40 Below, now with more winter gold

The good news is that Alberta’s most popular winter anthology of short stories is back with a second volume.

“The first book did really well. It came out at a really good time, talking about winter and embracing winter,” explained Jason Lee Norman, the project’s editor and mastermind. “I think it just hit a nice sweet spot.”

The bad news is that it’s now 70 per cent colder.

The better news is that’s just what it says on a fake promotional sticker emblazoned on the cover. Hey! We’re supposed to be having an El Niño heat wave this winter, aren’t we?

That first volume, by the way, was released at this time two years ago. Since one good turn deserves another, he figured that there would never be a shortage of pieces of poetry and prose inspired by our province’s generally blustery months to share with the world.

True enough. There are more than 70 individual works by dozens of writers from the 49th to the 60th parallels and all points between. Joining Norman as contributors to the project are such noteworthy names as St. Albert’s own Carla Maj, as well as Diana Davidson – whose 2013 fictional novel Pilgrimage used historical St. Albert as one of its major locations – Thomas Trofimuk, Shirley Serviss, Omar Mouallem, and Anna Mioduchowska, among many others, several of whom were also found on the table of contents for the first volume.

Norman knew that he had a winning idea for this compilation when the first call went out and he received an utter avalanche of submissions. It was like that proverbial snowball that starts off small and ends off huge. Needless to say, the interest was the furthest from being frosty. Well, you get the idea.

But these aren’t cheesy stories that centre around Norman Rockwell-esque scenes of children playing pond hockey, horse-drawn sleigh rides and drinking hot chocolate while the ice melts off of your beard.

At least, not all of them. Winter is a season of stillness, of darkness, of retreat, and sometimes of tumult and bad weather. Expect your reading pleasure to come with a dash or two of suffering, regret and longing in these pages.

“Obviously it’s about winter but it’s really just about what it feels like to be in this province and how we deal with winter. Sometimes it gets more specific but sometimes it’s a lot more general. It definitely has a wider audience.”

The weather is just one of those aspects of life that affects all of us, providing a low common denominator and a high-target audience for this book.

Certainly, we bibliophiles can all be thankful for not only that but also for the fact that Norman decided not to name this sequel 50 Below. It’s unlikely that he would have gained any new fans that way. He remembered an interview for Volume I where he predicted a mild winter.

“I said, ‘It can’t be as bad as last year.’ And then as soon as that story came out, there was a huge, bad dump of snow and everybody was mad at me,” he laughed. “It’s tempting fate – tempting a lot of things – when you name something 40 Below.”

The local launch of the book takes place tomorrow at 2 p.m. Audreys Books is located at 10702 Jasper Ave. in Edmonton. Many of the contributors will be in attendance.