Caitlin Sweet

Blog Archive

For many years, I had a blog. I posted sporadically at best, initially, then almost never. I don’t intend to have another, here, but wanted to make the archive available. Ursula K. Le Guin, Top Gun, cats…Take a look.

A Quiet Place

We were out for dinner the other night with friends, talking about the dumpster-fire demise of my former publisher, and other examples of egregious business dealings in the small-press world. One of our friends asked, mostly rhetorically, why so many authors allowed...

Min

Min hid, at the beginning of her life with us. She was a three-month-old street kitten, and she cowered under a bed for days. The walls must have felt constricting: where were the plants and trees, the green and earthy places where she'd lived before, alone? Min hid,...

To Play the Game of Men

I wrote a short story once, back in 2007, when my life was falling apart. Julie Czerneda asked for it. She had no idea that my life was falling apart. She might have known that I'd never published a short story before, but if she did, she didn't let it dampen her...

“Hark! the footsteps of the Groan!”

I found Gormenghast in Israel. Twice. # This country. I attempt to process what I'm learning of its past and its present as I follow Adam, our host and guide, through Jerusalem's Old City, and Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station—but there's too much. I hear, and I try to...

Danger Zone

Goddammit, Top Gun: I kind of love you. I saw you again last night, at Ontario Place's Cinesphere. The venue alone was enough to prompt a surge of nostalgia: I sat there often in the 1980s, heart hammering in anticipation of EVEN BIGGER Lukes and Leias and Hans,...

I Remember the Ansibles

Last Tuesday night, while I was at Mt. Sinai hospital, Peter texted me that Ursula K. Le Guin had died. I was at the hospital with my friend Megan, who was in labour with a boy she'd already named Monty. Her mother was there too, exhausted from a trip down from...

We Need to Talk About Kevin: Part II

Part I of this story can be found here.   October 22, 2017 “Life is complex. Your next night in doesn’t have to be,” proclaims the Miss Vickie's ad in the middle of my Facebook feed (because I haven't bothered to install Ad Blocker). Kevin is still in our...

Walk On

Emma says, “This is my third-last night here before I go.” We walk to Staples and buy bankers boxes. She sifts through her own baby pictures and finds some to pack. I don't cry, when I look at the photos, but I do feel gutted. That plump baby with the fuzzy blonde...

Tyre, tyre, burning bright

I have no idea what I was thinking. What the hell was I thinking? I was 50,000 words in, then. I've since written about 26,000 more. Not bad, right? Not bad for someone who usually requires years, not months, to get into the tens of thousands of words. Except that my...

Keeping Score

Funny, how intense is the nostalgia generated by Decembers and epic franchise movies. Lord of the Rings, for example: Whenever I watch the first installment of the trilogy now, and catch that opening glimpse of Frodo in Peter Jackson's Shire, I remember my sister...