January 27th, 2012

Mail Haul

Today my copies of Best Canadian Stories 2011 arrived, filled with exciting stories, including my own “Dream Big.” As if this weren’t enough, my contributor’s copies (and cheque) were part of an exceptionally nice mail haul, which also included a handwritten thank you note for Rosemary Sullivan’s lovely kids’ book Molito, a copy of The Fiddlehead, a set of wedding-invitation samples (terrifying), and a letter to someone who doesn’t live with us. There are a number of such individuals that regularly get mail (and phone calls) chez moi, but Cyril is my favourite, because every time I see his name I am afforded a happy memory of Cyril Sneer one of the best Canadian cartoon villains (not a tight race, perhaps) of all time.

And then when I got online, by google alert informed me of this review of *The Big Dream*on The Toronto Review of Books blog.

A day well-begun, I’d say!!

September 27th, 2011

Storyville

Hi again! My story “How to Keep Your Day Job” is on the Storyville App, which means if you subscribe to the app–for iPads and iPhones and perhaps some other things–you get my story as well as many other wonderful-looking ones, for $4.99 for a 6-month subscription. I think short-story apps are wonderful, and quite possibly the way the form will wind up going. Sort of makes me want to get a cellphone of some kind.

September 23rd, 2011

Pictures and Story

The kind person to send me pictures from Tuesday’s launch (at least the first one; I’d still be happy to receive more) is Kerry Clare, so she gets the 100 points and my eternal gratitude. Here’s us, waiting to go on-stage, and then on:

Talking with my hands! Further excitement is that the wonderful online literary project Joyland has published my short story Waiting for Women this week–so much goodness going on right now!

September 17th, 2011

Doings

A few more doings to report on:

–The National Post Books ran my story How to Keep Your Day Job on page 1 of the Post Weekend section today (but it’s also online at the above link, if you are not actually reading this on today-today). It’s pretty exciting to be in a national paper, and see people reading it around town. I actually saw a lady toss down my story without reading it in favour of another section (I didn’t see which one). I can’t explain why I think that’s neat but I do!
–Also in the Fall Fiction extravaganza, several cool authors (and me!) recommend new books we’re looking forward to!
–I also did an interview on my forthcoming (Tuesday!) book with the lovely Braydon Beaulieu at Faded Paper

Yes, the book is really launching on Tuesday, 7pm, Dora Keogh, 141 Danforth Avenue, and I do hope you can make it. But if you can’t, I have a few more online things coming up this week, so hopefully you won’t feel left out!

September 4th, 2011

Things that Don’t Happen When You Become a Published Author

I’m starting to get excited for my new book to come out. It’s not in stores for another couple weeks, but the ISBN and Amazon link are in place, and that makes me feel a little tingly.

There are so many amazing things that happened with my last book, it’s hard to describe. But there are also some cliches that everyone believes about book-publishing that it’s helpful to remind myself are *not true*. I’m sure there’s much more for me to learn, and many more illusions left to crush, but here’s what I’ve managed to debunk so far:

Everyone will think you are smart. I am not particularly stupid, but I do have some gaping holes in my knowledge–world history, current events, where certain countries are located, how microwaves work (not with nuclear energy, that’s for sure–what kind of moron would think that?). So sometimes people think I’m stupid in a more general sense and I find that very upsetting.

I thought having a book out might help–you can’t write a book and usually forget where Thailand is, is what I really hoped people would think (but they would be wrong). It didn’t work–people are impressed that I did manage the book *in spite* of certain obvious disadvantages like not being able to pronounce the word “origin.” But it doesn’t carry into other categories–they still raise their eyebrows as I stumble over a common 3-syllable word.

Pretty much the only time I can make people think I’m brilliant is when I don’t want to. Sometimes I meet people, usually younger than I am, whose lives strike me as interesting and whom I would like to get to know better, but they are so alarmed by this published-author thing that that’s all they want to talk about. I try to ask them questions about themselves but they insist they are boring and have nothing of value to say. I guess they think I’m trying to put them in a story.

People who didn’t think you were in cool in high school will now think so. Nope. I actually tried this out on a few girls who were basically nice but distant back in hs. We met at a party shortly after *Once* came out and I was pleased that they were being so friendly and even sort of remembered me. I waited patiently until they asked what I’d been up to in the last decade, and told them I had published a book and a bit about it. The silence was awkward; I don’t they either of them actually asked any questions. Later on, I realized a few things:
1) To someone who has never wanted to publish a book, it might not seem so particularly great to have done so.
2) I had not yet said I was had moved out of my parents’ house 10 years ago and since I was encountering them in the vicinity of said house, it might seem I had never done so. The conversation got a lot more lively after I said I had moved to Toronto and had a job–we talked about commutes.

Authors are famous. The above example pretty much illustrates how this one is wrong, too. To many people, writing a book–particularly a book of literary short fiction–is not very interesting or worthy of comment. This is, actually, fine. There are trappings of fame that come with small-press publication, but they aren’t the ones you think of–that doesn’t make them less lovely. Sometimes I get emails or Facebook notes from strangers telling me they liked my stories or asking questions about them (sometimes, they are students studying my work in a class, and wanting help with their homework; even that is strangely cool). And sometimes it’s weird too: I’ve been recognized on the street exactly twice, and both conversations were deeply baffling.

Being an author will encompass your whole life. Wrong again! I still have to do all of the things I did before, and sometimes I go for hours–nay, days!–without even thinking about writing fiction. This is not every author’s ideal, obviously, but it is also exactly like it was before. My work ethic was, perhaps, slightly bolstered by getting something into perfect binding, but it also added to the distractions like a higher volume of email, new writing friends, the occasional party invitation, etc. So it comes out a draw–I work about the same amount as I did before.

Writing success will make you more attractive to the people you want to be attractive to. This one actually sort of worked out for me, or at least, immediately following *Once*’s publication, I was flirted with more than I ever had been before. But I don’t think this was a strictly an authorial thing: I was also simply leaving the house more than I ever had before. Some people who aren’t writers may be familiar with the concept of attending parties where you don’t already know 75% of the guests, but I was not–it was kind of overwhelming just to keep introducing myself, not even bothering with the flirting. And I think the fact that a fellow author who liked my work recognized me at a reading from my author photo, and introduced himself, and two years later proposed, is probably a bit random and not typical.

So I’m counting on things staying more or less the same as they were before. They better–I don’t think I could handle any more change.

August 17th, 2011

Of course we don’t judge books by their covers…

But if we did, I’d judge this book to be honest, loyal, fun at parties, a good cook, really sexy…

*Thanks to Dan Wells and Gordon Robertson for making it so awesome.*

August 5th, 2011

Mentions

Just FYI, the current print editions of Quill and Quire and Fashion both have little bits about The Big Dream. They aren’t reviews, just mentions that the book is coming out in the fall–though the one in *Fashion* does call the stories “Coupland-esque,” which is rather nice. But it’s also just nice to know they know, you know?

July 14th, 2011

Ohh…*The Milan Review*

After various delays, and then a mailstrike, contributor’s copies of The Milan Review are finally mine, and they are really really lovely to look at. The endpapers alone–oh my! Can’t wait to dive into the stories–other than my own piece, they’ll all be new to me.

July 11th, 2011

Hello, Canada!!

Hey guys, I’m back. I went to England for 11 days of mainly awesomeness and a little bit of rain and projectile vomiting. I’m planning a massive post on the subject (Rose-colour Reviews England) but that will take some time, so I just wanted to check in and say hi!

Also wanted to let you all know that I did a guest post at the wonderful site Canadian Bookshelf all about my new book, in case you are interested.

And I have a reading coming up on August 8 to launch the summer fiction issue of Fiddlehead (if you follow that link, you can also get a sneak peak at a few of the stories in the journal, including mine. If you don’t make it to every or any reading of mine well, that’s understandable, but I urge you to consider this one, as I’ll be reading with Mark Jarman and Leon Rooke, two of Canada’s very greatest short-story greats, and likely a couple other awesome people besides. And it’s at the Dora Keogh pub, a delightful place to be, so you can’t really go wrong.

Stay tuned for detailed descriptions about old buildings, scones, and rail service in jolly old England!

June 24th, 2011

Up to date doings

A few things I am/will be/was up to:

Talking about punctuation in dialogue and John Metcalf’s (excellent) commentary on it, along with Cathy Stonehouse, on The Devil’s Engine on the Biblioasis blog.

I also participated in a discussion of Social Awkwardness Dread hosted by the lovely Jessica Westhead on Open Book Toronto. Hilarious and refreshing to see that so many of us are worried about the same sorts of things.

Upcoming is my story “Waiting for Women” on the wonderful short-story website Joyland around the middle of September, which I am very excited about! Yay!

And to provide some content other than just links, here is a short transcript of a conversation that took place in J’s car yesterday:

R: What’s that?
J: What?
R: There, on that Escalade? Above the name?
J: That’s a sticker. It’s supposed to look like bullet holes.
R: Seriously? They make stickers like that?
J: Yeah.
R: Well, it totally worked on me–I thought it was bullet holes. I am the target market for that sticker.
J: You seriously thought it was bullet holes?
R: Well considering it’s a minivan* and we’re in Scarborough…I was hoping to be wrong though.

*Internet research indicates an Escalade is not a minivan. But it looks like one!