Dolphins Again

Strictly speaking, that's a Walphin that Tigana is dancing with: a dolphin -killer whale cross. But Kasia had so much fun kissing a dolphin on our first trip to Hawaii, we decided that the rest of us should try it.

Back to Hawaii

Following my teaching in Summer Session this June, we took off for vacation in Hawaii. Well, I went to Edmonton to check on my Mom for a couple of days first, and I took the dog with me to confuse the kids. Because we hadn't told the kids they were going to Hawaii, only that they would 'be joining Dad', whom they knew had gone to Edmonton. They understand the need to be in Edmonton to visit family and to attend to all the Estate matters I am still plowing through (even after all this time). Not fun for them, but borne with stoic understanding that the family needed to do this. So Mary picked them up from school on their last day, drove them to the airport in Lethbridge, where they boarded a plane for Calgary, the usual transfer point to Edmonton. Mary had set them up perfectly by telling Tigana that they would drive up, but then giving in to Tigana's asking to fly up instead. (Tigana had used the argument that since I had already driven up earlier in the week, we already had a car in Edmonton, so there was no need for them to endure the six hour car trip. Mary had graciously acceeded to this request, never letting on that it was all a con.) So I flew down to Calgary from Edmonton, and was sitting in the airport Tim Horton's as they got off the plane. Kasia sees me, runs over and hugs me, as Tigana goes, "I thought we would be meeting you in Edmonton?"

Robert: "Ready to start the Grand Adventure of Summer in Edmonton."

Tigana: "Yeah, right."

Robert:" What, you don't want to spend summer in Edmonton?"

Mary: "Kasia, where do you want to go?"

Kasia: "Hawaii!" (This was a safe bet: Kasia always answers 'Hawaii' to questions like 'where would you like to have dinner tonight?' Besides a standing joke, Kasia asks us at least once a week why don't we live in Hawaii. We're having an increasingly difficult time thinking up an answer.)

Mary and I look at each other and shrug. "Okay, why didn't you say so. Let's go to Hawaii."

Tigana: "Whaatt? Youmeanaghghghghghghghghghgyeaahhhwhoooo!"

And so on. So an hour later, three hours after school ends, we're enroute to Hawaii via Vancouver.

Of course, we will be paying for this for the rest of our lives because now every time we take them to Edmonton they're going to be spending the entire trip saying, "Yeah, where are we going really?"

The Last Cup of Tea

Now that Mom is over 100, she had become increasingly frail.

She has become so thin, that her skin is essentially transparent, like those "living skeletons" used in biology classes: her bones and blood vessels, and what little muscle mass remains, are all clearly visible. The cell phone photo below doesn't really capture the effect, since it's hard to tell that you're looking through the layer of skin here; but you can maybe get a sense of the skin if you look at the wrinkles, which are like ripples on the surface of a pond; you only see the medium you're looking through when something disrupts the surface. Or look across the top of the fingers, you can sort of see the gleam of a reflection floating just above the bone; that's her skin. I can actually watch the blood flowing through her arteries/veins.


My mother's hands


What makes this particularly disconcerting is that I also had the experience of watching the blood stop flowing. I was, as is my custom when visiting her, holding and stroking mom's hand. This seems to provide her with some comfort. But on one occasion I happened to glance down as my thumb crossed various veins and arteries, and realized that I was cutting off the blood flow in each one in turn. I could actually see the blood stop moving, back up, and the color draining away 'downstream' as the supply was momentarily cut off. And I wasn't pressing hard; the lightest touch imaginable. That left me in a bit of a quandary, pitting psychological support against blood supply.

Then today, I happened to be watching one blood vessel as she crooked her fingers to take the cup handle to drink her soup, and I watched the blood in one of the vessels struggle to climb the 'hill' created by the bend, and not making it: little droplets of blood would climb half way up, like cars on a train, but roll back at the last moment.... It was unnerving. I also noticed dozens of little bruises all over, which I deduce are caused by blood vessel failure. (Quite aside from the fact that I have complete faith in the staff at her nursing home, the location of these bruises are completely wrong as 'grab points' or bed sores, but adjacent to what appears to be the end of a blood vessel.)

Similarly, whereas I used to rub her neck for her whenever I visited, there simply isn't any detectable muscle mass back there for me to message any longer. Looking at her arms and legs, the increasingly number of bruises, and her general frailness, I worry that her time is running out; but listening to her chatting away and laughing at my jokes, I think she she's good for another four years.

Much of what she has to say doesn't really make sense, at least not as part of our consensual reality. It is perfectly consistent and reasonable if one is prepared to accept that my mother, like the hero of Slaughterhouse Five has come loose in time and is moving back and forth through her life; or that there is an afterlife, and it consists largely of visiting with friends and relatives. Whenever I ask what she was doing today, she answers, "Not much of anything today. I was up late visiting with _____ (fill in the blank -- today it was our wonderful neighbours of 30 years ago, the Whitbreads) so decided to just take it easy today." Sometimes this comes across as her remembering some event from years before; more often, these seem to be current visits with those from beyond the veil. It's hard to explain exactly, but the visits sound to me as accurate projections of how people would have interacted had they been all gathered together in the same room, though most of them had never met in this world, at least not as adult contemporaries, being from different generations. Mom is now constantly with her mother, her sister, my brother, and sometimes one or more of her brothers. These are the people she talks with while I'm with her, and to whom she often attempts to pass the cup I have just put into her hands. "Tea Evie?" she'll ask. Significantly, she never sees anyone in this group or as visitors come to call on this group, who are still alive. When she talks about my visits or those of Ron, my other surviving sibling, it is quite clear that she is referring to our visits to her in the nursing home, and not to the group in the Garden (behind her mother's house in 1948), the usual setting for those visiting in the beyond. If mom were just "confused", wouldn't one expect her to mix up the quick and the dead?

One purpose of my visits serve is to get my mom a cup of tea. She likes a cup of tea of an evening, but it is not included in her official nursing home diet, so she only gets it when I'm there. She is supposed to be drinking an 'Ensure' type drink, which they thoughtfully warm for her, and which she seems to quite enjoy; but ultimately, it's not her beloved cup of tea. I realize that the tea fills her up without providing nutrition, but one has to balance nutrition against the psychological value of a really good cup of tea. And I do use one of her protein drinks as the 'cream' substitute, so I do get something into her. This trip, however, I was forced to acknowledge that the logistical issues had become untenable, and it was with great sadness that I realized that this might well be her very last cup.

I'd noticed on my last few trips that Mom was having increasing difficulty with sitting up straight: she now perpetually leans 35 degrees to the left. No amount of pushing her upright seems to help; she immediately re-adjusts to what must seem level to her, and actively resists attempts to help her hold her cup straight, complaining that I'm going to spill the contents to the right, when I manage to hold the cup level for a second. I've heard about people who've had strokes being skewed from the vertical like this, and given that mom is totally blind, she can't even use visual cues to keep herself aligned. This isn't a huge problem for the staff or I spooning in her pureed dinner, and she can usually manage her cup of (usually quite thick) soup by herself, though some days as much lands on her apron-sized bib as in her mouth, dribbling off the left edge of the tilted cup. But tea is a different matter entirely. Mom likes it hot, and being significantly thinner than the soup, her trembling hand and bad angle inevitably send near scalding tea splashing onto, and soaking through, her bib. Doubling the layers of the bibs helps a bit in terms of keeping her from getting burned, but ultimately, the experience is no longer a calming one. She is aware of the tea dribbling off her lips, and her hand feels around for the lake of tea on her lap, and of course it upsets her that she has spilled. Cold drinks present no such problem, being drunk through a straw, but even if I could keep the tea cool enough to drink with a straw, it is not really the full 'tea' experience anymore.

One minor compensation is that I will no longer have to deal with the problem of Aunt Evie. Whenever I would offer Mom a cup of tea, she would inevitably pause half way to her first sip and say, "but you haven't gotten any tea for Evie!" There would follow several minutes of frantic cup chasing as Mom would say, "Here Evie, take my cup!" and reach out to place the cup in Evie's hands, which did not, as it happen, extend into this world. I was generally able to intercept the cup before it crashed to the floor/spilled over Mom's legs, but this would often engender some conflict as Mom would demand to know "what are you playing at?" trying to grab away the cup of tea she was offering her sister. And it became quite clear over the months that while there is a good supply of buns and scones on the other side, it is apparently impossible to get a really good cup of tea. (In this context, the Red Rose ad campaign, "only in Canada, eh?" takes on an entirely new dimension.) I have the strong impression that Evie, although quite happy with 'life' over there, would dearly like a cup of tea and a cigarette. Asking my Mom or I for a cigarette is a lost cause, but she does seem to feel the prospects for a cup of tea worth pursing. I have not yet worked out the theological implications of all this.

Sunburst Short List Announced

The shortlist for the Sunburst Award has been announced, and I was a bit surprised by how few of the finalists I had actually heard of, let alone read. It just goes to show how many Canadian authors are writing SF these days, and how diversified the field has become. Really, very impressive!

Bit disappointed that more of my personal favorites were not short listed, like Lorina Stephen's Shadow Song, which is certainly literary enough for this juried award -- but then, I notice Kenneth Oppel only manages an honorable mention, so if a Governor General's award winner doesn't meet the standard....

I really appreciate how the shortlist was announced. The webpage shows the cover (good way to get a sense of tone for a book, at least sometimes) the cover blurb (let the book speak for itself), a comment from the jury (quick review explaining why it qualified for award), and brief bio identifying the author. All very informative. Certainly get a good overview of which titles would be of interest as readers of the genre; and a good overview of what's out there in Canadian SF these days.

Will have to add all these titles to my Amazon.ca wish list....

My heartfelt thanks to the Jury and all those that made the award possible -- obviously a lot of work being done here to highlight Canadian SF, and obviously being very successful!

Expresso Book Machine

Went up to visit my mom this weekend, and stopped into the UofA bookstore to have a look at the Expresso book machine.

The UofA machine is a custom built model one (though you can't see 'em in this photo, it has four printers attached instead of the usual one) was installed Nov. 2007.

Apparently the machine attracted a lot of publicity when it was installed, but living 500 k away in Lethbridge, I hadn't heard of it at the time. Having recently seen the video on the version 2, I sought the machine out and was surprised to find that the UofA had already been using theirs for a couple of years.

I was extremely impressed by both the quality of the books being printed -- they were distinguishable from the regular pocket books or trade paperbacks on the nearby shelves only by the superior crispness of the Expresso's interior printing -- and by the passion of the woman in charge who clearly took pride in her work, and went out of her way to be helpful.

The original version was just kind of dumped in the back of the bookstore, and the operator had to figure it out -- no training provided -- and she also has to do the repairs herself. It's not like having a photocopier where you just phone the service guy. When something breaks that she can't fix herself, they have to fly an engineer up from the factory floor. But the flip side of that need for self-reliance was the complete sense of ownership and commitment to the process-- we talked at some length about how she'd experimented with different types of paper and ink and cover stock to arrive at the perfect combination. And she really does produce a superior product. She showed me a book from the UofA Press, and her copy of the same book, and I literally couldn't tell the difference. Given that many of the smaller presses are opting for cheaper paper and particularly cheap coverstock and bindings, the Expresso product is clearly superior.

The version 2 is smaller, easier to operate, and cheaper. She told me that the Expresso people had spent a lot of time debriefing her about the machine and incorporated a lot of her feedback into the Version 2. So it's the version 2 that's being rolled out as a commercial mass market product.

The sociological implications of this machine are staggering. When it first came out ten years ago, the product was not that great and a lot of people who looked at the first two gigantic clunky machines were not impressed. But the woman at the UofA told me that those were just concept demo models and never intended for commercial use. So there was a lot of talk about publishing on demand (POD) back then, but the legacy publishers sort of pooh poohed it.

But the version at the UofA is a different matter entirely. These books do not look like amateur photocopied knockoffs -- these look like what they are, legitimate books. The day I was there, she was printing off copies of Kim Campbell's autobiography. The legacy publisher that had originally brought the book out isn't interested in warehousing a few thousand copies or processing occasional orders -- the big publishers require big numbers to achieve economies of scale -- but by POD Campbell can keep the book in print and make it available if and when needed. Similarly, profs can self-publish texts for their own courses (publishers aren't interested unless the course or its equivalent is offered across multiple campuses), authors can self-publish, and so on. One budding local SF author had printed 50 copies on the Expresso and taken the book to a bookfair -- where Penguin bought the book and signed the author. Others use the Expresso to print off fifty copies (or just one!) of the family history, or their collection of blog posts, or whatever. The possibilities are endless.

This, I think, changes everything.

For the price of the machine (about $150,00) one could open a bookstore. The only space requirement would be a counter, enough room for the photocopier-sized machine, and a cash register. Personally, I would throw in an expresso coffee machine and half a dozen tables so people could have a latte while they wait, though since it only takes about 10 minutes to print and bind your book, there is a danger that your book would be ready before your coffee. It would be sooo easy to add this to any of the existing coffee shops (Starbucks/second cup/Esquires/etc) in town. No hundreds of feet of bookshelves, no rent, no stock, no stock-taking, no theft, no shopworn books, no sending unsold books back, no remaindering books that you couldn't sell, no being stuck with unsold books. Nothing but a terminal where customers browse through any of the 650,000 titles available online. Or bring in their own flash card with he book they want. So infinitely more selection than existing bookstores; but no waiting four days for delivery from the online stores and no shipping costs. Lower carbon footprint for shipping and wasted paper. Win-win-win.

Just like the ipod effectively eliminated the need for record stores or record companies and individuals can simply record their garage band and upload it to the net; now authors can simply upload their books to the net, and people can download to their Kindle or sony reader -- or PRINT IT OUT AS AN ACTUAL BOOK.

Or to approach the topic from the opposite direction: By sheer coincidence, the other person I talked to on campus this weekend was UofA engineering librarian Randy Reichardt. Randy took me round to look at some recent acquisitions the Uof A library had made related to SF fandom, fanzines from the 1930s and 1940s, SF fandom being a mutual interest of ours. These included copies of many legendary fanzines from that era that I had heard of but never seen. These amateur SF magazines were produced on hectographs (how many of you have ever seen a hectographs? I've only ever seen 1 and I am OLD) and Gesteners (ABDick in the States). The hectograph art had stood up very well over time (unlike ditto which often promptly faded to invisibility). There followed a discussion of our own fanzine years, and the sadness that that era was now over. Modern fans -- with a few rare exceptions -- don't produce fanzines anymore, but instead produce webpages and blogs. These formats are obviously much superior: color is as cheap as black and white; there are no mailing costs; no printing costs; and the audience / print run (potentially) infinitely larger. As wonderful a vehicle for fandom as the internet is, I still miss the old days of the printed zine.

Well...with the Expresso Book Machine, or other POD systems, those days are back again. Only this time, we're talking whole books! It has once again become ridiculously easy to put out your own product. Cost is 7 cents a page, so a hundred page book comes out as $7.00 (same cost for trade paper or pocket book, though you get more words per page in the trade). Add on shipping and handling, and what, $10? Which is what pocketbooks cost these days, and half the price of a trade paperback.

see CBC Sparks radio program on similar trend towards turning blogs posts into newspapers.

Not one of my best moments...

This is wrong on so many levels, but they say confession is good for the soul....

Wednesday I had a couple of teeth on the upper right crowned, only one of them turned out to be past saving, and the dentist had to pull it instead. So getting a tooth pulled isn't great, and the extraction was 'complicated' -- which means it felt like they had to break my upper jaw/skull to get it out, but okay, what's done is done. They sent me home to take Advil and hope for the best.

I have to say, getting massive amounts of Advil in there before the swelling started worked wonders for keeping the tooth pain down to mild background noise, though the bleeding did make me nauseous, and Advil doesn't agree with my stomach all that well. The hole in my upper jaw where the tooth used to be reminded me pretty fast if I forgot to take the next dose on time, or if a stray piece of pasta wandered over to the side of the mouth I wasn't eating on. But four days on, it's not exactly foreground.

Enter my wife's amazing spaghetti sauce. She's trying to keep to foods I can chew easily, right? But her spaghetti sauce is really good so it's no hardship for me or the kids. In fact, I blame her for what happens next.

We have this wicked spaghetti ladle, specially designed to scoop up spaghetti in its wickedly long prongs. And having finished my portion of tonight's spaghetti, and as much of the kids' portion I could sneak off their plates when they were off arguing about something, there was still a little smidgen left in the cooking pot -- which I scooped up on said pronged ladle, and, um, stuck in my mouth.




As I said, not one of my best moments.

origami

This is pretty interesting: trailer for "Between the Folds".
See also this great 18 minute TED talk on Origami. First rate, worth your time!

The first two chapters of Edward Willett's lastest SF novel, Terra Insegura, are available as a podcast. Willett has the advantage over other authors that as a long-time radio personality (regular science guy stuff on CBC Regina) he is completely comfortable with the podcast format.

100th Birthday

Sunday, April 5th, was my mother's 100th birthday. It was a small affair, attended only by myself, my wife, and our two daughters. There were several reasons we didn't want to make too big a deal out of it.

First, my mom has good days and bad days, and I didn't much care for the idea of having a lot of people descend on my mom's nursing home if it turned out to be one of the bad days. In the event, she was mostly okay. (The nurse told me that mom hadn't wanted to get out of bed that morning, but that they had coaxed her into her wheel chair because they knew we were coming.) She was awake for most of the two hours we were there, and not in too much pain, and alert and in moderately good spirits, so we could have had more visitors, but you never know.



Mom having a cup of tea as one of the nurses we really like joins us for the celebration.

Tigana, Kasia (just peeking in over Tigana's shoulder), me, and Mary with my Mom on her 100th birthday. Mom is appreciatively cuddling with the extra soft, fuzzy purple blanket we gave her as a birthday present.

 

 

Second, we had had a big reception for mom's 90th, when she still lived on her own, and Mary had catered for about 60 people. But when we looked at the invitation list from that birthday, except for a few relatives, there wasn't actually anyone left on it... Mom has managed to outlive all of her friends and contemporaries. The one niece who still lives in Edmonton offered to come, but had to cancel at the last minute as her husband came down with a terrible cold -- and you don't take a bad cough into a nursing home (unless you're looking for an earlier inheritance).

Third, I wasn't sure how big a deal to make of the fact that mom had made it to 100. When we last discussed her age earlier this year, she thought she was about 92. When I told her she was actually 99, she became very depressed, and said "Well, if that's true, then I'm done!" Fortunately, she forgot the conversation, and when I returned the next day, thought she was in her 80s.

One of mom's surviving nieces (a woman Mom considers the daughter she never had) sent a great card. It's almost impossible to find a card that says "Happy 100th", 'cause, let's face it, there's not that large a market. And being blind, mom can't actually read her cards anymore. So they picked a birthday card that played "The Age of Aquarius" (which Mom could hear if not see); and the card read: "On your birthday, free you mind — it's not the age you are it's the age you believe in". Which is way too funny, given my mom's situation!

Most of the time Mom is in her Mother's back garden, having tea with her mother and her sister Evie, with occasional visits from either her brothers Tom and Charlie, or my brother Doug. It's 1948, she's 39, and her father has just passed away. She spends a lot of her time there, which in my view is a perfectly good place to be if the alternative is bedridden, blind, mostly deaf, and bored in a nursing home. The only problem for me is that mom isn't always clear on who I am, since in her world I won't be born for another 3 years; but she does seem to remember my daughters, Tigana and Kasia. I think their having unusual names helps her keep them straight. She hasn't remembered who Mary is since Mom went to the nursing home.

On my last visit up to Edmonton, Mom had started talking about her aunts, Rose, Daisy and Violet, whom she believed were staying with her at her house. As she chatted away about them, I thought, "say, here's a chance to take some notes!" because it is a part of the family genealogy I don't know well. (Mom was the one who kept all our relations straight, with Doug as our backup, but since her memory has failed and Doug is gone, there is no one left to ask who is who.) So I started jotting down some things and asking mom a few questions, hoping to probe a bit, but had to stop when mom mentioned that her dad had recently died (in her world) as the result of being attacked by raccoons. Oops. I'm pretty sure if it had been raccoons, someone would have mentioned that somewhere along the line, so I had to concede that mom's Alzheimer's makes her an unreliable source, and abandon my note-taking.

Her 100th birthday visit was good. She only eats pureed foods now, so we mashed up a piece of birthday cake with some tea (her drink of choice) and she wolfed that down faster than anything I've seen her eat in the last decade. When I commented that I hoped it wouldn't spoil her supper (her not eating enough being an issue) she responded that the birthday cake was a heck of a lot better than supper! (Actually the food in this particular nursing home is better than most; even pureed, Mom usually says how much she enjoys the food. She's just, at 100, not that interested in eating any more.) We gave her an extra soft, cuddly, purple fuzzy blanket for her birthday present, as she is perpetually cold, and she seemed to really like it, refusing to let go of it for the duration. And I got her a cup of tea, the one thing she can never get enough of.

For us, her reaching 100 is great in the sense that she has had a long and largely good life. She was taking care of herself right up to her move to the home two or three years ago; and was mostly lucid up to my brother's passing last year. His daily visits provided the stability she needed to stay anchored in this world, though she had already started to visit with her mom and Evie on a regular basis. But actually being 100 kind of sucks, and it saddens me to see how far her health has declined this year. Still, as long as she is happy visiting relatives, and she is not in too much pain, well and good.

Rejection Letters

Lorina Stephens, author of Shadow Song reviewed here previously, has posted to her blog the rejection letters she received from the mainstream press before turning to self-publishing. I found the letters -- the reasons she was given by various publishers for not publishing her historical cultural fantasy novel -- fascinating, both as someone who read and loved the book, and as an aspiring writer myself. I asked Lorina if I could reprint her column here; my own commentary on the letters follows:
========================
Every writer gets them, those dreaded letters, forms, slips of paper or, more currently, emails that either cryptically or in detail describe why it is their work won't be appearing on that publisher's list.

Given the reviews and success I'm meeting as a self-published author, who grew weary with excuses and the ritual of the publishing world, I thought I'd post five of many rejections I received for my novel, Shadow Song. You may, or may not, find them of interest.

You write well, and you've obviously done homework on the Indian ritual and custom, but it seems to me that the book is too quiet and 'domestic' in its tone to do well for us just now.

Susan Allison
The Berkley Publishing Group
July 26, 1990

Though I liked your storytelling I'm afraid that I was unable to stir the enthusiasm of the powers that be for the Canadian Frontier subject matter.

Brian Thomsen
Senior Editor
Warner Books, Inc.
August 28, 1990

The event you have chosen to focus on is indeed loaded with possibilities however, the novel you have chosen to write about it seems to me to fall right between the genres of adult, almost romantic, fiction and young adult. By that I mean, I regret, that it is neither one nor the other -- it is too coy for adult readers and too violent for the younger readers (although I realized young people are reading and watching things that would probably terrify me."


You are also flying in the face of current sentiment about non-native writers (I am making an assumption about you here that could be quite incorrect) writing about native people. Native readers and writers are becoming both hostile vocal about their portrayal by non-natives and there will be opposition.

Susan Girvan
Editorial Co-ordinator
Macmillan of Canada
October 20, 1990

The premise is very interesting indeed, but the story moves along rather slowly. In view of the fact the sample is around 12,500 words long, yet it includes only the first two paragraphs of the synopsis, it looks to me as if the book is well over 100,000 words. This is not an economically feasible length for a first novel. You might want to think about conflating incidents and varying the emphasis to both shorten the book and speed up the narrative.

Laurel Boone
Acquisitions Editor
Goose Lane Editions
April 8, 1996

The following are the reasons that we found your submission unsuitable:

requires a fair amount of editing, which we don't provide to that degree

writing in first person does not appear to enhance the protagonist's development

not enough fantasy, too conventional

characters seem extremely predictable

We hope that this does indeed help you to better target your work for the market it is suited for.

Kimberly Gammon
Editorial & Sales Manager
HADES Publications

Posted by Five Rivers Chapmanry at 4/02/2009 06:20:00 AM

==============

That first rejection (from Berkley) leaves me banging my head against the wall. "Too quiet and domestic?" What the ???! Because, writing from female point of view is domestic, is it? Three rapes, four murders, and being stalked relentlessly is now considered "too quiet"? I guess Lorina needed to work in a couple more car chases?!

I sympathize more with the Warner rejection. Thomsen clearly liked the book but couldn't sell Canadian content to an American publisher. That has a very long Canadian tradition -- Lorina is in fine company with that one.

I get Girvan saying that it crosses too many genre boundaries to be marketable. Never mind that that is one of the big pluses of the book for me as a reader (Lorina's book certainly taught me a thing or two about historical romance -- I promise to stop making disparaging remarks about that genre ever again) the fact remains that publishers today are driven by the marketing department not the editors, so clear market category is a necessity of commercial success, if not artistic integrity. So I understand that they didn't know how to market Shadow Song, but it doesn't make me happy with the state of publishing.

The comment on cultural appropriation is also understandable, if quite wrong in this instance. I can see a publisher not wanting to put themselves in the middle of a controversy when it has 200 other manuscripts with no such potential baggage. But aside from the fact that controversy is as likely to sell books as not, no one who read this book could accuse it of appropriation because it is clearly written from the point of view of the English heroine, not the natives. I think this comment must come from reading the synopsis rather than the book itself.

I never heard of Goose Lane Editions, but since when does a Canadian publisher complain a book is 'too slow'? "Moves along slowly" is quintessentially Canadian, and one of the things I loved about this book. You don't get the sensual descriptions, the depth of character, the underlying tension of the relentless pursuit in a fast paced narrative. I am so tired of TV pacing that introduces a problem and solves it within 22 minutes (plus commercials). This book needs all the space it takes, and there isn't a wasted word or a redundant scene anywhere.

I am more sympathetic to the economic reality that it is harder to justify the risk of a thick book on a new author, but by god, did they READ the book? Some risks are worth taking, and this book definitely will find its audience. I think what they are really saying is that they are too small time to be able to afford it.

As for Hades Publishing, what can I say? I would have to agree that there are not enough fantasy elements for the book to fit comfortably within their fantasy line, so I would be okay if they had just said that, though again, it must be frustrating for Lorina having a great book nobody is able to market within their little niches -- but the other comments are just completely off the mark. I have to say, this has certainly given me pause about sending them my own manuscript. Some of the books Hades has sent me to review are appallingly bad (too bad for me to actually review) so I just thought they were having trouble finding the great books -- that they were so dismissive of Lorina's manuscript is... troubling.

Though again, to be fair, the problem may be that they are responding to a synopsis, rather than the book itself. Could anyone sell a synopsis based on Romeo and Juliet? McBeth? The plots are stupid and predictable, if viewed in that light, but the writing...! And while I didn't see Lorina's novel as predictable -- certainly not the ending I expected -- I wonder how any plot synopsis can really do justice to any book, let alone one so based on characterization, sensual description, and spirituality.

I wish more authors would print their rejection letters. It certainly will help me face my own inevitable rejection letters if I see books as good as Lorina's garnering such comments. But then I and other beginning writers have long been sustained by the stories of great novels which had been repeatedly rejected prior to their ultimate publication to critical acclaim and financial success. Alexei Panshin's first novel, Rites of Passage comes to mind, published by legendary editor Terry Carr as part of the initial round of the Ace Specials in the mid-1960s. After what? 28 rejections? Or was it 43? The details are a bit hazy at this remove, but the point was Panshin had just decided to give up on the novel, shelved it permanently after receiving the latest rejection, when Carr called him up and asked (based on having read a couple of Panshin's short stories while editing a best of collection) 'You don't have a novel kicking around by any chance, do you?"

I can't imagine what Grade 10 would have been like for me without Panshin's fiction. I wrote my first English paper on a comparison of Rite of Passage with (mandatory Grade 10 novel) To Kill a Mocking Bird. The adventures of Anthony Villiers was 3/4 of the basis of the subculture of the group I hung with in high school. (Okay, admittedly we were total nerds, but come on --Anthony Villiers, people! This was the 60s after all.)

Anyway, one cannot help but reflect on how many Alexei Panshins out there never got that phone call, never ultimately got published; and whether they would have availed themselves of the print on demand options available to modern authors; and whether we, the readers, could have found them -- the signal -- among all the noise....

However reassuring it is to realize that one's book can be still worthy, even if repeatedly rejected -it is also necessarily terrifying. What if nobody ever gets it?

Well, not nobody, I guess. I love my book, even if no one else ever will....

April Fools

Well, we did a couple of childish pranks on our kids. On our way to bed, at 12:01 AM, we woke Tigana up and told her it was time for school. "You're kidding," she protested, "it feels like I just got to sleep!" which is pretty accurate. She got as far as the bathroom for her morning shower before she spotted the clock. "Oh, you guys! I knew it all along!" Back to bed.

So then we went around setting the clocks an hour ahead. We originally thought we'd get them up an hour early, driving them to school to find the doors still closed, but that would have meant us getting up an hour early, so we went with plan B. The alarm goes off, and mom jumps up shouting, "Oh no! We've overslept! You have to be at school in 20 minutes!" followed by much running around getting ready -- complicated somewhat by Tigana telling Kasia that today was Pajama Day as her prank on Kasia -- jumping into the car and racing off to school. We got about a block before Tigana spotted the car clock, and called us on it. So we just drove to Tim's for breakfast.

Enroute a little voice from the back says, "I knew it wasn't really PJ day either!" "That's okay," says Mom, "We've brought your day clothes to change into at school"
"What? No, I want to wear PJs all day! It will be funny being the only one in PJs." Funny how different the kids are. Tigana would be mortified to show up in the wrong costume, but not Kasia.

Waiting now for the other shoe to drop. What do the kids have planned for us/me? At 11 and 5, the only thing they agree on is their addiction to the show Prank Patrol. Memo to self: get kids to bed by 6PM, before they can do anything....

Poetry

This poem has been doing the rounds of writer's blogs/Facebook/Twitter this week, and is now my favorite new poem:

http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/bookofmyenemy.html

Works for academics as much as writers.

Jackie Hurt

So I came in from my walk last night and turned around to see this on Jackie's hip. We phoned the vet immediately, even though it was after10:00 already; and then we tried to figure out what the hell had happened while we waited for the vet to call back.

Mary and the kids had been playing with Jackie for an hour before I took Jackie out for her evening walk, and hadn't noticed anything, so it was pretty obvious it had to have happened on the walk. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out how she could have acquired such a wound while on a four foot leash without my noticing. I rewalked the route in my mind's eye, and while there is one fence on our usual route that has two nails sticking out of it, we always give it a wide birth; and while Jackie had had one of her freakouts barking at one of the neighbour dogs (most days she's okay with his barking from behind the fence, but every once in awhile he must bark something especially rude, because she pulls and jumps and goes nuts, as on this occasion) I could not see how my pulling on her leash could have resulted in a puncture wound like this.

Mary's first thought was it was a gunshot wound. This is a bit paranoid, but only a bit because we had a candidate in mind who is crazy enough to think shooting our dog would be funny. But I would have heard something, or seen someone, surely. Even a BB gun would have made an audible piff. But then, worrying my way through the walk again and again, I suddenly remembered that Jackie had -- on one of the quiet stretches of our route where there are no other dogs --jerked around as if shot, and kept pulling to go back, starring at something. I remembered my saying at the time, "Jackie, there's nothing there, you're jumping at shadows". I thought nothing further of it, but now, in retrospect, I wonder if I had allowed Jackie to be injured without my even noticing.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that must have been the moment -- only a block or so before I found the wound, and Jackie had been convinced that there was something there -- what if I had missed some kid in the bushes with a BB gun, and ignored my dog's attempt to warn me? Or even if the gunshot wound seemed far fetched, what if there was some dangerous object sticking out of the lawn or a fence or one of those old garbage can sheds? I let my dog get hurt, and I hadn't even noticed or listened to her. Paroxysm of guilt that such a thing should happen on my watch.

When the vet didn't phone back within the hour, we phoned a second vet who agreed to see Jackie immediately. She was really great, even though it was after midnight when we finally brought Jackie in. She told me that it wasn't a gunshot (which was somewhat reassuring -- it means I don't have to start driving to another neighbourhood for nightly walks); and that it looked older than the timeframe I had indicated. Once she shaved away Jackie's fur, it was obvious the puncture was from above, rather than from the side. The vet nominated a dog bite or a tree branch.

So then it was Mary wracking her brain, trying to think what could have happened. The day before she had taken Jackie for an off leash run, but Mary was positive there had been no dog fights or any other hazards. And how could she not have noticed the wound? We couldn't see how it was possible.

Eventually, we came up with our current theory, which is that there was a barbed wire fence at the off-leash park, and it is remotely possible that Jackie ran into a barb which sliced her open, but that the torn flap of skin remained over the cut, making it invisible -- and that when I had yanked Jackie back off the road during her freakout on our walk the next evening, she had tumbled onto her bum, and that was what rolled back the loose flap of skin, reveaing the wound. It makes sense to us, but we will never really know for sure. I certainly have become very paranoid about hidden obstructions on our night-time walks.

So, the vet treated Jackie, gave her the 14 day antibiotics, gave us doggie equivalent of Advil, and the dreaded "cone" and sent Jackie home. I was very pleased with the vet's bedside manner, very impressed with Jackie's stoic acceptance of the pain, though a very sad picture. Being the hopeless softies we are, he hate having her in the cone so have tried protecting the wound by dressing Jackie in shorts and T-Shirt, but that's only good while we're there to watch Jackie closely -- she undoes the clothes if we aren't. So it will have to be kennel and cone for times we're both out, much as it pains us to see Jackie like that.

Anyone have any experience dealing with these kind of puncture wounds? In their dogs, I mean.

Self-Publishing and the Exception to the Rule

It's easy to see that the publishing industry, like the music industry before it, is undergoing major changes where in future it may not be uncommon to see writers simply bypassing the publishers altogether to sell directly to their readers. The new print-on-demand publishers (like Lulu) make it extremely easy and economical for writers to self-publish, especially where these have immediate access to on-line distribution through Amazon or Chapters. This is good, because in cutting out the middleman (publishers, retailers) costs can be kept down, yet with a much higher return from the cover price going directly to the writer. But this is also very bad, because without a publisher acting as 'referee', the reader has almost no way of navigating through the storm of self-publishing that is threatening to overwhelm us.

Self-publishing is often legitimate when dealing with small niche or regional markets. As small publishers have increasingly been bought out by larger national publishers, and national publishers consolidated into global megapublishers, the big publishers have taken on so much debt acquiring their former competition, that they can no longer survive publishing books with limited appeal. To survive, they increasingly rely on economies of scale, and have been dropping even their formerly profitable midlist authors (those who sell 50,000-75,000 copies). So when authors I know turn up in limited editions from small regional presses or their own personal imprint, no problem. But finding new authors worthy of attention amongst the recent tidal wave of self-published titles is another matter entirely.

Most self-published work is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- dreadful. As a reviewer these last 30 years, a lot of self-published titles have crossed my desk on their way to landfill, and they have generally ranged from dreadful to appalling. There was one author I recall who had a certain naive charm, in an amateurishly painful way, but she was the exception to the rule, and even her work wasn't good enough for me to actually review -- I don't see the point of really negative reviews when there are so many good titles worthy of recommendation.

This history of self-publishing as synonymous with bad writing is a problem for those trying to catch the wave of the future, because professional reviewers have been conditioned to simply ignore any self-published work sent into them. Indeed, not only is it unlikely to be worthy of review space even in the local paper or niche market newsletter, the sort of individual that self-publishes is often the sort who takes personal affront at bad reviews, and there is only so much crank mail, tire-slashing, and death threats a reviewer can put up with before just deciding not to bother. Which sometimes leaves good writers who can't sell to the mega-publishers an uphill battle for acceptance.

Once such title is Lorina Stephens' Shadow Song. From the perspective of the major publishers, Shadow Song is unmarketable for three reasons: (1) as a Historical Romance, it has way too many fantasy elements; as a fantasy novel, it reads too much like a Historical; and as a Canadian novel, it's too down beat for either. So when a marketing department can't figure out which imprint to bring it out under, the project just doesn't go forward. (2) There are elements here that could lead to charges either of cultural appropriation or subtle racism. Both charges would be false, the first person narration merely expressing the authentic views of a European from 1830, but from the publisher's point of view, why take on any controversy when there are a hundred other manuscripts that won't raise any flags. (3) I think this book has real potential as a companion to high school history / novel study classes, but there are three sex scenes that essentially block it from that market. So, I appreciate why the big publishers looking for an easy, surefire hit, passed on Shadow Song.

But none of those considerations should matter to actual readers. It's simply a marvelous book, the exception that proves that sometimes self-published can be great. Indeed, I go so far as to say that the superior writing, backed by meticulous research and authentic characterization, elevates this cultural fantasy to candidate for Great Canadian Novel. As a historical romance, it features a ten year old girl thrust into life in 1830s Upper Canada (after sheltered aristocratic upbringing in England) and eventually into learning from First nation's shaman. The fantasy elements based on First Nation's culture are as convincing and riveting as any based on usual Celtic/Anglo traditions; the historical detail so finely rendered you can reach out to touch the settings; and the authentic voice of 1830s heroine gives narration fine Jane Austin feel-- with maybe touch of Black Donnellys thrown in. Definitely in the best tradition of dark, slow Canadian fiction, Shadow Song packs a powerful punch.

Highly recommended. (If you buy it, go for the green cover pictured here, rather than the original blue cover.)

Bad Dog!

Mary and I are reluctant to kennel Jackie during the day. Jackie is great at voluntarily going into her kennel at night, often without even being asked, but flops onto the ground and has to be dragged to her kennel on the rare occasions when we've kenneled her during the day. So, if we intend to be away for brief periods, we have been letting her roam the house.
In anticipation of Jackie being at home alone, we go around closing bedroom doors and so on, so she just has the run of the basement and the ground floor -- kitchen, dinning room, and front room. I'm fairly good at policing those areas to ensure there is nothing left out that Jackie can destroy, though Jackie has been steadily educating us on what constitutes "potential toy" to her. The electrical cord on the vacuum cleaner, for example, took me by surprise; luckily it wasn't plugged in at a time. But just like with baby-proofing the house when Tigana and Kasia were small, we now automatically lift everything chewable up onto counters and shelves out of Jackie's reach.

I have to confess that I may have occasionally accidently on purpose failed to put away particularly loathsome kids' toys – you know the ones I mean: the ugly stuffie that the kids insist they still want, even though neither has actually touched it in four years; or the politically incorrect bratz doll that somebody gave one of them for a birthday present; or the beloved teddy that has started to go a bit moldy. If these happen to be left on the basement floor, well, it's Jackie takes the blame on their dismemberment, not me for throwing them out; and the kids learn (very slowly, I must say) to pick up after themselves.
So, after quickly checking that there was nothing on the floor except sacrificial kids' toys and a half dozen strategically placed Jackie toys, including a new stuffed gopher which should have been good entertainment for 2 hours, we left Jackie at home alone for a bit longer than usual -- four hours.

We came home to find her toys and the kids' toys all perfectly fine, still scattered about the floor. However. The stuff – our stuff – on the dining room table....

So Jackie apparently climbed up onto the supposedly out-of-reach surface of the table and ate 1 silicon oven mitt (I would have though those essentially indestructible!); an assortment of pens; a bar of old soap (well, we sent 20 minutes reconstructing the pieces strewn around the room to ascertain that it was essentially all accounted for and we didn't have to phone the vet to pump her stomach); and – wait for it – my $400 ipod.

Fortunately, I had my laptop and its power cord with me, or otherwise I'd no doubt be looking at a $4,000 replacement cost. But why oh why would a dog climb up on a dinning room table to eat an ipod? They can't taste that great.
I was a bit surprised how calmly I took this—I listen to that ipod whenever I get the chance – it is my main source of CBC/NPR/BBC/TVO programming, and listening to shows like Sparks, Search Engine, and Q, is a significant resource for courses I teach on popular culture and cyberculture etc. Listening to the ipod is the only thing that made housework – especially alone in my brother's or mother's places – tolerable. Long drives, like when I go up to Edmonton to check on Mom or renovations to Doug's, I listen through external speakers. I'm not sure I manage without an ipod.

When I asked Mary why I was being so philosophical about it, Mary reminded me of when we first met, and she had left her two dogs with me while she went out on the lecture circuit for a couple of weeks. I'd come home one day soon after to discover the two dogs had got into and torn apart a giant carton of crayons. There had been micro pieces of crayon spread over and rubbed into the living room carpet changing it from a standard neutral beige to a truly unique "rainbow". And to Mary's surprise and delight, my only reaction had to been to burst out laughing. It was obviously my fault, not the dogs', that I had left the crayons where they could chew them up. I think it was at that point she figured I'd make a passable father for her kids....
But it does mean we will have to kennel Jackie when we're away from now on, which seems so mean. At least, it's usually only for a couple of hours at a time this time of year, since Mary and I can work from home most of the time, just going in for actual classes or meetings. But still....