The only other person (alive) who can make me (at any age) go SQUEEEEE is Neil Gaiman, who has finally announced his Canadian tour dates. The Toronto event is already half-sold, so don't waffle. Get yer tix now. I feel like I paid too much plus I will have to buy a copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane from Indigo if I want it signed, but since this will likely be Mr. Gaiman's last book tour, I'm sucking it up. And should probably buy a bunch of stuff from Bakka to make up for it.
Although it feels weird to have to buy a hard copy of a real book. I don't even think I have my copy of Anansi Boys anymore, because I never actually opened it; I have the audiobook instead, and Lenny Henry reads it much better than I ever could in my head. In fact, I had been planning to get Ocean as an audiobook, but the allure of an autographed tangible has gone to my head. So still the print book is not dead.
Speaking of Mr. Gaiman, Amanda Palmer writes a very moving blog entry about the book and their relationship. I had always thought another artist would understand someone's need to shut down and disappear into their own world for a while, but this goes to show that artist or not, we are all human beings who require love and attention and relationships are damn hard no matter what you do for a living. Which is why they are worthwhile.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Status update
Focusing more on Open Concept than Summerwood these days. The day job is topmost in mind, for better or worse, and writing about it is a natural extension. I've almost completed a second story in the cycle and have made notes on a third. Later, though, as Toronto summer slides downhill into murky and muggy August I will probably switch, as Summerwood is set (partially) in the city during that month.
Now that the weather is finally resembling a normal June I am searching high and low for a lunchtime writing refuge and coming up short. The scant, modest parkettes downtown are jampacked with fellow white-collar drones desperate for fresh air. So I return to my cold-weather standby, the non-Starbucks coffee shop franchise that no agency hipster would ever venture into, especially when there are two Starbucks and a fancy new espresso bar within a stone's throw. I really hope it doesn't go out of business.
---
My ChiSeries reading seemed to go over well, which makes me happy, because I love reading out loud. (Which is lucky for the offspring, who likes to follow me around with various books and have me read them out loud, repeatedly, no matter what I am doing at the moment. He's also lucky I can read words when they're upside-down.)
Otherwise my introvert self kicked in, mostly because the 17-year old in me was going SQUEEEE from being on the same bill as Guy Gavriel Kay, but I managed to meet fellow Masked Mosaic writer Michael Matheson, as well as fellow reader Jim Munroe. I also got a little fangirl frisson from being on the same bill as Mr. Munroe; I still remember, back in the day, noticing Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask in Bakka and wondering who this Jim Munroe guy was, and in later years reading about his work with Adbusters and No Media Kings. (I stole Flyboy's rock band name Fuck You Mr. Man as a line in my story "Fin-de-Siecle".)
I drank beer, I signed a couple copies of Masked Mosaic, I bought Kari Maaren's CD, I trembled at Leon Rooke's masterful writing and forceful performance. Now there's a writer who knows how to read out loud. But the highlight was Mr. Kay touching my arm in passing during a break and saying he enjoyed my reading.
SQUEEEEEE.
Now that the weather is finally resembling a normal June I am searching high and low for a lunchtime writing refuge and coming up short. The scant, modest parkettes downtown are jampacked with fellow white-collar drones desperate for fresh air. So I return to my cold-weather standby, the non-Starbucks coffee shop franchise that no agency hipster would ever venture into, especially when there are two Starbucks and a fancy new espresso bar within a stone's throw. I really hope it doesn't go out of business.
---
 |
| Who's got two thumbs and top billing over GGK? This writer. |
Otherwise my introvert self kicked in, mostly because the 17-year old in me was going SQUEEEE from being on the same bill as Guy Gavriel Kay, but I managed to meet fellow Masked Mosaic writer Michael Matheson, as well as fellow reader Jim Munroe. I also got a little fangirl frisson from being on the same bill as Mr. Munroe; I still remember, back in the day, noticing Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask in Bakka and wondering who this Jim Munroe guy was, and in later years reading about his work with Adbusters and No Media Kings. (I stole Flyboy's rock band name Fuck You Mr. Man as a line in my story "Fin-de-Siecle".)
I drank beer, I signed a couple copies of Masked Mosaic, I bought Kari Maaren's CD, I trembled at Leon Rooke's masterful writing and forceful performance. Now there's a writer who knows how to read out loud. But the highlight was Mr. Kay touching my arm in passing during a break and saying he enjoyed my reading.
SQUEEEEEE.
Friday, May 24, 2013
ChiSeries, and status
Pleased as punch to be reading at the next ChiSeries on June 12 at Augusta House. Other guests include Jim Munroe, Leon Rooke...and Guy Gavriel Kay! I feel like I've come up in the world. I've seen Mr. Kay at panels and readings before, of course, but my 17-year old self is going SQUEEEEE inside my head.
As always, we are busy. Lost some momentum after a week-long vacation in Cuba, where I finally read (perhaps appropriately) David Nickle's Rasputin's Bastards pool- and beach-side and despaired that I would never write prose so seemingly effortless. Didn't make the long list for the BSS short story contest. Perhaps I wasn't CanLitty enough? Who knows.
In a way, though, it's almost a relief. As much as I wanted to go to the concert, I also didn't. Weekends are precious time with the offspring, who is growing like a weed in a radioactive fertilizer dump. I've said it before and I'll say it again: children are little aliens who exist in a different timestream than us, one that seems so slow to them but is heartbreakingly fast from our point of view. He's almost two but isn't talking much. He's picking up words fast, though, and is learning that some words have a lot of power, like More! And he's learning that some words are just darned funny, like backpack, ice, and of course, bum. As I said, little aliens.
Status
 |
| The little alien |
In a way, though, it's almost a relief. As much as I wanted to go to the concert, I also didn't. Weekends are precious time with the offspring, who is growing like a weed in a radioactive fertilizer dump. I've said it before and I'll say it again: children are little aliens who exist in a different timestream than us, one that seems so slow to them but is heartbreakingly fast from our point of view. He's almost two but isn't talking much. He's picking up words fast, though, and is learning that some words have a lot of power, like More! And he's learning that some words are just darned funny, like backpack, ice, and of course, bum. As I said, little aliens.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Two things
1. Workflowy has an app, so I can now work on and access my novel outline offline. Sweet.
2. J. won a shiny new iPad Mini in a draw, which means I now have a shiny new iPad Mini has he already has a regular one. Time will tell if it is better for writing on the go than my iPhone, and better for reading than my now-old Kobo.
And now I sleep. (Yes, that's three things, but who's counting.)
2. J. won a shiny new iPad Mini in a draw, which means I now have a shiny new iPad Mini has he already has a regular one. Time will tell if it is better for writing on the go than my iPhone, and better for reading than my now-old Kobo.
And now I sleep. (Yes, that's three things, but who's counting.)
Monday, March 11, 2013
This changes everything.
Just discovered that WriteRoom can sync with Dropbox. This changes everything.
As much as Pages for iPhone is pretty handy, text can't reflow within the tiny screen (as far as I can tell). I guess they figured people would use it to make light edits on the go, not for writing entire novels. You have to click and zoom in on a sentence to type. I'm finding the "jump" in and out of a file jarring, especially when first starting a story. It was a big factor in slowing my progress on my BSS short story; I ended up writing most of it the old-fashioned way, on my laptop.
WriteRoom, however, reflows the text so it is easier to just get the words out. The downside, however, is that it only produces unformatted text files. But it's not much of a downside; this means the file size is low, so syncing with the cloud is pretty speedy. And of course, being a simple text editor, there is no pagination so you have to scroll and scroll to get to the very end of your file so I won't be using it for large chunks of text. I'm also not sure if there's a file size limit. But it's been really good so far for just getting things started, and less intimidating than a blank white page in Pages. I'm already halfway through a new short story. High fives all around.
As much as Pages for iPhone is pretty handy, text can't reflow within the tiny screen (as far as I can tell). I guess they figured people would use it to make light edits on the go, not for writing entire novels. You have to click and zoom in on a sentence to type. I'm finding the "jump" in and out of a file jarring, especially when first starting a story. It was a big factor in slowing my progress on my BSS short story; I ended up writing most of it the old-fashioned way, on my laptop.
WriteRoom, however, reflows the text so it is easier to just get the words out. The downside, however, is that it only produces unformatted text files. But it's not much of a downside; this means the file size is low, so syncing with the cloud is pretty speedy. And of course, being a simple text editor, there is no pagination so you have to scroll and scroll to get to the very end of your file so I won't be using it for large chunks of text. I'm also not sure if there's a file size limit. But it's been really good so far for just getting things started, and less intimidating than a blank white page in Pages. I'm already halfway through a new short story. High fives all around.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Writer's firehose
Ding! BSS short story sent off. We'll see what happens. Again, doing it for the prizes, not the glory. If it doesn't place, I still have a new story to submit somewhere else. The most surprising thing about writing this story, however, is that it only took me two weeks. It's only 3300 words, shorter than my usual work, but still. Hopefully I'm getting faster. Perhaps now that I'm older I'm not as in love with words as I used to be and have fewer blocks to getting the story out.
One can only hope I'm getting faster, because now that I'm free to start The Summerwood, I have a whole other totally new idea (or rather collection of ideas) for a cycle of Toronto fabulist--sorry, Toronno fabulist stories inspired by my day job. As my office is situated in an old warehouse building in the garment district, the possibility for story is endless. I've got almost a dozen story ideas already.
So here I am, blogging because I'm paralyzed as to what to start writing first. What's the opposite of writer's block? Writer's firehose?
---
Still suffering from label anxiety. I know it shouldn't matter, but it does, if only to make it easier to describe my writing to others, and to myself. Maybe it's an indication that I've finally figured out how to write like E. L. Chen. (Man, I hate that writer. She was a lot better when all her stories ended happily.)
I have decided on urban fabulist, a play on urban fantasist. Toronto is my Newford. Only the magic and weirdness here isn't an Otherness brought in by the different cultures that live here; it's grown out of the city itself.
If that doesn't make me sound pretentious then I don't know what does. But then again, I am from Toronno.
One can only hope I'm getting faster, because now that I'm free to start The Summerwood, I have a whole other totally new idea (or rather collection of ideas) for a cycle of Toronto fabulist--sorry, Toronno fabulist stories inspired by my day job. As my office is situated in an old warehouse building in the garment district, the possibility for story is endless. I've got almost a dozen story ideas already.
So here I am, blogging because I'm paralyzed as to what to start writing first. What's the opposite of writer's block? Writer's firehose?
---
Still suffering from label anxiety. I know it shouldn't matter, but it does, if only to make it easier to describe my writing to others, and to myself. Maybe it's an indication that I've finally figured out how to write like E. L. Chen. (Man, I hate that writer. She was a lot better when all her stories ended happily.)
I have decided on urban fabulist, a play on urban fantasist. Toronto is my Newford. Only the magic and weirdness here isn't an Otherness brought in by the different cultures that live here; it's grown out of the city itself.
If that doesn't make me sound pretentious then I don't know what does. But then again, I am from Toronno.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Biff! Bam! Pow!
I am also happy to be recognized as a Toronto writer. This is my city. There is magic under the slushy sidewalks and cranky streetcars and bombastic mayor, believe it or not.
So am I an urban fantasist? A magic realist? A downtown elitist, for sure, even though we've moved up-uptown. A couple months ago I read an article about the new wave of New Fabulists and I was suddenly struck with label anxiety. What am I now that "urban fantasy" connotes hot vampires and badass chicks with white tank tops and guns? I discussed this with Leah Bobet recently as she also writes a lot about Toronto. (Read Above!) Although "writing about Toronto" feels inaccurate. Our stories inhabit the city. Although even that feels inaccurate.
A Toronto fabulist? A Toronno fabulist? I'll keep working on it.
Watch the Tyche Books blog, by the way. Claude and Camille will be posting about all the stories in the book over the next month, and I am in some very good company.
---
Speaking of Toronno, slow progress is being made on the new story I'm writing for the Broken Social Scene short story contest. How could I resist--a Toronto band, one I've experienced at Dundas Square and on the island. (Because you don't really see BSS, you experience them.) You can't get more Toronto-y than that. We'll see if anything comes of it. To be frank, I'm more interest in winning tix to the concert than fame or glory. But I hope, like "Nocturne", the story will end up being funny and sad and full of the city I know and love.
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