Mark Leslie is a writer, editor and bookseller who lives in Southern Ontario. In 2005, Mark joined the blogging bandwagon and started posting random thoughts and musings on writing, bookselling and being a father.
The other day I made a short video on how to pronounce Lefebvre.
I couldn't resist adding in a joke at the end about the funny ways people mis-pronounce my actual surname. (This blog is under "Mark Leslie" the name I use for most of my writing).
One of the comments on a share of that video used the "Lefever" version of the name.
And for some reason, I got the old Peggy Lee song "Fever" stuck in my head.
Which lead to writing parody style lyrics to the song.
Which then lead to the recording of the song.
Which then lead to the music video.
You might say that I sometimes get a fever and the only curse is not necessarily more cowbell, but it's actually turning that creative energy into a project meant to make people laugh.
I learned that the song was actually written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell and was originally recorded by American R&B singer Little Willie John in for his 1956 debut album, Fever. Peggy Lee covered it a couple of years later and it remains the most notable cover of the song.
Of course, Elvis Presley also covered the song - and it was his vocal styling I was attempting to reach when I made my own parody music video.
My pal Julie Strauss, her husband, and daughter, and a couple of their friends quickly recorded silly mispronunciations of my name that I used for the video's opening.
The stories for this tour were drafted out of files of research I had compiled to write the book Haunted Hamilton, which was released in 2012 and was nominated for a Hamilton Literary Award.
The half hour route can be purchased through the free VoiceMap app on virtually any smartphone device, and takes you through central downtown Hamilton and
includes several interesting downtown locations, historic landmarks, dark history and
fascinating ghostly tales certain to bring you a few shivers.
This tour begins at The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry building
located at 200 James Street North, in Hamilton, Ontario. It takes you south down James Street, and past the sites of the Hamilton SuperCrawl, the historic Tivoli Theatre, Gore Park, the Royal Connaught, the former Wentworth County Courthouse and jail, Hamilton Club, Whitehern Mansion, The GO Station, The Pheasant Plucker, and The Winking Judge. Tales involve ghosts at these locations, as well as Hamilton's connection to Jack the Ripper, the Torso Murders, and Hamilton as a location for the filming of horror movies, including one from a Stephen King novel.
I've long been a fan of historic ghost walk tours. In fact, much of the research for this book was thanks to the good folks from Haunted Hamilton and Ghost Walks. I highly recommend their tours and events to people, and continue to be a huge fan of the work they do.
But what happens when you want to explore a historic haunted locale and the timing for the official tours don't jibe with your own schedule, or perhaps the tour is sold out?
Of course, during these more recent times of physical distancing, social distancing, and avoiding hanging out in groups, a virtual tour like this allows you the option to explore those same locations on your own, at your own convenience.
I have long written under the name Mark Leslie because of the fact that most people don't know how to spell or pronounce Lefebvre.
However, because I've been a book industry representative and part of the speaking circuit on a regular basis for well over a decade now, my actual surname is used. I also have a number of books (with more to come) about the business of writing and publishing published under my full name Mark Leslie Lefebvre.
One of the many things I have learned from the awesome folks at CAPS (Canadian Association of Professional Speakers), is to add a pronunciation key into the bio you provide to the folks running the conference/workshop/keynote address that you are speaking at. This helps ensure the person introducing you can easily pronounce your name.
I also thought it might be handy to create a brief video that helps explain how to pronounce Lefebvre.
I could not, of course, resist adding a little humor to it.
I've also long been a fan of the movie Die Hard, so I thought it might be fun to make a silly thumbnail for the YouTube video in the style of the movie posters from that film.
The "film" is just a little over 1 minute long. Just long enough to set the scene, and then make you rolls your eyes.
I'm currently soliciting stories for a book that I'm working on.
This is the cover.
I plan on releasing this book in the fall of 2020.
I already have a file folder stuffed with a bunch of tales that I have collected over the years. But I'm looking for new ones to add to what I already have.
If you have a tale to share, feel free to let me know by using this handy online form.
I'm pretty pumped to be returning as a guest to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.
Coast to Coast AM airs on more than 600 stations in
the U.S., as well as Canada, Mexico and Guam, and is heard by nearly
three million weekly listeners. With hosts George Noory, George Knapp (weekend), and guest weekend hosts, it is the most listened to overnight radio program in North America.
A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange
occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often
inexplicable) phenomena. Coast to Coast AM is overnight talk radio with
daytime ratings.
The show I'll be on runs three hours and airs from midnight to 3 AM Eastern on Friday June 5, 2020.
I have long enjoyed sharing Dad Jokes. Heck, long before I became a father I had been a connoisseur of eye-rolling puns and stupid humor.
I'm also fascinated with adaptations of elements from one form into another.
The first example of this is a cartoon from Leigh Rubin.
My cousin sent it to me. It's a funny cartoon, but the guy in it also looks a little bit like me. (Same head and hair facial style, at least - I'm not quite so thin).
I thought it might be funny to translate the cartoon into a short video.
And came up with a new series that I'm calling A Stupid Dad Joke Short Film.
Yes, that's 35 seconds of your life that you'll never get back.
One of my favorite all-time duets is "Islands in the Stream" written by the Bee Gees but made famous by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.
We toyed with the lyrics, wanting to tell the tale of a couple that learns how to share their home workspace, and their often struggling home internet connection.
It was, to us, a nice parallel to the previous parody we'd done "Stuck in This House With You" where a couple comes to terms with being isolated together. Whereas that one was about personal relationships, this new parody would be about discovering that same respect for the other person's new "work from home" life.
We recorded it a few weekends ago, but we couldn't get over the fact that there were parts of the song that, no matter how many times we tried to re-record it (and trust me, we re-recorded it dozens and dozens of times), we just couldn't get it.
I tried to do some audio enhancement to adjust the lyrical tracks, to at least try to slightly mask my off-key caterwauling, but not even auto-tune programs could resurrect this "The Singing Dead."
Liz wanted to scrap the entire project.
She is a perfectionist. I take more of a "it's good enough, let's throw it out there and see if it sticks" kind of guy.
We clashed creatively. As we do. I relented.
I was frustrated; because I felt the song was pretty good. (And by that, I meant, the parody lyrics were pretty good. The singing - well, it was my singing after all, it almost approached what one might say "not too nauseating.")
But then Liz came up with an idea. A brilliant idea.
She said that there were parts of the main chorus that weren't that bad. She wondered if we could use that, and also create a few other songs and present them together in a medley format.
As we brainstormed further, the idea of doing a K-Tel spoof commercial arose. We must have watched about twenty minutes of those hokey commercials from the 1970s and 1980s.
Then we set about recording the different tracks, and Liz began scripting out how the corresponding video would work.
It's something that turned out not that bad, in my humble opinion.
I suppose the lesson in this creative exercise is that I had initially been wasting energy being frustrated with the broken egg yolks I had when I'd planned on preparing a dish of over easy fried eggs. It was difficult for me to see past that, until Liz, looking at those eggs, looked around the kitchen for a few other things to throw into the dish, to turn it into a marvelous omelette.
Hope that you enjoy this omelette, and also that the lesson inspires you to think to look around your own kitchen for how you might be able to do the same thing with your own creative projects.
(Oh, and the original title for this used the term "broken egg yokes" because I was trying to layer in a play on words. Yoke as in an alternative term for a joke. But then I changed it because I was worried the mis-spelling might be too confusing.)
As a writer, I have, lately, been recognizing the value of recycling, or re-using, old material into newer forms.
Come to think of it, perhaps I have regularly taken that approach. I'm only just starting to recognize it now.
"I, Death," a 1000 word short story I wrote in the mid 1980s in my second year of high school was re-imagined into a serialized horror story in blog format in 2006. That same story was slightly revised and rolled out again in 2012, and then it was later adapted into a novel that came out in 2014.
A ghost story that I made up to scare students when I was teaching drama as part of a summer program at Carleton University (Prospero's Ghost) was re-adapted over the years to be set within the context of almost every new bookstore I worked at between 1992 and 2008, to entertain and frighten fellow bookstore employees. That story then got re-envisioned to take place at McMaster University when Kimberly Foottit and I co-authored "Prospero's Ghost" to be included in the anthology Campus Chills, which was released in 2009.
And yesterday, for May the Fourth, 2020. I released a silly parody video called Spud Wars: A New Hopelessness.
I spent a few hours on Sunday May 3rd working on the parody, which basically stars me playing every role, with not much in terms of costumes, makeup, or even acting ability, a Darth Tater Mr. Potato Head, and our dog, Maya. I then added in a few visual effects.
It is, of course, silly, and self-reflective, and produced with virtually no budget and a hastily written outline.
Of course, the parody video was based on the Spud Wars series rolled out on this blog, originally in 2006, and then re-vised and re-edited/crafted in 2011.
That original Spud Wars series was a text and photo based serialized story inspired by a a simple photo I'd taken of myself unmasking Darth Tater.
The original storyline, of course, actually had somewhat of a plot, which involves Darth Tater wanting to get revenge because I ate his father (as a plate of French Fries the night before) - he attacks, I am knocked out. The story continues in The Carb-Eater Strikes Back where I seek help from the wise old Yoda-figure mentor, Mister Bunny. He advises me to "use the forks" which I do to defeat the spud. The story continues in Return of the Spud-Eyewhere Darth also seeks help from the same old master, who advises that he clone himself.
At that point, the story devolves in terms of storyline and trying to parallel the original Star Wars movies, because the next chapter is Darth Comes Knocking - and then trying to adapt cloning into it (in recognition of the Star Wars prequel movies), with titles like Darth's Revenge Part I and Part II, followed by Mark's Last Stand where I am defeated by the clone army of Taters.
I then, of course, adapted a picture of Alexander man-handling my camera when he was about 18 months old . . .
The story continues with Alex Attacks and then more episodes, including images of Alexander fighting a bunch of the Tater clones in The Final Standoff, then coming to a truce and playing video games (because all this violence makes them want to play video games) in All This Violence.
It was supposed to end there, but I'm a sucker for cliffhanger endings, and so had someone creeping up on them at the end of that one, and the story ends with Spud Wars: The Conclusion and Spud Wars: Epilogue.
It was a fun 12 part serialized story.
Of course, writing a parody script to a few images and shooting an entire sequence of these things are two different things. Alexander most certainly wouldn't participate in it with me, and he's no longer 18 months old. He is 15. Most of the additional Star Wars Mr. Potato Head figures are in Liz's office at the school, so I only had the one Darth Tater in my office at home to use. Not to mention, I had less than 24 hours from conception of the movie trailer parody to wanting to release it on May the Fourth, Star Wars Day.
That is why the recent adaptation is so different than the original scrip.
The lesson, of course, is a concrete example of why the movie version and the original text-based version are so different.
No wait, the lesson is that re-adapting and re-imagining an idea can take many different forms and formats, over the years. It's all part of the creative process of being a storyteller.
Well that's neat. I started writing this thinking there would be a lesson about re-using and re-cycling ideas into different forms and I also ended up exploring one of the many reasons why a movie adaptation of a book, or comic can't possibly be the same thing, that it has to become it's own unique entity, it's own unique experience.
Two skeletons walk into a bar and say to the bartender: "We'll have a pitcher of beer and a mop, please!"
Me and Yorick
At least, that's one way to tell that joke.
I love that there are so many different ways to spin a joke.
Front yard joke sign for April 29, 2020
I mean, you start with a skeleton of an idea on how the word play can go, and then you flesh it out a bit, add a little muscle here, a little nuance that gets under the skin there.
The other day when Liz was online and I needed to stay off the computer, I shot a few stupid dad jokes on the skeleton theme using Barnaby Bones and Yorick. I later compiled them into a video.
See, I'm helping you exercise your eyeballs with all those eyeball rolls.
Barnaby and Yorick are jealous that at least YOU have eyes to roll.
It is, of course, a reference to the classic Monty Python sketch about a fictitious ministry.
A still of John Cleese in that classic role
If you haven't seen the sketch, it is embedded below.
We have regularly posted silly dad joke style puns in the front yard on a daily basis, something we started well before the global pandemic. But, ever since the self-isolation phase of this lockdown, I have made sure to update it every day.
It's great to see people pause to read it, and then either laugh, or exercise their eyes with a good solid eye roll.
So when I saw that image of the sign on Facebook, I decided to craft my own sign and post it in the front yard. I added a few silhouette images of Cleese to the sign and a bit of color, covered it in plastic to protect it from the rain, and fixed it to a board, so it would be a bit more solid.
The Silly Walks Ministry Sign in front of our house in Waterloo, ON
The sign I crafted, inspired by that first one, reads:
NOTICE: This property is an official jurisdiction of THE MINISTRY OF SILLY WALKS. Commence silly walking immediately!
Then, in smaller text below that it reads:
No FINES for non-compliance, just potential FUN if you give it a try.
My home office is on the second floor and looks down on the front yard. From my standing desk I have a pretty good view and have delighted in seeing the smiles it brings to people's faces. And also, for those daring enough to give it a try.
I've seen countless folks give it a shot over the last week. The young, the old.
And, in the past few days, with the weather getting warmer so I can open the windows, I can now also hear the laughter.
Yeah, most of us who aren't on the front lines are pretty helpless to do anything but self-isolate and try to help with flattening the curve.
But if I can help make a few people smile and laugh, then that's not such a bad thing.
I have since read that this hilarious trend was started by a woman in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, named Liz Koto. Here is a Bored Panda article about it. So three cheers to Liz for starting this awesome movement. There's also an Instagram account showing video of people trying the walk. under the name Yorkshire Silly Walks.
If you wanted to make your own sign, I created a PDF of the one I used that you can download.
She looked at me like I had just suggested we create a video tape of an intimate moment between us and upload it to Pornhub. That's because I'm the one in our relationship who is "all out there." Humiliating myself publicly is par for the course. Liz prefers to be the creative force "behind the camera."
But less than twelve hours later, she mentioned that she had some ideas for visuals that could go with the song.
You see, for years, she has been producing these amazing videos. Mostly in relation to her work. And the majority of the time she stays out of view of the camera.
Lately, however, she has had a bit more exposure, collaborating with a co-worker on producing a "morning show" style live show as a way of doing a combination of team-building, information sharing, and humorous distraction for her staff. It's a private show, meant for this specific team. But I've watched a number of episodes and, like so many of the things Liz does, I think it's fantastic.
So we started talking about how the video might look.
After relaxing one evening after watching a few episodes of the first season of Cheers, we did a dry run-through of a revised version of the parody lyrics to a karaoke version of the song.
Then yesterday morning, we went into our studio (okay, my home office where I record my podcast and do other video/audio related things as an author and book industry guy), and we did a number of takes, collaboratively revising the lyrics, then laying down the track.
We used the Ameritz Karaoke version of the song for the background track. Then we shot the video using an iPad, which Liz edited and produced right on the iPad using iMovie. After she finished, I imported the video into Camtasia 2019 to add the titles and annotations.
It was an awesome collaborative project. Yes, it was work, but for the first time in days, neither of us was spinning and spending the whole day either working or thinking and worrying about work stuff.
And perhaps also, more importantly, for the first time in days, we finally got a song stuck in our heads that has replaced the hilarious parody created by Brock Tyler of our Prime Minister using the words "speaking moistly." (Fun fact, BTW, the original lyrics of the song included a nod to that:)
"...and outside, the germs are crawling so moistly in the air - we say.....Please....."
It's enriching to collaborate on something creative and fun with the person you love. When you realize that there's nobody you'd rather be stuck in isolation with.
Here's hoping that the song inspires at least one much needed smile or laugh for you.
Jane is a consistently reliable authoritative source of solid information about the writing and publishing industry. Her blog and The Hotsheet are two amazing resources I regularly consume. I'm honored that I get to participate in one of her online workshops.
The course is $20 USD and will be a video chat where I'll be talking through several of the examples that Matty Dalrymple and I wrote about in our February 2020 book, Taking the Short Tack.
I will share many of the examples that we write about in the book as well several other options and examples with the goal of informing and inspiring authors on how they can leverage their short fiction IP in multiple ways.
I recently added an extra episode to my normally weekly podcast.
It was a Thanks for the Inspiration episode. These are an attempt to acknowledge and say thanks to the people, places, and things that have helped to either feed the muse, or perhaps just to feed the very soul and makeup of the writer behind that writing.
In this bonus episode of the podcast, I thanked the creative spirits who have produced musical parodies about Covid-19 and the current global situation. Because laughter is important.
As I said in the episode . . .
Yes, these are dark times, but laughter is important.
It connects people. And laughter has been shown to actually stimulate positive activity in a person's immune system.
I know we're all scared, we're uncertain, we aren't sure what's coming, for us, and for those we know and love. Things seem to be spinning out of control. But we can always control where we focus and how we respond.
I choose love, compassion, and humor.
And I choose to thank all of these amazing creative people who took the time to spread their own passion, through humor, to help others find smiles and laughs in these trying times.
You can click here to check out the show notes, with the audio as well as links to the original YouTube videos, or you can listen to the episode using the built-in media player above.
Below are the original YouTube videos
Covid-19 - The Taylor's - Parody of "Come On, Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners
JJ Mason Taylor (The Taylor Family)
My Corona - Parody of "My Sharona by The Knac
Kevin Brandow, Lyrics by Chelsea Brandow
Quarantine - Parody of "Let It Be" by The Beatles
Joe Cron
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (with new lyrics!) Parody of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke from the movie Mary Poppins
Daniel Matarazzo
One Week of COVID 19 - Parody of "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies
Pepper Coyote, Adapted original lyrics by @daniAwesome
My Corona Home - Parody of "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys from the movie Cocktail
Jon Pumper
Coronavirus Rhapsody - Parody of "Bohemian Rhapsody by Quee
I have always loved musical parodies, and I am grateful for the fact that these awesome folks, and so many others, are continuing to create brilliant parodies to help us with smiling and laughing in these most challenging and trying times.
I was honored to be a guest on a recent episode of The Rebel Author Podcast with Sacha Black.
I've had the pleasure of interacting with Sacha over the years, particularly in her active role within the Alliance of Independent Authors, as one of the organizers for their series of virtual Self-Publishing Advice Conferences.
Sacha is a writer, a developmental editor, a speaker, and a rebel podcaster. She is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction titles. I am looking forward to having her on the Stark Reflections Podcast in the near future to talk about her writing and a few of her latest books.
You'd be wise to click the link above and subscribe to the podcast, but you can also listen to the episode online either following the link or using the online player below.
If you have young ones in the home looking for something fun (and a little creepy) to do, why not check out this great series of videos from my friend and fellow horror author, Joel A. Sutherland.
(In all honesty, you don't have to be a kid to enjoy them - you can be, like me, a kid at heart. Because I've been loving this series)
Joel is the Silver Birch Award-winning author of the Haunted Canada series and has been called Canada's answer to R. L. Stine by Quill & Quire.
To top it off, he's a great guy, and a librarian. C'mon, how COULDN'T you love the guy?
Joel, who was born in Ottawa, kindly wrote the introduction to my adult non-fiction book Creepy Capital: Ghost Stories of Ottawa and the National Capital Region.
As of today (March 26, 2020), there are 9 segments of Joel's daily Haunted Canada Road Trip.
Definitely worth checking out.
Here's the first one in the series about a haunted hospital in BC.
Click the image above to see the original Tweet and Video. Or below to see it on YouTube.
It starts off with a woman sitting quietly in a living room and reading.
Less than a second in, a younger woman, her daughter, comes stomping into the room to the music of I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers.
A montage then begins of the young woman dancing, following, and invading the personal space of her mother. The tension builds as the persistent dancing becomes annoying as the matriarch tries to continue going about reading or other household chores while her daughter dances up a storm.
It's funny, and, at one point you suspect it might become one of those occasional Saturday Night Live sketches that starts off funny, and then gets less funny as it goes on, and you regret losing those 2 or 3 minutes of your life to it, or how that sketch made the weekly cut.
But instead, it gets better.
Because of the confrontation that happens.
And the resolution.
As Twitter user lonliness points out, the "infliction point" or the "inflection point" - basically where the conflict happens, or there is a moment of dramatic change, the mother has two choices. (Writers take note of this critical element that happens in a story)
The mother makes the decision that turns this video from cute and amusing to brilliant.
And it's also a story about the beautiful infectious nature of smiling, laughing, and dancing together.
To a great song that immediately inspires dance.
And we all need a little bit of that sort of infectious fun.
It can be extremely challenging when people are quarantined or self-isolating and are looking for something different to do other than sitting on the couch and watching television or binging online streaming services.
I've enjoyed seeing authors and celebrities reading stories, either adult reads, or even children's picture books, in order to provide something unique and entertaining for people to enjoy for free.
To that end, even though most of my writing isn't all that family friendly (a side-effect of writing horror and speculative tales from the darkness of the shadows), I thought I would share a couple of recent readings I did, specifically with the goal of providing some family-friendly content that could be enjoyed by middle-grade aged folks.
Adults, of course, might also enjoy these tales.
The first, That Old Silk Hat They Found is a dark-humor look at what might actually happen if a snowman were to come to life. Would he really be happy and jolly, and be able to dance around and march in a parade? Or would his life be significantly different?
That Old Silk Hat They Found appears in both my mini story collection Snowman Shiverswhich is available in eBook, print, and audiobook. (BTW, you can download the eBook for free on most eBook retail platforms).
The second story, Looking Through Glass was published in an anthology edited by Julie E. Czerneda called Stardust. This was part of the Tales from the Wonderzone series of books that were science fiction tales drawing upon the Ontario curriculum of science for grades 3 through 6.
My story was inspired by a combination of states of matter and properties of light from the Grade four curriculum, and the bit of a science fiction mystery story about a boy and his uncle Zak, an inventor.
Here is hoping that you enjoy these family-friendly and child-safe stories.
Have you ever wondered what might actually happen if a magic hat were able to bring a snowman to life?
Have you ever cast an uncomfortable glance over your shoulder when
passing the silent snowy sentinels that stand so eerily quiet as you
pass by on the icy sidewalk?
Have you ever marveled at the secret life of anthropomorphic snow sculptures?
Since today is March 15th, the Ides of March, I thought it might be fun to share the audio version of this mini story collection. Click the link above to download the audio file.
The eBook is also free on most eBook retail platforms.
The collection includes the tales Ides of March and That Old Silk Hat They Found. It also includes a "behind the stories" section as well as a short history of snowmen in popular culture.
