Hi y'all. Last year I quit my job, married a Canadian, and uprooted my entire life - old typewriters, vintage costumes and all - to Toronto. We called it our Canadian adventure and we're living in Apartment A, or as we call it, Apartment "Eh?" Collected here are some of my thoughts about the Great White North and I'll be updating regularly with new musings since I'm still adjusting to my newfound home. Follow me on Instagram @zoedinovi for my visual diary and tell me your own tales of 'innocents abroad' in the comments!

Our moms were right after all. Who cares who wins or who loses? The winners? Okay, maybe they do, but I don't. This self-help book will teach you how to keep it cool every time you fail. Just like me. xoxo Leo DiCaprio

The Freeze-Dried Groom is one of the nine stories in Margaret Atwood's fantastic new collection Stone Mattress. A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. Vintage Atwood creativity, intelligence, and humor: think Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in "Alphinland," the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists. In "The Freeze-Dried Groom," a man who bids on an auctioned storage space has a surprise. In "Lusus Naturae," a woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. In "Torching the Dusties," an elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. And in "Stone Mattress," a long-ago crime is avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite. In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.

Okie's fifteen. She lives in New York. She's got a few problems: she's failing geography, her dad's a wimp, and her mother, Sumatra, is a stone cold bitch. But things get a lot worse when Sumatra turns into a zombie and eats Okie's dad. Clio, Okie's grandmother, lives in Toronto; but since the zombie apocalypse, Toronto's a lot further away than it used to be. Clio suggests that Okie transport Sumatra across the border, because family is family. But coaching Okie by cellphone isn't easy, and Clio has some zombies of her own to contend with. Luckily she has some garden tools. Naomi Alderman and Margaret Atwood team up for this unusual two-hander. Encompassing love, death, sex, and the meaning of family, The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home will surprise, delight, and convince you of the vital importance of keeping ready supplies of rhubarb and mini-wieners in your freezer at all times. The story unfolds beginning October 24.

A series of musings and cultural commentary on current events (or rants depending on my mood) about literature, feminism, the working world and internet culture. I hope that it speaks to teens and adults alike. It's important to talk about this stuff sometimes, even if it makes you angry.

"As a child, I was one of those who buried treasures in jars, with the idea that someone, some day, might come along and dig them up. I found similar things while digging in the various gardens I have made: old nails, old medicine bottles, fragments of china plates... That is what the Future Library is like, in part: it will contain fragments of lives that were once lived, and that are now the past. But all writing is a method of preserving and transmitting the human voice." There’s a secret book that no one will read for 100 years. It is a book from the future, so it hasn’t been published yet. It is kept in a locked room, in a Norwegian library. There is a sacred grove that will provide the paper for its pages. And there are 100 authors who will write its secret stories. 100 years. 100 stories. 100 different writers. This is the Future Library (Framtidsbiblioteket). It is being created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson for the city of Oslo in Norway. When Katie had to choose the first writer to contribute the first story, she named Margaret Atwood, prizewinning author, poet, essayist, literary critic, and Wattpad’s official Fairy Godmother. Read Margaret's thoughts about her involvement in the project here. *Watch Margaret on Periscope on May 26th 2015 to witness the live event, and stay tuned for a special Wattpad writing contest coming soon!*

************************************************************************************** An outcast rogue must break a curse put on his fate, or die on his nineteenth birthday. To survive, he'll need the sword of a maiden, the aid of an immortal, and the power of forbidden magic that could cost him the only girl he ever loved. ************************************************************************************ *** THE JACK OF SOULS won a Silver IPPY this year! *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the PNWA Competition in Fantasy! * *** THE JACK OF SOULS won 1st place in the Southwest Writers competition! * *** A "Featured Book" on Wattpad! * *** Now a "Staff Pick" on Kickstarter! * *** Available on Amazon in paper, hardback, and ebook ! * *** My contract with Kindle Select won't allow me to post more than 3 chapters here, but... *** Sign up for my newsletter on stephenmerlino.com for alerts when it's free on Amazon! * MY INSPIRATION I wrote this out of pure love of trickster rogues; I love the wit over brawn motif -- Odysseus over Achilles, Raven over Eagle -- so I like to play with it in my stories. In JOS I set the rogue and con-artist Harric against a foil of warriors in a land threatened by magic and civil war. Whenever possible I turn familiar tropes on their heads: instead of a handsome young Lancelot, I cast a broken-down ex-champion addicted to pain-killing herbs; instead of a dashing Squire Brian, the old knight reluctantly takes an ambitious young woman as squire. Similarly, I re-imagine the standard medieval milieu by infusing aspects of two of my favorite historical periods, Elizabethan England, and The American Frontier. Both eras boast a kind of nationalistic arrogance that borders on hubris, and a magnificent spirit of resourcefulness and re-invention that is fun to play with. SERIES The Jack of Souls is first in a series. I am posting parts of the sequel here now (The Knave of Souls), to help me refine the story.

"Jane Eyre" follows the emotions and experiences of its eponymous character, including her growth to adulthood, and her love for Mr. Rochester, the byronic master of fictitious Thornfield Hall.

Cherry blossom lipstick: check Smokey eyes: check Skinny jeans: check Dead kid in the mirror: check For sixteen year old Mattie Hathaway, this is her normal everyday routine. She's been able to see ghosts since her mother tried to murder her when she was five years old. No way does she want anyone to know she can talk to spooks. Being a foster kid is hard enough without being labeled a freak too. Normally, she just ignores the ghosts and they go away. There's a little glitch this time. The ghost she sees is her foster sister, Sally. Everyone thinks she's just another runaway. Mattie knows the truth, though-she's dead, murdered. Foster kids look out for each other and Mattie feels like she has to help Sally, but she can't do it alone. Against her better judgment, she teams up with a young police officer and together they set out to discover the truth of Sally's disappearance. Now the killer has set his sights on her. It becomes a race to see if she can find the truth before the serial killer finds her.

In one day, the world succumbed to a pestilence that decimated the living. In its place rose a new species: vicious, gruesome, wandering zombies with an insatiable hunger for the living. Still in her twenties, Cash has watched her friends die, only to walk again. An office worker with few survival skills, she joins up with Clutch, a grizzled Army veteran with PTSD. Together, they flee the city and struggle through the nine circles of hell, with nothing but Clutch's military experience and Cash's determination to live. As they fight to survive in the zombie inferno, they quickly discover that nowhere is safe from the undead...or the living. (100 Days in Deadland is a journey through the first poem in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, the classic tale on the horrors of hell... zombie apocalypse style!) (Note: This is a draft so please excuse any errors. The finished novel is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook).