Christopher DiRaddo

When it looked like The Geography of Pluto was going out-of-print last December, I panicked. Was that it for this little book that I had given so much of my life to? Even though it continued to steadily sell copies every year, they weren’t the numbers my first publisher felt warranted an additional print run.

Thankfully, I was able to get the rights back and sell them to Véhicule Press, the publisher of my second novel. A new edition of Pluto will now be coming out at the same time The Family Way hits bookstores in April 2021. This means we’ll be saying goodbye to the original cover (so hold on to it, if you have it), as my new publisher uses something that better complements the titles in its catalogue.

This is a bittersweet moment for me, because as much as I adore the new image, I have a strong connection to the original one.

Back in early 2013, when I had a contract and knew that Pluto would be published in the spring of 2014, I looked forward to the moment when I would finally find out what would be on the cover. After working on the book for almost 14 years, it felt impossible for me to imagine one central image that would represent the world I had created (below is something I attempted to mock up). When I closed my eyes, I really had no idea what it would look like. Would they use a pixilated image of Pluto? Or would that be too literal? It would probably be too dark, if they did. It might even make the novel look like an astronomy book.

I was happy to be left out of the process. And to be honest, I was excited to see what a professional might come up with on their own. How would an artist working in another media interpret my work for readers? I remember the excitement I felt the day the email came in with the JPEG attached. “Here it is. Your cover.” I opened the file and gasped…

… It was wrong. Just, so very wrong.

I’d love to show you the image here, but I can’t. It’s not mine to show (and I also don’t want it out there in the world). I’ll describe it, instead. It was a sepia-toned image of the lower mouth and upper torso of a topless, skinny adolescent boy looking over his shoulder in wanton desire. The title was small, blood-red and in a font reminiscent of a vampire novel. It looked more like a homoerotic thriller than a book about first love and the relationship between a gay man and his mother.

Writers don’t always get a say in what goes on the cover of their books, but I knew I had to push back. I had worked so hard on this story, only for it to get what I felt was the short shrift. I politely expressed that I had an extreme reaction to the proposed cover. And even though the marketing department may have thought it great, I disagreed. I didn’t want Pluto to be victim to the clichés of gay fiction. I saw my novel as a book for multiple audiences, one that mothers might read to better understand their gay sons. And I didn’t see this kind of book on my mother’s nightstand.

Thankfully, my publisher understood my concerns and we set off to find something new. This time, I was invited to be involved. I was asked what I saw for the cover and suddenly I found myself in the same place I had been for the past 14 years—unsure what should go on the cover. Montreal? It’s a book about Montreal, maybe something about the city?

I spent hours searching Instagram, trying to get inspired, when I came across the account of Vincent Fortier, a Montreal photographer. Among his many stunning photos of the city was one of a winding metal staircase set against a pink/purple sky. This! I thought. Something like this! There was a light and energy to the image that seemed to capture my character Will’s state of mind. This was the back staircase he climbs to Max’s apartment. The open and endless sky was a nod to the heavens. The vibrant colour heralding the approach of night and signalling a moment of transformation. Thankfully, my publisher liked the image too, and so I wrote Vincent to ask him if we could use it. He responded right away and said yes.

Vincent didn’t know this at the time, but he had saved me from an impossible situation. I don’t know what I would have done if I had to settle for an image that I felt such strong revulsion for. I would have been proud of the book but embarrassed of its cover, feeling the need to apologize every time I spoke about it. His generosity spared me of that and I will be forever grateful. I’m happy to say we’ve also become great friends since (he’s an excellent writer too, with a debut novel just out).

However, with a new edition comes a new dress. And a few weeks ago, an email found its way into my inbox with a similar note. “Here it is. Your cover.” I gasped this time too.

I loved it immediately.

Pluto’s new cover was designed by David Drummond of Salamander Hill Design Studio (he also designed the cover for The Family Way). I’m impressed at how he had interpreted it based on the brief. Its orange/brown colour and ruler lines reminds me of high school texts books. And the criss-crossing squares overlapping with the orbital rings (with Pluto sitting right there) representing the boxes Will feels trapped in. The image is of Montreal too, in winter, with two of the prominent landmarks featured in the book—the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Monument and the cross on the mountain—present. He pretty much nailed it.

I like that Pluto now has two disparate looks and a second life which will hopefully flourish alongside the publication of my next book. I’ll keep both covers proudly on display in my library—one that reminds me of all the hopes and anxieties of being a first-time author, the other a wish for longevity and new audiences.

Now let’s see if we can just get someone to translate it into French and give it yet another life.

After writing The Geography of Pluto, there were two projects vying for my attention.

One of the voices was for what would become The Family Way. It was louder and more insistent than the other, so it won me over easily. But the other voice remained. I could hear it at times; muffled, as if on the other side of a wall. All I knew was that it would be set at my old high school in the late 80s, and that it would also be inspired by my dad’s childhood.

My dad grew up Goose Village, which was a very small neighbourhood in Montreal. It was a collection of six streets located at the foot of Victoria Bridge, sandwiched between the Old Port and the CN rail lines. It’s all gone now. In its place is nothing but a Costco and a parking lot. The entire neighbourhood—which was largely made up of Italian labourers and other blue-collar immigrants who worked nearby—was razed in 1964. The city said it was dilapidated and unsanitary and needed to be torn down, but popular opinion was that Mayor Jean Drapeau thought it to be an eyesore and didn’t want it to be the first thing people saw when arriving in Montreal for Expo 67.

Goose Village is legendary in my family. My dad would often share stories with me and my brother about the mischief he’d get into (saving those tales for the book). Even though he grew up poor, he had a very happy childhood. This small neighbourhood was a wonderful playground for him and his siblings. But it was also tough. He learned a lot of hard lessons on its streets.

As I wait for The Family Way to be published, I’ve started to write the next book. The illusive voice is in the room with me now, loud and clear (I don’t think I could’ve started this project seven years ago—it needed time to germinate). I still don’t know all about the story, but that’s the fun part. Writing is like trying to solve a puzzle. You’ve got a lot of the pieces, but not sure how they all fit. But if you stare at them long enough, rolling them around in your mind, they begin to shift and change and fall into place.

Right now, I have a tentative title (Hard Feelings) and I have my characters. I roughly know what will happen, and when and where it is set. Goose Village and its destruction will play an important role in the book, so I’ve begun to compile my notes. Over the summer I interviewed my dad, mom and aunt to collect their memories of the neighbourhood. I also read a book of oral histories from others who lived there, and I continued my research online.

A few weeks ago, I found a couple of great videos online (here and here). I also came across this one woman’s Instagram account where she too is embarking on a project about her father who lived there. I even found the city report recommending the neighbourhood’s destruction. Finally, I discovered this site with over 1,600 photographs taken before Goose Village was torn down. I felt like I had hit the jackpot. With these images—along with the maps and stories I’ve read—I was able to finally visualize what it must have been like for my dad to grow up here. I even think I found the picture of the house he grew up in (well, at least we think it’s one of two).

Next comes the fun part. Dropping my character into its streets.

Like many writers, I listen to music when I write. Nothing with (intelligible) lyrics, of course. I wrote most of The Geography of Pluto lost in the fuzz and noise of shoegaze bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, or deep in the melancholic soundscapes created by Boards of Canada. I wanted music that mirrored the mental state of my main character Will Ambrose, a profoundly introspective young man who felt lost in the emotional geography he had to navigate.

But then there are also the songs that made me think about the book. Songs I listened to on my long walks to work out the story, or even songs I have stumbled upon since it was first published. Songs I feel that capture the book’s essence, that would fit in a movie version if one was ever made.

I’ve always been interested in a writer’s creative process, so in case you are too I thought I would share some of the songs. There’s lots more where this came from. I add songs all the time to a folder on Spotify. But for now, here are ten that I connect with the novel.

“Pete Standing Alone” by Boards of Canada

I vividly remember hearing this song for the first time in Kilo coffee shop on St. Laurent. I had taken the day off from work because I was sad, and so I sat at the table and wrote and wrote. When this song came on, it stopped me dead in my tracks. I asked the barista what was playing and went out to buy the CD as soon as I could. I don’t remember the last time I discovered an artist that would come to mean so much to me. There is something so mournful yet beautiful in all of their work, especially the album Music Has the Right to Children.

“Untitled” by The Cure

No other album has had more of an impact on me than The Cure’s Disintegration. I hear any track on it and immediately I am transported back to high school. Suddenly, I’m a kid again and the world is new and sad and strange and wonderful. Coming at the end of what is already an epically emotional album, “Untitled” is a sweet ballad about everything that remains unsaid in a relationship. That feeling also runs through Pluto—what it’s like to live in the unspoken.

“Once in David’s Royal City 2″ by Sufjan Stevens

This traditional Christmas song haunts me. It sounds like it is being played on a toy piano in a small dark room. It too is sad and beautiful (see a trend here?). The song makes me think of Will and his mother, who chooses to keep her Christmas tree up longer than normal because it makes her happy. Pluto opens in the days following Christmas, and I can see the outdoor Christmas lights from the street flashing into Will’s apartment as he sits in the dark on his couch.

“Shell Suite” by Chad Valley

It’s both the lyrics and melody of “Shell Suite” that make me think of the book. There is an almost orbital quality to the song, the way its electronic blips just loop over and over, like a satellite. And then there is this big burst of energy two quarters through, a sonic supernova. Its lyrics resonate too: “You, you would always see the signs / The echoes in my head they rhyme.” This song is telemetry.

“Ange de Ville” by Lili Fatale

Pluto is set in Montreal, a city of two dominant cultures the exist side-by-side: French and English. Growing up in the city as an anglophone meant that I didn’t know much about French-Canadian pop culture, but that would change as I made French-speaking friends and dated French-speaking boys. Lili Fatale were a big hit in Quebec in the 90s. You’d even hear them on English radio. This song was a favourite. “Ange de Ville” is about being alone in the city, about it being populated with lost angels that go unseen. Vocalist Nathalie Courchesne makes herself vulnerable when singing about her lover, who is gone: « Puisque sans toi, je n’suis personne » (Without you, I’m nobody).

“Wait” by Death Cab for Cutie

I listened to a lot of Death Cab around the time I wrote this book. Like Ben Gibbard, I wore my heart on my sleeve. I had so much feeling ALL THE TIME. This song is not one of the band’s popular ones, and it is very short, but it too makes me think of the Pluto. I don’t know even know what the song is about (early Death Cab songs had vague lyrics), but all I need is the melody, the voice and Ben reminding me that, “Every town has a corner, where I see you…”

“Circles” by Digitalism

I don’t even know how this album ended up on my iPod, but one day this song shuffled on and I almost cried listening to it (which is odd for what is essentially a dance track). The singer jumps in right away with “Gather all the good times / When they chill with me behind / I didn’t have enough time / For this stuff, on my mind.” It sets the stage for what’s to come—a frenetic and repetitive electronic tornado with lyrics that seem to speak directly to Will’s experience. Like the “You” in the song, Will is also caught up in a never-ending circle, trying to travel back in time but instead living things over “again and again and again and again.”

“Burning” by MK

Pluto takes place in Montreal in the 90s and early 2000s, much of it in the city’s gay bars. The clubs that Will and Angie would first go to would be places like K.O.X and Sisters and Sky. House music was played in these clubs and “Burning” by MK brings me back to that time. I suppose there are dozens of more tracks that I could also include here, but this track has the additional element of desire to it, of wanting and longing and needing, all of which we felt on the dance floor.

“How Soon is Now” by Tatu

I write a lot about the music I would hear in Montreal’s village bars. Often times, I would find myself moved by a really bad song (I suppose it all depended on the mood I was in). Downstairs at Parking, they played everything. Russian faux-lesbian duo T.A.T.U’s cover of The Smith’s “How Soon Is Now,” was one of those songs you’d hear and say to yourself, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” But it’s wonderful in how truly bad it is. Like many people, Will is stuck in the past. The original things remain classic to him. But the world does go on without you.

“So It Goes” by Greg Haines

If you’ve read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, you’ll recognize the phrase “So it goes.” It appears many times throughout the book, every time someone’s death is mentioned. I see it almost as a shorthand for “Life sucks, then you die.” It may not be obvious, but Slaughterhouse-Five was a huge inspiration for this book (the epigraph is taken from it). I decided to make Pluto non-linear after reading it, because that is how dealing with loss felt— being out of time with the rest of the world. I was in awe of Vonnegut told this story that was really about how the end of things is never really the end.

So, there you have it! These are just ten of the songs. There’s about forty them on a playlist over on Spotify. Happy listening!

My next book, The Family Way is scheduled to come out in spring 2021 from Véhicule Press. I am knee deep in final edits, but at least we now know what it will be called.

The book has had many different working titles over the past six years. As a first draft, it was called Hilarious, Kind, Drunk. Then Fathering. Then The Spunkle and/or Spunklehood. For a short time it was If We Were Fathers. Finally, we landed on The Family Way (my friend Jen W. came up with the title). I think it works well on many levels. It’s simple, memorable and invisible enough to not place any impressions on the reader.

The book is about the way queer people make families. My main character is a gay man named Paul. On the eve of his fortieth birthday, long-time friends Wendy and Eve ask him if he will help them start their family. The book chronicles their experiences trying to make a baby, while also exploring Paul’s evolving relationship with his partner of three years, Michael, a somewhat free spirit and wayward soul who is 11 years his junior.

I’m looking forward to getting this book out into the world. This time I will be publishing with Véhicule Press, an indie publisher based in Montreal with a well-respected roster of writers and editors. It’s been such a pleasure to work with them. I’m happy to say they’ll also be giving a second life to my first book, The Geography of Pluto, which fell out of print earlier this year. Both titles should be available around the same time (hopefully next April / May).

Stay tuned!

This month I was approached by Jaimie Cudmore of Literacy Quebec to talk with her about the need for creating spaces for queer literature in the city. It was the first time I’ve been asked any questions on the subject, and I (surprisingly) found I had a lot to say. It’s interesting when someone else makes you think about the work you’re doing in a more critical way. I could’ve talked to her for hours, but thankfully (for listeners) it’s only 30 minutes.

If you are interested in the origins of the Violet Hour, or the desire to create alternative spaces for literature, then listen to the interview below.

This past weekend I went to Toronto for the National Magazine Awards. My story “Austin or Bust,” about the Austin International Drag Festival, was up for the 2019 Short Feature Award. It was the first time anything I have ever written has been nominated for a prize, and I was thrilled just to be acknowledged. To have had a jury read my work and deem it worthy of a prize.

The gala was a pretty fancy affair with circular white tables and large video screens (I felt like I was at the Golden Globes). When they called my name, I was pretty much in shock. I can’t remember the last time I was ever that nervous, but somehow I pulled it together and stammered through a short acceptance speech. I’ve spent so much of my professional life tracking prizes (through CBC Books and the CBC Literary Awards), that it felt good to finally be on the other side.