October 6, 2020
Gleanings
- I mean, how hard can it be? I had an idea, a story arc and time. All I needed to do was turn on the tap and it would flow out. Right?
- We made friends, we built a life—a good life—together, we have a language-for-just-us and code words and in-jokes.
- On Wednesday night I read the final chapter in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to my youngest daughter—thus closing the chapter on one of the major post-diagnosis goals I had set for myself.
- What a joyful thing. Evoking a response, a thought, interpretation, connection through your own expression.
- “October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!”
- My truth is that the quiet, almost eremitic hours I spend in the forest, are sacred and essential – how I am able to find peace in this time of high anxiety.
- Every day my walk is the same. And entirely different.
- But when, like most of us, I ran low on white flour in April, I used whole wheat instead and discovered that the recipe wasn’t just as good as it was with white flour, but better.
- And thinking about archives at the same time because I was already lamenting that I’d never done the thing that I’d always thought I would do: keep a regular reading journal, keep track of everything I read, and when, and what I thought. I was disappointed in myself beyond words and then, man, I realized that if only I’d done the same thing with the quilts I’ve made over the past 35 years…
- The Voyage Out soon began to spill into other areas of my life.
- “I’ve trained myself to do many different things in small segments over the course of the day…..Yesterday I began by making a butternut squash cake for our meeting, then I worked on my kintsugi.”
- Sometimes you have to kill all your darlings. Throw the whole book out and start again from scratch.
- What I found most disturbing about the book is that I know Mattie Rigsbees.
- Just as a cook needs to learn to diversify in the types of foods and the differences in spices, cooking methods, and ingredients used, so too should a photographer embrace their own diversifications.
- Sometimes, writers of dark fiction blur the lines between horror and the psychological thriller.
- This year, I took a different kind of breather, challenging myself to walk 300 kilometres, or an average of 10k per day. On twenty-nine of those thirty days, I walked.
October 5, 2020
Waiting for a Star to Fall: THE SOUNDTRACK
The question of why I insist on making playlists for my novels is definitely one worth asking, especially since all they really do is reveal me as a person whose taste in music is atrocious. But having come to terms with this fact, I can share that music is a really huge part of my process, of my entire life, and certain songs find their way into my fiction as a kind of subtle biography. These connections are rich and meaningful to me, not to mention catchy as all-get-out.
“Waiting for a Star to Fall,” by Boy Meets Girl
There was a really long period where the song “I Know You By Heart” from the soundtrack to the movie Beaches was in my head, and I can’t quite remember why. This was during the winter/spring of 2018, when I was thinking a lot about the plot of my novel even before setting down a word, and I was doing both of these things (having the song in my head and imagining the book) while I was swimming lengths at the pool.
But the weird thing was that “I Know You By Heart” in my head always ended up morphing into “Waiting For a Star To Fall,” famously the theme from hit film Three Men and a Little Lady.
It all made some more sense when I googled and found out they were written by the same songwriting team (Boy Meets Girl!), and then I spent that summer actually writing the book while obsessively listening to “Waiting for a Star to Fall” on Youtube. I was addicted, to this song and also others with saxophone solos, but mainly Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street,” and then eventually Youtube’s algorithm started following “Waiting for a Star to Fall” with “Right Down the Line,” by Gerry Rafferty, which didn’t have a saxophone solo, but found its way into the DNA of the book I was writing.
All of this seems kind of random, I know, but then it gets even weirder. That December, my novel was still untitled (it went through a stage of being called “The Fall” or “This Downfall”) and I went to my friend Marissa’s 40th birthday party, for which she’d created a Spotify playlist, and “Waiting for a Star to Fall” came on, as a poppy ’80s tune might, and then it was directly followed by “Right Down the Line,” by Gerry Rafferty. What the heck?? Two songs not especially connected by era or genre, and one of them definitely didn’t appear on the soundtrack to Three Men and a Little Lady. I was a little drunk and sent a hysterical text message to my husband, who worked from home one day a week and knew my secret—that I basically listened to “Waiting for a Star to Fall” and “Right Down the Line” on a loop all day long.
It was really weird and excellent, and then in early January I realized that “Waiting for a Star to Fall” was actually the book title I’d been searching for, for the reference to a political superstar meeting his downfall, but also because the song is all about unrequited love and somebody who is waiting for impossible things, which my book is all about.
“How Will I Know?” by Whitney Houston
The Boy Meets Girl duo (Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill) wrote so many great songs, among them some of Whitney Houston’s greatest hits. “How Will I Know?” is one my favourite songs to sing at karaoke, and it definitely conjures themes of my novel, about being young and unsure when it comes to love—especially since feelings can’t always be trusted.
“A Case of You,” by Joni Mitchell
I don’t know that I have ever written a less autobiographical work of fiction than Waiting for a Star to Fall (my protagonist doesn’t read!!) but I was able to tune in to all my own early 20s angst and longing to strike the right note with my character. This song meant a lot to me in those days, and the part about the guy who is as “constant as a northern star/ constantly in the darkness” tied in well with my story and the celestial imagery.
“Laid,” by James
When I started going out to bars, this song was a mainstay, and I loved it for its aspirational qualities, though it was far from the realities of my experience most of the time. I definitely conjure those days in my novel’s depiction of the small town bar experience (Lanark’s notorious bar Slappin’ Nellies is probably recognizable as Peterborough’s Trasheteria circa 2000) and the best thing is that the nostalgic obsession of modern times means this ’90s track is not so out of place.
“I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing,” by Aerosmith
Yes, more ’90s, but my protagonist’s love interest is my age, so it fits. He’s a cheesy dude and his favourite movie is Armageddon, and this song appears on the soundtrack—and it kind of sums up his intense approach to life and all things.
“Right Down the Line,” by Gerry Rafferty
I love this song, but it’s kind of a crime, as are all songs like these, these songs that convince women that their role is to wait and serve in relationships with men, “to put something better inside of [their partners],” and that a bare recognition of this fact should suffice as repayment for the enormous debt this incurs. Do you ever wonder how your life might have been different had you not come of age on these tropes? I also always wondered if Rafferty’s “You’ve been as constant as a northern star, the brightest star that shines” was somehow in conversation with Mitchell’s. (Essential to note: I eventually paid for digital copies of this song and “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” and no longer am I constantly streaming Youtube.)
“Let the River Run,” by Carly Simon
When my protagonist was a little girl, she used to watch her mother’s VHS copy of Working Girl, and then pretend to be a career woman by turning her family’s dining room table into a desk. (Please see Clementine Ford’s Instagram stories for a deep dive into why Working Girl is a very problematic feminist classic, another trope that works its ways into our veins to fuck us over. ) Carly Simon’s song was the best thing about this movie, except for Joan Cusack’s hair, and I still find the lyrics profoundly moving and poignant: (and yes, there is celestial imagery): “We the great and small/ Stand on a star/ And blaze a trail of desire/ Through the dark’ning dawn.”
“The Boys of Summer,” by Don Henley
This has been one of my favourite songs for years and years, and it was long out of date even by the time that I started loving it. This appears in the novel when my protagonist is missing the guy she loves and goes driving by his house even though he’s not home.
“Invincible,” by Pat Benatar
An abortion takes place in my novel (of course it does!) and the woman who experiences it is strong and secure in her experience because she’s cared for by her friends through it all. Like this character, I also watched The Legend of Billie Jean and ate ice cream cake after my abortion in the company of my pals, and this song is from the soundtrack. (I wrote about this here: “Abortion Baskin Robbins“)
“Be My Baby,” by The Ronettes
Brooke has never seen Dirty Dancing before until one afternoon when she watches it with her roommate, Lauren, summoned to their living room by this song with the opening credits. Its brave and radical abortion story-line is still radical even more than 30 years later, which is a travesty, but it provides my book with a pivotal plot point.
“Brilliant Disguise,” by Bruce Springsteen
There is a reference to a brilliant disguise in the novel when Brooke goes out to Slappin’ Nellies with her roommate and gets dressed up in uncharacteristic style—would Derek recognize her? Definitely a fitting song about duplicitousness and how we can be fooled by the people we love.
“Two Princes,” by Spin Doctors
Naturally, the novel’s climax takes place at Slappin’ Nellies, where it’s Retro ’90s Night. Why are we so hungry for nostalgia? But oh, we are, as this playlist attests. I met my husband at a Retro ’90s Night and we danced to this song together, and it was only 2002. Retro becomes retro so quickly.
Bonus Track: “I Know You By Heart,” by Bette Midler
I actually think this song was in my head because the book I wrote before Waiting for a Star to Fall was about female friendship and had a Beaches vibe. I am back at work on the manuscript now and hope one day to share it with the world.
Bonus: “Good As Hell,” by Lizzo
And yes, because my novel set in contemporary times deserves ONE SONG that came out this century. I think this song serves as a nice counterpoint to all those tunes about being constantly in the darkness, and yes, of course there’s a star: “You know you a star, you can touch the sky/ I know that it’s hard but you have to try/ If you need advice, let me simplify/ If he don’t love you anymore/ Just walk your fine ass out the door.”
If I had had this song twenty years ago, my early twenties might have been a lot less stupid.
October 2, 2020
Launch Week!
25 days until my book comes out!
In lieu of having a launch party, I am going to do what I do best, and stretch out celebrations into a whole entire launch WEEK, with lots of opportunities for you to be part of it.
Festivities kick off Sunday October 25 with the Turning the Page on Cancer Readathon. I will be one of many readers across the country sitting down with a book for eight straight hours, a fantastic feat of endurance (ha ha. Will I be doing a sleepathon next?) in order to raise funds and awareness to support people living with metastatic breast cancer.
How you can take part: Sign up for your own readathon. Donate to my fundraiser. Or just cheer me on via social media during the main event.
Monday October 26: Official Cake Party: I can live without a book launch party, but I cannot live without a fancy book launch cake. Fancy cake is on order. I am excited!
How you can take part: Have your own cake and eat it too. Make or purchase the cake you wish to see in the world. Watch for my cake on social media.
Tuesday October 27: Read-In and Win: OFFICIAL PUB DATE! A big day, especially for those of you who got your pre-orders in. Even more than a book launch party, to be honest, I am in love with the idea of readers across the continent curling up with my newly-released book.
How you can take part: Take a selfie of you reading WAITING FOR A STAR TO FALL, and share it online for a chance to win a $100 gift card to Inner Muse.
Wednesday October 28: Super Cool Live Event (TBA)
How you can take part: Stay tuned for my exciting announcement soon
Thursday October 29: Book Drunkard Festival Event with Bianca Marais. I’m so excited to be part of Blue Heron Books‘ festival this year!
How you can take part: Tickets for our event are $30 and include the cost of the book. Buy your ticket today!
Friday October 30: Official Champagne Toast. In which we pop open a bottle, and toast to a week well spent.
How you can take part: I appreciate all your virtual “Cheers!” Best delivered in your pyjamas, because it’s Friday night in a pandemic after all. And then we go to bed to read…
September 30, 2020
Brighten the Corner Where You Are, by Carol Bruneau
“Since Maud Lewis’s death in 1970,” writes Carol Bruneau in the Author’s Note to her new novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, “her story has become so mythologized it’s just about impossible to separate hearsay from reality, original information from an ever-deepening well of common knowledge.”
And in Bruneau’s own novel, which is based on research and interviews to imagine the inner life of one of Nova Scotia’s most famous and fascinating painters, she attempts no such thing, inhabiting instead an enigmatic space between that doesn’t bother with such distinctions, or emphasize the contrast between Lewis’s bright and floral artistic vision and the realities of her life which were informed by abject poverty, disability, and possible/likely abuse and violence from her husband, Everett Lewis, whose portrayal by Ethan Hawke in the celebrated 2017 film Maudie was more than a little bit generous.
This middle ground is from where Lewis narrates her story, after her death, but still able to see what’s going on in the world below. Now liberated from her disabled body and her marriage, both of which she describes as cages of a sort, but “What these folks don’t see is that these cages made me the bird I am, made me sing in the way I did…”
With rich and artful prose, and a narrative that first appears simple and straightforward and then is revealed to be just a little bit off-kilter (in the style of Lewis’s paintings), Bruneau complicates the myth of Maud Lewis, depicting her as a chain-smoking, deep-thinking, resilient artist who persisted in her vision in the face of adversity, who was an agent in her own destiny just as much as she was a victim of circumstance and impoverishment. Bruneau lets nobody off the hook for this, certainly not Everett Lewis himself, who hoarded the proceeds from his wife’s painting sales and deprived her of luxuries, among them electricity and a flush toilet.
But how could a person with his background (he grew up impoverished himself) have turned out any other way, Bruneau’s Maud insists. And what about the culpability of a society that accepts that poverty is simply a fact, that some lives are worth more than other, whose glaring inequities are as acute as they ever were while Lewis herself was still living.
This book is beautiful, as rich and uplifting as it is a literary masterpiece.
September 29, 2020
Gleanings
- I’m not calibrating my movements to the chattering and growling of rancid beasts anymore.
- I wonder how long it will be before two strangers sit side by side at the cinema sharing in the experience of being alone.
- “We, as a society, don’t value the process of activities, we just value the outputs. Maybe it’s the process that is the crossover between writing and craft,” Dr Burns suggests.
- It is kind of difficult to be a woman sharing a poem about reproductive rights, which are evidently important to me and many people that have uteruses in this city and in this province and to be shut down and told it’s too political, which is often the case when you’re discussing issues like this — it’s really difficult.
- Socks, knitting, Buffy. Fall is here as far as my family is concerned.
- The satisfaction of painted particulars.
- The consequences of our choices, deeds, words are unpredictable, outcomes uncomfortably beyond even our best guesses.
- So much of [the] satire depends on shaming its victims; the author appears frustrated when his method encounters a subject that is incapable of shame on any level.
- The bears remember and return. They’ve been doing this forever.
- I shall be a tree tourist in Alberta
- I have always been extraordinarily lucky. I am shy but have managed to surround myself with the most extraordinarily wonderful friends for my entire life.
- But what about those books that you eagerly anticipate? When you wait patiently for them to appear as “ready for pickup” in your library holds, and you hurry home with them and then you are not nearly as enthralled with them as you’d thought you’d be? There has to be a German word for that kind of let down.
- Brittney Cooper is indeed eloquent, and lets the rage fly. I learned so much.
- Well, it’s that time of year again. The time when I reread Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes.
- Every day that I was waiting for change, budding of leaves, longer light, I was also aware of a beauty that I had never noticed.
- Wait, what? All this time, and I still haven’t shared the history of the #wyrdshed? No better time than in the midst of isolation….
- It got me thinking: what else about myself (or the world–but let’s start small) could I wonder about?
- My hands shook, big deal, on good days I could just imagine it away and for decades I pretty much did.
- I love how the city has been everybody’s playground this summer, inviting us all outside to walk or talk or read or pray.
- A millimetre to the right and it might never have happened.
- We’d navigate the front steps (not easy with a giant pram, but you quickly sort it out and manage it quickly) and then roll into the shop, hearts pitter-pattering with excited anticipation.
- I am honoured to be with someone who sees me in a way that I can look back at who I was. I recognize myself.
- Documenting our lives, through whatever medium you chose, ought to bring us closer to our lived experiences, our loved ones, and ourselves instead of creating tension, anxiety and competition.
September 28, 2020
The Book Auction to Support Prisoners
The excellent Thea Lim has organized the Book Auction to Support Prisoners (in support of Book Clubs for Inmates, the COVID-19 Prisoner Emergency Support Fund & the Jail Hotline) which kicks off today. There’s an amazing list of signed books and other special offers up for grabs, including my novel Mitzi Bytes. Good books for a great cause!
September 25, 2020
Hope
It’s #CupandSaucerFriday, the “light in the darkness” edition. Jean E. Pendziwol has written a dream of a book with I Found Hope in a Cherry Tree, illustrated by Nathalie Dion, a book whose message underlines my belief (which I stole from Ali Smith’s Autumn) that the stories we tell become what the world is, for better or for worse. And the distinction is up to you, because your actions matter. And hope matters, wherever you find it.
September 25, 2020
How to Be a Champion, and Not a Sycophant
Some of my most important mentors have been the people who said no to me, the people who couldn’t accommodate my request, who didn’t want to help, who had better things to do than answer my email. From these people, I have learned that I too can set my own boundaries and limits, that none of us are required to be everything to everyone.
And so similarly was I impressed last spring when I approached a fellow author-friend for a blurb for my forthcoming novel, and she responded with a caveat—she would agree to read my book, but not necessarily to endorse it. Because how could she know if she hadn’t read it yet, and as a person who aspires for everything to mean what it means, this was a particularly powerful moment.
This story has a happy ending too, because this person really liked my book. And how much more her endorsement meant to me because it wasn’t granted automatically, because it meant something. But even if she hadn’t endorsed it, I would have admired that too. A sign that honesty and integrity are not as rare as one might think. And yes, my ego would have taken a bit of a bruising, but every public-facing person benefits from such an exercise from time to time.
Last week I wrote about the importance of making space for promoting books and reading, but this doesn’t require one to have to love everything. “The standards we raise and the judgments we pass…” Virginia Woolf refers to in “How Should One Read a Book,” and those standards and judgments are important. Not because they are the law, because they aren’t, and different readers and critics will have different standards and judgments, which is just the way it should be (and this is the great thing about making space—there can be enough of it to go around).
If you are making space and not adhering to your standards and judgments—raving about books you thought were terrible, blurbing books you’ve never read, recommending titles about which your take was mostly “meh,” holding your nose to post about a title your favourite publicist has sent you which is not your cup of tea, writing about a book that was rubbish but the author is super nice—then the space you are creating is not going to be very meaningful. And sometimes these kinds of situations are difficult to avoid, particularly if you are new to a community or less sure of your taste or less confident as a critic. But I would advise you to find yourself in these situations as little as possible to preserve your own literary reputation, your sense of self, and on behalf of the cause of better books, which is a cause we all can believe in.
Here’s how you can do it.
- If you can’t say no outright to review/blurb requests (it takes courage to be that bold) then you can make excuses. A lack of time is something nobody is going to argue with. Be vague. Don’t reply to emails. They’ll get the point. (There are people who will claim I am being unfair here, and that you owe it to authors to be honest and upfront. I have tried this. It has never gone well, and I will never do it again.)
- Build your wheelhouse. Most historical fiction, books about young men coming of age, novels with child narrators and fiction about philosophers I’ve never heard of are outside mine, which makes it easy for me to ignore these books without compunction.
- If that author on Instagram is super nice (even if she is me, although I am not that nice) and her book just didn’t jive with you, you don’t need to post about it. Even if she put it in her mailbox with her own two hands. The favour you did her was trying out the book at all. It’s not your fault if it didn’t work. And perhaps you can write a critical post that highlights the book’s redeeming features, but if none of those features can be found, just let it go.
- Be as brave as my friend and don’t agree to blurb a book you haven’t read yet. If you do agree to blurb a book that turns out to be terrible, fail to meet the deadline.
- Understand that a book may not be to your taste, but someone else might enjoy it. And that is terrific. Because you got to be honest with yourself and your audience and the book still got love. There is enough to go around without you bending over backwards.
- Know that it is not your job to take care of everybody
- And understand that your word is only ever going to mean anything if you mean the things you say. Your platforms matter. Use them wisely, smartly, and don’t water them down. And yes, we could be all throwing up our hands about declining ways to get the word out about books (and we do! And we are!) but that makes it all the more important to preserve the integrity in the places/platforms that are still available.
September 23, 2020
If Sylvie Had Nine Lives, by Leona Theis
Okay, imagine the craft and form of Caroline Adderson’s Ellen in Pieces, a premise and scope like Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, and an attention to the details of ordinary life that recalls the work of Carol Shields? (There’s also a Bronwen Wallace People You’d Trust Your Life To vibe that I can’t quite put my finger on…)
If Sylvie Had Nine Lives, by Leona Theis, is SO GOOD, a novel-in-stories (for real. It works.) that begins in 1974 as nineteen-year-old Sylvie is just three days away from marrying Jack, for better or for worse…
And the book that follows explores the many outcomes and possibilities created by Sylvie’s choices, several forks in the road, and why they matter, or why they don’t. What if life is not a river, the novel’s brief intro suggests; what if it were a delta instead?
Sylvie leaves Jack, and moves in with a roommate whose violent boyfriend’s advances she manages to refuse. Or Sylvie marries Jack and saves his life when he falls into the lake. Or she leaves Jack a few years down the line, pregnant. She marries her best friend from high school has two kids. She marries nobody and starts her own business. She and Jack spend their twentieth wedding anniversary watching the OJ Simpson Bronco chase. Sylvie remains single and becomes a university professor. And so on, these stories showing very different outcomes of Sylvie moving through the decades, getting older, the very same character (one with a propensity for terrible choices) contending with different circumstances.
This premise could be considered a gimmick, but the writing is just so excellent that the whole book shines, and the stories culminate the same way they might in a more traditional narrative. Perhaps some readers could become frustrated with each new story destabilizing what came before, but I just found it really interesting—and it works on a meta level too with Sylvie considering several times the different roads and doors she might have chosen. It is interesting also that the reader would mind at all if the “truth” of a fictional person’s story was undermined—if you’ve read the last page of Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Isn’t is amazing that it matters so much? And it’s a sign that the author has achieved something that it does matter.
I’ve not read anything by Leona Theis before, but she’s been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Award, appeared in The Journey Prize Stories, and had the amazing Elizabeth McCracken select her story “How Sylvie Failed to Become a Better Person Through Yoga” as winner of the American Short Fiction contest in 2016, which is the coolest honour I can think of. And this novel lives up to the anticipation of such a biography—the book is wonderful. Definitely my first favourite book of the fall season.
