Time Traveling with Neuroscience!

I've been having a very 90s/early 00s-coded time over here, and this makes me happy—because has anyone else noticed how much the 2020s have just kind of sucked so much? 

It all started with a song on the radio that I hadn't heard since maybe 2004, which sent me down a musical rabbit hole featuring The Beta Band and Remy Zero and South. Later that day I saw that Wheatus was coming to town and I thought, there really is nothing I'd rather do than sing very loudly to Teenage Dirtbag along with a crowd of my peers and then pretend to act interested in the rest of the set along with them too, so I bought myself a ticket. 

I often think about the neuroscience behind the law of attraction (which is basically that you have a network of neurons in your brainstem that filters the data coming at you and determines what enters your conscious awareness—I've read that that your brain receives millions of bits of data PER SECOND and of that, it processes about 50 (which seems like such a minuscule amount as to beg the question: are any of us really experiencing reality at all?)—and that this filter generally favours the information that aligns with your goals and beliefs and emotional state, and THEREFORE, your goals and beliefs and emotional state greatly shape the reality that you experience. SO, for example, if you're a person who believes you will someday be a famous singer, your brain is going to favour the bits of data that align with that, and you're going to be more likely to see opportunities to sing in public, to enter competitions, to be aware of all the different avenues for that dream to come to fruition, and to run full steam ahead down those pathways without self-selecting out of them. It's not so much that you can want a dream so much that it comes true, but...it kind of is? Just less in a mystical way and more in a psychological way.

So anyway, I think this is why, when I began immersing myself in 90s music (as well as dressing like Daphne Moon as much as possible and watching all the 90s-era films I could get my hands on) my brainstem filter began to send me back in time. (I had to pause while typing this to sing along very loudly to Don't Look Back in Anger. I'm back now!) I have, for example, noticed that more and more 90s bands are on tour through Regina all of a sudden. Or this: on February 20, I had an essay published in the Globe and Mail, and an excerpt of I Think We've Been Here Before appeared in the Village Voice on the same day. Isn't that such a 90s thing? Print media? Like, first of all, even being able to walk to the grocery store and buy a physical newspaper, then walk over to a friendly neighborhood coffee shop to sit and read it while System of a Down plays over the store speakers, but secondly, finding my words in those newspapers. It could be that I'm overly immersed in the literary world, where we are constantly talking about the loss of available spots in print media for authors to put their words, but that day felt so delightfully old school. I felt like Carrie Bradshaw, minus the heels (I break toes whenever I try to wear heels).

Then last week, I was invited onto a community radio show called the Queen City Improvement Bureau—exciting in and of itself because I'm a big fan of the QCIB (they accompanied me on many walks around the neighborhood in the early days of the pandemic)—but exciting in a specifically 90s way because we recorded in a radio station with a wall full of physical CDs behind me and gig posters everywhere and it just felt, for that hour, as I sat in my chair with that enormous mic in my face, like I was in a 90s sitcom about a funny little group of ragtag radio people. It did not have 2020s podcast vibes, you know? It was live to air, and the humor was dry and Canadian, and we talked about movies that the hosts saw live in theaters in the 90s (and also things like soda fountains and death).

On the same day, I did a TV interview with CTV, a live on location thing at my local grocery store. There maybe wasn't anything overly 90s about that (except maybe the fact that it was TV as opposed to social media?), but we were talking about my Globe and Mail column so the theme was basically just people being nice to each other, which doesn't feel overly 2020s. 

Anyway. Maybe this whole post is just book marketing advice? If you time travel to the 90s using *~*nEuRoSciEnCe*~*, it is easier to do publicity. Thank you for your time.

THE ABCs of 2025

Oh look, another year. 

Decembers are coming and going like a kid on an old-school metal merry-go-round; if they keep speeding up like this, I'm going to stop being able to tell how many of them have passed. I barely have time to acknowledge them before they've gone all the way around and come back again. I feel existentially dizzy. 

Maybe this annual ABCs Of exercise is becoming more of a grounding thing? A way to notice which things happened in which space in time so that when I'm fifty and it's all even more of a blur than it is now, I'll be able to know for certain where everything was.

So, without further ado:

A - Author friends came to visit! I always say that the best part of being an author and having author friends is that sometimes organizations just fly said author friends in so you can hang out with them (and so they can do events or whatever). In March, the Sask Writers' Guild flew Marissa Stapley in for Talking Fresh and I got to show her around Regina (Lake Fries at the Bar Willow, live music at The Cure, gift shop shopping at the Mackenzie Art Gallery, etc). In July, The Festival of Words flew Jennifer Whiteford in, so we got to hang out in Moose Jaw (I tried to take her for a walk along the river but I accidentally took her to an abandoned train yard instead. She said she still had fun) (We also spent a lot of time at the spa and I think she maybe liked that better than the abandoned train yard). And Adelle Purdham stopped by in April on her book tour; we went for tacos and then I interviewed her at the Everyday Kitchen, which was very fun.

B - Books (shocker). I read maybe 50 books this year? I don't think this is very many, compared to some people. I have seasons where I'll gulp down four books in a week, and then seasons where it takes me literally three months to finish one novel. Some of them were ARCs for upcoming releases, some of them were audiobooks (these were mostly thrillers), some of them were new releases, and some of them were books that have been on my shelf for a while. 

C - College! I was invited to speak at a college creative writing class. It was a really cool little group of folks and we had such a blast (or at least, I did for sure and they definitely appeared to, but maybe they were in acting classes as well?). I hope they all write stuff that I get to read someday. 

D - Denver! I got a grant from Sk Arts to fly to Denver, Colorado to do a couple of book events (Reading Den and an in-conversation at the Center for the Arts in Evergreen). Both of these were so much fun; I met a billion lovely people, but most importantly I finally got to meet some previously-only-online friends: Sarah Ann Noel, a friend I speak with literally every single day but had never met in person (we wrote a little article about our meeting and it was published on Write or Die), Melissa Payne, a fellow Lake Union author, and Eunice Brownlee, a friend from Instagram via Sarah (I think? Right, Eunice?). A very special, slightly surreal week!

E - Extra. In the summer, a friend of mine (Tim Lenko! Hi, Tim!) texted to ask if I would like to be an extra in a film his friend was directing. We shot our scenes at a funeral home, which felt kind of irreverent and hilarious. I wore a dress from my mom's closet from the 70s and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 

F - Film Screening. Tim—the same Tim as the one from the letter E—is a filmmaker too, and he screened his award-winning film in Moose Jaw in November. He invited me to come to the premier and be part of an artists' panel, along with another filmmaker and a visual artist. It was a really fun conversation and all of these interactions with Film People are really making me want to be Film People too.

G - Goodreads Choice Awards. I had the shock of my life when I saw that I Think We've Been Here Before was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award, and then an even bigger shock when it went to the finals. I was relieved of the heavy burden of imposter syndrome for three glorious weeks. What a vacation. (It's back now.)

H - Happy to finally receive the Russian copies of Sorry I Missed You, which was published over there a few years ago.

I - I dyed [some of] my hair purple on a whim. I was dying Scarlett's, and she said, "YOU DO IT TOO, MOM" and it was one of those reflex-without-thought moments. I just...reached up and ran the glove with the dye on it through the ends of my hair, as if I were scratching an itch. Scarlett was delighted, and that was that. Her hair dye faded within a month. My hair is very blonde, so it sucked in that color, and it hasn't completely gone away even now. Glad to see my impulse control is still so lacking at 38.

J - Just spent a lot of hours in my living room this year listening to Sully play the guitar and requesting that he play my favorite songs. 

K - Knorks. I went out for breakfast with Sarah one day, and there was this utensil that was almost like a fork, but not quite, on the table. She picked it up and said, "Hey, so here's something cool. My friend's brother invented this. It's called a Knork. It's like a fork but also a knife." And I used that Knork to eat my bennie, and then when I got home I ordered a set of four Knorks for my family because I liked it so much. 

L - Live Music Challenge. At the beginning of the year, my friend Ashley and I promised each other that we would experience live music at least once per month for the entire year. And we ALMOST did it. In January, we went to an acoustic show at The Mercury. February was open mic night at The Cure. March: Ritchot Textiles, The Moonrunners, and Black Thunder in the basement of The Artesian (maybe my favorite show of the year?). April: Robyn's choir performed at the Knox Met. May: Tiny played at my reading at The Artesian AND I got to see Sully's band perform live for the first time (okay, THIS was my favourite show of the year. Of my LIFE). June: another open mic night at The Cure. July: there was a guy playing his guitar at a restaurant in Vancouver, and also I went to a weird little biker memorial in Grand Coulee where a cover band was playing at the hockey rink. August: Sarah and I went to Nuit Blanche and there was live music in the RPL. September: Ashley and I hit up Swampfest, Regina's finest and most creative DIY music festival on Willow Island. Loved it. Always love it. October: Elliot BROOD & Great Lake Swimmers at Darke Hall. November: fail. December: we'll see if it happens, but I'm hoping to go to Band Swap at the Exchange on the 28th (I'm writing this post early). I'm usually out of town that night, so this is exciting!

M - Meow Wolf. I have always, for as long as I've known of the existence of Meow Wolfs (which is not very long, honestly, but still), wanted to visit one. And this year, I did, in Denver, with Sarah. It was really weird, and I loved it. 

N - New tattoos. I got a cat, in honour of the fact that strangers email me all the time now about the cat in I Think We've Been Here Before. I also got an hourglass and some rosemaling.

O - Okay. So here is a story about scissors: I went to Nuit Blanche with my friend Sarah, and there was a guy there giving out free freezies. I took my freezie and said to the guy, "Thank you. Do you have scissors? To open this freezie?" The guy looked sheepish and said, "No, sorry, I feel really stupid every time someone asks me that. I did not bring scissors. You'll have to take that freezie home, I guess, and open it with your own scissors." It was a hot night, and I was thirsty, and I really wanted to get into this freezie. I tried tearing it open with my teeth, but the plastic was way too strong. I couldn't do it. I carried this thing around with me for a couple of hours, gnawing at it like a rodent. Finally, I'd had enough. Exasperated, I threw the freezie in a garbage can. I could've taken it home, but I was tired of carrying something around that I really wanted but could not have. I sighed as I threw it away and said, "Ugh, my kingdom for a pair of scissors." So here's where the story gets weird and slightly unbelievable, but you'll have to just believe me because why would I make this up? A few minutes later, literally minutes, you guys, minutes after I threw my freezie in the garbage and said my kingdom for a pair of scissors, Sarah and I walked past this table in the park. Just a random table in the middle of Victoria Park. 10:30 PM. And the only thing on this table was, you guessed it, a pair of scissors. Like, I think I manifested them? 

P - Parties—or, to be more precise, galas. In the month of May, Barclay and I attended three galas—one for his work, one for mine, and one fundraiser. We are not gala people, so we had to go out and buy gala clothes and gala shoes and gala makeup (me). It was fun, but a little bit stressful because I'm not a super fancy person.

Q - Quite a lot of public speaking again this year. I thought it would be a quieter one because I didn't have a book release, but that didn't end up being the case. Lots of book clubs, podcast interviews, readings, random other speaking gigs and occasions. I continue to be more and more comfortable in front of people, and this continues to be a thing that makes me really happy, a thing that still surprises me, that a person can be so scared of something but then do it enough that it actually becomes—dare I say it?—enjoyable. 

R - (City of) Regina Writing Award. I did not win this! Courtney Bates-Hardy did! (And she deserved it.) But I was a runner-up, so I got to go to the awards ceremony and read from my [as yet unpublished] novel. I did win a writing retreat at a monastery! Cool!

S - Saskatchewan Book Awards. I Think We've Been Here Before was nominated for four Sask Book Awards: The Book of the Year Award, the Fiction Award, the City of Regina Book Award, and the Publishing Award. It even went so far as to win in one category, which was really neat. There was a gala in Saskatoon and Barclay and I made a little weekend out of it. 

T - Toured the Globe Theatre. I got a DM on Instagram one day from an account called Hidden Regina, out of the blue, asking if I'd like to go on a tour of the Globe Theatre here in downtown Regina. I was like, "Well yeah!" So I did that. 

U - Upset about...baseball???!!!?? I, and a whole bunch of other Canadians who normally do not care one iota about sports, got really, super invested in the Toronto Blue Jays this year. It was surprisingly fun, and time will tell, but maybe I'm a sports person now.

V - Vancouver! We hopped on a plane and went to Vancouver in July. It was the first Big Family Vacation we've taken since Scarlett joined our crew, and, therefore, the first time she's ever been on a plane. Barclay's sister lives out there, so we stayed with her for a week. It was really lovely! And now the kids, having had their eyes opened to the possibility of air travel, just want to fly everywhere.

W - Wrote The End on a new book! More on that later!

X - XXXVIII (I turned 38) & XVI (Barclay and I celebrated 16 years of marriage)

Y - Yes! I said yes to every single fruit I saw in the grocery store which I had never tried before. This was the year of rambutan and lychee and prickly pears and and pomelos and a few others I can't think of right now. (This is also the year I discovered I'm mildly allergic to pomelos.)

Z - Zipped off to Medicine Hat for my Grandma's birthday party. Almost the whole extended family on that side was there. That's a LOT of people. It was so good to see all of them again.

Goodreads Choice Awards Update!

It's the most beautiful foggy day outside; the sky looks like tea with a lot of milk in it. I'm inside, at the kitchen table, drinking coffee with a lot of milk in it (aka a latte). What a milky day.

I'm laying low this afternoon because I'm a little peopled out (in a good way!). This past week I did a reading at Bushwakkers and visited two book clubs, one in Baltimore via Zoom and one here in Regina. I also have an event tomorrow night in Moose Jaw—a friend of mine (Tim!) is screening his film and he's invited me to be part of a panel discussion afterward (event and ticket info here)—so I need to get my social battery back up to full (or, like, even 75% would probably do it). All good things, but my fellow introverts know that social batteries don't differentiate between good things and bad things, just peopley things and non-peopley things (though I think I expend a little extra energy for meeting-new-people things and center-of-attention things). 

Anyway. I've come on here to share some good news: I Think We've Been Here Before has made it to the final round of voting for the Goodreads Choice Awards (more on that here). 

I've been surprised a time or two in my life, but this is honestly one of the more surprising things that has ever happened to me. I was not just skeptical about making it to the next round, I actually thought it wasn't possible—which is why I didn't even check the short list to see if I'd gone through. Someone messaged me to tell me I'd made it and I thought it was a mean prank. I felt sad. I FELT SORRY FOR MYSELF. And then I looked for myself and saw that it wasn't a prank and I just felt baffled. 

I still feel a little baffled. But happy baffled. 

Anyway, I'd really like to say thank you to everyone who took the time out of their day to vote for me. According to Goodreads, almost five million people voted in that first round, which is a number I have a hard time understanding. It's wild to think that the number of people who voted for me specifically could've been high enough to break through that kind of noise and move my weird little Saskatchewan Christmas apocalypse novel along. It's been a really nice little trip. It feels validating and fun. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.

But wait! There's more!

There is one more round of voting; it's a new round, which means that you can vote again; your first round vote no longer counts (why do they do it like this? No one knows!). This round closes on Sunday, November 30. After that, one winner will be crowned in each category and all I will have of this week is a fond memory and a really nice TBR list (I am going to read every single book in the sci-fi category; they all look AMAZING and I recommend you do the same).

Okay. Click here or on the graphic below to vote one last time if you want. I'll love you forever!

A Wrong Turn Backstage

It was early in the morning; I was half-asleep, doing that thing you're not supposed to do where you check your phone before you even get out of bed and slowly fry your brain awake. On Instagram, a DM: someone sent me a link to the Goodreads Choice Awards nominee list with zero context. I didn't click on it. They probably meant to send it to someone else, I thought. Possibly, their account had been hijacked and this was spam.

For context, because not everyone is as terminally plugged into the Internet Book World as I am (and they will probably live longer for it), the Goodreads Choice Awards goes like this: Goodreads puts out a longlist of the most popular books of the previous year, based on their data—15 categories (sci-fi, fantasy, romance, etc), 20 books in each category. There’s a round of voting, the list is shortened to 10 books in each category, there’s another round of voting, and a winner is chosen in each category. 

I never pay much attention to the GCAs. The list is generally made up of the year’s Big Books, the ones you see in People magazine and in every single bookstagram feed and at the front of Indigo in hardcover on their release day (I don’t know if I mentioned this, but my local Indigo did not have any copies, not a single one, of I Think We’ve Been Here Before in stock on its pub day and, here in Canada, neither did Amazon because three days prior they inexplicably cancelled every single preorder and pulled the listing!). The people who make up these lists are, like, Stephen King and Emily Henry and Richard Osman and Fredrik Backman. 

All of this to say: if it sounds like I’m being annoyingly self-deprecating when I say I didn’t click that link because I didn’t think it could possibly have anything to do with me, I’m not. I really, really didn’t think it possibly could. 

But then it occurred to me that, maybe, this person and I had a mutual friend who had been nominated. That was possible. So I navigated back to my inbox and clicked the link. It opened to the sci-fi page, and I paused. Most of my author friends write romance, lit fic, thrillers, poetry. Who do I know who put out a sci-fi book this year? I racked my brain as I scrolled down.

Oh. Me.

I saw my book there and had a moment of elation before the grounding realization: It’s a dream. My dreams are super vivid and I have ones like this all the time. I've won the Booker! I've gotten a six-figure book deal! All of Hollywood wants the movie rights to my novel and they're literally standing on my front lawn throwing money at my house! Oh no! They’re drowning in their own money! I heroically jump in and save the producers from drowning in the money and I’m a national hero! Jimmy Eat World writes a song about me—

Anyway.

The best evidence for it being a dream? I Think We've Been Here Before could not be on a list for best sci-fi of 2025: it was published in 2024.

I put my phone back on the night table and fell back asleep. That’s how fleeting my adrenaline spike was: I fell back asleep.

Later in the kitchen, making coffee, trying to drag myself out of my lingering sleepiness, I pulled the page up again. It was still there. Hm. I asked Barclay to see if his Goodreads account also had my book listed on there, because I'd gone from thinking it was a dream to thinking it was maybe a tech glitch. But no, it was on his screen too. 

I scrolled to the bottom of the page and clicked on Rules and Eligibility: 

Books published in the United States in English, including works in translation and other significant rereleases, between November 13, 2024, and November 11, 2025, are eligible for the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards.

OH.

So then I believed it (barely, sort of). 

Voting for this round closes on Sunday, and the shortlist will be announced the following Tuesday. Let’s be real: I do not stand a chance. But! I’m going to ask you to vote for me anyway (HERE!). Because that’s what you do when this happens. And because my weird little book about a farm family from Saskatchewan is, for a moment, sitting on a list between two John Scalzi books, like a concert-goer who took a wrong turn after using the bathroom and accidentally ended up on the stage between Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter. Clap for her! She’s so confused about why she’s up there but she’s having a great time!

Under the Floorboards

If you’ve been around here for long enough, you know the story about how my grandma went to an auction sale to buy a buggy and accidentally bought a whole house for $500 instead. Or, as well, rather. You know that she was 80 at the time and didn’t know what to do with the house, which was a 1000 square foot, 100-year-old Eaton’s catalogue Foursquare farmhouse and a real fixer-upper. You know that she sent my mom a text that said, Oh! I just bought a house! And you know that my mom drove to Gravelbourg to see the house, fell in love with it, and promptly began the arduous, painstaking process of renovating it, top to bottom. 

You can read that whole story here, and see progress pics here.

I realized recently that I haven’t added newer progress pictures here in a long time—like, since 2018! I’ve done a little updating on Instagram, but not here. I’ll rectify this, I will, but FIRST. 

First.

Ask me what my mom found under the floorboards in the attic.

…

I’m so tempted to just end this blog post here and wait for a few days so you don’t get to know the answer to the question right away. I’m a sucker for a good cliff-hanger. I love making people wait, letting them wonder. I’m doing it right now! Isn’t it fun? 

(I’m getting the vibe from you, all the way from the other side of the computer screen and from back here in the past while I’m writing this to you, who will read it later today, that the whole making you wait and wonder is more fun for me than it is for you, and I’m sorry.) 

Okay, I'll tell you; I'll start at the beginning:

As I said, my mom and dad have been hard at work over the course of the past decade, fully renovating the first and second floors of the house. They've done the basement too, and they’ve landscaped the yard and planted a massive garden and built a garage. It is gorgeous. It is almost finished. There's just the attic left, which is going to become the master bedroom. 

So, it's often true, especially when it comes to very old houses, that before you can construct something, you have to take stuff apart a little. And it's also true, especially when it comes to very old houses, that when you take stuff apart, you might uncover...secrets. You might find things very purposefully tucked under floorboards. You might find, as my parents did, a letter from 1929, which begins, "Dear Ethel, I was so glad to hear from you and also to know that you arrived safely from prison to your home. We are all very well except that Lena Scottie is in the hospital sick with Diptheria."

The letter, which I will link to below, is five pages long, and in it, the sender implores Ethel to become a Catholic, and tells her that "all the Mothers and Children" miss her and talk about her a lot. The return address on the letter is St Agnes Priory School in Manitoba, a place where 'delinquent girls' were sent to be reformed (delinquent in the 1920s could mean anything from "has engaged in criminal activity" to "is a single mother" or "is neurodivergent"). It's not an overly juicy letter, other than the mention of prison or the fact that it was sent by one of the other "delinquent girls" at St. Agnes, but that almost makes it more interesting, doesn't it? Why hide a letter like that? Or, if you didn't want it to be discovered, why not rip it up, or burn it? 

My mom is not the kind of person to say, "Oh, a letter addressed to someone else; not my circus! Not my monkeys!" Which is good, because I'm really nosy and would like to know why Ethel hid the letter, and why Ethel was in jail, and also what happened to Ethel, period. 

So Mom called up one of the family members of the original person who built the house. She said, "Hey, I've got a letter here for the person who lived in this house who went to prison." 

And they were like, "Prison?!"

And she was like, "Yeah, the letter was hidden."

And they were like, "Much like the fact that we had a relative who went to prison!"

Luckily, this person is kind of like my mom and me; they are also not a not-my-circus-not-my-monkeys type. They immediately launched into a full-scale investigation, interviewing other family members, driving to grave yards, even calling the office of St. Agnes, asking for intake records. You can read all of their findings, as well as the full letter, here and an update here. 

It's wild, isn't it, to think about old houses, about how some secrets stay hidden and some make themselves known? It's wild to think about this woman, Ethel, who hid this letter instead of destroying it. Did it cross her mind that someday someone might find it and care enough to uncover her story, that members of her family might get to know her that way where previously she was kept a secret? I always think about how important it is to us, as humans, to be known and understood, and in reading Ethel's story, I don't get the sense that she was (I mean, one of the things this family member dug up was a newspaper clipping that told the story about how the Phillipsons came to Canada from England. It talked about all seven of their children, where they ended up, who they married, where they worked, but when it got to Ethel, all it said was, "Ethel, died young").

So, I don't know, I guess I'm glad for all of this, is what I'm saying. Glad for Ethel and her family. Glad for my mom, too—who among us has not dreamed of the day we might find a secret letter hidden under the floorboards in the attic of a 100-year-old house?

Just me? I think not.

One Year!

Today marks one year since I Think We've Been Here Before was published in Canada.

And what a year it's been.

I'm a reflective person by nature, the kind of person who talks about a party the whole way home from the party, who possibly enjoys analyzing things after the fact as much as [or more than] I enjoy the initial experience of them. Maybe it's because I'm so anxious? I find that when I'm living through something, I'm very distracted by my anxieties, by the pressure to do it, whatever it is, right, to have fun, to not say something stupid, to, ironically, enjoy it to the fullest. But in reflection, the pressure is off. I'm just observing. Reliving the nice things without the possibility of disaster or embarrassment or failure. And maybe there's something to be learned there—is this what people talk about when they say they want to be more present?—but I haven't learned it yet. 

The experience of releasing a book is no different; there is so much to reflect on after the fact, and people are constantly asking questions that provoke even more reflection. Questions like, "How did the book do?" And, "Was it successful?" 

Great questions. Surprisingly hard questions! Let me try to answer them.

Something I didn't understand before getting into Publishing World was that there are a million metrics for deciding if a book did well or not. There are sales numbers, obviously. There's reader feedback. Trade reviews and Goodreads reviews and other various internet places where people talk about your book. There are the experiences that come out of publishing said book, both private and communal. Did you earn back your advance? Are the reviews generally positive or negative? And so on, and so forth. There are a LOT of metrics. 

To start, I Think We've Been Here Before has the lowest number of sales out of all of my books—which is funny to me, because I think it's my best. But as of right now, it has sold more than 100,000 fewer copies than Sorry I Missed You, which is (don't tell Sorry I Missed You) my least favorite of my three novels. So by that metric, it didn't do very well. It also didn't get as many trade reviews as V&V or SIMY, nothing in Kirkus or Booklist or Library Journal. It doesn't have nearly as many Goodreads reviews as either of my other books. It didn't sit at the top of any important bestsellers lists.

But! 

This book took me to Toronto and Denver and Evergreen and Saskatoon. It introduced me, through the process of asking for blurbs, to Marissa Stapley, who then invited me into her glorious circle of author friends (and honestly, if this was the only thing that came out of this book's publication, I'd call it a win, because these people are the best and I get to keep them even after the book stuff goes away). It was optioned for television by the incredible Paul Davidson, and found its way into the hands of people I would never have imagined, in my wildest dreams, would ever read my work. It was nominated for four Saskatchewan Book Awards, and won in one category, and that was a completely magical experience, from the longlist announcement to the awards gala, where I sat at a table full of new and extremely talented friends. And it opened up the coolest conversations with strangers in my email inbox; I heard from people who'd recently lost loved ones, palliative care nurses, a very sweet family of Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on (and on and on), and we talked about death and life and quantum entanglement and deja vu and Berlin and music and grief and writing. The reviews, though fewer, were overwhelmingly positive. I even credit this book with helping me get over my fear of public speaking, because it brought about so many podcast interviews and book events.

So, how did the book do? Not well. But was it successful? YES.

So. What's next?

Something I love almost as much as reflecting is daydreaming. However, reflecting is easier, because the material is all there; you just have to, like I said earlier, observe it. Daydreaming in the publishing realm is not quite so easy, especially now that I've been in it for so long. I feel very aware of the fact that nothing is guaranteed, that just because you managed to get a book or two published, that definitely does not mean the journey ahead will be all downhill. 

Or downhill at all. 

Or that there will continue to be a journey. 

It's been an interesting year behind the scenes. I'm not going to go into the whole story just yet, because it feels like a foolish one to tell before it's finished, but I will say that I recently sent a new book to my agent. It's weird, definitely the weirdest one I've ever written. It starts out with a farmer standing in his field looking at a big empty place where not five minutes ago, there was a farm. At first, he thinks the problem is that he's losing his mind, but then he realizes that he's not losing his mind, a whole farm really has vanished in front of his eyes, and that's actually a much bigger problem. 

So my agent is reading it, and hopefully she decides it's something we can sell together. It's is a very nerve-racking thing, sending off a book that has thus far only lived in my head. I mostly trust myself to know when something's worth writing, but sometimes I wonder, yikes, what if this was a really bad idea? What if I just spent two years working on a really bad idea?

I guess we'll see! And I promise, you'll be the first to know if that book becomes, you know, a book. 

Straight to Zebras

So I'm one of those "adults" who really, strongly dislikes being alone at night. Leave me alone during the day, fine—great, even! I love you!—night? No. My imagination is too good. The dark is too dark. And what if something like this were to happen again, when I was home alone with the kids? It wouldn't be good for my wussy nerves.

But sometimes, inevitably, I do find myself alone at night. It happened again recently, when Barclay went away for a few days for work. Obviously, the kids were here with me, but they're smaller than me, and likely smaller than any intruder is going to be, and they do very little to put my mind at ease, no offense to them. 

So I was suffering, is what I'm saying, I was laying in bed at midnight, and the dark was encroaching, as it does, and my imagination was going, and I was watching Gilmore Girls, trying to distract myself from being alone. It worked. I drifted off to sleep...

...and woke up only a few hours later to this...sound.

This unrecognizable, unfathomable, unreasonable sound. 

I had no idea what it was. I felt sure, as much as anyone can feel sure about anything at three in the morning, that I had never heard this sound before in my whole life. It was completely new. It was not the sound of someone breaking in, or of one of the kids falling out of bed—it was too loud, and too weird. It was not a real sound, I decided, not something from this realm, if you know what I mean. 

(I don't even know what I mean.) 

I will try to describe it for you:

It was a crash, so loud I could feel it in my chest. But it was...strangely musical? But not nice music: it was dissonant and ugly. And it just kept going. It was a sound that echoed and reverberated. It was hollow and frightening and otherworldly. I thought, I am dying! This is what dying sounds like! 

Because it didn't sound like anything else. 

Then it was just over, and I was sitting straight up in my bed, having sat all the way up before I even woke all the way up, and I began to second guess myself. Had I heard anything at all? Was it a dream? Could you dream a sound like that?

I sat there and listened for probably ten minutes. Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a peep from the kids' rooms—and that made me doubt myself even more. Surely, if this noise was even half of what I thought it was, they'd be up and screaming bloody murder. 

But my heart was pounding, and my brain was fizzing, and I knew I could not fall back asleep without at least walking through the house and making sure everything was okay. I was not relishing the thought of walking through the dark rooms, hoping something wouldn't jump out at me, hoping I wouldn't hear that awful sound again. 

I went and looked at the kids first—fast asleep, both of them. Nothing amiss in either room. 

Okay.

I looked in the bathroom, in the shower. 

Nothing. 

I tip-toed into the kitchen, where everything was fine, and then down into the basement—nope; I stopped halfway down the stairs. Too scary. If there was something down there, it would have to meet me upstairs because I was not confronting it in what is objectively the scariest place in the house.

The last room left unexplored was the living room. It was quiet, and mostly normal, except for one thing: my acoustic guitar was lying on the floor in the middle of the room. 

I stared at it. This was weird. I was still much too tired to work it out. How had it gotten here? 

I know, I know. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Look around, use logic. I know. But I went straight to zebras; I always go straight to zebras. I thought, THERE IS A GHOST IN HERE AND IT THREW MY GUITAR ON THE FLOOR.

Like, I only thought that for a few terrifying seconds, but I did think it. 

But okay. Here's what actually happened:

My guitar hangs on a holder above the piano. 

Need I say more? 

Probably not, but I'll say more anyway: the anchor for the guitar holder came right out of the wall. 

At three in the morning, on one of the five nights of the whole year that Barclay was not home with me. 

Unlucky timing at its very finest. 

It came out of the wall, and fell, along with the guitar, directly onto the piano keys. The guitar then bounced off of the piano and onto the piano bench. It bounced off of the piano bench and onto the floor, and then it bounced across the floor, where it skittered to a stop in the middle of the living room, amidst the din of piano hammers striking piano strings and guitar strings striking the floor, echoing through both instruments and through the floorboards and through the thin wall into my bedroom on the other side, where I had been sleeping the fitful sleep of someone who just KNEW that Something was going to happen, purely because Barclay had gone away for work. 

My question is: how am I supposed to grow into a well-adjusted adult who can be left alone at night if things like this keep going on? 

A Quiet Month

I'm sitting in a quiet kitchen, listening to the sound of the dishwasher and fifty birds yelling at each other outside my window. I've turned all of the lights off and opened only the blinds on the south side of the house. I'm thinking about making a latte, but dreading the sound of the coffee grinder.

I am...overstimulated?

May was a lot—which is funny, because I had been telling people it was going to be a quiet month. Releasing a book comes with a lot of social things, mostly concentrated in the month of the actual launch and then tapering off as people forget you exist and move onto the shinier, newer releases (such a relief, such a blessing, but it hurts your feelings every time anyway). ITWBHB had two launch months, because it had two different pub days, so it took up the entire fall and most of the winter. There was a trickle of events after Christmas, but one day in March I looked at the calendar and realized that there was only one thing left: my friend Adelle's launch party in April. She would fly in from Ontario, we'd do a little in-conversation thing at Everyday Kitchen, and I would be officially off the hook. There was nothing left on the calendar, not professionally, not personally. May was for working on my next book, taking naps and recharging my social battery which I worried, at that point, was permanently dead. 

But then.

Okay, what was the first thing? Right. I found out, happily, that ITWBHB was shortlisted for some Saskatchewan Book Awards. There would be a gala in Saskatoon on May 9 where they'd announce the winners. Okay! That sounded fun, and I hadn't been to a gala since 2013. I was going to need to buy a fancy dress. Barclay would need a suit. This was so out of the ordinary for us; we're not fancy people. So I put that on the calendar, and it was The Only Thing in May. One big, fancy thing. Sweet. We asked my parents to take the kids for the whole weekend—after all, we didn't have anything else going on that month, and it had been a solid half a year since we had a night away from the kids. Might as well make it a little vacation, right?  

Oh, but then my mom texted to let me know that we were having a family reunion in Medicine Hat. When? May 17-19. Okay. Doable. The very next week. 

Oh, but then Barclay came home from work and said, "Hey, we've been invited to a gala!" And I said, "I know! It's on the calendar!" And he said, "No, a different gala. This one is on May third!" And I said, "Well, at least that's not on the same day as the other gala, or the family reunion!" And he said, "True!" And I said, "And we can get double the use out of our gala clothes!" And he said, "Awesome!"

Oh, but then Barclay texted me a few days later and said, "Haha, so what do you think about going to another gala?" It was a charity gala for Bring 'Em Up and the Open Door Society, and he was thinking about buying a table. I said, "Hey, we've got the gala clothes, we might as well." I put that one on the calendar too. May 23. 

Oh, but then my friend Ashley invited me to her wedding vow renewal on May 24! Which was very cool; I had never been to one of those before. And if I curled my hair on the 23, I wouldn't have to do it again for the renewal. Perfect. I put it on the calendar. 

Oh! But then I got another very nice email, telling me that I was a runner-up for the City of Regina Writing Award, for my next [as yet unfinished] novel, You Won't Believe Your Eyes. There would be an awards ceremony at the Hotel Sask on May 29! PUT IT ON THE CALENDAR. 

Okay, and there were more things but you're like, Suzy, we don't need a play by play. We all have calendars, and they are all very full. Yes, yes, I get it. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to imply that my calendar is more overwhelming than yours, I'm just saying that this month was supposed to be empty, like a Saskatchewan wheat field on a clear, cloudless summer day, but somehow it ended up being more like a bustling Toronto street with bikes and cars and pedestrians and a the-end-is-near guy. Because by the time May finally arrived, the calendar also contained a book reading, and a friend's book fair, and a second family reunion, and Sully's first public musical performance with his band (which ended up feeling like the most important thing of the whole month). 

I bought the dress, Barclay bought the suit. I wore the dress three times, and Barclay got five wears out of the suit. I did two readings, one from each book. I gave two acceptance speeches, got a plaque and a certificate and a nice little cheque. I caught up with maybe (actually) a hundred relatives and made a bunch of new friends. We spent a total of 22 hours in the car. I signed books, and bought books (namely I Hate Parties by Jes Battis, A Simple Carpenter by Dave Margoshes, and Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe). 

Sadly, near the end of the month, I also said goodbye to a very dear old friend. Because even when life is very busy and moving along at an amazing pace, it stops, too. Even when life is very vibrant and beautiful and exciting, it is sad, too.

So.

This morning, my kids went off to school, Barclay went to the office, and here I am, thinking about maybe making coffee. Thankful for the quiet. Processing. 

And I know better than to say that June will be a quiet month.

A Letter

 Hey J,

I didn't get to say goodbye to you before you left. You kept coming to mind all week, more than usual. I meant to send a quick text to see how you were doing and tell you how much I was thinking about you, but then I got a text instead, saying you were gone. I missed my chance. I didn't realize how little time there was. I keep saying to people that I was so surprised, and that I feel a little ridiculous for how surprised I was. I probably should've known better. 

Is this weird: I've thought about texting you to say goodbye. Like, after. Even though I knew it wouldn't be you who read the text message. Like, I know this is ridiculous, me sitting there trying to figure out how to get a message to you when I have already recognized the impossibility of that. 

But, okay, here's one last story for you, J:

I'm working on this short story right now, and it's set in Scotland. So yesterday I was sitting in my kitchen, looking at old blog posts from when I went there with Barclay in 2011. As I scrolled down to the bottom of the first one, your name jumped out at me—you'd left a comment that said, simply, "And this is why I love you." It was a strange moment; I smiled to myself and thought, Of all the days I could stumble across this comment from fourteen years ago... It's the kind of funny little nothing-but-everything story I'd specifically save to tell you, because you always loved stories about synchronicities. 

A light clicked on in my head at that moment: you are maybe the only person in the world who has read every single blog post I've ever written. You actually made a point of reminding me of that quite often, including in the last email you ever sent me. So if I wanted to say goodbye to you, maybe this is the place to do it? Is that silly? Maybe other people would think it's silly, but I actually think you'd like it.

So, okay. Goodbye, J. You meant a lot to me. You were a listener, a talker, an encourager, a friend, a motivator, an example, a cheerleader. You were one of the first people I told when I found out Sully was coming, one of the first friends to meet him after he was born. You were so open with me about your life, and I learned from you that openness is good and important and helpful and beautiful. You were the first person to "publish" something I'd written. You were funny, and you made me feel special and safe. And this is why I love you. 

I really, really wish I would've been able to say these things to you in time. I guess that's the last thing you taught me: next time, don't wait too long to say what you need to say. I don't think I'll soon forget this lesson.

Thanks, J. Goodbye. 

The Ghost in the Central Branch

I always walk around really conscious of my past self—is this weird? Do you know what I mean though? Like, Barclay and I went for a walk yesterday, in the east end by the golf course, and we were talking about something and at the same time we both went, hey, we were walking down this EXACT same path the last time we talked about this thing; we were right in this exact spot. And it was like our past selves were ghosts walking along beside us and we were laughing at them, at how little they knew about the future (to be fair, Barclay and I have never claimed to be fortune tellers). 

But I love moments like that, where you can see your past self, totally oblivious to your present self, maybe worrying about something, or planning something, or working on something, and they have no idea how it's going to turn out but you do. 

(Or at least, you know a little bit more than they do. Because someday, your future self is going to laugh at your present self for not knowing now what you will then.)

Anyway.

I had a moment like this today. 

My ghosts are all over this place—that's one of the cool things about living in the same city for such a long time—and one of them lives in the Central Branch of the Regina Public Library. She went to see the Writer in Residence there about a decade ago, clutching a half-baked manuscript that needed two more years of edits before an agent would take it seriously, basically to ask if she was any good at this writing thing or if she should quit. 

I don't know if you remember this, but you might: I wrote this blog post about the moment I pulled the trigger and send off that terrifying email to the WIR, and this blog post about the day I went in and met with her.

Today, I went to that same library for the Saskatchewan Book Awards shortlist announcement, and found out my book was shortlisted in four categories(!). As the SBA members stood at the podium and read the names of the nominees, I watched my shaky little ghost walk behind them, up the stairs and into the WIR office, manuscript in hand, heart pounding so hard I can hear it ten years later. My ghost went into the office worried that she was being silly, that this whole book thing was a bad idea, that the Writer in Residence was going to give her a few pity compliments and then drop kick her heart right out the window onto Smith Street. 

She didn't, by the way. That woman, Dr. Nilofar, was one of the first professional people who told my ghost that she wasn't being silly, and that she should try to publish a book. It's one of those Really Important Moments in my life, which is why my ghost haunts that library still, walking from the sliding doors at the library entrance, through the stacks and up the stairs, trying to be brave because this thing was really, really important to her even though she felt kind of ridiculous saying that out loud to anyone. 

The sad thing about these ghosts is that you can't talk to them. I always wish I could. I wish I could just yell back in time, like, even something vague and encouraging, just give them a glimpse into the future so they could know that what they're doing is working or that such-and-such a thing is going to be okay or, at the very least, just isn't going to matter in a few years. 

But you don't get to. You have to live your life in order and find out how it's going by going there. And you have to be oblivious to the future versions of yourself doing the things you dream about doing someday. And I think maybe this is the key to being a person with big dreams: being aware of all of your ghosts. Knowing that no matter where you are in your journey, there are more versions of you ahead, so excited for you to catch up and see what's going to happen next.

 

An Icon

There's this place here in Regina that does an open mic night every Monday. I've been to a few; it's a very nice time. 

I have to be in the right headspace for them, because they can be a little heavy on the second-hand embarrassment, for which I have a very low threshold. Like, that moment when a person is up there doing stand-up and they deliver this joke you can tell they're really proud of, and the room just collectively stares at them, unblinking...? I can't handle it. 

Even worse is when they wait a beat, like they think, oh, any moment now this joke is going to land; it's just taking a second. They know that if a joke takes a second and then lands, the payoff is sometimes even better, so they look out into the dark room, hopeful, searching so hard for that laugh. But there is no laugh and that pause only serves to amplify the fact that the joke was not something that was ever going to land—and maybe it's just this audience, this night, these vibes, but also: maybe the joke wasn't that good. And you can see these thoughts on their face; it's awful, watching someone recognize their own failure in front of an audience.

And it can get even worse! Because when people are embarrassed they get defensive and angry, and they might say something like, "Well people usually love that joke," or, "Whoa, tough audience." And you know they know, deep down, that it's not the audience's fault. You imagine them going home, walking into their apartment, sitting on the couch, staring at the wall. You imagine their sadness. And then you feel sad, when what you came for in the first place was the exact opposite of sadness. And that seems a little unfair! 

ANYWAY. 

All I really meant to say here was that I went to an open mic night on Monday with my friend Sarah, and it was lovely, and there was cheesecake and a little bit of secondhand sadness, but there was also a lot of secondhand triumph, and genuine laughter, and it was all very beautiful because it was all so human. And! A pleasant little surprise was that I ran into this guy again. I haven't seen him in years, but apparently he's a regular at open mic night now. He did two Bon Jovi songs; he danced, he got the audience to join in, he ran around the room during the instrumentals. 

And when he spotted me in the crowd afterward, he came over. 

He looked at me curiously; I wondered if he recognized me, and maybe he did but maybe he didn't. He said, "Hey, what did you think of my songs?"

I said, "You did great. It was so good. The audience loved you."

He said, "Yes, I know. I'm an icon."