Wow. All I can say is what a night! The book launch was so much fun. And it opened a tiny window for me into my character Debbie's world because for those 90 minutes I was a celebrity, lapping up the attention and kudos. I have to give a huge thank you to Carl Cavanagh and the Victoria Public Library for hosting the event in their community room. It was a great space with plenty of room for the 44 attendees, the book table, food tables and the podium. For any locals looking for a venue, please consider the library. Carl made the evening completely hassle-free. I also want to thank everyone who came out and bought a book. It was amazing to meet new people, connect with old friends and bring people from the literary community together. I received so many compliments about the cover and the quality of the binding. That truly pleased me because it was one of the reasons I signed with the Porcupine's Quill. They did an excellent job on the book. What a thrill to read excerpts from three of the stories in Plastic and to answer questions from the audience. I don't know if readers realize how exciting it is for a writer to be asked questions about the characters or the writing process. Suddenly, the world I created is real to a room full of people. What started as an idea, a wish, has taken on a life of its own and will mean something different to each person who picks up the book. I want to thank Liz Walker for introducing me and being such a poised and polished speaker. And a huge thanks to Liam Bagley for playing guitar while people mingled. He is an up-and-coming star. I would love to hear your thoughts on the book and the characters. You can find me on Goodreads or here on my blog.
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I am happy to announce that the date and venue have been confirmed for my book launch. Hooray! The Greater Victoria Public Library is a huge supporter of local writers, and I couldn't be more thrilled that they have offered to provide their community room for the celebration.
Recently, I attended the 2017 launch of the Emerging Local Author Collection at the library. This year, they are showcasing 147 books from over 100 local writers who self-publish or publish with independent or small presses. The youngest author is only eight years old -- what an accomplishment! I can't wait to join the program for the 2018 season. Please RSVP by June 9 if you can make the launch. I'm looking forward to seeing friends old and new. We always knew the timing was tight. When Stephanie contacted me last summer and said they wanted to publish my book in spring 2017, I thought she misspoke. Published in less than a year? Was it even possible?
Stephanie warned me that the timeline would mean speeding up the process. I agreed to prepare my edits and review the proofs without delay. The Porcupine's Quill set the release date for mid-April and the race began. For the most part, we kept to our schedules with a little slippage here and there. Then Canada Post lived up to its reputation, and here we are at the end of April. Still a few weeks away from publication. The great news is that my book can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.ca or Amazon.com, just don't expect it to ship on May 1. Also, the delay made it possible for me to hold off on my launch here in Victoria until June, when my sister is in town. So stay tuned for more information in the next blog posting. All in all, I don't think we did too badly. From acceptance of the manuscript to publication in just over 10 months...it might still be a record. My first book review has been posted! It's thrilling to read another writer's thoughts on my novel-in-stories, and I'm especially happy that the first reviewer was Isabel Huggan.
Isabel was my mentor at the Humber School for Writers in 2012. She worked with me on some of the stories in the book and got to know the characters. She likened reading the book to reconnecting with old friends. What a nice compliment to hear that she remembered the characters and felt warmly toward them (even if she wouldn't exactly want to be Debbie's friend). In the mentorship, Isabel and I worked on individual stories, focusing on that character's arc. This was the first time she saw the larger plot and Debbie's full journey. She told me that she loved the stories, and I'm so pleased that she enjoyed reading my book. Read the full review on the Porcupine's Quill site or check out an excerpt on my new Reviews page. And come back to read more reviews as they come in. Last month I shared news on the How Writers Write Fiction MOOC out of the University of Iowa. The short six-week course is over now, and I wanted to provide an overview of the topics covered for those who might have missed it.
In week 1, the topic was voice and identity. In the assignment, we had to write a scene or short story in which the main character is a female child. "Consider who you want your character to be, and how you want her to show your readers who she is, and how much you want her to consciously know about who she is. Consider how the people around her might speak to her or describe her; consider what she might understand or not understand about how they relate to her and how they relate to the world." For this assignment, I used a scene from Plastic that I had recently revised for publication. I wanted to see how readers would react. The feedback was very positive, which was gratifying. In week 2, the topic was desire and point of view. The instructions for this assignment were more precise: "Write a scene or a short story as follows:
I could have chosen another piece from Plastic for this assignment, but I felt eager to move on to the next book. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and didn't finish the assignment before the due date. In week 3, we discussed the cast and plot. The assignment consisted of writing a short story or long scene centered on four female characters. I started working on this one and then had to set it aside, but I used the writing for the final assignment, combining the two topics. In week 4, the topic was immersion or three-dimensional setting. "Write a story or scene in which you create an immersive experience of a setting or a world. Make this a setting in which a disastrous or momentous change has recently happened. In your story, show the reader some glimpses of what this world the world is like now and some glimpses of how it used to be." Again, I started but was unable to finish the assignment in time. Once again, the writing was not lost. It provided great background notes for the final assignment. In week 5, the topic was narrative experimentation. Here, they talked about fragmented stories, where there are shifts in time frames and narrators. "For your final assignment, look at the previous assignments you wrote for this MOOC. Choose the one that you think would benefit most from a process of experimentation. Perhaps you've been revising one assignment for the last few weeks but the pace or the tone or the way it unfolds is not quite working. Or perhaps there's something you've been writing outside if this MOOC and you want to try shaking that piece of writing up with a structural experiment. Choose the piece of writing you want to experiment with and find a way to break it open." I looked at what I had been working on the previous weeks and decided to try fragmenting the story. It raised a good question for me: how do I want to structure the next book? I used fragmentation in Plastic by choosing to write 12 linked stories from different point of views rather than one long narrative. I knew that the next book would not be in short story format, but would fragmenting the story work? The feedback I received was very useful on that question. Overall, I was very happy with the course. Although I ran out of time and was not able to finish all the assignments on time, the videos, readings and comments were incredibly useful. They made me really think about what I want to say and how I want to say it, and they ramped up my excitement for the next book. |
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