“These “meditations” are always engaging, easy to read, articulate – but above all, REALLY worth reading! I find every one of them thought-provoking, interesting, and true. I’d want to read this even if I never set foot on the Camino!” – Barbara Turner-Vesselago, author of Writing Without A Parachute: The Art of Freefall, Vala Publishers, 2013.
It’s 1964 in rural Ontario in Kelly Watt’s debut novel, Mad Dog, and 14-year-old Sheryl-Anne MacRae has a transistor playing the Supremes and a swoony crush on Peter Angelo, the guitar-playing hitchhiker working in her Uncle Fergus’s orchard for the summer. She also has the “sight,” the ability to see pictures of things in her head before they happen, or at least that’s how her uncle explains the horrible visions she has been having. The lazy adolescent curiosity of Sheryl’s summer of ‘64–reading Nancy Drew by the lake, aiming her binoculars at the lovely hired hand–is shadowed by a vague haze of cruelty and menace, which thickens the more we learn about Fergus’s apocalyptic ideas: that a new age is coming, and that “the true law is man’s will, what is evil often does good.” keep reading…
Watt was among the finalists for the Exile Editions short story contest sponsored by Gloria Vanderbilt. Some finalists in the resulting CVC anthology, from left to right: Martha Batiz, Kelly Watt, Amy Stuart, Gloria Vanderbilt and Jacqueline Windh. Read More
Kelly is a writer. She has written for print, radio and television for over two decades. Her award-winning short stories have been published in several literary magazines...
"The strangest coming-of-age story you ever did read."
—The National Post
"To call this a first-love/coming-of-age story would belie the suspense and mystery that Watt so adeptly creates."
—The Globe & Mail
"At the heart of Watt’s startling new novel is a look at fanaticism that dangerously blurs good and evil for the perceived fulfillment of a prophesy."
—Jenivieve DeVries, Highly Recommended by The Book Shelf, Guelph, ON