This is pretty interesting: trailer for "Between the Folds".
See also this great 18 minute TED talk on Origami. First rate, worth your time!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
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.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
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.
==============
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....
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.
Posted by Five Rivers Chapmanry at 4/02/2009 06:20:00 AM
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
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....
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
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....
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....
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
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.
http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/bookofmyenemy.html
Works for academics as much as writers.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
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.
Monday, March 16, 2009
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.)
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.)
Friday, March 06, 2009
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....
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....
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Dog Dreams
So, I'm having a normal dream, something about waiting in the Green room just prior to addressing the Intergalactic Council (okay, I meant 'normal' for me) when suddenly my recently deceased dog, Pooka, shows up, barking like mad. It's the "Come quick, Jimmy's fallen down the well" kind of barking, so I cast about for the emergency. I become aware without quite knowing how, as you do in dreams, that the (I'm not quite clear who at this point) soul has left the body and we have to get it back in. So the background shifts, and I'm in the basement of my previous house (more or less) with Mary and Tigana all shouting at this free floating soul (which I half realize by now is Kasia) to go back to her body quickly before it's too late, and waving our arms as if to brush the soul back in the right direction on the air currents our fanning creates. Pooka is bouncing up and down and barking more frantically than any of us. Then I say, "I can't see it!" because, you know, souls are invisible, though I can approximate where there is a presence. And Pooka looks at me with "You're an idiot" frustrated expression I may have seen on his face more than a few times when he was alive, and he suddenly flops down, stops barking, or moving for that matter. And then there is tiny red spark floating up from Pooka. I know it is his soul floating up out of his body. It looks like a tiny solar system, with tiny loops within loops and a central red core, all sparkly in a tiny point of light kind of way. And it is coming towards me, and Mary calls, "Look out, don't let it touch you!" and I kind of lean back out of the way as it floats towards me, but it suddenly zooms into me, and I am half afraid of what it will try to make me do -- and then I wake up.
I get up somewhat unwillingly and sluggishly wander to the bathroom, but there's this sense of -- well, Pooka still barking -- that sends me over to the baby monitor we still use to listen to the kids at night...and discover the plug has pulled out of the wall, and it's not on. So I run down to check on Kasia (not, I realize later, Tigana and Kasia, but specifically Kasia) and discover there is vomit everywhere -- the sheets, the walls, her stuffies; and she is fast asleep, face down in a two inch deep pool of the black and grey guck. I call Mary, and she runs down stairs, so I call out, "Kasia's okay" to reassure Mary, and then realize I should maybe check before I say that, but somehow I just knew it was true and that I had gotten there in time. Mary takes Kasia upstairs to our bed for the rest of the night, while I spend the next hour cleaning up the bed, walls, and surviving stuffies.
So... Is that strictly a coincidence? Or did my subconscious notice that the monitor wasn't plugged in as I was getting ready for bed last night and finally got a notice through to my dreaming mind to check it? Or did my subconscious hear Kasia throwing up from downstairs through two closed doors -- not loud enough to wake me, but enough for my subconscious?
Or is it really that the spirit of our dog is still watching over us and woke me up to save Kasia?
Pooka was, after all, no ordinary dog; Mary named him Pooka for a reason. And regular readers of this blog will recall that as a toddler, Kasia had had a tendency to drop dead at random intervals for a couple of minutes at a time (see reflex anoxic seizures) so her having an out of body experience is not entirely out of the question.
Indeed, while taking her bath last night, she had held her breath for fun, and I had watched as her face turned bright blue in seconds -- for other kids that's a metaphor, for Kasia, a horribly accurate description. I had tried not to freak, since it wasn't an attack, and there is this terrible fascination in watching this bright blue pattern emerge out of nowhere on her face, but I did ask her to stop doing that.... Anyway, I hadn't thought of her seizures for years, but maybe that bath-time incident is why it turned up in a dream last night -- but um, how is it that dream coincided with her actually being sick?
Whatever explanation one comes up with in the cold light of day, at 3AM, the spirit of your recently departed dog waking you up to save your daughter seems a lot more credible. I tried to describe the feeling to Mary, and all I could come up with at 3AM was 'creepy, but in a good way' but that's not really it. "Other worldly?" It's hard to describe. But there's a quality completely different from my other dreams -- and as an SF reader/writer, I'm not talking content here, because the content is almost always way out there, depending on what I've been reading. But this was...'more real' doesn't describe it; nor 'more vivid', nor 'more urgent'... but more...'other directed'?
Anyway, Kasia's fine, though we sat up with her through the night as she threw up several more times; looks like Norwalk virus to us. Kasia already seems over it, but by mid-afternoon Mary was throwing up and Tigana looks to be next. Me, I'm stuffing in the Cold FX, because you never know, it might help some.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Training Jackie
Dog training has been a slow process for us. Jackie is a hyperintelligent dog, so the problem, I know, lies largely with us.
The first problem is that I started out talking to Jackie in "Dad mode", as if she were one of my kids. My natural tendency is to try to reason with Jackie and explain what I want, but of course, dogs don't have language, so what she hears is "Blah blah blah blah, Jackie, blah blah blah." which is probably not very helpful. And using my soft Dad voice meant that half the time she didn't even know I was talking to her. So the dog trainer told me, "Fix a mental picture in your head that you've come from the store and found that Jackie has trashed the inside of your car" and that seemed to help a lot. Now I bark at the dog, and at least she knows I'm talking to her.
But that one was obvious, and sort of understandable.
More troublesome was Jackie barking at other dogs on our walks. Even though she is a kind and gentle dog, she'd bark like crazy at certain other dogs, leap up, strain at the leash, even nip at us for holding her back. It was pretty problematic. The trainer suggested getting Jackie to "sit" while the other dog passed, but this was not initially successful. I'd get Jackie to sit, she'd sit for 3 seconds, I'd reward her good behaviour with a "Good Jackie!" and she would leap up and start barking all over again. This would be repeated over and over again -- I'd no sooner get her sitting then she'd leap up again. It was frustrating.
Especially for Jackie....I eventually figured out that we had inadvertently taught Jackie that her release phrase was "Good Jackie". So from her point of view, I would order her to sit, then say, "okay, do what you want!" then get angry and yell, "sit" and no sooner have her sitting, when again I'd give her permission to go at it again. She must have thought "Make up your stupid mind!" or "stop teasing me!" I guess what happened was as I was teaching her various other things, we would do the 'trick', give her her treat, then say "good Jackie" and release/distract her to begin another round, so that without realizing it, "good Jackie" (or at least "good Jackie" the way I was saying it -- "good jackie" from my wife appears to be a different command, since she says it with a different intonation -- did I mention that Jackie is hyper-intelligent?) means, "command is over". So things have gotten a lot better once I replaced "good Jackie" with the new command, "Walk on" once the other dog has passed.
Another example of miscommunication was my "Other side" command, which initially worked great at getting Jackie to switch from my right (or the 'wrong' side) to my left when we walk. I'd let her pee, or she'd go sniff something interesting, but come back to my right side, I'd say, "other side" and she instantly switch to my left side. It was great. Except one day she absolutely didn't get it. The more I insisted "other side", the more stubbornly she insisted on walking on the right. Eventually we came to a standstill, and she just sat down in frustration. I stopped and tried to think what was going wrong. "Other side!" I barked experimentally. Jackie stands up, looks down at the grass, gives the dog equivalent of a shrug and sits down. So I eventually figure out what the problem is. On our usual walks through the neighbourhood, our circular route keeps the grass on my left side, the curb on the right. At this particular juncture, I had taken a different route, and the curb was on my left, the grass on the right. Apparently, "Other side" meant to Jackie, reasonably enough, "go to the grass side". So here she was standing on the grass, and I'm shouting "Grass side!" to her.
I'd sit down too.
The first problem is that I started out talking to Jackie in "Dad mode", as if she were one of my kids. My natural tendency is to try to reason with Jackie and explain what I want, but of course, dogs don't have language, so what she hears is "Blah blah blah blah, Jackie, blah blah blah." which is probably not very helpful. And using my soft Dad voice meant that half the time she didn't even know I was talking to her. So the dog trainer told me, "Fix a mental picture in your head that you've come from the store and found that Jackie has trashed the inside of your car" and that seemed to help a lot. Now I bark at the dog, and at least she knows I'm talking to her.
But that one was obvious, and sort of understandable.
More troublesome was Jackie barking at other dogs on our walks. Even though she is a kind and gentle dog, she'd bark like crazy at certain other dogs, leap up, strain at the leash, even nip at us for holding her back. It was pretty problematic. The trainer suggested getting Jackie to "sit" while the other dog passed, but this was not initially successful. I'd get Jackie to sit, she'd sit for 3 seconds, I'd reward her good behaviour with a "Good Jackie!" and she would leap up and start barking all over again. This would be repeated over and over again -- I'd no sooner get her sitting then she'd leap up again. It was frustrating.
Especially for Jackie....I eventually figured out that we had inadvertently taught Jackie that her release phrase was "Good Jackie". So from her point of view, I would order her to sit, then say, "okay, do what you want!" then get angry and yell, "sit" and no sooner have her sitting, when again I'd give her permission to go at it again. She must have thought "Make up your stupid mind!" or "stop teasing me!" I guess what happened was as I was teaching her various other things, we would do the 'trick', give her her treat, then say "good Jackie" and release/distract her to begin another round, so that without realizing it, "good Jackie" (or at least "good Jackie" the way I was saying it -- "good jackie" from my wife appears to be a different command, since she says it with a different intonation -- did I mention that Jackie is hyper-intelligent?) means, "command is over". So things have gotten a lot better once I replaced "good Jackie" with the new command, "Walk on" once the other dog has passed.
Another example of miscommunication was my "Other side" command, which initially worked great at getting Jackie to switch from my right (or the 'wrong' side) to my left when we walk. I'd let her pee, or she'd go sniff something interesting, but come back to my right side, I'd say, "other side" and she instantly switch to my left side. It was great. Except one day she absolutely didn't get it. The more I insisted "other side", the more stubbornly she insisted on walking on the right. Eventually we came to a standstill, and she just sat down in frustration. I stopped and tried to think what was going wrong. "Other side!" I barked experimentally. Jackie stands up, looks down at the grass, gives the dog equivalent of a shrug and sits down. So I eventually figure out what the problem is. On our usual walks through the neighbourhood, our circular route keeps the grass on my left side, the curb on the right. At this particular juncture, I had taken a different route, and the curb was on my left, the grass on the right. Apparently, "Other side" meant to Jackie, reasonably enough, "go to the grass side". So here she was standing on the grass, and I'm shouting "Grass side!" to her.
I'd sit down too.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Treadmill
Okay, this is pretty cool.
Arthur Slade's article on writing novels while on a treadmill.
I'm very tempted to try this....
Arthur Slade's article on writing novels while on a treadmill.
I'm very tempted to try this....
Monday, January 19, 2009
On Air Travel
Flew up to Edmonton to check on my Mom (I was worried about her having been relocated within the nursing home) and to check on the renovations done to Doug's place, and to arrange for renovations to begin on the next condo, and so on.
On the plane up from Calgary the flight attendant asked if I would be willing to switch places with the guy sitting next to the emergency exit because he didn't want to be responsible for opening the door if it came to that. (He looked sick, so maybe he felt he was too weak to do the job.) "There's more leg room in that row" the Stewardess told me, by way of providing me with an incentive. I shrugged and moved rows because, what the hey. So she does her training spiel, which I've heard maybe 12 times this year, and on the Dashes, the emergency door really is not that complicated. But I'm feeling put out about having to go up to Edmonton in the first place, so when she asks if there are any questions, I reply by asking, "Is there a discount for sitting in the exit row?" Without missing the beat, the Stewardess leans in close and whispers, "Only if we have to use it."
Which seemed pretty funny until I got to the apartment and saw footage of the jet in the Hudson river.
Especially when a commentator pointed out that one reason that everyone survived is that no one panicked and opened the emergency exits prematurely. "They followed procedure for that kind of plane and only opened the forward door – if any of the rear emergency exits had been opened, the plane would have sunk much faster." Which made me wince, since I had spent half the flight up to Edmonton telling myself, "If something happens, I not going to freeze up like I usually do, I'm going to pull that lever like she showed me and shove that door out the plane before it even stops rolling!" Apparently you're supposed to await instructions before opening that sucker. (The other half of the flight up, I'd been thinking, "If it is just that easy to open this emergency door, what's to prevent some drunken idiot or sacrificial terrorist from opening it mid-flight? That can't be good!)
But it raises the question: when your plane goes down, do you get a full refund? It's the sort of question Larry King never gets around to asking the survivors. So did they give them just another flight to that destination, or do they throw in a couple of freebies to make up for the trauma of it all? At least an up grade to 1st class? (With Air Canada's recent attitude, I'd suspect they might say "Well, you can't expect a full refund! After all, we got you half way there!") Personally, if it were me on a flight like the Hudson river ditching or the Gimely Glider incident, I'm thinking Greyhound vouchers might be the way to go.
Still, I appreciate that my flight attendant had kept her sense of humuor when this has not been a good couple of months for Air Canada. I'd spent five hours in the Lethbridge airport last Thursday, for example, waiting for a flight that never arrived. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to make the last possible connection in Calgary and I had asked that my flight be switched to this week instead, the desk clerk had said "Certainly! I'm sure there'll be no problems next week at all!" with such hysterical enthusiasm you knew she was being facetious. Clearly, she considered booking any flight out of my local airport during Dec - Feb an act of pointless optimism.
The recent air travel problems are particularly aggrevating for folks like us in the smaller airports. When Toronto and Vancouver had their respective storms/problems, the airlines' solution was to give priority to long haul passengers, because they could bring in a couple of 747s and fly a 1000 folks out at a time. Which works okay if you're going Toronto to Vancouver, or Toronto to Halifax, but if you're like us and have to connect through Calgary, you're always the lowest priority, because Calgary to Vancouver is always considered a short haul connection, even if you are making a connection there to somewhere else entirely. Indeed, almost by definition, anyone living on the Pariries or Atlantic Canada is screwed by this policy, since going from your home airport to your hub connection is necessarily 'short haul', while going from Toronto to anywhere is, well, a long haul priority. Hmmm. Does this pattern look familiar to anyone? So no wonder that paririe assengers were often left stranded in airports for days at a time -- unless they were on WestJet, of course.
And what, the consumer may ask, has been Air Canada's response to the debacle of the last two months? Has it relented on the downsizing that left Air Canada so thinly staffed that if a plane misses its connection, there's no aircrew available to man the next leg? Has it hired sufficient staff to man the desks and telephones to keep people informed and to help them rebook? To hand out hotel bookings and meal tickets? Nnoooo! It's to introduce a new service called "On My Way", which -- for an extra $35 per travel segment -- will provide you with the all stuff the Transportation Ministry says is every passenger's by right. In one fell swoop, Air Canada simultaneously pockets a bunch more cash and shifts the blame from themselves to the consumer. "Well I'd like to help you re-book your arbitrarily canceled flight, but you chose not to purchase our "On My Way" protection, so I can't." By paying the $35, the folks at the airport still won't help you, but they'll give you the number of a call center that will actually answer the phone. "Priority access to our team of specially-trained Air Canada On My Way agents who are available around the clock to assist you with all your unexpected travel needs." And, get this, "Automatic flight information notification/updates sent to you by email or SMS." They'll actually tell you that your flight is delayed or canceled, if you've paid the extra extortion fee. In contrast to what we observed the last few months where the Air Canada staff would simply turn off the flight announcement monitors and leave their desks so people couldn't complain to them or ask them questions.
So the rich and the desperate can pay what amounts to a third-world-style kick-back to Air Canada for them to actually supply the services for which we contracted, while the rest of us schleps are left to just cross our fingers and hope for the best.
Or, take WestJet.
On the plane up from Calgary the flight attendant asked if I would be willing to switch places with the guy sitting next to the emergency exit because he didn't want to be responsible for opening the door if it came to that. (He looked sick, so maybe he felt he was too weak to do the job.) "There's more leg room in that row" the Stewardess told me, by way of providing me with an incentive. I shrugged and moved rows because, what the hey. So she does her training spiel, which I've heard maybe 12 times this year, and on the Dashes, the emergency door really is not that complicated. But I'm feeling put out about having to go up to Edmonton in the first place, so when she asks if there are any questions, I reply by asking, "Is there a discount for sitting in the exit row?" Without missing the beat, the Stewardess leans in close and whispers, "Only if we have to use it."
Which seemed pretty funny until I got to the apartment and saw footage of the jet in the Hudson river.
Especially when a commentator pointed out that one reason that everyone survived is that no one panicked and opened the emergency exits prematurely. "They followed procedure for that kind of plane and only opened the forward door – if any of the rear emergency exits had been opened, the plane would have sunk much faster." Which made me wince, since I had spent half the flight up to Edmonton telling myself, "If something happens, I not going to freeze up like I usually do, I'm going to pull that lever like she showed me and shove that door out the plane before it even stops rolling!" Apparently you're supposed to await instructions before opening that sucker. (The other half of the flight up, I'd been thinking, "If it is just that easy to open this emergency door, what's to prevent some drunken idiot or sacrificial terrorist from opening it mid-flight? That can't be good!)
But it raises the question: when your plane goes down, do you get a full refund? It's the sort of question Larry King never gets around to asking the survivors. So did they give them just another flight to that destination, or do they throw in a couple of freebies to make up for the trauma of it all? At least an up grade to 1st class? (With Air Canada's recent attitude, I'd suspect they might say "Well, you can't expect a full refund! After all, we got you half way there!") Personally, if it were me on a flight like the Hudson river ditching or the Gimely Glider incident, I'm thinking Greyhound vouchers might be the way to go.
Still, I appreciate that my flight attendant had kept her sense of humuor when this has not been a good couple of months for Air Canada. I'd spent five hours in the Lethbridge airport last Thursday, for example, waiting for a flight that never arrived. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to make the last possible connection in Calgary and I had asked that my flight be switched to this week instead, the desk clerk had said "Certainly! I'm sure there'll be no problems next week at all!" with such hysterical enthusiasm you knew she was being facetious. Clearly, she considered booking any flight out of my local airport during Dec - Feb an act of pointless optimism.
The recent air travel problems are particularly aggrevating for folks like us in the smaller airports. When Toronto and Vancouver had their respective storms/problems, the airlines' solution was to give priority to long haul passengers, because they could bring in a couple of 747s and fly a 1000 folks out at a time. Which works okay if you're going Toronto to Vancouver, or Toronto to Halifax, but if you're like us and have to connect through Calgary, you're always the lowest priority, because Calgary to Vancouver is always considered a short haul connection, even if you are making a connection there to somewhere else entirely. Indeed, almost by definition, anyone living on the Pariries or Atlantic Canada is screwed by this policy, since going from your home airport to your hub connection is necessarily 'short haul', while going from Toronto to anywhere is, well, a long haul priority. Hmmm. Does this pattern look familiar to anyone? So no wonder that paririe assengers were often left stranded in airports for days at a time -- unless they were on WestJet, of course.
And what, the consumer may ask, has been Air Canada's response to the debacle of the last two months? Has it relented on the downsizing that left Air Canada so thinly staffed that if a plane misses its connection, there's no aircrew available to man the next leg? Has it hired sufficient staff to man the desks and telephones to keep people informed and to help them rebook? To hand out hotel bookings and meal tickets? Nnoooo! It's to introduce a new service called "On My Way", which -- for an extra $35 per travel segment -- will provide you with the all stuff the Transportation Ministry says is every passenger's by right. In one fell swoop, Air Canada simultaneously pockets a bunch more cash and shifts the blame from themselves to the consumer. "Well I'd like to help you re-book your arbitrarily canceled flight, but you chose not to purchase our "On My Way" protection, so I can't." By paying the $35, the folks at the airport still won't help you, but they'll give you the number of a call center that will actually answer the phone. "Priority access to our team of specially-trained Air Canada On My Way agents who are available around the clock to assist you with all your unexpected travel needs." And, get this, "Automatic flight information notification/updates sent to you by email or SMS." They'll actually tell you that your flight is delayed or canceled, if you've paid the extra extortion fee. In contrast to what we observed the last few months where the Air Canada staff would simply turn off the flight announcement monitors and leave their desks so people couldn't complain to them or ask them questions.
So the rich and the desperate can pay what amounts to a third-world-style kick-back to Air Canada for them to actually supply the services for which we contracted, while the rest of us schleps are left to just cross our fingers and hope for the best.
Or, take WestJet.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Grocery Lists
I'm not sure what it says about the state of the world, but I'm often fascinated that there is no topic on which someone or other has not published. There are, for example, two books available on lost grocery lists:
Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found (Hardcover)
and the even more interesting A la Cart by performance artist Hilary Carlip.
These are second only to "The Barbed Wire Collector Magazine" (the only remaining magazine on the topic, we are told, which suggests there used to be competitors) as most surprising demographic.... Who are the subscribers here? And what, after over 30 years and nearly 200 issues, is there left to say about Barbed Wire?
Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found (Hardcover)
and the even more interesting A la Cart by performance artist Hilary Carlip.
These are second only to "The Barbed Wire Collector Magazine" (the only remaining magazine on the topic, we are told, which suggests there used to be competitors) as most surprising demographic.... Who are the subscribers here? And what, after over 30 years and nearly 200 issues, is there left to say about Barbed Wire?
Walking the Dog
We love our new dog. Okay, we're a bit ticked that she ate our couch, three pairs of shoes, Tigana's prize hat, three Barbies, the electrical cord off the vacuum cleaner, four Christmas ornaments (why couldn't she have eaten the ugly ones?) a monopoly game -- indeed, everything within her surprisingly high reach -- except of course for her chew toys -- but one has to expect a 'settling in' period. We're good!
But the other night, Mary came in a bit shaken up because, while out for their mid-evening walk, Jackie had gone completely nuts. She had slipped her collar and taken off after a woman in a yellow coat with two tiny dogs. Mary managed -if only just - to restrain Jackie by hugging her tightly until the others were gone, but was completely taken aback at this uncharacteristic behavior. Jackie mostly doesn't bark, and when she does, it is a polite greeting to other friendly dogs, or a warning growl at some wildly barking manic dog as we pass by their yard. Nothing out of the ordinary. Pooka at 18 barked more. But on this occasion, Jackie went completely ballistic, insane with the need to attack either those two little dogs, or their owner.
Mary didn't get that good a look at the owner, but complained that the woman completely ignored Mary's problems, and rather than crossing the street or turning the other direction, as any normal dog owner would have in that situation, just proceeded on her way without breaking her stride.
Tonight I was walking Jackie, admiring Jackie's progress in learning how to walk in an urban setting (sidewalks good -- middle of the road, not good) when once again, the woman in yellow materializes a block away with her dogs, and Jackie goes completely psycho. I managed to hang on to her leash, but she pulled and jumped and howled and pleaded and went hysterical like nothing I've ever seen in any dog, ever. I abandoned any attempt to walk, and just got her to sit until the woman -- taking no notice of us whatsoever -- merrily continued on her way past us. At one point, as the woman had passed us and was receding into the distance -- Jackie was so crazed she actually turned around, and bit at my arm to get me to let go of the leash! Jackie?!
Once the woman had completely disappeared and Jackie calmed down, we continued home, where I told Mary what had happened.
"That's the same woman, alright" Mary confirmed. "But why is Jackie so insistent on attacking her dogs -- or her?"
"Alien Cyborgs," I explained.
"What?"
"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Jackie is desperate to attack that woman because Jackie can tell that those aren't dogs, and she's no human."
"Alien Cyborgs?" Mary asks, starring at me with that way she has sometimes.
"Dogs can always tell," I say. "I think it's the unearthly smell that gives the cyborgs away."
"Cyborgs?" Mary asked again. (I think she has trouble with her hearing sometimes.)
"Alien Cyborgs" I confirm. "Clearly, Jackie was trying to protect us, warn us against these alien invaders. It must drive Jackie crazy to be able to see the danger so clearly, and for us to be just oblivious like that."
"Or, maybe Jackie just really doesn't like that woman for some, you know, more mundane reason."
"Didn't you see how that woman just kept going? Like she was programmed? Robotic.... Obvious Cyborgs, really, once Jackie identified the intruders!"
"You're not going to do anything,,,um...drastic, are you?"
"I don't see alternative, I'm afraid."
"Oh, Robert, no!"
"Yes, I'll have to move Jackie's walk up an hour."
"What?"
"Well, if the cyborgs go for their walk at 6:00, I'll have to take Jackie at 5 or so. So we don't run into them again. Great thing about alien cyborgs: creatures of habit. Or programming, I should say. Very predictable."
"Uh, huh."
"It's their greatest weakness, really. Always leads to their downfall. That, and watchful dogs, like Jackie!"
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