Whitehorse writer Peter Jickling is launching his new book, I Believe This is Not the End, with an event at the Woodcutter’s Blanket on Nov. 5
Peter Jickling was part of What’s Up Yukon’s editorial team from 2012–2015, during which he wrote a weekly column called “Jickling’s Jabberings.” He essentially had free reign to write whatever he wanted—humorous anecdotes, touching real-life stories and hot-take opinion pieces, among other things. He’d had the idea to put some of his stories together into a book, for some years, but it took a backseat to other projects of his, until recently.
“After I left What’s Up Yukon, towards the end of 2015, it was always on my mind that I should compile a little book and put it out … of a selection of these columns,” he said. “It had been on my mind for a while.”
Jickling’s book, titled I Believe This is Not the End: 52 Hot Takes, was in the works for close to a decade. In 2016, he started choosing stories and giving them an initial edit, but shelved the project for some time when he took up poetry and explored some other creative outlets. This spring, Jickling revisited the idea and decided it was time to finish his book.
“It was almost more for my own sense of completion, or finishing the circle, than anything else,” he said.
When Jickling picked his project back up, he was initially worried that too much time had passed since the columns were written, and he wasn’t sure how they’d aged. He found this wasn’t so much of an issue, however, as lots of his stories delved into topics that could be relevant at any time.
“They still seemed like they would be entertaining for a modern audience,” he said. “So, I just picked up where I left off.”
Given that Jickling wrote about pretty much anything he wanted in “Jickling’s Jabberings,” within the confines of a family-friendly magazine, the selections that made it into his book cover a variety of topics. He recalled the public’s reception to certain stories, as they came out, and asked friends and family which ones they’d like to see make the cut.
“The topics really range,” he said. “I wrote one about losing my grandparents; all in the same year, I wrote one about why Theroen Fleury should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame; there’s one about cannibalism and kind of my own take on cannibalism; there’s one on Calvin and Hobbes, one of my favourite comic strips growing up, there’s one about The Tragically Hip; there’s one about drinking beer in the shower; there’s one about selling my old car and getting a new car. There’s 52 of them, altogether, and they really range across topics quite widely. A lot of them are humorous, but not all of them. Some are quite sad or quite serious, so it really covers a broad spectrum.”
To publish his book, Jickling started his own publishing company called Icebound Editions. He wasn’t sure that there would be a market among publishers, to put out a compilation of decade-old and previously published columns from the Yukon, and he’d always thought it would be fun to run a book publishing company, so it was a move that made sense.
“I decided to just do the whole process, from the very beginning to the very end, and see how it felt, see if I liked it, and see if it was something worth repeating,” Jickling said. “What better way to start than with your own book? It was sort of an experiment to see what the process of publishing a book would feel like.”
Jickling is hosting a book launch party on Nov. 5 at the Woodcutter’s Blanket, during which he’ll be reading a handful of the stories from his book, and selling and signing copies. The doors open at 7 p.m., the readings will start at 7:30, and the event is set to wrap up at 10. It will be an open house for people to drop in, pick up a book and chat with Jickling.
“I think it’s like anything else,” Jickling said. “When you’ve got something you worked hard on that you’ve thought a lot about and now it’s finally coming to fruition, you get excited. I get to have a party, and all my friends can come and buy my book and that’s cool too.”
