The ABCs of 2018

Welp. The planet and everyone on it lasted another year, which is, frankly, astounding to me at this point. (I have never claimed to be an optimist.) Happy last day of 2018, everyone. Let's see how far we can make it into 2019!

So here's my 2018 alphabet. I love doing this every year; my friend Courtney got me into it. I don't expect anyone to read mine—it's super long—but you should do one yourself. It's fun, both to do now and to look back on later.
(2017, 2016)


a - A few of the things I did anywhere from more than twice to every single week: walked around the lake and to the park, hung out at friends' houses, taco night at The Lobby with Shlee, early morning writing sessions at the Bean, trips to the museums and art gallery, made elaborate Sunday brunches with Barclay.

b - Built a desk and some bookshelves in our bedroom—can't have too many desks, can't have too many bookshelves. Made a desk for Sully in his bedroom too (he was so thrilled; he said, "OH I GET MY OWN THUMB TACK BOARD!" and, "Um, my desk needs a plant like yours has. In a real vase.")

c - Car trips: To Erin's house with Kate, to Frontier to visit my family a couple of times, lots of trips out of town to see Scarlett's parents, to Saskatoon for a cousin's wedding and to Medicine Hat for another cousin's wedding. No flying again this year (come on, 2019).

d - Drove also to Moose Jaw to attend the Saskatchewan Festival of Words with Hannah.

e - Editing. In 2018 alone, I closely edited V&V (counts on fingers) seven, maybe eight times. Editing with a publisher is a whole new ball game—editorial letters! Copy edits! Proofreads! Style sheets! It's like taking a writing class every time you do a round, which is excellent.

f - Film agent. We got an amazing film agent attached to V&V, and maybe nothing will come of it but it was really fun to start brainstorming actresses and daydreaming about sending my baby to Hollywood.

g - Gardened! Or, tried. And, subsequently, failed miserably. I killed everything in the yard, you guys. Everything. Even the grass died.

h - Had our car broken into twice—the second time was yesterday morning. I got up at 4:30 am to take a friend to the airport and was, like, super overjoyed to discover that the car had been trashed only moments earlier (there were fresh footprints in the falling snow) (I was so sleepy and so mad I was tempted to follow those footprints and give a good lecture to somebody).

I - I sold an article to Freelance Magazine (the Sask Writers' Guild's quarterly), to be published in 2019. It'll be my first publication in a physical magazine, which is very fun.

j - Just was such a bad book club member. (Last year's J was 'joined a book club.') I don't think I read even one of the book club books this year. Am I even still in the book club? I joined another one, too, and haven't been to a single meeting.

k - Kaeli, my good friend, started teaching Intro to Bullet Journalling classes at the Paper Umbrella and I went to one. She taught me a lot this year about how great it feels to support your friends in their endeavors, and how great it feels when they support you back.

l - Lake Union Publishing offered me a two-book book deal in January.

m - Music, live! This year I saw Jack White, Tokyo Police Club, a Beatles tribute band, Robyn Koester, Nazareth, Bruce Cockburn, Shakey Graves, Walk Off the Earth, Matt Holubowski, Neko Case, the Arkells, the Regina Symphony Orchestra, Big Wreck, Delhi 2 Dublin, Begonia, Close Talker, and Bears in Hazenmore. Went to Swampfest, Winterruption, and Folk Fest.

n - Neglected a lot of housework this year. It's like, WHEN, you know?

o - Onions, red. This year, I got super into red onions. I used to only buy white onions, but I haven't purchased a white onion in months. Crazy, isn't it? Red onions.

p - Peregrine Landscape Construction: the name of Barclay's new business that he started in August of this year. I'm so excited for him and proud of him; he's got one employee and they have half a season under their belt. Going well!

q - Quite enjoyed many quiet evenings this year at the kitchen table with Barclay, him working on his business and me on my books, drinking coffee and sometimes interrupting each other to ask for opinions or advice or whatever.

r - Read 14 books—which I'm going to consider pretty good, considering it was a crazy busy year. This doesn't include the books Barclay read out loud to me though, so...probably closer to 20.

s - Sullivan turned 4 & Scarlett turned 2—today, actually! (Happy Birthday, Scarlatti!)

t - Tourism Regina sent me to some fun events—mostly concerts and music festivals (above) but also the CP Women's Open, Nuit Blanche, Cinema Under the Stars, the RCMP Heritage Museum, the Ex, Fan Expo, and Video Games Live.

u - Undertow by Stars was one of my favorite songs. (The song itself is off of the Sad Robots EP, which is from 2008 or something, but, I don't know, it just never caught me until this year, and then I listened to it a lot.)

v - Vacation. Our family vacation this year was a couple of days in Saskatoon. We walked around, drank coffee, etc. It was super chill.

w - Wrote my second book, which I'm going to turn in to my publisher in the new year.

x - XXXI (see y)

y - Yes, I turned 31.

z - zebra sightings: 0.

Dear Loved Ones IRL

“Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it." - John Green

I was on a walk with someone the other day and she asked how the book stuff was going and I said it was going well and she said, "I'm so excited to read it!"

And I, immediately flattered and flustered and touched, said, "Yeah!...and then we can both pretend you didn't, right?"

She seemed surprised and asked me to explain myself, and I promptly found that I couldn't. I just did a lot of mumbling about how the whole thing is so fun, and so exciting, yes, it is, totally, and also I just never want to have to discuss it with anyone I know very well in real life. 

This confused things further because, of course, there is this: I have a blog where I write a lot, including about the books, and it is not a private blog. I have an Instagram account where I share, on average, a picture a day, and where I talk about the writing process a lot. And then, you know, I wrote these books and, with great effort and absolutely on purpose, am having them published. Publicly. 

So it's understandably confusing when I say to someone that I want to pretend with close friends and family, offline, that none of this is actually happening. Yes. Confounding.

I have had ten thousand iterations of this conversation in the past year or so, and I've found that I'm not getting any better at explaining myself. In fact, at best I'm confusing everyone, and at worst I'm offending them or maybe even hurting their feelings. The fact that I came here, to my blog, to work out and write out what I can never seem to say in real life almost feels like an explanation in and of itself. But I'll try to elaborate just a touch more. 

Okay.

I'm not even sure where to start. Maybe with this:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well, then, I contradict myself

(I am large, I contain multitudes)

- Walt Whitman

I have always wanted to be an author. I have always loved writing. And I have always been terrified of people reading what I write. I want people to read what I've written, because that's obviously a measure of success as an author, and I want to be published so that lots of people can read what I've written, and I don't want anyone to read what I've written because I'm the one who wrote it. 

When I started this blog, I protected it from everyone I knew in real life—Barclay, my family, my friends, everyone. There was a tiny community of strangers who read my blog, and I read theirs, and it was just a great way to practise writing and to connect with other people who loved writing too. It was a simpler time, when the internet wasn't so searchable, when blogs weren't so discoverable. As people began to find this place, though, I realized I had to make a decision: give up this hobby that I loved and the community I built here, because CRIPPLING EMBARRASSMENT, or keep on going and pretend like I didn't die inside every time someone in real life told me they'd stumbled across my blog or someone had shared it with them. 

This already sounds dumb. Bear with me; these are just my actual feelings. I just actually feel them. 

So the book thing, at first, was much the same as the blog thing. I was going to keep it a secret. I was going to use a pen name and tell NO ONE. My dream has never been fame; my dream has been the finished product: a legit book. Professionally edited and designed and published. 

Barclay said, "There are a few people who would want to know you wrote a book." And then I almost decided not to write a book because, well, he was right. People would be put out if I didn't tell them, and I was not willing to tell them. But then I found that I was so attached to the idea of publishing a book that I also couldn't not do that. I was stuck between something I could not do and something I could not not do and at first I couldn't tell whether it would be harder to do something hard or to not do something wonderful...and somehow, I ended up here.

And this is how it's been for every single step in the process. Weighing the outcome against my fear, briefly considering giving up, and then pushing forward in spite of myself.

My bestest-best friends know that I mostly deliver book news by text message (or not at all) and then get really, really weird about it if they want to follow up in real life. I can barely even say the names of my books out loud because I wrote those too. 

I got my book deal in January and didn't tell my parents about it until April (and then I did it via super awkward text message, sandwiched in between a picture of something Sullivan made and a funny story about something he said).

And Barclay will attest to the fact that any time I get good news about this process, or any time I have a phone meeting with my agent or editor, I get actually, physically ill. The better the news, the sicker I get. My whole entire being suffers from stage fright. (It's actually kind of incredible, the way the brain is, like, connected to the body like that.)

All that said, I'm loving it. I have had a headache for months and the knots in my shoulders are like rocks, but I'm having the time of my life, I really am. I'm so happy and sick and it's all I want to talk about and I do not want to talk about it at all—like really, at all. I would not create a fictional character like this because my editors would say she didn't make sense. They'd say, "So her life-long dream is finally coming true and she just wants to pretend nothing's happening? This is dumb."

And I'd say, "Oh, it's not that she wants to pretend it's not happening. She'd be okay talking to strangers about it."

And they'd be like, "What about her charming, supportive husband who cares so much and asks so many intentional questions?"

And I'd say, "Mm...maybe him sometimes. Depending on her mood. But he's kind of figured her out and knows which questions make her eye twitch and he avoids those. It's really actually very sweet."

Anyway. This is my brain, hello and welcome, I'm sorry if it's weird. I will try my best to not be a jerk, but maybe, if you know me in real life, you could sometimes—just sometimes—meet me in the middle and pretend like I'm an architect or an accountant or some other occupation where we don't really talk about the specifics of my job very much. And the rest of the time I will laugh too much and turn too red and make self-deprecating jokes and steer the conversation hard the other way without even meaning to. (Don't forget that I'm saving you too, because what if you want to talk about this, like, all the time and then you actually read it and you hate it and suddenly you don't know how to mention it in front of me without being super awkward...)

And we will mutually understand that we love each other and that's actually why I'm so shy about this in front of you, and neither of us think that makes much sense but, hey, people don't make sense in all kinds of ways! You're weird too, you just don't write about it on the internet.

Which is probably a good call.

On Blurbs and Blurbing

So, blurbs. You know what they are, even if you think you don't (this has been true for 100% of the people who looked at me funny and said, "Your what?" when I told them my first blurbs came in).

The blurb (aka endorsement) is that little sentence or paragraph of promotional praise you find on the cover of a book (or just inside, or on the back, or on the Amazon page, or wherever). It's written by another author, usually one that has some clout in the publishing world, and I guess its purpose is to show that, look, a legit literary person read this book all the way through and they liked it, so if you like them/if you like books like theirs/if you like books that can be read all the way through and spoken glowingly about, you might like this book too. 

I've always noticed blurbs on the covers of books and wondered about the process behind them—how did this other author get ahold of this book in time to write this praise before the cover was finalized and the book was published? Did that author really even like or read that book or were they bribed? I know we got blurbs for the C+C book, but I wasn't really in on the process and this felt like a new thing to me still, so I googled it and came across these nuggets of wisdom from authors who have gone before me:

1. Asking for blurbs is humiliating and horrible—especially for debut authors.

2. Blurbing is important, but it's more for industry people than it is for consumers.

3. It's not uncommon to ask a lot of people to blurb your book and come up with nothing.

The gist of it: Brace yourself (that's a direct quote). No one's heard of you. You're asking people who have never heard of you to read an entire book you've written and, if they like it, say something nice about it. Not only that, you're asking this of other authors—people who are presumably very busy writing books, beta reading for their actual friends and writing groups, promoting their own work, doing conferences and tours, etc. You're asking them to put their name on your book, which is kind of a massive favour. 

So, okay then. I was ready when the email came from Alicia saying we were going to see if we could get some blurbs for V&V. I prepared myself to get exactly zero blurbs. If I even got one blurb that said, "This book is okay!" that would be great, I thought. And then I thought, "Wow, this is exactly like walking the hallways on the first day of high school asking other students if they think you're pretty, and then if they say yes, asking them, In what way and will you write that down for me?"

Not my thing, you know?

But we did it! (Actually, Alicia and Victoria did it! They do everything! I like them so much!) And it feels like a big enough deal to blog about. They sent out a (very early, not completely edited) copy of the book to some authors they thought might like it and who write in the same genre as I do, and then we waited. They've now begun to trickle in, and it's very, very good for my frazzled nerves.

(My nerves are so much more frazzled than I thought possible at the beginning of this whole thing, which is why if you've asked me about my book at any point in the past nine months, I've stared at you like you slapped me across the face and dumbly said, "Uhhh...yeah...it's...let's not talk about that, please." But that's a subject for a whole other blog post because this one is about BLURBS.)

Yay.

Valencia and Valentine Has A Cover!

We've all heard that dumb old saying about not judging the covers of books. It's very old and I think we could retire it. I always judge the covers of books and I always will because that's the whole dang point of covers of books: they're supposed to give you an idea of the style or mood of the book, maybe hint at a character or two, or the setting, or a detail pertinent to the plot. They're supposed to imply genre and they tell you who wrote it and what it's called. Everything is intentional, if a cover is well-designed, right down to the colours and the fonts.

If you were not meant to judge a book by its cover, a book would not have a cover. 

That said, I'm finally allowed to show you the cover of my book, so judge away, people. It was designed by Philip Pascuzzo (one of the designers behind the famous Twitter logo). It's going to be in hardcover and paperback, which is especially exciting to me because Lake Union is known for their beautiful hardcovers and it'll be a dream come true to have my name on one. 

Isn't it so pretty? I have it saved as the lock screen on my phone so I see it all day every day. Many thanks to Pepco Studios, but also to Lake Union and Alicia and Victoria for all the back-and-forth brainstorming sessions and allowing me to give my input. It was suuuuch a cool process. 

One step closer to pub day!

PS: You can preorder here (or click on the cover above), but I also just wanted to take a moment to add that preordering/buying a book is not the only way to show support to a person who has written one (though it really does help and I'm enormously thankful for everyone who's done this, srsly). 

A few other (free) ways are:

Add the book to your to-reads on Goodreads.

Request the book at your local library (if all copies of a book are reserved before the title comes out, the system has a way of noticing this popularity and marking the book as one for “more orders”). 

Same with bookstores. If you happen to be there anyway, I mean. It helps bookstore employees become aware of a book they might not have known about otherwise and maybe they'll read it and maybe they'll like it and then maybe they'll start handselling it, which would be the best.

Sullivan at 22

I don't know why the word 'eccentric' is most commonly applied to old people. After all, the most eccentric person I know is four years old.

This week, Sully has assumed an alternate personality, one which he embodies whole-heartedly and without breaking character for hours at a time. His name is Sullivan Barclay Krause; he is 22 years old and lives in BC with his wife and two children (who are, coincidentally, 1 and 4 and named Scarlett and Sullivan). He is fairly deadpan, speaks to me as a fellow adult, drinks americanos, likes jazz, and takes his kids to the park, like, all the time. He even asked me for my number so we could hang out sometime.

Today, he came for lunch. I asked him how his day was and he sighed deeply and said, "Welp. My car broked down. AGAIN."

I said, "Oh? What happened to it?"

"Welp. I was just going to the guitar store to buy some picks and a bad guy comed up and started punching it and it broked." Here, he rolled his eyes and shook his head and his little shoulders rose and fell and he let out another massive sigh.

"That's terrible," I said. "Just for no reason?"

"Oh no, he had a reason," said Sullivan Barclay Krause (never only Sullivan or Sully). "I just don't know what his reason was."

"Ah," I said. "You're probably right."

"I am," he said sagely.

"Hey, Sully," I said, clearing the table, nudging a blanket that had been left in the middle of the floor with my foot, "would you—"

"Sullivan Barclay Krause," he reminded me. "I'm 22. I'm an adult."

"Right. Hey, Sullivan Barclay Krause, would you mind putting that blanket back on the couch?"

"Sure," he said. "Where's your couch at?"

I pointed to the couch, and he nodded approvingly. "Ah," he said. "It's a nice couch. My wife has the same one."

"Ah," I said. (We say 'Ah' back and forth to each other so much when he's 22, apparently.) "Would you also mind putting those pillows back on it? My son's always throwing them on the floor."

I said this very pointedly, but Sullivan Barclay Krause was oblivious, neatly stacking my pillows on the couch that is the same as the one his wife has. And then, rolling his eyes again, he said, "Yes. My daughter is always doing the same thing."

"Ah," I said. "Do you want some coffee?"

"No," he said. "I've got coffee at home."

"Okay."

He stood in the middle of the living room and put his hands on his skinny little hips, surveying it. "Yep, yep, yep," he said, making a very grown-up sound out of the side of his mouth, the kind you make when you're in a pause in a conversation and you don't know where to go with it. "I see your husband likes to play video games."

"He does," I said. "What does your wife do?" I thought maybe he'd tell me his wife was a writer or a mom, since she seemed loosely based on me from all he's told me about her this week.

"She works at Suds. The car wash," he said. "She runs all the brushes."

Anyway, it went on like that. I just wanted to write this part of the conversation down verbatim before I forgot it, because 22 year-old Sullivan Barclay Krause is my favourite. 

I have writer's block again, and that's fine. I only come here anymore when it hits. Usually blogging at least distracts me, if not totally cures me—maybe being distracted from writer's block is the cure for it.

It's kind of the perfect day for writer's block anyway. Life has been nonstop around here. Maybe I should look at it less like, "Ugh, my brain is being blocked from getting important stuff done," and more like, "I have hit a natural barrier within myself to doing anything more today because that's what's good for me." It's probably accurate.

But! Writers gotta write, even if it's just for fun. So, in the spirit of butt-in-seat, in the spirit of getting words down, in the spirit of all that good advice other writers give you that they probably don't completely follow themselves, here is a list of the things keeping me & my household busy lately:

1. Barclay is starting his own landscape construction business. I don't mean, like, someday, Barclay is starting his own landscape construction business. I mean today is last day at his current workplace. 

It's, you know, on.

He had some great years at The Shovel (and will still be around there a lot, considering he's staying in that field), but this is something he's wanted to do for a long time. It's been fun watching him get ready for his first few jobs, even being able to help a little. It's especially significant to me that he's chasing this dream at the same time as I'm chasing mine; we're in a really cool season of life that way, being able to cheer each other on and daydream out loud back and forth. I don't take it for granted at all, and I'm so excited for/with him.

Also, check out his name and logo:

(The peregrine falcon is his favourite bird. A thing I love about Barclay is that he has a favourite bird.) 

I'm making his website right now, but I'll probably link to it later on in case you need someone to build you a really sweet patio. Barclay makes amazing things.

2. I finished yet another round of edits on my book. This editorial letter was much shorter than the last, and I think we're nearing the end, which is exciting and terrifying. There's a certain sense of comfort in sending my manuscript away but knowing it'll come back to me for another pass. The day I send it off for good, I'll probably crumple up like a piece of paper and spontaneously combust. But. I had a great phone call the other day with my editor and my agent and they're both so lovely and optimistic and always saying good things to me, so maybe I'll survive. 

Also, I'm almost done the first draft of book #2! A good, polished-up draft is due to Lake Union in February, and I think I'm gonna make it. I feel...quite proud of that, actually. When I finished the first one, the thought of doing all that again felt impossible. But here we are. And then I guess I'll start on #3? Momentum is great.

3. The LPGA's in town (I'm second-guessing myself on the order of those letters), so Tourism Regina sent us out to a bunch of stuff this month to highlight the city for visitors. This week alone has been pretty full: we went to a Nazareth concert last night, a movie in Vic Park and supper downtown at Famoso on Wednesday, the RCMP Heritage Centre on Tuesday, and the CP Women's Open...oh, also on Wednesday. I really do love this gig.  

There could probably be numbers 4-10 on this list, but but it's all pretty obvious stuff like housekeeping and making supper. Reading books. Having friends. Raising children. Running errands. Building a little office space in our bedroom (it's really functional and cute and I'll show you later). Life right now is a mix of mundane and sensational, and that's the way (uh huh, uh huh) I like it.

Unconventional Writing Career Goals

In my first telephone conversation with my agent, she asked me a very hard question: "What are your goals for your writing career?"

This sounds like an easy question, and maybe it would be for you, but for me it was hard because at that point, I only had one goal: get published. Like, once. Like, here is a book I wrote; if someone saw potential in it and slapped a cover on it and tried to sell it to someone other than my friends—there. That's my goal.

When she said career, the skin on my arms bubbled up. A career? What a lovely, impossible thought. It wasn't that I didn't daydream about a writing career; it was that it literally seemed unattainable. It was like someone had come to me and said, "Where do you plan on going when you're granted the superpower of flight?" I could only answer that question hypothetically, jokingly, wistfully.

"Like, everywhere," I'd say.

In the year since, I've been thinking about that first question more seriously. It's not as hypothetical anymore, which is fun. But it's still hard, even if it's hard in a fun way.

The typical writer career goal list might look something like this:

1. Get a book deal

2. Win the __________ Award/Prize

3. Sell film rights & star in your own movie

4. Private jet

5. Blue checkmark on Twitter

6. Have people actually care about your opinion because you've "made it"

7. New York Times Bestseller List

8. Amazon Charts #1 spot

And, I mean, I would be straight up lying if I said I didn't want to be on a list or win the kind of award you have to accept in a ball gown. However, I have recently begun to daydream about a few other, more unconventional writing career goals.

That list, so far, is as follows:

1. Have my book cover painted on Jennie Shaw's fingernails.

Okay. Go to Instagram, right now, and search @jennieshaw, or click here to read the article about her on Goodreads. She reviews books and gives herself manicures of the books' covers. And they are INCREDIBLE. I found her through Andrea Dunlop, when Jennie did She Regrets Nothing. I have scrolled all the way back. All of my writer friends agree: this is the coolest ever. We must achieve this.

2. Another Instagram-related one: There's an account called @subwaybookreview. They go into the subways of New York, London, Mexico City, Delhi, Milan, etc, see people reading, and ask for their thoughts and opinions. The idea of this is so wonderful: no one's paying these people to read these books. Publishers aren't sending the books out, saying, "Here's a free copy, tell us what you think." These people aren't 'influencers' or 'book bloggers.' For those reasons, I feel like it would be the hugest compliment to see my book on there someday. Like, someone chose to read my book on the subway, all by themselves. Cool.

3. Have an old teacher email me and be like, "I never thought you'd amount to much, but look at you! You published a book!" I don't know. I just think that would be kind of satisfying.

4. Alternately, have an old teacher email me and be like, "I always knew you had this in you! Yay!" or something.

5. Have my book made into a movie and be an extra in every single scene, but in DISGUISE. So, like, I'd be a mailman in one scene (there are no mailmen in my book, but for example), and then in the next scene, I'd be a lady walking down the street, glimpsed very briefly, and then in the next scene, I'd be, like, in a mascot costume or something. And so on and so forth.

6. Be a guest on the Print Run Podcast.

(This kind of actually happened recently; I sent in a letter and they read part of it, and talked about it for a solid thirty minutes. I was driving and I literally had to pull over.)


I'm sure I'll think of more, but I really wish I had these at the ready for that first conversation with Victoria. She would've been so impressed at my forethought. Querying writers: be more on it than me. You may borrow any of these when your time comes.

In a Cabin in the Woods

My friend Erin moved away last year, out of my neighbourhood and out of the city. She bought an acreage with this gorgeous old farmhouse on it, and a barn, and a little guest cabin. Her three children will get to grow up like I did—running around unconfined by city blocks and busy roads and other people's pesky property. They seem pretty happy about all that, so far.

Another friend, who happens to be Erin's sister-in-law and whose name is Kate, also moved last year—to a small town just outside of Regina. She's still close enough to maintain the illusion for most of her other friends that she didn't actually "leave," but I am not fooled. Because she, like Erin, used to live within walking distance of my place, and now I have to get into a car and go on the highway to get to her house. That absolutely counts as leaving.

I stayed here. (I will probably always stay here.)

(Also, a funny, completely unrelated thing is that these two women married brothers who grew up in the same small town as me, four hours from here, and their mother-in-law is tight with my mom, but that's not even how I know them. Isn't that a funny thing? And so completely unrelated?)

On to the point of it all:

After she left, Erin kept reminding Kate and me that they had a little cabin on their property that would make a great writing space, and that she wanted us to come use it.

And we said, well, we'd love to come, but we'll just want to sit and visit with you.

And she said, no, you should come write in my cabin.

And we said, but we want to have coffee with you.

And she said, yes, come for coffee.

So yesterday, at last, Kate and I arranged our children into two neat rows in her minivan, threw food, toys, and an iPhone at them (literally, and I hit Kate's four-year-old son in the eye with a plastic Cavendish potato), and travelled to Erin's new home.

We set out from here at 8 am and got there at 10 am. Our kids ran off, revelling in the open spaces both in and outside of the farmhouse. Erin fed us well and gave us coffee. And then, after lunch, we put the younger kids down for their naps and shuffled the older ones into the playroom for joint quiet time (which worked much better than solo quiet time ever has), and Kate and Erin said to me, "Okay. You're going to the cabin to write." Erin had packed a bag with cake and coffee and cream and water bottles and Werther's Originals.

I said, "What's all this? How long am I going to be in there?"

And they said, "As long as it takes."

(To anyone reading this who is not a writer, this sounds kind of mean, maybe? You should know that anyone reading this who is a writer and also a mother at the same time is salivating on their keyboard right now.)

So, obediently, I followed Erin out to the cabin. It was small, an open-concept-with-a-loft-type deal. There were books in all the window sills and a great yellow couch and a table with one chair.

Erin got the coffee going, said, "Haaaaave fuuuuuun..." and shut the front door behind her. The house filled up instantaneously with the kind of quiet I haven't heard in a very long time. Country-quiet. There-is-no-noise-in-the-house-and-not-outside-of-it-either quiet. I took a picture with my laptop, because that is what one does in the absence of a cell phone. Right? CAN'T NOT DOCUMENT.

Then, I sat down in the one chair and started writing, because that was the only thing there was to do. I hadn't grabbed my phone on the way out, so I had no Instagram or Facebook to distract me, no Internet hotspot for my computer, even. I had cake and a whole pot of coffee all to myself. It was incredible! I wrote and wrote and wrote and then, suddenly, inexplicably, I was done writing. Because, I guess, that's how writing works.

I picked up my laptop and went back to the house.

I found Kate in Erin's office, also writing, and Erin in the kitchen with her laptop. Everyone was happy and had gotten something done and the kids were still loving each other and we reconvened and ate more food and discussed our various works and writer's blocks and questions while the kids ran through the sprinkler and jumped on the trampoline.

So that was that. The writing retreat/coffee date was a complete and total success. How nice to be locked in a cabin in the woods by one's friends. How nice to have the kind of friends who know you want to be locked in a cabin in the woods even when you say they shouldn't lock you in a cabin in the woods.

Erin called herself bossy yesterday, and, in this case, she was a little bossy, but she was only being bossy because she wanted to do this super nice thing for me and I wasn't really letting her, so she had to be bossy. And I was kind of proud of her for being bossy too, because I think she had to try pretty hard at it. You can't help but love a person who is only ever bossy when it benefits someone other than them.

Erin and Kate, if you're reading this: next time, I will take the kitchen and you two can duke it out for the delicious cabin-writing experience. We're onto something real good here.

31

As of yesterday, I'm 31. Feels okay. It's funny how 30 felt so old to me, because 31 feels young. It's funny that a number can "feel" anything, but it does. 

A friend asked me yesterday what I learned this past year (she phrased it better than that though because everything that ever comes out of her mouth is careful and eloquent) and I stared at her and didn't answer right away (because nothing that ever comes out of my mouth is careful or eloquent; my spoken words just kind of barge out like a middle-aged lady at Costco on a Saturday afternoon). 

(There's a thing that I've tried to learn this past year, to be more careful and eloquent with my speech. But I'm pretty far from being able to say that it's a learned thing rather than a learning thing.)

I thought about that question on the drive home. What did I learn this past year? An easier question would be, what changed in your life this past year? or what did you accomplish this past year? or what new wrinkles or recurring physical pains or attitude glitches have you acquired this past year? What things do you wish you'd learned this year or what things did you work on this year or what was your favorite color this year or where did you live this year or how old are you, Suzy? Do you like spaghetti? Sorry for making you think so deeply; would you like to take a nap?

I just kept thinking of that old Albert Einstein quote: "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." Because I feel like this year, I just learned that I don't know very much, or that I have a lot of things I need to learn. 

(Again.) 

I'm sure there's some kind of peripheral wisdom you gain when you learn that you don't know something. And surely sometimes you learn the thing you've learned you didn't know—sometimes that's how you learn you didn't know it before. But sometimes you just learn that you don't know something and then you go on trying to figure out that thing. And you think, "Man, there must be a lot of things I don't know, if I don't know this." 

Growing up is a blast.

But, okay, now I'm going to actually try to answer the question instead of annoyingly talking around it: 

One thing I've learned is that envy and jealousy are not the same thing(!!). Jealous is vigilant (the dragon jealously guards its treasure) and envy is covetous (the adventurer is envious of the dragon's treasure). I learned this on Twitter, courtesy of someone named 'chillmage.' Fascinating.

I've learned other things about envy and jealousy too, less to do with their definitions and more to do with their impact on my life and relationships. 

What else...

I've learned patience, in many areas, because I've done a lot of waiting this year, on a lot of things and people and situations. 

I've learned a thing or two about empathy, about what it really means to care about someone enough to feel their pain and to let that effect the way that you treat them and think about them. 

I've learned a bit about friendship. About how it comes and how it goes and how to deal with it when it goes. Oh, and the importance of the friends that stay year after year. It's harder to be a good friend when you're an adult, when your kids aren't sleeping well or you're in different life stages from each other or when you both have super busy schedules. One of the things I'm still trying to learn is how to be a good friend.

I've learned to say no. It's been an overwhelming year—maybe the most overwhelming year of my life, to be honest—and I've felt guilty at times about how little of myself I have to give to people outside of the few big things we've had going on around here. But I'm doing what I can do, taking care of the things on my list in the right order (I hope), and cutting the list off when I've reached my full capacity. I've learned that I have a smaller capacity than some of the people around me, and that that's okay too. 

Okay, so maybe that's not such a hard question after all, because now that I've started I feel like I could keep going. But also, I have work to do and places to go. So this will have to be an introspective activity from here on—which is okay and probably even better. 

Search Party

It's Barclay's busy season at work. For him, "busy season" means lots of six day work weeks, putting in extra time at the end of most days, fielding phone calls even when he's not on the clock, and two days in all of June that we get to be home as a family with no plans or obligations, work-related or otherwise.

I definitely can't complain; I know loads of people whose husbands are gone way more than mine, or who don't have someone to help them with their children at all, ever. But I'd also be lying if I said this summer wasn't kind of kicking my butt. I just feel like there's never any quiet. It's Barclay's busy season, and it's my loud season. And it's all okay, because it's just that: a season. I'm not worried about it lasting forever or anything.

Thankfully, though, it's also another season: summer. Which means that when the four walls of our little house start closing in on me and the kids, I can point at the front door and we can all march right outside. It's not necessarily quiet out there, either, but there's more room for our noise. At least it doesn't bounce off the walls out there.

So this morning, as usual, we went for a walk. Down Winnipeg to Scenic Drive, onto Broad and up to Trafalgar Lookout, where we, you know, looked out. Across Wascana Lake at the Leg.

Sullivan and Scarlett were throwing rocks into the water and I was hanging back, watching them, when from behind me I heard pounding feet and a woman screaming someone's name, over and over and over. She sounded desperate and I knew instantly that she'd lost her daughter.

She was there and gone so fast I couldn't talk to her, but it was obvious what was going on. I wished I could've flagged her down and asked if I could help. I wished I'd been quicker on my feet. The thought of losing a child at Wascana is an awful one—there's so much open water, so many people, such busy roads all around the perimeter...

I got a second chance just two minutes later. Another woman ran past, but she was screaming a different name.

It was the weirdest kind of deja vu.

I called to her as she sped past: "Have you lost someone?"

She looked at me, surprised. "YES!" She slowed enough to shout out a description; I was able to work out that hers was with the little girl belonging to the first woman. She looked terrified and my heart hurt, imagining how panicked I'd be if I were her.

"I'll look this way!" I yelled, pointing down another path and waving her on.

"Thank you so much! Thank you!" she called back. She sprinted off again and I plunked Sully and Scarlett in their wagon and we set off. I made the mistake of telling Sully he needed to keep his eyes peeled for some lost kids and we had to discuss for the next thirty minutes the fact that I didn't actually want him to peel his eyeballs.

As we walked, I thought about the two mothers and how scared they must be and prayed they and the kids would be okay. Every time we passed people who looked like they might be trustworthy mother-types (or grandmother-types) themselves, I told them about the lost children, and they also hurried off, saying stuff like, "I can't imagine; those poor women. We'll look over there." I wished I could somehow find the two mothers with the missing kids and tell them, "See, all these women are looking out for your kids and if any of us find them, we'll take care of them until we can find you again. They're going to be okay."

We walked all the way around the lake, and were almost back at our starting place when we passed a couple of older women I'd talked to earlier. "They're found!" they yelled gleefully, as excited as if they'd lost and found their own grandchildren.

So, a happy ending.

And one of those weird things, too, where the original two women will probably never know how many people were concerned for them and their kids and actively trying to help them, watching out for them. Maybe they felt, in that moment when they turned a corner and suddenly their kids were just gone, a little like they were suddenly standing on a tightrope over a terrifyingly open space, with no idea of the community working to build a safety net beneath them.

I wonder how often that happens in life. I love the idea that we're often not half as alone as we think we are.

Writer's Block Again

Writer's block is here. It is belligerently and heavily and annoyingly here (gesturing to brain area). I'm trying to work on book #2 and I have no words to put into it. I tried to jolt my mind into action by adding ridiculous characters and some equally ridiculous situations but it didn't work. All these characters are piling up inside of these situations, doing absolutely nothing. It's like someone threw a Halloween party in a broom closet and then turned off the lights and shut the door and everyone's just standing there, feeling dumb in their stupid costumes, blinking a lot.

So I left the party and came here, to my neglected blog.

Book #2 is not due to my publisher until February. Which means, sometimes I think to myself, that I have lots of time.  I have eight months.

And then I think, EIGHT MONTHS??! I CAN'T WRITE AND PROPERLY EDIT A BOOK IN EIGHT MONTHS ALL MY HAIR IS GOING TO FALL OUT.

Not to mention, book #1 is still not finished going through edits (I know! I know. Editing is a whole thiiiing). So I don't have eight actual months of book #2 writing time. I have about six weeks of book #1 editing time, and a week or two of freelance writing time, and need to allow a month or two for "breathing time" (the period after you finish writing a book where you don't look at it or think about it before you jump into editing it). Plus, there are, you know, kids to raise and a husband in his busy season at work and a house to clean and sleep to be had and maybe a social life (negotiable). All that on the table, and I feel like I'm looking at a solid minus five minutes to write this thing.

Yet here I am, blogging, while my ridiculous characters sit in a darkened closet and blink a lot.

But the thing about writer's block is that you can't just decide you don't have it anymore. It's like a dragon, you know? If you have a dragon, you can't just decide you don't have a dragon; you have to conquer it.

...or wait until it wanders away to torture someone else. Which is, generally, my method of dealing with both writer's block and anything that breathes fire.

However, if anyone has a good tip on how to speed this particular proverbial dragon on its way, I would love to hear it.

Sully's Cellphone

"Sully, I need you to put your raincoat on."

Sullivan is hunched over his train set. "I don't need it," he says.

"No, you do," I say. "It's going to rain."

He sits back and pulls out his imaginary phone. This is a thing he does now. He taps away on the palm of his hand for a few seconds and then smiles up at me. "Mario just texted me. He says it's not supposed to rain today."

"Well, Mario doesn't know everything," I say.

He taps on his palm again. "Mario just texted me," he says. "He says he knows everything."

"Well, he doesn't know everything," I say, "because he apparently doesn't know he doesn't know everything. Go put your jacket on."

He does.

Two hours later, we return home from a morning of errand running. Sully slips out of his raincoat and runs to his room to resume his train thing. I sit Scarlett on the couch and start untying her shoelaces. She flaps her arms and babbles at me and points out the window at I don't know what. I make the usual one-sided small-talk with her. "Yeah," I say, "look at that! The sun's out! That's nice. Looks like it's not going to rain today after all."

Without missing a beat, Sully calls from the next room, "I guess Mario does know everything!"

Apparently I Look Like an Idiot

I was at a local shop, buying a thing or trading a thing or sending a thing away to be repaired, whatever, and the man helping me asked what I did.

Not like, "What did you just do?"

Like, "What do you do?" Like, "What are you?"

I was going to give my usual answer: "I'm a stay-at-home mom." This is a great answer because it is true. But that day, in that shop, with that person I didn't know, I felt safe enough in my anonymity to say a different, also true, answer. "I'm a writer," I said. I wasn't trying to be pretentious or anything. I just kind of wanted to try it out in real life. I'd also just signed my book deal, so it felt like a little celebration, wearing my title in public like that.

He looked surprised. Pleasantly so, I thought. I felt great. "Wow!" he said. That felt great too. "That's really cool. I have a writer friend; his name is Pete Peterson." (Not his real name.)

"Oh cool," I said, nodding a lot. I generally do nod a lot. "That's cool." 

"He could probably give you some pointers," said the man. "He's really good. He could probably help you get started. Here, I'll write down his name for you." He did, on a yellow sticky note.

"Thanks," I said; I felt less great. A little silly. Like I had told a stranger what I wanted to be when I grew up. I took the note from the man and we finished up our business and I went on my way. When I got back to my car I looked up the name on the note and found Pete Peterson who could help me get started. Cool.

A few days later, I was at another place entirely. I found myself, randomly, in a conversation with a man who works in the literary world here in Saskatchewan. We were talking about a literary magazine we were both familiar with and I said something about sending some work there. At this point in the conversation, I knew who he was and what he did, but he hadn't asked me anything about myself. I was holding Scarlett, so he probably just assumed Stay-at-Home-Mom and I left it there this time, lest I subject myself to a repeat of the other day. 

To my comment, something like, "That's a gorgeous magazine; I sent a piece there once," he replied, "Oh, you know, just keep at it. You'll face a lot of rejection before you make it anywhere; take some classes, keep submitting, and maybe someday you'll make it!" It was a very nice sentiment, a very nice thing to say. But I felt like a little kid whose mother had taken her to see the policemen in real life, and one of them had come over and said, "Here's a sticker, little girl! Someday, you can be a policeman, like me!" 

But I smiled, nodded, said thank you. Said I hope so. Said It's a gorgeous magazine. 

I realized afterward that he hadn't ever even asked if the piece I sent there had been rejected or not; he just assumed it had and went straight to patting me on the head and telling me I could make it someday if I kept on trying. 

I'm not sure what I could be doing differently in order to be taken more seriously as a literary type. I suppose I could stop carrying children around. Wear my glasses in public. Stop blogging. 

It's a fine line, right? Like, I do need help. I do need community. I do need people who have been at this for longer than me to teach me stuff and help me get better at it. But I also really want people to take me seriously. To ask me questions about where I'm at instead of assuming I suck and have never succeeded at anything just because I'm a young woman with a baby on her hip (sometimes I put the baby down, it's true!). 

Anyway. All this to say that I have become very aware lately of my need for validation, my need to be taken seriously, my instantaneous Feeeeeeelings when someone talks down to me. I can see how, for many people, these needs and Feeeeeeelings translate into the need to constantly blast their accomplishments directly into the ears of anyone who will listen. I can see how, for others, it comes across in a pretentious or snooty way. And I can also see how it could just get all internalized and sit under your skin for the rest of your life, making you slightly puffy and terribly uncomfortable.

No thank you to all of that. I guess the only thing to do is keep existing, keep doing my best at stuff, and keep saying thank you to well-meaning people—and always remember, myself, to never judge the proverbial book by its cover.

On Picking a Publisher

Here's a question I've been asked a lot lately (again just this morning, in fact): "So, you're self-publishing?"

Many people ask this as soon as I mention that my publisher (Lake Union) is one of Amazon's imprints. I totally get where the question's coming from—Amazon does have a well-known self-publishing operation. However, APub is a different thing altogether: a traditional house with 15 imprints.

Therefore, the short answer is: No, I'm not self-publishing.

Here's a longer answer though, which I generally reserve for the people who then ask, "Why?": I do not have the self-confidence for self-publishing. I do not have the money or the time. I don't have the connections.

Do you want an even longer answer? Cool. This is my blog, where I give super long answers whether you want them or not—and I'm the kind of person who loooooves reading posts about publishing on other people's blogs and assume there are one or two out there like me who are like, "Yes! Publishing! Talk to me forever!" Plus, I've been getting emails from people who are writing or have written books who want to know how I decided what road to take to get to Publishing World, and I've been typing variations of this blog post back to them. From now on, I can just refer them here.

So anyway, today, class, I'm going to talk about why I chose traditional publishing over self-publishing or hybrid publishing or small house publishing. You'll notice this post is not titled "Which Publishing Option is Best," and that's because I haven't tried all of them, but also because what's best for me is not what's best for you—I mean, Andy Weir self-published The Martian, and that kinda worked out. I'm just going to tell you how I landed where I did.

Ahem.

My writing buddy, Sarah, and I finished our first books in the same month. And then we basically looked at each other (over the internet, as she lived in New York and I was here in Regina) and went, Now what?

At the time, I didn't want anyone I knew to actually read my book (the. actual. horror—I'm still a little iffy on this point but I think I'm coming around). I wanted to publish it under a pseudonym. I didn't think I had what it took to go the traditional route, but was not even considering self-publishing because for all the people who'd buy it I figured I might as well just print off five copies at home, pass it out and be done with it. I didn't know what other options there were. I was like, Why did I do this? This was a big stupid waste of time.

I ended up emailing my book to my friend Hannah, because she really wanted to read it. Hannah worked at a library, and I trusted her taste in entertainment, and (most importantly) I knew she'd be brutally honest without letting her opinion of my writing affect her opinion of me as a person. She read it, gave me some great, critical feedback, and said I should get it traditionally published. "Like, Penguin would publish this," she said. She said it like she honestly believed it—she didn't seem like she was joking. I laughed at her anyway. That felt unfathomable to me at the time.

Still, I began to do some research. You don't just write a whole book and then do nothing. I Googled "small presses" and "how to get a publisher" and "this was a big stupid waste of time." Then, "different types of publishing" and "self-publishing vs traditional publishing vs small house publishing" and "how to get an agent." I have Googled more in the past three years than the rest of my life put together, INCLUDING the time after Sullivan was born which, as all moms know, is GOOGLE CENTRAL ("how to make a baby sleep through the night" "why is this baby's poop green" "what do I do if my baby eats hand lotion"). 

My findings were as follows:

In traditional publishing, a company buys the rights to your manuscript, usually through your agent (who then gets a percentage of the sale). The publisher pays you an advance, promotes and markets your book (how much promotion and marketing they do varies from publisher to publisher and book to book), and has final say on every aspect, from editorial content to cover design. You earn royalties only after your book has earned enough money to pay off the advance you were given up front.

If you self-publish, you do all of the above without the involvement of a third-party publisher, at your own expense. You handle publication costs, marketing, distribution, storage, etc. You can use a print-on-demand service, or pay for a publishing package or upload your work to Amazon or whatever. You can hire an editor or a cover designer. Obviously, you then have the final say on everything, and you get to keep all the money you make from the sale of the book—after you've paid out of pocket for the up-front costs (the prices I came across were anywhere from $200-several thousand, depending on the services people felt they needed. You could do it for free, but it'll probably show if you don't at least hire an editor). 

Hybrid authors do some combination of these—maybe they traditionally publish first to build a platform and then self-publish afterward, or maybe they use a company that (for a fee) does some of the work and leaves some of it to the author, for more creative control and, again, higher royalty rates. Hybrid authorship is an umbrella term and you seem to get a different definition of it depending on who you ask.

Small houses are run similarly to traditional houses, but you often don't need an agent to submit to them. The advance is probably going to be smaller ($1000-2000) or nonexistent. You're probably going to get a lot more attention from your publisher, as they're publishing fewer titles, and I've heard they're often more willing to take risks and are in general less focused on sales targets and stuff than the bigger guys.  

For every way there is to publish a book, you can find, on the good old Internet, a range of experiences, from Nightmare to Dream Come True. From the small house that excelled in marketing and cover design to the Big 5 Trad that made their author do all the heavy lifting and didn't seem to care about them at all. From the self-published sci-fi novelist who sold three whole books in their first year to, well, Andy Weir, whose book is now a movie. So no matter what decision you make, there are no guarantees. It's like jumping in a helicopter, sitting above the clouds, and throwing a hundred copies of your book out the window. Hopefully you're above New York and not the Atlantic Ocean. But who knows? The most you can do is carefully select your pilot.

At the end of all my careful Googling, I sat back and thought about what was really important to me. If you ask yourself the right questions, it almost becomes a no-brainer. 

Do you care if you make (or end up spending) money on this book? 

Do you care about credibility and/or prestige? 

Do you want more or less creative control? 

Do you want to publish it ASAP or can you wait?

And so on.

The thing that ultimately made the decision for me was the gatekeepers. The agents and editors. I realized that it was super important to me, personally, to have as many gatekeepers between me and my final goal as possible. I thought, you know, if my book isn't deemed "good enough" by someone who knows the industry, who knows about books, who is, for all intents and purposes, an authority, then I just don't want to put it out there. 

This is why I say I'm not self-confident enough for self-publishing. I don't trust myself enough to gauge my own work with accuracy, to say if it's good or bad. And I don't mean this in a self-deprecating way—I think it's actually a strength. I know I'm not my own best critic. I'm not going to try to be. Pressure's off.

So that was that: I'd submit to agents and if I couldn't get in that door, I would respectfully remain A Person Who Wrote a Book Once.

Even now, as I wait for my editor to get back to me on my latest round of edits, I have no concerns about "where the book is at." If she says it's ready, I'll trust her on that. If she says we need to do five more rounds of edits, I'll breathe a sigh of relief that I have her around to tell me that. She's not making a commission on each round we do; she's giving it careful, thoughtful read-throughs and communicating with me honestly and thoroughly because she wants it to be the best it can be, and I LOVE THIS. It was the same when I went through edits with my agent. I'm a big fan of these women; they're smart, careful, and trustworthy. And that's how I know I made the best decision for myself.

I'm also aware this would be torture for a lot of people, and that people exist who do know their audience, the industry, etc, well enough to do it themselves, or to at least allow themselves a bit more control. And that others exist who do not require any affirmation from the "authorities and gatekeepers" of Publishing World. Those people amaze me and I think they're cool. But also, I'm...still me.

I generally hate blog posts that end with a question (we're just dyyyying to know, dear reader, what fall floral can you just not live without?) but I have one! I want to know how other people made/are making this decision. I'm also curious to know whether you actually pay attention to the publisher of the books you read. Well, dear reader? 

Perfect Moment Music

It's raining. Sully's watching a show in my bedroom; Scarlett's asleep. I'm listening to quiet music and drinking coffee. I'm writing (obviously). Behold, Internet, here it is: the perfect moment.

I have learned something since becoming a mom, and that is that you can't expect perfect moments like this to go on for even a second after you become aware of them. The very realization that you are in such a moment might be all you get. So you just need to get it in you as fast as you can, like taking a deep breath with your brain.

Even as I finished writing that sentence, the rain stopped and Scarlett woke up and I drank the last drop of coffee, all at once. But look at this: proof in writing that that perfect moment existed.

Just for kicks, here's the playlist I'm listening to right now. Very good perfect moment music.

A Comprehensive Breakdown of All the Imaginary People Who are Living or Who Have Lived or Been in My House

Sullivan has a lot of imaginary friends; I have a hard time keeping them all straight but he doesn't. I have decided to make a list for future reference for myself and for current reference for you, in case you care.

I am consulting with Sully as I write this.

(He just told me that he actually wants me to refer to him as Sullivan in this post going forward, as he likes names that end in N better than names that end in EEE. So. Okay.)

So, you've heard about Jemano, the carrot cutter. Except he quit his job as a carrot cutter and got a different job as a cheese grater. Then, he quit his job as a cheese grater and got a different job as a baseball player. He plays right field for the New York Yankees and his best friend is Aaron Judge.

Then there are Myles and Charlie, who were in Sullivan's band. They were hit by a car last month ("both of them at the same time, Mom"), and are now, in Sullivan's own words, "sleeping in the hospital forever." That's sad, but at least I know he knows the importance of checking both ways before crossing the street.

Next, we have Stadefani, Stef, and Stephanie. They all work at a coffee shop together. Stef is a man. The coffee shop's name is Coworker. Stephanie is the most recent hire; before she worked at Coworker, she didn't work anywhere because she "didn't have the tools." Then she got the tools.

Mario and Raligi are some of Sullivan's oldest friends; they've been around for over a year. They were in his band too, and they lived with us for a while, but when Scarlett came they moved down the street. They bought a baby from Baby Centre (who, I am told, gets its babies in bulk from Costco), but the baby grew up literally overnight and they sent it to live with their friend, Mark, next door. Then they moved to Chicago, where they tried a variety of interesting jobs such as door-making, flower-smelling, and taxi-driving, before moving back to Regina, much to Sullivan's great delight. Now they work at the chocolate hospital, as doctors. Raligi recently offered a position to Sullivan there, and his job is to keep the children in their rooms. Sometimes I'll ask Sully to do something for me (clean his room, pick something up, whatever), and he'll pull his imaginary phone out of his pocket and check it and roll his eyes and say, "Sorry, can't, Mom. Raligi needs me at the chocolate hospital. The children are getting out of their rooms."

Lastly, we have Mr. Mark and Mr. Bulb. Mr. Mark is kind, but Mr. Bulb will burn your eyes out. Don't look at Mr. Bulb.

Sullivan has wandered off, so this blog post is over for now. I think we covered everyone though. I'll be sure to keep you updated on our growing household.

The Office

When we moved into this house, it was so we'd have a place to put a baby. Our old place was 480 square feet; all the living room furniture touched. We had to put our bed in the basement. There was no room anywhere for a crib unless we wanted to put it on the couch, which I think would've been unsafe and impractical.

This house is almost exactly twice the size of that one. Barclay and I took the master bedroom, put a crib in the second bedroom down the hall for Sullivan, and made the third an office.

It was a great office, with a big window looking into the backyard and a bookcase and a desk that Barclay made for me based on a picture I had in my head that he managed to transfer to a sheet of graph paper without losing any of the details. I used to sit in that office and work on my book with the window open, listening to Barclay playing baseball with Sully just outside the window. I used to sit in that office and write hopeful query letters, while Sullivan sat at the desk beside me and coloured pictures. I used to sit in that office working on edits while Barclay sat beside me working on music.

Last summer, though, we moved the desk into the basement. My office has been relegated to a corner of the living room.

We put the crib back up. The office is now a nursery; we'd wondered if it might be someday, though I know we never thought it would happen quite this way.

I've been mulling this blog post over for a while. Words have never been so tricky for me. I want to write it in such a way that makes sense but is still purposefully vague so as to protect the privacy of all the right people. Some would say that's a good reason not to broach the subject online at all, but the fact is: there is another person living in our house now, and we love her a lot, and it would be (has been) hard to pretend she's not here, even if it's just on social media. And if I just started mentioning her with no explanation, that would be weird too. She should be introduced, I think.

Her name is Scarlett. Her parents chose that name, and I love it.

She came to live with us last summer; she was about seven months old at the time. Sully and I travelled to get her, just the two of us (it all happened rather quickly; Barclay wasn't able to get time off to come along). I have a lot of memories of that trip, but the most vivid is pulling over to the side of the road, just five miles away from where we picked Scarlett up, to check that her car seat was buckled right and that she was comfortable and that she wasn't scared. I remember getting out of the car and opening the door and seeing the two car seats there instead of just Sully's and feeling just as shocked as if there was a whole football team crammed in there staring back at me. I had so many moments like that in the days and weeks that followed.

It was a bizarre summer.

(That said, I'm not going to elaborate further on that part of Scarlett's story; it's not my story to tell, especially not before she knows it herself.)

So we've been getting to know this girl, this Scarlett.

She's such a wonderful little person. So quick to laugh, so friendly, so active. Stubborn, strong, outgoing. Hilarious.

Sullivan is head over heels for her and she loves him right back. She is his opposite in every possible way, and I've already seen them balance each other out in a lot of areas. He has taught her to dance and drum and air-guitar and build blanket castles. They give each other a lot of hugs. She mimics his every move. He has introduced her to all his favourite bands. When he cries, she runs to him and kisses his cheek. They make each other laugh so hard that she shrieks and he runs out of breath. He had to get used to her following him around and wanting to do everything that he did, but now he gets mildly offended when she doesn't. And sometimes, of course, they fight. This morning, for example, if you'd walked past our house, you would've heard Scarlett laughing hysterically and Sully screaming, "MO-OMMMMM!!! SHE'S TRYING TO DESTROYYYY MEEEEE!!!" (She pulls his hair sometimes, and she thinks it's funny, and he doesn't.)

Every morning, she comes running into our bedroom with a big grin on her face, laughing and reaching for a hug. She greets Barclay the same way when he comes home from work at the end of the day. She likes to hold my hand in her sleep, and often calls me into her room for that reason in the middle of the night.

We don't know what the future holds for us, for Scarlett. But my parents did foster care for most of my growing up years, and the thing I learned from watching them do that was that sometimes, your job is just to love someone as much as you can for as long as you can. And, I mean, no matter what happens from here, I can already confidently say Barclay, Sully and I will just keep on loving her forever.

So that's where we're at right now. In case you were wondering about the office.

All About Querying! Get Excited!

Disclaimer: Quite a few people have been reaching out and asking questions about how a person goes about getting an agent—either out of straight-up curiosity or because they wrote a book and would like to see it published traditionally someday. So if you're one of those, read on, and if you find all this shop talk boring or annoying, skip it! I promise I will not only talk about Publishing World from now on (but perhaps with a little more frequency).

Ever since I began querying my novel, about 2.5 years ago, I have been completely obsessed with other writers' query trench stories. I think most of this fascination has to do with solidarity, needing to hear over and over again that it's hard for pretty much everybody, that it wasn't just hard for me because I'm a bad writer. But a thing I learned in the process of querying is that you can be a fine writer and a really terrible querier at the same time—and, truth be told, I was a really terrible querier.

For the uninitiated—because I didn't know what querying was two seconds before I started doing it myself—querying is the process of sending letters to literary agents to introduce them to your book and ask them to attempt to sell it to publishing houses (you can't approach most traditional houses with your own manuscript; they will laugh and laugh and laugh and throw it out the window). You have to have a representative. 

(Note: Lots of smaller houses will allow unsolicited/unagented submissions, just FYI, and self-publishing is obviously also an agent-free option, so if this querying/agent thing sounds like a headache, totally look into those! They're valid!)

So you research literary agents, you find one who is reputable and looks legit and represents your genre (two websites I used for this were Manuscript Wishlist and  Quick Brown Fox), and then you write a super concise letter that says who you are and what your book is about. You attach, maybe, the first ten pages or the first three chapters of your manuscript (most agents post submission guidelines on their websites—FOLLOW THEM TO THE LETTER OR DIE). And then you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Some agents never write back. Some send a very polite form rejection within six weeks. Some send a really sweet personalized rejection within six weeks. And some—and this is what you hope for—send a manuscript request.

If that happens, you pull an all-nighter, agonizing over every single comma—is it good enough? HOW DO I DO THIS AGAIN I DON'T KNOW WHAT LETTERS ARE send the rest of your book. Of course, of course. And then you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Some agents, again, never write back. Some send a very polite form rejection. Some send a very sweet personalized rejection—and sometimes even a request to see future work. And some—and this is what you long for with all of your heart—ask if they can call you on the phone.

Because writers are known for their creativity and particular way with words, we call this part of the process The Call. 

The Call is a two-way interview. Both parties are asking questions—both want to know if the other is someone they can work with, what their expectations are, what they're willing to bring to the table—after all, neither party makes money without the other (people have asked me how much money it costs to have an agent. The answer is: Nothing. If an agent ever asks you to pay them anything up front, run away! The agent gets a percentage of what you make on your book; all the [hours and hours of] work they do for you prior to the book deal is done in faith that it will pay off down the line. Kind of incredible, hey?). 

There are countless lists all over the internet of the things a writer is supposed to ask a potential agent on The Call. It's a big, big deal. And at the end of it, if everybody's happy, the agent might possibly offer representation. 

That's it, in a nutshell. 

If you've done the math, you already know that from the time I started querying my novel to the time I got The Call was 1.5 years. In that time, I sent out 28 query letters. 

28 Agents at 25 agencies. 

People will tell you this is normal, and I've heard of many writers who have queried for a lot longer—a "rule" I've seen a few places now is don't give up on a project until you've sent 80 query letters. I just read an article written by a woman who sent out 400 queries before finding an agent. I read yet another article written by a woman who's been trying to get published for something like 25 years, and heard a podcast the other day about an author who took almost a decade to get her book deal (like I said, I'm obsessed with these stories). 

And, I mean, man alive, all the stars that have to align in order for you to send an agent exactly what they're looking for at a time they feel there's a market for it and are even in the right frame of mind to fall in love with your exact project (you know how sometimes you just don't feel a book and then you try and read it a few months later and are like "WHAT WAS I THINKING THIS IS AMAZING"?).

But even so, I feel like the process could've been less painful if I'd known going into it what I know now—as with, like, every other thing in life. 

I remember finishing my manuscript, being like, "Yep, ready!" and sending out 12 terrible query letters rapid fire. In turn, I received 12 rejection letters. Fair trade.

12 is not 80, but still. I quit querying for a while. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to write a better query letter and sharpening up my manuscript. And I tried again. This time, I sent out ten letters altogether. And this time, I received nine rejections and one manuscript request...which did not result in an offer of representation but definitely buoyed my spirits. I took it as an indication that I was moving in the right direction. 

I took a step back again. More learning, more tightening. 

The next time I queried, I sent out only six letters, and it was just under one month from the time I began that round of querying to my very own The Call. 

When it's written out like that, it doesn't seem all that bad. It felt like a long time, at the time, but now I just count those months as education. They were valuable. 

And for those who are now about to embark on that strange journey, here are some things I would tell myself if I had a time machine, but will tell you instead. Because, duh, I don't have a time machine. 

1. Don't start querying until you've spent quality time Googling different variations of "how to write a great query letter" or gotten advice from someone who knows a bit about the practise. Writing a great query letter is actually a skill you have to hone. Don't pound out a letter in five minutes and assume that your charm and wit will get you further than following query guidelines and industry standards. I read a blog post written by a lit agent once where they casually mentioned they read about 200 queries a day. Can you imagine? I feel like, at that rate, you'd just want everyone to get to the point, say what they need to, and stick to the rules.

2. Advice I swear by: research the agent you're submitting to, find out what books they like, pick one that's similar to yours in voice or subject matter or whatever, and mention that in your letter. (ex: "I saw on your MSWL profile that you loved Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down. My novel is similar in tone and has some of the same themes throughout...") 

3. Get someone else to proof-read your query letter. I had my friend Sarah do this for me, and it was so super helpful. It's hard to write a book, but an even harder thing is writing about your own book with objectivity. An outside perspective is key, and will help you not to get all wordy and self-important. And, obviously, get a whole bunch of people to read your manuscript. Spend a whole bunch of time tightening that thing up. What good is a query letter if the manuscript sucks? Why waste a perfectly good manuscript request?

4. Most importantly: remember that an agent is a regular person with their own particular taste. Try to conjure up memories of a book club meeting where you read a truly fascinating, heart-wrenching, well-written novel, and a third of the room thought it was great, a third hated it, and a third got bogged down and stopped reading one chapter in. Now imagine that each of those people is a literary agent, and you're asking them one by one to represent the book in question. Even if you've done everything 'right', it's still largely a matter of luck, of happening to ask the right person first. Plus, take into consideration that of the people who loved the book, you have to find someone who's willing to put in countless hours of work, unpaid, to polish it up, create a submissions packet for it, and stake their reputation on it in sending it out to editors. They don't just have to love it, they also have to believe they can sell it. It should take a little time, at least.


This is obviously not The Only List you need to read before you start querying a novel. This is just four things I think would be helpful. And if you have already done the whole querying thing and have things to add, please do! And if you haven't, but plan to, try to enjoy yourself. Here, this is a blog post I wrote two months into my own query journey. I was so naive and optimistic still! But I stand by most of what I said in that blog post.

Okay. Off with you. Go find an agent.

Meanwhile, in Another Universe Entirely...

The book publishing world is, in fact, another world—an alternate reality with its own time and rules and atmosphere. You can't get to it by simply hopping on an airplane, you need a transcendental vehicle of some kind, like the wardrobe in the Narnia books.

(Or email.)

And you can only access it using very powerful magic.

(Query letters.)

And you can't just go to this mystical place, you must be summoned by the powers that be.

(Literary agents.)

Last May, this happened to me; I stumbled through my own "wardrobe" into Publishing World by way of an email from a lit agent named Victoria. Since then I've maintained communication with that world through emails and phone calls, little things that briefly pulled me out of this universe and into that one. But aside from these fleeting otherworldly encounters, life hasn't changed all that much. I worked on edits with Victoria for about half a year, and then we took my book on submissions.

The submissions process was no joke. It was like the querying thing all over again, except this time it was my agent sending my sweet baby novel to the editors at big publishing houses. And they were reading my work and passing it around their offices and getting second and third opinions and discussing its saleability and its characters and its potential, and even writing their thoughts on it down for me to read. It was exhilarating! It was an adrenaline high! It made me want to kind of puke a little bit!

It was also incredibly (surprisingly) validating. Editors, as it turns out, are kind and encouraging human beings who want your book to be the next big thing just as much as you do.

So Subs was...an experience. One which I do not necessarily care to repeat any time soon, but also one which I...loved. Kind of. I don't know.


Here's another thing about Publishing World: time there is like water: it freezes, and then it flows. Nothing happens at all, and then huge things happen all at once, like explosions, like a sporadic, ob-nox-iously spaced-out fireworks show in a peaceful night sky. It's because there are so many moving parts in this machine. So many people to read so many words and make so many decisions and send so many emails. And even after something happens, the effects aren't felt in our world for a long time.

Which is why I'm only now allowed to write this blog post. But here it is! As Etta James would say, Aaaaaat laaaaaaast. Boom that song's stuck in your head forever.

In January, we sold my first book—and, at the same time, my second book (which isn't even written yet, because apparently in publishing, things either happen way after you wish they would or way before you thought they were possible).

The first little book baby is due June of 2019 from Lake Union Publishing. I had a really great phone call with my editor there back in January, before I accepted their offer, and was immediately in love with her and Lake Union and all of their wonderful ideas. They seemed so excited about my book, about working together, and I think that remains one of my favourite parts of my adventures in Publishing World to this point: those moments where I feel like I actually belong there, am wanted there, like I didn't just wander in accidentally. You know?

The day of the offer, I went out for supper with Barclay to celebrate and then, while Victoria negotiated my contract, my life went back to normal and I wasn't allowed to say anything and it felt like it had all been a wonderful dream. The same dream I've been having since I was, like, five.

I thought that maybe, when it became Internet Official, when the deal announcement went up on Publishers Marketplace and I wrote this blog post, that it would all feel real, and that Publishing World would feel like a place on this planet. But then today, I received a little package in the mail from my author relations manager, a notebook embossed with my new publisher's name, the name that will be on the spine of my books, and I realized that it probably never will feel completely real. It might always feel like a dream.

And I'm quite okay with that.