November 11, 2026
What I Wouldn’t Do for a Free Book
I don’t know what I wouldn’t do for book in the mail, which is something that occurred to me the other day as I signed on to receive a newsletter from the media outlet Be Giant in exchange for a book they’d created. And did I need that book? Probably not. Do I already have a professional life that involves books arriving in my mailbox on a regular basis, many of them unsolicited? Absolutely. And yet there I was, happily relinquishing my personal information, consenting to yet another corporate email appearing my inbox, because I’d been promised a book, and I was fine with that.
Not even 24 hours later, I’d done it again, purchasing two boxes of Mini-Wheats as part of Kellogg’s Feeding Reading campaign. With the purchase receipt for these two boxes I was eligible to receive a selection from a list of children’s books in the mail, and naturally I was all in, never mind that my children have aged out of the books on the list, and no one in our household eats cereal for breakfast under ordinary circumstances anyway. But free books in the mail are hardly ordinary circumstances, even if you’re sending away for them all the time, and when called upon our family will rise to the occasion.
I’m actually well practised at books for breakfast—we partook in Feeding Reading last winter, ate a ton of Mini Wheats, and ended up with three books for my kids. (Feeding Reading had more YA titles then.) Almost 25 years ago, when I lived in the UK, book tokens in cereal boxes earned me Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit and Wild Swans, by Jung Chang, and the fact that I could earn books by ingesting whole grains still fills me with abject delight.
Reader, this is who I’ve always been. When I was a kid, there used to be television advertisements in the daytime for an actual sequel to the Bible that you could get if you called the phone number across the bottom of the screen, and I wanted that book so bad—I went to Sunday school, but they’d never once mentioned the Bible Part Deux, so I was curious. And while I’m really sure I called that number in quest of the book, that it never arrived makes it more likely that I didn’t call at all for fear of the kind of telephone charges you might incur for calling the Psychic Network—I was ten, so who was I to discern?
And that is the story of how I never managed to get my grubby mitts on a complimentary copy of The Book of Mormon, an injustice I’ve been making up for in the years since by trying to acquire all the other books in the universe.
November 5, 2026
Four Manuscript Consultation Spots Left for 2027!
Just four 2027 manuscript consultation spots remaining! I’m booked until the end of May, but June, August, October, and November are still available. If you’ve been thinking about working with me, now’s the time to claim your spot.
“Working with Kerry Clare on my manuscript was a truly positive experience. Her feedback was detailed, straightforward, and insightful. Her intuition and perceptiveness not only helped me focus on rewriting and improving weak areas, but her notes gave me a much better perspective overall and her comments became a gateway to adding more depth to the stories. If you are looking for someone with a great understanding of fiction and a passion for writing, Kerry is an excellent choice. She combines dexterous editing with inspiration and kindness.” —AB
Read more testimonials at https://picklemethis.com/manuscript-consultations-lets-work-together/
Here’s how it works: Let’s work together so I can help you bring your creative dreams to fruition!
On the first day of the month, you share your 80,000 word manuscript with me. I get back to you after having read it twice with a detailed letter with my feedback, as well as an annotated manuscript, and then we make an appointment for a one hour online meeting to talk about everything together and leave you galvanized and inspired for what’s next.
In my manuscript consultations, I bring my experience and expertise to the table (as author of four novels, editor of a nonfiction anthology, a literary critic for 17 years, a writing instructor since 2011, and an avid expert reader since forever) to help make your own vision for your project come to life, helping guide you towards creative realization and marketability.
WHAT IF… are my favourite magic words in this process.
And WHAT IF I got to make that creative magic with you?
I charge $2000 CDN, plus applicable taxes for manuscripts up to 80,000 words. A $.03 surcharge is applied for every word beyond that limit. Send me an email if you have any questions, and please spread the word to anybody you think might be interested.
Sign up at https://tinyurl.com/bp6ruxa5/ #authorsofinstagram #writinggoals
October 14, 2026
Trust Fall
I’m at a crossroads in a bunch of different ways, thinking about how I might be sharing aspects of my life on the internet going forward as social media spaces keep on changing for the worse. Although one thing that’s been clear to me for a while is how impossible it is to write about being a parent once your children are people of their own, because their stories no longer belong to us and they can speak for themselves (and they do!). I think of how much I valued honest conversations about parenthood when my children were very small, conversations that let me know I wasn’t alone in the struggles and anxieties, and how I miss being able to have such conversations in online spaces now*, because the alternative is posting photos that may as well be captioned, “Look at us over here! We’re killing it!” When, of course, we’re only killing it some of the time, and the rest is the usual heartache, frustrations, fears, and tears, which is harder to bear when it seems like nobody else is ever going through any of it and everybody else’s kids are perpetually shiny.
*Obviously, I’m still having these conversations. That’s what group chats are for.
Parenthood is the most wondrous agony, which is something I’ve been thinking a lot about as we’re less than a year away from launching our eldest child into the world, and this is everything I want for her, but also, how! And why? And no!! The most wondrous agony for which I’d sign up again and again, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Maybe the most blatant demonstration of how ease and lack of friction aren’t what any of us are here for in this thing called life. I don’t train for marathons, but I do have kids, and the agony is similarly baked in, but also—oh my goodness—nothing compares to the highs. These wondrous creatures who are the very best people I’ve ever met in my life. (And I made them!)
I take credit for very little when it comes to my kids (except I swear by the results of having asked them, “Tell me what you think first,” whenever they asked me anything at all) and know how much it all really comes down to pure luck. As we all learned in playschool, you get what you get, and you don’t get upset, and neither do you decide that anything about your children was the result of your superior parenting skills.
Although IF anyone was asking me how to get kids to read, I’d say that modelling reading yourself sure goes a long way, and I’ve done my fair share of that, and then some, and so maybe that’s part of how we got to here.
To where I get to meet my kid at the bookstore on the day a new release by her favourite author drops so I can buy her the book she’s been waiting for. Truly, this is the dream! We’re killing it!
Or at least we were that day.
March 11, 2026
Books in DEFINITELY THRIVING
You might already know that DEFINITELY THRIVING is a bookish book, but did you know that a major plot point involves the whereabouts of a copy of Cathy Park Hong’s essay collection MINOR FEELINGS? (Follow me for more hot tips for writing scintillating narratives…) Writing a novel set in a disorganized bookshop with a questionable cataloguing system was a lot of fun because it enabled my protagonist to come across so many of my favourite titles, and I even wrote my first edition of Carol Shields’ THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE into the text (what a find!).
DEFINITELY THRIVING is out on Tuesday, and includes so many picks to add to your reading list!
November 24, 2025
My Reading Year Reflections
With weeks of 2025 still to go, I’ve already hit my goal of reading 200 books, a goal that is somewhat arbitrary, meaningless, and paltry when you actually think about all the books in the world that I’ll never get to read, but still is pretty substantial in the face of all that, although it only means anything because of how much I’ve loved reading these books, how many of these books I truly loved. Books loved are what I measure out my life in, never mind coffee spoons, and while I know focusing on numbers is kind of irritating (“It’s about quality, not quantity,” so spoke that rare school librarian from my past who did not like me, and that criticism lives rent-free in my head, don’t worry!), but being a fast reader is pretty much my only remarkable skill, so can we let me just have that? Do people go around telling Andre De Grasse not to focus on his speed because it’s making all us slow-walkers feel bad? No, they do not.
If you’re curious about how I find the time to read, I shared some of my top tips here! (#1 is “Get Your Blood Checked,” which really did lead to an entire extra hour of reading every day after I learned that my iron count was low and started taking supplements, and was thereafter able to get up in the morning.)
And in addition to the books themselves, here are some things that helped make my reading year remarkable.
- So much nonfiction. Fiction is my usual lane, but with the world being extra weird and hard to understand in 2025, having nonfiction to help me puzzle it all out has been so helpful and even sometimes reassuring. Diving deep into a subject instead of merely scrolling has also been a nice counter to anxiety. Standout titles that have helped me make sense of the world this year include At a Loss for Words, by Carol Off (which just came out in paperback); When the Clock Broke, by John Ganz; In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times, by James Cairns; How to Survive a Bear Attack, by Claire Cameron; Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything, by Colette Shade; The Snag, by Tessa McWatt; Encampment, by Maggie Helwig; Storm the Ballot Box: An Inside’s Guide to a Voting Revolution, by Jo-Ann Roberts; Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, by Mark Bourrie; and Water Borne, by Dan Rubinstein.
- A focus on Canadian small press books. While I’ve always been a fan of Canadian small press books (which is to say books that are published by presses that aren’t Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, or Harpercollins), I’ve never made them my religion. Especially since market forces mean that the big presses are always going to be able to attract the big deal books that everybody is most excited about (whether that attention is warranted or not) and—this is a controversial statement, I realize—not all small press books are necessarily great and/or to my taste. Sometimes the former is because they lack the resources to fully invest in the production process, which undermines the reader experience. Sometimes the latter is because the very job of a small press is to publish the odd and underrated and not to cater to the widest commercial appeal. Sometimes both factors have meant that small press books have not been as much of my reading focus as they should be. But this year, I decided to make my “On Our Radar” column at 49thShelf a round-up of my own reviews of Canadian small press books, and has that ever been rewarding, pushing me to make small press titles a bigger part of my reading life, resulting in an expansive, transporting, and so much more interesting experience.
- The library. I’ve borrowed books from the library this year more than ever. This is especially convenient since I live in a city with one of the largest library systems in the world, putting so many great books at my fingertips. It’s meant I’ve been able to read a lot of hyped books I wasn’t sure about without getting invested—like, say, The Plot and The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Putting books on hold at the library before they’re released means that I’ve ended up getting to read brand new books before anybody else in the library system OR that I’ve had to wait months and months for my hold to finally arrive, and there are advantages to both of these. The library has allowed me read widely and keep things interesting. (Having just three weeks in which to read a high demand book that can’t be renewed also helps me focus and get the book read, whereas it otherwise might linger on my shelf forever…)
- Bookseller recommendations. It might be hard to tell because I’m still in Instagram a lot, but Bookstagram has factored a lot less into my reading experience this year, which has made my reading more diverse and interesting. And a highlight of this has been heading into bookshops and letting bookseller recommendations decide my purchases—and it’s had me ending up with books like The Road to Tender Hearts, So Far Gone, The Correspondent, and more. (See also “The Booksellers’ List,” new from the Canadian Booksellers Association, which is just definitively excellent. These booksellers have got taste!)
- Weird avenues. My reading regrets most years involve not having pursued enough of these. Not this year though, which makes me very happy. This is partly because I dove into this year with a number of reading projects on the goal, including reading everything by Elizabeth Strout in order of publication (DONE! It was THE BEST!), rereading Carol Shields (I’m slowly going about it, have read up to Swann), and reading Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka books (need to reread The Fire Dwellers and I’m DONE!). None of these authors are that weird, I realize, but anything that isn’t the New York Times bestseller list is a little bit weird these days. I’ve also read a few books in translation, have done plenty of rereading, and feel like I’ve been free to take the wheel in terms of reading what I want to read (which is the nicest freedom I know).
- Reading on my own. A big part of my year even beyond reading has been relearning that not everything I do has be recorded online, and book reviews are included. I was feeling a lot of pressure to write something about every book that came across my path, as though it didn’t exist unless everybody knew that I’d read it, and letting that go has been really freeing and has brought real ease into my reading life.
October 10, 2025
Sometimes Magic
A year ago today was a great day, because it was the day I met Suzy Krause when she came to town to do an event with Marissa Stapley at Type Books in the Junction. Suzy is a ridiculously talented author and downright radiant human who came all the way from Saskatchewan to promote her novel I Think We’ve Been Here Before, and I loved her immediately, and not JUST because she’s a blogger-turned-novelist just like I am and had had a copy of my debut novel on her shelf for years before we finally connected. And before the event, we all went out for dinner, along with the writer Sherri Vanderveen, and we talked about everything, including where I was at in my own career, with a novel on submission, no clue as to what was coming next, and I was trying to be more comfortable with having no expectations, with just living in the moment I was in.
That night after the event, as Suzy and I caught the subway east on the Bloor Danforth line, I FINALLY managed to catch the transit poster for Marissa’s then-new release, The Lightning Bottles, a book I love so much and which was kind of the novel Marissa has been working towards her whole career in terms of literary achievement. It was also exciting because I’ve dreamed of having a book on a transit ad, and having my friend’s book on a transit ad is the closest I’ve come. Because it never rains but it pours, we encountered the poster again on our way out of the station, and I think you can tell by the look on our faces just how excited and happy we were. And if all that weren’t magic enough, I received an email from my agent the next morning (while waiting for Suzy to come over for tea and scones—she was staying at a hotel was close to my house) that House of Anansi was going to make an offer on my book.
A year later, I am still trying to be more comfortable with having no expectations, just living in the moment I am in, which is easier to do in a world where I know good things happen sometimes. I just finished up the final pass for my new novel, now called DEFINITELY THRIVING. Marissa is reading it now from Los Angeles where she is busy at work on exciting things in preparation for the release of the Apple TV series based on her novel LUCKY. Suzy is reading it too from her home in Regina, where she’s spent the past year working on her own next book, and SUZY THINKS MY NOVEL IS GENUINELY FUNNY (Woot!).
The writing life is full of up and downs, and I’m realizing that there is actually no level of success that ensures an end to that. But in the meantime, there are magical people, friends to celebrate, and—in our own books, and real life—wonderful twists that can catch us unaware.
January 13, 2025
Ways To Read More in 2025
I’m of two minds about this post. First, I am allergic to the ways in which online writing has become so prescriptive, which means that online reading has become about emphasizing the ways in which we’re all doing it wrong and are in need of optimization. This is everything I’ve been turning away from as a writer and a reader, and what I’m abjectly refusing for this new year. If all this striving was turning us into happy and satisfied beings, I’d be okay with it, but it’s not. (A book I read last year that clarified this was Meditations for Mortals.)
HOWEVER (and this is self-serving as someone who earns a living from books and publishing and also dreams of a world in which literature occupies as much cultural attention as reality television) aspiring to read more is a resolution that’s different from trying to lose 15 lbs, develop an entirely different personality, or make a fortune in a multi-level marketing scheme. I also think it’s an aspiration that, if you’re realistic, fair and easy on yourself, really can make you a little bit better off.
Further, I read 214 books last year, which is more books in a year than I’ve ever read in my life, so I know what I’m talking about. And I’m sharing the number 214 because having read so many books in a year is actually the single most impressive thing about me; I don’t run marathons, I don’t have pretty fingernails, I last won a literary prize 20 years ago for a story that was terrible—so please just let me have this one thing. If your own reading goal ever seems paltry compared to mine, remember that comparison is the thief of joy and you do you… but how about doing you with a just a little bit more time for reading?
Here are my tips for how to find some.
1) Get Your Blood Checked
This was a game changer for me! I went to donate blood last January and was refused because my iron count was too low, which was not surprising since I’d spent the last six months (during which I was otherwise well) struggling to get out of bed in the morning, feeling very much like a hibernating bear. So I started taking iron supplements (Floradix, the vegetarian variety that doesn’t cause digestive issues) and waking up an hour earlier (um, not too early—I will never been an early riser) and I decided to spend this bonus time not getting out of my cozy bed, but picking up the book on my bedside instead. Which is so much time for reading, not to mention a really lovely way to start each day.
And so if you, like me, are not particularly youthful, and you’re one of those people whose eyes fall down every time you curl up with a book, getting bloodwork done might be something to consider.
2) Put Your Phone (Far) Away and Delete Socials
It’s much easier to wake up in the morning and pick up a book if your smartphone is out of reach. Mine charges overnight far away from my bedside, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve also deleted the only social media app (Instragram!) that had remained on my phone, which has freed up so much space in my mind and hours in my day. I still use social media on my desktop, and download Instagram once or twice a week to post and share other people’s posts in my stories (which I can’t do on the desktop) but I delete the app once I’ve finished.
And yes, it means I’m a little less connecting to the quotidian details of the 3000+ people I follow on Instagram, but maybe that’s okay…?
3) Find Your Desert Islands
Once your phone is out of reach, you’re on your way. I like to find opportunities to be stranded someplace with a book and nothing else for distraction. The bathtub is my favourite place for this, but so is the coffee shop at the block near where I drop my daughter off at an extracurricular every week for an hour and a half. Along those lines, going out for lunch with just a book for company is one of my favourite indulgences. If nothing else, I try to read between 9pm and 11pm every evening when nothing else is going on. If you tend to spend that time streaming television, maybe consider designating one night a week for reading instead? (I rarely watch TV, which I do think [in addition to my robust iron counts these days] is the most important answer to the question of how I find the time to read.)
4) Make It Easy
Reading doesn’t have to be a chore. It should actually be fun. And while some people’s idea of fun is Middlemarch or War & Peace, accepting the reality that you’re not such people (if you’re not such people) will go a long way toward having your reading habits take hold. Which is to say: read the kind of books that make you relish the turning of pages. Yes, reading widely and challenging yourself is a great way to read, but if you’re striving to read at all, making the experience purely a delight will help a lot. Read short books! Quit books you’re not enjoying. Ignore the books you think you should be reading. Don’t be afraid to trust your tastes and instincts, and to steer your own reading ship.
5) Build a Framework
And along those lines, I like a reading project. I’ve taken on a whole bunch of these this year (more to come in my January essay for paid subscribers), one of which is #WinterofStrout, as I go back and read every book Elizabeth Strout has ever published. I reread all of Madeleine L’Engle’s Austens series back in 2019. In March 2020, which I found it hard to read anything, I found my back to books by rereading Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books.
If there’s something that interests you, an author you’ve been meaning to get around to, any particular kind of book—books set in a certain place or time period, award-winners from a particular decade, a particular segment of the books already waiting on your to-be-read shelf, anything that might seem fun, and feel good and satisfying—steer your reading ship that-a-way, and let the literary magic happen as those books weave their way into your day-to-day life.
November 4, 2024
25 Hours
The day the clock falls back is my favourite day of the year—I’ve written about this over and over. How the extra hour is, of course, time to read in, which matters especially at a moment in which I seem incapable of reading less than five books at a time. It means that I woke up yesterday morning and proceeded to spend the next hour in bed, finishing THREE DIFFERENT BOOKS (and I’d just finished another the day before). And then after such a feat of completion, I started reading another book that was short enough and good enough—Susie Boyt’s LOVED AND MISSED—that I managed to read the whole thing in under 24 hours. And what a 24 hours it’s been. My family’s schedules obviously out of sync with the time change, which meant that dinner and all evening duties were concluded before 9pm, which is unheard of in my household. Everybody else was tired and went to sleep, but I just returned to reading, and the luxury of this time and this focus was such a pleasure to behold. (Again, it helped that I was reading a book that was so very excellent.)
One of the many book piled on my bedside table right now is Meditations for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman, who writes in one reading about the reality of information overload. “How do you choose what to read?” somebody asked me recently in a DM, in the context of all the seemingly infinite books out there in the world, and the point of Burkeman’s book is the finite nature of human experience. And Burkeman offers the image of a river, how as readers what we do is dip into the current and pick out what we can, what we want to. No one is ever going to read all the things—there are not enough extra hours in the year, even though I’m doing my best to make a dent, for sure!—and nobody should feel bad for their failure to, and this was such a relaxing way to think about the stacks of books on various surfaces around my house that are constantly, dangerously, threatening to topple over.
September 18, 2024
On Emily-Splaining
People are weird on the internet. A couple of weeks ago, a comment turned up on a post I published more than four years ago about rereading Emily of New Moon, and this commenter was not having it, unleashing a diatribe of scolding. And not even for having stolen a copy of the book from my school library (which would have been fair!), but for having understood Emily within the context of Anne, and for judging a book by its cover. Of my trouble with the drowned barn cats, they wrote “If your delicate modern sensibilities are disturbed by this, well — you need to read other books.” OMG, SERIOUSLY, COMMENTER: DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?? I have read ALL THE BOOKS. And then they proceeded to answer all the questions I’d posed in my post, which was really really annoying since these were actually the questions I’d had about the books when I was 9, and I’d actually worked most of them out by now. It was more than a little PATRONIZING.
But I’m not bringing this all up so you can be indignant along with me. (Okay, I am A LITTLE BIT). But instead because I also really understood where this annoying person was coming from—and perhaps this is why I’m especially indignant because I’m just the same. To ASSUME that you could explain L.M. Montgomery to ME! And I understand that there is a whole community of Montgomery scholars and historians, and they even have a society, and that’s fine, but I’m still quite sure that nobody there could have the connection to Montgomery and her work that I do. I’m entirely wrong about this, just in case that needs stating, but it doesn’t matter, because my connection to Anne and to L.M. Montgomery’s story feels so fundamental and so personal that it’s impossible to imagine that anyone else could precisely know what I’m talking about when I mention it. And of course they can, but there are parts of the story that were mine alone—my Anne of Green Gables clothespeg doll I bought in Fenelon Falls, the Anne of Green Gables Treasury I absolutely coveted from this folksy store at the mall and saved up for. When I was Anne for Halloween, the copies of the novel that were gifts from my Grandma. The time we were out on a boat with another family, and I asked my mom how Anne and Gilbert managed to make all their children because, according to Anne of Ingleside, they slept in separate bedrooms…
If that commenter is anything like me, they are possessive of their Emily. Other people might have their own Emily stories, but it’s not the same, and it’s the strangeness of these characters we got to know in our most formative years, the way it felt like they were speaking directly to our souls, but other readers were picking up the very same signals. The way that reading seems like such a solitary thing, a private universe, but there are so many of these, and the shock of realizing the connection may not have been quite so intimate after all.
