March 6th, 2024

Orphan prose: sandwich edition

So much text gets cut in the course of writing a novel or story–the work I’ve published is probably a tiny fraction of the total word count that was drafted for the project. If I like the bit I’m cutting, I often stick it in a file of off-cuts, intending to revisit and use them for something else but realistically I never do–it’s like planning to rewear a bridesmaid dress–it’s really only good for the thing it was intended for. So here’s some drunk people in a kitchen late at night, chatting and making a sandwich. It doesn’t suit anything other than the chapter it was intended for, and really, as it turns out, it doesn’t suit that either. But I still quite like it.

Up the stairs in the quiet kitchen by the grey light of the stove hood, Bella is making a sandwich. Jody is fairly certain he is too drunken and tired for this, plus that fucking Greyhound in the morning, filled with the burps and farts of other hungover idiots. And Marcy’s pointed chin tucked into her chest, nose scrunched in dismay to realize he is among the idiots, farting along with them all. It’s such a sad drag of a weekend he is staring into, despite the hug from Colleen, the small arms and neck, the sticky face and handful of rocks and gum she often offers him—it’s worth it but…still, a hard sell.

Bella clanks her knife into the peanut butter jar and turns, jumping when she sees him draped in the cellar doorway. ”Oh! Oh sorry. Hey Jody. Hello. Do you want a sandwich?”

Jody is filled to the jawline with beer and party mix but it seems very awkward to reject the offering and if the kitchen becomes awkward he will have to remember where the busstop is and how often the bus comes, and where he gets off to transfer, all things he doesn’t want to do, if he’s even qualified when he’s this drunk, which he doubts.

“Sure. Thank you.” She is still looking at him in the grey light, so he nods a little bit, trying to think of something else to say. “I appreciate it.”

Finally, Bella looks down and starts to pull more bread from the bag, dunk the knife back into the jar. “Banana?” There’s one cut neatly in half on the counter. “Or there’s blueberry jam in the fridge.”

Jody says banana because that seems like the least trouble. What Sabrina always put in a peanut butter sandwich and what he now feels belongs there is honey, but that’s not on offer so he says nothing further. He hasn’t seen Sabrina in more than two years, or heard anything from her, or from Trevor. Once, in the art listings in Now, he saw that some her paintings were in a gallery way east on Queen—the reviewer even called them sepulchral in a way that seemed kind of positive—and Jody felt happy but he didn’t go. He was just glad she hadn’t killed herself. She often said she might. He supposed the existence of the paintings in a show wasn’t airtight proof that the artist was still alive but, again, it seemed positive.

“Here,” says Bella, as if she might have said it a few times already, and thrusts the plate at his chest.

He takes it and the sandwich, in neat diagonal halves. Bella picks up her own plate, then slides her tiny ass up onto the counter. Jody is much taller but it seems much harder for him to get up onto the counter. He tries the slide and then a hop and then decides to eat leaning. After the first bite, they are still silent so he ventures through banana, slightly muffled, “I’m sorry about Nic.”

Bella looks puzzled. She chews, swallows. “Nic, my boyfriend, Nic?”

Jody nods. He doesn’t know where he is going with this. Bella is truly very pretty, her cheekbones making her face all shadows until she smiles, wide pink. Still, it seems unlikely. “Yeah. Ex-boyfriend, I guess. Sorry.” How is he still chewing?

“Oh—we’re still together, we didn’t break up.” Bella isn’t…laughing, quite, but she isn’t not laughing, either. “What gave you that idea?” She jams most of a sandwich half into her mouth, still sort-of laughing.

Jody can feel it in his face, the colour of cherry Kool-aid, the temperature of a hot bath—embarrassment. Not for an honest mistake but for what he might have done: asked her out, kissed her? Who knows?

“Sorry, sorry, I must have misunderstood, or something. Something.”

Still chewing, truly laughing now, Bella tips back on the counter and clonks into the cupboard door and abruptly shushes herself. Is she high? It’s hard to tell—Jody doesn’t know her that well.

“Theo? He said something to you?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Oh my god, he heard us fight last night, gave me a hug when I was upset but he didn’t, like, ask me any questions.”

Jody nods. He is such an asshole but maybe this is fine, good? He will finish the sandwich, and then leave, and no one wants or needs anything from him? Fine?

“What did he say to you?’

Jody swallows and a chunk of unchewed banana slithers down his throat.

“Not that much, just that you—” he’s already admitted he thought they broke up, he can say that “—you two split, you were sad.”

“Oh, poor non-existent-listening-skills Theo. A fight is not the end. He and Roxy fight all the time and they’re fine, he should know. It’s how you get to know each other better.”

Jody leans back against the counter, eating, wondering. He and Marce have almost never fought, and they know each other well—or at least, have known each long, which almost amounts to the same thing. Pretty nearly. And he actually does not think Theo and Rox are fine, it always seems tense when he joins them at a table in a bar, gets into the back seat of the car when they’re up front. But they are both so great as individuals and what does Jody know about relationships? He has never asked anything about Roxy except about her singing—he cannot get enough of her voice.

“So you’re not…so you’re still together.” His mouth is sticky, craving milk. Bella would get him some if he asked—the Addisons probably have some, they are so pure and good, even though Bella is likely high as they chat here in her kitchen, high or rolling, on something.

“Have you ever actually dated anybody, Jody?” Bella isn’t laughing at him, but she isn’t entirely straight-faced either.

“Oh, well, in high school, I had a girlfriend.”
            “Yeah, yeah, Marce, of course. Marce.” Her tone—he can’t quite place it. As if Marcy isn’t real, or isn’t really his. Or—something. Some part of this is made up. Somehow.

“And…I’ve dated other people. A bit.”

It’s more like a smirk this time.

“There’s a bus at 10:27 if you’re getting it, and then not until 10:57. She points at the wall clock—10:20.

“Oh, so I should.” The sandwich has disappeared—his belly feels bloated and huge from all the beers, party mix, and now this stupid and unnecessary sandwich that he doesn’t even remember eating. “Go.”

“Have a good weekend, Jody.” Bella follows him to the door and when he turns, anticipating a hug, she takes the peanut-butter smeared plate.

January 9th, 2024

2023 in (my) publishing life

I made the usual effort to reflect at the end 2023 and what a year–what a cavalcade of things! There were a lot of personal events for me in 2023–I moved, published a book, lost one job, was freelance for a bit, got another job, and all the more minor bumps and highlights that don’t suit being Timeline Events on Facebook. But what I am mainly thinking about lately is one of the many things that was great and terrible about my 2023 was publishing life. The books, the mags, the sharing, the collabs, the whirlwind opportunities, the ideas, the help and support and endless endless work in support of awesomeness. I’ve never been so deeply in it, and I’ve never been so shocked at how hard it all is, and how cool the best people are, and how smart. I have never had so much help and believed so much in the power of the collective, but also–there’s no other way. I worked my a$$ off at two different jobs, a handful of freelance gigs, and my own book in 2023 and I was both amazed at how much of it was and is a spaghetti of cross-wired grant applications and connections and ideas handed around until they find their best fit. Being over in magazines now is the same song in a different key–I have a tremendous amount to learn, I am highly (highly!) aware of that, but a lot of the basic outlines are familiar.

But there are a lot of challenges. Certainly, a lot of what happened at Inanna was unique to the situation but also there were some things that were universal because publishing is publishing. Nothing could have shocked me more after working for six months in the tiny Inanna office–which, let’s be real, is a repurposed supply closet with a mysterious black ooze hardened on the back wall–than going to the London Book Fair. I had sort of forgotten about capitalism, there in the supply closet with everyone just sort of scrabbling around to give each other a hand however they could, but meanwhile in another part of the forest, a lot of people remembered. I keep thinking I will write about that experience–I keep trying to, the original draft of this post had some thoughts–but it was too wild. TOO WILD. I didn’t craft my wardrobe properly for all the sitting on the floor I had to do. But I was pretty successful at the fair–shockingly so, really–because my Inanna colleagues and the Canadian publishing community painstakingly helped me get ready, step by agonizing step. It takes a village. Also my English friend who taught me to buy meal deals at the Aldi for 5 pounds rather than the expensive food in the fair, that helped me too.

I feel like I’ve seen too much about publishing and whenever anyone asks, “Aren’t you worried your book isn’t getting enough attention, don’t you want to do more promo for it, are you worried about publishing your next book?” I think I AM worried about those things…and then I think about that huge dizzying wonderland/hellscape in London, about all the really good publishers struggling with grant applications written in morse code and runes, about all the hours and hours and hours I spent worried about some “portal” or other logging me out and not saving everything properly and all the people who just never responded to my emails even when it was their actual job to respond to my emails, and the TWO different people who actually had no responsibility to email me back, who responded very politely to say they would prefer I never email them again. I have for the record obeyed. And so yeah, I love my own books, and I want them to be successful but I just…cannot get very fussed about it. Mainly…every now and then I’m still fussed. But really–just what are the odds! If you have seen what I’ve seen–which is actually NOT all the books published in the English-speaking world in a year, but a fair percentage of them–you just can’t get that upset anymore. You still work hard–I still work hard–but like Le Petit Prince on his tiny planet (why are so many things like Le Petit Prince to me?)…it’s an odd perspective.

What am I saying? Maybe I’m saying what I’ve been saying since I started back in 2002–the sky has always been falling. Except I’m older now, and more tired, and it’s hard to keep putting the sky back together. I would like publishing life to be easier for more people, to be a more welcoming environment for a broader range of people who can’t eat a cheap squished sandwich while standing in the gutter in three minutes so they can rush right back to work. A career path like that necessarily leaves a lot of people out, more and more, and it’s sad to see. I can’t begin to describe how generously I’ve been treated and how exhausted I’ve been–even just today, both things.

September 25th, 2023

Most Ideas Can Be Good

I was going to write this post for the company blog when I was doing acquisitions at my previous job but since i don’t have that role anymore, I just thought I’d write it here for the general public good. I do think it’s something folks need to hear and, of course, has been said before but a reminder is useful.

It is of limited utility to try to come up with a “good idea” for your book. Not that you shouldn’t want the premise of your book to be excellent, of course, but instead of trying to get some sort of outside validation, it’s much more important to find an idea that excites you as an author enough that you’ll do the necessary work to see it through draft after draft without getting bored, to make an excellent book. Only the individual author knows what ideas those are.

This is not out of some pure-hearted “everyone needs to write their truest story” belief though I mean, sure, that too. I just have seen too many seemingly intriguing book ideas murdered by sloppy, nuance-free writing–and I’ve read so many fantastic, original, enthralling books based on such banal concepts as “people fall in love but there are problems,” “there’s a murder but who did it?” or “family through the generations is messed up.” A fantastic writer can make new the tritest concept but it’s very hard for someone who isn’t hard-working, talented, and putting in serious time to do very much with even the most ingenious brand-new never-before-seen squid-falls-in-love-with-banana rock opera (that one is yours for the taking).

Getting someone to evaluate your ideas without seeing the execution almost never works unless you are working in a very specific genre where really only a narrow set of specific concepts WILL work (sometimes romance at certain subgenres, a few others) or if you are working on something extremely topical and of limited duration you might need to have some guardrails…even then, if you’re a genius, you can get around it. During my brief period in acquisitions, folks would send me ideas and ask me if they should write them and unless they were really love stories about invertebrates and fruit, I said yes–I’d love to see it, but what I couldn’t say is, sounds promising, but how good a writer are you and how hard are you going to work on this? Because that’s what really matters. And if you have some holes in your craft–and don’t we all–you can just work harder, keep drafting, get feedback, patch’em up, if that’s the story you really want to tell. But for most of us, it’s only if we’re madly in love with a story that we’ll work that hard. Which is why other people’s opinions at the starting line don’t matter that much–the finish line is a whole other stratosphere in so many cases. Or it should be.

Of course if you are writer and you go to parties and–like a fool–tell people you write, someone will occasionally “give” you an idea and suggest you write it for them. It’s a gift, free of charge, all you have to do is spend three to five years bleeding all over your computer trying to write, edit, and publish it. What a freebie!!

You see? MOST IDEAS ARE GOOD, if you have the time, energy, talent, and tenacity to work with them to make them as good as they need to be. But most of us only have those things for a few ideas in our whole lives–and we spend it carefully. If you’re not going to invest it, even the cleverest idea won’t actually result in a good book, or a fun experience writing it. So…instead of worrying about who likes our ideas, it might be best to worry about whether we, the writers like our ideas enough to put in the work. Because you gotta love it enough to make it all worthwhile, is my opinion.

August 29th, 2023

Events, past and upcoming

So the FanExpo event on Friday was pretty interesting–I had certainly never been anywhere like FanExpo before.

My fellow panelists, Denise Da Costa, Tanya Turton, and Nathan Whitlock along with moderator Eden Boudreau were just lovely and brilliant to chat with and the crowd, while not enormous, with very engaged. You can see a small write-up on Comicon (we are the last section, though it’s quite interesting to see the other panels that ran that day–ours was a bit different!)

Upcoming events include my VIRTUAL LAUNCH costarring my main character/main squeeze (can’t believe I just came up with that play on words) Mark Sampson. You can go to EventBrite for a ticket (free, but that’s how you get a Zoom link closer to the day of) and see the lovely poster from Dundurn below.

Also upcoming is a fabulous new event, just announced–I’ll be at the Toronto International Festival of Authors with Diaspora Dialogues on Sunday September 24, 11am, with Elizabeth Ruth–so excited!! Hope to see lots of pals at these very exciting parties–cannot wait!

August 21st, 2023

Lots Going on This Week

I haven’t had a very hectic schedule with These Days Are Numbered…except this week?! Not sure why but I’ll take it. I realize most folks aren’t reading this blog week to week but I post things here as a kind of repository and in case of googlers–anyway–here’s what’s up

I wrote a blog post on the Dundurn site about the nature of truth in the writing of These Days Are Numbered. I always wondered about how memoirs are truth but also, when you know the person who wrote it, it’s not exactly how it is–or not only that?? It’s weird. Anyway, I still don’t exactly get it, but there’s more in the most.

I also wrote a post for the Shepherd website about the best novels (according to me) about community and connection, one of my favourite topics and certainly a big one in TDAN, which is not a novel but much of my reading material is. ANYWAY, the post is about a real wide range of books, so hopefully there’s something there for all to enjoy.

And finally on Friday I’m doing a book panel at Toronto FanExpo on Friday–6:30 with a bunch of really cool Dundurn authors who also write about my true love, Toronto. Should be a weird wild hopefully wonderful event. Join us??

August 13th, 2023

Out and About

These Days Are Numbered has been a different kind of publishing experience for me–6 years after my last book, publicity venues have retracted, and there’s more on the author than ever before. And I’m probably at my lowest ebb in terms of what I’ve been able to do for my book–just when more would have been ideal–between a move, a demanding job, and then suddenly becoming unemployed–it just hasn’t been my time to get out there and promote!! But I have been doing what I can, and a few really lovely things have come my way, with a few more upcoming–and the upside of life settling into an admittedly not ideal groove post job-loss is at least I’ll have more time. And every little bit of time spent on the book is pretty fun for me!

I’ve been out signing books in bookstores where I can find them, and I did a really fun interview with Jamie Tennant on Get Lit at CFMU available on Spotify about the book, I organized a raffle for some download codes for the audiobook book that’s over now but that audiobook is still out there on all your major audio platforms. I’ll be on a panel called Lost in Toronto on August 25 6pm at Fan Expo and I will be having a virtual launch on Sunday September 10 2-4pm (EDT) (via Zoom, RSVP to the EventBrite for the link) for those who couldn’t attend the Toronto one or just prefer virtual. And this nice review on Minerva Reader turned up too (there’s one in the post of my earlier book The Big Dream, too–bonus! And there’s a few more things to come that I’m aware of…stay tuned…

August 2nd, 2023

These Days Are Numbered: Ongoing Adventures

These Days Are Numbered, my new book, has been in the world a little over six weeks–in that time, I have moved apartments, been laid off from my job, and Mark has been away for two weeks. Suffice to say, I have not been a whirlwind of book promotional wonders. But I have been trying to enjoy the ride for what it is–it’s a very special thing to have a book in the world. I had a lovely book launch at Queen Books on July 18, with a stage interview with Christine Fischer Guy, tonnes of friends, books, and snacks, and many hugs. Pics? Of course (courtesy Lisa de Nikolits):

As well, the audiobook of TDAN is out now and I really love it–such a different interpretation of the written version of the story I created. It’s such a tremendous gift to see/hear my stories in a new way. I have few extra download codes so I’m doing a little draw on Instagram–if you’re interested, please go to this post and comment that you’re interested and I’ll do the draw after August 9 11:59pm. Feel free to share the link around if you know anyone who might be interested too.

And finally, a couple September events to save the dates for–no links yet but I’ll be doing a virtual launch, hosted by my love and main character Mark Sampson, on September 10 2-4pm, via Zoom–more details and EventBrite to come. And I’ll be at TIFA this year with Diaspora Dialogues as part of their TOK program, September 23 11am, in conversation with someone cool–again, much more info to come.

And the journey continues…

July 5th, 2023

Read Out Loud

I’m pretty excited that the audiobook of These Days Are Numbered is now available for preorder–there’s a deal where you get two free audiobooks along with mine if you preorder, which is cool But it’s also just–a stranger is going to read my book aloud and we will get to listen to it. It is 10 hours and 21 minutes long, which I did not predict–somehow I thought it would be shorter? I did vet the narrator but I gave the note that she should sound less authoritative in the reading–my natural speaking style is very upspeaking and of course this book is just…my voice? So…I wonder what it will wind up sounding like. I wonder a lot how particular sentences and phrases will be inflected. I mean…I’m just so curious. It’s also another avenue for people who are NOT me to experience the book, because that’s the main point of an audiobook, of course. People who wouldn’t necessarily sit down and read it might be thrilled to listen to it in the car or on a walk or while doing chores. So that’s a potential new readership/listenership, which is cool. I wonder if they will like it. It’s all just very interesting.

Anyway, there’s also the launch, coming up in a couple weeks, July 18, 6-8 at Queen Books, which is gonna be fab and I’m super-excited about that as well. So…see you there?? Hope so!!

June 11th, 2023

Douglas Adams and the Meaning of Kentucky

When I was a kid I was a completist–if I really liked an author, I would work my way through their entire oeuvre until I either exhausted it or they delved so deeply into another genre (included the genre of being less good) that I couldn’t follow. I no longer read in this way for the most part, partly due to lack of time, partly because most books don’t need to be read in the context of an author’s whole career, but I admit it was kind of a nice way to read. Occasionally I still do it, and there are few authors I’m staying with publication by publication, so we are taking their careers together in real time.

One author I read in his totality when I was a kid is Douglas Adams. I imagine a lot of kids do this–he is just a captivating writer for a certain type of goofy imagination. He also died shortly after I ceased to be a child, so stays forever in the realm of nostalgia for me, even as I reread at least one of his books every few years. Back when I was a snap, I read all the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, and then later the unfinished fragment in The Salmon of Doubt and later still the completely unnecessary “sixth book in the series by Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing, which was perfectly fine but so unlikely Adams’s voice as to cause a new wave of grief for Adams’s early death. I read the two Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency books, which are good too, and so was the recent BBC series that took no actual content from the books, just the character and general vibe. I read Last Chance to See, which was about endangered species and really quite profound. And I read The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff.

These two very silly books left me a bit cold, even though I doggedly slogged through them. They are dictionary books consisting of place names, repurposed as words with definitions, invented by Adams. His theory was that place names are “wasted” when they could be words with meanings, and so he made them into what they could be. The books are little dictionaries. There were a bunch of funny ones, a few I liked especially for being mildly dirty jokes, and one that actually joined my vocabulary as a word.

Shakespeare invented dozens of words, Dan Savage has created a few–but honestly, one is pretty good for to take hold and come to common use. It’s “kentucky”–definition, “to fit neatly in the exact space available. So if you have one inch of space left on the shelf and a book with a one inch spine needs to go in there, it will slide in “nice and kentucky.” Isn’t that…right? Adams did have an ear for such things.

Even Mark has started to use the word in every day conversation–and he’s not an Adams fan, to such an extent that when he turned 42 I had to explain the joke to him. He has since gone on to listen to the Stephen Fry audio book of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and enjoyed it very much. I was delighted and asked him if he’d read the other four, but Mark was good stopping at one. Mildly troubling to me, since the best book in the series to me is actually the fourth, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish (would love to know other people’s favourites!). There’s plenty of authors who have made a huge impression on me and whose work I think of regularly, but Adams is really up there. And kentucky really fills (exactly) a gap in the language.

June 9th, 2023

These Days Are Numbered Is Coming

It’s wild to say but sometimes I go out without a mask and my book about the pandemic will be out in five days, two things that imply that the pandemic is–if not over–certainly somewhat on the wane. The book is actually out in small ways right now–I have had copies in my home for a few weeks and it’s just gorgeous, and a couple weekends ago I did a little signing at Toronto Word on the Street, which felt appropriately unglamourous (my signing stand faced away from the street, onto a patch of grass and nothing) and also ultra glamourous (somehow people found me anyway and eventually the stand sold out of my book!) And next week, TDAN hits the world–I’m so proud and pleased with it. You can see the full writeup, with description, blurbs and buy links, on Books page of this site, or just go over to the Linktree for purchasing options.

OR you could check out this playlist I made of songs I listened to around the writing of the book.

I always see writers releasing playlists to go along with their books, sharing all the songs that inspired the work, and I always want to do that, but the truth is, I can no longer do long, complex tasks requiring deep concentration to music. I used to–if you wanted a playlist of music I wrote my undergrad thesis to, I could sort that right out–but now I find it too distracting from anything hard. Music is for relaxing, easy things, or sometimes just doing nothing but listening to the music itself. I told this to my much-younger colleague, who was horrified–I told this to my mother who said just wait, she can’t even focus on an easy task if there’s music on. SO!

BUT this most recent book was pretty easy to write, because I didn’t know I was writing a book–I just wrote little nibbly posts whenever I felt like it and didn’t worry too much about them, so sometimes there was music on and generally throughout the pandemic there was a vibe of music on often to cheer myself.

SO at long last I was able to make a book playlist and here you go–enjoy! There’s a story behind a few of the songs–the first and last are specifically about counting, and I believe the Alan Parsons one was where my friend Shannon drew the inspo for the title (Shannon came up with the book’s title). A number of the songs are just upbeat bops–Underdog is from the first season of Ted Lasso and A Better Son/Daughter is from the first Hannah Gadsby special, so there’s some tie-ins. Basically, anything that made me feel good. There’s tonnes more of this on my phone–I cut it off at about an album’s worth, though I may pad it out later… Listen when feeling sad or boxed in, and let me know your lockdown jams!

And finally you could…come to the launch! The book launch for These Days Are Numbered will be July 18 from 6-8 pm at Queen Books on Queen Street East and I think it will be just lovely–hope you can come. But if you can’t, please let me know where I should try to come–I do hope to organize more events, though I have been a little slow to do so as yet…

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Buy the book: Linktree

Now and Next

Interview in "Writers reflect on COVID-19 at the Toronto Festival of Authors" in The Humber News

Interview in Canadian Jewish New "Lockdown Literature" (page 48-52)

CBC's The Next Chapter "Sheltering in Place with Elizabeth Ruth and Rebecca Rosenblum hosted by Ryan Patrick

Blog post for Shepherd on The Best Novels about Community and Connection

Is This Book True? Dundurn Blog Blog Post

Interview with Jamie Tennant on Get Lit @CFMU

Report on FanExpo Lost in Toronto Panel on Comicon

Short review of These Days Are Numbered on The Minerva Reader

Audiobook of These Days Are Numbered

Playlist for These Days Are Numbered

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