September 14th, 2008

Today and Tomorrow

So, twenty-four hours from the launch of my book, and I’m starting to twitch a little. This is not unusual; ignore me. Just to reiterate, for those who just started reading this blog:

Time and Place: Monday, September 15, 2008 at 7:30pm (Doors at 7pm.)
Location: Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, SECOND FLOOR GALLERY (I always forget to walk up the stairs)

I’m hoping, by the time I make to that point tomorrow, I’ll have the confidence and the suavity to say something interesting and/or witty. As for the rest of today, in a minute I’m gonna write. Because really, today tomorrow and always, that’s what I do. Like this:

We go sit in the waiting room with all the dusty dying plastic carnations and the real rubber plant, so shiny it looks plastic. There’s a few people sitting in the chairs. Some people just look like us, jeans and sweaters and staring at the ceiling, but one woman has her hair in blue plastic curlers under gauzy pink scarf like my mother used to wear; one man is wearing slippers and a navy robe with gold trim. They seem to live there, so what are they waiting for? A man with a beard comes from the hall carrying a guitar case. He sits down by the window and takes out the guitar, which has an American flag painted on it. There’s coins in the shiny red fluff of the inside of the case.

The curler woman nods and taps her foot as he starts to play and sing, something sleepy and Spanish. He taps his foot, too. He isn’t wearing shoes, but his toenails are nicely cut and clean. This room is not the waiting room; it is the living room.
–From “This Is A Podcast” a story that isn’t, really, yet

See you tomorrow. Please smile encouragingly.

As cool as I am I thought you knew that already
RR

Talking to Kerry Clare…

is always a pleasure, last Thursday in the form of an interview, which is now up at Kerry’s blog, Pickle Me This if you would like to know what we like to talk about. Reading and writing, mainly.

You live in a church / where you speak with voodoo dolls
RR

September 13th, 2008

Upshots

Thanks for all your advice, guys–I really appreciate it. In case you were wondering how it all turned out:

1) I couldn’t get the book Fred recommended from the library, but the search brought up something similar sounded, which I have ordered. I’m sure whatever I end up with will be disturbing, as it should be, but maybe I’m hoping for…manageable disturbance? So I can still fall asleep?

2) I love the booklet that Kerry lent me on recycling. You *can* mix paper and plastic and metal. You should put cut tin lids *in* the tins and then pinch them shut so the recycling collectors don’t stabbed. You can recycle those round cardboard canisters that cocoa and disinfectant come in, but not the plastic lids. Amazing. There’s even a picture. The booklet provides a link which leads to a much more confusing bunch of information. Try to get the booklet if you can.

3) Since the age of my olives was indeterminate but at least 8 months, I took the advice of Naya and Scott and almost everybody and tossed them. I miss them, they were a part of my life for so long that I notice the blank spot when I open the fridge. I miss them even though I don’t actually like olives all that much, which is what cause of the problem in the first.

4) I bought a knee-length, non-black, non-constrictive new dress yesterday, but it is only good for a specific season (fall) and since we seem to be having all of them in alternation, I’m still not sure what I’ll actually be wearing on Monday. But I am excited. And to get into waaayy too much information, the trial run on my hair didn’t go so well. I now must take the bus looking like I’ve just received a mild electrical shock. Learning, learning.

As cool as I am / I thought you knew that already
RR

How not to

“You like D and D, Audrey Hepburn, Fangoria, Harry Houdini and croquet. You can’t swim, you can’t dance and you don’t know karate. Face it, you’re never gonna make it.”

“I don’t wanna make it. I just wanna—”

“I’m Not Ok video intro by My Chemical Romance

September 11th, 2008

How to

“At first, in the good old days, I did not know how to split wood. I set a chunk of alder on the choppint block and harassed it, at enormous exertion, into tiny wedges that flew all over the sandflat and lost themselves. What I did was less splitting wood than chipping flints. After a few whacks my alder chunk still stood serene and unmoved, its base untouched, it’s tip a thorn. And then I actually tried to turn the sorry thing over and balance it on its wee head while I tried to chop its fee off before it feel over. God save us…

“One night, while all this had been going on, I had a dream in which I was given to understand, by the powers that be, how to split wood. You aim, said the dream–of course!–at the chopping block. It is true. You aim at the chopping bock, not at the wood; then you split the wood, instead of chipping it.”
–Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

September 10th, 2008

Please advise

A few things I could use some help with, if you happen to know…

1) Can anyone recommend a fairly accessible book on the KKK? For obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to do a blind web search on this sort of things, and also obviously, I don’t know anyone with first-hand experiences.

2) Can anyone explain to me what’s going on with Toronto recycling? (I believe it’s different from city to city, so out-of-town advice I guess doesn’t count.) Can you mix paper and plastic now? What about shopping bags? I don’t understand the new labels on the bins in the subways, nor the (different) ones on the bins in my appartment building. I’m worried I’m not being as helpful to the planet as I mean to be. Standing in the alleyway trying not to get hit by a car or a pigeon, I’m not at my best trying to figure this stuff out, and so far no one else seems to know either (comforting in solidarity, but unhelpful).

3) How long can you keep olives in the fridge once the jar has been opened?

4) What should I wear to my book launch? I am *sure* it doesn’t matter to the audience (since I’ve been the audience up until now, and have no memory of what any author has ever worn at a launch/reading/anything) but this is the current thing my mind has perched on to worry about.

If you can weigh on this stuff, that’d be awesome. And, hey, feel free to give me some good advice on an unrelated matter you think I need help with–I take direction well.

I’m listening to the low moan of the dial tone again
RR

September 9th, 2008

Desk space

Everybody cool is already on this, but let me also add that I adore Desk Space, a blog showcasing writers’ writing spaces. I am always dying to know what’s under writers’ desks, on their mousepads, on their shelves. The very fact that this blog exists makes me feel somewhat better about myself, since other people want to know too, so I’m not *that* weird.

I’m of a less oracular bent
RR

September 8th, 2008

Eden Mills Recap

Yesterday morning, Kerry Clare and I set off for the Eden Mills Writers Festival, to listen to the readings, buy the books, be short-listed for the Eden Mills Literary Contest (KC’s story “Stillborn Friends”) and to read at the Mill (RR’s story “ContEd”). It didn’t start to rain until we were at the rental car place, and it didn’t start to pour until we hit the 401. I’m actually a fine driver (far better than you’d think if you know me socially, I’d say) but the 401 becomes whitewater in a downpour, and I am not that much *better* than fine. At least white-knuckling the highway took my mind off my terror about doing the reading.

But we didn’t die under the wheels of a semi, and instead arrived in the still-pouring downpour, and sloshed into the, you guessed it, outdoor festival venue. By the time I’d signed in, it was pretty close to my cue to read, but there was of course still time to sneak by the Biblioasis tent and see, for the first time ever, my book.

I knew what it looked like, since I spent three years writing the thing and saw every version of it, and the cover mock-ups, the advanced reading copies, etc. I knew it would be there, since Dan (Wells, Biblioasis publisher) had promised to bring copies. It really should’ve been a zero-suspense moment, but, um, it was absolutely thrilling. There was *Once*, out in the world, separate from me and all the people who have been working so hard on it–a big stack, looking pretty much perfect, and ready to be taken away and read. Something about the thought that the book is now fully self-contained, that anyone, strangers can read it if they feel like it, is what really hit me at that moment, I think.

Dan put a copy in my hands and hugged me and a photographer took my picture, and someone asked me to sign a copy, and my mentor Leon Rooke suddenly appeared to congratulate me, and I hugged him, and hugged Kerry, and somehow got out from under my umbrella and got wet…

I think, once in a while, something can be exactly as good as you dreamt it would be.

And then I went down to the Mill, which is a lovely setting to read in. There is a hill facing the water, a natural amphitheatre looking out across a tiny inlet to another spit of land where the stage-tent and microphones were set up. Of course, with the downpour ever increasing, all that surrounding water seemed a bit much, and I was rather alarmed crossing the slick-boarded bridge to the stage. But fellow readers Elspeth Cameron and David Chariandy were spell-binding enough to make me forget all the splashing and chill under my umbrella. Almost more amazing than anything was the fact that people stayed to hear me, the last reader. After 40 minutes in the deluge, when I walked to to the podium, perhaps 50 or 60 soggy people peered at me through the curtain of water, waiting patiently to hear what I had to say.

And I didn’t die under the wheels of a semi! Or fall into the water, or make any egregious stumbles in my reading. It was probably the most audible reading I’ve ever given–I’m getting louder! And…and…I read it out of the actual book! Hooray!

Whew. It was all gleeful after that. Stars of the afternoon included Mariko Tamaki, Paul Quarrington, Shari Lapena, Laurence Hill and, of course, Leon Rooke. Another star: the sun! It came out and was lovely warm for most of the afternoonn. My clothes got dry, even my feet. And we were fed dinner in the community centre, served by adorable children so eager in their work that they would sometimes watch you take the final bite of your salad with their hands on the rim of the plate. Hilarious!

And then, after getting briefly stuck in the mud of the parking area, we drove home. I was very very tired and over-stimulated, a state in which it is my preference to drive 20 kilometres under the speed limit. And it is a testament to Kerry Clare’s truly wonderful spirit that she neither attempted to decapitate me with one of our Eden Mills Mix cds (which would’ve been a tragic loss of both me and music), nor closed her eyes and let me get away with disrupting traffic. And we didn’t die under the wheels of a semi, or even ding the rental car, thanks mainly to Kerry’s gentle guidance, and then we were home.

I am very lucky in my friends, and in many things.

My best friend Leslie said / oh she’s just being Miley
RR

September 7th, 2008

The Pages Window

So, in the wee hours of yesterday morning, Brandon was wandering the city and passed the wonderous Pages Books. A fine attraction on it’s own, but while there, B. spotted a window display of Once. Even though he emailed me both description and photo, I actually rearranged my day in order to go see for myself. I am hugely lame, as is evident in this picture, but I am also really gleeful, as is probably also evident.

Please note: these are only posters right now. As of Monday, they will be actual books.

On the morrow, Eden Mills, where it might or might not rain, but where it’s fun enough for rain not to matter (right? right!)

Wearin’ a raincoat that has four sleeves / gets us through all kinds of weather
RR

September 5th, 2008

Love

Last night I sent out the following email to almost everyone I know. In the interests of overkill, I’ll put it here, too:

Dear Everybody,

This is just to say, in case I somehow didn’t mention it to you, or send you a Facebook invitation or an airmail letter about it, or show you the event listing, or grab you by your shirt and yell, “My book is launching on September 15!!!!!”

well, it is.

Here’s the official details for the launch of *Once*, my first
collection of short stories:

Time and Place: Monday, September 15, 2008 at 7:30pm (Doors at 7pm.)
Location: Gladstone Hotel, 2nd Floor Gallery (1214 Queen Street West)

To launch her first short story collection, “Once,” Rebecca Rosenblum will share the stage with John Metcalf and Leon Rooke. “Once,” a collection of stories, is the winner of the 2007 Metcalf-Rooke Award and the work of one of Canada’s most promising new writers. This event is part of Pages Books’ This Is Not A Reading Series.

The unofficial details are that the evening may consist at least partly of me twisting a wad of crumpled notes in my hands, failing to operate the microphone, and maybe tripping over something…but mainly I think it will be lots of fun, and there will be drinking afterwards. I’d love to see you there if you feel like it, are free
on Monday September 15, and, you know, dig that sort of thing.

No need to RSVP, unless you like RSVPing, in which case, please do!

Bestest,
Rebecca

Lots of people did in fact RSVP and send me nice notes, which is always lovely. This is my favourite so far, though:

Dear Becky:

We’ll be there! (Are you kidding?)

Love, Dad

I wanna talk to you
RR