more about me and dosemagazine
I was born in Montreal, went to university in Kingston, Ontario (one very painful BSc in Mathematics & Engineering; one very enjoyable BA in Philosophy); lived in Dingle, Ireland, for a while, came back to Montreal for a couple of years, moved to New York, and then moved back to Montreal (I think for the last time) in December 2001, after watching the 2 towers in NYC fall down in a billowing cloud of dust. I was on the corner of Wooster and Grand, in Soho, with maybe 20 people, in shock, watching the news coverage on a televison set that someone had stuck out the window of their ground-floor apartment. I turned away from the TV and towards the towers just moments before the first one fell. When it came down, the woman beside me fainted; the dust cleared slowly to reveal a clear blue sky, and one tower sanding alone. I had already planned to move back to Montreal, but that did it. I thought to myself, soon after: "You'd better try to write that novel now." Which I "did," or rather continue to do.
I finished one novel (which has collected a good number of rejection letters),and you can find a bit of it here: Blind Spot, Chapters 1&2. In the mean time I've been doing various other other engineering-y things (solar & hydrogen power), with the odd writing gig as well. I've started a new novel, which is much better I think than the first.
I started LibriVox.org in August 2005, a project to get volunteers from around the world to record chapters of books in the public domain, and make them freely available to the world. It's grown into a bit of a monster, and if you want to volunteer check out the forums.
dose magazine was an idea that never really got going: it was cooked up in 2002 over too much coffee at Open Da Night with a friend of mine. But I was focused on finishing a 1st draft of a novel, and she moved to Vienna, so nothing much came of it. I kept the name though, as well as dosemagazine.com, and, just three short years later (in late 2004) this weblog (blog) was born.
If you are looking for CanWest's (new) Dose, you can find them at dose.ca (and just remember they launched in 2005, six months after the original dose!). Learn more here.
Recently, along with Kristen & Chris, who helped make LibriVox a success in the early days, we launched http://collectik.net, a podcast management/search engine you should check out. Let me know what you think.
I live with my cute wife, Christine. I still play rugby for this club, and I'm on the board of directors of this library.
Oh and I just published this little guide book to montreal bars: Montreal from Beer to Whiskey.
That's enough for now. If you wish to contact me please send an email to: hugh(at]dosemagazine[dot)com
