Viking Girl Adventures

Why I love C.S. Richardson, and Goodbye...For Now

2007-03-14T01:43:00.000-04:00

As those of you who read the blog know, I've been struggling with starting my second book for the last several months. I haven't actually been writing, but I've been in a strange phase where I'm constantly thinking about what I want to write. I sat down with BHJ earlier this week and tried to explain the strange, fuzzy, in-between phase of thinking - but not actually producing - a book. And the reason why I'm not yet writing is that I'm just not ready. I spend a lot of time thinking about my writing, and even more time not actually writing. With the last book, I wrote the first draft in 3 months and then spent the next 3 years rewriting. But at least I had a whole book to work with. This time, of course, I have nothing.

I was watching Fine Print on Thursday - which is an excellent show, btw - featuring Canadian writer C.S. Richardson talking about his first book - The End of the Alphabet. Richardson is an award-winning Canadian book designer who decided to try his hand at writing. During an interview he was asked a question along the line of; how did you come up with the idea for this book?

He said, "Well, I was kind of thinking, people always wonder; 'what would happen if you won a million dollars. But then I was thinking, what would happen if you got some very bad news, like you had a month to live?'

I sat back on our couch and breathed that in for a minute...what would happen if? It was perfect. What would happen if, is the best way to start a book that I've ever heard. And it's so simple. I have all of my characters rolling around my head and a loose idea of the plot - all I have to do is ask is; What Would Happen If?

Richardson went on to write a book about a man who finds out that he has only a month to live. What would happen if...you had a month to live? Me being me, I made one of my a semi-weekly trips to the bookstore today and picked up a copy of his new book, "The End of the Alpaphabet." It's beautifully designed and looks like a great read. And for giving me some clarity, he certainly deserves the buck he's going to get from the sale.

Then I came home, had a nap, had dinner, and started my next book; ten pages. So, thanks, C.S. Richardson.

In other news, I've come to the point where I'm ready to take a hiatus from the blog. I've been doing it for a year now, and while I've really enjoyed it, it's time for me to focus on the next phase of my writing, my next book.

I wanted to thank everyone who's come by and read and made comments, and especially those who have sent me nice emails about what I've written. It's been VERY much appreciated.

If you want to see how I'm doing, drop by my web page and sign up for my mailing list. When I sell my first book, you'll be the first to know. And you can check back here every once in a while, I'll probably be able to cough up a few semi-witty remarks every now and then.

Cheers,
Maia

Scrotum!

2007-02-19T22:55:00.000-05:00

'The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.' (NYT)

Now they're banning books about scrotums! What's next, penguins?

Oh, wait....

Hug Your Friendly Neighbourhood Geek - or - Why I Hate George Bush

2007-02-17T14:55:00.000-05:00

You might have noticed that I haven't been around the blog a lot lately. Why? Well, it's all because of George Bush.

In July, 2005, the US Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which was signed into law by George Bush on August 8th. God, do I hate the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In this ridiculous piece of legislation, Daylight Saving Time (now known as "Extended Daylight Saving") starts three weeks earlier, on March 11, 2007. (At 2 a.m., if you want to be specific. I have to know this because I'll be up at this time, glued to the clock.) Canada, claiming business reasons, has followed along with this insanity. The reason behind this law? Save energy by having more daylight at the end of the day. Of course, logically, people will be getting up an hour earlier, in darkness, and will have to....turn on the lights. God, do I hate the Energy Policy Act.

I have to instert a disclaimer here: I was the Y2K compliance officer for the company I worked at at the time. I had a year to prep, very little work to do in order to get compliant, and zero issues after the fact. So I know a little bit about massive systems changes, researching compliance issues and generalized foolishness. My better half was also on the Y2K team for his company. So between the two of us, we have a pretty good knowledge of these kinds of issues.

So, it's with this knowledge that I make this statement: Extended Daylight Saving is worse. (Well, in some very small ways. Don't start stockpiling food or anything.) And it's the reason I've been working my tail off lately.

Part of the reason that this is so bad is due to the fact that vendors are STILL working on the patches that are required for geeks like me to be able to transition our systems over to the Extended DST period. Microsoft has released tools in the last week or two when people normally need a month or two to test and roll-out. I've only been working on this a month.

So, why should you care. Running a computer? PDA? Blackberry? You need to update.

Here are some tips to make things earlier. (I have to provide a second disclaimer here, this is a suggestion only, not professional advice. When in doubt, always consult your vendor. But I'm right, so it's okay.)

Tips:

1 - Edit your calendar items *now* to reflect the correct start time of appointments between March 11 and April 1. Just click on the item and change the subject line to include the time.
2 - Print out your calendar *now*, paying special attention to any travel or critical appointments.

Then update your computer. If you're running Windows XP SP2, your patch is available here: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_hu3?Submit1=Download. This patch will update your time zone configuration so that your computer will move an hour ahead at 2 am on March 11. You could, however, change the time manually, but your PC will likely move another hour ahead 3 weeks later when the old Daylight Saving Time kicks in. (Hey, I haven't tested this scenario yet, but I'll put that on my list.)

After updating XP, appoinments in Outlook Web Access or Outlook will appear one hour later in the three week delta period after March 11. You can either manually move your appointments back or run the Outlook Time Zone Update Tool, although this is *not* guaranteed to work in all cases. I say, when in doubt, do things manually. (More information on this here.)

If you're using another vendor for your mail client (Eudora, etc.) you should check with them. If you're using a web-based program, Gmail, Sympatico, etc. your vendor should be fixing the problem, so don't worry about your email. You still need to update your own computer, though. To make things even more fun, Microsoft released the XP update this week as a critical update - so if you have "automatic updates" already set up - you might have the patch already. If that's the case, double check your appointments if you're using OWA or Outlook.

If you're running a Blackberry device, you can get a device update by navigating to: www.blackberry.com/DST2007/patch/index2.shtml on your device. If you're running other Blackberry software, take a look at their site to see what you need to do. If you're running a different PDA, check your vendor's website.

I'm amazed that this is just starting to hit the news now, considering the impact could potentially be significant. Billing, banking, accounting, and travel systems? Well, I'm glad I don't run them. My problem, however, is that I work for a company who hosts email for *other* companies, so that can get sticky. Plus some of the changes on my side of the fence are a little hairy. PLUS, information is changing almost daily, meaning it's impossible to keep up with new issues/changes (in fact, when looking for some links for this blog, I found out that Microsoft has changed their DST webpage since yesterday). Excuse me while I medicate my ulcer.

Now, to be honest, I don't think it's going to be the end of the world. Most people will likely experience a few headaches and take it in stride, but if a CEO misses a flight for THE meeting that was going to make their company millions of dollars, I can be sure that I'm going to have some 'splaining to do.

So, thanks, George.

Oh, and the best thing? This is a TEST PERIOD. So we might have to undo all of this next year. If that's the case, I'm quitting the computer industry and opening a fruitstand.

So, if you have a friend who's a geek? Give them a goddamn hug. We need one.

Cheers,
Maia

Oh, and don't forget, change all your clocks, smoke dector batteries, VCRs, PVRs, your automatic furnace settings, your watches, your car's clock...and anything else that keeps time. Which is pretty much everything.

I'm an Old Lady With Bad Knees, or, First Fall of the Season

2007-01-25T11:40:00.000-05:00

First, let me say this; I'm not a great skier. For someone who grew up steps from the Laurentiens and whose mother is from Magog, (which has turned from a factory town into a fancy schmancy ski resort) I'm barely average. There are a lot of reasons for this, mostly my general unco-ordination and the 10 years I took off skiing after I moved to Toronto, mostly caused by lack of money, lack of transportation, and lack of desire to ski Ontario's tiny hills.

I got back into the swing of things about 4 years ago when my better half suggested a trip to Horseshoe "Mountain". I snapped on some snazzy new parabolic rentals and skied like Bode Miller. (It's hard to ski badly down 300 vertical feet). And just like that, my winters were transformed. I went from hating winter, hating the cold, hating snow, to loving all of the above. And I mean looooooooooooooving. Now when I see flakes start to fall, I do a little happy dance. Every time someone complains about -15, I smile so wide my teeth almost pop out. People can't stand it.

So I'm not a great skier, but that's not my problem My problem has to do with chair lifts and chair lift related disasters; stopping them, falling off of them, and - even - pushing others *cough* John *cough* off of them.

The chairlift has become my nemesis. Particularly the ones at Blue Mountain, our regular winter hangout, which, even though it's a barely respectable 720 feet of vertical, is the 4th most visited ski resort in Canada. So, basically there's lots of traffic + high speed six pack chair lifts. Six people going in different directions at once on skis? I smell disaster brewing.

So, a few weeks ago, John and were out on our first trip to Blue of the season. About halfway through the night we got on the chairlift with a kid I knew was going to be trouble. He was swinging his snowboard under the lift and smacking my skis and yapping in a loud, obnoxious voice about his exploits to the dude sitting next to him (for a fourteen year old, he has had a lot of exploits). As we got ready to disembark he crouched down and slid off the lift with his elbows up, his board almost sideways, and his head up his ass. Almost immediately he hooked the back of his board (snowboards have a slight curl upwards at both ends) under my right ski and started to pull my leg out from underneath me. Instead of lifting up my leg and releasing his board, which would have been a lot smarter, I was sort of caught in a daze, thinking; this little bastard is going to take me down. And I'm an old lady with bad knees. Unsuprisingly, about 2 seconds later I went down, my right and left skis pointing towards each other in a jaunty 90 degree angle, one that generally indicates that you've just mangled your meniscus. And I couldn't get up, because this was the first fall of the season and I had no clue what I was doing. After a few seconds of malingering I clued in and remembered; aha! This is how you get back up. And I did.

I think it's the height of unfairness that I have to re-learn how to fall and how to get back up again every single winter, and I did a suitable amount of feeling sorry for myself afterwards. Unfortunately, this is also where I'm at with my writing. I've got exactly one paragraph written of my new book and I can't remember what the hell to do next. I expect the answer is, just like skiing, to get up and keep going. And here I thought it was going to be easier this time around. On the bright side, it doesn't involve chairlifts.

Cheers,
Maia

PS. I'm back to Blue this weekend - Super Bowl Sunday is the best night of the winter to ski because everyone's at home drinking beer and waiting for another glimpse of Janet Jackson's boobies. If I embarass myself horribly in another chairlift brouhaha, I'll be sure to let you know.

Thank You, Strange Guy at the Queen's Quay Loblaws

2007-01-05T11:16:00.000-05:00

On the day before New Year's Eve, we were hosting a dinner for some friends of mine. For any and all dinner parties I take a run over to the St. Lawrence Market, (a market so scrumptious it was voted one of the 25 best markets in the world). Conveniently, the market is just down the street from the Queen's Quay Loblaws (a grocery store so sexy it's rumoured to be one of Toronto's best pick-up spots), where I get all my non-market related sundries. Unfortunately, I also had to go shopping the day before New Year's Eve, a move only contemplated by utter maniacs.

I was in a wickedly bad mood; the fancy schmancy new Canadian Tire tree stand that we'd just bought had leaked while we were on our ski trip in Quebec and warped our recently refinished hardwood floors (more research on hardwood floors reveals that this type of damage is called cupping. Just thought you might want to know.) We had tried to staunch the flow, but I had just discovered some new damage before I left the house and I was officially pissed off.

I made the short trip downtown, muttering to myself while I steamed in my own juices in my little red car. As soon as I neared the market I realized that I was headed for disaster. My regular parking lot looked packed to the gills, the four-way stop was being overrun by SUVs bullying their way through the intersection, and people were *everywhere*. (I have a phobia about crowds. It's not pretty.) I managed to squeak into a parking spot, narrowly avoided getting squashed by a minivan, and escaped being flattened into the pavement by a family with a double-wide stroller, but by this point, I was almost purple with angst.

I managed to get through the throngs of people, sidestepped the crates of writhing lobster lining the walkways and ended up in front of a store where they were hawking - literally - yummy little Cornish Hens. The butcher was über friendly and quite funny and I felt a little warmed. I went over to the veggie store and picked up a bunch of green beans and shallots, but couldn't make it to the potatoes because of the wall of grumpy teens being dragged around by their mothers. I cut my losses, bought my handful of organics and headed out to the Queen's Quay Loblaws, but I was in for a surprise when I got there. It was the first time I've ever seen the massive main level parking lot look full, so instead of circling like some kind of parking lot predator I scooted up to the second level, thinking I was super smart. Nope, it was packed too. I knew I was in for a miserable time; I still wasn't feeling all that fantastic, the traffic was freaking me out, and I still had to clean the house.

I got my buggy and started to navigate the mess of yuppie/hippie/chichi/new-age couples and families with little less than a snarl on my face. It was almost impossible to navigate the store. Unfortunately, I'd been to the downstairs liquor store first, so I had three bottles of nice wine in my cart. Paranoid that someone was going to relieve me of $50 worth of spectacular booze, I didn't want to leave my buggy. I had been in the store for only about 5 minutes when the most interesting thing happened; I was trying to navigate the potato section when I came head to head to with an attractive older man in a nail-biting grocery cart standoff. I needed to get around him to make it to the all-important baguette section and he was in my way. And I wanted him to move.

And then...he did. He smiled at me, a smile that reached his eyes and transformed his face into a delightful maze of wrinkles. He backed up his cart, navigated around me, and said; "Happy New Year". It was a perfectly charming moment that rendered me so flustered I didn't move forward, thwarting the attempts of the person behind me, who pushed his cart ahead and ended up wedged against my ass. Instead of murdering him with a potato, I turned around and smiled. He backed up his cart, apologized, and smiled back.

My bad mood evaporated and I continued on my way, listening to snippets of family discord and strife; to husbands not giving a shit that their wives *had* to have organic beets for their side dishes instead of canned; to wives who didn't want to suffer through another torturous dinner with their mother-in-law; to mothers chastising their slouching Goth teens and screaming Gap-swaddled toddlers. The ever present, ubiquitous Christmas charols were playing in the background and they were...lovely. As I smiled at my cranky fellow shoppers and ceded right-of-way to their grocery carts, I thought about how lucky I was. I thought about how I was going to go home and make a yummy dinner for good friends and an unmarried/common-law/domestic partner who I adore. I thought about how thankful I am for what I have, thankful that we can all define who our family is in our own demented, quirky ways, and that living a happy life is sometimes all about perspective. So, thank you, strange guy in the Queen's Quay Loblaws, thank you for smiling at me instead of horribly mangling my foot by running over it with your buggy.

A very Happy New Year's to everyone. I wish you and yours all the best in 2007. And don't forget to smile at random strangers every once in a while. Just 'cause.

Maia

Happy Solstice, Y'all

2006-12-20T13:10:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: I just finished watching the news, and apparently the tree in question was dragged back into the lobby yesterday, but was removed after a few hours. The plot thickens!

***

There was all kinds of brouhaha recently about a Christmas tree that was removed from a downtown Toronto courthouse so that it wouldn't offend non-Christians. Most people are irked about the removal, and some, quite rightly, have pointed out the fact that Christmas and Christmas traditions - including the Christmas tree - are outgrowths of early pagan festivals that celebrated the winter solstice and aren't Christian at all.

I'm not a religious person myself, but I do enjoy a nice Christmas tree - ours is so large we have to walk sideways into our kitchen. (It's possible we are crazy.) In any case, in the spirit of debunking some perceptions about Christmas, I did some digging about Christmas origins and traditions.

It is widely believed that Christmas is an outgrowth of Saturnlia, "...one of the best known ancient celebrations of the Winter Solstice...Saturnlia was the greatest festival of the Roman year, and was marked with great feasting, gift-giving, dancing, playing, and relaxing. Homes were decorated, work was suspended, and there was general merry-making done by all." They also took their festivities on the road; "Caroling, Wassailing, and masked processions were other Saturnalia staples that outlasted the Romans." A few millenia ago, the solstice fell on the 25th of December, and in modern times it has shifted to the 21st or 22nd. (The solstice this year falls on the 22nd, at 22 minutes after midnight.)

What about the recently relocated Christmas tree, anyway? "The Christmas tree, like many Christmas customs, originated in the ancient Roman new year festival of Saturnalia...Home decoration was emphasized, and the decorations were the evergreen trees sacred to the sun- pine, holly, etc."

Even smooching at this time of the year has a pagan origin; "(t)he roots of [kissing under the mistletoe] are unknown, but is likely tied with the fertility aspects of mistletoe and that it was viewed as a bringer of peace by the Druids." This particular tradition was banned in many churches, due to its roots in paganism.

What about Yule? And what's up with that silly song about the partridge in a pear tree? "The pagan Norse Solstice celebration, Yule, gives us both the Yule log and the "Twelve Days" of Christmas. The burning of a tree, a log, or a wheel was a widespread custom in European pagan Solstice ceremonies. The burning of the Yule log is a symbolic sacrifice of the sun's sacred evergreen, and its sacrifice gave energy to ensure the rebirth of the weakened sun."

Personally, I've always wondered what Boxing Day - the day after Christmas - was all about. Apparently, "(t)his word comes from the custom which started in the Middle Ages around 800 years ago: churches would open their 'alms boxe' (boxes in which people had placed gifts of money) and distribute the contents to poor people in the neighbourhood on the day after Christmas.

Well, there you have it. I, for one, would like to thank the pagans for their partying spirit and general hedonism. Happy solstice, everyone! John and I are ditching our families and running off to ski the slopes of Quebec tomorrow. Now all we have to do is pray for snow.

I'll see you all in the New Year.

Maia

Near Death Experience!

2006-12-19T15:53:00.000-05:00

It's possible I'm a tad melodramatic, but that's part of my charm. I've been laid low with a spectacularly awful virus for the last week or so, making me delinquent on my posting, and in about every other part of my life. Now I'm busy trying to get BHJ and I ready to head to Quebec for a week of frolicking in the snow, except...there's no snow. Environment Canada says there's a 60% chance of getting the white stuff today, so please, everyone, pray to whoever your designated diety is (personally, I've accepted the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my personal saviour, mostly because of the focus on loose moral values) for some snow for us. We have the worst ski trip luck in the world. I blame John.

Cheers,
Maia

The Happy Tummy Cyber Cafe and Hammock Bar

2006-12-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

I admit it, I'm a terrible hedonist. I like to sleep, I like to eat, and I like comfort. The only reason I believe in Astronomy is because I fit my sign's characteristics to a T. The first hit when Googling "Taurus" turns up: Self-indulgent and greedy. Um, well, yes. I like good food (lots of it), good wine (also lots of it), sitting on the couch (also...okay, you get the picture). In any case, my penchant for *lots of it* tends to spill over into my writing. Most of the conflict in my first book was pretty realistic, but now that I'm getting ready to start #2, I have a tsunami of soap opera storylines raging inside me. They all suck, and frankly, I find myself at a loss as to what the main drama's going to be in my next book. I've had some characters happily living in my head for a while, but I'm not quite sure what they want to do yet.

So, in an attempt to do some brainstorming, I turned to the news. What about traveling? That's always stressful. I had followed the news stories a few weeks ago when an American woman was yanked off a plane for breastfeeding (which prompted a country wide nurse-in at a number of US cities and got the flight attendant censured). Who knew that passing gas could also get you the boot? I decided not to have my protagonist fart herself off a 747 and kept searching. Since it's the Christmas season, I tried to do a little digging on the holiday spirit. What did I find? A mother who got her son arrested for opening his Christmas present early. No joke; apparently 911 is the new way to address behavioural issues.

I always gravitate towards the stranger than fiction type newstories, or sites like the Darwin Awards, which delights in showcasing some of humanity's worst moments. But after spending all this time scouring the Internet looking at news stories, I was forced to admit that I spend too much time reading about people's quirks and not enough writing about them. And I still don't have any good ideas.

You'll have to excuse me now. I'm heading off to the wedding of two very good friends, where I will be indulging...er, well, you know.

Maia

PS: The title of this post is the name of the restaurant I'd set up if I ever won the lottery, sort of an ode to headonism: a cyber cafe featuring drinks with insanely long straws, so that people don't have to get up from their hammocks. Believe it or not, I've been able to convince a few people that this is a good idea. Come on: Hammocks? Food? Drinks? Computers? What's not to love?

How Does Karma Work, Exactly?

2006-11-24T15:11:00.000-05:00

First off, I'd like to give thanks to Buzzfeed for linking to my gay penguin exposé earlier this week: http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzz/Gay_Penguins. They are my new BFFs.

Secondly, I wanted to talk about the latest OJ Simpson foolishness - even though it looks like it's already over, I'm never one to turn down beating a dead horse.

You'd have to be living under a rock to have missed the craptastic events of the early 90's when Simpson went on trial for the murder of his wife and her friend Ron Goldman. Simpson has always proclaimed his innocence, even though he later lost a civil suit to the tune of $33.5 mil. His answer? Retire, since his pensions and residence (as soon as he scooted over to Florida to take advantage of their more lenient regulations) cannot be claimed as part of the civil suit.

His most recent shenanigans involve both a book and interview, entitled, "If I Did It", featuring "Simpson speak[ing] in hypothetical terms about how he would have committed the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Goldman."(CNN.) I don't even understand what the hell that means, but it's basically all kinds of stupid.

I was reading through an interview done with the über perky Katie Couric on the 10th anniversary of the murders and was struck by (a) what an asshole this guy is and (b) his assertion that people are overjoyed to see him wherever he goes, comping him meals and whatnot. I'd have to say that the recent uproar and ensuing cancellation of his book and interview deal would lead me to rethink that perspective, if I was him. Since he's clearly a raving narcissist, it's unlikely that'll ever happen.

What's the real the kicker, you ask? He'll likely be able to keep his $1 million+ advance. Oh, yeah, and the interview and book will likely slither out anyway: recent news stories show that a few copies of the book have already hit eBay.

M

Gay Penguins are Taking Over the World!

2006-11-17T11:37:00.000-05:00

I'm ashamed to say that up until this week I hadn't heard about the gay penguin situation at the New York Central Park Zoo. Why am I ashamed? Well, the simple truth of it is, I love penguins. I want a penguin. I watched "March of the Penguins" about five times more than is reasonable. And I'm heading out tonight to see the animated Penguin-fest, "Happy Feet", which opens this weekend.

John has always said that our house isn't set up for a pet penguin, but then we caught a news story a while back about a family that has adopted a wild penguin. The penguin refuses to leave, and even has his own air-conditioned room, so he doesn't get too hot. I say if they can do it, so can we. I don't know which room we'll give up for the penguin; probably John's office.

Anyway, putting aside my tragic penguin-less status, Peter Parnell, a playwright, and Justin Richardson, an assistant professor of psychiatry (who are, themselves, partners), recently penned a children's book called "And Tango Makes Three", that chronicles the story of Roy and Silo, the New York penguins who adopted Tango when she was just an eggling. When asked why they wrote the book, Richardson responded:

We're hoping kids will love it and beg their parents to read it again and again, since children are bumping into children from these same-sex families at school and at birthday parties. This [book] makes it comfortable for parents to talk about these families.

Seems pretty healthy/sane/reasonable to me, but it seems that some parents object to shelving the book in the children's section. They want to "(m)ove the book to the library's regular shelves and restrict it to a section for mature issues, perhaps even requiring parental permission before a child can check it out."

So far, school officials are hanging tough, and the book is still shelved in the kiddie section. It has, however, been moved to the non-fiction section at the Rolling Hills' Consolidated Library in Missouri, at the request of two parents.

Seriously, this is the kind of stuff I just can't figure out. What's the harm in reading this book? Is it because gay penguins are trying to convert us to their gay penguin agenda? Wait, I can see it now! I understand: gay penguins are taking over the world!!! Lock your doors, people!

Cheers,
Maia

PS. Go see Happy Feet!

Tagged

2006-11-07T18:42:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged, thanks to Todd Wheeler. Unsuprisingly, it took me a few days to come up with 5 interesting things about me.

1) My father is from the Estonian Island of Hiiumaa, and after WWII no one in our family was able to return, or, in many cases, communicate with family members there. After the fall of the iron curtain it was like Estonia-palooza for us; I was able to obtain an Estonian passport and citizenship, and have voted in two Estonian elections. I even travelled on the Estonia a year before it sank in what was one of the worst ferry disasters of all time. I also learned Estonian at the age of 20 at the University of Toronto, although it is a ridiculously difficult language with a completely unreasonable amount of vowels. Just ask my better half, John, who's currently taking introductory Estonian classes.

2) My University degree is actually in Criminology, not computers; I've read dozens of legal cases, sat in on many trials, and I do volunteer work with an organization that assists victims of crime. I originally thought I wanted to be a lawyer but I've never worked in the legal field and I don't want to write crime novels, although I love to read them. I do sometimes wonder if all those university years were a good investment, but there you go.

3) My maternal great-grandmother was an Irish Home Child. Home Children were impoverished youngins who were sent to Canada as - basically - forced labourers. Most were orphans, but my great-grandmother was not: her mother died when she was young and her father was seen as an unfit father because he was a musician. My great-grandmother was so badly treated in Canada that her daughter - my maternal grandmother (who was, without a doubt, the most kind hearted person I've ever met), only ever made me promise her one thing; that if I ever visited Ireland I would spit on the doorstep of the family who insisted my great-grandmother be sent away. I will be heading to Ireland for the first time next summer, and now I have to decide if I'm going to spit on some poor Irish family's property.

4) I'm a junk/vintage/antique freak. My TV sits on a what used to be a reading table at the university of New Brunswick in the 60's, my CDs/DVDs are stored in an antique icebox, the sidetable on my side of the couch is a vintage pie safe. It wasn't until a year ago that I realized that all of my stuff was once owned by people who are now dead. Thankfully, none of my possessions are haunted, although I did live in a haunted house while in university; kitchen cupboards would open themselves, deadbolts would be slipped into place even when no one was inside the house, and I once woke up to what appeared to be a tiny apparition in my bedroom. The landlord was really upset that we didn't want to renew our lease. Me? Not so much.

5) I'm a photography wannabee, and I prefer to shoot in black and white. This is one of my faves, a shot of BHJ, taken in the same area where my great-grandmother's family ended up settling; near Sherbrooke, Quebec:

Now I'm going to tag a REAL photographer: Toronto artist and photographer Piika.

Cheers,
Maia

PS. The Gritlit festival and Murder Mystery last weekend was fantastic! I'll be blogging about it next week.

gritLIT

2006-11-02T11:41:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased as punch to be heading down to Hamilton this weekend for the annual gritLIT festival. The festival is kicking off tonight with family-oriented lit readings.

BHJ and I are heading down for their Murdery Mystery night on Saturday, and we'll be hanging around after to hear three Canadian mystery writers read from their latest works. The Murder Mystery is sold out, but tickets are still available for the readings. I don't write mystery myself, but I do read a whole big bunch of it. I'm definitely looking forward to heading down to the mustard capital of the world and checking out some new Canadian writers.

Tickets are available at the door for events, so check it out if you're around this weekend.

Cheers,
Maia

International Festival of Authors, Part III

2006-11-02T11:15:00.000-05:00

I finally scraped together enough brain cells to figure out when Ryan Knighton was going to be in Toronto and (happily) ended up at his interview with fellow Canadian Don McKellar last Saturday. I've been to a boatload of author readings over the past year or so, so it was a very nice change to watch a writer kick back and talk about writing, reading, and life in general, particularly since Knighton is blind and can't read or write in what we think of as the conventional way. He's also a natural born storyteller, is funny as hell, and isn't afraid to sprinkle his conversations with a few well-placed f-bombs. (Personally, I think judicious use of the word "fuck" can help illuminate most stories.)

He also spoke about his appearance in the upcoming documentary As Slow as Possible, as well as his idea for a travel book based on experiences that revolve around non-sighted senses. His first idea? Traveling to the annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Texas. He made sure to stress that he'll be experiencing it via sound, not touch.

Other than the torturous Starbucks tea (seriously, how can Earl Gray go so wrong?) and the chick sitting beside me who was texting with enormously loud thumbs for the last twenty minutes or so, I had a great time. I stood in a pretty impressive line to have Ryan sign a book for me, so now I have one of my very own, and I don't have to worry about spilling juice on my friend's copy anymore.

If you're in town next year, definitely check the IFOA out. Bravo was there taping the interview - which is great, because there were a few other writers I wanted to see, but couldnt - and I'll be posting the air dates for the festival whenever I figure out when they're going to be. Ryan Knighton's website is: www.ryanknighton.com.

Cheers,
Maia

Celebrate Halloween by Grabbing a...Turnip?

2006-10-31T14:22:00.000-05:00

Well, today is Halloween, and it just so happens that the Estonian word for Halloween is my favourite word in the whole wide world. Hingedeöö, the word in question, is pronounced: Hing geh deh eugh. (Actually, this is a terrible description, but it took me a long time to figure out the öö portion and that's the best I can do.) It's incredibly Swedish Chef-ish, with an Estonian - and somewhat evil - bent. Love it.

I'll leave you with some trivia about Halloween (you'll have to scroll down a little): http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm. The highlight? Definitely:

"The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember. "

Happy Hingedeöö, and be glad we don't all have to hollow out a bunch of turnips.

:)

Maia

Racism in Publishing, Revisited

2006-10-26T11:18:00.000-04:00

I blogged earlier this summer about American writer Millenia Black's struggles with her publisher. In a nutshell: Millenia Black, who is African-American, turned in a book that was under contract, and except for one 'tiny' little detail, the book was acceptable (ie. well-written and publishable under the terms of the contract). The tiny detail? They wanted her to change her characters from white to black. Millenia refused.

She has now announced that she is suing her publisher.

Being an unpublished writer means that my understanding of the publishing industry is limited to 2nd and 3rd hand information. I say this because the implication from some is that the decision to change the race of the characters in Millenia's book was a simple marketing decision, one that's done all the time in publishing. If that's the case, why doesn't NYT bestselling author Tess Gerritsen, who blogged about this same issue a few months ago here and here, have to change the race of her characters from white to asian? Why isn't Sue Monk Kidd, a white American writer whose NTY bestselling debut featured black characters, shelved under African-American fiction?

This is what I believe: People should be treated with respect even if we disagree with them. Sadly, the reaction to Millenia's news hasn't been quite so evenhanded; some people have even implied that the lawsuit is an attempt to garner attention for her upcoming novel.

Clearly niche publishing/marketing is a complex issue, one that evokes strong feelings on all sides. (For some interesting discussion on this issue, please take a look at Monica Jackson's blog, or the comment trail in Millenia's last few posts. There are lots of links and trackbacks to other blogs, and the discussion ranges from illuminating to infuriating.)

Ultimately I find the issue, at its core, fairly straightforward: Millenia is saying that she feels that being forced to manipulate a text that she wrote with white characters into black ones based solely on *her* race is wrong.

And I agree.

In an environment where it's more and more difficult to get published - and to stay published - Millenia has put absolutely everything on the line. And *that* takes guts.

I wish her the best of luck with her lawsuit.

Maia

International Festival of Authors, Part II

2006-10-26T11:15:00.000-04:00

At Word on the Street last month, I discovered Toronto writer Zoe Wittall, who was reading from her latest book poetry book, The Emiliy Valentine Poems. (Which I bought and really enjoyed.) She's currently blogging about the IFOA for NOW mag. You can check her out here: http://www.nowtoronto.com/ifoa/daily_post.cfm?daily_id=177

Toronto's International Festival of Authors, Part I

2006-10-20T21:06:00.000-04:00

EDITED TO ADD: Uh, yeah. I'm an idiot. Why? It's not October 28th yet. (I blame the paint fumes.) The Toronto International Festival of Authors is currently taking place, so check out www.readings.org to see if any of your favourite writers are in town.

***

Well, Toronto's International Festival of Authors is upon us, and naturally, I have front row tickets (okay, they're not actually front row, but they will be once I push a few people out of a few chairs) to an event. Tomorrow I'm going to see Ryan Knighton (who I've blogged about earlier) interviewed by Don McKellar.

I bought the tickets online and was struck by how awful the ordering process in general, and the form in particular, was. Truly, Internet technology is terribly misunderstood by some people. The form wasn't correctly framed in my browser (and I tried two of them) so the whole experience was nothing short of traumatizing. (I almost ended up with tickets to a...let's just say, something I would never go see. Even if you threatened me. With a gun.)

The piece de resistance was the confirmation email saying that: "someone will be calling you to discuss all the details of your purchase". Discuss? Details? The only discussion I want to have is...oh wait. If I wanted to talk to someone I would have ordered the tickets over the home. (Yes, I know, I'm an anti-social urban hermit. What can I say? It works for me.) I was curious, though, about what they would say: Hi Maia, still want the tickets?

Well, yes.

There was a whopping $5 charge to mail the tickets basically down the street, so by yesterday I was getting slightly perturbed that they hadn't showed up. I was going to call them to "discuss all the details" of my ticket-less status if they hadn't arrived by today and, to be honest, I was gearing up to be a little ranty about it.

Naturally, the tickets showed up in this morning's mail.

No one from Harbourfront ever ended up calling me, so I guess that means they don't want to talk to me either. Even though I don't want to talk to them, I have wanted to go to a Harbourfront reading event for a while, so I'm suitably excited about my literary outing tomorrow. One thing that's interesting about Harbourfront is that they charge for readings; $15 per ticket if you're general public, or $12 if you're a member. It's not a huge amount, but I bet it stops some people from attending, which is too bad. I sure as hell hope that money goes to the writers.

In any case, Paint-a-palooza 2006 continues, and I'm covered with a sticky oil-based expresso coloured semi-gloss. Looks like I have a date with some varsol.

M

Lies!

2006-10-12T12:29:00.000-04:00

Well, I wasn't able to start posting again in September because of a particularly nasty combination of renovation-itis and a lingering case of pretty-much-feeling-like-hell. This, my friends, makes me a liar. That being the case, I thought I'd update everyone on the state of affairs with a few other - admittedly more famous that me - liars.

#1 Kaavya Viswanathan. It's certainly not surprising that Kaavya has headed back to Harvard, seeing as how an internal review found that their plagiarism rules only applies to work submitted to the university itself. Slightly more interesting? She's now a student advisor. Great to know that she's molding young minds. At Harvard.

#1 James Frey. James and his publisher, Doubleday, have settled the lawsuits brought against them by cranky readers who feel that they've been gypped by reading Frey's fictionalized non-fiction account of his recovery from addiction. I have to be missing something here, because books are already refundable. The only significant difference is that Doubleday will honour the full price of the book, even if it was sold at a discount. What's the price delta here? $10 CDN? $20? Who in the world would launch a lawsuit over $20? If someone can clue me in to what I'm missing here, please post it in the comments.

James has also given his first interview since Freyapalooza, and he seems to have a few bones to pick with, well, everyone. (Except Oprah, because making her angry is Bad.)

First, he disputes the notion that the publishers didn't know that details in the manuscript were alerted (and they dispute this right back at him):

Once he had signed with Doubleday, reportedly for an advance of $50,000, the process of editing altered the book - now billed as a memoir - further, timelines shifted, characters were erased, segments rearranged. "So the idea that nobody at the publishing company knew it was a manipulated manuscript is an absurd idea," he says. "I remember somebody at the publishing company told me that if the book's 85% true there's no problem. Certainly that standard wasn't then applied to it later."

Secondly - and he's always made this assertion, but I'll throw it in here for posterity:

The absence of criminal records is because he had them (legally) destroyed before he published the novel. "I mean, if I wanna go be a teacher, do I want all that stuff to exist?" he asks. "It's not an uncommon thing to do."

And, finally, he's angry at everyone, everywhere (except Oprah, because that's Bad):

(W)hen Frey's American publisher and agent dropped him, and Warner Brothers elected not to make the film of A Million Little Pieces, he was surprised. "My agent just called me and said she couldn't work with me any more because she felt her integrity was being questioned," he says, and frowns a little. "My publisher called and said they were cancelling my new contract simply because they didn't want to honour it." The most curious thing, he says, was that despite the scandal they had made, were continuing to make, an enormous sum of money out of James Frey. "I mean, that's sort of the irony, y'know? My agent said her integrity was questioned, but it wasn't questioned enough for her to stop taking the money."

Well, that's what happens when you sign away 15% of your work in a legally binding contract. Finally, in a delightful twist of irony, both of his memoirs are still holding strong on the New York Times Bestseller list. Gotta love it.

If my lies paid off that well, I'd spend my whole life with my pants on fire. Until that happens, I'm back in the saddle, posting again every Thursday. Hope all is well with you and yours, and that the leaves from your trees aren't blanketing your entire garden. Like mine are~~n't~~. See? This lying thing is addictive.

M

Look Ma, Knob and Tube!

2006-08-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

That's right, prehistoric electrical wiring! It's all very terrifying. This is what my living room looks like right now, and my brain is in a similar state. We're in the middle of renovations and are officially nomadic and homeless for the next while. I'm going to take a break from posting until mid-September when I actually have a home network again and somewhere to post from instead of roaming the streets desperately trying to find wireless hotspots. Not that that's not fun. Because it is, totally.

Cheers,
Maia

Now THAT'S Dedication

2006-08-11T13:44:00.000-04:00

I'm a longtime reader of JA Konrath's blog; he's a US writer and literary marketing wiz with a seemingly endless amount of energy, and his blog is home to a number of lively discussions on all kinds of topics.

He announced earlier this summer that he was going to go on a mind-boggingly enormous 500 store book tour for his latest tome, Rusty Nail. He even got a write-up in Wired (which covers all things nerdly, and is near and dear to my heart) about the GPS he's using for his cross-country extravaganza.

I've been following his progress, and it makes me tired just to read his entries these days, except for his latest post, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Tour Day 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40, which included a sweet anniversary shout-out to his wife, who is halfway across the country with their wee ones on their tenth anniversary. Now THAT'S dedication.

I'm a bit of a loner, but staying in a hotel room for a day or two just plain old makes me cranky; Joe's been on the road for weeks at this point. If that was me, I'd seriously need a hug right about now. He's asked readers/writers/friends to loan him a couch if he's in their neck of the woods, but he's not coming to Toronto, or else I'd pony up a steak and a beer for the poor guy. And maybe even a hug, if it wouldn't make me look like some kind of Canadian wacko.

He's a tireless advocate for new writers, answers his email promptly even if you have strange questions, makes up awards that he gives himself, and is an all-around nice guy. Take a look at his blog, and if you like his style, you might want to check out his published stuff; his latest is now on the shelves, but if you're more of a short story/anthology reader I've also seen the new anthology he's in, Thriller, all over the place lately. He also has a short stories series, Four Pack of Jack, available on www.Amazon.com/shorts for a piddly 49 cents (I know that that 49 cents is US, not CDN, but our exchange rate is awesome these days).

Cheers,
Maia

My Name is Maia, and I'm a Book Fondler

2006-08-03T13:26:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine, another "emerging" writer - who I'd link to if she had a website - lent me a book last week. After reading the first chapter, I knew I had found another new favourite writer; Ryan Knighton, a deliciously acerbic Vancouverite. The book is Cockeyed, a memoir about being diagnosed and living with retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that eventually causes blindness. (You can check out some of his excellent writing on his website.)

I have experienced a whole boatload of vision loss myself, so much so that even though my lenses are specially treated they're still a sexy Coke-bottle-ish thickness. Moderate myopia (measured in diopters) is between -1 to -3. I am around -8. (Complete lack of vision is in the neighbourhood of -18). I started life with perfect sight and started to lose it at the tender age of 8. It stopped in my early twenties, thankfuly, but every year or so when I was growing up I'd slip a diopter or two deeper into blur. After all that downward sliding, I developed quite a fear of losing my own sight. In one of those ironic twists of fate, I have such spectactular hearing that that I can hear a proverbial pin drop. This is great fun when trying to sleep.

Anyway, that's all kind of apropos of nothing, but is a bit of background on why I find his work so fascinating, although the fact that my vision can be successfully corrected means that there's a whole universe between his experience and mine. I find his descriptions of his adaptive behaviour interesting, though, and I started to think about how I do similar things; not turning on lights if I get up at night, because without my glasses I can't see anything anyway. When staying at hotel rooms, I don't put things on the floor, because I'll trip on them if I have to get up in the middle of the night, (likely because my bionic ears have heard some inconsequential noise and I've woken up).

I haven't borrowed a book from someone in a long time, and as soon as I started to read this particular book, I ran into trouble. The book was in pristine shape, almost as if it has never been opened. My friend is currently on a literarly romp around the Maritimes, so I can't ask her if it's okay to bend back the cover, but since she hasn't done it already, I have to assume the answer is no. Which leads me to wonder; how to people hold books when they don't bend the spine? How do they keep their page if they don't bend back the corners? Bookmarks? Sadly, I'm just not a good bookmark person: I keep losing them. I tend to mark my path through books with turned down top page corners of when I'm trying to keep my spot and turned down bottom page corners when I want to mark a particularly good moment in the book. When I was struggling with plot structure problems in my book, I read 4 or 5 books and marked all the plot transitions with sticky notes. I leave my books face down and open. I read in the bathtub, in waiting rooms, at the pub when waiting for friends, and my books all look like they've been manhandled within an inch of their lives. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Maia, and I'm a book fondler. A bit of a literary pervert, if you will.

I wouldn't normally be so concerned about putting my grubby paws all over her book, except the damn thing is autographed, and so, is unique. On the bright side, Ryan Knighton will be in Toronto for the International Festival of Authors in October, so I'm going to go see him read and get him to autograph a book for me.

(Or two.)

Cheers,
Maia

What She Said

2006-07-28T13:23:00.000-04:00

There's a Toronto agent who very rarely accepts submissions who's currently accepting 50 pages. My problem? The first 50 really are the weakest in the book, and need - yet again - more work. I think I'm finally getting the fact that if an agent/editor/reader/inmate in loony bin don't like the first page or two, they're going to put the book down.

I popped over to the Lipstick Chronicles for some constructive procrastination, and lo and behold, I see that Nancy Martin posted just this week on deadlines and rewrites. Her column is definitely worth a read, particularly since (a) she's a REAL writer and (b) uh, she knows what she's doing:

Today I'm celebrating letting go. Trusting your reader friends or your agent or your editor to step in and point out what needs to be done. And doing what they tell you to do because they're the ones who are thinking straight.

That's where I'm trying to get. Sounds simple, but knowing me I'll fail in unexpected and creative new ways.

I'm also synopsizing (hey, that's not a word!) my little heart out, again, since a number of plot points have changed since the last time I did one. I'm beginning to wonder if I ever really will finish, and why it is that I can't seem to get this right. On the other hand, I worked up the courage this week to read through the comments of my trusty editor and one of my first readers, and I'm actually feeling pretty positive about things. Trust me, for someone of Scandinavian heritage, this is a major victory.

Maia

AAAAARRRRRGHH!!!!

2006-07-20T13:22:00.000-04:00

That's my pirate noise. (I'm still working on it.) I was writing a post about the wonderfulness that was MASH and ended up on the blog of Ken Levine, who wrote for MASH and blogs about TV writing and the like. While going through his reminiscences about the 4077th, I came across his hilarious post about Pirates of the Caribbean, which starts out with; "NO SPOILER ALERT: I saw the movie and still don't know what was going on."

I'd have to say I agree with Ken. John wasn't feeling well last week, so I decided to treat him to one of his favourite things - pirates! I'm not anti-pirate, in fact, I think we need more of them, especially since my higher power - the Flying Spaghetti Monster - believes that the decrease in pirates over the last century is the real cause behind global warming:

I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth yet, so the Flying Spaghetti Monster's theory is the one I'm sticking to for now. Certainly, I have a few bootlegger/semi-pirate/Viking relatives floating around in my genetic pool, so; Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum, and all that. I wasn't sorry I went to see Pirates, but I did have a hellova lot of "huh?" moments while watching all whopping 151 minutes of it. And, seriously, I'm not a clean freak or anything, but I REALLY wanted to tell everyone to brush their teeth. 'Cause...ew.

This all kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about special effects - if the story isn't good, all the effects in the world can't fix it. Oh, wait...it's breaking box office records, you say? Well, so did Da Vinci Code, which isn't exactly what I'd call great literature. But what do I know?

I guess I'm just getting incredibly bored of all the CGI special effects in movies these days, even though I am a techno geek. Or maybe I'm just getting old and crochety; I was telling a story last week that started with; "when I was young, we...."

Well, we did!

Cheers,
M

Poor Sportsmanship, thy Name is Maia

2006-07-11T19:45:00.000-04:00

I grew up out in the country, and the only organized activity my mother ever drove me to (read: forced me to do) was a co-ed soccer team I played on for a few years when I was 8-ish. I was one of three girls, the other two didn't exactly want to be my BFF*, and let's just say that showing up wearing hand-made shorts with frills on them doesn't exactly endear you to little boys. Plus, I sucked at soccer. Astonishingly so.

Fast forward twenty five years, and you end up in Toronto last Sunday afternoon, when BHJ and I were out and about, having a spectacularly late lunch. We live in Toronto's Greektown, and the Danforth was merrily bustling with families/yuppies/crazies, the patios even more packed than they are every weekend. (On this particular day we saw one restaurant that had lugged TVs out to their patio so they could broadcast the game to the outdoors.) BHJ and I settled at our favourite 50's diner, ordered up our meals and, suprisingly - considering my childhood soccer angst - got sucked into the game.

After we watched for a few minutes I mentioned to John, with no small amout of surprise, that the players were really showing good sportsmanship - a few of them put out a hand to help a player from the other team to their feet, and the like. Compared to hockey, it looked like a 60's love-in.

After the score was final and Italy had won the kickoffs, the street erupted in an ear-splitting symphony of horns and a jumble of Italian flags so large that they almost blocked out the sun, in an impromptu Italian-Canadian extravaganza. For weeks Toronto has looked like a mini UN with flags from all over the world neatly perched on the sides of cars, but all of a sudden, huge Italian flags appeared on the sides of panel vans, full sized flags were thrust out of car windows and handheld by the occupants, and plain old comical flags appeared in the in the hands of bikers who were working their plinky little horns with the other hand and screaming a variety of lusty cheers. I'm convinced at least one of them must have fallen off and squashed a pedestrian. (The honking, as it does every time a major sports event takes place, continued well into the night. This is why I sleep with earplugs.) But I digress.

I have to admit it was nice to be in the middle of that much good cheer, and the soccer playing was superb. Plus my lunch was really yummy. I ate and watched and even bit a nail or two during the kickoff. It was good, clean fun, which I don't get enough of on the weekends, really.

I hadn't seen the foul. They showed it later, of course, and now - due to the frenetic pace of the Internet coupled with imaginations run amok - the shocking image of Zidane head-butting Materazzi has even been turned into a game, readily available on the web. Zidane's lukewarm apology a few days later has mollified some and enraged others. FIFA has launched an investigation. It's all a big un-sportsmanlike mess.

While sourcing the agent I recently queried, I ordered one of her author's books, a novel I thought I'd really like. When I received my rejection, it included the zinger that my writing "wasn't lively enough". Naturally, when the book arrived I tore through it, comparing it to my work. I spent a fair bit of time patting myself on the back, telling myself my writing is better and mumbling things to myself like; not lively, my arse!

After enjoying my self-satisfiedness for a bit it occurred to me; I was showing poor sportsmanship. Poor sportsmanship that has no basis in reality, because I am not competing with this writer. Poor sportsmanship with a splash of jealousy, because this writer is published, and I am not. Poor sportsmanship that's about as productive as what Zidane did.

In the incomperable Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott - as always - has a lively take on the green-eyed monster:

"If you continue to write, you are probably going to have to deal with [jealousy], because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know - people who are, in other words, not you."

She goes on to mention the brilliantly snarky poem by Clive James, titled; "The Book of my Enemy has been Remaindered". Happily, re-reading Anne's words always reminds me to keep my sense of humour at the ready. Which I try to do, really, most of the time. And to not take it personally, because it's just not. The agent who rejected me was polite and professional and it's all for the best; I don't want someone who's not behind my work to represent me, anyway.

I wasn't so much distressed at this specific rejection, to be honest, but at the enormity of the number of rejections that are to come. And since I'm all about the melodrama, I had to go through the requisite; am-I-cut-out-for-this-and-am-I-wasting-my-life internal struggle. Luckily, there was enough chocolate in both solid and liquid/alcoholic form to help shepherd me through this trying time. All is well now.

Thanks muchly to all who wrote with words of support, commiseration, and insight, particularly, the lovely and talented Toronto artist/photographer Diana Pakkala, who blogs at; http://greyscaleca.blogspot.com/, Hamilton über author Rachael Preston, whose wonderful second book just hit the shelves, and the fabulously fabulous Liza Palmer, who just happens to be one of my favourite writers.

I owe you all drinks.

:)

Maia

*BFF=best friends forever. Don't ask me why, it's one of those girly things I never quite got.

Rejection, thy Name is Maia

2006-07-06T10:22:00.000-04:00

Well, there you have it. My first query has been met with a resounding 'no', so I've officially started down the path to bitter, unpublished, (slightly crazy), Canadian writer. On top of that, I have been sick as a dog this week.

I need a hug.

In times like this, I find it helps to turn to www.rejectioncollection.com, which has some truly hilarious rejections side by side with some even funnier commentary.

Happy almost weekend, everyone. I'm going back to sleep now.

M

Happy (Almost) Canada Day!

2006-06-29T15:42:00.000-04:00

Well it's that time of the year again. When I was little and growing up in Ottawa - the capital of this fine nation - Canada Day was often referred to as Dominion Day and our normally sedate city tranformed into a somewhat surreal Canuck-oriented bacchanalia. (Now I live in Toronto and every day is a bacchanalia.)

So it's a great time to check out some Canadian talent, including - wait for it - Canadian writers! Northwest Passages has some excellent Canadian lit links, including an index of Canadian authors. Take a gander at it and think about adding a new Canadian writer to your roster. I'd recommend that anyone who hasn't checked out the sharp and witty Will Ferguson take a look at some of his books on Canada, including Beauty Tips from Moosejaw, one of my faves this year.

So Happy (almost) Canada Day, all. To paraphrase the immortal words of the Simpsons; I hope you enjoy celebrating the independence of your country by blowing up a small part of it. Here's to clear skies, cold drinks, good friends and, of course, lots of fireworks.

Best,
Maia

...and to our neighbours to the south, a very happy (almost) 4th of July.

Maybe They Thought I wouldn't Notice...

2006-06-22T15:09:00.000-04:00

I swear to christ, I'm having the worst gardening season ever.

I'm not a hobby person, having been one of those childhood bookworm shut-ins who ended up going into the computer industry, and neither of these things are particularly good for forming either social skills or taking up extracurricular activities. Thank god BHJ is a bigger geek than me, or else I'd be an adult urban hermit with some spectacular sexual frustration issues.

I have two hobbies, gardening and drinking (both of which can be done together quite nicely, surprisingly) and I just cannot understand why people don't let me do both in peace. We live on a main street in Toronto and have suffered through all kinds of property theft; Halloween corpses walking off, (free) recycling bins that are now recycling someone else's bottles, and people deciding to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus by stealing my Christmas lights. I've also experienced a bunch of front lawn flower thefts in the past - dug up Gerberas, and the like - so I get that it's a high traffic area, and kids will be kids. Doesn't stop me from wanting a moat with some honking crocodiles, but it doesn't keep me up at night, either.

However, in this short growing season I've experienced:

1) rampant Tulip snipping
2) dug up Pansies (they left them there, the little darlings)
3) Lilac butchery
4) forced Hydrangea forklifting after I was informed that the gas metre has to be moved into my microscopic front yard, and...
5) the latest, my Tuesday morning Allium beheading (which I captured on film for your viewing pleasure. The scale is a bit hard to see, but they ~~are~~ were about 2.5 feet tall).

People really are just fascinating. What would posses someone to walk up onto someone's front lawn and snip off a flower top? Did they do it at night, or in the middle of the day? Did they see the flowers, like them, and come back later with scissors? Or did they do it spur of the moment? Do they carry a pocket knife for just those types of occasions? Was it their first time? Will they do it again? WILL THEY?

To be honest, I spend a goodly portion of my day asking myself these types of questions.

In what can only be described as ironic, BHJ and I were walking to brunch last weekend and I saw a man walking in front of us. He ducked to the side, reached over, snapped off a rose branch from someone's garden- one about a foot and a half long - and kept walking, almost without breaking stride. I was so surprised by it that I didn't have a chance to stop him, and all I could do was say to John: didyouseethat??! We kept walking and the guy slowed up and started talking to us. I was trying to figure out what kind of a person would do such a thing...and, I soon had my answer: he was drunk. And a bit of a jerk. Apparently, in what can be filed under 'no big surprise to anyone', drunken jerks steal people's flowers.

After finding my guillotined Alliums on Tuesday, I stewed in AngryMaia juices until I finally tried to put a good spin on the situation. What to do? Might as well write about it. The truth is, I like having little evil quirks for my characters - the main antagonist in the book I just finished parks in handicapped spots even though he's fully ablebodied - so flower theft will have to go on the list with people who give you recipes with one crucial ingredient missing, drivers who park sideways across two parking spots in a packed lot, neighbours who don't recycle, and mothers who...well. It's a long list.

In other news...

My 'brilliant' post from last week ended up being irrational as opposed to insightful so I've scrapped it. What I did want to say is that I've sent out my first query to an agent, so I'll keep you posted on how disastrously that goes.

Maia

(Semper Fi, little Allium dudes)

Pre-ordering Books and Giving up on Getting the Book Monkey off my Back

2006-06-21T09:43:00.000-04:00

As if my fiction addiction wasn't already totally out of control, I've recently discovered the joy of pre-ordering books. It's a great way to ensure you get your hot little hands on books as soon as they're published, and it's also a great way to support your favourite writers. I'm not sure what the impact of pre-orders have on the success of a writer's book (and I'll do some more digging on this when I get a chance), but I have to assume it's good news for everyone involved.

That being said, I pre-ordered two books the other day; Sandra Scopettone's Too Darn Hot, the sequel to the fabulous This Dame for Hire - due out this month - and The Great Betrayal by Millenia Black, due out later this year.

Abebooks.com is a great spot to pickup out of print books, but don't forget that writers don't get royalties on used books, so if you want your favourite novelists to be able to keep turning out books you love, buy new.

Best,
Maia

Blooky!

2006-06-16T12:29:00.000-04:00

Blog + hooky = blooky.

I'm not gonna lie, that's the most creative thing I've been able to cough up this week.

I have 2 posts almost ready to go, but one of them is either brilliant or makes no bloody sense whatsoever. I'm going to let them percolate for another day or two and then post.

For all of you enjoying the kind of weather we are here in the GTA, I say go outside and get a bit of sun. Whether you get it from sitting on a patio (my vote) or doing something healthy (bleh!) is up to you.

Maia

I Give Up

2006-06-08T11:44:00.000-04:00

I had a long and heart-wrenching post (almost) written that chronicled my week - a miserable debacle that included two nights of no sleep and a contractor who cut down most of my beloved 20+ year old, 25 foot high Lilac tree without permission. Crying was involved.

However, I'd rather focus on the positive since the weekend is in sight, the weather is absolutely beautiful and the fourth draft of the book is done and has gone to my trusty freelance editor. Woo!

Have a great weekend, everyone.
Maia

Everest Update

2006-06-08T10:51:00.000-04:00

MountEverest.net has posted some more titbits on their website regarding the controversial death of British climber David Sharp:

Experienced expedition leaders on the mountain have voiced their opinion that the location of David should have made it possible, easy even, for 2 sherpas to put him in a sleeping bag and drag him down. (EverestNet)

They've posted the names of the 40 climbers who walked past Sharp on their way to the summit as well as the fact that Sharp was filmed by a Discovery Channel camera crew shortly before he died. Sharp's mother has stated publicly that she does not blame anyone for her son's death, but that she does not want the specific details of his demise to be made public. Hopefully the video won't be shown against her wishes.

There's a Discovery Channel special on Everest currently showing Monday mornings at 10 (no, I don't really have a job) that chronicles a 2003 summit attempt. This past Monday they showed a corpse which was decomposed enough so you couldn't identify it, but not decomposed so badly that you couldn't read the logo on the trendy winter wear. While I understand that many climbers want to stay on the mountain if they perish there, I really feel for family members who might see their loved ones in that kind of condition.

In any case, the Discovery Channel series is pretty interesting; set your VCR and check it out if you get the time.

Maia

Just Who the Hell is BHJ Anyway?

2006-06-08T10:25:00.000-04:00

Those of you who read my blog might wonder who this BHJ is that I keep rambling about. Well, BHJ is shorthand for Better Half John, my unmarried domestic partner/common-law husband/equivalent-to-spouse and all-around sweetie pie.

It's great to live in Canada where those of us who are living in sin get all the benefits of marriage, but it's sometimes difficult to figure out what term to use, particularly since "partner" is often interpreted as business partner, and DINKs (Double Income No Kids) just isn't something you'd use in polite company. Better Half seems to cover most of the bases.

Me and BHJ

Cheers, Maia.

Racism in Publishing

2006-06-03T22:09:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Millenia Black's blog ever since she was nice enough to post a comment here back in January. In April she wrote a really distressing post about the situation that arose when she went to submit her second book to her publisher. What happened? They refused to publish unless she changed the race of her main characters from white to black. (Millenia is black, and was told, essentially, that she had to write 'African-American oriented' fiction in order to get published.)

She blogged about what happened but later removed the post and replaced it with a note that she was abstaining from posting for a bit while she tried to deal with the situation IRL. I've checked back in at her blog a number of times now, and am pleased to see she's back in the fray. Congrats to Ms. Black on winning her battle to have her work produced exactly as she wrote it. What she did takes courage.

What's the best way for us to support Millenia? I think that continuing to follow her blog and offering support is one way. Buying her soon-to-be published book is another. I'm going to do both.

Cheers,
Maia

Everest or Bust

2006-06-01T09:01:00.000-04:00

It's been an interesting season on the world's tallest moutain, where the climbing window is a scant month per year, people have to acclimatize for six weeks before they can take a crack at the hill, climbing costs can hit $100,000 USD, and controversy has raged this year.

I first became interested in all things Everest a few years ago after reading Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer's account of the 1996 disaster in which 8 people died in one day when a group of commercial climbers and guides got caught in a ferocious storm. In 1996, guided tours of the mountain were just starting to take hold, and critics later argued that the presence of unskilled climbers on the mountain that year - most notably socialite Sandy Pittman, a buddy of Martha Stewart's who yapped publicly about whipping up specialty coffee on her Dean and DeLuca coffeemaker at base camp - put other climbers at risk and contributed to the deaths of other climbers. The 1996 season became the deadliest on Everest's peak.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the disaster with a record-setting season, including oldest man, first diabetic (sponsored by a pharmaceutical company) ,and first double amputee to scale the peak. In the last ten years, commercial expeditions have become commonplace and Everest is now strewn with garbage - one of the climbing expeditions this year gathered up 1300KG of litter from the mountain - and bodies. One of the latest additions to the graveyard in the sky is Brit David Sharp, a climber who was making a solo ascent without oxygen and was passed by by 40 climbers ascending the mountain. As far as we know, only 2 people tried to help him; Sherpa Dawa, who busted his ass trying to get Sharp down the hill, and double-amputee Mark Inglis, who gave Sharp oxygen but continued his summit.

This is not the first time an ailing climber has been left to die alone, so it's somewhat interesting that there has been so much discussion of it this year. The argument for this type of behaviour is pretty straightforward: in the "Dead Zone" of 26,000+ feet, conditions are so harsh that people, quite literally, start to die. Ailing climbers aren't helped down the mountain because it's almost impossible to move yourself at that altitude, let alone a 200 pound man who's suffering from hypoxia, can't get to his feet, and is hallucinating. Certainly, Rob Hall, who was by all accounts one of the best guides in the world, lost his life in 1996 when he refused to leave his almost dead client.

Those who know me, know that my university degree is in Criminology, I work in computers, but I really want to be a writer. (Confused much, Maia?) My degree wasn't a total loss, however, (even though it took me until I was almost 30 to pay back my loans, priced at a reasonable 10.5% interest rate); it helped me feed my long-term love affair with trying to understand society as a whole and people in particular, with a special interest in deviant behaviour. History is full of pundits who have tried to explain humanity's many foibles, most notably Sigmund "I Like Your Cigar" Freud. I learned about most of them in school, but isn't writing - and reading - a way for all of us to try to figure out how life really works, why we do the crazy things we do, why a sock left on the floor by your partner almost makes you stroke out, why your friends sleep with horribly unsuitable people? I think it is.

And I think a good argument can be made that spending half of your life in the clouds is a little bit deviant. The truth is, I find the mindset of mountain climbers to be absolutely fascinating. They're driven, solitary and deliberately expose themselves to horrendous conditions, (I like to sleep until noon). What on earth compels people to risk bodyparts to frostbite, relationships to distance, their very life to a mountain?

I'd love to find out, really, and right now I have the most overwhelming desire to research and write a novel about a mountaineer who takes on Everest. Think about it - it would have everything: Conflict! Hardship! Coffee!

Unfortunately, 3 things stand in the way of me writing my sure-to-oversell-the-Da-Vinci-Code novel:

1) I hate the cold. Seriously. Can't stand it.
2) I hate camping. John and I camp out once a year in August and I start dreading it right about now. Luckily, I'm not going this year. (Ha!)
3) I don't like mountain climbing. When I was at Whistler last year, I hiked over the top of a crest to see if the hill beside me was any easier than the one I was headed down. 2 things I learned: at Whistler, when they say black diamond hill they bloody well mean it, and hiking at a 8,000 feet is torture. BHJ said I was actually blue by the time I got back to him. I love the mountains, and I love to ski, but my piddly thirty foot hike was enough to convince me to keep my perambulations at sea level.

Since it's - sadly - unlikely that my book will come to fruition, I'd suggest checking out an excerpt of Jon Krakauer's excellent Into Thin Air. I'm quite a fan of him and his no-nonsense writing.

Sir Edmund Hillary (who was the first to scale Everest in 1953 with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay) blasted the 40 climbers who passed by the ailing Sharp on their way to the top, most notably double-amputee Mark Inglis, fueling a lot of international bickering about high altitute right-and-wrong. Days later, however, an extraordinary rescue effort was launched to save the life of another climber, Lincoln Hall, who, despite being declared dead the night before, was later found alive, carried to safety by 17 climbers and sherpas over a 30+ hour ordeal that used up 36 bottles of oxygen. Since that much activity at that altitude means that a crack at the summit will have to wait until next year, none of the rescuers made the peak. I suspect that the (non fiction) book deals are being made for that story as I type, and I, for one, plan on reading at least one.

Maybe I'll figure all this out yet.

Cheers,
Maia

Steaks the Size of Your Head

2006-05-25T02:38:00.000-04:00

I'm a red meat kind of gal, but I ordered a hamburger today that was, quite literally, the biggest I've ever seen in my life. It was so large I had to cut away about 1/3 of it so I could wrap my hand around the bun. I couldn't finish it, didn't touch my fries, and really, really wanted a nap afterwards.

Where the hell am I, you ask? Calgary, where the hotel porters wear cowboy hats and vegetarians are considered freaks of nature. I'm here on business and am hoping to put the final polish on my book while I'm here, whiling away the nights in my hotel room. I get horrifically lonely when I'm traveling on business, even though I almost never feel lonely usually, being the uber intense, loner writer and all. (This probably doesn't bode well for my eventual book tours.) In any case, I was very pleasantly surprised to find an exquisite bouquet of flowers in my hotel room when I got back from work this evening, courtesy of some 007-ish wrangling from BHJ. Thanks BHJ!

Cheers,
Maia

Scaring the Neighbours

2006-05-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

I've heard a number of writing teachers/pundits/plain-old-writers extol the virtues of reading your work out loud, so I did just that this past week. It was an interesting experience and it showed me a few things. Namely, that I had a ton of errors that weren't visible to me by reading in my own head. I'm talking about mistakes that have been in the book for months, or worse, years. Some weren't so bad; word repetitions that I couldn't 'hear', minor flow problems, the odd psychotically placed comma. Others were a little more serious, like discovering that the tone shifts awkwardly between particular scenes and missing plot points.

I was reading through chapter five when the neighbour's kid walked past our open window to get the ball he routinely kicks into our yard, and I guess my (not so) dulcet tones scared him a little, 'cause he ran like hell.

The writing group that I'm in reads everything out loud, which I've found to be a really beneficial experience; not only have I become more comfortable reading in front of others (particularly good, considering the fact that when it comes to public speaking I'm nothing short of appalling) but it's helped me become a little better at finding lit problems (both mine and other people's). We don't distribute our stuff beforehand; we just show up, read, and then discuss, so I think I've gotten a little better and faster at figuring out what works and doesn't work. Which is nice.

However, reading 10 pages out loud every other week is a little different than sitting down and reading out 300 pages all at once, an experience which left me with a fairly spectacular saliva deficit and my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. This was, as is the case with most things, fixed with a stiff drink.

So, at the end of the day, even though I scared a small child and found some pretty serious problems, I'm glad that I did it. I've finished doing most of the corrections that came out of my read-a-thon and am left with 3 major scenes that need to be reworked. On the other hand, it never ceases to amaze me how changing one or two seemingly innocuous things can result in a literary butterfly effect, creating ripples throughout the rest of a book. So, as is the case with most things, it can always get worse.

For those of you who despair that you'll be hearing my snail's-pace updates every week for the rest of the summer, I fear that you might be right. It's just not there yet.

Wish me luck.

Cheers,
Maia

The Fat Lady Rises!

2006-05-03T15:58:00.000-04:00

I posted last week that the fat lady had 'officially sung' in the case of Kaavya Vishvanathan, a Harvard student whose debut novel was recently yanked off the shelves amid an uber cyber (and RL) kafuffle regarding charges of having "lifted" (I love that word) portions of Megan McCafferty's book, "Sloppy Firsts".

Looks like I know precisely nothing. Her publisher has now issued a statement saying that they won't be publishing an updated (eg. de-plagiarised) version of her debut novel and have pulled out out their two book contract. On top of all that, there are now claims that portions of the novel also resemble a second book, the bestselling "Can You Keep A Secret", by Sophie Kinsella.

Now I really want to know: will she have to give the money back?

Cheers,
Maia

Expression of the Week: "Book Fluffer"

2006-04-29T13:52:00.000-04:00

...Referring to the 'book packaging' company that Kaavya Viswanathan used to 'package' her now recalled novel, "How Opal Mehta..."

(In the interest of not plagiarising, I must admit that my better half, John, came up with that.)

There was an interesting article in the Harvard Independent yesterday on 'packaging' books as well as people; it's a look at how parents and Ivy League prep companies get teens ready for schools like Harvard. Clearly, I must be living under a rock, because up until this week I had never heard of either book or people packaging.

In other news, Dreamworks has pulled out of their deal with Viswanathan. I think the fat lady has officially sung.

Little, Brown Recalls "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life"

2006-04-27T22:48:00.000-04:00

The plot thickens...

Little, Brown has recalled all of the copies of "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life". Megan McCafferty, author of the plagiarised work, has released this statement:

"In the case of Kaavya Viswanathan's plagiarizing of my novels 'Sloppy Firsts' and 'Second Helpings,' " she said, "I wish to inform all of the parties involved that I am not seeking restitution in any form." (NYT)

I'm curious to see what will happen to her advice, contract, and how this will impact her 'book packaging' company.

Kaavya Viswanathan Has Some 'Splaining To Do

2006-04-26T13:31:00.000-04:00

So it's all over the Internet that Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan's debut novel (for which she received a reported $500,000 advance and a two book deal) has striking similarities to the already published "Sloppy Firsts" by Megan McCafferty.

Viswanathan initially denied the charges. A day later she coughed up the following statement:

"Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel, 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life,' and passages in these books," she said.

Calling herself a "huge fan" of Ms. McCafferty's work, Ms. Viswanathan added, "I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words." She also apologized to Ms. McCafferty and said that future printings of the novel would be revised to "eliminate any inappropriate similarities." (NYT)

Viswanathan has also stated that future printings will include an acknowledgement to McCafferty (I wonder how that'll go: hey Megan, thanks for the half mil?). The next edition of the book will be edited to remove the offending duplications, now estimated at 40.

Random House issued a response yesterday. They ain't buying what she's selling.

In an climate where becoming - and staying published - is getting more and more challenging, I always find it peculiar when newcomers like Viswanathan get $500,000 advances for their work. (Of course, it makes a certain kind of sense that they'd give her, in particular, the big bucks. I guess that second time around really is a charm.)

But seriously, why do some writers get that $500K and others the industry standard $5-20K? Where do all those delicious zeros come from? In this case, I'd assume that the hook was that the writer was a 17 year old wunderkind who was destined for Harvard herself (which mirrors the plotline of the book). It worked; the book debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list at 32 in March. Film rights have been sold to Dreamworks. But that's not all to the story.

While working on her opus, Viswanathan engaged a 'book packager', 17th Street Productions, to help her "conceptualize and plot the book." Just what the fark is a 'book packager' anyways? The Harvard Independant does an interesting write-up about the service. In it, they report the claim of a former editor at 17th Street that; "(a) packager basically serves as both the writer and editor of a book...” Of course, this implies that the work has been ghostwritten. If that's the case, it leads to yet another interesting question. Are 17th Street actually the ones responsible for the lit theft? (For the record, everyone involved is saying that Viswanathan penned the novel herself, to a non-mathematical certainty of 1000%, no less.)

This is another case where I'd like to read the book in question and see what the deal is. (I still haven't bought Frey's A Million Little Pieces, but I do have a friend who's going to lend it to me after he's done.) In this particular case, I'd have no problem giving my money to McCafferty, but there's no way that Viswanathan is going to get her hands on any of my filthy lucre. So I decided to read through an excerpt of her work. It doesn't do much for me, but I didn't like teen-girl lit even when I was a teen.

This morning, Viswanathan went on the Today Show and gave her side. (Search for "Teen Author Denies Accidental Copying.") If you get a second, check it out. If she's really sorry, I'm really a tunafish named Bob.

I'm very curious as to what's going to happen next. Will the book get pulled? Will her two book deal get revoked? Will she get her arse sued off by Random House? I just don't see how her "oops, sorry" defence is going to fly, particularly from a Harvard student who's supposed to be all kinds of smart. On the other hand, one can only assume that the latest publicity will bump sales further, as has been the case with Frey's work.

On a much brighter literary note, last night BHJ and I went to the book launch of Hamilton writer Rachael Preston. Her latest is The Wind Seller and looks to be a great read. Pick it up if you get a chance.

On less bright note, I'm still embroiled in third draft anguish. Perhaps I should call a 'book packager' and have them finish it for me.

Cheers,
Maia

Techno Woes

2006-04-21T10:42:00.000-04:00

So I'm beta testing some Blackberry software for work, which means that my personal email is all forwarded to my pager right now. It's fairly common for geeks to sleep with their pagers (who says we don't have exciting lives?) so I was awakened last Monday morning at 5:43 by a friend who was innocently sending out an email. This, of course, leads me to the question; is all this technology making our lives any better? At 5:43 on a Monday, my answer would have to be no.

And in an update on my endless laptop catastrophes, my laptop is almost unusable after falling off of a stack of books. I wasn't even near it when it happened, so it's hard to pin this one on myself. Unfortunately, this is not the best news, since I'm STILL trying to finish my third draft.

Last weekend I did a full read-through of the book from beginning to end, mostly to check for pacing and flow. Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that the story is just not finished. This was not exactly a welcome realization. I'm going to muddle through this weekend and see if I can get any closer to completion. I'll keep ya posted.

In other literary news, Julie Powell, author of the wonderful "Julie and Julia" has just won the first Blooker award. Congrats to her.

Cheers,
Maia

Extreme! Gardening!

2006-04-12T19:47:00.000-04:00

Well, my version, anyway. Meaning, gardening in rain.

My backyard is still a big soupy mess, but the tiny front patch we have is full of bulbs that have started to peek up. I can't find half my tools and had to improvise a kneeling pad out of a bath towel, but I succeeded in planting the cutest darn pansies you've ever seen today. I now have that familiar, maddening feeling of not being able to get all of the dirt from underneath my fingernails. I have short and stubby man-nails so you'd think it wouldn't be all that hard. But it is.

I've now made it halfway through the edit of my third draft, which is a good thing. The first half of the book takes place in the winter and the second half in the summer, so I'm more in tune with action in the part of the book that needs the most work, now that spring has finally arrived.

I find it challenging to write out of season, probably because my life (and my characters) are so closely tied to seasonal activities, like gardening, sailing, patio hopping. It's nice to actually see the sun while you're writing about the sun, and since Toronto is engulfed in a morose grey from November to late March, I'm thrilled to have it back. There's something about the weather that helps set the tone for scenes, I think.

On another note, BHJ and I had the good fortune to attend an event in the Toronto Storyteller series last Sunday, which was the "Cabaret: Letting Down our Hair" performance at the Lula Lounge. Dinner was excellent and the storytelling was eminently entertaining. Nice to see that the oral tradition of storytelling is still alive and well. All in all, a great night, and definitely something that we'll check out again next year.

Cheers,
Maia

Funny Business

2006-04-06T13:50:00.000-04:00

I think that there's a delicate balance between making a point through humour and being considered a smartass. I've been walking this particular tightrope my entire life; I tend to instinctively look for humour in the world around me. While I was watching the final - and pivotal - scene in Memoirs of a Geisha, which takes place in a visually spectacular Japanese garden, I couldn't stop myself from blurting; "man, I really need to redo my backyard".

Maybe I'm a smartass, perhaps I'm just a tad irreverent. It's hard to know. I actually have a fairly typical Scandinavian temperament - reserved, serious, a little morose, even. I just like to make people laugh. Of course, Estonians are also known for having a little fun now and then. I mean, how can you not see the funny side of being the international Wife Carrying champions?

It used to upset me if people didn't get my sense of humour, but I stopped worrying about that years ago, because, well. It turned out that I don't care. You can't really, if you want to be true to yourself. Over the past few years I've been trying to convey humour in print, and I've found it an interesting experience to both find an appropriate place for humour and to relearn to shrug off people who don't get it.

The fact is - everyone has a different sense of humour, and some people are just not looking for a laugh when they pick up a book. My high school curriculum introduced me to a parade of deep, meaningful and decidedly humourless literary work that made me want to poke forks in my eyes. It was the first - and only - time in my life I didn't enjoy reading, but clearly there are readers out there who prefer their stories with an ample dose of serious. Me, I prefer to save my fork poking for other occasions.

I'm still at the phase where I'm trying to balance story and humour, but there are a number of people who do this well. Anne Lammot's Bird by Bird, which I've flogged ad nauseum (but really, read it!), is both hilarious and serious when warranted. Hypocrite with a White Pouffy Dress is alternatively hilarious and meaningful as hell. Beauty Tips from Moosejaw is the funniest travel book I've ever read and is also meticulously researched and written. (Although there's some contention about Peter Benchley's sense of humour, his first draft of Jaws was so full of jokes that his editor cut them all out. See, I would have LOVED more jokes in Jaws, but I guess that all that judicious editing worked out okay for Benchley in the end.)

As I'm rewriting I'm seeing opportunities to add in a bit more humour but I'm also trying to restrain myself. The feedback that I got from the freelance editor was that I need more conflict, not more funny business. (I just happen to like funny business a lot. I mean, is it wrong that I sent this to BHJ while laughing my head off?)

With any luck, this draft will be done Easter weekend. After that, I'll be busy experimenting with a drink that consists solely of hollow Easter bunnies and Kaluah.

Cheers,
Maia

It's a Mad Mad World

2006-03-31T23:16:00.000-05:00

Slashdot's gone...pink? Their marketing department crunched some numbers and "discovered that (their) audience is strangely disproportionately skewed towards males. Like, 98.3% males to be precise."

I guess that their new look is supposed to appeal to the female demographic. Let's look at it like this, if you like ponies, you'll LOVE the new Slashdot.

Happy April Fool's, y'all.

Maia

Third Draft's A Charm

2006-03-28T11:46:00.000-05:00

(AKA: Oh, the lies I tell myself...)

Well, I'm well into my third draft, and my mood varies from foolish optimism to dismal catastrophising (new word!) from day to day. It's an interesting time, though. I'm really glad I only have to do this once per book, but I also doubt that it's quite the same every time. It's just a challenge to be SO close to being finished and still not quite able to make it there. And I'm definitely not there yet.

I decided to do another series of character outlines to help me refine and shade my characters a bit more. Generally, this is done through by creating a backstory for characters through a series of questions.

Holly Lisle, who I've mentioned before, has a good article on character development on her site, as well as a checklist for creating characters. I also add a few other variables to this list, like; what's under your character's bed and in their fridge, how to they dress, what kind of sense of humour they have, any tics or habits, and lastly, how they change during the course of the book, and why.

The point is, naturally, to be sure that I've stayed true to my characters and followed them through through their character arc. By doing this it helps show what I've missed. I've already found out that I have missed some stuff, but it's fixable. (Unlike my book addiction, which continues apace.) I also picked up a book called "Creating Unforgettable Characters" at my latest book buying extravaganza, and it seems excellent so far.

Story is all about conflict and character, and I like reading (and writing) about everyday stuff that everyone can relate to. It's, I think, an interesting challenge to write - convincingly - about why you're going to leave your partner/husband/wife, etc. when all they did was screw up your plane tickets.

Speaking of plane tickets, I think that The Amazing Race is - if you'll excuse the redundancy - an amazing place to look for conflict and characters. The Amazing Race, if you haven't heard of it, deals with the seemingly mundane subject of personal relationships and international travel. Throw in sleep deprivation and wacky tasks and you end up with a truly impressive level of conflict. They've had contestants so evil that they got death threats after the show was over. And it all deals with seemingly innocuous stuff that really can bring the average Joe/Jane to tears; I once put my head down on a check-in desk in Helsinki and took some quiet time, after being informed that I had been put on standby. This was the last straw in a very long chain of events, and ten years later I still remember it vividly.

And in another entry in my "gee, maybe I'm not co-ordinated" file, I'm currently reading through a copy of "In Cold Blood" that was published in the late 60's. It managed to last 35 years with the dust jacket, and I ripped it right off the second time I picked it up. I'm...not good.

On a happier note, it's beautiful here today - I hope the sun is shining where you are too.

Cheers,
Maia

ME ME ME!

2006-03-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

I've heard back from the freelance editor that I hired. Unfortunately, it was not as positive as I had hoped it would be. She did have some excellent suggestions that will be easy to implement and will definitely strengthen the story, which I'm very thankful for. She also liked the ending, which is nice, since I *really* worked my arse off on it.

On the not so great side, she thinks that the middle is weak; specifically the crisis point - the point that the whole book turns on. On the bright side, she said that this is common with new writers. Back to the not-so-great side, some of her commentary makes me think I just haven't gotten my story across the way I wanted to, which is depressing after so much work.

I took about five pages of notes from our discussion, but my handwriting is cartoonishly gargantuan, so it's likely only about a page or so typewritten. (This was just a read-through, not a full edit.) That's not so bad, really.

I know that hiring freelance editors is sometimes seen as controversial, and I'll likely blog more about this in the future. From my perspective I think it can be a useful tool, particularly on a first novel, and particularly since the market is so competitive. I have other readers who are really excellent, and a few other reader/victims lined up to read the third draft, but they have to be nice to me, if they expect to come sailing with me. It's nice to have someone impartial take a run at it; kind of like novel-writer couples' counseling. (Right now, my novel isn't speaking to me, but I'm hoping to open up a dialogue.)

At the end of the day, I'm betting that this is a fairly normal part of the process and I just need to sit down and work out my problems. I guess that I just feel pretty discouraged right now. Things just don't seem to be going well generally, my laptop is almost unusable since I installed a new hard drive in it, and...well. You get the picture.

I'm going to focus on my third draft for the next 2 or 3 weeks, so I'll be bumping my posting down to Thursdays only for the next while. Of course, if it comes to light that Frey is going to write a new book about....anything, really - I'll definitely whip up some Estosnark.

Cheers,
Maia

Winterlicious

2006-03-20T22:00:00.000-05:00

It's sad but true, winter is over. Well, it was bitterly cold on the weekend, but all of the rain and warm temperatures lately have ruined the good part of winter; skiing.

I'm one of those immensely irritating people who love winter. I wasn't always like this - as a teen I skied quite a bit in Quebec, but for ten years after I moved to Toronto I stayed indoors in the winter, putting nose prints on my windows from all the checking to see if it was spring yet. When I did venture outside I spent most of my time grumbling about having to wait in bus shelters designed by people trying to maximize the amount of wind going up my skirt. It was miserable.

Then I fell in love with a man with a car who wanted to go skiing on one of the tiny molehills around Toronto. Once I snapped my feet into my rentals and did one run, I was hooked again.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, I'm an avid skier, or as avid as it's possible to be when you live in the flatlands of Ontario, and I find skiing to be one of the most inspirational things in my life. There's a vitality in skiing, in putting my energy out there in a way I don't normally. It's amazing how often a bit of dialogue pops into my head, or a solution on how to fix a problematic scene comes to me when I'm looking down from the top of a run. As a nerdlet and writer - both of which demand a lot of time sitting on my arse - I tend to get my thinking in a bit of a rut; skiing helps shake that up.

At the risk of being photo-albumy, this is a shot of me at Whistler last year. It's hard not to get inspired with this kind of scenery...

I'd LOVE to do a book about a city girl who chucks it all and heads out to Whistler to be a ski bum, but then finds out she can't ski well enough to cut it. I'd give anything to be able to write off that kind of research...

On another note, I've always thought that there's a different flavour to life in Canada in the winter, a different energy and, certainly, a different lifestyle. I find it a challenge to write in opposite times of the year - hard to get into the Christmas spirit in June, hard to think about patios - in a realistic way, not a delusional one - in January. Spring and fall are always a bit of a paradigm shift for me, so I'm at loose ends a bit, these days.

Of course, sailing season is just around the courner...

Cheers,
Maia

Edited to add: Bestseller Tess Gerritsen blogged on "Writer's Anemia" this week, which ties into the whole skiing/recharging/inspiration thing I was talking about. Of course, she does it better :)

Yeah, it's been that kind of a week....

2006-03-16T14:21:00.000-05:00

I'm in the midst of a five alarm migraine and heading out of town until Monday, so my ode to snow is going to have to wait a few days.

Cheers,
Maia

Hanging on to Winter...

2006-03-13T23:50:00.000-05:00

Since I'm depressed that winter is pretty much over (that's right - depressed!), today I'm going to direct everyone to JA Konrath's excellent post about blogging at: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11291165&postID=114226624553067025

Thursday: I explain my obsession with winter and the white stuff.

Cheers,
Maia

Quincy vs. Star Wars

2006-03-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

I must admit, I have a weird thing for 70's shows. When I was working at an answering service to support myself during university (and no, this wasn't in the 50's) I did homework and watched TV between taking messages. There were a lot of 70's crime shows on when I worked, and I got hooked on Quincy, MacMillan and Wife, the Rockford Files - shows I had never seen before. (Turns out I'm a sucker for TV where people don't look or act like wind up toys; I'd take the delightfully full-of-flaws MASH characters over Friends any day).

Since I'm a hermit I often work from home, and around lunch time I tend to put Quincy on in the background. Yesterday, the show was centered around two teens driving home from an all night party, both drunk as proverbial skunks. An accident ensued - naturally - and the mystery ended up being trying to figure out who the actual driver was. During the investigation Quincy consulted a computer geek whose specialty was the *cough* "cutting edge" field of accident scene recreation, using what looked like prehistoric computer imaging. The computer graphics used were a monochromatic rectangle for the car and a series of dashes for the road, sort of like an automotive version of Pong. In the end, it turned out that the survivor hadn't been driving the car. Hallelujah!

I also have to admit that I have a a thing for Star Wars. (Well, up until the recent ones). As I was watching the show I was hit by the thought that George Lucas would laugh his arse off if he saw the pitiful special effects. In interviews George has waxed enthusiastically about the triumph of making Jar Jar's robe flow in a completely life-like way as he walked. Jar Jar, who is easily one of the most reviled characters in movie history. Who the hell cares what his robe was doing when his very presence took the viewer out of the story? When his character was so poorly drawn that instead of being sucked into the conflict you wanted to punch him? One has to assume that George is so embroiled in special effects creation at this point that he needs some kind of intervention - the kind where someone takes his CG software away and gives him a stern talking-to. (Man, I'd love to be there for that).

Do special effects in today's TV and movies help tell the story? As over the top cheesy as Quincy is, the characters all have heart, they're well established and definitely not propped up by special effects; for my part, I'm able to connect with the story in a way that I often don't these days with movies, or TV. Seriously, I could care less that the volcano scene in Star Wars III took nine months to put together. The acting was gawdawful and the characters were laughable. (Am I the only one that wanted to give Anakin a time out instead of seeing him as the embodiment of evil?)

In the end, it's character and conflict that drive the story. I did some digging around about creating characters and came across Holly Lisle's great article on this subject. I have to say, I read this ages ago - when I had finished the first draft of my book and was starting the second. The points she makes resonate even more strongly with me today, and I'll definitely keep them in mind as I'm writing my next. Right until I need to blow up the Death Star, of course. Then it's CG all the way.

Cheers,
Maia

Rejection...and then some

2006-03-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

Last week I made a foray into the local Office Depot to collect supplies for my upcoming query-a-thon. It came to a whopping $92, and I was reminded of the post I saw on www.rejectioncollecion.com where the author was complaining about how they didn't have the money to send out material that wasn't returned even when a SASE was included. My thought at the time was that if a writer can't afford to print and mail out their work, they might be in the wrong field. But now after my $92 trip, I realize that they were totally right! Or not. On the bright side, I really like the paper I got; blindingly white.

Rejectioncollection.com is a very interesting website. First, I have to say that I can understand how difficult it is to be harshly rejected by someone who you look up to. Certainly, some of the letters that agents and publishers send out are written with a dollop of pure evil, and some are downright unethical. I can also understand the frustration of writers who are trying to break into an insanely competitive industry, but the reasoning behind some of the writers' viewpoints and actions just escapes me.

For example, why would a writer want their manuscript to be returned after being handled by the post office and a bevy of agents, publishers, etc.? Do they actually want to send it out again? Books are meant to be read; on the subway, while eating Timbits, while waiting for the doctor. And I won't even tell you how many times I've dropped a book in the bathtub, cause as I've covered earlier, I'm...not good. In short, a manuscript is going to be manhandled. A SASE is for responses. Agents and publishers might well return the MS if you include enough postage, and an envelope big enough, but I can't imagine what you'd do with it at that point. Send the manuscript out with Timbit prints all over it? Oy.

As I read through the submitted rejections, I was struck by the fact that the Rejecters (which kind of sounds like some kind of evil supervillian...but I digress) really couldn't do the right thing. If there was a brief "no thanks" or a form letter sent, the recipient wanted a personalized note, if there was a scribbled note, the recipient was upset they didn't warrant a form letter. Obviously, rejection can be hard to deal with- no matter how it's couched, but I don't think that writing back to a Rejecter rejecting their rejection is going to get you published. It will likely get you on some kind of a list, though.

Cheers,
Maia

New Website

2006-03-04T16:07:00.000-05:00

As you can see, the format for the blog has changed - the website is also now up and running. Feel free to stop by and take a look.

Thanks again to Sandy Law for all her help.

Cheers,
Maia

Blogstrike!

2006-03-02T17:31:00.000-05:00

Well, not really. I've just been up to my eyeballs in work - real work - and haven't had a chance to write today's blog. It'll be there on Monday, I swear.

Cheers,
Maia

What the HELL is The Hedgehog of Depression?

2006-02-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

A few years back when I worked for a vibrant and friendly tech firm, we were bombarded with treats during various holidays - secular, pagan - hell, sometimes for no reason at all. I'm not sure on which holiday the Hedgehog made its way into my life, but it arrived via Kinder Surprise. You know, the children's toy that comes inside an edible chocolate egg? The vast majority of the toys are small plastic dodads that you assemble yourself; sometimes they're puzzles, sometimes they're cars or trucks, and the like. Never, are they made out of wood. Never, are they morose, bizarre hedgehog-type beings.

I must confess, the Hedgehog was originally given to a friend of mine, who then generously gave it to me since I was so smitten; coming up with the name was a group effort. I put it on my monitor where it sat for many years, watching me like some sort of deranged, morose mascot.

For reasons that are still not all that clear to me, I have become very attached to the Hedgehog over the years. I think the appeal was that no matter how bad things got at work, at least I wasn't a suicidal child's toy. That, and trying to answer the eternal questions: who the hell makes depressed children's' toys, and why? Is it a German thing?

In any case, the Hedgehog made its way into my novel and has now ended up as an icon on my website. I suspect that most people will wonder: What the HELL is that thing? There's the answer.

In other news:
...I got hit with a particularly bad cold at a particularly bad time last week, which pretty much made the whole week a terrible mess. To cheer myself up on Friday, I - in what can only be termed "no huge surprise" - headed off to the local Chapters, Canada's largest literary smörgåsbord. I picked up "The Year of Magical Thinking", by Joan Didion, "The Continuity Girl" by Leah McLaren, the remaindered "The Camera my Mother Gave Me", by Susanna Kaysen, (author of "Girl, Interrupted"), and Lisa Moore's first collection of short stories, "Degrees of Nakedness". Last but not least, I grabbed "Happiness™" - which I've already finished - by Will Ferguson, author of the current bestseller "Beauty Tips from Moosejaw". It's a hilarious take on how society would collapse if a self-help book that actually worked ever got published. It's also a wry look at life within a publishing house and, in particular, what can come out of the mighty awfulness of the slush pile. It's wickedly fun stuff and I'm overjoyed to see a Canadian writer publishing fiction with a funny twist, because my stuff also has a humerous bent.

I have also just finished "This Dame for Hire", a PI novel set in New York during WWII, with a twist; the PI is a woman. "Dame" is the first in a series, and the sequel "Too Darn Hot", will be out this summer. I used to read a lot of detective novels but haven't in a few years, and clearly I've been missing something. "Dame" is the kind of book that - literally - kept me up at night. The sequel "Too Darn Hot", will be out this summer, and I can't wait.

Basically, I'm in book heaven. (Insert Homer Simpson drooling noise).

I've also been brushing up on my HTML and diving into the wild world of stylesheets. Why? Why indeed. My website is very nearly finished, courtesy of the lovely and talented Sandy Law, and I'm learning how to maintain it by doing a wee bit of geek-girl-reverse-engineering kung fu. It's interesting stuff but I'm having some frustration with manipulating graphics because, essentially, I suck at it.

On a final note, I do volunteer work and have had my hands full getting ready for our annual fundraiser which took place last week. It went very well, which is always good news. I help produce the program for our silent auction, so I always get a peek at the goods before the event. I had my eye on a photograph taken in Tallinn by the lovely and talented Toronto photographer Diana Pakkala, and I'm very pleased to say that it's now in my hot little hands.

So it was not such a bad week, after all.

Cheers,
Maia

Well,

2006-02-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sick as a dog. Back on Monday.

M

A Sense of Place

2006-02-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

So I had an interesting revelation on Friday - an epiphany, one might say. BHJ and I watched the De Niro flick "Hide and Seek", which I was actually kind of looking forward to. I ended up not particularly liking the film, although I'm not much of a movie person. (I prefer to watch my movies in book form).

In any case, it's supposed to be a thriller/suspense piece, and even though there was a lot of something-terrible-is-gonna-happen music, there was no real suspense for me. Well, until a brief scene with Dakota Fanning in the decrepit basement of the country home that she and De Niro had just moved to. Nothing particularly frightening happens in the basement (scary music notwithstanding) but it completely freaked me out. It also brought two interesting tidbits to my attention: (a) apparently I've never gotten over my weird aversion to basements, and (b) I had really strong feelings about the 3 major settings that were featured in my first book; the main character's apartment, which was inspired by an apartment I saw about ten years ago, the parent's home, and the office that she works in. And it occurred to me that I wrote about them pretty vividly without thinking about it all that much. I really struggled in a number of places with plot and character development, but setting? Not so much.

As I've been working through ideas for my next book, I realized that I don't have a strong sense of place for my new main character. I have some idea about what who I'm going to write about and some of the conflict that's going to happen, but I don't know exactly where it all takes place. So far, all I have is a sneaking suspicion that the main character lives in a condo. I know that setting - particularly a character's home - has a huge impact on characters; it shapes who they become and is also a reflection of who they are, so I'd like to get this figured out.

Unfortunately - and no offence to any condo dwellers out there - I'm really not a condo enthusiast. BHJ and I live in a very small house, with the tiniest of gardens. So I guess I'm going to have to do some research. Luckily Toronto is chock full of shiny new condos so going to some open houses likely won't be too difficult.

Author Elizabeth George, in "Write Away" included an interesting section on locations; she takes pictures of some of the places that feature in her work, places that bodies are found and the like. I don't really care for all the dead bodies, but I think that this is a great way to keep the atmosphere and feeling of a particular place vivid for a writer. I'll pack my handy digital camera and bring it with me on my travels, and let you know how it goes.

Cheers,
Maia

Curious about Queries?

2006-02-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

So this week I've been working on my website and roughing together some ideas for queries. My copy of the "Canadian Writer's Market" showed up last week and I plowed through it. It doesn't quite have all the information that I want so I'm trying to find a few books on writing queries and outlines and all that good stuff. I don't think that all of the answers can be found in how-to books, but my personal opinion has always been that if I get one useful piece of information out of a book, it was a good buy. (Of course, this might just be a way for me to justify buying so many books. Not that I have a problem or anything).

I've been researching Canadian lit agents, and - holy bleep - we don't have very many. There are some online listings at: http://www.writersunion.ca/cla.html and http://www.publishers.ca/publishing-literary-agents.htm. There are probably 20 agencies in total, so that doesn't bode all that well for me as an "emerging" (aka unpub'd/unknown/nobody) writer.

Hand in hand with my research on agents, I've been taking a peek on how to write queries, and I've come accross some interesting links in my travels:

Writer Max Barry has a fairly sparse section on queries, but some good links on his site. His description of queries highlights two key factors; (1) queries are damn important, and (2) keep your sense of humour at the ready: "(t)he idea of a query letter is to take this book you've written, this incomparable masterpiece that took five years and destroyed your marriage, and summarize it on a single piece of paper while still leaving enough room in the margins for a publisher or agent to scribble, 'Sorry, not for us.'" http://www.maxbarry.com/writing/help.html#query.

Writer Holly Lisle has some interesting writerly-type info on her site, including a section on queries: http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/agent2.html.

Nicholas Sparks (author of "The Notebook") also chimes in at http://www.nicholassparks.com/WritersCorner/Query.html. I have to confess I haven't read the book, but I did catch the movie. It's not for me, but you can't argue with his success.

So basically, I'm going to spend the next while coming up with a hook like: “Sarah...has never had a steady boyfriend, a good hair day, or three dead bodies to explain." My character has never had a steady boyfriend, or a good hair day. The three bodies will be a little harder to write in, though.

And, finally, my personal favourite link of the week - seeing as how I'm a complete and total nobody - "The Complete Nobody's Guide to Query Letters".

I'll be putting some more links up on my website when I get it up and running.

On another note, I'm still feeling farily optimistic about everything, so either I'm a total idjit or I really enjoy this stuff. (And no, you don't get to vote on that).

Cheers,
Maia

Trying Not to Get Freyed

2006-02-14T14:26:00.000-05:00

I am seriously almost thinking about considering feeling sorry for James Frey. Seems like one of the writers who he's blurbed (fancypants way of saying "said something nice about the book that is then slapped on the cover") is now pulling the blurb from future printings:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/business/media/13frey.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

One can only wonder what tomorrow will bring the beleaguered (but still selling like goddamn hotcakes) Frey.

Cheers,
M

Literary Empty Nest Syndrome

2006-02-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

I've got it, got it bad. I sent off my second draft to all interested parties and now all I can do is wait. I know there are things I could have done to make it better, but it's out of my hands now. I'd like to ramble and entertain everyone today, but I'm recovering from a particularly vicious paper cut. Plus, I'm beat, ya'll.

In the absence of anything intelligent and/or coherent from me, I'd like to share some of the lit blogs I read;

Sandra Scoppettone, author of 20 books, has a great blog about the writing (and publishing) process at: http://sandrascoppettone.blogspot.com/. I've just started reading her latest book, "This Dame for Hire."
JA Konrath, who's fairly marketing driven, has some helpful - and sometimes offbeat - advice for newbie writers; http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
MJ Rose, has interesting advice for writers, as well as a "writerly therapy" installment on Fridays at; http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/
And the Lipstick Chronicles at; http://thelipstickchronicles.typepad.com/the_lipstick_chronicles/ is written by four authors who discuss different aspects of the writing process (what to do if you're remaindered, for example) and have some fairly lively discussions.

If anyone knows of any other good lit blogs, please pop into the comments section and drop me a line.

Cheers,
Maia

I'm Putting out a Hit on my Inner Editor

2006-02-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well, there you have it. I knew I'd eventually have some sort of psychotic break and try to kill off one of my less attractive personalities (of which I have a few).

So here's my problem: I'm just doing the final run through before I pass it off, and my inner editor has me in a frenzy. I keep thinking of ways to make the book better and to improve and refine some of my characters. I could easily spend another six months working on it. I've also reformatted in a standard font (I like writing in one of those annoying fonts you're never supposed to submit in) and lost forty pages. I miss them, in an irrational-yet-stubborn way, and I suddenly feel like I need two more chapters to make up for the missing pages. I don't, of course.

This week has been a very interesting experience, as has writing this blog. The fact is, I'm not used to writing to deadline and it's making me a tad...well. Peckish. I had originally planned on finishing the second draft of the book by Christmas, but I got terribly ill with a not-very- interesting illness that won't even net me any sympathy. After spending so long writing the book you'd think I would have at least come down with leprosy or something, but no dice, it was just a bad cold. The deadline that I set for the final run-through is this Sunday, and I'm going to hit it if it kills me.

As I do so often when I come across a literary challenge I haven't faced before, I consult the experts. The consensus on rewriting? Don't overdo it. Awesome advice, except I'm not quite sure when that point is. Anne Lamott, in "Bird by Bird" says that you come to a moment where you just know that you're done. She adds, "of course, there will always be more you could do, but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor." I am trying to keep this in mind, but I think that there are just some things about writing that can't be taught and we all need to come to on our own terms, and I think this is one of them. Dammit.

So, I have done a full read-through and outlined about five major spots where there a theme gets dropped, or a character needs to be refined more, or an image doesn't work. I'm going to fix those and then force my inner editor to put down the red pen. By Sunday.

I hope.

Peckishly yours,
Maia

It's Second Draft-tastic!

2006-02-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

I am very, VERY pleased to say that I've finally finished the second draft of the book, which I've been working on for about a year and a half now. I'm going to take a few passes at it this week and then send it off to a freelance editor to take a wee look at it. Then I'll polish it up and all that jazz. I'm hoping this will only take a month or two and I'd love to take some time off to do this, but it's unlikely I'll be able to do so.

After all this is done I'll start looking for an agent. That's a whole other facet of writing that I've really not done a lot of research on yet. I have never even written a query, so after my manuscript goes out next week that's what I'll start working on. Since I love to read and do research, geek girl that I am, I'm actually looking forward to figuring some of this stuff out. I know enough to know that I should do a focused search for an agent and there are some online agent listings, but a lot don't have web pages, unfortunately. I find that a little strange. Of course, some people think I'm strange, so I guess it all evens out.

The Canadian Author's Association has a bunch of links about writing and getting published in Canada. The Writer's Union of Canada also has some useful information. I've also ordered a copy of the Canadian Writer's Market, but my trusty postman has yet to deliver it into my grubby little hands.

I guess that I should get emotionally prepared for all the rejection that's headed my way, but I just can't get that worried about it (and worrying is like breathing for me). I've read enough blogs and assorted rantings of published and aspiring writers to know that it's par for the course. My relationship with rejection is, thus far, pretty brief; I've only submitted two pieces of fiction, a short story, for which I received a very nice rejection note, and a postcard contest, where they just popped my entry into my *SASE and sent it on back to me. (I later read the winners, and they didn't do much for me, but the truth of it is that I'm not really a short fiction kind of a gal - although I have been making an effort to read it lately. In my younger years I wrote a lot of terrible short stories and some ferociously bad poetry, but at the end of the day I'm a bookworm; that's what I love to read, and it turns out that's what I love to write).

A quick Google search will reveal loads of musings about how hard it is to get published in Canada. Perhaps I'm more addled than usual these days, but reading articles like these just doesn't get me down either. I used to have delusions about making a living off of my writing, but I was tag teamed over cocktails one night by a published writing teacher and a writer friend of mine who let me know that the average Canadian writer makes $11,000 a year, knocking these ideas right out of my head (thanks a lot, Elaine!). Now I just want to get my work into print, and we'll see how it goes.

Cheers,
Maia

*SASE: Self addressed, stamped envelope.

All I want for Christmas is...

2006-02-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well. I realize it's a little early to be talking about Christmas, but would you believe that we only took our tree down a little over a week ago? You should. BHJ takes Christmas very seriously. Unnaturally seriously, if you ask me, but I guess that's a discussion better suited to couples counselling.

So the point is - in a little tidbit we can file under "no big surprise to those who know me", I have some issues with...um...clumsiness. Issues so severe that we buy our glasses by the crate and thank one of the great Swedish Gods (Ikea) for carrying a lovely white wine glass collection. But I don't just stop at breaking glass; my butterfingers and I have ruined two laptops over the course of writing the book, in both cases because I spilled water on the keyboard. The last time was right before Christmas, when, after having a close call with my laptop six months previously, I drenched it AGAIN. There was no hope of revival, despite much hairdryer-ing, praying and wringing of hands. And I am not much for the wringing of the hands. BHJ saved the day by buying me a new laptop as an impromptu Christmas gift, so I guess his Christmas obsession is not such a bad thing after all.

Obviously, all of this destruction can get expensive, soI was thrilled to find out that MIT, technogeek paradise extraordinare, is currently working on a $100 laptop. Unfortunately, they're only going to be available for students, but if I have to go back to school to get my hands on one, I just might. Since it's not in production yet (and, really, just meant for kids), I have to buy second-hand, twelve pound, terrible laptops that can basically only be used as a typewriter or dumb terminal that connects to a server (server = big ass computer). Luckily, there is a used computer store a half a block away where they now know us by name. So I guess I can live without the $100 laptop. (That's US dollars, anyway).

My laptops are not the only devices I use that are in danger. When I'm not busy annihilating my computers, I'm likely out and about with one of those funky Blackberry devices, which I use to email ideas, images, snippets of dialogue, visual cues, etc. to my home email address, which I file and go through later. The downside is that people think that you're rude when you're constantly - what appears to be - carrying on a text conversation with someone. But hey, it's better than calling my home number and pretending to carry on a real conversation with someone; my sanity is tenuous enough as it is. On one hand, I try to keep my friends all liquored up anyway, so people barely notice my texting. On the other hand, I'm not so good with the Blackberry devices either - seeing as how the last one also met an untimely death by water when it fell off my belt and got flushed down the... Okay, you get my point.

The sad truth is, I'm clumsy. I was a clumsy kid and I've grown into a clumsy adult, which is not so good for an avid skier (all those trees!). Or, really, a writer. I've been thinking quite seriously about getting an adult sized sippy cup lately, because I just can't afford any more laptop disasters. Christmas will be here in another eleven months, so if anyone sees a Maia-proof sippy cup, please consider picking one up for me. Or at least let me know where I can get one.

Cheers,
Maia

A Guy Who's Been Dead for 215 Years, and your Friendly Neighbourhood Reading Series

2006-01-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

So BHJ and I went to see the Toronto Symphony Orchestra perform a tribute to Mozart on the 250th anniversary of his birth last Friday. I like classical music, enough that I listen to it a few times a week - especially now that I'm watching less TV (dammit) - but I haven't been to a live performance in years. The music was poignant and spectacular, and I was vividly reminded of how much I used to love watching the conductor's hands move in such a beautiful but peculiar ballet.

I wasn't surprised that the TSO is so terrific. Toronto has a ton of local talent, some of the best music, theatre, and art that the world has to offer, in fact. What we also have, and which people sometimes forget about, are a number of great readings series that feature both local and international writers.

As always, a good place to find listings for the TO hip-happening cultural scene are the free weeklies NOW and Eye. Another good place to find listings for readings in particular is at Word. You'll find that a series like the Harbourfront Reading Series draws writers from all over the world and smaller ones will showcase more local talent, so there's lots of variety.

Another way to go about it is to look up some of your favourite writers, hit their website and see what their tour dates are. Get on their mailing list so that you can find out when they'll be in town. You might find out that your favourite writer, who conjures up stories on the other side of country (or the globe), will be here on our very own doorstep. Grab a friend - grab me, god knows I like being grabbed - and head out to hear what they have to say.

Even if you're not a writer, why not step out of your comfort zone a bit? Take some time to meet some of the artists who have brought so much enjoyment to our lives, and all that jazz. The truth of it is, the book biz is pretty cutthroat these days, and most midlist and emerging writers need all the support they can get. On top of that, readings can be a lot of fun, they're usually free, and if you're going to buy the book anyway, why not do it when you can get it personally autographed by the author? After that you can head out to watch some live music or pop into a pub and indulge in a few pints. Make a night of it.

If you're not in TO or a large urban centre, check your community listings to discover some local talent of your own. Or you could try and take in a reading the next time you're visiting the big city. Either way, you won't be disappointed.

Cheers,
Maia

Mr. Frey, Your Pants are Calling - Something About a Fire?

2006-01-26T14:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I watched Oprah this afternoon in a show which featured James Frey. And boy, is she pissed. I have to say that I was impressed with her for admitting she was wrong for what she said during her call into Larry King, and wrong for her disregard of the truth in this matter.

Frey, on the other hand, looked a little like he wanted to cry.

I'm very curious to see which way this will spin next - and if Oprah removing the magic of her book club approval from Frey will affect him and his sales. The truth of it is, Oprah has changed publishing in a very interesting way. Her seal of approval means tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and, for Frey, millions of additional sales for the writer in question. It launches them into an international spotlight as literary superstahhs. All was well until the Jonathan Franzen incident - the 2001 dustup in which Oprah rescinded her Book Club offer to Franzen. From this point forward she choose only dead writers, and was only lured back to publishing the living after an impassioned plea from Word of mouth, a writer's organization.

I still think that the controversy will continue to propel consumer sales, at least in the short term, and I'd love to hear from someone out there who's bought the book in the last week or so, and why.

So the Oprah show pretty much amounted to a smackdown, which was nice. And the book? I'd still like to read it someday. But only secondhand.

Cheers,
Maia

A Girl Without a Genre is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle

2006-01-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well, kinda.

As I've discussed previously, my book is about a geek girl coping with life during the Internet/tech sector crash. After I'd written the first draft and got started on revisions, I decided that I needed some feedback, so I workshopped the first chapter of the novel at a class last year. In this particular course you submitted pages beforehand, everyone read them and then brought comments to class, where you would listen to them discuss your work. (And when I say "discuss your work", what I really mean is "terrorize you"). In any case, I got some very pointed feedback along the lines of:

"I'm sure I don't know what genre this is..."
"I have very little experience in this genre. VERY LITTLE, MAIA."

And a number of similar comments, mostly from people angry about the technospeak and computer geekishness. Now, I could tell myself that they were all jerks (and they were, kinda) and that my work is just plain fiction (and it is, kinda) but it brought up an interesting point that I suspect I will have to cough up a semi-coherent response to in the next few months. The question being: just what the hell genre does The Book belong to?

A few months down the line - workshopping other sections of the same piece - I was accused by the very same people of writing ChickLit. I found this mildly terrifying, since I had never read any, and, as I've previously pointed out, writers should read. Good sense dictates that writers should read other authors in their genre, so, being the geekish/bookish type and all, I went out and read a lot of ChickLit - a lot - over the next while. After a shitstorm of pink book jackets, I've come to the following conclusions: (a) I'm not writing ChickLit and, (b) I can't read any more books about women who can itemize the different designer pieces they're wearing like they're some kind of bipedal clothing catalogue. Designer shoes? The only time my character would handle a Jimmy Choo original would be to squash bugs with it.

Insert standard disclaimer here: I don't have an issue with ChickLit, I think that people have to write what they need to write and that's pretty much all that there is to it. People enjoy reading ChickLit for the same reasons they enjoy reading all kinds of genres; it speaks to them. Nothing wrong with that.

But what is it, really? And why is it that many (most?) of the books written these days by women, featuring a female character seem to be pidgenholed into the ChickLit genre? I went looking for a definition of ChickLit and found a roundtable of contemporary authors who weighed in what it really is: www.authorsontheweb.com/features/0402-chicklit/chicklit-q01.asp . Elizabeth Crane concluded that "(i)t seems like a single female protagonist is the main requirement." Well. My book does have a single female protagonist, but is that really all it takes? Single? Female? I don't think so, Liz. [UPDATE: Elizabeth Crane was nice enough to stop by and comment on my post, so please check out the comment section at the end. It appears that she and I are in total agreement about all this, so thanks for setting me straight, Elizabeth].

On the one hand, I can understand the desire to categorize books by type, mystery in mystery, crime in crime, James Frey in wherever the hell he feels like, ChickLit in ChickLit, DickLit (seriously, I did not make this up, and no, it's not porn)...well, you get the picture. For readers who know what they like, it makes perfect sense. For writers who feel that their work appeals to a broad range of readers and, essentially, don't want to be labeled, I'm betting it's a problem.

So I'm kind of A Girl Without a Genre, which for marketing purposes isn't so good. Right now I'd classify my work as "Contemporary Urban Fiction" but I hope to hell a publisher doesn't want to publish it as ChickLit. My main character HATES pink.

Cheers,
Maia

Up Yer Kilt!

2006-01-25T09:05:00.000-05:00

So, I'd like to wish a very happy Robbie Burns day to everyone out there! Lord knows there's not much I like more than men in kilts, so I'm all for it. If you're out and about tonight, raise a pint - or a nice twelve year old scotch - for Robbie Burns, writer of the poem "Auld Lange Syne". No one knows what the hell the song means, but we keep singing it every New Year's anyway, and in the interest of learning more about Robbie Burns, I went looking for the meaning of "Auld Lange Syne" and found this on the Internet (so it *must* be true):

"Auld Lang Syne" translates from old Scottish dialect literally as "Old Long Ago"

Old long ago? See, I'm not sure if I'm really helping here.

Reading on:

"and is a song about celebrating the past and looking forward to the future, with the 'cup o'kindness' being a drink shared as a symbol of friendship."

Well, I can party down with that. Happy Robbie Burns day, y'all!

Maia

Thank you! Merci! Äitah!

2006-01-23T00:05:00.000-05:00

See, I'm so grateful that I wanted to thank everyone in all three of the languages I speak (and no, the third one isn't Klingon). I'm really pleased with the amount of traffic I'm getting, and I just wanted to say thanks for coming by and hanging out.

Have a great week,
Maia

Writers Read

2006-01-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

AKA: My Name is Maia and it's Been 1 Day Since my Last Book Purchase

So I had promised myself not to buy any books for the next while, but it turns out I have problems with truthiness. Oh well, these things happen.

I had bookmarked the website for Julie Powell's spectacular blog, the "Julie/Julia Project" a while back, but hadn't gotten around to sitting down and reading through it until recently. For those who haven't heard of this offbeat endeavour, it's a year (2002-2003) in the life of teetering-on-thirty-and-trapped-in-a-shit-job New Yorker Julie Powell who decides to work through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (circa 1961) and blog about it in an attempt to save her tenuous sanity. The writing is vivid, hilarious, semi-profane and delicious enough to make your mouth water every once in a while.

I was going to try to make it to the end of the blog before deciding if I wanted to buy the NYT bestselling book that she wrote based on her year of blogging, but I broke down by the December 2002 entry (Julie, you had me at Boeuf Bourguignon - attempt #1) and ordered "Julie and Julia".

On other reading fronts, I'm partway through "Open" by Lisa Moore, which is spectacular, strange, and beautiful. I'm also working through a few Anne Lamott books. I just finished her first novel "Hard Laughter", written in her early twenties after her father was diagnosed with a brain tumour. In "Bird by Bird", she describes how she found herself "desperate for books that talked about cancer in a way that would both illuminate the experience and make [her] laugh." On a trip to her local library she asked where the 'funny books about cancer' were and received a - how shall I put it - less than enthusiastic response. Folks, "Hard Laughter" is a funny book about cancer, a genre that might not have caught on, but a damn good read, nonetheless. I'm also working through "Blue Shoe", written after she sobered up and found Jesus. So far, I prefer "Hard Laughter". Don't know what that says about me, but there you go.

On another note, If there are any writers out there looking for good books on writing, I'd definitely recommend Anne's "Bird by Bird" and Carolyn See's "Living a Literary Life", which I've mentioned previously. I'd also suggest "Self Editing for Fiction Writers", which deals with the mechanics of editing in a straightforward and concise manner. They also have a helpful website at: http://www.editorialdepartment.com/

If you're in TO and want to borrow any of my books, just drop me a line. If you're in Tuktuyuktuk...well, I'd have to say that you're on your own. Sorry 'bout that.

Cheers,
Maia

Writers Write

2006-01-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

...or so I've been told. Most writers who produce texts on the craft argue that if you want to succeed, you must write every day (or very nearly that). Anne Lamott in the most excellent "Bird by Bird" and Carolyn See in "Living a Literary Life" both make a case for sitting in front of your computer daily. Stephen King agrees in "On Writing", and he's one scary dude.

I agree with them in principle, but in reality all three of them have been Writing Full Time for many years now. The real question is, what to do if you work full time, have to fight traffic home and then make a dinner that fits your Atkins, South Beach, Vegan, Organic, etc lifestyle. Not to mention shaking the dust off your exercise clothes now and then, talking to your friends, dealing with your family, reading good books, spending enough time with your children so they don't become feral...you know, life.

The fact of the matter is that we just might not be able to sit our butts down every day. I try to focus on writing every day. I notice characters, images, situations; I harvest details from what's going on around me and use it in my work. When I'm out and about, I send ideas to my mail account from my pager so I don't forget them. I think about where my own characters want to go, and how I'm going to get them there. But I don't write every day. And I think that's okay.

For most of the people I know who are actively writing and holding down jobs, it's not unusual to have taken 2+ years to finish a halfway decent draft of a novel. (And that's before you include the submission process, an experience sometimes referred to a reject-o-rama. More on that later). So I don't think my progress is terrible, but it can get discouraging. Has anyone seen the scene in the movie Sliding Doors when the main male character finally bursts out: "Of course I haven't finished the book. I'm a writer. I'm never going to finish the book."

Sometimes I feel like that.

On top of that, I'm now turning to other projects so I can start to wean myself off of The First Book and get ready for the next one. I've had an idea rattling around in my noggin for about six months that I'm dying to get started on. Of course, first drafts are so sloppy and fun that it's not really like work, unlike the position I'm now in with editing The First Book where I'm constantly looking for the perfect word, the perfect image, the perfect piece of dialogue, the perfect ending. It's enough to give you a stroke.

So I'd like to get the editing of this book finished as soon as possible, it's pretty much as simple as that. And the only way to do that is, as the pros say, write more. How to do that? I'm going to have to cut down on/get rid of some of my time-wasting vices, the worst of which is definitely TV. Yes, it's true, as much as I hate to admit it, I'm a sucker for TV. Even worse, we have digital cable and potential access to more channels than is even remotely reasonable. (There's even a Book TV channel! That's gotta count for something, no?)

BHJ and I keep the TV off on the weekends if we're working on our various computer-related adventures. Now, I'm just not turning it on when I come home from work. It seems to be helping. It's like anything else worth having; you have to sacrifice. I get that.

Next on my list to give up? Definitely exercise.

Cheers,
M

Must...Make...Goals

2006-01-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

January is a good month for goals, so I'm going to do just that. Since everyone is busy busy busy and can't check my blog every day, I'd like to set some kind of a schedule.

What I'm aiming to do is make two postings a week; Monday and Thursdays. And maybe more, I'm crazy like that. So, sign up for my feed or swing by on Mondays and Thursdays for some pithy reflections on writing and/or some riveting EstoSnark.

Happy reading.
M

So what's the deal with this book thing?

2006-01-15T17:05:00.000-05:00

I'm glad you asked. 'This book thing' is a project near and dear to my heart that I've been working on for a little over two years now. I'm very close to finishing a draft that can be sent out for some editorial input. My Better Half, John (and since geeks are so fond of acronyms, I'll just refer to Better Half John as BHJ from now on) sent out two chapters to a freelance editor as a birthday present for me last year, and the comments I got back were both helpful and positive. Thanks, BHJ! So, I think that it's a good idea to have a pro vet the whole book before I start to submit it. (Of course, I have to actually finish it first, but...well, Christmas was busy. And I've had a cold. Ohbloodyhell, the book just keeps getting longer, that's why it's not done).

But soon, soon.

So what's the book about? Well, I'm glad you asked that, too. In the proverbial nutshell, it's the story of a young über geek coping with the chaos of the Internet crash of 2000/2001 who, at the end of it all, has to figure out where she really belongs. It's set in Toronto and deals with sleepless nights, caffeine addiction, Star Trek, wacky friends, fast food, McGyver, an ailing relationship, technobabble, and corporate betrayal and intrigue. It's a dramatic comedy. Dramady?

I'll be putting bits and pieces of it up on my website when I finally get it (the website AND the book) up and running, whenever the fark that will be. I've been thinking about how to layout the website for quite some time now, and I hope to get it launched within the next month or so. I'll keep you posted.

Cheers
Maia

Why Viking Girl?

2006-01-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

Why, indeed. Well, it stems from the fact that my father's side of the family is from a wee country across the Baltic Sea from Finland called Estonia. Estonians and Finns are essentially first cousins and both speak Finno-Ugric languages. Finnish is a more complex language but the pronunciation is identical and the base words are the often the same; when I ended up in Helsinki in the 90's, running terrifyingly late and without enough money to get to the airport, I was able to sweet-talk my cab driver into shuttling me and my Esto-Canadian butt there on time. I spoke Estonian, he spoke Finnish, and we got along just fine.

Now, since most people have never heard of Estonia, but pretty much everyone has heard about Vikings - who were running rampant through the area lo these many years ago - I sometimes just simplify things by calling myself a Viking. Surely, I have Viking blood in these veins, but more importantly, I like the fear factor that that inspires. On top of that, I think I'd be much better at pillaging than I am at my regular job - I mean, did they have to work long hours and deal with cranky customers? I doubt it. I bet that the Viking complaint department was pretty deserted because of, you know, the fact that they'd likely kill anyone nervy enough to cough up a grievance.

Plus, I'm short and solid, with wrists the size of tree trunks. Good strong Viking bones, twice - no, three times! - the size of normal Canadians. I am not a girly girl.

So, that's the story behind my domain name. It's really all in good fun, I don't actually want to pillage anyone. What I DO want is one of those funky Viking hats, though. That would be an awesome birthday present.

Cheers,
Maia

Freyapalooza

2006-01-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

So, it's been an interesting week for James Frey, millionaire extraordinaire who, courtesy of Oprah, skyrocketed into literary stardom in 2005 with "A Million Little Pieces". I've been following Freyapolooza with a significant amount of interest for someone who hasn't even read the book. So I'm left in a conundrum: buy the book and help finance Frey's new summer home, or leave it on the shelf and form an opinion from second hand accounts. I hate to feed into the process of further rich-ifying (no, not a word, but neither is "truthiness") Frey because of the current scandal - sales remain high since TSG's revelations - but, as I revealed earlier this week, I have an *ahem* problem with book buying. (Maybe Frey should write his next book about recovering book-aholics. THAT I'd have to read). Plus, I hate to debate an issue with only half the facts. For the record, I picked up his book at the grocery store a few months ago, flipped through a few pages, and immediately put it down. The writing just seemed awkward and sloppy, and the sense that he was full of shit jumped right off the page at me. But I was cranky that day, so maybe it's brilliant. What do I know?

So, I said in my last blog that I was going to watch James' stint on Larry King on Wednesday, and I did. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I saw someone tap dance around an issue as poorly as he did. My favorite moment was his assertion that the "emotional truth" of the book was still valid. What the hell is an emotional truth, and how does it differ from the real truth? Because, seriously, I do not know what that means.

After the Frey interview, his publisher announced that further printings of the book would contain a disclaimer about twisted facts and whatnot, which sounds about as funny as Michael Jackson saying he won't have anymore sleepovers with children. Good to know guys, good to know.

I was also really struck during Oprah's dramatic call-in moment when she revealed that she hasn't read his other book. I find that one of the oddest details of this whole brouhaha. If James Frey is such a captivating author - keeping her up at night reading about his shenanigans and all - why wouldn't she run out and buy that one too? From what I understand, the story continues in "My Friend Leonard", so it would make sense to me that James' reader base would want to stay with the story. But I'm cranky today, so maybe that's totally normal and it's just me.

So, basically, it's my feeling that Frey's pants are engulfed in a five alarm fire, but I'm still in a position of not having read the book. So, what to do? Any thoughts?

Truthfully, (and I say this with all the truthiness in the world), I'll likely end up buying it secondhand so that I can experience it for myself without having to give James a dime.

Maybe I should start an Abebooks.com recovery group and then write about it, making up blood spattered fights over who gets the first editions and people passing out while reading The Iliad.

Cheers and have a great weekend,
Maia

Bookstores, the Mailman, and Getting a Fix

2006-01-11T19:31:00.000-05:00

I just got back from a trip to the bookstore, and, as usual, it's one of the highlights of my day/week/month. As an unabashed book-aholic, heading for the local bookstore always provides me with a much needed fix.

I generally find it difficult to decide which books I'm going to buy, and since I'm tightening my fiscal belt these days, today I told myself I was only allowed to get one book. Since discovering Abebooks.com I've been able to get my hands on a lot of hard to find and out of print books (not just for me, I've given a bunch to friends. Okay, four. Okay! Three.) I've decided I have to stop that for now, because books were rolling into the house at such a spectacular speed that my bank account almost seized up on me. I wonder if my mailman knows that he's also my pusher...

But the bookstore is the stomping ground for finding new lit, and I still get a little weak-kneed when I walk in the door. All those spines waiting to be cracked, all that paper waiting to flip through your hands, all of those book pheromones wafting by. Instead of wasting all that time searching through the shelves for a book, I'd rather just buy the whole damn store and move in.

I am currently saving up for this.

But back to the present. So many choices - mystery? new releases? business? American? Canadian? All of the above?

I'm trying to work through more Canadian authors these days, but I have to admit I'm finding it difficult. A lot of the Canadian work that I've come accross hasn't really spoken to me, although on the other hand, I've had the deep pleasure of discovering Will Ferguson, playwrights Trey Anthony and Claudia Dey, Anne Ireland, Lesley Krueger. Today I picked up Giller finalist Lisa Moore's "Open". I'm looking forward to a good read. (I'm also ordering two Seth Godin books for my better half's birthday next week, and then I'm done book buying for now, I swear!)

As I was cashing out, I noticed a pile of the James Frey book "A Million Little Pieces" stacked beside the cash, the same book that's recently been slapped with the novelized memoir/fictionalized-non-fiction label. I'm curious to see how things shake out with him on Larry King tonight.

Cheers & happy reading,
Maia

Welcome!

2006-01-11T18:30:00.000-05:00

Welcome! I'm a Toronto writer, and this is the new home of my rants (and occasional ravings) about finishing a novel and trying to get it published.

Cheers,
Maia