Go Green

There's an important article on Quillblog today about publishing and protecting the environment.

http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2007/11/27/uk-publishers-go-green-sort-of/

One thing I love about Brindle & Glass is that they are committed to protecting the environment. My book will be printed on 100% post-consumer recycled and ancient-forest-friendly paper. Which makes me very happy.


We should be proud of our Canadian publishers, who are leading the way in this. Unlike Stephen Harper, who is a national embarrassment. Don't get me started....

Giving it away for nothing...

A friend of mine, a fellow writer, sent me this rant. If you're a writer, you should watch it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE


He's got a point.

My cover!!

We have a cover for Things Go Flying, and I LOVE it!!
I will try to insert it here.
Damn. This is hard.

*!%&!~*

There must be a way to do this!


Anyway, it's a great cover.

Later...

Yay! My genius tech guy figured it out...

Elyse Friedman launch

I'm looking forward to Elyse's launch of her new collection Long Story Short, on Thursday night, Nov. 1. It will be at Type Books, 883 Queen St. West, starting at 7:30. Open to everyone.
Anansi is publishing it. She is a very good and funny writer.

I can't seem to get a picture of the cover to go in here. Damn. You'll have to check it out on Elyse's site!

http://www.elysefriedman.com/

Rick Mercer!

I am SO going to watch Rick Mercer tonight!!! Mercer is absolutely brilliant.

Get a sneak peak: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2007/10/02/mercer-black-premiere.html

Word on the Street was really good. Great events in the tents. Russell Smith did not disappoint. He did mention that fiction doesn't pay. The Giller panel was highly entertaining--I didn't know that Austin Clark, Richard Wright and Vincent Lam were such wits. Also, Quarrington's info about how a novelist's skills translate better to TV than to film might come in handy...

Word on the Street

Word on the Street is on this weekend and I know what I want to see: Paul Quarrington talking about Writing Across Genres. Also, Russell Smith. I loved Muriella Pent. And Gil Adamson, who wrote the fabulous The Outlander.
And lots more, as long as the kids stay happy in the kids' tent....

Michael Redhill and Winston Churchill

You may wonder, looking at the title of this post, what Michael Redhill and Winston Churchill have in common. Well, I've been thinking about things lately, specifically, about how terrifically tough it is out there for writers of literary fiction.
Which made me think of Michael Redhill. Now, he is a real talent, but he is also modest and seems to be a genuinely nice person. I remember reading an interview in the newspaper in which he admitted quite frankly that the reviews for his latest book Consolation were not particularly glowing, that the book "tanked" in Canada and the U.S, and that it had sold 75 copies in the U.K. And then it made the Booker long list. Since then, Consolation won the Toronto Book Award, and will get new life from that.
Which brings me to Winston Churchill. Churchill gave a famous speech, I don't remember where or to whom, but presumably to the British people during the blitz, although it would work just as well for a room full of writers, which went as follows:

Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.

Brindle & Glass and the Giller long list

A Brindle & Glass novel, The Reckoning of Boston Jim, by Claire Mulligan, just made the Giller long list! Very exciting! Kind of makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I will be keeping my fingers crossed for Claire.

Here's the link for Claire's book: http://www.brindleandglass.com/fiction.htm

Also, I just noticed that they've got some info about Things Go Flying on the website too!

For the full Giller long list, go to Quillblog at http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2007/09/17/the-scotiabank-giller-prize-longlist-unveiled/

new fave site

I really like this new literary site, Open Book Toronto. http://www.openbooktoronto.com/

Lot's of good stuff on it, even a writer-in-residence.

Eden Mills

It's that time of year again--the Eden Mills Writers' Festival is coming up this weekend. I read there at the fringe a couple of years ago, with my friend Dave Whitton. He has gone on to be published in The Journey Prize Stories and Best Canadian Stories etc. etc. and is receiving gobs of grant money. He will be famous one day.

Eden Mills was a wonderful experience, very validating. Check out the line up: http://www.edenmillswritersfestival.ca/

We will soon have a cover for Things Go Flying! And a website! Both of which are going to be very exciting developments. For me, anyway.

More on Writer's Gym...

Check out the interview with Eliza Clark about Writer's Gym posted today on CBC.ca, Words at Large.

http://www.cbc.ca/wordsatlarge/features/feature.php?storyId=506

Also, see the review in NOW magazine.

>http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2007-07-19/books_reviews.php

summer

If you've got kids, summer is brutal for a writer!
Maybe several weeks' forced break from writing is a good thing. Maybe I'll have fresh eyes in September. Or maybe I can get some reading done!
On my list:
Saturday, by Ian McEwan
The Outlander, by Gil Adamson
A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
The Birth House, by Ami McKay
Maybe I'll revisit some Trollope, too, as we're going to London on vacation. I do miss reading the classics. Would love to lie on my chaise reading novels and eating bon bons all day...

Have just finished Writer's Gym and was very impressed! I immediately sat down and wrote a long page of ideas from it to apply to the next rewrite of Poets'. Also, it's always entertaining to read what other writers have to say about the writing life, and the writing process.

Writer's Gym--sold out!

I went to my local Book City yesterday to pick up a copy of Writer's Gym by my friend Eliza Clark. It's just been published by Penguin. It's a collection of interviews, tips and fiction exercises from lots of respected authors--like Margarent Atwood, David Eggers, Rick Moody, Michael Redhill, Catherine Bush, Marnie Woodrow, and lots of others. Kind of like a writing workshop in paperback.

So I went to get a copy and it was sold out! But they have more on order, and I should get it in a week or so. Yay!

I recommend you try your own local independent for this book, and if it isn't there, get them to order it!

paper clips

I'm sure you've heard the paper clip story--how a guy called Kyle MacDonald used his blog to parlay a lowly paper clip into a house. As it turns out, the house was really just a jumping off point for his fabulous new career--his book about it all is coming out soon, and he's about to go on tour internationally to promote it.

And then there's the story in the Globe this weekend about the Chinese girl who wanted a recording contract. So she got hooked up with a guy who set her up with a blog, the aim of which was to trade up from a paper clip to a house in a hundred days. Somehow, after a hundred days, she ended up with a recording contract--I'm not clear about the house.

I can't imagine how this could possibly work.

Well, I'd like a five bedroom house off Withrow Park, but I'm going to be much more modest. I would like to trade up to--a Bookshort!

In case you haven't heard of them, Bookshorts are little mini-films about 3 to 5 minutes long that are like movie trailers for books. Authors use them to promote their books. I'd like to get one made for my novel, Things Go Flying.

Here's my favourite Bookshort--it's for Douglas Coupland's Jpod. You really have to see this to get what I mean.

http://bookshorts.com/watch_jpod.htm

Now I just have to think of something to trade...maybe I should hit some garage sales.

lunch with my agent

Had lunch with my agent yesterday. It's such a thrill just to say that.
We went to a nice little bistro and talked about my wip--The Poets' Preservation Society. She loved it! It's a very rough first draft, and needs lots of work, but she loved it. Which is great, because if your agent doesn't love you, who will?

Here's a site I just love--check it out if you haven't already.

http://www.authorsaloud.com

inaugural post

I guess I should introduce myself...

I am a writer, living in Toronto. My extended family is from Middleton, Nova Scotia, in the Annapolis Valley, where I spent many summers. Ernest Buckler, author of The Mountain and the Valley, was my cousin.

I went to school at the University of Toronto. I wanted to study English, but felt it was impractical, so I got a degree in political economy and went to law school. I practiced law for only one year, because I disliked practicing law even more than I disliked law school. I did a fair bit of bankruptcy law, seizing airplanes and so on. Then I went back to school to become an English teacher. But I’ve always known I wanted to write novels—I knew when I was nine years old. I wanted to write Nancy Drew books and pony books. I really should have listened to my gut.

To get through school, I did lots of menial jobs. I sold advertising over the phone, which didn’t last. I waitressed at the Horseshoe Tavern during the punk years, which was interesting. I was a chambermaid at The Royal York Hotel for a while, and I washed dishes at a chronic-care hospital, which paid well, but I never want to see pureed food again.

Staying home with my children gave me the opportunity to write. I’m trying to bring up my kids so that they turn out. I love dark chocolate. I do yoga every day. I’m learning to play the piano. I suspect I have a spatial learning disability, but I’m pretty good with words.

I attended the Humber School for Writers, where my mentor, David Adams Richards, worked with me on the manuscript of my first novel, Things Go Flying. An excerpt from that novel appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of the Dalhousie Review. In 2004, I won the Globe and Mail’s Great Toronto Literary Project competition and had my “final chapter” of the serialized story published. That was great fun, because part of the prize was being picked up by a limo and taken to a swank dinner attended by all the contributing writers—Catherine Bush, Paul Quarrington, Susan Swan, Michael Winter, Shyam Selvadurai, Kerri Sakamoto, and Andrew Pyper--where much wine was consumed. I was shortlisted for the 2006 CBC Literary Awards for my short story, “Dr. Deleterios on the Danforth.” Along the way, I acquired an agent—Samantha Haywood of Transatlantic Literary Agency, Inc. She’s awesome. And now my book is going to be published in March, 2008, by Brindle & Glass. Yay!

I am currently at work on my second novel, The Poets’ Preservation Society.