Things about which I get aggresively excited

I was at a BBQ over the Labour Day weekend. Amongst the burgers, Prosecco and setting, late summer sun, discussions turned to good movies and then to the German film, The Lives of Others. The mild-mannered artist sitting to my right advanced the opinion that maybe the ending dragged a bit. That is when I found myself waving my finger and yelling in incoherent half sentences - "Are you insane?" "He goes to the archives and realises --" "He's at the theatre and talks to the SAME guy." -- "The little dude is a POSTMAN!" I was half out of my chair at this point, belligerent finger waving like a weapon, so agitated it was all I could do to remember to keep sipping my bubbly wine.

There are some things, books, movies, TV shows that I am loudly, blindly and forcefully a fan of, and this post is my inaugural edition of `Things About Which I Get Aggressively Excited

The Lives of Others (Das Leberen der Anderen in the original German) was made in 2006. It's set in Cold War Berlin and examines the effects of the incessant state surveillance on both the watched and the watchees.

If this sounds like a lame downer, YOU'RE TOTALLY WRONG! It's a fantastic, fast-paced and fascinating film (hee - "F"s) with an ending that will knock your socks off and leave you with faith in the human race, or at least in the decency we can show each other in our personal relationships. It's got luminous performances, sexy subversives and the most unlikely likable character ever. 

If you haven't seen it, get yourself to Netflix pronto and DO not let me catch you slagging the ending.
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Sexy Veggie

A colleague has grown a rather special carrot...

It's the hairy bit at the tip that is truly freaky...

FYI -- One of the Google autofills I got as I tried to find out what that hairy bit is called:

The real concern here, is, what does it say about global health issues  that "hairy tongue" becomes a default Google search. 

Canadian Thanksgiving Resolutions

In the frozen wastelands of the North we have Thanksgiving on the first weekend of October. This is more sensible than our American brothers and sisters, I think, because the weather is better, the leaves are prettier and it's a good distance from Christmas, meaning that we can quite happily have two turkey-dominated feasts without them being so close together that you're still working off the Thanksgiving-related turkey farts when you sit down to your Yuletide feast.

Anyway. We have a venerable tradition in Canada where we make Thanksgiving Resolutions, this tradition is as Canadian as feeling unjustifiably smug about our Medicare system and collectively agreeing that Stephen Harper just shouldn't smile. 

While I may have just made this tradition up, I am sincere in my new resolution... Which is to get better with the blog posts. If anyone is still checking my infrequently updated blog, I vow to do better.

Wintergreen Studios

Alrighty my babies, I know in my last post I promised an entry detailing the delights of my recent trip to Montreal. The meals! The shopping! The booze! The hangover! The amazing spa-ing! The parking tickets that were avoided! Every exciting, delightful detail will be relayed. Before we get to Montreal, though, I have to spill the beans on this most amazing weekend I've just had. Yes, yes, those who are keeping score (rude) that is two weekends in a row when I abandoned my family for selfish pursuits, but really, my family is small and low key and seems to be perfectly content without me, so it's hard to work up a really extensive guilt trip.

This past weekend, through a series of twisty, fate-y turns, I ended up taking a three day writing workshop with Lawrence Hill. Not only was Larry (yes, that's what we were asked to call him) a really good writing teacher -- insightful, helpful, engaged, interested... But it turns out he's a very nice guy, a good listener and a pretty good swimmer.

The weekend would have been fantastic if it had just involved learning about the craft and business of writing from Larry, but it was so much more. The seven other participants (all women) were also amazing... Just this fantastic group of fascinating ladies who each had interesting stories to tell about their own lives. There were no whiners or weirdos in the group (though, I do have a friend who claims that if you can't spot the weirdo in a given group, it's because you yourself are actually that weirdo -- if so, sorry ladies!).

Again, that kind of serendipitous wonderfulness doesn't happen often, but maybe what sealed the deal on the magicality (totally a word) of the whole thing was the setting. Wintergreen studios is a secret hideaway tucked away in the backwoods of Ontario. It's down a long a windy dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Off-grid and built as sustainably as possible, the main lodge and its surrounding buildings (including a tiny little cabin called the Hobbit House that was tucked away in the woods... totally adorbs. I contemplated staying there, but then chickened out because, murderers) were made from recycled materials, and often with straw bales, which is totally the de rigueur building material for the environmentally conscious.The place is the brain child of this brilliant, multi-talented Renaissance woman, Rena Upitis who  bought the land and envisioned the whole wonderful, magical place.

Suffice to say, the food was incredible, the setting stunning, the people nurturing and funny and inspiring and the whole thing was like a giant feast of creativity that will nourish me for months to come.

Amazing.

So sorry m'ladies and m'gentlemen! I have failed in my self-imposed posting schedule and it's because life reared it's ugly head...

I'm trying to revise my dissertation for publication (gah!); do this ridiculously labour-intensive promotion application for my work (double gah!); work on a new novel (triple gah! but also, fun!); train for a 10 km run (oh my God, my knees, my poor, sore knees); deal with a twerpy toddler who has suddenly decided that going to bed is for suckers (rude) and I also squeezed in a truly fabulous trip to Montreal where I shopped, ate, drank, spa'd and shopped some more. One of the things I bought were leopard print leggings!!

 Anyway, Montreal deserves a whole other post of its own, but I'm hopeful that I will get back to the blogging very soon. I'm actually swanning off for another glorious weekend -- this one in the backwoods of Ontario, where I'm doing a little writer's retreat...

Stay tuned my babies!

A time to write

Carving out time in the day to write can be very tricksome. My work day is obviously consumed by the high energy adrenaline rush of performing my urgent, life or death duties with utmost concentration, effectiveness and precision.

Evenings consist of snack-preparation, meal-making, colouring-book colouring, meal-eating, bathing, bed-putting and then being so brain-drained that the only option available is to collapse in front of Don Draper and Peggy for 45 minutes of vaguely boring, vaguely ominous, beautiful-looking television before crawling off to sleep.

Since I love being in bed by 10 and actually am deliciously excited when climbing under the covers by 9:30, staying up late is not an option. Weekends get eaten up by fun stuff, and when I do get the chance to write (like now, at a friend's cottage, while everyone's at the beach and I'm up here for the kiddo's nap) I work on "quick" stuff, which is usually blog or Internet-related...

All that being said, it can be challenging to actually work on creative-writing. Wah wah, I know, First World Problems.

I've made a new resolution for Fall though... Nights are longer, days are cooler, children are back at school, we're mere days away from a barrage of Christmas advertising ... The time seems right (of maybe I should say WRITE - hardy har har). I'm going to get up at 6 every morning and devote an hour to writing, not blogging or Internet browsing, but actually producing new material. It is time. I will do this. I will.

Caption Contest

Add caption

Sometimes at work we'll come across a particularly random photo and play a little something called "Caption Contest" --- anyone have any ideas for this one? 

   

Beaver Attack!

This is the most amazing radio interview... It paints Canada's national symbol in a whole new light, but really, the hero of the day is Penn Powell - the man telling the story in a matter-of-fact, if slightly bemused, way.

Some choice quotes...

"I slip up under the beaver."

"He was wet like a greased pig."

... then the crazed animal goes for Penn's "Honeymoon jewels."

In the end, though, despite the ferocity of the beaver attack, Penn is forgiving.... Actually saying, "I hold nothing against the beaver whatsoever."

Gates and Gratitude

We've got a new gate in our backyard (no this isn't any kind of sexy talk euphemism). It's a new, white picket gate demarcating the end of our lawn and the beginning of the lane. It's so pretty! It took over a year to come to fruition because my fella did it all himself, which is extremely admirable and extremely slow. I love our gate SO much. Prior to the arrival of the Wonder Gate we had a derelict metal thing that our neighbours had run their car into. It was banged up and rusty and filled with tetanus and springy pointy bits and it didn't really close and if you touched it your hands turned a rusty red and it was a complete eyesore. My words can't do justice to how truly awful and eye-sore-ish it was. (note to self: ALWAYS take a "before" shot).

Anyhoots, in the place of that Tetanus Gate there is now this beautiful thing:

I was looking at it tonight thinking how flipping lucky I am to get to live in a house with a gate like that. Not very profound, I know, but life can be really shitty at times, and when life is shitty, I need to remember to look at that gate and feel grateful for everything not shitty (most things) in my life.

How do I look and can you help me with my foot bulge?

I'm monkeying around with the blog format... Trying to make commenting easier and and make it all seem prettier and more user-friendly. I don't, unfortunately, have a clue about what I'm doing, so if anyone has any comments/suggestions/general abuse feel free to throw them at me either in the comments or via the electronic mail.

While you're communicating with me -- what do you think --  I fell off my bike this afternoon, and now there is a weird giant bulge forming on the inside of my foot. It's kind of blue-ish and a bit bleed-y... It hurts to walk on, but maybe I'm over-thinking it. Should I be concerned?

Relying on the Internet for medical advice since 2006

Bic Pens

This is a good one... Buzzfeed's pick for the

12 best reviews of the new Bic Pen "For her."

Numbers 1 and 6 are particularly good...

Travelling with a toddler

Everyone knows that traveling with a child can be tiresome. Firstly, there is the sheer amount of STUFF the kid needs - the clothes; the extra clothes for when the first set gets so thoroughly encrusted with pee, snot, cheerios and stale milk that it's like they're made of cardboard (crapboard?); the diapers; the toys; the special blankie or teddy, without which your child will LOSE HER SHIT; not to mention a pair of shoes (*cough* managed to forgot those on a recent trip to Toronto). 

Assembling all the stuff and thinking through all the permutations of eventualities - rain? swimming? fancy tea where an adorable dress is required? Band aids? Kids' Tylenol? - requires more logistical planning than D-Day (small exaggeration?)

Apart from the stuff, there's the actually moving from point A to point B. Strapping a toddler into a car or plane seat seat is akin to wrestling a greased orangutan into a thimble.If you're on public transit you have to contend with your fellow travelers' falling faces as they realize that yes, the woman laden with fourteen carry ons, a filthy dolly and a wriggling 3-year old with a suspiciously brown looking bum, is going to sit next to/behind them. 

As someone who used to sanctimoniously glare and eye roll about about being within a 12-row radius of any person under 21, I feel these people's pain. Nothing kills your seat-back TV and Chardonnay buzz like listening to a child yowling or a desperate parent pleading/threatening. 

Despite all that, though, there is something great about traveling with the little ones. When we lived in Belgium we got to go to Paris a lot. We saw and did all sorts of amazing things and felt that we had a good grasp of the city, its geography and its general vibe. When we returned last summer with the kidlet, our experience of the city was totally different. For one thing, people were friendly and helpful and even smiled at us. Given our previous 2.5 years with the Belgians/French and the contemptuous sneering they regularly subjected us to, seeing smiles on Parisians' faces was disconcerting... Like coming out of the house and discovering that grass was now Monopoly money or cars were made of cheese.

I didn't quite grasp what was happening at first -- old ladies held the door open for us, rather than sniffing haughtily, teenagers smiled sympathetically as I struggled to haul the stroller down the Metro steps, rather than angrily ignoring me. When the security guard at the Musée D'Orsay came up to us in the gigantor line, I was sure it was because we had committed some infraction and were going to be asked to leave, instead he ushered us to the "Priorité" line, as if we were Jerry Lewis, or something. By the time the taxi-stand dude waved us to the front of the line and the crepe lady gave us an extra dollop of Nutella, I began to believe that miracles do happen and all it takes to melt a Parisian's stony, stony heart is the innocent smile of a child. 

In addition to the magical attitude-melting-effect of the sprog, there's also the fun of discovering new sides to a place because your activities change when you are en-childed. I can't pretend that the man and I were partyin' hard pre-baby, but back in the day when we were on a trip I would force myself to stay up past my ten pm bedtime to go out for a nice dinner or stroll. We'd shop, eat lingering meals, drink too much, go to museums and stare at stuff... Activities that aren't particularly fun with a little one.

With a child we're discovering new things, like that there's a really fantastic play area at the Jardin du Luxembourg featuring an old timey carousel,  that Toronto's Parkdale library has a fun kids' section and even if you're not a city resident, you can get a day pass ticket to use the library facilities (don't tell Rob Ford) whilst engaging in primo people-watching; that along with being a total tourist trap, Montpellier Vermont's Morse Farm Sugarworks has insanely beautiful views, enormous ice creams and a "petting zoo" consisting of a sheep and a goat that you can't actually touch, but about whom your kid will then remember and discuss for the entire 20 hours of your trip. 

That's the thing about traveling with kids, you might not be skinny dipping in the Mediterranean or drinking Sangria 'til dawn, but you're eliciting different reactions form the locals and seeing new parts of the cities and places you're in. Not a bad tradeoff for the three hours of "Wheels on the Bus" you had to sing in order to get there.

Scenes from Toddler-dom

At Ikea:
Kid:  What is this place, mummy?
Me: It's the warehouse.
Kid (gasp, eyes huge): The bear house?!


Returning to the lineup at Toronto Island Ferry after visiting the bathroom:
Kid: Daddy, Daddy, I did a pee pee and a big fart!

In the car:
Kid: what's this mummy?
Me: (reaching back) show me. (Takes large ball of orange-y sticky stuff) I don't know. Is it honey?
Kid: (sadly) No, it's from my ear.

Toronto Gets Me

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Belgium

What can be more enticing than a post titled "Belgium."?

Well, we lived there for a couple of years, and while it was maddening and strange and the people were generally QUITE grumpy, it was also kind of magical and delightfully bizarre.

Never mind the veneration of the peeing boy statue (Mannken Pis) or the lesser known and truly disturbing peeing girl statue (Jeanneke Pis); the incomprehensible politics; the language hatred that makes the Canada-Quebec business look positively cozy; the shameful colonial past -- despite (because of?) all that, the Belgians are a bit wacky.

One of the things they do every couple of years is cover their beautiful Gothic central square (La Grande Place) in an elaborate tapestry of flowers... There's no real reason for it, but like their hot chocolate (MOTHER OF GOD) or their love of an odd parade, they do it really well...

So have a look at these pretty pictures and join me in boggling at this funny country. As my Flemish teacher told me, Belgium was created after the Napoleonic Wars to be the "tampon" between France and Germany...

The Hairpin

My piece on writing Carnal Punishment and Love's Bouquet is up at The Hairpin!

Check it out! Not only is it super exciting to be getting the word out about my smut, but it's quite thrilling to make the cut for The Hairpin, which is my all time fave website... Funny, feministy and quirky without being all smug about it. The comments are always fantastic, and they're like an asshole-free zone on the Interwebs... Miraculous, like unicorns and fresh corn on the cob. Love it.

Also, in two wonderful worlds colliding, the fantastic Edith Zimmerman, editor of The Hairpin is being interviewed on Q today (though sadly for her, not by that deep voiced delight, Jian Ghomeshi). She's talking about the death of Helen Gurley Brown.

Aieee! So much good in the world!

This American Life

Oh, I love This American Life -- an amazing radio show that I cannot possibly over-sell. They pick a theme ... loneliness, say, or underwear , and spend an entire hour exploring what that theme means to a cast of interesting people with fascinating stories. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sad and sometimes it's maddening. If you haven't listened, go there, download it, and then join me in falling in love with nebbishy Ira Glass and his intense awesomeness.

For any Canadians out there, this episode is a particularly good one to get started. 

The one on testosterone is also really fun and interesting. 

This story of "Nubbins" the malformed lifelike baby doll, is possibly my absolute favourite. I defy you to listen to this and not find it profoundly funny as well as a sad commentary on how horribly humanity really is... but in a FUNNY way.

Anyone else out in blogland have faves?

Getaway

I am mere moments from a fabulous getaway and I can't get there soon enough.

I'm off to a cottage for the weekend, and not just any cottage, but possibly the Platonic ideal of a cottage. Not too fancy (no TV, no Interwebs, no insulation) but not so rustic that there's no running water, electricity or screens to keep the bugs out. It's on Bob's Lake, which is kind of perfect all by itself. There's not a ton to do... Crossword puzzles to fail to complete (I don't KNOW the Jewish months, alright?!), 10-year old magazines to read, CBC to listen to, lake to jump in, kayaks to kayak. 

[Sidenote, I can't think of "kayak" without thinking of this clip from Celine Dion's interview with Larry King about Hurricane Katrina. -skip to 3:00 ish for the relevant watercraft reference with hand movements. Mother of Pearl, I enjoy that crazy crazy lady with her out-there emotions]

While I'm eagerly anticipating the cottage for all of the reasons mentioned above, plus wine wine wine and friends friends friends, I'm mostly super psyched to get away from my husband and child. Shocking, I know, but I've had a bit of a crusty summer...  Job craziness, bat infestations, random maladies, ailments, infirmities and complaints... I just need a break from neediness (and the bats, the swooping, swooping bats) and from thinking of myself as a unit, rather than a me. I love being in a relationship and being a mum, but the two can be a bit identity-gobbling, so it's nice to have some away time to remember who I am at my core -- a fairly indolent lady who likes to read a lot.

Apart from getting sunburned, mosquito-bitten, cheese-bloated and drunk, isn't that the whole point of cottaging?

Love's Bouquet is up!

My angels! Love's Bouquet's fragrant aroma is ready to be inhaled by the world's reading public.

It's up on Amazon Kindle, my dickie birds, for the bargain price of $4.25.

Best part? You don't even have to own a Kindle to read it. Amazon will kindly download it your computer without making you a slave to their proprietary hardware! Hurray!

If you do buy it and read it, my feathery doves, and you are so moved, leaving reviews is very helpful, apparently. It tells others out there that the book is worth their hard earned (but entirely reasonable) $4.25.

Hurray!

Things it would have been helpful to know sooner

1. Always get the rash looked at
2. Cheap mouse traps work best
3. Never wake a toddler who has fallen asleep in the car, until all groceries are unloaded, and possibly you've had a gin and tonic
4. Relationships should mostly be easy
5. Thank-you notes are always worth it
6. Take 2 aspirin before passing out
7. When you need to pee in a bathing suit, you can just scooch the crotch material over, without having to take the whole thing off
8. People don't offer to help unless they mean it
9. If your tights keep slipping down, wearing your underwear OVER them will keep them up
10.  Always carry bandaids
11. How long you breastfeed really doesn't matter

Anyone else have others to offer?

Judging a book by its cover

I am totally not a visual person. I can't really tell if something looks good on me, if a box will fit through a door or if a photograph has a good composition. I'm so non-visual, that when my husband and I have discussed rearranging furniture he has actually gone to the point of cutting out scale models of the items we're going to move and then given me the little cutouts to move around on graph paper, like a super boring game of paper dolls. While his plan didn't help me visualize what the room would look like if the table were over THERE, I think it assisted him in handling the frustration of trying to get decisions from someone who just repeats, "I have no idea what you're talking about," when he's trying to describe something.

All that to say that when it came time to choose a cover for my soon-to-be-released novel, Love's Bouquet, I was nervous. Covers, as I am learning, are vitally important, especially in the e-book, self-publishing world. Your readers have to take a leap of faith when buying your book. Because it hasn't been vetted by a publishing house, they have no way of knowing if you're the second coming of J.K. Rowling or if you view Snookie as a literary heroine. Aside from the short blurb you write about your book, the cover is the only tool you have to convey what it's about,  its tone as well as whether or not you're actually competent. That's a lot of pressure for one simple image.

Knowing I could never actually come up with something on my own, I searched the Internet until I found someone creating e-book covers in a vein I liked.

Judy at Custom Ebook Covers was great, especially considering I didn't really know what I was doing, and our communication was just an email version of "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Here's the cover:

While that's not how I originally conceived of Wendy, or the back of James' head, I think it coveys what the book is about: A fun, flirty romance involving laughter love and tulips, oh the tulips!

mascara and lipstick

I am not good with makeup. This makes no sense, since my mother was a stone cold fox back in the day, leaving a trail of  marriage proposals,  broken hearts and white gloves wherever she went. I am also blessed with THREE sisters, who, in between psychologically torturing me, dissing my love life and always getting shotgun, could have at least taught me how to curl my eye lashes. 

Somehow, despite the overwhelming femaleness of my household, no one was very girly, and as a result, none of my sisters really know what to do with makeup. If I needed advice on how to swim the butterfly or sing off key, I would have been set, but what do with foundation or how to apply eye shadow, and they were useless.

This lack of knowledge has been fine for most of my life. I look okay, a bit thin lipped, squinty eyed and freckly, but mostly okay. It's not like I never wear makeup, on the day of my wedding I made an effort with the unguents and potions and creams - though I was careful not to go overboard - there's nothing weirder than not actually looking like yourself in your wedding pictures.

Lately, though, I've started to realise I need to up my game.  I'm on the wrong side of 35, and I can't get away with thinking that my youthful cuteness will mask my awkward wardrobe, sproingy hair or increasingly wrinkly face.

I need makeup, is what I'm saying.

So I made a vow to myself not to go to work without mascara. This isn't the first time I've resolved to care more about my appearance. When we moved overseas I decided that it was a new me, on a new continent, and that from now on I'd wear mascara and lipstick every day. I trotted out of the house on that first day, feeling like a glamorous and mysterious femme fatale with my "full" face of makeup on. I had a bunch of errands, including sorting out my new identity card. The photo on my carte d'identité is totally smoking... I've got sultry eyes, full lips and non-crazy hair. I was thrilled. The new me was going to totally rock. I'd start wearing scarves and heels everywhere! I was going Full Euro!

The next day, and I am not exaggerating, I woke up with an eye infection, a sty, and a giant ulcerating cold sore on my lip. By the time all of my various makeup-induced ailments had cleared up, I'd lost my enthusiasm for the project.

This time it's different, though. I'm no longer a girlish 30, but deep, deep into the decade... My eyes need to "pop" and  my lips need to be embiggened, I've been wearing mascara for a few months now, without eye-infections of Biblical magnitude raining down on me, so maybe it's safe to try lipstick... Who knows, maybe I'll even dig out those scarves I bought all those years ago and have never felt I could carry off...

The Return of Love's Bouquet

The glory of e-publishing, as I am learning, is that you can resurrect all your old writing, and send it out into the world to find its readership. That's what I'm in the midst of trying to do with my first crack at a novel.

The genesis of Love's Bouquet was the back of a napkin in 1999. My friend Meghan and I had backpacked around Australia's East Coast, reading tons of old Harlequins we'd bought at a used bookstore. By the time we got to Cairns, we were convinced we could write one ourselves. We came up with the plot on the return bus trip from swimming in a tropical waterfall.

I went off and wrote it up -- typical Harlequin -- Wendy Blake, a plucky florist, falls in love with her womanising customer, James Crofton, hijinks ensue, love conquers all. The novel's first iteration was terrible -- long discourses on Kingston sights and sounds, wooden dialogue, absence of plot. I kept at it however, and slowly I learned how to write. I got rid of all that exposition, I spiffed up the dialogue, I started to think of Wendy and James as real people, not just Harlequin archetypes, and I tried to beef up the plot. Over time, I developed a respect for romance novelists, it's hard to make the same story - boy and girl meet, they overcome obstacles and smooch in the end -- fresh funny and interesting.

Eventually I thought it was good enough and I sent it to Harlequin. By then I'd done some serious research in to the romance field, was a member of the Romance Writer's of American and thought I had a shot of getting published. In the end, Love's Bouquet came close, with an editor asking for a few  re-writes before ultimately passing because the line it was aimed at -- one for humorous romances called Duets -- was discontinued.

Wendy Blake and James Crofton aren't dead yet, though. With the arrival of e-publishing, I'm going to see if those two crazy kids can find their audience. Watch this space -- Love's Bouquet is going to be released as an e-book.

PS I recognize that the title is TERRIBLE, but after more than a decade (!) of thinking about it as Love's Bouquet, I can't come up with anything else... if anyone's got any better ideas, please, lemme know!

Cleaning the Car

Things found whilst vacuuming the car for the first time since 2009

1. Topical antibiotic cream used to treat horrifying Virginia Creeper rash; believed lost in 2010

2. A full container of yogurt, dated three months earlier

3. $15.29 in change

4. An entire box worth of Cheerios

5. A packet of soy sauce, so old it had changed from black to a lustrous, golden amber

6. A 5 euro cent piece

7. Beloved children's classic, Baby Koala Climbs!

8. The resolution to never let it get this bad again

The things that weigh me down

Up until this point in my writing life, I haven't taken myself too seriously. Since I was a little kid I knew I wanted to write, but I am too conservative, too cautious and yes, too afraid, to attempt to make a career of it.

There is the lack of money, of course. Very very few authors, even so-called successful ones, make a living writing fiction. This is especially true in Canada, where our reading market is tiny. The five living Canadian fiction authors you can name of the top of your head? Maybe four of them make enough money from the sale of their work to live entirely on the profits. Everyone else is hustling, marketing, teaching, applying for grants, writing think pieces...

It's not only the grim financial reality that is a deterrent. Not to get too dramatic, but the writer's life is a solitary one. To do the job, by definition, you need to spend a lot of time by yourself, in your own head... Struggling to find the right word or express the right idea. I do well in a crowd, and parking myself at a desk for 8 hours a day can be killer. At times I'm completely unmotivated and then I feel like a failure.

That's the other thing. When I finished my Masters in English, I felt enormous relief. I'd spent two years with a constant, nagging feeling that there was more I should be doing. There was always another article I should be reading, another book to be analysed, an essay that could be improved. I eventually figured out that the entire point of grad school is to overwhelm the student and force them to make choices about time management. You can't do everything, so you have to prioritise. Even that knowledge didn't alleviate the incessant, nagging guilt I felt at failing to do all of the work assigned to me.

When I finished school and started my first 9 to 5 job, it was like I had been freed. I put in my 8 hours a day, walked out of the office, and it was over. The rest of the time, was mine. I could veg in front of the TV, burn out my retinas in front of a Tetris Marathon or go for drinks without the incessant back of my mind voice telling me I SHOULD be doing something else...

Deciding to pursue writing again has changed that. It's reintroduced that feeling of "should" into my life. I'm not complaining (though I know it sounds like I am). I get a ton of satisfaction from figuring out how to express an idea or capture a feeling in words, but it has meant that on top of parenting the small person (which, also, I am not complaining about) and being a somewhat decent employee and somewhat thoughtful wife/friend, I've got to accept something else to feel guilty about.

Days when the words flow, or they sound trite and lame, I don’t think it’s worth it. Then I hit my stride and luck is with me and I write something I feel really good about, and then I realise that it’s worth all the guilt.

Playing the odds

We are a lottery-buying household.

Yes, yes, gambling is the devil's work.

Your odds of winning the big jackpot are less than the likelihood of being struck by lightening whilst fending off a shark attack.

It's a tax on stupidity.

Buying a lottery ticket is the gateway drug to a crippling gambling addiction that sees you sell your house to the Hells Angels, pawn your baby off to the white slavers and gut your husband for his valuable kidneys.

And yet...

If you don't buy a ticket, you will never win.

Every week, when we plonk down our $3, one part of me wrestles with the whole thing. My husband and I have three decades worth of education between us... Is this our ignorant, uninformed dark side coming through?

And yet...

If you don't buy a ticket you will never win.

There are pleasures to be gained just from buying a ticket. At first, I spent a lot of enjoyable time fantasizing about what I'd do if we won. We don't want a lot. Quite honestly, we'd be happy with 300K. We'd pay off the mortgage and our other debts and have a bit of breathing room. I don't need to dramatically quit my job or anything. I just want to remove the low level money stress that plagues me. So, initially, I'd fantasize about what I'd do with all that money. Maybe a condo in London, England? Write fat checks to all my siblings? Donate giant chunks to the hospital where I was born? I don't aspire to wear fancy clothes, and any one who has seen either my man or I drive can vouch that it wouldn't be a good idea for us to get behind the wheel of anything more powerful than a Toyota. Travel, charity and an absence of debt... Fairly modest fantasies, I think.

Lately my lottery ticket fantasies haven't been about  what we'd do with the coin. Instead, I'm mulling over what EXACTLY I'd do if my local Mac's Milk guy said that I'd won... How would I react to his news? How precisely would I tell my husband? How would we pick up the check? Would we hire a money manager or just wing it? How would we tell our family? Would we tell people at work? etc.

Thinking through the practicalies is almost as fun as spending the imaginary money... Almost.

For now it's all moot, but when the day comes, I'll be ready.

Obligatory Fifty Shades post

So, I can't deny I've been influence by 50 Shades of Grey. Not in writing Carnal Punishment -- I wrote that two years ago, long before I knew about "subs," "doms" or the literary possibilities of "argh." No, the book didn't influence my writing, but it has influenced my decision to create this blog.

Fifty Shades of Grey, if you've missed it, is the first book in a trilogy chronicling the tortured relationship between Anastasia Steele and her billionaire swain, Christian Grey. Mr Grey is into light S&M and spends the first book trying to persuade the beautiful and befuddled Anastasia to be the Submissive to his Dominant. I don't know what happens in the next two novels, because I didn't read them. Fifty Shades is also a publishing phenomenon, with all three novels hitting the New York Times Bestseller list.

As I've written about earlier, I've been hesitant about publicising my erotica writing... When I sent a few close friends the link to my Harlequin published novella and begged them not to tell ANYONE I had written it, one friend wrote back, "I think you're a little hazy on what marketing means."

Quite.

E.L. James has changed that, however. I've heard her interviewed a couple of times now, and she's just a regular lady. Far from mooning around in pink peignoirs and oiling her whips, she has sounded intensely, profoundly, deeply ordinary. Except she isn't ordinary, is she? Because E.L. James is now an insanely successful author. If this everyday woman, writing an erotic trilogy based on Twilight, of all things, can hit the publishing big time, be interviewed by my beloved Jian Ghomeshi (and my less loved, but still better than Sook Yin Lee, Brent Bambury) and popularise the term "mommy porn", then I should come out of the erotica-writing closet, actually try to move some product, and claim my ridiculous erotic novella loudly and proudly (though still safely hidden by my pseudonym).

I read Fifty Shades a few weeks ago. Or maybe I should qualify, let's say I read-ish it. I mean, I started to, and I hung in there through the first 70 pages of sex-free hand-wringing by the gormless heroine. Once they starting fucking things got better, but then that's all they did, and it got boring again. By page 200 I was skimming.

I am on board with the consensus that says that Fifty Shades is badly written and that its success is deeply mystifying and profoundly angry-making for anyone struggling to make it as a writer, and who feel that their work is So. Much. Better.

Despite all of the sour grapes I feel toward this work, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, Fifty found its audience, and nothing I've ever done has had such a successful reception. Instead of wallowing in bile-making envy, I am taking deep metaphorical breath and feeling grateful for James' success. It has given me the courage to create this blog and claim my own heavy-breather with pride. After all, if James can be interviewed by Jian (sigh) then maybe one day I can too.

PS - in an earlier draft of this post, I included a short review of the book where I wrote without irony about the "amount of spunk" Anastasia had -- hee, unintentional sploodge pun!

Love the library

I love the library. As a kid I whipped through our small town's limited children's section in no-time and got special permission to take out adult books. Under the beady eyes of the librarians I never dared take out anything more scandalous than an Agatha Christie, but I loved the fact that I could wander in there and spend half an hour reading the backs of books. Examining the covers and reading the synopsis was almost as good as taking the books out themselves. It was kind of like watching endless movie trailers, almost better than reading the books themselves, because the teasers promised greatness and never disappointed.
From teenagehood until parenthood the library lost its allure. While I was at university and grad school rather than a place of magic and wonder, the library became the storage unit where my required readings were kept, a quiet place to study, or let's face it, boy watch.

It's only lately, with a toddler, and more time to read for pleasure, that I've rediscovered the joys of the library. Firstly, how amazing is it that you can take books out for free?! It's a completely cuckoo system. Totally socialist, too, by the way. I'm surprised that those nutty Republican presidential hopefuls didn't make an issue out of the infiltration of red Commie values into the hearts of American small towns through LIBRARIES, rather than all that palaver about ladies and their birth control.

Anyhoots. The library. Crazy system of free books. You know what else they have at the library? Free magazines. Rather than drop $7 to have Fitness or Self make me feel bad about myself, I can waltz into the library and learn about new body parts to loath, new cancer risks to fear and new exercises to torture myself with, all for free. My current favourite magazine is O -- I know that completely identifies me as a middle aged, middle class woman, but A. as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of am and B. it's really well-written. Seriously, O's got infinitely less bullshit than most magazines aimed at women, has tons of fascinating book reviews and some seriously fresh and interesting writing. The only downside about getting my O's from the library is that these days, I kind of feel bad for Oprah, and I don't like depriving her of the coin she might need to keep her sagging TV channel alive.

You know what else the library has? DVDs, CDs and ebooks! All of your entertainment in one spot, and all absolutely free. The place is totally amazing.

You can show up there with a whiny child on a rainy day, give the sproggins free rein over the kiddie books and immerse yourself in a trashy magazine for an hour. By the time your little angel has exhausted herself, you'll be all caught up on Kardashian related gossip, it won't have cost you a penny and instead of being branded a neglectful mother for reading trash rather than making papier mache, you'll get bonus points cuz you took your kid the library. Win. Win. Win.

Time/toddler management

Writing with a toddle underfoot is tricky, no doubt about it. There's nap time, obviously, and I am blessed with a kid who sleeps like a drunken frat boy, so I get a good two to three hours in the afternoon. That is certainly enough time to get a good whack of writing done, as long as there is nothing else that needs to be done without the "help" of grubby little hands, temper tantrums and a litany of unanswerable questions -- "Why?" "What is this?" "Why?' "Where's my dolly?" "Why?"

I used to get up an hour before everyone else in the house and sneak up to the attic to work. I've stopped that, though, because my angelic child has developed supersonic hearing, whose pinpoint acuity and accuracy could direct surface to air missiles.

So, this often leads me to attempt to work while she's hanging around. I've encouraged solitary playing, and if I set her up with an exciting game of cars or restaurant I can usually snatch half an hour. The problem is that I have to answer urgent questions about what kind of soup or cereal I want her to pretend to serve me, or my presence is demanded to inspect a tower of cars she's created.

What I've learned to do is leave all of the actual writing that demands serious concentration to those uninterrupted hours when she's napping. Instead I do all of my less serious computer work while she's sitting at my feet methodically emptying the Tupperware drawer.

This strategy helps me maximise my time, but doesn't help with the guilt. If I'm home with the little ragamuffin, shouldn't I be devoting my time to nurturing her creatively, emotionally and intellectually? After 2.5 hours of wrestling with these mundane questions of maternal guilt, I've come up with an answer: No. My parents certainly didn't agonise about whether all of my various needs (beyond food and safety) were being met... Instead they ignored me most of the time, with a few well timed and useful "Pipe downs!", "Get your hand out of there" and "I love yous." While my parents weren't ideal, they were pretty great, and frankly I've managed to sort myself without a lot of handholding.

While I theoretically endorse the "tough love", or at least "less tender," approach it still doesn't help the guilt. I don't think I'll ever toughen up enough against that.

A day off

There are times when I rail against the stodgy government town I find myself in. Those times are usually March.

Ottawa in the winter is lovely.There is skating on the canal (longest ice rink in the world- represent!) there is cross country skiing in Gatineau Park and excellent downhill less than two hours away. The snow is thick and white on the ground-- none of the half hearted slush you find in other cities -- and the sky is often a crystalline blue with sunshine so bright it makes your teeth ache.  Even the two weeks when it is -30 C (that's -22 F for you Yanks) and it's so cold that your eyes water and then your eyelashes freeze together, even those two weeks are perfectly manageable because as you scurry from house to car, you get to feel like some kind of hardy Viking warrior braving the bitter chill in a quest for adventure and glory, or at least a pay cheque and groceries. 

What doesn't make you feel like a warrior is when it's mid March and the sky is grey and there is another god damn 20 centimetres (7 inches)  of snow and you're sick of shovelling, and you're sick of your salt-stained winter boots, and you're sick of your fingertips tingling with cold and you wonder why the god damn Vikings even bothered coming to this benighted country because who would ever choose to live in such a cold damp nightmare when they could be in Florida, or at the very least, Northern Maine?

All that to say, that at times Ottawa (the second coldest capital city in the world after Ulan Bator, Mongolia) can wear on the nerves.

But, after a hard couple of weeks, I had a good day, which reminded me of all the reasons I love this place. Skipping work, the kiddo and I waved her daddy off for the day, lolled in our PJ's for a couple of hours, then hit the road. I climbed onto my bike, attached the trailer, and sped along the city's amazing network of kilometres and kilometres (miles and miles) of bike paths. The trail we took wended along the mighty Ottawa River, a big, obnoxious and aggressive body of water, probably better suited to some city with major attitude, like New York or London, than apologetic Ottawa. Still the River is ours and it gives us something to strive for and live up to (and curse when the bridges are inevitably gridlocked).

The path took me past a ton of Ottawa's main attractions. We zipped by the National Archives, the Supreme Court and the Gothic looking parliament buildings. You see all of this history and culture, not from Wellington Street, which is how you're supposed to view the buildings, but from the path, which is far below, at water level. It's kind of fun, like Peeping Tom-ing on National Heritage, but without the illegality or feeling of skeeviness. 

We parked at the locks, a series of dams that regulate the Rideau Canal. The Canala allows access from the Ottawa River to the even mightier and more aggressive St. Lawrence 200 km (125 miles - for God's sake, people, go metric already!) to the South. 

We crossed the locks on foot, then climbed the big hill up to the promontory where the National Gallery gleams like a crystal palace. It's an amazing building -- all glass, with soaring, Gothic elements echoing the parliament buildings you can see from its windows. 

The kid hadn't been there in a year or two and we spent a lovely hour wandering around, trying unsuccessfully to touch paintings, cuddle camel sculptures and shouting at any portrait featuring a man with a white beard (away, Santa, shoo! -- Little Lady doesn't dig the Claus) until we had a restorative rice cake and peanut butter snack in the cafe.

Cycling back, we passed a goose and her five yellow, fuzzy goslings. Little Lady was tunelessly singing in the trailer, there was not a car or a hill to be seen on the path, and I thought the Vikings may have been on to something after all.

A bit of whining to start...

Oh man, I've been telling myself I need to start blogging since I first heard the news that Harlequin would be publishing my erotic novella, Carnal Punishment in February 2012.

Everyone tells you, over and over, that creating a successful book is 20% writing and 80% promotion.

That's the tricky bit, though, right? Writers are often introverts (nothing wrong with that!) who are less interested in the money making end of things than in the careful choice of words and sentences, the evocation of a scene, the delineation of a character. Writing a book, articulating thoughts and ideas you might never have expressed to any one before, can be an extremely daunting  act, and the idea that you then have to SHILL those ideas is dispiriting... At least for me.

I just want people to read my stuff and get a kick out of my story. I want to connect to people, but I want to do it at a safe remove...  Dudes it's bad enough I've written an EROTIC novella (what would my mother think?!?) that features a disembodied Egyptian ghost getting a little rapey, the idea that I then have to go out and convince people to read it is downright sick-making.

But, you know what my babies? I'm committing to doing this. After all, we only get one crack at this nutty crazy world of ours and I don't want to be 90 (yes, I'll make it that far) on my deathbed, metaphorically kicking myself for not marketing the bejesus out of my super sexy, s&m'y story.

So. Dudes -- go buy it!

Harlequin has distributed it left right and centre, so if you're in the market for sexy sado-masochist stories about plucky archaeologists, brooding bosses and, yeah, a sexed up poltergeist with control issues... Here are a few places to get it:

Amazon

Google

Waterstones