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...