The 30 Second Commute is a comic narrative about the real life of a full-time writer. Stephanie Dickison had been successfully publishing features and articles for over a decade while working a full-time job, but in December 2005, she left the secure world of a "real job" to tackle completing a manuscript that was close to five years old and to take on freelance writing full time.
Drawing on her years as a book and pop music critic, she delves into food writing and becomes a restaurant critic for a big city website. She starts a blog about new products and services and soon, she and her fiancé have to consider moving due to the product piled up behind the bathroom door.
Celebrity interviews, feature articles, and offers to speak about writing are just some of the highlights of what can happen when you get to live your dream.
There are also the cautionary tales of what happens when you're your own boss, saying yes to every offer that comes your way and typing hunched over a rolltop desk for 14 hours a day, but mostly it is a celebration and exploration of a writer just trying to make her way in this crazy world - one word at a time.
Marc Vachon was born in Montreal in 1963. He went from one foster home to another. He knows the injustices that the weak must suffer in any society. He knows the violence, the abuse, and the emptiness that life can offer in so-called developed countries.
He dealt with it the only way possible: through drugs and crime. He turned into "a bad egg" as he puts it.
Until the day when, escaping an unbearable situation at home, he came across Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Paris. Since he had some experience in construction, he was hired to supervise the logistics of a cholera camp in Niaminthutu, Malawi. From that point on, he drew on the survival instincts he picked up on the streets, delving into his work to forget the pain, never looking back. He made himself indispensable, quickly becoming the frontline logistician for MSF, moving mountains, commanding respect, afraid of nothing or no one, able to build shelters for tens of thousands of refugees in record time.
Power struggles often occur in the humanitarian sector, and Marc Vachon could never really accept them. They always seem to go hand-in-hand with injustice. This has inspired him to deliver a biting and fascinating review of humanitarian aid, or at least the way it is in the present "news-entertainment" era.
Calgary's Stampede Wrestling spawned some of the biggest wrestling stars in history, from mat kings of the past like Gene Kiniski and Superstar Billy Graham to modern idols like Bret "Hitman" Hart, the British Bulldogs, and Chris Benoit. Pain and Passion tells how a small, family-run wrestling business profoundly influenced the world of professional wrestling as we know it today.
Pain and Passion takes readers on a rowdy ride through the evolution of Stu Hart's Calgary promotion, from its meagre beginnings in the 1940s, its peak in the 1980s, and its fall as Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment changed the face of wrestling forever.
But this is more than a wrestling story - it's a tale of family and of human tragedy. The Hart family lived for the wrestling business and, like Starbucks mowing down a mom-and-pop coffee shop, the emergence of McMahon's media colossus ran Stampede into the ground. The wrestling game lost its innocence and western Canada lost a staple of its pop culture. As for the Hart family, the once-mighty clan was nearly destroyed by the business it loved.
The Stampede Wrestling story is a wild blood-on-the-mat saga over fifty years in the making. It's sure to captivate not only wrestling fans, but anyone who appreciates a powerful drama.
