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Colin Brezicki's short story, "A Time To Reflect," creeps up on you slowly and isn't afraid to mess with genre. It starts out in a light literary vein, as a lopsided dialogue between two psychiatrists, quickly reveals its comedy chops, moves into suspense, then ends with an almost O'Henry-esque surprise.

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The basic narrative revolves around a therapist who has gone in to talk to a colleague about his paralyzing fear of leap day violence breaking out within his own family. It's not giving anything away to say this much, since every story in Iguana Books' Blood Is Thicker anthology (co-published with the Canadian Authors Association) starts with the same premise: "It was  February 29 again, and I was wondering which member of my family would try to kill me this time."

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What's different about "A Time To Reflect," compared to many of this book's more plot-driven entries, is its willingness to forego action for a type of narrative that's all in the head.

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Brezicki's story unfolds through lengthening leaps of logic in the mind of of its brilliant but troubled main character, whose theories about who might be targeting him, and why, become increasingly outlandish.

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By turns funny and suspenseful, this story's subtle humour and low-key revelations lulled me into a quiet attentiveness that turned to rapt focus as the story raced toward its tragi-comic conclusion.

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A retired high school teacher who taught in England and Canada for thirty-seven years before settling in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Brezicki says he never knows where a story is going to end up until he writes it.

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In this written Q&A, timed to coincide with the June 2018 release of Blood Is Thicker, he muses about the revision process, talks about his favourite books (and his opera crush), and reveals more of the same gentle humour that marks his this memorable short story.

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—Lee Parpart

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"Nothing left but the story: A Q&A With Colin Brezicki."

June 11, 2018

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Iguana Books: How did you hear about the Blood Is Thicker anthology, and what convinced you to spend days (weeks? months?) crafting a story about the attempted murder of a character by a member of their family on leap day?

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Colin Brezicki: I read about the call for submissions on the CAA website and decided to adapt an idea I had already been working on for a story. The opening sentence [provided by Iguana Books co-founder Greg Ioannou] is wonderfully outrageous, and so I wanted to develop a suitably outrageous but believable character.

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I once lived next door to a clinical psychiatrist and I remember seeing him one evening sitting alone in his car in the driveway. He looked like he was talking to himself and he kept glancing in the rearview. Likely he was on his phone but the idea of a psychiatrist starting to lose it appealed to me.

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Making the protagonist a ‘Leaper’, with his birthday on February 29th, added an extra comic dimension to the story as he assumes that the birthday gestures of his family are concealed attempts to kill him.

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Q: What was the writing process like? Did your story come out with a bang, or did you struggle to make something of the premise?

CB: As with pretty well all of my writing, I didn’t storyboard this one before I started. I try to develop a main character to a point where he (or she) becomes believable and intriguing; then I let them go where they will, while I hang on to a flexi-extendable leash of sorts. I always have to write the story to find out what will happen. 

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Q: How long have you been writing, and what are some of your writing goals and/or successes so far?

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CB: I’ve been writing in my head pretty well all my life, imagining characters and scenarios, but never really doing much with them. My creative energy went into directing plays and teaching literature (you have to be able to think on your feet in a classroom, and I was never much interested in mapping out a storyboard lesson plan either).

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So when I retired, I had all this time to write. Three novels and some two dozen stories in six years, and a smattering of personal articles and essays published in The Globe and Mail and some journals. Two of my novels found a publisher in the UK, and I’ve been fortunate to have some of my stories receive awards in Canada and the U.S. The J.K. Galbraith Fiction Award was an especially happy moment.

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Mostly, I just love to write. And read. I read all the time. Reading good fiction or memoir is at least as valuable as a course in creative writing, I feel. I often read a new novel by, say, Ian McEwan or Graham Swift or Miriam Toews twice: once to immerse myself in the world they’ve created, and a second time to watch how they do it.

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Q: What’s your favourite line or passage in your submission, and why?

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CB: Maybe the bit where the guy is talking about the difference between what you perceive and what is actually going on. For example, he asks, is the car backing out of the garage or is the garage moving away from the car? Wouldn’t it look the same either way? Then, having already described his neighbour’s obsession with positioning his car in the garage exactly right, he says, “I should run that one by Gunter while he’s parking his car. That would freak him out.”

It’s kind of the heart of the story, that moment, for me. Funny, but also sad, like him. Like all of us, if we’re perfectly honest. Funny, and a little sad. All part of suffering humanity, if you like.   

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Q: What’s your writing routine?

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CB: I prefer to write in the mornings. It gets me out of bed. I write a first draft quite quickly, I suppose, but everything goes through at least a dozen rewrites and revisions, even the novels. Not that I’m a perfectionist. You can’t be or you’d go mad—there’s always something to be fixed. I revise until I feel I’ve disappeared from the writing and it doesn’t sound like writing any more. I hope. Nothing left but the story.

   

I so admire writers in a pre-digital age who had to pretty well get it right in two or three drafts. No cutting and pasting, no spot-welding, no editing tools that allowed you to revise forever.

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I listen to classical music when I write because it fills the silence. And all that glorious music was once just some marks on a page; so I feel anything is possible.

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Q: What do you do for a living (or if you’re retired, what did you do), and what do you do for fun?

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CB: I was a career high-school teacher and director, in England for fifteen years, and then back home in Canada. I can honestly say I did that for fun too.

   

Now I cycle, lunch with friends, read, go to the theatre with my mother and with my daughter when I get up to Toronto. She’s my editor and mentor, a voracious reader who now manages a bookstore. How cool is that?

I listen to music, rock, classical, jazz and opera. I’m not at all religious in any way but sacred music is one of my favourite kinds.

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Q: If you could have a lunch date with any person living or dead, who would it be and why?

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CB: It would be the Bulgarian soprano, Sonya Yoncheva. I’ve seen her in half a dozen leads—La Traviata, Otello, La Boheme, Luisa Miller—and she not only has a voice that is completely effortless, but she acts with passion and realism. She could do Shakespeare. I love her to bits.

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Q: What’s a favourite book that you’ve read in the past five years? Notice we didn’t ask you to name your ultimate favourite. We’re not monsters.

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CB: Mothering Sunday, by Graham Swift. Anything by Graham Swift, for that matter, but Mothering Sunday is especially poignant and beautiful. And gutting.

My ultimate favourite is Staying On by Paul Scott (author of “The Raj Quartet”). If there is one novel in the English language that has absolutely everything a novel could possibly have, it’s that one.

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Q: What else should readers know about you?

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CB: That I could ramble on forever about anything at all, but by now they must know that.

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Thank you.

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Author Bio

After teaching in England and Canada for thirty-seven years, Colin Brezicki returned to writing to try and make sense of the world — still a work in progress. A Case for Dr. Palindrome (2017) and All That Remains (2018) were published by Michael Terence (UK). His short fiction has won awards in Canada and the U.S., while some whimsical articles have appeared in The Globe and Mail and Voice of Pelham. He enjoyed writing “A Time To Reflect,"  and is grateful to have it included in the anthology. He never knows where a story will end up until it gets there. Find out more at colinbrezicki.com

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