The Conversation: Bruce McDonald and Kelley Armstrong on spooky stories and making sequels
The place: Salvador Darling in Parkdale The people: film director Bruce McDonald and horror writer Kelley Armstrong The subject: spooky stories and making sequels
The Hunger Games and Twilight hog all the attention, but Kelley Armstrong has been repeatedly landing on the New York Times bestseller lists with her supernatural guilty reads about sexy werewolves, witches and vampires, and kids who can raise the dead. The 13th and final instalment in her Otherworld series for grown-ups hits stores this summer, while the second book in her teen-friendly, necromancy-themed Darkness Rising trilogy is out now. Local indie film legend and cowboy hat enthusiast Bruce McDonald has spent some time at the undead rodeo, most notably for his zombie flick Pontypool, and now in the follow-up to his career-making 1996 film Hard Core Logo, a fake documentary about a punk-rock band’s last hurrah. While most of the original characters are gone, we do get a visit from the spirit of Joe Dick, the disgruntled frontman who famously offed himself at the end of the original.
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Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”
