Commitment Hour

AUTHOR'S NOTE Why Feliss City?

A number of the people who read Commitment Hour have had fun figuring out where the book takes place: near the tip of the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, on the east shore of Lake Huron. Anyone familiar with the area can identify most of the places referred to in the story…but they ask me what I meant by Feliss City.

So here's the answer.

Back in 1978, I wrote a number of radio comedies/dramas for CKMS, the campus radio station at the University of Waterloo. These included the series Sarah Goes to College and Percy Pulsar, Space Accountant. Those series were centered around the University of Waterloo, under the thinly disguised name of Felicity University. (Good old FU — a weak joke that got used more than it should have.)

Since that time, I've written a number of things that used the name "Felicity" for the city of Waterloo: comedy sketches, role-playing stuff, and even an unpublished fantasy novel. I saw no reason to change when I wrote Commitment Hour.

Therefore, Feliss City in Commitment Hour is good old Felicity, my perennial pseudonym for Waterloo. I realize this isn't a boffo explanation, but that's what my thinking was.

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