Category: News

By John Miedema under his penname Jan Andreas

Alcove, Quebec’s own John Miedema is pleased to announce the publication of his graphic novel Me and My Shadow: Social Distancing 2020, created under his penname Jan Andreas. It’s now available as an e-book from Snail Books for only $1.99. Kindly support local writers and small Canadian publishers by sharing this post. 💕🍁📖

Created in the bewildering early months of lockdown, Me and My Shadow captures the strange quiet of 2020 with humour, tenderness, and a surprising philosophical clarity. Jan Andreas turns the simplest companion — a shadow on the ground — into a guide through solitude, fear, and the odd beauty of being alone. The result is part memoir, part philosophy comic, part cultural collage.

One of the early 5-star reviewers writes:
“I really enjoyed Me and My Shadow by Jan Andreas as a welcome and timely escape during the pandemic. The great quotes, the metaphysical and practical reflections, and the way shadows become more than they appear — born, growing, fading, carrying information. The story playfully explores how, in difficult times, there’s more that unites than divides, confirming the old saying that ‘at night all cats are grey.’ I highly recommend it!”
~ Taylor Wentges

Buy the book from Snail Books.

You can guess, I’ve already decided to publish this work

I’ve read this manuscript by Jan Andreas a few times now and sat down with Jan to talk it through. I like Jan. They remind me a little of myself some years ago. They/them are their preferred pronouns. Artists. That’s fine by me. A fledgling illustrator, they admit their drawings have inconsistencies, though the rawness is part of the charm. They self-published the work in 2020 and now hope to find a proper publisher. They told me it was our publication of The Divine Mind that drew them in — a work of similar jaunt.

Their suggested title is Me and My Shadow: Social Distancing 2020. As editor and publisher, titles remain my decision; they are marketing tools in the end. Still, the title works. It’s been five years, but the pandemic lingers in so many ways — in the literal persistence of virus variants, often unacknowledged, shadows in that sense. And in this new dark age of politics we inhabit, an era of shadows of another sort.

The work is a kind of graphic novel, scarcely thirty-five pages, yet packed with story, quotations, political questions, and cosmic reflection. A natural-science question about shadows and dimensionality gets resolved in a quiet encounter with a bee. It’s psychological and philosophical throughout.

Shadow, as I’ve been calling it, is meta and recursive, with Jan portraying themself as Jay, and then symbolized as a slippery shadow they chase and flee. It has layers. You can guess, I’ve already decided to publish this work.

It’s Wednesday, and decisions made on Wednesdays tend to be slippery

It’s been many a year since I launched Snail Books, and countless manuscripts have crossed my desk. Most arrive quietly, as manuscripts do. But this morning, something different caught my eye.

A submission from an author calling himself Jan Andreas — a name that nudges a memory. The manuscript is titled, Me and My Shadow, a graphic reflection on solitude, small rituals, and a shadow that refuses to stay in its place.

I’ve read just enough to feel that familiar pull: a quiet strangeness, a thoughtful undercurrent, the sort of work that seems to watch you as much as you watch it.

Whether Snail Books should publish it … I haven’t decided. It’s Wednesday, and decisions made on Wednesdays tend to be slippery.

Divine is a short work with a larger story before its publication — and a tender real-life epilogue

The Divine Mind is a short work with a larger story before its publication — and a tender real-life epilogue since publication.

The book was first drafted by me in 1988, prompted by a request from my friend Ted Smith. Ted aspired to write a fantasy novel and asked me to help him by inventing a pantheon of human gods for his story’s background. It was a fun challenge. I created a collection of god-like characters loosely modelled on people I knew. The gods Sequorin and Allend were inspired by Ted and another friend, Jim. We were avid chess players, so I invented a cosmic game, Dasmark, to enrich the mythology. Other characters and their dynamics were based on vegetables in a garden and the turn of the seasons. Anticia, for example, is tall with silken hair like a corn stalk. Like the vegetables, each winter the gods retreat and renew.

I typed the manuscript on my Smith-Corona, photocopied and bound it at a local print shop, and handed out copies to friends. Ted passed away far too early, and the work slipped into obscurity.

Decades later, I found my only surviving copy gathering dust on a bookshelf. I scanned it into digital form—and in the process, destroyed the last printed copy. I dropped the file into a cloud drive, assuming that was where it would rest. But life has its own turns. Since my Parkinson’s diagnosis, I’ve felt a growing urgency to publish the writing I’ve carried for years. To that end, I founded Snail Books, an independent digital imprint for my original works. All I needed was a first release.

Lately, I’ve been writing essays about chess, and the connection with Dasmark resurfaced. The playful manuscript was already complete, so I revived it, gave it a thorough refresh, and—in a turn Ted would have relished—collaborated with AI on both text and images. The image of the god Sequorin looks strikingly like him.

Reading the original text again, I realized how much the times have changed. The gods reflected my own white bias and gender binaries. In this new version, I’ve spiced things up. The characters now show much more diversity in name, appearance, and gender identity. They are far more interesting.

As I mentioned, Ted passed away too early. I still have newspaper clippings from his obituary: Edwin C. Smith, born February 11, 1968, in St. Thomas, Ontario, to Robert and Mary-Ellen of Iona Station. It noted that he was the father of Scott and Tyler. I knew them both when they were young. Years later, when they were teenagers, we met and spoke about their connection with their dad through fantasy role-playing. I dedicated the new edition of The Divine Mind to Ted and his boys.

As I prepared this post, I reached out to Ted’s family to reconnect. Clearly, I had let too much time pass. I learned that Scott now identifies as Evelyn. I’m proud of her courage and was glad to tell her about the gender updates I had already made to the text. I learned, too, from their mother that both children, now adults, are brilliant. I updated the dedication to read:

For Ted Smith, and for his children, now adults, Evelyn and Tyler.

As an e-book on a digital publishing platform, anyone who has the old version will be invited to download the updated version. All future downloads will show the new dedication.

The story behind Snail Books and a life of writing at a human pace

While some people find careers and callings they love, many of us compromise—taking jobs to make a living, then finding time in the quiet hours and retirement to practice our art and satisfy the soul. Such is life in a capitalist society, where every act must be counted in dollars.

At 59, I have not quite finished my day job, but I’ve begun what will become my retirement passion: writing and publishing. I recently released a book, The Divine Mind, the first title from my own small press, Snail Books. This essay introduces me as an author and publisher.

My name is John Miedema. I live with my wife in Alcove, Quebec, a lovely rural village in the Gatineau Hills. We share our home with two dogs and love tending fires in our wood stove. I take cold plunges in the river with Wakefield locals throughout the winter. Our adult children live nearby.

I have been writing all my life. I grew up in my father’s print shop, and as a boy I started a family newspaper writing neighbourhood stories. In school I wrote plays and kept journals. I’ve often joked that university ruined me as a writer, forcing me into an academic style. Still, I published several research articles, a patent, and a book.

That first book was a small success. But let me back up. After completing an undergraduate degree in psychology, I worked in social services. The work was meaningful, but the pay was too low to raise a family. I pivoted to information technology, where I spent the next decade. Mid-career, I used a corporate tuition program to pursue a Master of Library and Information Science part-time, hoping to move into library work.

As part of that program, I researched the benefits of reading at a voluntary and reflective pace. I published them as a book, Slow Reading. It came out just as the Kindle was hitting the market and it became a modest hit. I was interviewed by international publications and invited to speak. I did not leave IT but was surprised that the library degree made my technology work more interesting —more on that below.

What finally cured me of academic writing was when I stopped writing altogether for a few years and took up illustration—painting, life drawing, and comic art. It taught me to think more visually and creatively. I attempted several graphic novel projects, but I’ll admit, I was never very good at them. Writing is my stronger art.

I still want to complete what I call a “worthy work of art.” Eighteen months ago, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. My health is good, but the diagnosis was a memento mori—a reminder to get moving. It sharpened my sense of purpose. I realized I no longer wanted to postpone what mattered most: to create something lasting, honest, and fully mine. I set aside illustration and returned to writing. This past year I’ve written many online essays on politics, philosophy, and technology. I began to consider what books I still wanted to write, which ones I could finish, and how I would publish them.

This is where my library degree and technology career come together. After completing the degree, I worked with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, digital humanities, and language models—tools that now seem perfectly suited for independent authorship and publishing. That’s why I launched Snail Books, with The Divine Mind as its first title.

I plan to keep doing this part-time until I retire, and then continue as a retiree. I’ll still spend much of my time enjoying life with my family and in the natural beauty of Alcove and the Gatineau Hills. For years I counted hours, projects, and pay. Now I count pages, walks with my dogs, and the turns of the seasons in Alcove. Perhaps that’s the truer arithmetic. Snail Books is my attempt to live by it—to make art at a human pace, where the soul can finally catch up with the clock.

Grateful for this deeply reflective guest essay of The Divine Mind by long-time writing colleague, Bryce Tolpen. In this review, Tolpen weaves excerpts from my book with his own monk yearnings and teaching memories. Check out his brilliant writing at Political Devotions.