Friday 18 May 2012

Love the library

I love the library. As a kid I whipped through our small town's limited children's section in no-time and got special permission to take out adult books. Under the beady eyes of the librarians I never dared take out anything more scandalous than an Agatha Christie, but I loved the fact that I could wander in there and spend half an hour reading the backs of books. Examining the covers and reading the synopsis was almost as good as taking the books out themselves. It was kind of like watching endless movie trailers, almost better than reading the books themselves, because the teasers promised greatness and never disappointed.
From teenagehood until parenthood the library lost its allure. While I was at university and grad school rather than a place of magic and wonder, the library became the storage unit where my required readings were kept, a quiet place to study, or let's face it, boy watch.

It's only lately, with a toddler, and more time to read for pleasure, that I've rediscovered the joys of the library. Firstly, how amazing is it that you can take books out for free?! It's a completely cuckoo system. Totally socialist, too, by the way. I'm surprised that those nutty Republican presidential hopefuls didn't make an issue out of the infiltration of red Commie values into the hearts of American small towns through LIBRARIES, rather than all that palaver about ladies and their birth control.

Anyhoots. The library. Crazy system of free books. You know what else they have at the library? Free magazines. Rather than drop $7 to have Fitness or Self make me feel bad about myself, I can waltz into the library and learn about new body parts to loath, new cancer risks to fear and new exercises to torture myself with, all for free. My current favourite magazine is O -- I know that completely identifies me as a middle aged, middle class woman, but A. as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of am and B. it's really well-written. Seriously, O's got infinitely less bullshit than most magazines aimed at women, has tons of fascinating book reviews and some seriously fresh and interesting writing. The only downside about getting my O's from the library is that these days, I kind of feel bad for Oprah, and I don't like depriving her of the coin she might need to keep her sagging TV channel alive.

You know what else the library has? DVDs, CDs and ebooks! All of your entertainment in one spot, and all absolutely free. The place is totally amazing.

You can show up there with a whiny child on a rainy day, give the sproggins free rein over the kiddie books and immerse yourself in a trashy magazine for an hour. By the time your little angel has exhausted herself, you'll be all caught up on Kardashian related gossip, it won't have cost you a penny and instead of being branded a neglectful mother for reading trash rather than making papier mache, you'll get bonus points cuz you took your kid the library. Win. Win. Win.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Time/toddler management

Writing with a toddle underfoot is tricky, no doubt about it. There's nap time, obviously, and I am blessed with a kid who sleeps like a drunken frat boy, so I get a good two to three hours in the afternoon. That is certainly enough time to get a good whack of writing done, as long as there is nothing else that needs to be done without the "help" of grubby little hands, temper tantrums and a litany of unanswerable questions -- "Why?" "What is this?" "Why?' "Where's my dolly?" "Why?"

I used to get up an hour before everyone else in the house and sneak up to the attic to work. I've stopped that, though, because my angelic child has developed supersonic hearing, whose pinpoint acuity and accuracy could direct surface to air missiles.

So, this often leads me to attempt to work while she's hanging around. I've encouraged solitary playing, and if I set her up with an exciting game of cars or restaurant I can usually snatch half an hour. The problem is that I have to answer urgent questions about what kind of soup or cereal I want her to pretend to serve me, or my presence is demanded to inspect a tower of cars she's created.

What I've learned to do is leave all of the actual writing that demands serious concentration to those uninterrupted hours when she's napping. Instead I do all of my less serious computer work while she's sitting at my feet methodically emptying the Tupperware drawer.

This strategy helps me maximise my time, but doesn't help with the guilt. If I'm home with the little ragamuffin, shouldn't I be devoting my time to nurturing her creatively, emotionally and intellectually? After 2.5 hours of wrestling with these mundane questions of maternal guilt, I've come up with an answer: No. My parents certainly didn't agonise about whether all of my various needs (beyond food and safety) were being met... Instead they ignored me most of the time, with a few well timed and useful "Pipe downs!", "Get your hand out of there" and "I love yous." While my parents weren't ideal, they were pretty great, and frankly I've managed to sort myself without a lot of handholding.

While I theoretically endorse the "tough love", or at least "less tender," approach it still doesn't help the guilt. I don't think I'll ever toughen up enough against that.

Sunday 6 May 2012

A day off


There are times when I rail against the stodgy government town I find myself in. Those times are usually March.
Ottawa in the winter is lovely.There is skating on the canal (longest ice rink in the world- represent!) there is cross country skiing in Gatineau Park and excellent downhill less than two hours away. The snow is thick and white on the ground-- none of the half hearted slush you find in other cities -- and the sky is often a crystalline blue with sunshine so bright it makes your teeth ache.  Even the two weeks when it is -30 C (that's -22 F for you Yanks) and it's so cold that your eyes water and then your eyelashes freeze together, even those two weeks are perfectly manageable because as you scurry from house to car, you get to feel like some kind of hardy Viking warrior braving the bitter chill in a quest for adventure and glory, or at least a pay cheque and groceries. 
What doesn't make you feel like a warrior is when it's mid March and the sky is grey and there is another god damn 20 centimetres (7 inches)  of snow and you're sick of shovelling, and you're sick of your salt-stained winter boots, and you're sick of your fingertips tingling with cold and you wonder why the god damn Vikings even bothered coming to this benighted country because who would ever choose to live in such a cold damp nightmare when they could be in Florida, or at the very least, Northern Maine?
All that to say, that at times Ottawa (the second coldest capital city in the world after Ulan Bator, Mongolia) can wear on the nerves.
But, after a hard couple of weeks, I had a good day, which reminded me of all the reasons I love this place. Skipping work, the kiddo and I waved her daddy off for the day, lolled in our PJ's for a couple of hours, then hit the road. I climbed onto my bike, attached the trailer, and sped along the city's amazing network of kilometres and kilometres (miles and miles) of bike paths. The trail we took wended along the mighty Ottawa River, a big, obnoxious and aggressive body of water, probably better suited to some city with major attitude, like New York or London, than apologetic Ottawa. Still the River is ours and it gives us something to strive for and live up to (and curse when the bridges are inevitably gridlocked).
The path took me past a ton of Ottawa's main attractions. We zipped by the National Archives, the Supreme Court and the Gothic looking parliament buildings. You see all of this history and culture, not from Wellington Street, which is how you're supposed to view the buildings, but from the path, which is far below, at water level. It's kind of fun, like Peeping Tom-ing on National Heritage, but without the illegality or feeling of skeeviness. 
We parked at the locks, a series of dams that regulate the Rideau Canal. The Canala allows access from the Ottawa River to the even mightier and more aggressive St. Lawrence 200 km (125 miles - for God's sake, people, go metric already!) to the South. 
We crossed the locks on foot, then climbed the big hill up to the promontory where the National Gallery gleams like a crystal palace. It's an amazing building -- all glass, with soaring, Gothic elements echoing the parliament buildings you can see from its windows. 
The kid hadn't been there in a year or two and we spent a lovely hour wandering around, trying unsuccessfully to touch paintings, cuddle camel sculptures and shouting at any portrait featuring a man with a white beard (away, Santa, shoo! -- Little Lady doesn't dig the Claus) until we had a restorative rice cake and peanut butter snack in the cafe.
Cycling back, we passed a goose and her five yellow, fuzzy goslings. Little Lady was tunelessly singing in the trailer, there was not a car or a hill to be seen on the path, and I thought the Vikings may have been on to something after all.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

A bit of whining to start...

Oh man, I've been telling myself I need to start blogging since I first heard the news that Harlequin would be publishing my erotic novella, Carnal Punishment in February 2012.

Everyone tells you, over and over, that creating a successful book is 20% writing and 80% promotion.

That's the tricky bit, though, right? Writers are often introverts (nothing wrong with that!) who are less interested in the money making end of things than in the careful choice of words and sentences, the evocation of a scene, the delineation of a character. Writing a book, articulating thoughts and ideas you might never have expressed to any one before, can be an extremely daunting  act, and the idea that you then have to SHILL those ideas is dispiriting... At least for me.

I just want people to read my stuff and get a kick out of my story. I want to connect to people, but I want to do it at a safe remove...  Dudes it's bad enough I've written an EROTIC novella (what would my mother think?!?) that features a disembodied Egyptian ghost getting a little rapey, the idea that I then have to go out and convince people to read it is downright sick-making.

But, you know what my babies? I'm committing to doing this. After all, we only get one crack at this nutty crazy world of ours and I don't want to be 90 (yes, I'll make it that far) on my deathbed, metaphorically kicking myself for not marketing the bejesus out of my super sexy, s&m'y story.

So. Dudes -- go buy it!

Harlequin has distributed it left right and centre, so if you're in the market for sexy sado-masochist stories about plucky archaeologists, brooding bosses and, yeah, a sexed up poltergeist with control issues... Here are a few places to get it:

Amazon

Google

Waterstones