snapshot of the past two weeks

Things have been busy here. I think over the past two weeks, I've written five blog posts...in my head.

I did a bunch of syndication interviews on CBC radio. This means (I think) that all the stations around the country are informed in the morning that you'll be sitting in the booth for a certain amount of time and they can call in to speak to you and tape a segment or put you on live on one of their shows. So I got to hang out at CBC for four hours and ended up speaking to people in 12 different locations around Canada (Charlottetown, Whitehorse, Kelowna, Winnipeg and many more). I always find it nerve-wracking doing radio segments when you're not in the same studio as the interviewer. It's like talking on the phone....and I'm not much of a phone person. But they were all more fun when they were happening than I would have expected.

And while trying to prepare for those syndication interviews at CBC Radio I found this interview in Maisonneuve magazine I did in 2013 with the brilliant Melissa Bull, who made me laugh a lot. I had so much fun in this conversation, and I really liked the way she approached the novel. I always meant to share it here and never did. So voila!

Then I went back to CBC a few days later and taped segments for the Canada Reads broadcast. I think this was the deciding straw in whether or not I will listen to the show when it airs --- because as apprehensive as I might be about listening to people debate the merits of my book, I'm twice as afraid of tuning in and hearing my own voice!

But one very fun thing I got to do as part of all this was put together a playlist for the novel. This is something I've been meaning to do since before the novel came out...at first just for fun, as I thought I'd blog it, then possibly for other blogs/sites who asked me (unfortunately, I never got around to it...doh), but I'm sort of glad I ended up not getting my act together until now because I have some distance and clearer thoughts about it PLUS I think it means that some of songs will be played on CBC radio as I recorded some intros and throws. I'll share the playlist here if it ends up on the web, too.

Sitting in a CBC studio with all my cold remedies.

And if that wasn't enough, I've been pushing myself like mad to finish a rough draft of a large project that I've been aiming to complete by February. I pretty much finished on Friday, though I'm going to take Monday to fix the last, rapidly hammered out parts. Thank you, Leap Year!

Even though I didn't intend to, I crossed the 100, 000 word 

threshold on my current draft. The software, in case you're wondering,

is Scrivener. (Highly recommended!)

This week my friend K stopped by Montreal on her way to Ottawa with her mom and her very sweet one-month old baby. While we were killing time waiting for the restaurant to open, we stopped by Indigo to scope out the Canada Reads display and K took some photos.

Yay, Canada Reads! Just look at the amazing company Bone and Bread is in!

I am one of those people who buys a lot of non-book items at Indigo.

They do such a good job with their displays. Look at those bunnies back there!! 

I think I am going to go back and get one for a certain little someone.

And speaking of that little someone, of course, she has been keeping me busy, too.

Mixing prints: not just for fashion bloggers!

She is getting cuter every day and understands so much more than she can vocalize. Starting about a month ago, she became obsessed with books beyond just pulling them off the shelves and chewing on the spines. Now she is demanding them all. the. time. Even while she's eating. And we usually give in. It might not be cultivating good manners, but it's hard not to be indulgent when it comes to babies and books.

She moves so fast now, almost all my photos are blurry!

And a couple of slightly older photos because now I'm in baby-share mode:

Trying to get her to take a step in the snow (no go).

Attack of the cute!!! Wearing her little hat

from D in Newfoundland. 

There have been lots of other fun things going on, too: choir, scotch club, Pixelles events, knitting. 

Bright lights, Nuit Blanche

I had a great writing morning today.  I brought my laptop into bed with me and sat propped up in bed and wrote for two hours.  Then I had some food and came back and kept going for another two and a half, with minimal interruptions. (My husband, bless him, made breakfast and even let me out of the cleanup.  And the breakfast included bacon.) 

Part of my amazing productivity (by my standards, since I'm a rather slow writer) is probably due to the fact that right now I'm writing something fun.  I don't want to jinx it by talking about it too much, but it's a YA project I've had planned forever, right down to most of the nitty-gritty details, and whenever I work on it now it just seems to flow out into the keyboard.  I'm pretty much rolling with what I wrote the other day about easy reads and following it through with some easy writes.  Right now, anyway, it's working, and that's enough.

Today is a good day to have a good writing day because tonight I am giving a reading at Nuit Blanche as part of this event in conjunction with Maisonneuve Magazine, and it's always nice to feel confirmed in one's writerly sense of identity before doing things like this.  Although it might be a bad thing, too, since good writing days can also result in me feeling extremely socially challenged -- like I've stepped out of a different gravity and everything I say goes unheard or misunderstood and I feel like there's a piece of glass between me and everyone else who is actually normal and doesn't spend half of their time making make-up people walk and talk.  Oh well. I guess I'll find out!

Nuit Blanche is also known as Montréal en Lumière, which is probably partially why this Cult Montreal listing calls us "some of the local literary scene's brightest lights," but it is nonetheless a thrilling designation.  I'm really looking forward to hearing the other readers and hoping my cold doesn't wipe me out too early tonight.