May 19th, 2017

Hometown proud: Get Lit and the Glanbrook Gazette

Way back when I was a teen, I used to read the Generation X column by Jamie Tennant in the Hamilton Spectator. We was one of the very few cool people I had located in my immediate surroundings, though we never met in that period, and I really liked the column. I thought someday perhaps I could be cool too and then I would know cool people who wrote newspaper columns and perhaps even become one of them. I was really disappointed when the column ended in 1994, and just utterly delighted when Jamie reappeared on my radar this year as a different kind of cool person, a novelist and literary journalist for the show Get Lit on CFMU in Hamilton. He interviewed me when I was in Hamilton last month and it broadcast last week–if you weren’t in Hamilton to hear it, you can listen as a podcast anytime. It was really a great interview not only because of my teenage admiration but because of the close reading and thoughtful questions Jamie brought to the table (microphone). So much fun!

I also got interviewed by the extremely local paper for the little town I am from, The Glanbrook Gazette, which was also delightful. It’s owned by Sachem now, but is still for and about the teeny community I’m from. So charmed to be mentioned there.

And not really related to the hometown stuff, but just another thing of mine to come out lately is my 49th Shelf list of Good Books for Hard Times, which is of some of the funny books I read while I was writing So Much Love. SML was a long hard project and it was good to read some more light-hearted things while I was doing it, every now and again. Might be a good list to pick up if you, too, feel like a project is getting to be a bit too dark for you.

And hey, happy long weekend!

March 19th, 2010

The Weatherboy

Now this is just lovely: the Rattling Books podcast of my story, The Weatherboy, as read by Gerard Whelan. I know, it’s bad manners to say something I wrote myself is lovely, but it’s actually Whelan’s delicate reading of the story that I’m in love with. It makes me so happy to hear the story doing things I hadn’t quite thought of, yet are perfect for it anyway.

This story originally appeared in echolocation 7, and I’m so pleased it’s getting another life.

RR

February 12th, 2010

Rec Department

Indelible Acts by AL Kennedy is very intense, funny, tart, weird, and definitely sexy. The first couple stories are two of the weirdest (a man has an affair with a woman he meets in a cheese shop, and the sex is so brilliantly good that something cracks open in either his brain or the universe), so it wasn’t until I was well into the book that I started to experience a weird sense of vertigo…”This woman writes…like…me!”

I think Kennedy has all kinds of points on me, quality-wise (I’ve never seen anyone write about sex so grimly and unsentimentally), and we have different interests in many ways (no one in this book appears to have a real job), but we both write stories firmly rooted in character, and sometimes, if what’s true to the character is a lack of change or closure, then that’s how it wraps up. So I was pretty wrapped up in this book from a technically point of view– a “how is she going to deal with *that*” attitude–because while if I could just copy brilliant authors, I would, but most are doing such different things I can’t use their techniques. Hers, maybe, I can–I do feel like I learned a lot from this read. But, like I said, she’s amazing and I was able to enjoy this on a non-technical level and think you could, too!

Have you read the periodic table recently? Highly recommended–I think it’s changed since I was in high school–so much more stuff now! I was looking at one that described what people *do* with each element (not the one linked; sorry, I can’t find it on the web) and there are quite a few new elements marked “no use”, which I think is funny, although we’ll probably need’em someday, to fight the aliens or some new plague or something. My favourite is ununoctium, elemebet 118, which does nothing, but is the leader of the pack that starts at ununium and goes all the way up to 8. What *are* they, besides fascintating? Bonus: element 71, lutetium, is used for determining the age of meteorites. HOW DOES THIS WORK??

My short-story, “Do,” was published last fall in the Antigonish Review, and is now available as part of the new podcast (#8) of Words to Go. It’s a short, sweet, very interesting show, and I’m quite pleased to be a part of it.

RR

December 23rd, 2009

Festive farewell

I just wanted to send a quick Merry Everything to y’all out there in blog land. I’m mainly dependent on the kindness of others for internet this holiday season (I am currently stealing wireless from somewhere to write this post) so likely there won’t be much action on Rose-coloured for the next week or so, although I can never really keep away from the interwebs entirely. But certainly, I wanted to wish all who care to celebrate a merry Christmas tomorrow, and to those who don’t, a very nice day!

I don’t know if any of you would have run into this, but my short story, “Christmas with My Mother” just got released as an audio download from Rattling Books Earlit Shorts 4. It was very weird to hear my work in another’s voice–brilliant, because Janet Russell gives the story a gentle and nuanced interpretation–but very strange since the only place I’d heard those words before was inside my own head. Add to that the fact that I wrote the story over a year ago and hadn’t even looked at in six months and the whole thing was something of a shock. I actually squirmed at the awkward moments in the story as I listened and once laughed aloud at a funny part (immodest? sure, but I also think that writers who don’t find their own funny parts funny should stop writing them.

That story is also included in this year’s Best Canadian Short Stories, which also came in the mail yesterday–merry Christmas to me! So there’s two ways to get that story, should you care to. I would like to point out that, despite the title seeming to perfectly coincide with the season, this is very much not a Christmas story, and might not be ideal reading for those of you cuddling down to read in the glow of treelights (or it might be exactly appropriate–depends on how you like your glow). But just FYI.

Other than that, there is very little literary going on around here, but lots that is good–family, old friends, a cake made almost entirely out of pudding, that ornament of a stocking I made in grade 2, 90s nostalgia music, and many hugs. That’s how I like my glow–I hope yours is however you want it to be.

Merrily,
RR

October 15th, 2009

Rebecca Reading

This is a last reminder (because I need to spend tomorrow freaking out, and most of Saturday on the train), that I am reading on Saturday afternoon at 5pm at the Manx pub in Ottawa (here’s the Facebook invitation if you like). I hear the Manx is the nicest pub in Ottawa, if that’s any incentive for you to come.

Of course, I know many people can’t make it, either because they are busy or don’t live in Ottawa or some combination thereof. If you would like to hear me read anyway, you could try this little podcast of the Hear hear reading I did in August, of the first half of my new story, “Cheese-Eaters.”

Actually, since it will be a different reading on Saturday, you could actually do both of the above. If, you know, you felt like it.

RR

June 29th, 2009

Web presence

My audiobook debut edges ever closer–Rattling Books has made me an author page for my contribution to Earlit Shorts 4. And now I know that my partners in audio shorts are Chris Benjamin, Michael Collins, J.J. Steinfeld and Leslie Vryenhoek. I’m stoked!

In other news:

1. I had a lovely weekend and was only outside during the sunny parts.
2. I’m starting to be ok holding babies, although only if a) the parents are present and b) the baby is awesome.
3. Ontario strawberries!!!
4. I’m the least-efficient writer ever.
5. This week has a holiday in the middle of it!
6. Yay, everything (except #4)!

And the girl at the top wearing tulle
RR

March 4th, 2009

Now in stereophonic sound

I’m pleased to say that two of my short stories, “The Weatherboy” and “Christmas with My Mother,” will be included in the forthcoming audio anthology, Earlit #4 from Rattling Books, coming to a speaker near you this spring. I’m pretty excited to hear my work read by a professional and a stranger, as well as to be included in such a cool cool project.

Please note that I actually don’t know what “stereophonic” means other than Brit musicians, I just like the word. It could actually be that Earlit is not in stereophonic sound, but whatever it is, it sounds pretty good to me.

Please note also that one should not confuse Earlit with Earshot, the paranoiac madcap stageplay by Morris Panych. Both wonderful, and highly recommended by me, but quite different.

I don’t believe in the sun
RR

January 5th, 2009

Reading in the Bathroom

My short story, “The Words,” has a scene set about writing in a bathroom, and Kerry Clare has done the scene the honour of reading it aloud in a bathroom. Julie Wilson instigated and recorded the reading, and made it available for your listening pleasure. It’s pretty pitch-perfect, if you ask me!

And the public don’t mind
RR

December 16th, 2008

Matches and Misses

Remember September? Yeah, it’s blurry for me too, but I do recall going out to Winnipeg to participate in a couple events tat the very wonderful Thin Air Literary Festival. On of those events was The Matches and Misses reading with Daria Salamon, Nicole Markotić, Gerald Hill, David Bergen, Pasha Malla and l. There’s an audio recording of that lovely up now on the Thin Air podcasts list, if you want to feel like you were there. The evening was introduced and enlivened by Charlene Diehl and the whole thing was ace. It’s a long recording, and worth it, but if you are searching for my stuff, I’m fourth, just after intermission.

Yeah oh yeah
RR