October 25th, 2011

What’s going on

Reviews In case you missed it, there was a very nice review of *The Big Dream* in the National Post on Saturday–you can get the online version here. There’s a less nice but still interesting review of *TBD* in the November issue of Quill and Quire, on the stands now–I’ll post the link when it goes online.

Launches I completely failed to attend the Insomniac Press fall launch last night–or rather, I failed *at* attending, because I did actually go to the launch. I was there mainly in excitement over Jamie Popowich’s Metraville, though in general Insomniac books are pretty stellar and I was looking forward to all the readers. But I was sick, I was tired, and then it finally happened–a Toronto event got started so late that I could not last until it *began*. It was not Insomniac’s fault–everyone else was having a blast, and I wouldn’t have wanted to speed along the festivities. I just have a terrible cold, and am flirting with laryngitis, so in deference to my reading tonight wouldn’t talk to people unless I could get right on top of them and whisper in their ears, which wasn’t making me very popular. And finally, about an hour after the show was supposed to start the room started to spin and I needed to go home. I failed the reading, where my only role was to sit and listen. Lame!

But I did go home and sleep for 10 hours and when I woke up I could speak in a voice heard by people who don’t want to know me intimately, thus I could survive the day and give a tolerably good reading to the very dedicated Ryerson students who made it to class in the rain to hear me!

Laryngitis Why do I seem to lose my voice at least once every year, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you why–because when I was young and stupid I got very sick with strep throat and did not see a doctor. After close to a week of this, I was feverish, mute, and living in a very sad, strange and entirely silent world of my own. When I was finally taken to the doctor and given some antibiotics, it was too late, though I didn’t know it–I apparently have scars on my vocal cords.

I figured this out because, though my everyday speaking voice is normally (rather loud at times, actually), even the slightest cold or cough irritates my vocal cords to Marilyn-like huskiness; if it gets slightly worse or I try to talk a lot, I’m rendered mute for days. I met a woman in her 60s with the same condition who says it only gets worse as you age–for her, the huskiness was apparent in her voice all the time.

What is the moral of the story? Go to the doctor when you are sick!!!