October 28, 2020
True Covid Confessions: I don’t miss literary events. All I ever wanted to do was stay home and READ.
As a literary enthusiast, a reader and a writer, it feels like blasphemy to declare it, but I don’t miss literary events. Not a bit.
I don’t miss yelling over the roar of a crowd to make awkward small talk, sitting through readings that last far too long, listening to that one guy whose outsized ego means he clearly holds his co-panelists in contempt, or being introduced to a writer for at least the third time (we even shared a panel once) who still claims not to know me.
I don’t miss paying way too much money for a drink I don’t really feel like drinking, or half as much (which is still a lot) for a glass of tepid orange juice.
And the audience Q&As. I don’t miss them at all. The woman who actually has a comment instead of a question, and the other one who wants advice on how to get published, and I’m still traumatized by the event back in 2006 when a man got up to ask Zadie Smith if she supposed she would have had as much success had she not been so physically attractive.
Or even worse, the events that only a handful of people have bothered to show up to, so that I am mortified on behalf of the author, the establishment, and humanity in general, and then I somehow feel contractually obliged to become that woman yammering on in the Q&A, since the alternative is crickets.
And while I do appreciate the opportunity to buy books at literary events, particularly when it enables me to support one of my favourite local independent booksellers, it is often the case that I have purchased the book on sale already, having pre-ordered it or ventured out to buy it on the publication day. So that I’m buying a copy of a book I own already, which is hardly a tragedy (I love deciding on the perfect reader to pass my spare copy on to) but it’s not exactly economically sensible.
I miss the cheese though—such irresistible cubes. The pieces I cut at home never achieve the same symmetry. And I miss seeing friends, and celebrating writers I love. I’m still buzzing from a 2018 conversation with Esi Edugyan and Meg Wolitzer at the Toronto Festival of Authors, scrawling Wolitzer’s brilliant words in my notebook: “The world will whittle your daughter down, but a mother never should, and my mother never did, and that is feminism in action.” I miss the inspiration of watching panels as fabulously curated as those at an event like The Festival of Literary Diversity, which is where I became acquainted with amazing writers like Cherie Dimaline, Carrianne Leung, and Amber Dawn for the very first time.
As a writer, I have gained a particular understanding of just why literary events matter so much, and I’ve been grateful to them creating opportunities for me to connect with readers and to enact the privilege of being an author in public—basically what dreams are made of.
But even my most hotly anticipated literary events, those opportunities to share a room with authors whose books and ideas are integral to my very being—these, I have secretly resented for the way they keep me from my number one pursuit, which is reading. If it was socially acceptable for me to hide in the corner with your novel at your book launch, I would do it, but the lighting never suffices, and enough people think I’m kind of rude already.
I have secretly resented them for the way they keep me from my number one pursuit, which is reading.
And so for me, there has been something of a relief in the cessation of the literary social calendar. Skipping the Zoom launches, and curling up with a book instead, and I’ve been doing so much reading. I’ve been doing my part by buying books too, and then some. The most joyful moments during the dark days of these pandemic times has been finding deliveries on my porch from local bookshops, who’ve worked so hard to keep their businesses going and keep us all in books while in lockdown.
Books and the reading proving to be the most delightful diversion and escape as well, the opposite of twitter doom scrolling. I’ve enjoyed finding online community too in a network of readers, which is rich and rewarding, even if lacking in cheese.
My new novel Waiting for a Star to Fall is out this week and you don’t even have to leave the house to celebrate!
- Purchase your copy today.
- Tonight (Wednesday), I’m doing an Instagram Live event with Indigo at 7pm.
- Tickets are still available for the Book Drunkard Festival Event tomorrow.
In 2010, I wrote this somewhat related piece, “Enough shameful author appearances for one lifetime”
October 27, 2020
Gleanings
- This is a collection of previously unpublished short stories ranging over the earlier years of Madeleine L’Engle’s writing career, now gathered by her granddaughter.
- In these very weirdest of times, where the ordinary feels extraordinary and precious, where we are forced to be creative and innovative in navigating life in a world that presents very real challenges to our physical, emotional and spiritual health, it was a good day.
- I want to find a way to be brighter, make the best of this situation.
- Sprinkles are entirely optional, of course, but we could all use more sprinkles these days.
- As soon as I finished reading this I thought: I want to read it again.
- October here is like a painting.
- Any literary genre is open to distinctions in readers’ taste, but arguably none more so than the horror genre.
- I could have spent the afternoon reading but instead I washed my husband’s body while he braced himself on his walker, helped him back into his bed, arranged the soft flannel sheet over his legs.
- The togetherness, tradition, self-expression.
- “Sometimes in the world of people who write or people who make media there is just this expectation that everything is on the table, especially if you’re two women who make media, that we’re supposed to just share our pain and everything that’s going on in our lives but that’s not fair and it’s not true…”
- I keep telling myself, I need a winter plan, a plan to get through, no matter what. I need some new winter mantras. (Quietly, quietly).
- Did you know that there’s a whole world out there beyond Harper Collins and Penguin?
- What to do when life takes a non-peachy turn
October 27, 2020
The Wait is Over!
Waiting for a Star to Fall is here! Thank you to everybody who has helped me welcome it into the world.
- Have you seen my cake??
- From the review in Saturday’s Toronto Star: “Waiting for a Star to Fall” surprised me. I read it in a day, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
- Waiting for a Star to Fall in the Peterborough Examiner!
- Q&A on Ann Douglas’s blog
- “Pick up Kerry Clare’s novel because it’s an entertaining, contemporary read. Stick with it because it is a perceptive, intelligent commentary of the world we’re in.” Thank you, Kaley Stewart!
October 26, 2020
Blue Monday
There’s reading and there’s reading, you know? The latter an intense and visceral experience, and I don’t know if it’s about the book or the moment, or an amazing alchemy involving both. I know you can’t plan it, and simply have to wait for the moment to arrive, often when you really need it (like when I reread Kate Atkinson last spring and it brought me back to life…)
I took part in the Turning the Page on Cancer readathon yesterday and read for 8 hours straight, which is pretty much my ideal way to spend a day even when it’s not for charity. Putting together a stack of books for the event late last week—books on my to-be-read shelf, books that weren’t too long so I could feel I was making progress. They all turned out to be blue, which is the opposite of the Breast Cancer pink palette, but I always like to do books my own way. (PS We raised more than $30,000!!!)
I didn’t read Louise Penny’s latest, All the Devils Are Here, as part of the readathon, but it was almost like I did because a) the book was also blue and b) I had to speed through it Friday and Saturday so it would be finished in time for me to begin the official stack on Sunday. And I enjoyed the novel so very much. I always love me an Inspector Gamache novel, but this one seemed particularly compelling, I think because of its close focus on a single plot plot-line. I was absolutely wrapped up in the plot, gasped aloud several times (and yes, all gasps are aloud, but you know what I mean…) and found the climax rich and satisfying. It takes us away from Three Pines, to Paris, where Gamache and Reine-Marie have gone to await the birth of their new grandchild. And when Gamache’s godfather is struck down in a hit-and-run that seems calculated, the whole family becomes embroiled in a crime with potential for massive devastation—but is there anybody they can trust?
I had been nervous to read Rumaan Alam’s new novel Leave the World Behind because I’d heard reports it was bleak and disturbing, but also that it was phenomenal and it’s nominated for a National Book Award. So what to do? Because I’m not exactly emotionally strong as steel these days, more like wobbly as Jello, and I wasn’t sure I had the stomach. BUT if I read it in a couple of hours in one sitting, in the morning…it wouldn’t be so bad, I decided. This story of an ordinary time that turns into an apocalypse, when a white family is staying at remote holiday home and then an older Black couple turn up, the home’s owners, saying something unspecific but devastating as taken place in the the city, and they have nowhere else to, and things just get weirder and weirder, and it was so good. Resonant in this plague year (the mother’s plea, “I just want everything to be okay!) and the writing and imagery so striking (the flamingos!) even if I do feel he gets women and sex wrong (in this book, a woman can’t find her child, and likens this to being as strange as not being able to find her earlobes or her clitoris, but man, I bet there are a lot of women who can’t find their clitoris, it just was very off.) Am I glad I read this book? Yes, it was so interesting and rich and propulsive. Do I kind of wish I’d never read it though? Yes, because I’ve been disturbed by its darkness and slightly frightened ever since I finished it, but what a testament to the book’s power, right? This one is definitely a mindfuck.
But Agatha, by Anne Catherine Bomann, is not, thank goodness. A charming tale, one that could have been twee, but wasn’t. It actually spoke to the very different Leave the World Behind in a variety of ways, actually, about the danger/desire to live apart from humanity, about existential longing, about trauma and despair. Also set in Paris, which took me back to Louise Penny the day before! This one is a slim volume and I read it in an hour, but I loved it, translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight and published in Canada by BookHug, About a therapist whose detachment from his patients and the world around him becomes blurry when a new patient arrives and his stalwart secretary leaves to care for her dying husband. It also contains a recipe for apple cake, so this one was always up my street anyway, but I adored it.
I also loved David Berry’s On Nostalgia, which I bought after his 49thShelf launchpad post, and while it’s also a slim volume, it’s packed and heavy and I am pleased that it was part of the whirlwind of my day, adding a bit of literary heft, and it tapped into similar existential questions I’d encountered in the previous two books. Why do we spend so much time looking back? Why do we disdain this impulse? How do politicians manipulate it? How is Back to the Future actually an anti-nostalgic exercise? How does the dynamicism of social media affect our engagement with it, and that we have no memories of sites like Facebook or Instagram which is changing our user experiences of them constantly? It was so interesting, and the prose was engaging and funny. I am very glad I read it.
And then finally Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke, whose first two novels I loved, and I picked this one up at Lighthouse Books in the summer. (Literally. And then had to buy because Covid.) I’m not so far into it now, but am riveted, about a Black Texas Ranger who’s caught between a rock and a hard place, a familiar situation I would imagine for Black police officers everywhere. He’s also a law school drop-out and pulled between the desire to challenge the law and to serve it—in which corner does justice lie?
On the eve of my own book release, with so much else going on in the world and my nerves all frayed, butterflies exploding in my stomach, etc, it was such a privilege and a pleasure to escape into reading this weekend, not to leave the world behind at all (SPOILER: IT IS TO MUCH WITH US!) but to give me new ways to think about it, and celebrate the magic that reading can do.
October 23, 2020
Launch Week!
There are just days to go before WAITING FOR A STAR TO FALL is launched into orbit, and I know that pre-ordered copies are already making their way into the world. Thank you so much for making my pandemic book launch a not-lonely experience and I look forward to sharing celebrations over the next week with you—including chances for you to win!
Sunday: Turning the Page on Cancer
If you need me on Sunday, I’ll be heroically reading FOR EIGHT STRAIGHT HOURS to raise funds and awareness to support people living with metastatic breast cancer. Thank you to everybody who has helped me meet my goal. I am so exciting that the campaign altogether has raised more than $20,000!
Monday: Official Cake Party
Fancy cake is an essential part of the Book Launch experience. I’ve got mine on order and would LOVE if you could have your cake and eat it too in solidarity with me on Monday.
PS I recently learned that Flo-Rida has a song called “Cake,” and while some people have suggested that his cake is a metaphor for salacious deeds instead of about actual cake, I’m taking him at his word.
Tuesday: Read-In and Win
I’m so excited at the thought of my new book arriving into the hands of readers on Publication Day. Share a selfie of you and the book on your blog or social media next week and tag me for a chance to win a $100 Gift Card from Inner Muse. Three runners-up will win a bag of Star To Fall tea blend from Clearview Tea!
Wednesday: Live Instagram with Indigo
Join me at 7pm on Instagram for a live conversation about Waiting For a Star to Fall! Links and info here.
Thursday: The Book Drunkard Festival
I am so excited to be part of this year’s Book Drunkard Festival, ESPECIALLY since they’ve gone virtual, which means everyone can join. And yes, because they have their own beer. At 7pm, I’ll be speaking with the amazing Bianca Marais about Waiting For a Star to Fall.Tickets for the event cost $30, include the purchase of the book, and are on sale now!
Friday: Official Champagne Toast
What a week! I will confess that it may not be authentic champagne with which we’ll be toasting my launch week, but a glass of anything will clink just fine. Please raise your own glass, and I’ll be toasting you in appreciation for your support and encouragement.
PS: Don’t Forget Your Book Plate
Guys, my sharpies ran out!! But I am buying more tonight so please send me an email with your address and I will be happy to send you a personalized book plate!
Star to Fall Tea Blend
And yes indeed, WAITING FOR A STAR TO FALL has its very own tea from Clearview Tea in Creemore, ON, an organic black tea blend featuring vanilla, bergamot and rose petals. On sale now for a limited time.
October 22, 2020
Perfect October Reads
The Searcher, by Tana French
What a gift is any new book by Tana French, and The Searcher is no exception. Set in rural Ireland where a retired Chicago cop has come to make a new life after escaping his old one for reasons he really doesn’t want to get into…but then a kid shows up urging him to pursue a local mystery.
This is a quiet, thoughtful kind of thriller, not heavy on plot at all, but propelled by the most terrific tension. I loved her previous novel, The Witch Elm, but it was kind of baggy. The Searcher is a more satisfying read, rich and soulful, and really hard to put down, and enlivened with a moral ambiguity that’s unfailingly interesting.
Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
And believe the hype about the bestselling Mexican Gothic. Spooky haunted house book in the 19th century English tradition, terrifying and absolutely delicious, and with a great critique of colonialism and racism. Moreno-Garcia’s Noemí Taboada is the heroine of your wildest dreams, cigarette-smoking, convertible-driving, as clever as she is gutsy, and determined to save her cousin Catalina who’s been having terrifying visions since arriving at her new husband’s strange family home, built on top of a fateful silver mine—but the strange and deadly force at work in the house is determined to stop either of them from leaving. You’ll be having disturbing dreams until you’ve made it through this one, so you should probably just clear your calendar.
October 21, 2020
Taking Stock
I am not super into memes, but I’m currently in a mindset that requires a bit of grounding and also anything Pip Lincolne does, I want to do too.
Finding: That once again, publishing a book is making me feel vulnerable like nothing else. It’s TERRIBLE. At least I know what it is this time. A combination of “Why is everybody looking at me?” and “Why isn’t everybody looking at me?” at once. Shawna’s post yesterday spoke to me.
Wishing: For Covid infection rates to go down.
Cooking: So in love with Smitten Kitchen’s Spaghetti and Meatballs, and the carrot white bean burgers, both of which we had this weekend. I don’t know what I am making for dinner tonight…
Making: Hatching plans to knit a baby blanket for a friend. I suppose the only thing I’m actually making right now is a new draft to my novel that has been long in-progress, but it feels very good to be doing that now. And also: plans for next year’s garden.
Sipping: Star to Fall blend tea!
Reading: Big Friendship, by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
Looking: At the leaves turning yellow outside my kitchen door.
Listening: All I want to do is listen to songs that were played on Top 40 radio during the year I was 20, like “I’ll Be,” by Edwin McCain. It’s ALL EAGLE-EYE CHERRY ALL THE TIME OVER HERE. I think this is what happens to people once they turn 40. (And Taylor Swift’s folklore, obviously.)
Wishing: For the polls to be right.
Enjoying: The Storygirls Podcast!
Liking: How wonderful it is to take my children to school every day
Loving: The Searcher, by Tana French and Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, both atmospheric reads that I’ll be writing about tomorrow.
Buying: Choco-Sol Halloween Chocolate after reading the latest edition of Five Minutes for the Planet
Watching: Season 4 of Schitt’s Creek which I am watching very slowly, because I watch TV about once every three weeks. Whatever the opposite of bingeing is—abstaining?—is my approach.
Hoping: That people buy my book, and then we get to celebrate that plus a new US president the following week
Needing: A new US president. It is not fair that such a stupid man has caused me to be scared and worried for four years.
Wearing: My Desserts and Skirts zebra tunic, OBVIOUSLY. The tunic I wore until it had holes and then purchased a replacement.
Noticing: That my anxiety towards illness is going to be what my kids talk to their future therapists about.
Sorting: The porch and garden for winter. Cleaned away a lot of clutter, and purchased a pretty pot of fall flowers for beside the door.
Getting: Used to the ease of my children having their extracurricular activities (Girl Guides and piano lessons) online and so much less running around.
Craving: Indian takeout for lunch!
Coveting: The Gladstone Press edition of Wuthering Heights
Feeling: A bit lugubrious (thankfully temporary), but also grateful for so much
October 20, 2020
Gleanings
I am so happy today as I read through the blogs on my Blog Reader. So many people who’ve taken my course this year have updated their blogs this week. Some of my faves (Elizabeth!) updated theirs twice. Such a pleasure to see all the good people out there in the world making good work and sharing their ideas. And this reader sure appreciates it.
- Sure enough, the more I thought about birds, the more they began appearing in everything I read.
- However if, like me, you don’t think/respond well when put on the spot, or if you’re a people-pleaser and your go-to response is agreement, consider adopting a personal pause.
- When you start prioritizing your writing time, the people around you might not like it very much. (They won’t like it at all.)
- Words are like seeds and when healthy ones are sown, those seeds grow into something greater.
- And then the word Heal comes to me and everything settled. That’s what this time is. Calm. Quiet. Light, is what I imagine for the winter.
- Reading: Pachinko and Persuasion.
- I’m always torn between, hey look everyone it’s me over here, and also trying to fade into the woodwork.
- I am not very good at being nocturnal. While I love the moon, and the stars, and the uncanny call of the owl behind my house, I must admit that my mood often sinks with the sun.
- When it’s light out, the trees brilliant gold and deep orange, the house finches busy at the work of opening maple seeds, I am ready for anything. But when the weight settles, I pick up my quilt and stitch free-hand spirals into the sashing between the log-cabin blocks.
- We’d always end up among the trees, in their shade, in their splendour.
- The first thing I don’t like about this book is that she (Gertrude Elizabeth Blood), calls herself Lady Colin Campbell
- Fortunately, not all best laid plans automatically go awry, either. We didn’t get to meet as we’d anticipated, but we did get to meet in ways we’ve come to expect and enjoy…
- The perfect time to eat it simply never came. Note to self: It never will.
- I unfold each scrap of paper before I throw it in the recycle bin, just in case I find a note. Because even in our era of emails and texts, Doug wrote me notes. I haven’t found one in his winter clothing yet, but I might, and I’ll savour it and save it.
- October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and, for me, it is doubly so.
- I used to think that the ache would disappear, that the hurt would fade but seventeen years later I’ve learned that grief is a journey without a real destination.
- Rioux makes the case that the book is important to all readers as a story that explores female identity in ways that still continue to matter.
- WE USED TO HAVE A ROOF OVER OUR HEADS, moan the butter sticks. WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR ROOF. The shelf is fine, I tell them. You’re safe on the shelf. NOOOOO they whine oh butter. Have you considered meditation?
- And so this sign in all its simplistic splendour really spoke to me as something that was, if not completely attainable at the time, at least something to strive toward. Simplify, it said. OK! I said. Let’s give it a shot.
October 18, 2020
How I Made My Children Readers: My ONE Magic Secret
Okay, as everybody knows, my children are readers because LUCK and because they happened to be born with those inclinations, and because they are fortunate that reading comes easily for their brains. LUCK also that neither of them decided to hate reading out of spite, because their mom was just way too into it. (I was anticipating this. Have done my best—and no doubt failed—not to be too much about the whole reading thing, and give them space to develop their own tastes and connection to reading that was not just an extension of mine.) This is probably 75% of the formula.
In addition, books and reading are an essential part of our family culture, they see me and their dad reading all the time, I’ve surrounded them with excellent books since before they were born, and it’s rare that they’ve ever taken a journey that didn’t end at a bookshop (and then ice cream).
But my magic secret to raising readers is none of these. My magic secret is much less wholesome, is sexist and outdated, and is available in digest form at your local grocery store. My magic secret to raising readers is ARCHIE COMICS.
And here’s why.
1 ) I buy them at the grocery store checkout, along with milk and cheese and breakfast cereal, underlining the point that reading materials can be staples, sundries just as essential as toilet paper and dish soap. They’re always appreciated, and special enough to turn up in Christmas stockings, but they’re kind of viewed there the way that socks in the stockings are. Nice to have, but ubiquitous.
2) Ubiquitous, which is to say accessible. They’re cheap. Can be taken for granted. Unremarkable. They’re just always around.
3) Being so accessible, they’re also disposable. They’re the books my children bring to the table at lunchtime because nobody cares if they get splattered with soup. Nobody has to be precious with a book like this.
4) These are also stories that ask little of their readers. They don’t require a lot of attention or brain power. They’re perfect for if you’re really tired. My daughter likes to read one as a palette cleanser after reading something intense or demanding before bed. They’re not edifying. In short, they are basically literary candy. Unlimited literary candy. And unlimited candy is basically every kid’s dream. (Just don’t tell them that they’re building literacy as a lifelong habit!)
5) I bought two comics last week when we were waiting in the drug store for our flu shots. Archie comics pass the time, and because they’re broken up into pieces, you can read them at three minute intervals or for ages and ages. Picking them up and putting them down is easy , and so they’re really easy to integrate into the course of one’s day. SEVERAL TIMES.
And because they’re so ubiquitous, there’s usually a small pile of them within arm’s reach anyway. Nobody has to go out of their way, which is just the way literacy training ought to be.
