Michael Leask

Some of you may know me, some may be reading (meeting) me for the first time. I’m excited you’re here, and I’m excited to be sharing my content with you!

I’m an emerging author living in Calgary, Alberta. I’ve spent the last year in the Creative Writing Certificate (CWC) program with the University of Calgary. It’s 100% online, which I love! More on that in another blog.
I’ve already written a book called Ryder on the Pass (ROTP), published under my wife and my company called S’cyra Publishing Ltd (S’cyra). We created it as a professional branding for this novel and subsequent novels that we would write, like Time in Tartarus by P.K. Sahota (pictured above, my wife). Alas, COVID has claimed S’cyra as well. We are shutting it down (but keeping the name) as we can’t sell our books. Almost all of our sales were through book signings in store—an old method, but tried and true.

But the closing of S’cyra hasn’t deterred me from continuing on my path to becoming a professional writer. My goal, other than sharing content with you on this website, is to write novels. I love the sci-fi genre, but I also love writing in mystery and fiction. In the CWC, I’ve workshopped a new story called Murder in the Iron Forest (MITIF). You’ll notice I use acronyms a lot in my blog. It makes discussing my novels easier, as they are working titles that stick most of the time. 

I also have three other stories that I’ve been working. One of these stories is Orion Colony Invasion (OCI), which takes place in the same universe as ROTP, but a hundred years ahead and with a slew of new characters. I’ve also workshopped another fun sci-fi story called A Way Home (AWH)—I’m not liking the acronym, and it’s a working title for now. AWH gives me the feeling of a lot of the sci-fi and fantasy that I grew up watching, like Star Wars, Star Trek, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Willow and such. The Blight (no acronym cause its title is too short) is set in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, in a dystopian future. I applied for a research grant from the Alberta Foundation of the Arts. Stay tuned if I received it. Anyways, The Blight is a metaphor for COVID and what Canadians had gone through. This pandemic story is far different because The Blight is used to compulsively control people with the power of suggestion and rarely kills. Imagine what a terrible person could do with such a power to reshape the world around them. What would you do with such a power?

So as you can see, I have a lot going on in the coming years. My last course in the CWC is a final project course, and I’m hoping (also excited) to work on AWH. I think it’s going to be such a fun and gripping story. I’d like to write more about it and share the development in my blogs.

There are also other stories that I want to write, a series in fiction, based on true stories (which happened to me). Why the fiction genre instead of memoirs? To me, these stories are difficult to tell. Partially, internally they reflect my feelings after events that I’ve experienced that make me feel scared, disappointed, weak, humiliated, and embarrassed to be told factually. So the only way that I would feel comfortable writing about it is in the genre of fiction. But I will describe what I’m working on, as I’m working on it.

With all the ideas for these exciting projects, I don’t want to keep you from reading more of my content. I hope you enjoy reading everything on my site as much as I love writing it.

Chat soon,

Mike