Who the hell is Marc Heyez?
First off the bat, Marc Heyez is a pen name - my real name is Marc Gervais. It is a bane to my existence that many share my name including a singer, evangelist, pediatrician and even an actual author. My fears of identity theft have not yet been realized but a nifty thing to do would be to walk in a hospital room and say, “Hi, I’m Dr. Gervais, I will be delivering your lizard”, especially to a 63- year old man awaiting appendectomy.
I was born deaf to hearing parents as result of my mother contracting German measles (maternal rubella) during pregnancy in the late 1960s. I count myself lucky that I was not afflicted with any other unfortunate maladies such as the spasm that makes people stick their fingers in other people's noses like you see in Monty Python skits. I was first born and have a hearing sister and brother. We grew up in the suburbs of Dorval, Quebec which is the English west island of Montreal, and is the setting used in the book.
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MOSD was where I learned how to speak and lip-read and I was mainstreamed in a "deaf-impaired" school from grade 1 and was seen by a teacher from the MOSD every week to ensure that I do not mispronounce nun Maureen and headmistress Virgina's names without giggling. Despite this, I’ve told relatives and parents' friends that I had “candy stores” in my mouth (canker sores) and play hockey at a "Pubic area."
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All through elementary, high school and CEJEP (Quebec college), I wore a FM system in which the teacher wore a microphone and I had a receiver boot plugged to my hearing aids so I could hear every bodily noise the teacher made, even during lunch. I never had an oral or sign language interpreter during those years. I read voraciously, which helped me with my writing skills and knowledge of things arcane.
It was 1994 when I began writing "Fishy lips", a "monster in the box" that was on and off the shelf with many revisions and cutting out silly tangential stories until now. More on this later.
It was 1994 when I began writing "Fishy lips", a "monster in the box" that was on and off the shelf with many revisions and cutting out silly tangential stories until now. More on this later.
My first exposure to the culturally Deaf world was when I attended Gallaudet University where I picked up ASL and had my hearing impaired eyes yanked open to being Deaf as a person, not someone who has a disability. I graduated there in 1997 with a Master's degree, found a career job, met and married a lovely hearing woman from Belgium, had 2 hearing daughters, worked at MAB-Mackay in Montreal and now have settled in Kingston, Ontario where I work for the Canadian Hearing Society full-time. I consider myself happy having the best of both Deaf and hearing worlds, being able to speak clearly and sign fluently, thus could reasonably communicate to anyone except to Canada Revenue Agency auditors.
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Why did I write this book?
Being mainstreamed deaf, I struggled but managed to live in the hearing world filled with misunderstandings, “missed boats” and discrimination. Some of what happens to the Egg Flounder character has happened to me, with some wild embellishments (this is the legal bit where I absolve myself of any crimes the character has committed).
It has been said that a person’s intellectual and creative peak is in the early 20’s. When I was 22 years old, seeds of the book came about via jottings of random ideas, deaf-related embarrassing moments, or ridiculous musings scribbled in a notebook while on a bouncing city bus, over the drone of a university professor’s voice and half-asleep in the dark. Did I ever write! I actually filled out about 4 of these notebooks, supplemented by ideas, funny words, and silly questions written on margins of my school notebooks, napkins, and torn-off corners of newspapers.
It has been said that a person’s intellectual and creative peak is in the early 20’s. When I was 22 years old, seeds of the book came about via jottings of random ideas, deaf-related embarrassing moments, or ridiculous musings scribbled in a notebook while on a bouncing city bus, over the drone of a university professor’s voice and half-asleep in the dark. Did I ever write! I actually filled out about 4 of these notebooks, supplemented by ideas, funny words, and silly questions written on margins of my school notebooks, napkins, and torn-off corners of newspapers.
I first wrote a series of essays and half-page pieces of what I called “Random thoughts”, a compendium of philosophical, thoughtful and humourous musings. In 1994 I developed a basic story line of a deaf character, originally named Egg Pike, and used these random thoughts throughout. I turned this into storyboard which was a 1983 calendar whereupon I organised the events and storyline on each date. I was heavily inspired by the writings of Woody Allen, Dave Barry, Douglas Adams, stand-up comedy of Jerry Seinfeld and TV skits from Kids in the Hall and Monty Python. One working title was, “Egg’s clothesline”, in which the clothesline represented the storyline and the assorted naughty underwears, once-stinky socks and 1980 concert T-shirts were the random thoughts. The first draft was completed in 1997. |
Egg is thus somewhat based on my life and experiences (but not the exposing self to nuns bit). Like the character, I attended a private high school, went to the dances alone, weight lifted to build up my spindly arms and grew up with a hearing family. I had few hearing friends so was the "odd duck in a roomful of swans” and a "monastic mole with agoraphobia” like the character. Only Egg had better luck in the ladies' department than the real guy. I took my Snoopy fluffy to the prom. In my early 20s, I became involved with youth social group at the MOSD, which was one of my happiest years of my life – being with many others like me for the first time.
Then Life interfered in more ways than one. The book has been on and off the shelf since then. After finishing the first draft, I put myself through graduate school at Gallaudet University, the famed school for the Deaf. I moved from Montreal, Quebec to Vancouver, BC. I moved back to Montreal. I went fishing. I found a job in Montreal, a 90-minute commute to and from my home. I got married. Then I did more fishing.
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I renovated our entire basement with bruised thumbs and paint-streaked hair, a project that stretched out over 2 years. When I had 2 daughters 21 months part, I became a full-time dad, supportive husband and fix-it man. Revising my book took the back seat to changing smelly diapers, wiping green peas off the table legs, and answering endless requests for milk, bedtime stories and to act as the boogey-man warden.
I began to focus on revising and re-writing the book in 2010, spending at least 1-2 hours a night after my little girls were sound asleep and in between household chores and errands. Weekends were devoted to spending time with my family or fishing (my only escape); writing came at night when I wasn’t too lazy. Again, over the years, the book was on and off the shelf until I got over the hump and went ahead to publish it. Procrastination is the writer's worse enemy.
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." – Mark Twain