I know, I should be able to do two things at a time. And I swear, I’m going to thrash out the next scene of the Glass World thing any day now.
What I’m actually working on most of the time is flamenco. We’ve got a show coming up and, even though I’m only in two and half dances, it’s a lot of work. I’m also performing an adaptation of the opening monologue from the play Medea (the one by Euripedes – my Greek and Roman Drama class is coming in handy) and reading a poem.
On the off chance in you’re in Toronto on April 27th, there are still tickets available!
During the rotten cold I’ve had for the last week and half, I managed to finish the kawandi quilt, and here it is in all it’s glory. I thoroughly enjoyed doing it and I’m looking forward to doing another one. Sadly, I’m pretty sure my next planned fabric venture won’t work using this technique, but that’s a problem for another day.
Thanks to anyone who bought any of the reissued books in 2024. And, of course, thanks to the fine folks at Open Road Media for reissuing them. I made enough in royalties to cover the ridiculous cost to relicense the Shriekback lyric for THE NIGHT INSIDE, which I really didn’t expect would happen.
After so many years, every sale is a vote of confidence, as is every borrow from the library. I have no idea what will happen with The Witch Novel, but this does give me some hope it might find a home.
And, if you’re interested, both A TERRIBLE BEAUTY and THE NIGHT INSIDE are on sale March 1 for $1.99.
I hated home economics in high school. I had no patience, no precision, and no particular desire to be there. In the years since, I’ve learned to cook a little (mostly things like soups, where precision isn’t required) and, during the pandemic, I finally revisited sewing. Yes, I am that person.
The decision was partly driven by decluttering. I was cleaning out some clothing that, sadly, didn’t fit me anymore. There were some lovely pieces by Toronto designer Annie Thompson, plus a number of interesting scarves that I’d acquired over the years. I could, in theory, have listed them on Poshmark or deposited them in one of the used clothing bins in the neighbourhood. But I am definitely not a ‘list it on Poshmark/Facebook’ person (to my regret) and the fabrics were so beautiful that I couldn’t bear to just put them in a bin. So I decided to create something new with them.
Keep in mind that I haven’t done anything but mend the occasional tear or sew on a button in years. I also don’t have a sewing machine and don’t want one. After some searching through YouTube, I discovered a tutorial on Boro, a Japanese method of hand-stitching scraps into a new piece. That seemed like a something I could do.
I started with a scarf (above). This did require buying a plain beige one, but Winners supplied that. I only needed scissors, pins, a needle, and some thread sourced from a local fabric store (which would later loom large in my endeavours). I found doing the work relaxing, as the amount of precision required was minimal. I could even watch video essays while I stitched.
Once that was done, it was on to something more challenging. I decided to adorn the back of an old Tilley vest inherited from my mother. I enlisted my more talented artistic friend Gillian to help me with the design, which improved it considerably. The key components were two Annie Thompson vests and a dress.
Next up, I took apart an Annie skirt. The two zippered pockets plus a strap became a handy little bag I could use on walks to carry my keys and my phone. The rest of the skirt was added to a knit bolero jacket to form a new “Frankendress.”
Now, it was time to up my game. I’d been inspired by all the fabric art I’d seen at the Venice Biennales. I was gifted a set of Japanese fabrics, including some obis from kimonos, and designed two small wall-hangings (ok, I did have Gillian’s help on this front). But I realized that I didn’t really know HOW to do a wall-hanging. Did I need batting? What kind of backing should I use?
Fabric Spark was once again the answer. In addition to selling fabric, they also run classes. An upcoming one was on Kawandi, a style of quilting created by the African-Indian Siddi community. I immediately signed up and it was 100% worth it. Not only did I figure out that yes, I needed batting, and yes, there was an easy backing I could get, I discovered a whole new creative diversion.
I don’t have any particular talent, but I’ve come to value creating visual art with my hands. It’s an important antidote to both writing (my creative life) and numbers (my former work one). It feels good to flex a different muscle for a change.
Here’s what I managed in the three hours last week. I’m looking forward to getting back to work on it.
You may notice a few fabrics from the vest and making a reappearance here. Waste not….
Almost every book of advice on writing will tell you to read your work aloud. I find lots of advice to be either incompatible with my wonky process (yes, I can draw a plot graph but it never seems to help) or completely impossible (write my entire book again, from scratch, for the second draft? I don’t think I’ll live that long), but this one has always rung true.
There’s nothing worse than doing a public reading and discovering halfway through a sentence that a) you’ve used the same word three times and you didn’t mean to and b) the sentence is quite awful. Note: this is why you should always practice and edit in advance.
My current writing project is reading the entire second draft (all 124,000 words of it) of the Witch Novel out loud. To my relief, it doesn’t seem to suck. I’ve had to had a number of notes (wait, am I capitalizing that? How many years pass between event A and event B? Am I sure? Didn’t Erzabet already tell Vedette about this?) but that’s normal. I didn’t write the book in order, so some of the ghosts of the narrative guesses or clues I put in each new section are still there to be pruned.
I just finished Chapter 35 of 42, so the end is approaching. I found myself getting quite dramatic with this one, gesturing wildly and hunching over my computer. It was quite fun. I’m a pretty good reader – I once recorded all of Cold Hillside in VoiceRecord Pro – and I like doing it. Even if I did always choke up at the end of Hiroshima chapter, which was one of the sections I often read for Blood & Chrysanthemums. I’ve done readings for two of the flamenco shows I’ve been in (if you need someone to lend a bit of cynicism to a paean about Spartan women, I’m your girl) and my teacher has already said I’ll be doing some more for the show in April.
I suppose I’m better at reading than I am at footwork, but that’s ok.
During the pandemic, my husband recorded me reading short sections from each of the books and then he composed music to accompany them. My goal is to post those over the coming weeks – once I figure out how.
This year’s total was 143 (give or take a few physical books I may have missed), of which 48 (33%) were non-fiction. The non-fiction percentage is down from 2023, but I maintain that Tony Judt’s Postwar and Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence both count as at least two books.
As always, here are some of my favorites.
FICTION
On the ‘Best Thing I Read’ list: The BookDNA.com list covers a slightly different time period, but of course I have to mention the two that do qualify for 2024. Menewood by Nicola Griffith and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell. These could not be more different. One’s a rich, immersive fantasy about 8th century Britain, one’s a rich, immersive depiction of a midwestern middle-class family between the wars…. In all seriousness, they’re both brilliant, even if the prose, the milieu, and the concerns of the characters are very different.
Fairies, Encyclopaedia of: I thoroughly enjoyed both of Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde books. Charming, inventive, and lots of fun. And thanks to my husband, for reading them first and recommending them to me.
The Year of the Kingfisher. T. Kingfisher, that is. In 2024, I managed to inhale A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, Nettle & Bone, A Sorceress Comes to Call, A House with Good Bones, What Moves the Dead, and What Feasts at Night. I read also Paladin’s Grace, written in her Ursula Vernon guise. I’m glad there’s a substantial back catalogue to keep me busy in 2025.
“Like” isn’t really the word: Certain portions of Paolo Bacigalupi fantasy novel Navola left me quite queasy, and I can’t get them out of my head, even if I wanted to. It’s set in a richly imagined version of Renaissance Italy in which the fantasy elements are minimal and intriguing and backstabbing are a way of life. Best of all, it’s essentially a stand-alone novel, though the door remains open for more tales in the world.
Not really fantasy but…”: Nights of Plague by Turkish writer Orthan Pamuk isn’t really a fantasy novel, but it ticks a lot of the same boxes for me: a vividly described world, a wide range of characters, love, death, satire, comedy, politics, heroic action, wilful stupidity. It chronicles the impact of a plague on a fictional Mediterranean island in the waning days of the Ottoman empire – and of course a good deal more.
NON-FICTION
Catching up on the 20th Century: A lot of my history reading is centered on the distant past, but this year I dove into the aforementioned Postwar by Tony Judt (what happened in Europe from 1945 to the 2000s) and Legacy of Violence (which covered more than one century of British colonial violence).
Mars? You first: Winner of a Hugo, A City on Mars (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) is a serious look at the perils and possibilities of colonizing another planet, told with humor and cartoons. I don’t object to space exploration or even planning for a colony, but the bulk of our energy, innovation, and money should be spent maintaining the health of a planet where everything won’t kill us.
Yellowknife? You first: Ok, it did sound more fun than Mars. Canadian musician-writer Dave Bidini takes a summer job working for a newspaper in Yellowknife and writes Midnight Light, in which he explores the pleasures, dangers, and weirdness of life in the north.
We’re screwed, Part II. Last year’s list included Fire Weather, about the Fort McMurray fire. This year, I paired The Water Will Rise and The Heat Will Kill You First, both by Jeff Goodell. Both good, but sobering.
Squirrel!: There are a lot more than squirrels in On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz, but I did see a squirrel run up a tree to his nest at the exact moment that the audiobook narration featured a wildlife expert explaining how to spot a squirrel nest. Synchronicity! Horowitz explores the blocks around her Manhattan home with eleven experts, including a geologist, a sound designer, an artist, a dog, and her own toddler. As a committed flaneur, I loved it.
I’ll be posting my list of top reads and final tally of books read later this week, but earlier this year I’d already decided on my favourites for the annual “Best Books of 2024” list for the Shepherd.com book recommendation site. The great thing about this list is that it doesn’t focus only on what came out in 2024, but what you actually read. One of my top reads was published in 1959. What was it? You’ll have to check my list to find out.
This year, you can go in and post your own top reads list – just follow this link. And check out the top lists (with convenient genre breakdowns) to find more things to add to your list for 2025.
That’s a formal title for a rather anti-climatic event. I turned 65 last week and enjoyed some lovely celebrations. Most of my thoughts on aging have centered on how to get my Presto card updated to Senior so I can get my discount. Not very introspective, I admit.
I have the usual tangle of feelings about aging. I rarely actively feel it, while at the same time my knees go wonky and my hip hurts most of the time. I don’t think of myself as older, let alone ‘old’, but my mirror shows me graying hair and the impact of gravity on my face. I regret that I wasted the years in which I was somewhat attractive feeling ugly. I regret all the things I was afraid to do when I was younger, the things I skipped because it was easier not to risk failure. I have fears for the future that I try not to think about: my health, my husband’s, what will happen as we age, what I might have to face alone, what I might have to face sooner than I think, that might end all ‘facing’ for good. My mother died at 70, my father is still going strong at almost 91 – who knows whose genes are stronger? Who knows what toll my own choices might have taken? Who knows what virus or random cell mutation is out there with my name on it?
On the positive side, I care much less about what the world thinks of me than I used to, and that has made me braver. I took up flamenco at 57 and have done three public performances, which was as much a surprise to me as anyone. I’ll never be really good at it, but I’m proud of myself for trying. I’m still writing, for no other reason that I can’t seem to stop. I have no illusions about publication or fame or critical success. I just write, even when I don’t enjoy it, because it seems that’s still what I do. I like learning – about history and science and politics and the world – even if I forget the details of half the things I read or hear. By any estimation, I’m materially and financially comfortable. I have family and friends and the best husband in the world. I’m not really afraid of dying. I never have been. I’m afraid of pain and a long decline fraught with physical humiliation and helplessness, but the thought of ceasing to exist has never bothered me.
So I suppose it’s ok that it’s anti-climatic. I’ll just keep going, trying to write every day, trying to get my feet to move fast enough for the choreography, trying to walk, trying to move, trying to have fun, trying to be a slightly better person, trying to find wonder in the world. I’ll probably screw a lot of it up, but that’s life.
P.S. In the obligatory sales promotion, here’s what’s on sale right now. A TERRIBLE BEAUTY in Canada, until December 20th. COLD HILLSIDE in the US until December 20th. THE NIGHT INSIDE in the US on December 18th.
Made my 10,000 word target – though the usual quality caveats apply. I’m definitely feeling my way through this part, stranded in a world of foggy details, mysterious motivations, and uncertain outcomes. Though it was rather fun brainstorming oddities that one might find in an imaginary world made of glass. My mantra was BE WEIRDER!
The plan for December is to read the Witch Novel aloud – and try to think of an actual title for the thing.
Well, it could be worse. I’m about 600 words behind target, mostly because I had one of those “wait, no, she can’t possibly know X at this point, because that will change how she relates to Y” moments and that threw me right off. In the end, I decided to just bull on ahead, assumes she DOES know X and dealing with it. I’m about to plunge into an area I haven’t really planned (what DOES the Glass World look like anyway?) but I’m just going to hope for the best.
I decided December’s project will be to do my “read the novel out loud” edit for The Witch Novel, which should be fun. Or not.
SALES NEWS
BLOOD & CHRYSANTHEMUMS will be on sale November 22 for $1.99.
COLD HILLSIDE will be on sale from November 22 to November 29 at the same low, low price.
