Producing Classification Pending by D. Gardiner

From Behind the Scenes to Making One

Throughout my working life, I've never stayed in one lane.

Music videos, dance tours, marketing campaigns—even sold a TV pitch. These days I work year-round as a tradesman in Muskoka.

The common thread? I was just processing opportunity.

So when I started writing my first book, I did the same thing. Learn the system, angle toward the gate. Seek placement.

The book apparently had other plans.

In just under 20,000 words, the narrator moves through three very different settings: a tax-sale auction in British Columbia, a Buddhist hermitage in Mexico, and the Toronto music video industry.

At the auction, everything in an old hotel is numbered, catalogued, and placed according to value and ease of movement.

From there, the book becomes increasingly concerned with what happens when the same thing is done to people.

The triptych won't fit neatly into typical publishing categories. It uses absurdity, dark humour, and gritty details to bring the scenes to life. Familiar genre tropes are tactical, restrained. What goes unsaid is often where the work examines—and challenges—how both fiction and personal stories are conventionally shaped.

The difficulty in placing the book wasn't accidental. It was inevitable.

Chained Pen Clearinghouse

The book is published through Chained Pen Clearinghouse, an imprint created for this book and future projects. The name comes from an object in the book: a chained desk pen, an item in the hotel that couldn't quite be catalogued. A tool of the system, tied to it but free to record.

A small clearinghouse for books about classification, institutional power, and voices that are hard to place.

Launching Classification Pending

The book is now available on Amazon for Kindle and through Kindle Unlimited.

It's a short read—roughly the length of a feature film.

You can find the Amazon link on the book page here at MuskokaHandiwork.com.