Floods and disappearing cable needles

Well, it has been a week since my mom's operation, and she is continuing to do really well!  Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and good wishes.  (And if I owe you an email, I promise it's on its way.)  

It turns out that knitting is a better "sit and keep company" and "sit and wait" activity than writing fiction, so until yesterday, my hat-in-progress had come along further than my story.  (If anyone has a tip for how to not lose a cable needle, oh, about fifty times an hour, I'm all ears.) But now the story is coming on strong...I just need one of those pesky endings.  Right now I have the characters circling around one another, talking about this or that.  Before long they're liable to start checking their watches or something. 

In case you're not on Twitter (or maybe even if you are...some days there are a lot of links flying by), below are a few things I clicked on recently that were worthwhile...

This is a really interesting article by Samantha Francis for BookNet Canada on what makes a bestseller (according to sales data).  In case you've ever wondered what makes a bestseller in Canada.

We can’t reveal sales numbers, but to give you a very rough idea: when a book is in the “Top 10,” it’s usually sold several thousand copies across Canada in one week. 

An enjoyable Q&A by Ali Smith at The Daily Beast on "How I Write."  

A piece about how Canada's crime novelists are making a killing.  This was enough to make me pull out and revisit a plot outline for a light mystery novel I'd dreamed up last year during an idle afternoon, as well as another project close to my heart which has changed imaginary forms many times (TV show, screenplay, graphic novel), but which has finally come to rest (not surprisingly, given my actual skills) as what I hope will be a YA novel.  One day I'd love to write a mystery, and not just because it seems to be the one of the best ways for writers to make money these days.  

In other news, there was a ton of flooding at McGill yesterday (over 40 million litres!).  Below is a photo I took on Friday afternoon on my way across campus, of construction in progress on the reservoir pipes and the weathered old pipes on display (I think they're around  a hundred years old):