Lady Injury

Lady Injury is the raw, honest experience of coping with eating disorders, self-harm, and facing the childhood traumas that led to psychiatric care. Handwritten journal entries that filled a series of books over the course of an approximately six-month period of inpatient stays for self-injury and bulimia were the foundation for much of the verbatim quotes within this memoir.

Wounds and scars were hidden for years under layers of clothing or behind lips with closed secrets. The shame of self-harm made speaking about it difficult within an environment where this was expected. The silence behind these wounds later exposed the childhood psychological trauma that led to creating them.

Melissa explores her fears, her past, while meeting unique individuals within her stays at the hospital that opened her eyes to others who struggled, the stigmas they faced, and the people beyond their symptoms. Apprehension turns into compassion, friendship, vulnerability and human connection throughout the interactions described within Lady Injury.

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Gangster Rising Trilogy

 

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(7th Avenue Gang)

With a few exceptions, everything in this novel occurred during my early life growing up in East Vancouver. Most of the stories happened to me, some to other people, but almost all are none-the-less true. The only outrageously fictional piece of the novel is the Goddess of Speed; no such perfection in childhood automotive engineering was ever constructed by me nor anyone I know of.

Like Denny, I occasionally suffer from two rare ailments; Scintillating Scotoma and Alice in Wonderland syndrome, both of which are a form of migraine. Also like Denny, those conditions made me think as a child that I might be crazy because I did have a cousin who tried to kill himself by jumping off the Lionsgate Bridge and an Aunt who shot her husband in a gin-soaked, vengeful rage, and both ended up in Essondale – the 'Hospital for the Mind'.

I had to play with some dates to make this novel and the sequels work within a timeline that touches down on the summers of 1959, 1969, and 1999.

I also had to switch some dogs around.

The Zombie Dog story is true and happened to the brother a friend of mine. Butch on the other hand was my dog as a kid, but to include him in my Grandma's neighbourhood wouldn't be logical, so I had to give him to Errol. It just wouldn't have made sense to have Butch spend the summer with me at Grandma's house.

But every word about Butch is 100% true; he was truly an outlaw among dogs. Butch did kidnap and execute a neighbour's Boxer in vengeance for its attack on me, and yes, Butch used to pull meat heists at Buy Rite Market. He also mugged a neighbour kid for a string of wieners; that kid was named Stan and he was complete bully and gangster wanna-be asshole.

My dad made the mistake of slapping me around once in our backyard in front of Butch. Butch attacked him with such savagery that my dad pulled away and ran for the safety of the house. I remember the shock, fear, and drunken confusion on his face as he ran with the sleeve of his shirt shredded above the hand he had been hitting me with. From then on when my dad was on a drunken tear, I'd run outside to hang out with Butch and refused to come back inside until dad calmed down.

Grandma's house once stood exactly where I located it; snuggly pressed between Longo's garage and the house next door on 7th avenue just off Commercial Drive on a lot so narrow you could spit across it. You can visit that street still and see its replacement; a tall, modern house shoehorned into that tiny lot.

Almost all of the names have been changed, mostly because I don't want people to be angry with me. Those familiar with Vancouver's history might recognize some of the larger than life characters despite the name changes. So be it. Let that be our little secret.

When I was growing up, I didn't know that many of my parents' acquaintances were criminals. Some of the people I grew up around were dangerous people, but they weren't dangerous to me or my family. To me they were full of life, loved their wives and their children, and worked hard to make a good life for them.

All of the 7th Avenue Gang are real people that I grew up with. Some may recognize themselves, and I hope they find delight in that. Denny's nemesis in the novel is an amalgam of assholes I've known throughout my life. I named him Kevin, because every Kevin I've ever known has been a pain in my ass. No offence to the vast majority of Kevins out there or the people who love them, it's just that the Kevins in my life have never worked out for me.

Carrie Anne Gabler is also an amalgam of a number of girls and young women I've known through the years, and yes, one of them fell through a ceiling and broke her arm when she hit the television her brother and I were watching. These girls were all gentle and sweet and loveable, yet at the same time vulnerable and tragic. The world is a hard place for girls like Carrie, who only see the good in people and when evil is done to them they internalize it as a failing of their own character. Though Carrie only has a small role in 7th Avenue Gang she plays a larger role in Denny's life during the sequel that takes place ten years later. Denny will carry her memory and his undying love for her for the rest of his days.

A friend and I did witness the Vancouver Police ambush and kill an escaped convict named Boyd in a hail of gunfire just like it happened in that chapter. I had to move the location of the massacre so it fit into the right neighbourhood for the story and the friend with me wasn't Frankie or Donny; his name was Tom and his parents owned the grocery store where Boyd bought the groceries for a last meal that he never got a chance to eat.

So, I give you Gangster Rising Book One– my thin slice of growing up in East Vancouver living on the fringes of the law. Other East Vancouverites may hold vastly different memories so your mileage may vary. 

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Book one available at these bookstores or on Amazon

All The Good little Girls Keep Quiet

In the summer of '79, hell bubbled right up through the loamy Louisiana bayou just outside of Lafayette Parish and set Olive Abernathy's world on fire. Maybe it was the little devil sittin' side-saddle on her shoulder that turned Olive into a murderin', hitchhikin', train-hoppin' vagabond at the tender age of thirteen. Or maybe…just maybe…there were a few secrets itchin' to claw their way out of that bayou along with her. 

Olive Abernathy is a silver-tongued tomboy with a mean right hook, a fierce little spirit, and an inability to fit in. Her uncle mistook the Mayor's toupee for a bigfoot pelt. Her Aunt found the baby Jesus in a bowl of cornflakes. Her Mama's holding a paddle in one hand and the world's biggest secret in the other. Olive feels her little Louisiana town closing up around her like a pill bug and she yearns for freedom; she yearns for adventure . . . she yearns to shed the Abernathy surname that everyone in town inexplicably detests and to strike out on her own.

But when Olive convinces her besotted best friend Henry, "the world's oldest living 12-year-old" to strike out and ride the rails like a starry-eyed hobo, the big city proves to her that while the grass over there might be greener, the dog in the yard's also meaner. Olive's forced to grow up hard and fast. Olive's forced to feel the same hard touch that her Mama felt. And Olive's forced to realize that great cruelty exists in this world.

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The Boy Who Glowed In The Dark

Welcome to Hayfork, Iowa, a peaceful farming community nestled in the heart of a tranquil valley, a town that looks after its own. It’s a place where gossip is king, but secrets are kept from outsiders and those who are born there live and die at the mercy of the weather, or the forgiveness of the land.

Now a strange terror roams the sky at night, a dread horror lurks among the corn and a troubled widow gives birth to a boy who glows in the dark. Death on the streets and blood in the fields seed suspicion and division deep in the valley’s fertile soil as the town folk are terrorized season after season with the deadly visitations of a mysterious ancient hunter of human emotions.

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Devil Brigham - Mark'd With Blood

Given a cursed name by a mother who loathed and abandoned him, Devil Brigham is the law in a beautiful land during a grim time.

In the depths of the Great Depression, Devil is the unconventional Chief of Arawana's Police Department in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, toting a sawed-off shotgun instead of a pistol, and dispensing justice like a frontier sheriff with his stallion Rascal and half wolf police dog Chance.

On the morning that an Inspector from the B.C. Provincial Police arrives to evaluate Devil and his Deputies, a naked woman is found wandering a country road spattered with blood that isn't her's. There's been a murder tied to a labour dispute that could tear the town to pieces as a strike threatens to become a riot.

With a savage murderer on the loose, Devil must thread his way through angry migrant workers, rich land owners and politicians, to protect innocent town-folk all under the watchful eye of Detective Inspector John Locke who will decide if the Arawana Police force will be kept on or replaced.

Available at these bookstores or on Amazon

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