November 21st, 2018

More ways to feel bad about being a writer

Sorry about this, guys. I’m not even in a particularly dark place right now (I went to a chocolate-making class last night, actually). That last post was a long time coming, and just happened to get posted recently, and then all these other on-theme things came up in quick succession. So here ya go…

1) The movie Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a true story about an author named Lee Israel in the 1990s. Her books fell out of favour and she couldn’t get a book contract and had trouble holding onto a day job, so through a series of accidents she turned to forging letters of famous dead writers and selling them to collectors. The ins and outs of the scam are interesting, but Lee’s living situation and desperation are incredibly sad. I saw it with Mark, so as two writers we kind of moped out of the theatre. I’d still recommend the movie. It’s well-written, though I bet the book it is based on, by Israel herself, is better–there’s some plot holes in the film. As well, I really like Melissa McCarthy, who plays Israel. It’s nice to see her in a dramatic role for once, albeit one where she makes a lot of dark jokes. It also has the guy who plays Kevin on *Brooklyn 99* in it in a tiny role. Kevin is my favourite!

2) On the flight back from Poland I saw the movie Love Simon pretty much at random, and while I probably wouldn’t have watched it in any other context, I quite liked it. It’s about a gay teenager struggling to come out while hanging out with his really attractive friends and going to fun parties. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I could sort of tell by the language of the good but glittery-Hollywood film that it must be based on a book and sure enough, it was–I got Simon versus the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli out of the library and read it over the weekend. I was pleased that the book had more going on and was a bit more subtle, and interested that the book developed different characters in different ways–if anyone wants to do a compare/contract of the two with me, HMU!! But the thing that makes me sad is after all this, I went to Albertalli’s website to see what else she’d written and read her deeply disturbing FAQ. Though perhaps I’ve dreamed of having legions of loving fans, I never thought really really famous writers have to write FAQs like “Would you consider being my therapist?” “I’m feeling depressed and having thoughts of suicide.” “Can you send me your book for free? etc., etc. She sounds like a really nice person and like she’s coping really well, but wow.

3) The The Diminishing Returns report from the Writers Union on writers’ incomes. I’m linking directly to the report so you can see the stats for yourself, though there have been articles in most of the major papers on this thing. In general I think that the conclusions the report draws are true–writers’ incomes are definitely going down, it’s at least partly due to poor copyright protections though I think there are many other trends in play that are harder to quantify or act against, but it all sucks for us writers. I’m sad about all of it. I also want to say that the Writers Union is an organization I most of the time respect and am myself a member of. However…this isn’t a great report when you get right into the math. I wrote up a whole analysis of it but in the end I’m not going to post it because a) what do I and my one statistics course know? b) the truth is, even with variant math I don’t think the conclusions would differ, and c) I don’t want to undermine the central concerns of writers with distractions that don’t really matter. But still, bad argumentation of any stripe makes me shudder. Again if you want to get into it with me privately, always delighted to chat!

Hmm, sorry for all the sadness! In an attempt to cheer things up, I can report that the youth are doing well, at least the youth that I’ve encountered: I visited a writing class at UTSC last week and the students were really fab–I was really impressed with their engagement and insightful questions. I’m also still working with my own lone student, whose work is really fascinating.

Oh, here’s another nice thing–I was telling a friend about reading through a publication and encountering my own work and just reading that too. She was surprised, as she thought maybe I would find reading my published fiction squirmy or embarrassing, in that way you feel when you see yourself in video sometimes. “Nope,” I said, startled at my own answer. “I like my own work. I don’t publish anything I don’t like.” Of course, I do find errors or things I’d like to change sometimes, particularly in older pieces, and sometimes I get tired of excerpts I’ve read many times in a row, but in general I subscribe to Sarah Selecky’s famous “Write what you want to read” and I do. I often tell just-starting writers that there are no guarantees that anyone will ever like your work, so you’d better like it a lot yourself or the whole exercise will be pointless. If you write something you love, then it has value no matter what.

And thank goodness, considering all that other stuff.

May 29th, 2018

Trillium feelings

Last week, the day after my birthday, the Finalists for the Trillium Book Award were announced and So Much Love was among them. It’s a truly tremendous list, and that’s always the best part of being shortlisted for anything, for me–realizing that my book is considered worth talking about in the same conversation as all these other mighty pieces of literature. I am thrilled, and humbled, and hope to have read the complete list by the time of the celebration, so that I can talk to the other authors about their books. It’s too great an opportunity to miss!

This whole experience is pretty amazing, considering So Much Love will be 15 months old when we hit the Trillium stage and I had thought for a while that my days on stage with this book were probably behind me. Which would have been fine–SML and I had a great run–but how very lovely to get to do this amazing victory lap.

If you would like to see us there, the Trillium Readings are June 20 from 6:30 to 9:30. Don’t worry if you’ve already seen me read as much as you would want–each reading is only 3 minutes and there’s a number of different prizes being read for, so you won’t get bored–for the English book prize, the English poetry prize, the French book prize, and the French poetry prize. It’s one of the only bilingual events I’ve been to in Ontario and when I’ve gone in the past the mix has been just lovely. Even to my somewhat-less-than-fluent-in-French ears, it’s great to hear that mix. I also know from past experience that it’s just a really friendly and well-thought-out evening, so if you like this sort of thing, please come. It’s free, but you do need to register to get a ticket a the link above.

October 27th, 2017

Some nice things

I’ve been just maintaining this file of things I keep meaning to mention on the blog but I haven’t had time to write a post about each one and now there’s a bunch, plus some will eventually get out of date, so here they are, unthematically linked and without surrounding prose that’s worthy of them but at least I got to them instead of, like so many drafted posts, just letting them live in the drafts folder forever.

My friend Hilary June Hart started Cackle Productions to better share her wonderful humour with the world. You can watch her first video, the all-too-close-to-home Fertility Nag Bot Informercial and see for yourself.

My friend Kerry Clare wrote this great blog post on how to have a great blog (hint, not like this) and it’s really inspiring!

2017 Short Story Advent Calendars are available for pre-order and they look amazing.

Mark and I did a Pecha Kucha presentation you can now watch online. It’s about our marriage and it’s a bit sweety-sweet, but also funny.

The author Sharon Bala wrote a nice brief review of So Much Love, which I was especially happy about since I just read her lovely story “Butter Tea at Starbucks” (I’m behind!), which is up for the Journey Prize.

Andrew Daley’s new novel Resort is out November 2. I blurbed it so obviously I think it’s good–“Resort is a taut twisty story that starts out being about a life of crime but encompasses so much more: love, literature, and the limits of trust are all seen from new angles. I was enthralled from start to finish,” is what I said. But you should probably read it and see for yourself.

May 25th, 2017

Amazon First Novel Awards

Guys, it has been really really great being an Amazon.ca First Novel Award finalist. The teams from The Walrus, Amazon, and Penguin Random House have made the experience feel really special and fun, but what has been best has been reading the books. I figured a judge (the very impressive Tanis MacDonald) who liked my book a lot would also like other books I would like, and I was right. Since the nominees were announced, I’ve read The Break by Katherena Vermette, White Elephant by Catherine Cooper, Accordeon by Kaie Kellough and half of The Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains by Yatsuko Thanh (I’m never quite as fast as I think I’ll be!) and it has been a truly amazing experience. The books are all so good! And so different! And so thrillingly heartfelt, moving, technically complex (all of them wrestle with point of view and who tells the story) and ambitious. And as I was reading, and honestly, truly engrossed, some tiny part of my brain was thinking, Someone thought your book was this good, too. It has been a great feeling.

Last night was the very fun and swanky pre-awards dinner with all the nominees and our chosen plus ones, editors and other publishing folks, people from the Walrus, Amazon, and the judging panel (the final decision is being made MacDonald plus Gurjinder Basran and Casey Plett and assorted other luminaries. It was delightful to hang out and enjoy dinner and talk to people about all these amazing books without any big announcement at the end of the evening.

That’s tonight, of course, and while I have no worries at all–I know without a doubt that a fantastic book will win tonight, and I can’t feel sad when that happens–I am sorry to see this lovely time end. It is very nice to celebrate books and very nice to have my own book celebrated, and I feel very very lucky indeed.

April 26th, 2017

Authors for Indies, the Winnipeg Review, some fun interviews

For the first time ever, I’ll be participating in Authors for Indies this year. This is a great event that I have always missed due to scheduling, not lack of love. What it is is, authors go to indie bookstores and help out–sell books, chat with customers, create displays, run event tables, whatever the booksellers need. This is a day for authors to give back to the many independently run bookshops that do so much to support us. It is also, from what I hear, a lot of fun.

I’mventuring out of my comfort zone in terms of the city, heading first to Etobicoke and A Novel Spot from 10:30 to 11:30 and then on the Bolton and Forsters Book Garden from 1 to 3. I’m looking forward to seeing these shops, both of which I’ll be seeing for the first time, some new parts of the GTA, and meeting lots of readers. Especially, I’m looking forward to talking about BOOKS, books other than my own. I’ll be recommending lots of great ones like Sex and Death edited by Sarah Hall and Peter Hobbs, The Weather Inside by Emily Saso, Mitzi Bytes by Kerry Clare and as many others as I can get people to listen to me for. I’ve also recently realized that I can SHOP while I’m in these stores, which is super-exciting. So it’ll be a very good day, as long as I don’t get lost (well, I’ll probably get lost but I’m leaving extra time–as long as I don’t get VERY lost).

In other news, I still have the Bibliobash tomorrow night, and tonight I will be gluing one of my shoes back together in anticipation–wish me luck. Yesterday was a lovely reading in Aldershot for Different Drummer Books with Kyo Maclear and Trevor Cole that was lots of fun. Yesterday also saw a lovely review of So Much Love by Dana Hansen in the Winnipeg Review, which I thought was so insightful and generous and thoughtful. My IFOA 5 Questions interview got posted, in anticipation of the May 10th event with Kerry Clare and Amy Jones and me! And my very silly answers to the Hamilton Review of Books’ Proust Questionnaire got posted, which is delightful event though I’m pretty embarrassed as to how much I talk about my cat.

I think that’s all the news for now…

April 21st, 2017

The Making Room Anthology and Out in the Open on the CBC

Oh, you guys, the Pivot at the Steady reading was so nice. Every reader was great (even me, if I do say so humbly–I lived up to the evening I think!) the host was great, everyone that I spoke to in the audience was great, the vibe in the room was great, even the temperature was great. I wish I went out to readings as often as I used to–it was about once a week, more or less, in my late twenties and I just went to anything my friends suggested or that sounded cool to me. Now 10 years later it’s less than once a month unless I am myself reading and I really miss it. Stupid increasing decrepitude.

BUT I am reading a lot these days in support of So Much Love and while that in itself is a lot of fun, it’s also wonderful in that it gets me out listening to all the talented folks who are on the bill with me at readings. Like Saturday night, for example, when I’ll be reading at the Toronto launch of the Making Room anthology with so many brilliant and talented women like Amy Jones, Ayelet Tsabari, Eleanor Watchtel and tonnes more. It should be an amazing night. If you can’t make it or don’t live in Toronto, you can still order the anthology, which is huge and amazing and well worth reading. $26 is a steal for a book that covers 40 years of female and feminist writing in Canada. I’m not all the way through yet but I’m just floored by the strength and diversity of the gathering.

Sunday will be a day off from me and my book, but if you miss me, you actually hear me on the radio talking about the only other thing besides books people ever want to talk to me about–my big crazy jaw surgery! I’ll be on Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay at 11am on Sunday morning, 11pm on Tuesday, or you can listen online at the link above. It’s an interesting show concept, on personal transformation, and I’m looking forward to listening to all the interviews myself!

March 30th, 2017

Ongoing adventures

Hello from Vancouver, where last night I read at the Incite series and yesterday was on the Global BC News at Noon. I find the clip pretty unwatchable, but apparently that is how people feel about seeing themselves on TV–most other people who have watched it think it’s fine (or have been too kind to tell the truth). It was very fun to do the interview with Sophie Lui and Squire Barnes, who were total pros and very good and making me feel both comfortable and smart–what good TV presenters do! I still can’t watch the clip, though.

I’ve discovered this lovely blog review at the Bookshelf blog by Andrew Hood. Andrew is an old friend whose work I deeply admire, so this was a delight to stumble across.

I also finished off a blog interview with Steven Buechler at Sea of Pacific Tranquility about So Much Love. I talk about how we are all know about crimes like the ones described in SML but we know about them in tiny ways, and most of us have the privilege of turning off the news when it gets distressing–but some don’t. The people who experience the crimes and their families don’t, and I wanted to use fiction and whatever empathetic imagination I possess to explore that world and that experience, an experience that doesn’t end.

It’s hard thing to get right–and I’m never going to capture the breadth of experiences in the world, because I’ve only written about a handful of characters and also because fiction is an art and what people think of art can be subjective–but just because I’m done the writing of the book doesn’t mean I can stop thinking carefully and deeply about the subject matter and how I present it each and every time I’m in public or online. I think I need to work on that.

Can you tell I’ve had some tough talks recently? Or have been spending too much time by myself perhaps? Or both? I have one brilliant sunny day left in Vancouver and then I’m going to come home and read at The Ontario Writers Conference Festival of Authors. And then maybe lie down for a little while.

March 25th, 2017

Constant excitement

Oh boy. We had the launch party on Wednesday evening and despite me being pretty intense about the whole thing–I showed up over an hour early “just in case,” and then when everything appeared to be fine went out to dinner with friends but didn’t eat–it was really a lovely, loving evening. The M&S publicity staff did a great job setting up a party with wine and cheese and books and chairs for all who wanted them, and my brilliant editor Anita Chong made a lovely speech where she put the brilliance all on me (lies!) I was truly touched by how many friends, old and new, came out to wish the book well on its journey into the world. It was pretty great to have my family there, and as a special favour I had asked my in-laws to extend their vacation in Toronto half a week to be there too, and they did it, and even baked me a cake. And my brother- and sister-in-law even managed to get my niece there for part of the evening, no mean feat with a two year old. I laughed, I didn’t really cry too much, there was a lot of gorgeous cheese, and I received many hugs. It was intense, but great–and then some friends drove me off to finally get some food and I kind of slowly and gently collapsed. One cannot do too many evenings like that in a lifetime, but I’m glad this one happened happened.

Then I spent Thursday evening frantically working on the lecture I gave Friday at Laurentian University (Barrie campus) on the women in media/gender studies themes in my novel. They are most certainly there, but it is not necessarily a novelist’s role to pull them out or identify them, so it was a bit challenging to talk about my process with the book and stay in line with the the syllabus’s goals, but the class seemed to go well and I certainly enjoyed talking to the youth, so we’ll count it a win.

I’m taking this weekend off from book stuff, but on Tuesday I fly to Vancouver for more. Wednesday is a “media day,” in which I do interviews around Vancouver. Since those are local outlets, I don’t know that I’ll be able to share any of the results here, but if I can, you know I will. Then that evening I am very much looking forward to returning to the Incite reading series presented by the Vancouver Writers Festival and the Vancouver Public Library, where I’ll be reading with Janet McNulty and Lori McNulty. Hooray!

After spending Thursday frolicking in Vancouver (please don’t rain) I’ll be back in Toronto Friday morning to prepare for my Friday evening event at the Ontario Writers’ Conference Festival of Authors. That is in Pickering, suburban friends–please stop by if you are free. I have to admit that tickets–available on the site–are a bit pricy at $20, but I will try to make it worth your while. Also, I hear there are snacks.

After that, I plan to collapse or else start living in my car in order to defend it from being towed as my parking lot is being torn down and my poor car is homeless. This is really not your concern but is taking up a lot of space in my brain! ANYWAY, elsewhere on the internet there was a nice blog review of So Much Love posted today at Literary Hoarders and yesterday a lovely interview I did with Brad de Roo went up at Canadian Notes and Queries. That one was one of the most thoughtful and well-read interviews I’ve done in recent memory, and it was a real pleasure as a challenge to answer Brad’s questions–I hope you enjoy it.

Things promise to calm down soon–well, by the end of April anyway–and I will make an attempt to talk about something other than myself/my book in my next blog post but really, all this attention for SML is pretty thrilling and I am most certainly grateful for it.

March 14th, 2017

Launch day!

So Much Love is real and available for your reading pleasure in stores, online, and–I believe–in libraries today. You can get a hard copy or digital in myriad formats, and then you can read it and see what I’ve been working on all this time–and even tell me what you think? I fixed my contact page so I’m easy to write to!

This isn’t the celebration I was anticipating for this book–things are challenging for me right now and I haven’t been able to do the obvious thing, go to a bookstore and visit my book out in the world. There have been some reports that it is truly out there, though–even on tables, even actually purchased by actual humans! So I’m semi-satisfied with that, though hopefully I’ll get out there myself soon.

But lots of stuff is upcoming, book-wise–perhaps I will eventually have seen enough of my book, though right now that doesn’t seem possible. A few highlights:

March 22, Book launch in Toronto!! There’s a complete list of events in the right sidebar, so I’ll mainly refrain from mentioning events I’ve talked about previously, but this is the big one, and I’m very excited. If you’re in Toronto and enjoy books, snacks, short readings, and–possibly–me, please consider stopping by.

April 2, 11am, I’ll be on the radio on Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay. This isn’t even book-related–it’s an episode about personal transformation–but I think being on the radio is amazing, so here we are. I hope you can listen!

April 4, Reading for the Toronto Review of Books with Jessica Westhead, Heather Birrell, Antanas Sileika, and the one and only Mark Sampson.

April 25, Books and Brunch with Different Drummer Books at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Aldershot, with Trevor Cole and Kyo Maclear.

Before all of that, though, I’m finally going to make it out to a bookstore to celebrate another book, Mitzi Bytes by my dear friend Kerry Clare. In addition to being a very talented writer, Kerry is also the best Enjoyer of Events I have ever encountered, and sharing a book birthday with her has really helped me engage with the spirit of the thing. I also read Mitzi in draft (as Kerry did for SML) and can vouch that it is funny, wise, and surprising–can’t wait to read it in its final form. I will be raising all the glasses on Thursday, and speeding through the book soon after. You should too!

March 30th, 2016

Pages Unbound, hanging with students, literal and figurative frosting

In the endless drudgery that is novel-completion, I am very fond of anything that is not novel-completion. Especially things that make me feel writerly without requiring me to, you know, actually write anything. That sort of thing is really the icing on the cake of this whole career choice I’m making…

So getting to talk with a classroom of college students last week about reading and writing (along with my husband Mark Sampson and the wonderful professor (and friend) Nathan Dueck was a joy and delight. So was tagging along with Mark to launch his new poetry book, Weathervane alongside Dorothy Moahoney at the fabled Biblioasis store (it’s a lovely as I’d hoped!)

And so is the prospect of getting to take part in “Burst: New Voices in Canadian Literature” on May 6 as part of the Pages Unbound festival. The wonderful and talented Suzanne Alyssa Andrew and I will be sharing the stage with a bunch of other emerging types, and I’m so excited to meet and hear them. And to read a little myself, too!

Sharing what one has written is the frosting of writing, of course–it has to be, for if you are counting on publishing and ensuring accolades to sustain you emotionally or (heaven help you) financially, you might well starve to death. Writing as well as I possibly can needs to be enough for me because it would be easier to do almost anything else and no one wants to listen to me complain about something I could easily elect not to do. But I like this line: “If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you’re not a writer.” (it’s from this essay by Josh Olson–warnings: snark, swears)

So I write because I’m a writer and if it’s hard it’s my problem because I wanted to tell these stories. Them being written, and available for me to read myself is the sustenence here. But I do really enjoy the icing on the cake, giving the work to others and seeing what they think–so grateful the opportunities to do so that come my way.

Possibly, frosting is on my mind of late, because I was in the States last week (after Windsor it seemed natural to go on to Michigan and see some of the rockstars we know there) and a friend asked me to see if I could find any rainbow-chip frosting. Apparently it used to be available all over North American, then only in the States, and most recently no one could find it anywhere. I googled and found that the frosting had in fact been discontinued and is now coming back. I also found this insane video of a guy who who got 7000 people to sign a petition to bring back the frosting (!!!!) and then, when invited to a party celebrating his success, seemed absolutely terrified.

Anyway, I bought the frosting and my friend was delighted. I bought a tub for myself too and am really looking forward to trying it–can 7000 people be wrong? I can’t find a way to tie this back into the post or the central metaphor, but basically: you take your fun where you can get it.