The image of the left is a section of a photograph of the No Kings Protest in front of Los Angeles City Hall, snapped by the Wikipedia user ItalianAce. It is used in accordance with their Creative Commons License.

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When I was finishing the final draft of The Night Girl, the story was supposed to be set in 2018. Although the year is never mentioned, the dates correspond with 2018. Or 2029, as it turns out.

For the years that I wrote The Night Girl (2003-2016), the story was supposed to be far enough in the near future to feel contemporary, but slightly ahead of its time. Subway lines were finally going to open in Toronto, and there was a new (but somewhat familiar) mayor. Torontonians were going about their business as much as they were when I was writing the story.

Publishing takes longer than people think, but thanks to Kisa Whipkey and REUTS Publications, The Night Girl came out in October 2019, not too far into the near future for the story to clash with reality. (And thanks again to Ed Willett and Shadowpaw Press for giving the story a new lease on life in 2025)

Then 2020 happened.

While the reviews for The Night Girl have been favourable, some have criticized the resolution. One noted, "[it's] too good to be true. With the events of 2020, I admit that I lost a lot of hope in the human race, so I tended to side with the fairies on this one. In the real world, [this story] would have ended in rivers of blood." Others questioned the use of Toronto's homeless statistics as a plot device, with James Davis Nicoll noting that, if 20,000 goblins and trolls were enough to seriously bend the veil in a city with a population of three million, "any fey folk population larger than one percent of the human population is going to wreak havoc on the veil."

When writing The Night Girl and ending the story with the faeries, goblins and trolls coming out from behind the veil and allowing themselves to be seen by the human race, I tried my best to hint that the human reaction was mixed. While the worst of us would act as we'd expect them to, the best of us would open our arms, accept our new neighbours for who they are, and welcome them into society.

Tent encampments for the homeless were already a feature of North American cities by the time my novel came out. Since then, the situation has only gotten worse. We've seen the politicization of the pandemic, the celebration of ignorance and the rise of malicious disinformation. Then there's the ongoing plague of Trump and his fellow travellers, some of whom revel in cruelty, denounce empathy as sin, and wish death on the people I love for being queer.

With all this, I can see how some may see my resolution of The Night Girl as hopelessly optimistic. It's true that I'm an optimist, often a hopeless one, but my children genuinely dread the future, and I can't say "things will be all right" without sounding trite or condescending.

But does that change the need for people like the faeries, goblins and trolls to step out from behind the veil and demand respect for their existence, and for the angels among us to welcome them? I don't think so. Instead, the events of 2025 only demonstrate their courage in doing so. The question now becomes, how do we react?

A few weeks ago, millions of Americans took to the streets, from Los Angeles to New York and in over 2000 centres in between. They came out in some of the reddest of red states of America to stand up for the rule of law, to stand up against authoritarianism, and to demand respect for the human rights of all people. Yes, this is only the beginning of the struggle, but it shows that the best angels of our nature are still with us and within us.

There is a lot of work to do to fight back the fascists and win an optimistic world for our future. But it starts with standing up and, more importantly, never sitting down again.

And who knows? Maybe The Night Girl is set in 2029 after all.