February 26, 2025
I Read My Own Book
Yesterday I read my own book, which is not something I’ve ever done before, with any of my books, cover to cover. It was in anticipation of tomorrow’s meeting of the Beyond a Ballot Book Club, which is reading WAITING FOR A STAR TO FALL, and I thought that I should probably reacquaint myself with the story, which came out almost five years ago. And I’m glad I did, first because there was indeed so much of the story I’d forgotten (her roommate Lauren! I love her!), which would have made me the most useless guest author ever, but also because I really enjoyed the book. Like, ridiculously enjoyed it, which I guess makes sense since I wrote it, and therefore it would indeed so viscerally tap into my emotions, but I wasn’t expecting to feel it so much. While most what my main character experiences in this book is not based on my own life, I’d drawn on my own post-adolescent feelings of longing and sad-hoping to realize her character, and so reading it really did affect me in a really stirring way.
I was also glad to enjoy the book so much because of how it was a novel that wasn’t received the way I’d expected it to be by readers. Part of it was the marketing, I think, which positioned the novel as a straightforward romance, which it’s not, but I’d come away with some regret that perhaps I’d been too ambiguous in my approach to the story. This is very much a #MeToo novel, but I wanted to write about the grey areas surrounding that issue, which is not to say that I’m ambivalent about consent, and rape culture, and unequal power dynamics, and how some men get away with everything while women are torn down so easily, but I found it really interesting to think about a workplace relationship from the point of view of someone who thinks she has more power than she does, about what it means when some women choose the side of the oppressor, about being sure of yourself when you’re too young to really know (and how patronizing is that) and how all these ideas that really do muddy the water.
However there were people who read this book and thought I’d written an anti-feminist screed, and there were even people who congratulated me for my bravery in writing an anti-feminist screed (YIKES!). To which I say, we all bring our own baggage and biases to every book we pick up, but it sure made me think that avoiding ambiguity might actually be advised, and that the reading public might in fact require clear and direct messaging instead of broad spaces to think around in. (I don’t REALLY think that, but I also don’t want people thinking I’ve writing a novel in defence of predatory men!).
But I was pleased to read the book just like a reader, instead of as the writer I’d been when I’d read it so many times pre-publication in draft form, and to discover that I really do think I got it just right, and if not everyone got it, well, so be it. But I was pleased with what a thoughtful, nuanced, and subtle story this is, which is what I think that a novel operating in a grey area has to be.
So weird to be reading this novel about politics in such a different political environment from the one that I wrote it in though, sheesh. The book is absolutely fictional, but was inspired by a politician whose downfall made way for our current Ontario premier, who has been such a disaster and who is predicted to win his third straight majority when we go to the polls tomorrow. (Does this make me think differently about the other smarmy guy who we could have had instead? Not really. And don’t worry, after that scandal that “ruined his life,” he did manage to be elected mayor of a city he hadn’t even lived in. These guys do okay…) I also wrote this novel in 2017/2018, when the new US presidency seemed like a blip, a fluke, and everything is so much more awful now. Even worse, my novel features excerpts from made up news articles/opinion pieces and the one by a female right-wing tabloid columnist that was supposed to be paranoid and crazy—about how #MeToo was going to generate a backlash that made broken men absolutely dangerous, “you ain’t seen toxic masculinity yet”—reads as horrifyingly prescient.
February 4, 2025
Talking Politics
I’m so proud to have published these two unabashedly political novels, grateful for every instance in which those novels have been received in that context, and still a little bit disappointed that it hasn’t happened more often, because making these issues and ideas—about consent, and power, and reproductive rights—accessible to readers was huge part of why I wrote these books in the first place. It’s disappointing to me that “politics” is so often seen as siloed, male, serious and tidy, dry and impersonal, detached from our bodies, our families, the hamster wheels of our everyday lives.
At this moment where politics as usual has seemingly jumped the shark, however, I feel heartened by two really beautiful instances of these novels entering the discourse. On the January 28 episode of the Aborsh podcast, Elizabeth Renzetti (whose new book WHAT SHE SAID: is essential reading) mentions ASKING FOR A FRIEND as an example of positive abortion representation in media (along with SEX AND THE CITY!): “[The book] starts with an abortion and it’s about how that abortion shapes, the friendship between the two protagonists. And it’s just a really interesting way of looking at how abortion brings the two women together and becomes a shared experience.”
And WAITING FOR A STAR TO FALL will be the BEYOND A BALLOT Book Club pick for February 27, which I’m really looking forward to. BEYOND A BALLOT, whose mission is to get more Canadian women interested in politics, brings together really interested group of politically-minded thinkers, and I hope that my novel makes for fruitful discussion and meaningful questions (which are always more important than having the answers).
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.
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 25, 2022
Good Bookish Things
One of the highlights of my March has been hosting the virtual lunch for Danielle Daniel’s debut adult novel Daughters of the Deer, which continues to appear on bestseller lists across the country—which is just the best news, and I’m so thrilled for the book’s success. As a token of thanks following the event, Danielle was kind enough to create a beautiful image of a a reader and my book, and I couldn’t love it any better.
March 9, 2022
On Entitlement
So SOMEBODY is currently making the rounds hoping that his reputation can now be fully rehabilitated, especially after the sexual assault charges against him that (temporarily) derailed his political career back in 2018 have fallen apart. And fair enough. But as someone who has read his terrible autobiography (which is the worst typeset document in the history of documents), I would like to underline that the specific assault charges, to some of us, were never the point. Instead, it was a question of character. The entitlement of a guy who launches his political career with a case of beer at his elite all-boys private high school, who builds a political career with a strategy of unseating female incumbents, who has the fucking audacity to vote to reopen the abortion debate and court the family values crowd—all the while he’s in his thirties and having relationships with women just out of their twenties who work in his office. One of whom he’s now married to, whose secret relationship he only admitted to on the night in 2018 when his whole career came crashing down and suddenly it seemed opportune to be a man with a partner. Who’d be exasperating enough if he were only one guy, except that he’s emblematic of so many mediocre men in positions of leadership who have no idea how irresponsible and reckless it is that they get to have so much power over ordinary people’s lives.
So this is why I don’t feel sorry for Patrick Brown, and that so many people do only underlines the power of “himpathy” (read Kate Manne’s book), and I’ll tell you again that his is the natural trajectory of the men whose “lives are destroyed!” in #MeToo style takedowns, and, finally, if you want to know more about my thoughts on the subject, go read my novel, Waiting for a Star to Fall.
March 4, 2022
It’s Here, It’s There….
Images of Waiting for a Star to Fall out and about in the world lately, including in the company of a couple of excellent mugs.
January 24, 2022
Shooting Stars!
Just a fun round-up of Waiting for a Star to Fall out and about in the world—including a review in the latest issue of Herizons!
