Canadian Werewolf – The Story So Far
Please note that there are SPOILERS to the series included below.
Don’t say you weren’t warned that if you keep reading, there’ll be spoilers.
About the Canadian Werewolf Series
The “Canadian Werewolf” series follows Michael Andrews, an ex-pat Canadian trying to make his way in the Big Apple while living with the side-effects of turning into a wolf after sunset during the cycle of the full moon.
Michael converts into a grey wolf during these times and has no conscious awareness of his time in wolf form except for fleeting memory snippets.
When he is in his human form he has enhanced wolf-related senses (smell, sound, taste) and strength. His immune system and ability to heal are also greatly advanced.
Each book in the series could be read as a stand-alone novel. But the books do follow a sequential timeline.
If you are starting anywhere in the series but Book One (A Canadian Werewolf in New York) you might find this helpful so you don’t feel that you absolutely HAVE TO read all the books.
Please note (again) that the details below contain spoilers.
BOOK ZERO – THIS TIME AROUND
(A 10,000 word short story)
This is the original story that was eventually adapted into the novel A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK.
It explores the early morning of Michael Andrews (un-named in this story) when he wakes up naked in Battery Park with a bullet in his leg, the taste of human blood in his mouth, and no memory of the night before. His challenge is to find some clothes and get back to mid-town Manhattan for an important meeting with his literary agent. Staying “undetected” in his current condition is amplified by the fact that he’s somewhat of a celebrity given his New York Times bestselling author status.
The narrator’s first clothing acquisition is a pair of soiled pink panties that are a couple of sizes too small for him. He then encounters a developmentally disabled adult whom he befriends and protects from a bully, scoring the bully’s pants. Because of the bully’s bloodied nose his shirt is blood-stained. He wears an A-frame sign to cover his shirt-less nature, and barters with a bag lady to get his hands on a shirt. He stops a subway mugging. The grateful mugging victim, assuming he is a homeless person based on how he is dressed, refuses to take no for an answer when he offers him some cash. Rather than argue — he has to flee the scene as the authorities arrive, preferring to stay anonymous and not answer questions from the police — he accepts the money and runs back up to the street. He hails a cab, using the reward money to pay for it, and makes it just in time for the meeting.
BOOK ONE – A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK
August 14, 2014
This novel documents a single day in the life of Michael Andrews. The first six chapters of this novel align very closely with the details of the short story “This Time Around.”
After waking up naked with a bullet hole in his leg, the taste of blood in his mouth, and a suspicion he was fighting with another wolf the night before.
At the meeting with his agent, Mack “The Knife” Halpin, Michael learns that he is a last-minute replacement guest on that afternoon’s taping of the David Letterman show. His agent also shares that Michael’s publisher is antsy to see some progress on his forthcoming novel, and demands an excerpt that afternoon before he leaves for the Ed Sullivan Theater.
As he is back in his apartment working on his latest manuscript, Michael is surprised by the unexpected arrival of ex-girlfriend Gail Sommers. She shows up to announce she knows he’s a werewolf,and that she needs his help. She believes his enhanced senses could be leveraged in helping to find her finance, whom she believe is kidnapped.
Michael helps her, realizes he never got over her and is still in love with her. He also uncovers the fact her fiance has been cheating on her.
In the middle of a tough situation, a traveling salesman friend, Buddy J. Samuels, bumbles onto the scene, creating a distraction that helps Michael defeat a group of thugs. Michael appreciates Buddy, remembering how the appeared in the nick of time during a deserted highway wolf attack that led to his affliction.
Gail is with Michael when, during the live taping of the Letterman show, the other werewolf, Knell (a shock rock musician, who is another guest on the show), fight to the death.
It ends with Michael hoping that perhaps he and Gail can, one day, be back together.
BOOK TWO – STOWE AWAY (novella length)
July 31 to Aug 1, 2015
A year later Michael is still pining for Gail, but they’re friends. She’s not ready for a relationship after the fiasco with her fiance and the fact Michael had lied to her years earlier about being a werewolf.
After Gail has to leave for Stowe, Vermont for a family emergency, Michael decides to head up north to be with her. On the train ride north from Manhattan, he encounters a teenager (Bridget Wells – nicknamed Bridge) on the run from a human predator. The two team up and he mentors her and protects her, but she also mentors him and advises him on having an honest talk with Gail about how he feels.
BOOK THREE – FEAR AND LONGING IN LOS ANGELES
June 13, 2017 thru July 4, 2017
Michael and Gail are still friends, and, no matter how much he has tried, she is still not interested in having a relationship. Even though he can sense that she loves him, he also knows that she’s not ready to trust again.
His agent arranges for him to head to Hollywood to work on the set of one of his books being turned into a movie. He feels this is the change to “get over” Gail. He ends up coming to term with the fact they’ll only ever be friends and shortly after meets someone in LA.
The someone he meets, Lex, (Alexandria) is a woman he falls in love with. But she also has supernatural abilities – as an ex member of the PFA (Proud Fighters for America) her artificially induced abilities mean that her proximity reduces supernatural abilities of those in her vicinity. She nullifies magic.
During an encounter where a gang gets the better of Michael, his traveling salesman friend Buddy Samuels appears, like he has in the past, seemingly out of nowhere, to rescue Michael.
Lex and Michael fight the PFA and the PFA seeks revenge on Lex for her betrayal of them. Michael realizes that when he’s with Lex his werewolf nature, powers, and abilities disappears. This could allow them to be a “normal” couple. But LA is too dangerous, as the PFA is still after Lex. The novel ends as they decide to escape the growing concerns of the PFA and head back to New York together to try to live a normal life.
BOOK FOUR – FRIGHT NIGHTS, BIG CITY
July 4, 2017 through July 15, 2017
Michael and Lex return to NYC to begin their “normal” life.
Only Gail meets them at the airport, to surprise Michael, having no idea he was bringing his new girlfriend back with him. Gail is now ready to love Michael. Michael founds himself torn between these two women he loves. At the same time, they discover the PFA has a branch operating in NYC, and the leader, Marco, has followed them from LA to the Big Apple.
Lex and Gail and Michael team up with another werewolf and a secret division of the FBI to fight the PFA and put a stop to their attempt to infect the inhabitants of New York City with a “Berserker” powder that would drive normal people to commit extremely violent acts.
Michael’s friend Buddy appears, again, at what seems the right time for his rambling trivial blathering to help plant clues that helps Michael and his friends determine the secret location of the PFA’s nefarious plans.
During the climax where they end up defeating the PFA, Lex ends up sacrificing herself so that Michael can save Gail’s life. At the very end she admits she knew he never stopped loving Gail the whole time they were together.
BOOK FIVE – LOVER’S MOON
(co-authored with Julie Strauss)
July 28 & July 29, 2017 – Prologue and Epilogue / Main Content: May through Nov 2011
This is a flashback story to Michael and Gail when they FIRST met several years earlier and fell in love.
The memory is kicked off when, after weeks of Michael moping around about Lex’s death, and Gail being there to comfort him, they end up sleeping together, and re-igniting the love they both thought they’d lost.
The story-within-the novel is a “romantic comedy” about them first falling in love.
When, at the Epilogue, the story returns back to present-day, Michael is surprised by Gail’s brother Ben and her ex best-friend Isabeau at his door. Both characters, who are introduced in the flashback story arrive to announce that they need to talk – something really serious just happened involving Michael and Gail.
BOOK SIX – HEX AND THE CITY
(co-authored with Julie Strauss)
July 29, 2017 through Sunday August 20, 2017
Michael and Gail’s newly re-kindled love is interrupted when Ben (Gail’s brother) and Isabeau (Gail’s former best friend) force their way into Michael’s apartment to warn them about the ancient curse they’ve unlocked.
As Ben and Isabeau separate the two lovers, trying to explain the curse, neither Michael nor Gail wants to hear anything about it. They’ve already overcome so much to be together, and they naively believe that love for one another can conquer all.
Gail is transported via to New Orleans in a portal conjured by Isabeau where they encounter Artair, the first of a several snake-like supernatural humans, and their mini demon horde. She learns that Isabeau is a witch and is re-united with Isabeau grandmother and her family. She is startled to find her mother, Darina Sommers appear on the doorstep and learn that her entire family (including Gail) are witches, and that a curse was placed on the Sommers clan preventing them from being with, or conceiving a man. An ancient prophecy spoke of a female born after the only Sommers male (Gail and Ben are twins. Ben is one minute older than his sister) mating with a wolf from the north to unleash demons from hell and apocalyptic-like havoc on the earth. Ben and Isabeau had been secretly trying to keep Michael and Gail apart, and Isabeau went so far as to create an enchantment at Gail’s shop that prevented her from acting upon her inherent love for Michael. Gail’s attempts to flee back to New York are thwarted by Isabeau. Eventually, Gail manages to convince her former best friend to head north to New York, and the two take a road trip where Isabeau begins to teach Gail how to draw upon and leverage her Paranormal powers.
Back in New York, Ben has explained that the curse is protected by a series of talismans that are hidden across North America called the Baloraye. They need to be destroyed in order to nullify the curse, and one is supposed to be here in New York City. Feeling helpless, and panicking about where Gail disappeared to. Michael wants to take action. He wants to find and destroy the Baloraye. He wants to rush off to New Orleans to be with Gail. As his anxiety grows, a text from Gail prompts him to knock Ben out and head to the airport. On his way there, he runs into the middle of a terrorist-style attack near Penn Station that already has claimed several innocent victims. In his attempt to prevent further death, Michael dons a hasty disguise and attacks the gunmen. In his fight he is temporarily infected by the Apatetic Spirit (a possessive demon spirit) that had been controlling one of the gunmen, and loses control and suffers a black out in the middle of killing the second of the two terrorists. His whereabouts are unaccounted for as Ben scrambles about trying to find him.
Ben is finally able to locate him after an anonymous note is slipped under his door, and he nurses Michael back to health and rid him of the evil entity inhabiting his body. While Michael is back in control of his body, the AP is still inside him. The evil spirit usually only takes effect when Michael experiences extreme emotion – especially anger. Ben tries to keep him as calm as possible. As the only person in his family without Paranormal abilities, Ben tries unsuccessfully to conduct a ritual to remove the spirit from Michael.
Ben contacts Isabeau, asking for her help in exorcising the evil spirit from Michael’s body. During their meeting, Michael and Gail briefly reunite and witness, first-hand, the impact of the curse as nearby animals behave erratically and a fresh horde of demons appear from out of nowhere. Isabeau and Ben are injured in the fight before Darina Sommers appears through a portal, uses her powers to hold off the demons and whisks Gail, Ben and Isabeau to safely; but not before she pushes Michael through a different portal telling him to stay away from Gail.
Michael wakes to find himself in a labyrinth deep below the city. He struggles with his intense anger that triggers the Apatetic Spirit to take over as he fights a bunch of Wraith spirits and climbs his way to the surface. When he gets there he is disturbed to see it is nightfall, and realizes, due to the cycle of the moon, he is about to change. The next morning when he is back in human form he realizes that the change between man and wolf resulted in his rejecting of the possessive spirit. His old pal Buddy meets him at the park with a change of clothes. Over breakfast, Michael learns that Buddy doesn’t understand the source of his compulsions to find Michael and relay information to him; just that it happens and he has no choice but to enact upon the instinctual prompts.
In a secret domicile outside the city, Darina nurses Isabeau and Ben back to health. But they are discovered by Artair and his accomplish lover Laxmi. Gail learns that the woman she hired to manage her store, Jaya, was actually Laxmi, family enemy. Artair is killed and before escaping Laxmi swears her revenge on the Sommers clan.
Buddy’s clues lead Michael on a hunt to find the Baloraye at an old water tower in the city. As he is about to find it, Darina, Gail, Isabeau, and Ben show up. So do the enemy hordes. There is a deadly battle, but night falls and Michael changes into wolf form. He ends up fighting side-by-side with Gail while in wolf form. They eventually overcome the demon hordes and cease the Baloreye, but in the climactic battle Michael is critically injured while saving Ben’s life. Darina steps in front of a spear that would have killed Michael, sacrificing her own life for his.
The book ends with Gail hiding a secret note for Michael at a special location in Central Park. While they found one Baloreye there are still more, and the curse remains active. They must stay apart, and she needs to embark on a solo journey to learn more about herself and find a way to stop the curse.
BOOK SEVEN – ONLY MONSTERS IN THE BUILDING
August 28, 2017 through Sept 8, 2017
What could possibly go wrong when a werewolf needs therapy?
Michael Andrews has suffered the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune while living with lycanthropy. But the blackouts from when transforms into a wolf, and the latest loss of his one true love have finally pushed him right over the edge.
In desperation, he checks into a secret and remote retreat in upstate New York to undergo group therapy with a mysterious and motley crew of other supernatural creatures.
But when their therapist is found dead—apparently the victim of a brutal murder—Michael and the other patients (a studious fairy, a vegan vampire, a shy mermaid, a clingy werecat, and an extroverted troll) look at one other as suspects.
Will his years of writing mystery novels be enough to help him through a case where he may be the guilty one?
“Only Monsters in the Building” is a humorous and mysterious adventure that will keep you laughing on the edge of your seat.
BOOK EIGHT – A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, ONTARIO
To unravel the mystery of his werewolf roots, Michael Andrews returns to his old stomping grounds of Canada and traces a bizarre path of destruction that lead him and his faerie companion on the trail of the father he barely knew.
Get notified about this next book’s release.