Lit Soup has Bad Ice up on her Blog

Jenny Rappaport over at L. Perkins Agency has been kind enough to allow us upwardly mobile authors to promote our books on her blog. Mine is first up! Hop on over to her blog, Lit Soup and have a look.

If you have a book you're promoting, fire her an email!

Bad Ice Available In Print

I was just informed today that Bad Ice is now available at Champagne Books in trade paperback format. I'm ordering a bunch, so Bernita, your copy will be mailed to you soon!

It's not on Amazon yet, but Champagne is pretty good about mail orders, and they'll take a cheque if you don't like to mess with credit cards. I ordered one through the site (as a civilian) and it was pretty easy. I'll let you know how fast it ships!

Fighting Like Cats and Dogs

Yeah. Really. Cats and dogs.

Three years ago, Chester the dog and Ridley the cat had a pretty violent tiff, in which the dog received a poke in the nose, the cat got a hole in his neck, and my husband almost lost a finger. We figured it was super hot that day, the animals were miserable, and the cat hadn't been fixed yet. They kissed and made up, and things were uneventful... until last week.

We put the dog out as usual, but when he came back in, Ridley got right up in his grill and made him nervous. Chester scooted down the hall to get the lamprey off him, but Ridley kept at it, trying to decipher some smell the dog had brought in.

In his rush to get away from the cat, Chester tried to jump on my daughter's bed, but he's not as spry as he used to be. He missed and fell on the cat.

Well, you can imagine how insulted Ridley became. I guess forty pounds of dog landing on your head can be pretty upsetting when you're a cat. He latched onto the dog's face, howling ad hissing. Chester, in a panic, pinned the cat down and gave off the most horrendous high-pitched snarls.

Add the kids' screams to the mix and I ran into the bedroom, shouting at the dog to leave. He scrambled out and we locked the cat in the bedroom to allow him to calm down. The dog just looked confused.

After a day and a half of growls and howls and the judicious use of baby gates, they finally sniffed noses and gave each other the old half-hearted 'guy hug', kinda like Joey and Chandler in Friends.

If I Could Be Like That

I'm watching the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics. We won 18 medals, and local resident Eric Lamaze won individual gold and team silver in Show Jumping, a sport I had followed since I was a teenager. He shed a controversial past and more than one tear as he listened to the Canadian anthem during his medal ceremony.

As I watched the the joy in the faces of the winning athletes during the final montage, I wondered if I could achieve the same absolute feeling that all is right with the world.

Then I realize I already have.

I experienced it with the moment Father Paul announced my marriage to my husband twenty-four years ago today. As I kissed my new spouse, Father Paul touched his shoulder and murmured, "Down, Boy." I resisted the urge to laugh and kissed him all the more deeply.

I felt a similar bliss the moment my children were born. They were both absolutely beautiful, and they still are.

Every time I finish a painting, I sigh with satisfaction, knowing I did the best job I could.

I giggled with delight when I saw an actual ISBN number that validated the existence of my first book. I'm experiencing a similar warm and fuzzy feeling, seeing that my second novel Bad Ice is number 86 among 8000 romance releases on Fictionwise. I know - it's the only indication I have of sales. I don't know if the rating represents five or fifty sales, but I'll take it.

--Photo: Canada's Eric Lamaze rides Hickstead to a gold medal Thursday at the Beijing Games. (Susan Walsh/Associated Press)

Just when she was getting interesting...

My oldest is about to start college. The next ten days will be a flurry of shopping, packing and assurances that everything will be okay.

She's studying for her BA in Arts and Animation at one of the top schools in Canada, Sheridan College. Someday you'll see her work at Pixar! We managed to find her a nice place just across the street from the school, and if she wants to come home for the weekend, she's only a couple of hours away by train or bus, and we can always make the 1.5 hour drive to get her. After all, she'll want a decent meal at least once every couple of weeks.

I have mixed feelings about my oldest youngling leaving the nest. Like any parent, I've been frustrated, infuriated, enraged and worried. She bickers. She swears, calling her brother every name in the book. She won't eat a meal with food touching each other. Shes keep me up at night, yapping in the hallway, slamming her door and complaining she's cold. She doesn't clean the cat's litter box without being hounded for three days.

She says things in a quirky way that doesn't fail to make me laugh. She introduces me to movies and authors I never would have discovered if not for her appreciation of the really funny stuff. She got me hooked on 30 Rock, Arrested Development and The Office. She walks the dog.

I'm a lucky Mom. Many of my peers have complained about teenagers who stay out late, are lazy, unappreciative and belligerent. Some kids smoke, drink and do drugs, either in the open or on the sly. They get into fights, talk back to their parents, and barely scrape by in school. They treat their home like a hotel, expecting their laundry to suddenly appear, all washed and folded in their drawers. Not my kids.

The biggest disagreement I have with my son is his stubborn habit of composing his school essays in Lucida Grande instead of Times New Roman. (I know... first it'll be fonts, then it will lead to cocaine OMG!)

The thing that worries me most about my daughter is that she worries too much. That being said, I have nothing to worry about, except to stop her from worrying.

Will I feel that tug and snap of the apron strings when we finally say goodbye? Will I sit in her room for all of Labour Day, crying into her stuffed toys?

More likely, I'll be turning her bedroom into my writing room. Or not. She'll probably be back for a visit within a couple of weeks, already tired of living on peanut butter sandwiches.

That's okay. I'll welcome her back with open arms, then shove her out the door again.

Illustration: Dog Spacedog in Space - used with permission from my daughter, the creator.

The Big Dark

Today marks the fifth anniversary of The Big Blackout.

"At 4:11 p.m. ET on Aug. 14, 2003, Ontario and much of the northeastern U.S. were hit by the largest blackout in North America's history. Electricity was cut to 50 million people, bringing darkness to customers from New York to Toronto to North Bay." - CBC online news

I usually work a half day on Thursdays and on that day I was in Toronto with my daughter, shopping at a specialty store for her new school uniform. After our transaction, we left the store and got in the car. I think that was the exact time the lights went out, because when we left the parking lot the traffic lights were out. I thought it was just a localized problem, so we inched our way through and proceeded north.

Every light was out! Obviously, treating a downed intersection like a four-way stop is great in theory, but much harder in practice when dealing with six lanes of rush hour traffic in each direction.

I was running low on gas and we dodged into a gas station. The owner shrugged and shook his head. The pumps weren't working. We switched on the car radio and discovered the power was out in a widespread area. My daughter tried the cell phone but the signal was garbled and whiny.

We felt isolated although we were surrounded by hundreds of other motorists. At a rural intersection north of the city, a Hydro worker in his bright orange overalls directed traffic. It took three surreal hours for us to make it back to my home thirty miles north of Toronto. By then the car was on fumes.

Everyone in the neighbourhood dragged their barbecues to front yards, and an impromptu street party ensued. When the sun went down, the clear sky revealed more stars than I could ever imagine. My neighbour Carol brought out a bottle of Crown Royal and we sipped and talked late into the night. It was too hot to go inside anyway.

I waited Friday morning for a call from my boss before going in to work. I work for a newspaper, so we didn't have the luxury of just not showing up! At 11:00 am I got the call to go in. They had restored power at one of our offices in Richmond Hill. I told my boss I didn't have enough gas to get there, so I went to our local office and helped a colleague stuff our Classified server and a few Imac workstations into his Honda hatchback. We looked like a couple of looters.

We set up in the boardroom of the Richmond Hill Liberal office and managed to put together a decent number of pages by about 11 pm. My boss dozed on a sofa in the foyer, waiting to take me home when I was done.

One printing press that had power got the papers out for the weekend editions. What a team!


Several barbecues and thawed Popsicles later, the power was finally restored by the end of the weekend. I look back on that weekend with fondness, although I'm sure it was a nightmare for a lot of people.

Does anyone else remember their experiences during The Big Blackout?

Edited to add: Our newspaper, The Era-Banner was just awarded Newspaper of the Year (Non-Dailies, Over 37,500 Circulation) by Suburban Newspapers of America! What a team!

Breakfast Special

I'm resurrecting something I posted last spring over at the Romance Writers Unlimited blog. I think it warrants a repeat performance (sorry, Wordtryst, you saw this before).



She shuffles across the worn tiled floor and plucks her pencil from behind her ear. "Hi, I'm Belinda. What'll ya have?"

You pluck a laminated piece of cardboard from between the ketchup and the chrome napkin holder, and notice the All-Day Breakfast Special. For only $3.99 you get three eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, potatoes and juice, accompanied by a bottomless cup of coffee. Sounds good. "Gimme the Breakfast Special."

"Fried, boiled or scrambled?"

"Scrambled."

"Bacon or sausage?"

"Brown or white?"

"Hash browns or home fries?"

"Apple or orange?"

"Decaf or regular?"

In about ten minutes, you have a satisfying plate of Coronary Club for just under four bucks.

Let's mosey down the street to a high-end bistro.

A carefully coiffed waiter approaches, handing over a leather-bound folder.

"Good morning, my name is Alphonse but you can call me Al." Your new best friend slides into the booth and leans forward with a friendly smile. "Our special this morning is the Petit Déjeuner a la New Orleans. It consists of fluffy, mouth-watering scrambled free-range Omega-3 eggs, three crisp slices of grain-fed pancetta, artisan bread toasted to golden perfection, sautéd sliced Yukon gold potatoes, fresh squeezed organic orange juice and a steaming cup of cappuccino made from Fair Trade coffee beans, roasted on the premises."

"Sounds great. How much is it?"

"Only $13.99."

Hell, when you describe it like that, it must be worth the extra ten bucks! Imaginative copy writing has raised the lowly breakfast to a culinary delight.

In case you don't know where I'm going with this, let's discuss one of the Cardinal Sins of the Novel Writer: Telling instead of Showing.

Telling: The barn was burned down.

Showing:
All that remained of the century old barn was a jumble of smoking, blackened lumber surrounded by a low foundation of mottled gray stone. The singed bricks forming the silo stood alone at the rear of the mess, a few forlorn bits of insulation flapping in the cold breeze at its severed summit.

Telling: He missed his wife.

Showing:

He felt the old, familiar ache lurking around the corner. It advanced until it became a sharp pain. He balled the socks in his hand and gazed at the photo, concentrating on Marion's smile and the warm look in her eyes. He looked at the socks. Normally he would have just left them on the floor, but thinking of Marion, he took the trouble to place them in the hamper.

Can you think of a way to jazz up a menu? Let's try putting a hamburger or shepherd's pie into the Hamptons bracket.

Excerpt One is from my Romantic Suspense, Bad Ice. Excerpt Two is from my WIP, The Yearbook.

All Things Seventies

They're baaaaack...

Long straight hair, flared jeans, peasant skirts and platform shoes have been making a comeback for the last few years. That Seventies Show still boogies across the airwaves in reruns. New shows like Swingers show the questionable side of married life when innocence took a back seat to exploration.

Late boomers are feeling nostalgic for the old Donny Osmond posters, Volkswagen buses and kitsch kitchens. Some never left the seventies -- that goddawful brown paneling is still on my basement walls.

My kids are discovering the cool sounds of the Seventies - no, not disco, but good stuff like Joni Mitchell, The Stones and The Doobie Brothers. Gotta love those classic rock radio stations.

I am currently working on a cross-genre novel in which half is written in the POV of a sixteen-year-old girl when she goes to an unfamiliar school in 1975 and falls for a boy who doesn't know she's alive.

The other half is in the POV of the boy, all grown up. He meets the girl, now a woman. He's a widower and a father of a young boy, and she's a divorced mom. They are drawn together by her son's illness and he helps her deal with the situation, since he lost his wife to cancer.

In writing this book, the seventies are taking centre stage. Memories are flooding into my brain with such clarity, I want to go back. I want to return to those days when we looked into the future and saw a million possibilities. As a young person, I still saw the world with clear eyes and mostly missed the political turmoil entangled amongst the Peter Frampton concerts and Saturday Night Live.

My daughter, who is now nineteen, says she likes the seventies because they were so weird, and hates the era because it was so gross.

How do we treat novels about the seventies? Are new novels set in the seventies still considered contemporary, or are they now seen as historical? Will publishing suddenly have a glut of books set in that era?

I want to go into the minds of agents and publishers to find out if books set in the seventies will fly in the next couple of years. I don't want to submit and get the answer, "No one reads books about the seventies."

Edited to add: A commercial just came on, selling the complete collection from "Midnight Special" - live performances from - you guessed it - The Seventies.

Warming Up The Grill

It's that time again! Tomorrow, July 24th from 9am to 9pm, my friend Chris Eldin and Roastmistress Phoenix are set to roast me and my novel, Bad Ice at this month's Book Roast. Drop by for the party! The party goer with the best answers to Phoenix's clever trivia questions will win a pdf copy of Bad Ice.

Now, I know some of you prefer the old fashioned paper books, so as a special bonus I will arrange to send an autographed print copy to the winner when it becomes available this fall/winter!

Lost in Hamilton

Most of my father's relatives live in the Hamilton area, but every time we visit, it takes a few tries before we figure out where the heck we're going. Over twenty-five years, I think we had to have a dozen relatives come get us because we could never remember where Uncle Tony's farm was.

You know the kind of directions local people give: "Turn left at the little bridge, there'll be a fork in the road, take the left fork, then turn right at the first gravel road you see."

Poor Hamilton's track record was already poor in my husband's opinion. During the NHL lockout we attended an outdoor charity NHL game at Hamilton's Ivor Wynne Stadium. With all the one-way streets and roundabouts, we finally stumbled on the stadium in a shower of sleet and sloppy snow. Hubby was not amused. He sat under a plastic poncho (we paid $5.00 for something we could have bought for a buck in a dollar store) for three hours, watching a bunch of wet and miserable NHL players a mile away in the middle of a football field.

Yesterday we were supposed to gather with the rest of the clan for the annual Cormier picnic at a conservation area. We had gone last year, so at least we knew where it was. However, in spite of the clear blue sky in Newmarket, I received a phone call yesterday that the picnic was canceled because of the possibility of thunderstorms in the Niagara region.

We laid aside our plan to make fried chicken and bean salad, and instead prepared to meet my father, sister and brother with their spouses at a motel in Hamilton for an afternoon visit and dinner out.

We left a little late -- the kids wanted to pack enough electronic paraphernalia to entertain a Boy Scout troop, although the only other child would be my eight-year-old niece.

I had diligently copied my stepmom's detailed directions to the motel and printed out Google Map instructions as well, but in my rush to leave, I left the handwritten note with the phone number on the coffee table, thinking the Google instructions would suffice.

We decided to take the toll highway and almost missed the exit. Hubby crossed four lanes of sparse traffic to hit the ramp for the 403, and we continued through steadily darkening skies. When we approached Hamilton, the clouds opened and poured buckets of rain on us. Traffic slowed to 40 km/hr and we followed a red 4x4, the only vehicle visible in the muck. I had to squint through the side window to see the exit sign, but we found Main Street West.

It's a one way street with five lanes. We drove through the downtown area in the middle lane, but cars in the far left lane plowed through six inch deep puddles, sending a mini tsunami onto the sidewalk. At one point, a lady huddled under an umbrella and watched in horror as an arc of solid water rushed toward her. I could see her whole body flinch, but the offending car thankfully slowed just before reaching her, so she was spared the Bridget Jones treatment.

We kept going through the deluge, but it seemed we were on Main St. West an awfully long time, then it turned into Main St. East. The rain eased and we peered at buildings that appeared more and more disheveled, with rusty fire escapes and boarded up storefronts.

"Dad couldn't have taken a room here. It's not like him." My dad always chose neat and tidy accommodations when they visited Ontario. This area was definitely not on the tidy side.

I pulled out the map of Hamilton and peered at impossible small printing to find out where we were, but nothing looked familiar. After turning around twice and more than a little swearing, my husband pulled into a parking lot, got out of the car and stomped into a convenience store to ASK FOR DIRECTIONS WITHOUT BEING TOLD. I was so proud of him.

He came back and said, "We're going the wrong way." We searched for landmarks on the map and discovered we were actually in the east end of Hamilton, not the west. "I hate this %$#@ town," he muttered as we meandered through four one-way streets before finally heading in the right direction.

We arrived an hour late, frazzled and silent, to a tiny motel room crammed with happy relatives. After a beer and a wholesome dinner at Boston Pizza, we felt better.

When the evening ended, we found Highway 403 in five minutes flat.

Ask A Canadian

Kanani gave me a great idea. I scooted over to her blog to check out her friend Gustavo Arallano's book Ask A Mexican, and it got me thinking about how the rest of the world views Canadians.

We seem to come across as some mysterious entity that insists it doesn't want to be noticed, and yet performs in such a way that we are noticed. For example, look at Jim Carrey or Mike Myers. Not exactly shy fellows.

I think I'll have some fun and invite questions about us from non-Canadians. You can try me with anything from beer to moose to hockey. I don't promise to be accurate - in fact, I'll probably be wildly inaccurate.

Kanani asked me in a post:

Dear Canadian,

What's with the aboot? Do Canadians say this because there's no other way to distinguish themselves from Americans, or to put a barrier between them and the rest of the Commonwealth? Or is this just some natural genetic flaw?

Dear Non-Canadian,

I honestly don't think I say 'aboot' but maybe some Maritimers do. When listening to Americans speak, they seem to broaden their vowels and say 'abaaawhut'. Maybe it's because they're warm and lazy from sitting in the sunshine drinking mint juleps.

We Canadians tend to shorten our vowels and speak faster. Maybe it's because we're so damn cold all the time we need to get the words out quickly so we can go inside where it's warm.

Canadians have no genetic flaws. We are perfect.

We Have A Winner

Tonight, a slow line of cars rolls down our little residential street as the local citizens take in the annual fireworks display at George Richardson Park. I used to climb on our roof to watch the show, but the trees have grown too high.

Usually, I'd join the exodus, but tonight I sit at my computer and tabulate the answers to my trivia questions about our lovely country. There were a couple of 'wild card' questions with several possible answers, and I received some really imaginative ones.

Travis, you seem to have a special place in your heart for our dear Pam Anderson, who is a real smart cookie besides being well endowed. You made me laugh with your attempts to upstage Bernard.

Stephen, you gave it a great run, and you might be right about the beer, since you live in a country where beer is probably stronger.

Wordtryst, you tried really hard, but living in Paradise probably affects your accuracy.

Barbara, as a fellow Canadian, you came close, oh so close.

Mlh, you get brownie points for sucking up.

But the one who got all the answers right (kudos for the aboriginal name for Niagara Falls) is...

Bernard!

Tell me how you'd like your electronic copy of Bad Ice. I can either email a pdf or burn it on a CD and snail mail it to you in the format of your choice.

Thank you all for dropping by. This was so much fun and I really appreciate your support. Don't forget, you have another chance to win at the end of July over at Book Roast.