A sweet book; wise, yet youthful.

An annal suppository of a mindful being undefined by normalcy, anarchy, or elitism. As such, Mind the Bits breeds a schema derived from an indistinguishable agenda. Amidst a world of self-promotion, virtue signaling, political agency, unrealistic beauty standards, and self-preservation, within here is the defiance of a sometimes poignant, yet vibrant oddball character in a harmony of individualism.

With a subscription to a music streaming platform, two feet and a heartbeat, this book’s shadow boxing eschews the STDs (stereo transmitted diseases) of side-taking that withers the lifeline into cells that imprison the spirit. 

92 pgs

Available for special order through amazon

A poster boy at a Toronto music venue, music critic, and two-time Master’s of Fine Arts dropout traces an up-and-coming indie rock band while coming to grips with the addictions he has in common with the scoundrels around him.

Michael Whone’s abject portrayal of the muses, drugs, high-intensity romances, betrayals, and the magic therein—originally titled Lost Bacon Bits in the Salad Days at O’Reilly’s, Lo-Fi, and Exotic Distortions—Analysand is a semi-autobiographical account of a man soullessly lost in the inner-workings of the music industry.

This is Michael’s finest to date, building on his previous body of work, venturing deeper into his unique and provocative, often grotesquely satirical, brand of meta-fiction and experimental narrative. 

178 pgs

Available for special order through amazon

This duology is a collection of the inseparable first two novellas of Michael Whone: Winter Lyric and There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

As Turganev described first love as coming to experience “a sweet oppression,” Michael’s early novellas capture the tender fragments that piece together first love. As fragments unfold, a beauty of more than just bedfellows develops into the awe of synchronicity and the feeling of undeniable connection to the earth and destiny.

These deceptively charming novellas brush up against the gritty realities of marginalized living conditions, mental illness, the struggle for autonomy, and doubting ones privilege from within these confines.

A first adult love is transformative to an individual, captured herein, beat by beat, as art in a uniquely meta narrative that (as Pablo Picasso said of art), “washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” This collection of autobiographical fiction is deeper than a story of love and loss: it is writings from the very depth of the soul aimed towards taking hold of one’s mental health.

Michael’s narrative is founded in the common style of improvising jazz musicians, as was Kerouac’s. The spontaneity built upon combining rigorous form with momentary ideas—modulating harmonies, fortuitous melodies, and fiery rhythms—is emulated in these two books: a modern reincarnate of the avant garde contrasted by an inimitable clarity and familiarity of tone and voice.

314 pgs

Available for special order through amazon

Jason Emde's poems in little bit die are intimate and haunted recollections of travel and freedom, of friendship and loss, of leaving and getting home. Careening from small-town Canada to Zimbabwe to Mexico to Poland to Tiananmen Square to Gifu, Japan, Emde traces how the heart moves through its spheres of grief and the ways it endures "in the middle of the noise."

"It's a fantastic book; it broke my heart and made me laugh at the same time. Does it get any better than that?"  

—Susan Musgrave, author of Exculpatory Lilies

"In heady intimate anaphoras that recall Allen Ginsberg and ecstatic catalogues of rich plurality and particularity reminiscent of Walt Whitman, Jason Emde's little bit die traces a life bisected between Vernon, Canada and Gifu, Japan. These poems lead us through streets layered with the repeated footsteps of growing children, hotels haunted by a single night's drunken laughter, houses that remain identical outside but where "modern-sleek" updates replace the "indescribable nameless junk" that lives on in memory. At its heart, this book is an elegy for a friendship between "two non-macho guys / who loved each other for 30 years" and a testament to what it means to lose a friend who holds so much shared past. Emde plumbs the paradoxes of our inner and outer geographies. little bit die leaves us with a curious and wonderous sense that we are—that every person is, every place is—"just as vast / inside as out." These digressive, voice-driven, strange, and funny poems remind us how our daily errands, chores, and acts of care touch on the deepest mysteries of being. Like Frank O'Hara, Jason Emde's infectious voice and astonished attention to the intimate ordinary will follow you long after you set down this book."

—Bronwen Tate, author of The Silk the Moths Ignore

"Jason's incredible. Such energy and vision"

—John Lent, author of A Matins Flywheel

Jason Emde is a teacher, writer, undefeated amateur boxer, Prince enthusiast, creator and host of the Writers Read Their Early Sh*t podcast, and the author of My Hand's Tired & My Heart Aches. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and his work has appeared in Real Travel, The Malahat Review, Soliloquies Anthology, The Watershed Review, and numerous other publications.

Available at many indie bookstores, Chapters/Indigo, Barnes & Noble, and e-books available from Google Books, Apple iBooks, Nook Book, Kobo, and more.

"Although loneliness is a quality that we all must endure (sometimes even while we are with someone), in every instance of it that I can think of, there is always an intervening event that rips you up in the end, apprehensively targets the tedium at first and crescendoes into an aggressive stranglehold of the heart. And I'll willfully let that happen again, but it's unpredictable when it will occur."

Aiming to find the man that no longer resides in him, Vic devises a plan to unite with his inner self. In his first summer and autumn in a house on Etherington Crescent, he gathers all the necessities he needs to withdraw from the outside world and reassemble the lonely, marginalized outsider he's become. With a new found purpose, he attracts two women with similar, but subconscious, conflicts of mind. Slowly he comes to realize what underlies their personas. Two trysts develop, one after the other, but no one said it would be easy. No one said things would go awry.

Part One of There Is a Light That Never Goes Out is a memory of how the trio of outsiders came to find one another. The second part is a satirical romance that, in Michael Whone's distinctly modular narrative and wry wit, transforms each beat of Vic's words into a portrait of mystical awakening. Untangling the frustration of losing the lover that waltzed before his eyes and saved his life one winter three years ago, Vic grows enlightened by the urban wilderness around him—a metaphysical beauty surfacing in the shape of his lost love.

A story of Vic, Paula and Sarah, their natural yet unnatural connection with love, and life's fragility pleading them to love just a little bit deeper and more sensibly. In an ideal world, true love would save the day, but as fickle and superficial as relationships are, the three of them lead themselves deeper into a hapless desperation for heartbreak.

Available wherever you purchase your ebooks.

"an infectious little gem" —Whispering Stories

Winter Lyric is the emotional and poetic story of Elliot Stephenson and his relationship with Sarah Benton, two drinking buddies that suddenly become romantic partners.  With a new found lust for life so profound he’s not quite sure what to do with it, Elliot delivers a quirky love-manifesto for Sarah, documenting his recklessly entertaining fruition of sexual self-discovery. Elliot brilliantly weaves together a breathtakingly honest, and cleverly entwined story that fortuitously connects each hedonistic moment of his past and present to a bittersweet realization that life isn’t about pleasure seeking, but that life’s synchronicity and divine transcendence is the ultimate pleasure, that finds us.  

Available wherever you purchase your ebooks.