November 9th, 2012

The Next Big Thing–want to play?

The Next Big Thing is an internet meme that’s been floating around over the past few weeks. It’s about writers’ works in progress–what they’re up to, how it’s going, why they’re doing it, etc. At the end, you’re supposed to tag more writers so they can have a crack at it. Shari Lapena kindly tagged me so I’ll be filling it out over the next few days, and will post my answers here when they’re ready.

As for whom I’ll tag…um! I’m really hesitant to approach people about their works in progress because for some, talking about undone work is tantamount to bringing on a curse, or guaranteeing it’ll never happen. Or they just find it really depressing. I’ve definitely felt like that at times and though I’m over the principle horror for now, no telling when it’ll come back–I definitely empathize with those in the throes of it now.

So, I thought I’d just throw the doors wide open instead: are any of you guys a) currently attempting in some fashion to write a book and b) willing to discuss it, even in a vague and elliptical fashion? If so, drop me a note in the contact (above) or comments (below) and I’ll sign you up.

Until the next wave of horror!

November 8th, 2012

Baby Trivia Quiz

I have been a touch overwhelmed with RL lately, but rest assured, all is well. I am co-throwing a baby shower for a dear friend this weekend, and it’s consuming me a wee bit. If you’re not shower-savvy, they need games, and since many popular shower games are dull, gross, or uncomfortable to play with one’s mother present, I’ve been making my own. I worked hard on my baby trivia quiz and since it’s basically the only thing I’ve created this week, thought I’d share. If you hate babies, stop now, but otherwise you might want to play. If you send me your answers or post me a comment, I’ll let you know your score. Maybe we could even have a winner!

Sorry, over-excited there. If nothing else, you’ll probably learn from this quiz what I learned from making it–babies are super-weird!! FYI, I don’t have babies nor very much experience with babies–I looked up answers to these questions via google, so these answers are only as reliable as the relatively authoritative-looking websites I found them on. It might be a good thing to let me know if you notice anything wrong, so I don’t have a shower revolution on my hands!

Baby Trivia Quiz!
1. When does a baby have “mature vision” (ie., as sharp as an adult)?
a) At birth
b) 6-8 weeks
c) 3 months
d) 6-8 months

2. When is a good time to clip a baby’s nails?
a) While he is sleeping
b) Not until he’s at least 3 months old
c) Playtime
d) Never—you should bite them off.

3. Which of the following is illegal to sell in Canada?
a) Soy infant formula
b) Baby walkers
c) Teddy bears with glass eyes
d) Barney DVDs

4. When can a baby recognize her primary caregiver(s)?
a) A few days after birth
b) A few weeks after birth
c) A few months after birth
d) Around a year

5. When can a baby learn to smile?
a) They can always smile!
b) Around a month
c) Around 2 months
d) Around 3 months

6. Do cats really try to steal a baby’s breath?
a) No, but they might lie on top of a baby for warmth and smother her
b) No, but they might try to lick milk off a baby’s face and hurt her
c) No, the whole cats hurt babies thing is a myth unless the parents are really irresponsible
d) Yes.

7. When might a baby start reacting to the word “no”?
a) around 9 months
b) around a year
c) around 18 months
d) never

8. How fast does a baby’s head grow in circumference in the first 2 months?
a) 0.5cm a month
b) 1cm a month
c) 1.5cm a month
d) 2cm a month

9. How do babies get ready for teeth while still in the womb?
a) They gum the umbilical cord
b) They suck their hands
c) They grow tiny “tooth buds”
d) They grow “milk teeth”

10. When do the legendary “baby fat” rolls appear?
a) Birth
b) 4-8 weeks
c) 4-8 months
d) 1 year

November 2nd, 2012

No Giller reivew this year

So, sadly, there will be no Rose-coloured review of the Giller Awards broadcast this year, because the Giller website listed the time of the webcast as 9pm (scroll down to the second blog post and you can still see the error!) When I eagerly sat down at 8:59, everyone was cheering and the camera was swooping *out*–party over, having apparently started at 8pm. Nerds!

I admit that I mainly wanted to watch so that I could make snarky comments about that guy from Hedley, and the injustice of devoting an hour of air time to books by 5 authors, and not letting 4 of them speak. But I also do enjoy the experience of seeing some razzmatazz in the name of the usually more yoga-pants-y writing life. I’m also a little alarmed that no one caught the error–I bet this never happens with the Pulitzer!

Nevertheless, congrats to Will Ferguson anyway–apparently he was quite charming at the ceremony. And congrats also to Russell Wangersky, the author of the only shortlisted book that I read, for writing a really good one.

I’m looking forward to the Writers’ Trust Awards next week to fill this gap. I have been twice now, and never wanted to say anything snarky about that event–it’s really fun, and yes, glamourous. Also, high-calibre snacks. I’ll be much more upset if I get the time wrong on this one!

October 29th, 2012

1000 Things–We Like Endings Too

These are from Andrew

965) Getting my braces tightened (when I had braces)
966) The smell of hop tea before it got the wort added to it, specifically as huffed during my first week working in a brewery
967) Seasons 1 through 8 of The Simpsons (RR says: there’s always such debate on where the good stuff ended on that show. My husband says season 9 is the last good one, but when I was shopping for his anniversary gift at Future Shop, like three sales associates ganged up on me and said season 12!)
968) Falling asleep and then waking up–what feels like immediately–a bunch of hours later
969) When someone asks for a recommendation in the bookstore
970) When my angry friend and I would get caught hugging on the job
971) When the stupid government sends me money I didn’t know they owed me
972) Badly Stuffed Animals
973) The first day of patio season
974) The stubborn last day of patio season
975) When I worked night shift, having a beer after work and watching the sun come up in Parc Lafonatine
976) Having a second beer while all the office shlubs came to the park for their morning boot camp workout

And these are from Scott:
977) eye sight
978) Tom Hanks doing the Nerdist podcast
979) typewriters
980) watching someone enjoy a board game
981) comfortable office chairs
982) watching the rain (RR says: my weekend in a nutshell!)
983) finding twenty bucks in your winter jacket when you first bring it out for the season
984) web comics
985) freshwater pools

And so it’s down to me…let’s do this thing

986) when the doctor says everything is fine
987) mini bags of microwave popcorns, so I can eat the whole thing and not hate myself
988) small victories
989) toddlers wearing age-inappropriate clothes, like a 3-year-old in a suit
990) naps
991) cloche hats
992) enthuasiasm
993) exhaustiveness
994) extreme weather (any minute now…Frankenstorm!)
995) meeting famous people and finding out they are nice
996) meeting anyone and finding out they are nice
997) collective endeavours
998) positivity
999) everyone who contributed to this list
1000) love

Seriously, thanks to everyone who took the time to list their likings, especially to Fred, my partner in crime. See y’all back here in 2017 for the fourth 1000, and our 15th years. Amazing!!

October 26th, 2012

Back and last of the 1000 Things

So I went to Vancouver and it was awesome, but caused me some confusing days with the wrong number of hours in them, as well as a lot of time slouched up against an airplane window while a broad-shouldered man tried really hard not to squash me. So I’m tired but I met a lot of amazing folks, heard brilliant readings, and ate as much salmon as humanly possible without being an embarrassment (I don’t think). So let’s get a bit closer to polishing off this liking list while I’m in such a good mood.

First, from Fred,

942) Becky’s cat channel (RR says: aw, thanks!)

And from Jane,

943) paper warm from the printer

And now me, with a heavily west-coast tinged bunch

944) candied salmon
945) Walking along and suddenly seeing a body of water where you didn’t expect one
946) farmers markets
947) tiered tea trays
948) holding a baby who doesn’t mind
949) Irish accents in general and Anakana Schofield‘s in particular
950) Anakana’s novel, Malarky
951) Really good huggers, like VIWF’s head honcho, Hal Wake. In the midst dozens of authors, staff and volunteers, hundreds of audience members, too many potential problems to count, and basically a perfectly awesome festival, he still found time to hug like he meant it.
952) When Alice the kitten stands on the palm of my hand
953) Not even starting to fret that it won’t work out before it does in fact work out
954) GIFs
955) Zsuzsi Gartner
956) Angie Abdou
957) Caroline Adderson
958) Biting into a chocolate-covered cookie to discover it’s actually a chocolate-covered cream puff
959) When my suitcase is first one to hit the baggage carousel (I swear, this actually happened for my return to Toronto)
960) Toronto, city of my love
961) Fluffy pillows
962) My brother
963) Blogging
964) Swiss Chalet (less than an hour to go!)

October 18th, 2012

Packing for VIWF

I am a chronic under-packer. This is because I often take the sort of trip where I have to lug my suitcases on and off public transit not once but several times. Faced with this future scenario, I often decide I can wear my blue dress on Tuesday *and* Thursday, sleep in my underwear, and transport my cereal bars out of their box. And you’ll often find me by Thursday, wearing a dress with a salsa stain on it, exhausted because my hotel room was freezing and I was basically naked, with all my cereal bars in crumbs.

But the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival is being so lovely–picking me up *and* returning me to the airport, arranging accommodations near the reading venue, and basically sorting all the potentially stressful details for me–that I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind. I’m bringing clothes for *all* the days I’m there, plus a notebook, and (I never do this) an alternative pair of shoes. And trusting to fate and volunteer festival staff that I’ll never have to carry my suitcase down a massive cement tunnel as I did so many times in England.

Yep, this is my version of a wild and crazy trip.

I should probably go over my reading one more time though. I do have to shoulder *some* of the stress.

If you’re in Vancouver, I’d love to see you at one of my events!!

October 14th, 2012

Literature is anything, taken seriously

I’m the worst when it comes to cat obsession–I’ve already spent far too much time and bored far too many people talking about my kitty, Evan. I even have YouTube channel for my cat videos–including a new one that finally offers proof that Evan knows how to fetch

Ta da! And that great echoing silence is the sound of no one clicking on the link. Which is fine. Cats are my one pure indulgence, the one part of my life I don’t have to analyze or think about with a subtle critical eye. I just enjoy them and all their fuzzy silliness.

And it’s only going to get worse, because on Friday we got kitty number 2, Alice Sampsonblum. Isn’t she pretty? (I can’t explain what’s going on with my hair, here).

In the Humane Society Playroom, after we’d made the big decision.

So it’s basically a personal problem and pleasure, cats, that has somehow crept onto this never-really-professional blog. But I *have* started taking a professional interest in cats, professional in the sense I write stories about them (though actually, I think kitten shepherd would be a great job for me).

From the earliest-written story in the book that became *Once*, I’ve always had cats around the margins in my work. Why? No reason except that I’ve always had cats around the margins of my life–when I imagine a world, it has cats in it. When a Famous Writer reviewed a story of mine for a class, all she had to say was it was interesting that an adult woman’s close friend would turn out to be her brother. I did not think that was interesting and wished she had said something substantive about the story, but it’s true–many of my characters have brothers, at least in my head if not on the page. Because that’s just my reality–my default position for the human race is to have a brother and a cat. Write what you know is a hackneyed, limiting piece of advice–but it can work sometimes.

I do not think writing about cats is more or less frivolous than writing about brothers, or anything else for that matter. As with everything in literature, it’s not what you do but how you do it. Which is why it’s ridiculous that, say, humourous writing is sometimes not taken seriously. I guarantee you the writer of a genuinely funny book took the task of making it so *very* seriously.

So I’m a touch nervous to say that I’ve written my first story with a more central cat in it, Everyone Likes a Little Guy, just published in the Rusty Toque Issue #3. I hope it’s a good story and engages with real people living real lives. Much as I want to live in a fluffy world where the kittens wear bowties and dance on rainbows, I live in the real world and try to write about it as best I can. One of the perks is occasionally I can write about cats.

October 11th, 2012

1000 Things We Like: So Close Now!!

Let’s get started with 10 from the lovely Annie:

831) the smell of freshly cut grass
832) people who string their skates over their shoulders
833) sitting on the floor (RR says: yes!!)
834) bonfires
835) leaving work on time
836) peeling off labels on “school supplies”
837) pouring a fresh cup of coffee or tea
838) sitting with elderly people on benches
839) when you find out a famous person you like is Canadian
840) live music

And 100 (!!) from David:

841) The Internet
842) Semi colons
843) Mashing words together to make new words
844) The German language
845) Microscopic art
846) Electron microscopes
847) Vowels (RR says: Never thought about it before, but actually, yes)
848) SQL database programming language
849) MP3 format
850) The existence of sounds that humans can’t hear
851) The LHC
852) Dopamine
853) Photo bombs
854) External validation
855) Micro Machines
856) Commercial ditty’s that you don’t think much of at the time, but then you catch yourself singing them later on and raise your fist at the sky to curse Capitalism for making you like a song about a fabric wholesaler (RR says….yes)
857) John Stewart
858) Theater chairs that go back exactly the right amount
859) Lake Huron
860) The internal combustion engine
861) Nikola Tesla
862) Tesla Coil
863) Super Mario Brothers 3 (RR says: half my childhood)
864) Brand name facial tissue
865) Honeysuckles
866) Sweet Corn
867) When really smart people appreciate your input (RR says: the best!)
868) Ice cubes shaped into things that are not cubes
869) Space Invaders!
870) Pinball (RR says: I like the Back to the Future one!)
871) Morticia from the original Adam’s Family show
872) People in costumes at comic conventions
873) People who are not at comic conventions but are inexplicably in costumes anyway
874) Musical parody
875) Weird Al Yankovic
876) Hilarious T-shirts
877) The Pixies
878) Internet Memes
879) Pixie sticks
880) JavaScript
881) Cherry Cheesecake
882) Rib festivals
883) When that song you love, but totally forgot about comes up on your playlist
884) Pulled Pork
885) The ability to format e-mails in HTML
886) All-inclusive resorts
887) Fight Club (movie)
888) Dark Dark Dark (RR says: the number matches the thing–weird!)
889) Tire swings
890) Cheap wine/booze that tastes as good as the more expensive stuff
891) When you attempt to pronounce a name you don’t recognize, and find out that you’ve pronounced it perfectly
892) Specialized farm machinery
893) Humming birds
894) Indie music
895) When the total on a bill or receipt is inexplicably a perfectly round dollar value
896) Prime numbers
897) Animaniac re-runs (RR says: so few people realize the greatness!)
898) The Hawaii Five-O theme song
899) Rocks for diving off from
900) An elusive sandbar
901) The unrealistic romantic idealism of Ninjas, Samurai, and Cowboys
902) When dogs sit like human beings
903) The Android convention of naming versions after deserts
904) Reasonably easy to solve jigsaw puzzles
905) FileZilla
906) A waiter/waitress who remembers your name
907) Beach Volleyball
908) When the politician you hate makes a gaff (RR says: smiley face)
909) The Pride Parade
910) The human need to name ships, planets, cars, animals, etc…
911) Centreville
912) A female vocalist accompanied by a cello
913) Drinking songs
914) Bars with over 100 types of beer
915) Excel
916) Cars that count down how many kilometers of gas is left (RR says: that’s a thing now?)
917) Honest mechanics
918) Chuckit brand dog toys
919) Voyager 1 and 2
920) Plane seats with an interactive screen built into the back so you can watch movies/TV
921) Lego
922) Coral Reefs
923) Sharks and Octopuses at a safe distance
924) Hotels made of ice
925) James Bond movies
926) Popcorn at movie theaters
927) Movie previews
928) Free Wi-Fi hotspots
929) Half day Friday workdays
930) Slushies and other frozen convenience store drinks
931) Listening to personal music at work
932) Online news sites
933) Professional hockey
934) Apricot jam
935) Sunflower seeds
936) Futurama
937) Ancient Roman history
938) Hands-free bathroom facilities
939) Pizza delivery
940) Candy-bar flavoured ice cream
941) Home-made gifts from young children

Oh my god, 59 things to go–amazing!!!

October 10th, 2012

A little farther West than usual…

A bit of happenstance, and a bit not, has lead to a lot RR-related links in the West today–well, a lot relative to the norm, which is none. Ok, not my best sentence–moving on!

I did a fun interview with Cynthia Ramsey for the Jewish Independent in Vancouver. E-interviews can be terribly rote, so it’s thrilling as an author to open a set of questions to find that a journalist has engaged deeply with my work, and asked questions thoughtful enough to make me see it in some new ways, too. Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

My short story The House That Modern Art Built is now available on newsstands in PRISM international. This is the first thing I’m publishing from the current work–my first post-Big Dream publication, actually. Yipes, that was a long hiatus. Not sure why I needed a whole year, but it felt like I did at the time. Anyway, I’m proud of this story and proud also that it found a happy home at Prism. Hope you enjoy that, too!

1000 Things We Like: Ever Closer

Fred and I have been going through the archives–the 2002 and 2007 1000s, and they are so great. I do not know how to make a Word document available on this blog, but feel free to hit me up if you are curious. What’s interesting is that different people contributed to each of the three lists, and some I am no longer in touch or never actually knew that well–they were just kind list contributors! So some of the stuff on the lists, I’m like…why? But such is the wonder of the world–everything is liked by *someone*. On a sadder note, the 2002 list includes a cat, a dog, and two goldfish all now deceased. Good to be reminded of them, though.

Onwards–back in 2012, we have some contributions from Liz:

812) Shamefully, pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks (RR says: everyone is obsessed with these lately. I do not like the idea of a pumpkin beverage, but may have to try it….)
813) Having skin tags removed
814) Eight-year-old girls talking about lighting their farts on fire and subsequently burning their houses down

And back to me…

815) Taylor Swift’s Mever Getting Back Together (sorry, cool people!)
816) when something huge happens to someone I really like, and then I see them again and they are exactly the same
817) tuxedo cake
818) when my good news genuinely lights up someone else
819) a surprise ride home in the rain
820) pub curry
821) tiny kitten feet
822) scratching a really itchy spot
823) peanut brittle (anything brittle, really)
824) the way you can roll sideways on a futon that is in couch formation so you are kind of in a gully at the back
825) really shiny hair
826) friend dogs in the elevator
827) “The Variance” by Miranda Hill
828) palindromes
829) rhinestones
830) green gum–particularly the 5 flavour called “Rain,” even though I realize that’s a very dumb name, even for gum

Let’s keep this going, gang–what do you like?