AN ONLINE LITERARY PUBLICATION to which my stories have been posted is called CommuterLit. It is run by a sharp editor – meaning she is clever and does not miss much, not that she is noticeably angular or drawn by Picasso. Nor does it mean that she is in pain, or plagued by pangs of hunger or regret.

Well, we all have regret. Like me, right now – stuck way out on this implausible introductory branch, with no apparent way down.

Anyway…when my stories ran on CommuterLit, which is Toronto based, I always imagined the trains alongside the 401 and other major routes. I like the names of the stops, glottal and otherwise: Coburg and Newcastle; Yonge, Mount Pleasant, Baif Boulevard and Halton Hills. Very Ontario sounding to my Manitoba slash BC ears.

I like also to think about the people who read my stories on those trains. Who they were (are, will be). They could be professors and plumbers, students, office employees, hungover people, still-drunk people, high-minded folk who ride for political reasons, frugal people who don’t, people fed up with driving,  annoying people kicked out of their car pools, ambitious people churning away on their laptops to prep for a meeting and wanting a quick mental wasabi to clear their cognitive pathways and leave them mentally…

Sharp.

There. Back on terra firma. Phew.

CommuterLit ran a trilogy of mine called The Red River Valley Trilogy – so named because all three installments took place within easy snowmobiling distance of the winding Red River of the North.

Here is a link – for all of you professors and plumbers, to my stories on CommuterLit. Each story has pingbacks (no, that is not a Trump pejorative; they are links) to the other stories in the trilogy. The overall theme has to do with guardian angels – but I am sure you will get that, hungover, or not.

So please – feast on the trilogy, and on the many, many other great stories on offer – for free – on this great reader’s website.

 

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016