Chris Patrick Carolan is an author, an editor, and if you ask him, a hovercraft enthusiast. If you ask him twice, he might admit he has never set foot on a hovercraft. The other things are true, though. His first novel, The Nightshade Cabal, was published by Parliament House Press in February 2020, and hit #1 on the Calgary Herald’s Best Sellers list. His short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including the Enigma Front and Tesseracts series.
February also saw the role of father added to his list of titles, when Chris and his wife Maggie celebrated the birth of their first son. A book release and a baby coming so close together certainly made for a busy few weeks, but finding the new normal has been a wonderful adventure.
Chris was born in Scotland but grew up in Canada and, after moving around a lot as a kid, settled in Calgary shortly after the 1988 Olympics but before the Flames won the Stanley Cup. He’s not a sports fan, though, so he would say it was between Tim Burton’s films Beetlejuice and Batman. Either way, he dreams of a life at sea but hasn’t escaped the prairies quite yet.
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What ‘hood are you in?
Woodbine, where I mostly grew up. I lived in Sunalta for nearly twelve years in between, and then two years in a secret pocket of rental townhouses in Pump Hill, but we ended up back in Woodbine last summer. We’re about a five-minute walk from where my folks used to live. It’s strange how much hasn’t changed.
What do you do?
By day I work behind the scenes at the University of Calgary’s Taylor Family Digital Library. That may make it sound far more mysterious than it is, but there you go. I also write books and short stories, and sometimes they end up getting published.
What are you currently working on?
I’ve got a few projects on the go. Too many, if I’m being honest. Right now, I’m focusing on the sequel to The Nightshade Cabal. It’s another paranormal murder mystery, once again set in 1880s Halifax, this time with werewolves and monster hunters and unscrupulous newspaper tycoons adding to the complications our reluctant hero has to deal with. I’m hoping to finish that up by this summer, then the next project in the queue is a science fiction novel heavily inspired by classic anime and sci-fi comics like Heavy Metal Magazine. I’m also currently co-editing an anthology of robot stories by mostly Calgary-based writers, which will be released in August.
Where can we find your work?
The Nightshade Cabal is available from all ebook vendors, and the print edition can be ordered from Amazon. My much-neglected website and I can be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as @cpcwrites.
