Introduction
Welcome to my on-ramp. Buckle up for a rollicking ride, east on the Trans-Canada Highway from Victoria, BC, to St. John’s, Newfoundland. There will be plenty of wrong turns, bone-jarring potholes, and near misses as Colin Peterson sets out to rebuild his shattered life and fulfill a promise made.
Points of Departure: Adventures on Rialta Road is my fifth Direct-to-Web novel—that is, a story written and published episodically, in real-time, and shared as a stand-alone website. Go to CraigSpenceWriter.ca if you want to take a gander at my previous D2W books: The Boy From Under, The Mural Gazer, Entrapments (still being published), and Flibber T. Gibbet.
Direct-to-Web editions are: interactive, environmentally sensible, can bundle audio with text, are portable (they can be read on mobiles, tablets, and computers without any apps), and affordable (I ask readers to pay approximately what I would earn in royalties for a print edition, but don’t erect any pay barriers).
As with all my novels, Points of Departure is meant to entertain, explore, and challenge. I hope you have some good laughs, are enamoured or pissed off by its cast of characters, moved by its poignant passages, and discover things about yourself and your world in its pages.
The story was inspired by a cross-Canada odyssey my wife Diana and I took in 2022. Being British Columbians, we set out thinking there couldn’t be any place in the world as beautiful as Vancouver Island, and more delightful than our final hometown, Chemainus. From day one we were proven wrong. Canada is magnificent; Canadians, marvellous.
Four years later, the need to take modest pride in my homeland—an oh-so-Canadian point of view—has been brought into sharp focus. Tumultuous events that have rocked the world and shocked Canadians, especially, are a second impetus for this book. One of the endearing and enduring traits of we Canadians is our ability to laugh at ourselves and our dilemmas.
Humour can be serious business, though. Encapsulating overwhelming issues in a funny narrative helps us confront them. And making our stories plausible—what I call ‘real fiction’—adds to the uplifting effect of literature. I hope Points of Departure buoys your spirits, and that you find the sometimes laughable situations my characters get themselves into convincing.
Craig Spence
© Craig Spence, 2026
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
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ISBN: 978-1-7388526-9-7