Fall blur

The one good thing about a prolonged absence from blogging is that it sometimes means I have been doing other writing. In this case, it happens to be true. I'm probably jinxing my progress by mentioning it here (doh!), but I feel like I've got momentum right now and I can see my current draft taking shape. I think I've talked about this particular project being almost done for at least two years running, if not longer, but it has been stuck at the 70% mark for a long time. Even when I edge up the word count, the scope gets larger, so the progress feels negligible. Anyway, I think I was saying, yay writing. So yay!

I also never posted the result of the Montreal Tournament of Books at Paragraphe Bookstore. Bone and Bread won! They very kindly invited me in to sign some stock.

Signing stock at Paragraphe Bookstore

Ahhh, early September, when it was still warm enough to wear a sleeveless linen dress. What you can't see is that I'm also wearing my wedding shoes: yellow flower Seychelles heeled sandals. I am colour-coordinated infrequently enough (and restrained to just one colour even less frequently) that I think this fact needs to be documented here. Actually, for a pair of yellow shoes, it turns out they match quite a few things I own! I wish I could say the same for all my other brightly coloured shoes. Also: I like how long my hair looks in this picture.

I also asked for a photo in front of the tournament poster!

Yes, that is a French poster for a tournament of English books. 

Other semi-recent goings-on in the writing world include a reading at Drawn & Quarterly for the launch of Teri Vlassapoulos's novel Escape Plans. Here are some photos from the evening that I grabbed from Facebook!

With Ian McGillis (host of the evening and former QWF mentor to both me and Teri), Teri and Lesley Trites.

Just the readers. 

I have been saying no to a lot of readings because they are always scheduled at exactly my baby's bedtime, but I have long admired these ladies and a trip to my favourite neighbourhood bookstore is always a treat. Thanks for the invitation!

Singing at a holiday concert tomorrow afternoon, so I'm off to see if I still have my dollar-store Santa hat from years past. I have a feeling it was a victim of the fire, but I'm hoping to be happily surprised.