Corey Hayes writes slice-of-life stories about Edmontonians that sometimes include spec-fiction but always include satire.
Corey earned a double-major in English & anthropology from MacEwan University and isn’t at all bitter about graduating a snowshoe hare’s hair short of distinction. He has one creative essay and one seminar thesis published in MacEwan’s e-journal, but his crowning literary achievement was winning Mr. Daniel’s Silver Star Sticker for his eighth-grade story, “Why?”*
Corey has also sold restaurant equipment in Australia, taught English in South Korea, and bartended in disreputable establishments on both sides of The Rockies. His falsetto rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight has been applauded by karaoke-goers on three sides of the Pacific.
Corey doesn’t know what drove him to write Edmontonians but he reckons if just one person laughs or cries it was well worth the effort.
Corey lives in Edmonton, Canada.
* If you’re an agent, “Why?” is about an angsty Boltzmann boy-brain on a millisecond-long quest to find a girl-brain before he pops back out of existence. It is still unpublished. I can go get it now.
About Edmontonians
Edmontonians live in a place where winter lasts half the year. This isolation bends us into ourselves, into one another, and thrusts introspection, inquisitiveness, and innovation upon us. It also makes Edmonton, frozen or thawed, fertile ground for storytellers.
About the Magpies
Edmonton hosts a large community of black-billed magpies who live here year-round. Magpies are as curious, observant, and as lippy as my favourite writers and they play an integral role in Edmonton’s booming car-wash economy. If you’re ever tempted to strike up a conversation with a magpie don’t be surprised when its friends show up to lecture you from all sides about your failure to grasp even the most elementary of Magpiean prepositions. And never start with four squawks!
Why not help magpies in need by donating to the WILDNorth Northern Alberta Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation?
About the Artists
All images not created by me are 100% created, owned, and copyrighted by other talented Edmontonians and commissioned by, and licensed to, Corey Hayes.
To know more about these fabulous artists please contact them directly:
About CoreyHayes.ca
The purpose of this blog is to entertain you as I gain enough experience to become a traditionally-published writer.
CoreyHayes.ca is 100% ad-free and I will not sell your information. If you enjoy my stories, please support me by subscribing to The Rat Hole, by linking back to my stories, and by sharing them with your friends.
I did what I could to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). If something is broken, or you need a story in PDF or EPUB format, please let me know and I will find a way to fix it.
Domain, web, and email hosts are 100% Canadian-owned and operated, as is my subscription service.
New stories will appear here one day before they appear on my Substack.
Comments Policy
I am building something here. You are welcome to pick up some bricks to help me build but please don’t throw them at me.
Constructive criticism is welcome. Destructive criticism is not (but I may share a scathing review that tickles my funny bone).
Racism, sexism, populism, and all the other awfulisms will not be tolerated.
AI Policy
While I don’t know where AI might lead, I firmly believe that when it comes to art “automation leads to amputation”. So here’s the deal:
- When it comes to writing, MS Word’s native spelling and grammar checker is my only cheat and when it tells me I am wrong but I suspect I am right I tend to side with me*. I have never paid for nor used Grammarly or any of the big AI models, but yesterday I googled “farther vs further”;
- When it comes to images, artists who contribute to this site have been asked to not use AI.
That said, I knew nothing about webcraft when I began customizing my WordPress theme (Twenty Twenty-Four, by the way) and what took me weeks to learn might have taken months if not for Google’s Gemini. I also leaned on svgtopng.com, tinypng.com, and photopea.com to delete exif data, compress images, change formats, and to edit image backgrounds so they blend into the site.
* I learned to side with me after I spent the first three months of 2026 copying The Great Gatsby, Dubliners, and The Old Man and the Sea and Word red-marked hundreds of words, phrases, and punctuation marks it figured Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Hemingway had gotten wrong. Yes, I double-checked the original text and no, the red-lines were not due to an error on my part.
This practice of copying great authors word-for-word is called copy work.