Book Excerpts

Dreaming of The Walker – Chapter One

Dads are born in an instant, the moment their first son or daughter emerges to draw their first breath. The mother has been a mother for nine months already, carrying and nurturing and puking and talking softly. But the guy is just a guy wondering when and if the sex is ever going to get back to normal. Her water breaks and he becomes a mess of pacing and sweating and praying to a god he doesn’t believe in, holding her hand and telling her to breathe and thinking he’s playing a vital role in the birth. There’s an extra nurse in the delivery room just for him. And in a moment, in a split second, after ten or twenty or thirty-six hours of labour, he hears the frantic wail of a baby. And in that instant, a dad is born.

Image of R.Paul Faubert as an infant

highlighted in "The Dreaming of the Walker".

A Criminal Act of Heroism - Chapter One

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Sammie studied the grave marker. She studied the etched veins of the maple leaf, the simple two lines of the cross. She looked to her right down the row of grave markers that seemed to stretch to eternity. Each marker was the same. Equality below the soft European grass, she thought. She rubbed her eyes, dispelling a tear before it had the chance to fall, fearing others might follow if one led the way. She leaned forward slightly in her seated position, reached behind her head and removed the elastic allowing her dark straight hair to spring from her usual ponytail and fall forward, curtaining her face. She took her sketchbook and her pencils from her backpack and sat cross-legged at the edge of the path. She began to draw the marker, the surroundings, the grass. There in the centre of her sketch, as if made more real with graphite, her name, his name.

Image inspired by the mystery and memory

explored in "A Criminal Act of Heroism".