strong smells (Mostly anything floral or going close to a soap store in the mall. Although someone had a poutine at work and the smell lasted all day. I loved the smell but ouch)
Changes of 10+ degrees in the weather and rainstorms. (I have no control over this one.)
Stress doesn’t seem to make the migraine worse but it does make the side effects worse. I had a really stressful day in December and for the next two weeks the muscles in my hips hurt like they were on fire. It’s caused by the migraine, the brain, and the two causing muscles to tense too far (probably what happened to my arms.)
I see my doctor on Wednesday and we’ll see what happens. I think this is a long haul.
Allergies
I have restarted my allergy shots and one week hasn’t cured me yet. I’ll be taking them weekly for 22 weeks. My allergist’s office prefers that I do the shots elsewhere so I’m thinking of going to an Appletree near my house on my lunch break.
Neurodiversity
As I mentioned in Friday’s post, I am Autistic and have ADHD. This explains a lot about how I burn out and how drained I feel in certain situations. It, with the migraines, explains a lot of why I feel like crap at certain times.
I’m not sure how this interacts with my other health issues but I’m sure that they interact and make things more complicated.
Sleep apnea and asthma
I have taken an asthma test and I am scheduled for a sleep test this summer. Hopefully these will be eliminated as concerns.
In Conclusion
Despite everything on this list, I feel better than I have in years. With my doctor’s help and hopefully finding the right thing to help with my migraines I should be even better by next year.
A few years ago I started looking into getting diagnosed with ADHD and/or Autism.
Last year I was diagnosed by a quick online service with Inattentive ADHD. I found out afterward that most employers and insurance companies don’t accept the results of this sort of testing.
I decided that I wanted to know and got tested properly. As you can guess from the title I was diagnosed as Autistic. I’m considered level 1 which isn’t a cool RPG system but just means that I need little to no support in day to day life. (Until recently it was called Asperger’s after a Nazi-Eugenicist).
I was also diagnosed as ADHD mixed type, suspected Dysgraphia, and Rejection sensitive dysphoria.
A small build your own booknook that I got for Christmas. It was a lot of fun to make. If you’re wondering why I put this in the post, its for reach and because I`d say books are one of my special interests.
It’s been almost a month and I’m still processing what it means. Currently, I’m relieved to be able to look back at times where I thought I was broken and understand that I wasn’t. So much of my life makes more sense now that I know.
The more I learn about Autism and ADHD, the more I feel better about myself. I’ve spent so long being told I was lazy, unreasonable, not applying myself, melodramatic, picky, annoying, or just weird. Over forty years of being told things like that, it starts to become part of your own inner monologue. My whole life, I’d wonder why certain things were so hard for me and those were the only answers. Now I have a better one, and I need to start being kinder to myself.
It’s a disability, and I’m starting to understand how it affects me and my life.
The big take away, for now, is understanding that I’m not broken but I am disabled.
