March 21, 2024
The Books Themselves
Last week marked seven years since the release of my first novel, an occasion I didn’t mark as in years past because I’m trying to be more honest and human about my publishing experiences (as opposed to, like, posting, say “WOO HOO BIG BOOK TOUR ENERGY!” posts when it’s just me eating crullers at a series of Tim Hortons across Southern Ontario).
I’ve been really lucky and privileged to have published three novels in total, but it’s never been like how I thought it would be, I’ve never received the validation that my books are real, that I’m legit. I’ve never made a major bestseller list, I’ve never had any of my books nominated for an award, let alone won one. In many ways, trying to pass in the world as a bonafied author has felt more like a series of embarrassments and humiliations that anything else, and I know I’m not alone in this, it’s just too mortifying for most people to say it out loud (and everybody else is John Grisham).
It helps a lot, however, to divorce my books from the idea that they exist to solidify my identity as an author and my sense of self-worth, to look elsewhere for the latter, to freaking get over myself in regards to the former (I think about Annie Dillard’s line, “…he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat…”)
To think of the fact of these books in themselves, as singular creations rather than as extensions of me. To consider how true I was able to be to my vision for all three of them, how I’m able to open any one of them at any page and start reading, and think, “This is a book I’d like to read.” How proud I am of the secret subversion in each of these stories, the poignancy, the humour, and how they lift up, complicate, and celebrate women’s lives and women’s stories.
Here are, at least, three parts of my author life of which I wouldn’t change a single thing.
March 15, 2023
Mitzi Bytes Turns 6!
It’s March Break this week (low key staycation edition) and yesterday we celebrated Pi Day AND the sixth birthday of my very first novel with a chocolate pudding cake. It’s especially exciting to be celebrating this milestone as I’m hatching plans to bring my THIRD novel into the world on September 5. (Cover reveal is coming next week!! Stay tuned!).
January 13, 2023
235 Days
235 days until Asking for a Friend is released! And in the meantime, my previous novels are still out there in the world, being read, and (in one case) wearing a moustache. Thank you to everybody who’s reading and sharing.
October 12, 2022
Looks! Looks! It’s my books!
If you need me for the next month, I’m going to hard at work on the final round of revisions to my novel before it goes for copy editing (it comes out September 5 2023, which is less than a year away) but, in the meantime, how wonderful that my first two novels are still out there in the world, going places and being read! Thanks to everybody who’s reading and sharing.
March 16, 2022
Mitzi Bytes Turns Five!
Mitzi Bytes turned five on Monday, which was also Pi Day, and so once again I made Nora Ephron’s chocolate pie to celebrate. I’m also giving away a copy of the new Harper Perennial Edition of the book. If you’d like a chance to win, enter over on Instagram before the end of the week.
February 22, 2019
Why I Put My Children Online
Once in a while, some thoughtful person will ask my permission before posting a picture online—a Facebook page, a community website, their Instagram feed. And in response I always start laughing. “You go right ahead,” I assure this person. “After all, I’ve plastered both of them all over the entire internet already.”
For 18 years, I’ve been telling my life stories via blogging, and when I became a mother, I didn’t see a reason for things to be different. In fact, when my eldest daughter was born, I needed the communities of blogs and social media more than ever. It was through my blog that I puzzled my way through early motherhood, and found friendships and connections that made me feel so much less alone at a difficult time.
Of course, things became more complicated as my children grew, developing into individuals in their own right. I knew that they would be implicated in the stories I told, and so I exercised caution, asking myself, “Will this keep my child’s dignity in tact?” before posting a photo or an anecdote. Only once I ever fudged this, and this was when I posted a photo of my naked child’s bare bum as she played in a paddling pool on a rooftop. The backdrop was a cityscape—it was quite dramatic—and I figured that as you couldn’t see her face, she would come off from this fairly innocently.
But what about the pedophiles???, some worried parents will inevitably respond to this (and they did, in fact). To which I reply that while I do keep such nefarious individuals in the back of my mind, letting these people guide the way I operate myself online would be misguided. Regarding the internet as a place wholly apart from the world would be similarly wrong, and so instead I proceed with a spirit of openness with a sensible amount of caution.
Letting my children exist on the internet at their young ages is also a useful way to acquaint them with social media, which will presumably be a huge part of their lives in general when they are older, just as it is a huge part of mine. They are currently invested in how they appear on social media and on my blog, and are developing an understanding of how it all works, which will make them more savvy online operators when they’re ready to venture into the world without parental accompaniment.
For my older daughter in particular, I do ask her permission when I post images of her or write about her. (There are many photos I never posted, and stories that I’ve never told.) Although I also understand that the permission granted by a nine-year-old is dubious at best. But this is where the fact of me being her parent who is looking out for her interests comes in handy—it’s actually my job. And she trusts, and I trust, and her father trusts too, that I will make smart decisions that will also keep her safe—and preserve her dignity as well.
Of course, there will be mistakes and misinterpretations. Things will go wrong. Posts will be deleted. I hereby reserve the right to mess up, but to keep on learning too, rather than just simply forgo my children appearing in my online life altogether. (There are also indeed weirdo parents who blatantly exploit their children for YouTube notoriety, but maybe let’s not make this base-level parenting be the standard from which all our ideas and discussions about parenting begin.)
My biggest reservation with the expectation that women not share their images and stories of their children is that it implies that certain parts of a woman’s experience no longer belong to her once she becomes a mother. It reminds me of those 19th-century images of “ghostmothers” shrouded in black holding their babies in portraits. It’s not so far along the spectrum from a line of thinking that once a woman becomes pregnant, she doesn’t even properly belong to her body anymore and therefore someone else can be charged with her reproductive choices.
There is also a gendered element to this discussion, in which mothers often refrain from posting photos of their children and explain that it’s because of their male partner’s discomfort with social media. I find it strange and troubling that a man whose partner is active and literate in social media could not trust her to make smart choices in this space (often a feminized one) which he is less savvy about, and instead has the power to decide what she posts online.
While I acknowledge that a woman’s life is no longer just her own once she has children, I assert her right to maintain an existence on the internet (which these days is where a lot of life happens) that acknowledges her entire personhood—and motherhood is a part of that, if she desires it to be. The stories I tell about my children are their stories, but they’re also my stories too.
In my novel, Mitzi Bytes, my protagonist learns that while compartmentalizing one’s experience and maintaining a rigorous divide between online and actual selves seemslike a smart approach, ultimately it’s not sustainable. Living in the world is more complicated than that, both online and off it.
October 29, 2018
More Fun Things
Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of returning to the Stratford Writers Festival, where I moderated a panel about women’s experiences with Sarah Selecky, Andrea Bain, and Emily Anglin, and it was wonderful. I still remember the first time I was asked to moderate anything, years ago, and how I accepted the job because I thought it was the kind of thing I’d really like to do, although I wasn’t sure I’d be very good at it—and I wasn’t. But over the years, I’ve become comfortable with public speaking and confident about my own skills as a reader, to the point where I’m a kickass moderator and I know it, and I love it. It was a real pleasure to be part of this event.
That same weekend, I had the joyful experience of my review of Iona Whishaw’s A Sorrowful Sanctuary appearing in The Toronto Star’s venerable books section. So nice too that Whishaw’s all too timely historical novel gave me an excuse to be calling our shady nationalist politicians and Nazis in the media. ‘“I suppose I’m simply naïve,” [Lane] explains. “I want all my Nazis parceled up and put on the shelf of history after all our hard work in the war. I didn’t expect to find them here.”’
And this weekend, I’m off to Sudbury for the Wordstock Sudbury Festival. On Saturday morning, I’ll be appearing on a book industry panel with Hazel Millar and Holly Kent, and later that afternoon representing Mitzi Bytes with Margaret Christakos and Diane Schoemperlen, and I’m really looking forward to it.
September 14, 2018
In the woods, on the radio, and online!
We had an amazing time at the Dunedin Literary Festival “Words in the Woods!” last weekend, where I had the privilege of moderating a panel with Karma Brown, Tish Cohen, and Uzma Jalalludin. It was a very good day and left me excited for my next event, which takes place on September 23 in Huntsville as part of Huntsville Public Library’s Books and Brunch series. I’ll be there with Hannah Mary McKinnon and K.A. Tucker, and all of us appeared on the most recent episode of the library’s very own radio show (how cool!) Keeping Up the Librarians—you can listen to it here. And I was also happy to take part in the “Behind the Scenes With Book Reviewers” series at the Hamilton Review of Books, which was published this week—go here to learn all my book reviewing secrets.
July 19, 2018
Mitzi Bytes: Big In Muskoka
Though not for lack of trying, I have never encountered anyone reading my novel on the beach, but I came very close last week when a copy was spotted in the library at the cottages we were staying at. My friend saw it first, but only mentioned it offhandedly because she’d assumed I’d put it there. But I hadn’t—at least I didn’t think I had. And the other families we were vacationing with, both of whom had stayed at the same place last summer, promised that they hadn’t left the book either. I didn’t really believe any of us—was it possible that my book had been purchased by a person I don’t know (or who is not, a least, a friend of my mother’s)? But it had a sticker from Chapters Indigo, so it was certainly not a copy I’d dropped off and then completely forgotten about (distinctly possible…) My friends hadn’t bought their copies at Indigo either, and the spine was even cracked. And while I could have decided to respond to this situation by being despondent that a reader had left my book behind and not committed it to their personal library for all of eternity because it was the most affecting and incredible novel they’d ever encountered in a lifetime… instead I was just pretty thrilled because the cottage library was in alphabetical order even, featured some pretty excellent titles, and each one was stamped with the cottage library stamp, which seemed very official. This cottage library was legit.
And presumably, someone had been reading my novel on the beach…even if I wasn’t there to see it.
So that was pretty cool, and then my sense of being Extraordinarily Popular in Muskoka was only compounded when we went into town for the day and my face was on the Huntsville Public Library’s Books and Brunch poster, plastered all over town. And on the library display screens displayed prominently over the checkout desk—my children were very excited!! To be famous in a library is no small thing, although nobody recognized me—when my author photo was taken I was wearing make-up, had washed my hair recently and wasn’t covered in bug bites. But still, they knew it was me. It was all very exciting. (The Huntsville Books and Brunch Event is at Hidden Valley Resort on September 23 with superstars K.A. Tucker and Hannah Mary McKinnon [whose The Neighbours I read before I went on holiday, and liked so much…] You can buy tickets through the library.)
One other exciting thing is that Karen Green at Bookclubbish included Mitzi Bytes on a list of books by Canadian authors to read for Canada Day—alongside writers including Karma Brown, and Sharon Bala. If you missed it, fear not! You can also read Mitzi Bytes for the August Civic Holiday Weekend…
And in case you were curious about what Mitzi Bytes and I are up to this fall, I’m pleased to be taking part in some fantastic events across the province—The Dunedin Literary Festival, Huntsville Public Library Books and Brunch, Stratford Writers Festival, and Wordstock Sudbury. If any of these these happen to be in your neck of the woods, I’d love to see you there.
