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!

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. 

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.

 

Book Tour!

Years ago, when I sold my first book, I made a list of writer goals. At the time, I didn't know very much about the actual life of a modern-day author. My ideals were informed by movies about fictitious authors, novels about fictitious authors, and magazine interviews with only very, very famous and successful real-life authors. I think this is why, when I made that list, it had on it all kinds of ridiculous, out-of-touch, nonsense goals. I really thought, there, I've done the hard part. Now it's all downhill; now I get to write down all my wildest daydreams and check them off as they come true, one by one.

LOL.

One of these goals? Go on a book tour! That was a feature in every single one of those movies and books, the debut author being sent by her publisher to various cool cities, picked up at the airport in a limo by a nervous publicist, somehow having amassed a large and loyal following in the three days since their book was acquired, edited, and published, despite not spending any time (on screen, anyway) doing any kind of social media marketing. 

I was like, yes, that! Me! Want. Need, even!

But movies about writers are rarely accurate or realistic (despite the fact that they would, one would think, sometimes be written by writers) and one of the first things I learned as an author newbie was that most publishers don't really send most authors on books tours anymore. Yes, you might see authors going on book tours, but often those are paid for by the authors themselves, not the publishers (the exception seems to be that if you are already a very famous, very important author, then, as with everything in this business, you get to live that dream movie version of the author life—which is why my magazine exposure to only the most important writers of our time didn't give me such an accurate glimpse into the life of the...less important authors, which in reality is most of us).

I've released two books now. For my debut my friends threw me a party at The Paper Umbrella, which I never really posted about on here because I was so overwhelmed that entire summer, but it was beautiful and amazing and I was spoiled with a massive crowd of good friends and cookies decorated like the cover of Valencia and Valentine and twinkle lights in the back alley for when people got too warm in the shop and needed to get fresh air. It was so perfect that I didn't even mind that no one was sending me on a tour. 

For my second book, I was meant to do a little signing at a book store in Saskatoon, as well as a launch party here in the city, and that was going to be the extent of my self-funded book tour, but everything got cancelled because it was June 2020 and there were, you know, other things going on in the world at the time. 

So when I wrote my third book, the idea of a book tour was like a helium balloon I'd let go of long ago and completely forgotten about. 

However.

When my agent sent me the deal memo from Radiant, who bought the Canadian rights to I Think We've Been Here Before, I was pleasantly surprised to see included in their offer that they would "support at least a three city tour" and that particular daydream came floating back into my brain. 

It's fun when you let go of a dream and then it sneaks up on you again out of nowhere like that.

So anyway, all that to say, above is an early draft of my little book tour announcement graphic thing. There should be another date added soon, but the ones on there already are fairly finalized. If you're in any of these places at any of these times, you should come hang out. If you own a bookstore or are a librarian or have a book club and you want to hang, I'd be very happy to chat about adding your bookstore or library or whatever to the little book tour announcement graphic thing. If you're in Saskatchewan, you can book me through this form, and if you're not, email me at suzy@suzykrause.com and we can at least talk about it. :)

Book Soundtrack: I Think We've Been Here Before

 It is September 6, 2024, exactly two weeks and four days until pub day. 

Or, so I thought. 

I went into this month thinking to myself, okay, that is happening this month, but not until the END of this month. But then a couple of indie book stores put the book out, almost a full month early, and people started messaging me saying they were buying it. And then today, I woke up to more messages from people saying that Indigo sent out their preorders.

So what I'm saying is, this book is launched. This book is eager and sneaky and jailbreaky and it is OUT THERE where just any old person can get it and read it, and I can no longer smile smugly at everyone and say, "Sorry, you'll just have to wait until September 24," while secretly freaking out inside my brain trying to figure out how to flee the country before I have to start having awkward in-person conversations with people about my book. 

It's here. We're there. Have mercy.

But in honor of this turn of events, I'm going share with you the Official I Think We've Been Here Before Playlist (pretend there are tooting horns now). If you've been here long enough, you know that I love making playlists and that I always make playlists for each of my books. 

This time though, I'm going to share with you the lyrics from the songs that go with the book. You can do one of several things:

1. Listen to each song after you've read the corresponding chapter.

2. Listen to each song while you're reading the corresponding chapter.

3. Listen to each song before you read the corresponding chapter.

4. Listen to the whole playlist before and after you read the book and see if you feel any feelings either way.

I'd probably do a combo of #1 and #4. But you do you.

Okay. That's the preamble. Here's the playlist!

Chapter 1 (Nora): Last Christmas by Wham! (The Jimmy Eat World version)

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day, you gave it away 
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special


Chapter 4 (Hilda & Family): THE ONE MOMENT by OK Go

You're right
There's nothing more lovely
There's nothing more profound
Than the certainty
Than the certainty that all of this will end
That all of this will end


Chapter 5 (Nora and Sonja): WE WON'T LAST THROUGH DECEMBER by LJ Mercer

We won't last through December

My stomache's in my shoes

Chapter 9 (Petra): WE WILL BECOME SILHOUETTES by The Postal Service

I wanted to walk through the empty streets
And feel something constant under my feet
But all the news reports recommended that I stay indoors
Because the air outside will make
Our cells divide at an alarming rate
Until our shells simply cannot hold
All our insides in and that's when we'll explode
And it won't be a pretty sight

And we'll become
Silhouettes when our bodies finally go


Chapter 32 (Marlen & Hilda): SUBURBAN TREES by Jump, Little Children

(Note: This is a song I stumbled across on a Spotify playlist while I was doing my final edits. The scene where Marlen turns on the radio and the song The End of the World by Skeeter Davis is playing was already in there by then, so this felt like such a lucky find.)

Credits on the wall 

scrolling ultra vision 

static on the call 

applauding the decision 

End of the World 

is playing on the radio


Chapter 36 (Hank & Irene): IN THE VALLEY BELOW by Dove Season

The season's coming
There's room for both of us
You can't choose your love
You can't choose your love
I could use your love
Can't lose your love
If this is the end
Let's start all over
Start all over again
I believe we can
Start all over
On earth as it is in heaven

Chapter 37 (Nora & Jacob): LOVER by Taylor Swift

We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til January
This is our place, we make the rules
And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you dear
Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?


Chapter 55 (Marlen & Hilda): SONG OF GOOD HOPE by Glen Hansard

Watch the signs now
You'll know what they mean
You'll be fine now
Just stay close to me
And may good hope, walk with you through everything

CHAPTER 59 (Nora & Jacob): APOCALYPSE NOW (& LATER) by Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers

The bliss of your kiss in the apocalypse
On top of the world, at the end of the world, with you


Chapter 62 (Nora & Jacob): IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA by Neutral Milk Hotel

What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see


Chapter 68 (Everyone): STARS AND MOONS by Dizzy

I am starting to see stars and moons
(It's an awful sham, but I follow suit)
This is how it ends, a courageous boom
(Neighbours wave their hands, as we're passing through)
And it's awful sad how two lovers bloom
(Come and watch them dance, dance into their doom)
I am starting to see stars and moons
(Come and watch them dance)


Chapter 69 (Everyone): DON’T BE AFRAID, YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD by Akron/Family

Don't be afraid, you're already dead
Don't be afraid, you're already dead
Don't be afraid, you're already dead
Don't be afraid, you're already dead


Chapter 70 (Everyone): THE LAST CHRISTMAS (WE EVER SPEND APART) by The Arkells
(Note: I put this song on the playlist before I read all of the lyrics. Then when I went to write this blog post, I laughed at how perfect they ended up being...)

I'm sitting by the windowsill
I got nothing but time to kill
I took this all for granted, but I won't do that again
That'll be the last Christmas

BONUS TRACK: 

TIME MACHINE by Daisy the Great

The sky is burning
No more need to hurry
We were right to worry
We were right to worry
The birds are gone now
The time has come now
Just close your eyes now
Just close your eyes now
The sea is crying
The moon is sighing
It's terrifying
It's terrifying
It's all around us
The end is ground us
The star has found us
I once read about a time machine
They learned to teach electrons
To go back to where they started
Should we go back to where we started?

Spiraling

Our mailman is one of those weirdos who listens to podcasts at full volume on his phone's speaker instead of using earbuds or headphones. So, every single morning at about 9 o'clock, I hear what sounds like a small crowd of self-important men making their way up my sidewalk, talking over each other, forcing laughter, saying, "Yeah, no, but here's the thing, my guy, here's the thing—" 

This is about the time I'm making my first cup of coffee for the day. The kids go downstairs and play video games, and I sit next to the open window and try to work on the new book, or publicity stuff for the other book, or, if nothing's flowing in either of those places, I'll come on here and write a blog post. 

Clearly nothing's flowing in either of those places at the moment, because here I am.

This is kind of to be expected though and I'm trying to be gentle with my brain. My next book comes out in a little more than a month (unless you're in the States, because the pub date there has been changed, but more on that later), and I'm in this awkward space where I know I'm supposed to be yelling at everyone to post about my book! and preorder now! and ask your library to order it in! but...I still feel so weird doing that. I thought this part of things would get easier as I gained confidence in myself, but I have learned, as I've said before, that publishing is a humility boot camp and I have not actually gained said confidence. 

Maybe later?

But now is not later, and I know this because I posted a giveaway the other day on Instagram (which is still open), and the way you enter is just to share the giveaway post, either on Instagram, or by text message to a friend, or with your book club, or on Facebook, or whatever, and it is so ridiculous how nervous I was to do that. I made the post the day my author copies came in the mail and then sat on it for a week, and then decided I might not do it after all, then made a quick mental u-turn, cutting dangerously across several lanes of oncoming traffic (this is maybe a metaphor for ignoring my self preservation instincts?) and hit that terrifying post button head-on.  

Then I spent the whole day cringing, wound up so tight I thought I was going to snap my neck if I turned to look at something behind me. The worst was when the name of one of my friends appeared on my screen. I worried they were secretly judging me for being so annoying about the whole book promo thing—or, worse, not secretly judging, but openly judging in group chats and in-person conversations with other people I know. And I was sympathizing with them! At what point do you start rolling your eyes a little, you know? At what point do I start to sound like the self-important men on my mailman's blaring podcasts? Join my Patreon! Buy my sponsored products! I have opinions about the infrastructure of New York!

There's just so much noise online these days, and we're all very tired of being advertised at; I'm worried about adding to it. Words like 'must read' have begun to sound less like a glowing endorsement and more like a homework assignment. I wish my books could just go out into the world, separate from me, and do their thing, but they're clinging to my legs, hiding behind me, making me speak for them like shy children. And I have to do it, because if I want to write more books, I need to sell the ones I've already written. I hate the word 'hustle' and yet hustle I must.

I guess at some point you just need to trust that your friends are going to love you even if they need to mute you on social media for a month or two? Or maybe you can even dare to believe that some of them enjoy seeing your name pop up on their screen, yet again, because they understand that a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do and she is so, so, so sorry but she's gonna do it anyway?

Anyway. There is no point to this ramble. I'm just spiraling (just a dainty, neat little spiral, nothing dramatic) and I need you to know that I am EXTREMELY aware that I'm very annoying, and I will continue to be annoying until probably December, and then I'm going to chill right out and be so fun to be around. 

(But actually I will be spiraling in a different direction at that point because my book will be out in the world and I never handle that well. Who keeps letting me do this?)

Quantum Entanglement and Modest Mouse

I have this friend; her name's Becky. We've known each other for almost two decades now, but we didn't become Actual Friends right away. She was one of those people who just kept crossing my path until we realized we were destined to be in each other's lives.

We went to the same school in The Middle of Nowhere, Saskatchewan but ran in different circles. She moved to Saskatoon after that and just so happened to live in a house with a close friend of mine. I'd stay in that house when I visited that friend, but didn't really interact with Becky at all when I was there (although! Once I played a Modest Mouse album on my friend's laptop and Becky got into them because of that, so that counts as the very first of many music recommendations to pass between the two of us. Years later, I would go for coffee with her for the first time and we'd talk about music and she'd say she liked Modest Mouse and I'd get so excited to have something in common with her and she'd tell me that it was me who'd introduced her to them in the first place).

When I moved to Regina and started dating my now-husband, he mentioned one day that he'd said my name at work and one of his coworkers had been like, "Huh, I wonder if that's the same Suzy I sort of know." I said, What's the girl's name? And he said, Becky. And I said, Of course it is. 

We became real friends after that. I don't think we really had a choice, which is a good thing. 

She moved away a few years ago, but we stay in touch, texting and visiting and sending snail mail. And here's the weird thing: on some other inexplicable level, our brains have stayed in touch even without our technological aid.

The first time I really noticed this, I was sitting at my desk working on a book and a song popped into my head that I hadn't heard or thought of in years—probably since I was a teenager. I texted Becky:

Remember this song from, like, 1998? It randomly popped into my head this morning.

Her reply:

SUZY. That song just as randomly came to me today; I've had it on repeat over here!

This keeps happening, and it never gets less weird—if anything it's stranger each time because the probability goes down. Chances of something like that happening once? Slim but not nonexistent. Chances of it happening over and over...?

So weird.

And it extends beyond music. She'll become interested in a very specific topic and text me about it, only to find I've been reading articles about that thing and listening to podcasts about it already. A person from some leg of our shared history will come to both of our minds, unbidden, at the same time. I'll think of her and my phone will light up with her name on the screen. It's like some part of our brains, at some point, got synced up.

One day, a year or so after the first notable instance of our invisible communications, I was listening to a podcast (and I so wish I could remember the name of it so I could share it with you) on which a physicist was explaining the concept of quantum entanglement. He was talking about how scientists had figured out how to entangle two particles so that they behave as one object. They could put one particle on a spaceship and send it into outer space, and still the objects would not become unlinked. The podcast explained that this was a process that happened naturally as well, but it wasn't very well understood yet how.

As described by Space.com:

"Quantum entanglement is a bizarre, counterintuitive phenomenon that explains how two subatomic particles can be intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space. Despite their vast separation, a change induced in one will affect the other."

Or, as Einstein famously put it:

"Spooky action at a distance."

I found this concept fascinating. It feels, at first, a little magical and abstract, but I think the thing I love most about it is that it's just...science. It's testable and provable and it points to the fact that there is so much more going on around us (and within us?) than is physically or easily observable.

So. Am I saying that Becky and I are entangled on a quantum level, and that's why we always get the same super-random songs stuck in our heads, or get obsessed with the same topics at the same time without each other's knowledge, or any other number of strange coincidental things? I don't know. I've done a lot of reading about it, and there seems to be some debate about whether it's possible for people to become entangled with each other, but there also seems to be some proof of it. And when I was writing I Think We've Been Here Before, I decided that in the world in which I was setting this scenario and these characters? Yes. It's possible. And this is the cool thing about writing fiction: you get to learn as much as you possibly can about the way the world actually works, you get to marvel at it, sit in awe of it...and then, once you feel like you have a grasp on the rules, you get to break or bend or stretch whichever ones you want to suit your purposes. You get to fill in the blanks where scientists have said, "We don't know about this!"

It's very fun.

Something Like Fame

 I’m having extra thoughts this morning. I’m a person who has a lot of thoughts at the best of times (I’d say “don’t we all” but sometimes I ask Barclay what he’s thinking and he says, “Nothing,” and he really means it, and I can’t relate to that at all, though I admire and aspire to it) but they feel much more pressing today. And I do mean, literally, pressing. 

Like:

I generally picture the thoughts in my head as a cloud of mosquitos, just buzzing around in my whole skull, and sometimes these thoughts are at the front and sometimes these other thoughts are, and I’m aware of all of them all the time but I’m more aware of the ones that are buzzing around right behind my eyes. Today, I feel like all of the thoughts in my head are demanding my attention, up against my forehead, the backs of my eyeballs, filling up my sinuses. 

Miserable as that sounds, I don’t hate it. I just feel extremely…present. I can feel myself in my head.

One time, I saw someone on Twitter pose this question: Where do you exist in your body? I thought that was the weirdest thing to ask. I’m in my head! I thought. Aren’t we all in our heads? When you think about your self, isn’t it, whatever exactly ‘it’ is, in your head? If you got decapitated, wouldn’t you think “you” were in the head, not the body? 

But then people were replying that they feel like “they” exist in their chest, in their stomach, sometimes even outside of their body looking at it from somewhere else in the room, and my mind was blown. I am constantly being reminded that my experience of being a human person, my experience of existence, is not the same as everyone else’s, even down to these things that feel like they should be universal. 

I bet you’re very interested to see where this particular rabbit trail is going, aren’t you? Well, sorry, it’s going nowhere. It’s just one of the mosquitos buzzing around in my noggin. It does get weird in here.

Anyway.

I think this particular thought swarm is somewhat a result of last week’s news. It was really fun, sharing the press release about the book being optioned for TV, receiving so many encouraging notes and messages. And because I exist in my head (oh, here we go, I can tie that rabbit hole in here and make it a little less abstract), I don’t ever just feel my feelings; I think them. I observe them, I analyze them, I wonder about them. 

So I woke up this morning really thinking my feelings. I was thinking, specifically, about a couple of messages I got last week that jokingly were like, “Don’t let all this fame go to your head!” And, like, it was very much a joke, I do not actually have fame, but it got me thinking about fame, about why people want it so much. Or why they think they want it. I mean, when I see videos of actually famous people being mobbed as they try to just go to a restaurant with their friends, I mostly feel sorry for them. It doesn’t look fun. I feel like very few people actually want that. But I also feel like it’s a very common human thing to desire something tangential to it. Something easily mistaken for it.

This is an ongoing conversation I’ve been having with my friend Sarah, about why writers want to be published in the first place, about why we don’t just keep our stories in notebooks under our beds, why we’re constantly trying to push them out into the world even though the thought of doing that is so often physically uncomfortable for introverted, private people like her and me. 

We have landed on the idea that one of the best parts of writing is feeling seen. Not in an ‘I love people looking at me’ way, but more in an ‘I love people understanding me’ way. 

I actually started writing this blog post last Tuesday, the day after the announcement went out. I was sitting in my usual spot at the Brewed Awakening downtown, at the window bar looking out on Victoria Ave. It’s the best place for people watching and I feel fairly invisible there even though it’s such an obviously visible spot. But people aren’t peering into the window as they walk past; they’re in a hurry, they’re going to work, they’re meeting someone for coffee. I’m just sitting there, a little above eye-level; I have the advantage. 

On that particular day, I happened to see a familiar person walking past my perch in the window: my father-in-law, Marty.

He had his head down; it was a little windy that day, the temperature was still below zero, so he was buzzing along, but he must have sensed me in the window because he looked up and smiled at me. We waved at each other, he made a funny face—a natural reflex for him, I think. 

A moment later, the bell over the coffee shop door dinged, announcing Marty’s arrival in the shop. I thought, oh, he’s meeting someone here. He went up to the counter and ordered a large coffee and made his way over to me, walking the way people do when they’ve got a large cup of hot liquid filled right to the very top. I thought, oh, he’s coming to sit with me. But when he got to my spot, he merely set the cup on the bar in front of me, made small talk for a couple of minutes, and then said, “Well, I’ll let you get back to work!” And with a wave and a smile, he was back out on the street, going wherever he’d been going in the first place. My latte was almost gone and I was extremely happy for another cup of coffee, but it also felt like such a perfect illustration of the whole entire publishing Thing for me. 

Me, sitting in a coffee shop, observing, writing. A very enjoyable thing all on its own. But…if I’m being fully honest, the desire is not for it to be a thing all on its own. The desire, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously, is for it to be a transaction. The desire is to be seen, to have someone not just glance at you, not to just register your basic existence, but to understand you. Like Marty, looking up and noticing me in the window, understanding me enough to know that, yes, I would love another cup of coffee, and, yes, while I enjoy your company, I have come here to work so I don’t have a lot of time to sit and visit. I felt seen. 

And that’s the way I feel when people read my books and send me emails saying, “I read this and I GOT it.” And that’s the way I felt when Paul emailed me and wanted to talk about making my book into a TV show. He had all these ideas and thoughts and all of them made me feel very seen, very understood. Evidence that I had been successful in portraying the weird vision I had in my head when I started writing that book, because here was someone picturing all the same things and describing it back to me in a way that showed it was understandable. This is the exciting thing about picturing this story on a screen—the thought of people watching it and understanding the things I wanted to say with it. The thought of seeing other creative people interpreting it and adding their two cents to it, adding nuance and meaning that I didn’t originally put in there. Being part of something more collaborative than I’ve had the chance to be part of, previously. 

But, I don’t know. 

Maybe lots of people just actually want fame.

Maybe everyone reading this is like, “Nope, you got it all wrong. People just want fame and that’s a bad instinct that we should get rid of as a society.” Maybe they’re like, “You want fame and you’re trying to justify it by dressing it up as something else.” Maybe they’re still stuck on the weird part at the beginning, where I lost them by using the word “decapitated.” 

LOL. I don’t know. The thoughts are just buzzing around. I’m just telling you about them. 

If you get it, you get it. And that makes me happy.

Weirdness Journal Entry #2: The Little Free Library

I told someone the other day that there has been some weirdness following me since I started writing this most recent book, and it has amped up considerably since I handed in the final edits. They asked if I was keeping a journal of the weirdness, and I said I wasn't really, and they said I should. 

So I think I will, and what better place to keep a weirdness journal than right here?

And, I mean, I've already told you about the Mercury Cafe thing. So I guess that was entry #1. Consider this entry #2.

Okay, story time:

Just before Christmas, Lake Union sent me two boxes of advance reader copies to use for publicity. I can do whatever I want with them, but the point is to share them in such a way as to draw attention to I Think We've Been Here Before ahead of its release in creative ways: using them for giveaways on social media, sending them to book bloggers, things like that. It occurred to me that I should bring one to the Penny University, Regina's indie bookstore, and give it to the owner. You know, so she could read it and hopefully enjoy it and tell her customers about it and order it in. All that good stuff.

So I put a copy in my backpack one day when I was out running errands and stopped in at the Penny. I walked around, bought a book, and left without leaving mine there. 

Claaaasic Suzy. 

It was just too weird. I feel so awkward going up to people and telling them about my books. Marketing yourself online is uncomfortable enough as it is! And I know I'm supposed to just suck it up and do it, but that day I felt vulnerable and shy and I decided I'd wait for a braver day. 

A braver day did indeed come along, and I found myself, once again, at the Penny with that ARC in my backpack. But Annabel, the owner, wasn't working that day; it was some other guy I'd never met before. He was very nice, but I wasn't about to be like, "HEY I'M AN AUTHOR HERE IS MY BOOK DO YOU WANT IT?"

So I left, yet again, with the ARC in my backpack. Guess it wasn't a braver day, after all.

This happened...a few times. Which is kind of okay. I like going to Penny University. Wandering a bookstore is not a pain, not a chore. Buying a new book is a treat. I thought to myself each time, I am just a person much more suited to online self-promotion. It's very okay. 

Okay, SO.

This past Wednesday, I was working in a coffee shop downtown and when I went to pack up my laptop, I noticed that forgotten ARC still in my backpack. I felt that familiar rush of courage, and I thought, this is ridiculous. Today is the day. Besides, it was gorgeous outside—almost positive temperatures, only a little wind. I had some coffee left in my go cup. I thought to myself, I'm going to park a few blocks from Penny U, take a little walk down 13th, and get rid of this thing once and for all. 

So I drove to the Village, parked the car, and set off. 

It was such a nice day for a walk. I was in a great mood. And it felt like fate because as I walked up the steps to the Penny's front door, Annabel was just coming out of it.

"Well hi!" I said, feeling the weight of the ARC in my backpack.

"Hello!" she said. "Are you coming to the book signing this afternoon?" 

I thought of saying, "No, actually, I'm just here to drop something off for you!" 

Instead, I said, "I'm hoping to!" 

And then Annabel and I had a quick discussion about, of all things, book marketing. Not my book marketing, but book marketing in general. It came up because we were talking about the author whose book signing was that day and we had both noticed how great she is at book marketing (shout out to Victoria Koops). 

It could've been a very natural opener for me. 

"Speaking of marketing," I could've said. And then I could've just reached into my backpack and handed her the ARC. Did I do that? Nope!

So we finished talking about other people's books and she took off down 13th to meet someone for lunch. And that was that. I'd failed yet again!

It didn't dampen my good mood though. I'm used to being a coward. I took a spin through the bookstore, headed down 13th to the Paper Umbrella to say hi to Brad and/or Theresa (neither of whom ended up being in that day, rats), and then headed back to my car, which I thought I had left on Montague Street. 

Spoiler: no I hadn't. 

I frowned, confused. Maybe I had left it on Athol?

Nope.

Garnet?

No.

Cameron?

No. 

Robinson?

No. 

At this point, I was thinking my car had been stolen. It was just not anywhere. I cut through a back alley and paused, frowning at yet another slushy road without my car on it. I didn't even know which one it was at this point. I decided to head back to the Penny and retrace my steps a little more carefully. As I started off again, I noticed an adorable little Free Library on a lawn to my left. I thought to myself, why not make this trip worthwhile? I'm getting rid of this thing one way or another. I pulled Annabel's ARC out of my backpack. Sorry, Annabel, I thought to myself as I placed the book into the little wooden box. Maybe someday I'll get up the nerve to annoy booksellers face-to-face. Today, I'm just going to release this thing into the wild and see what happens. It's more my style, to just quietly leave a book somewhere and hope it accomplishes something on its own.

(Shh. Do you hear that? It's the sound of a hundred thousand sighing publicists.)

I carried on my way, feeling a sense of accomplishment. And when I got to the end of the block, like magic, there was my car! I'd parked, not on a side street, but right on 13th. How could I have forgotten that? Bizarre.

I drove home. I forgot about the ARC. 

The next day, I was sitting on my couch and my phone dinged with an Instagram notification. 

This is what I saw:

Yup. That Little Free Library? Annabel's. 

There is nothing left to say except: isn't that weird?

THREE TWO ONE! ONE TWO THREE! WHAT THE HECK! IS BOTHERING ME?

 I’ve been having a hard time concentrating on much the past few weeks, so I’m drafting this blog post instead of working. Not a great use of my time, since I actually have a lot of work to do, but maybe I’ll be more productive if I get this out of my head:

The date is January 30, 2024. I’m sitting at my kitchen table. I have my laptop and a cup of coffee and a bag of Milkybars and my eye is twitching. This is a newish thing for me, the twitch. It happens when I am anxious, when I am excited, when I am tired, when I am stressed. There’s a muscle in there that has HAD IT with me. I remind myself of Carl Winslow—from the 90s sitcom Family Matters—in the episode where he gets so annoyed with his next-door neighbor, Steve Urkel, that he develops a melodramatic eye twitch. He goes to see a therapist; the therapist tells him he needs to chill out. He spends the whole episode walking around his house yelling, “THREE TWO ONE! ONE TWO THREE! WHAT THE HECK! IS BOTHERING ME?”

It doesn’t seem to help him. I might try it.

But I’m not stressed. I’m not annoyed. I’m not anxious. I’m having a great time, actually, and the great time is just a little too great for my nervous system. 

Hence, the eye twitch. 

I have just gotten off the phone—I am trying to say this in a way that doesn’t sound pretentious or ridiculous or braggy or even self-deprecating, but I can’t think of one, so—I have just gotten off the phone with a Hollywood producer who wants to turn my book, I Think We’ve Been Here Before, into a TV show. This is a very surreal thing, and I’m not sure I’m awake. 

Barclay once asked me, way back at the beginning of all this book stuff, this question: If you could steal a career from someone, whose career would you steal?

I didn’t even have to think about it: Nick Hornby, duh. He’s published a whole bunch of books, books that are funny and moving and full of music and smart little musings on life. But even cooler than that: he’s had so many of his books turned into movies and TV shows—and, like, good movies and TV shows. 

If I had his career, I said to Barclay, I’d be very happy. But really: if I could have even one book made into something else, I would be just over the moon. Tickled pink. Floored. Elated. I have this recurring daydream where I go to a movie theatre and I sit in one of those cushy theatre seats, and the lights go down and there are a few previews and then the lights go down even more and the opening credits start rolling and then those words are on the screen. You know the ones:

Based on the novel by Suzy Krause

And in the daydream, by this point, I’m just—sobbing. Just a mess. Just crying so loudly, and I have no Kleenex, because I never do, and I’m trying to contain myself with the sleeves of my sweater and it’s a spectacle. And there’s this girl sitting a few seats down from me and she’s just staring at me like, what’s your problem, the movie has not started yet, nothing sad has happened, why are you like this. 

And I don’t care. I don’t care at all. My wildest dreams are coming true and I’m, what’s the word, verklempt. 

And this random daydream girl gets up and she moves far away from me, because I am, at this point, just downright disruptive. That’s okay, I didn’t want to sit by this girl anyway. Hey, why am I alone in this scenario at the movie theatre? In my own daydream? If my book ever got made into a movie and the movie played in theatres, like, you guys would come with me to see it, right? 

Anyway.

See, this is the weird thing: my brain is so used to this daydream that I can’t shift it from the daydream ruts to the reality ruts. Even as I’m writing this blog post, I’m just sliding over into the daydream version of it.

So, reality. You're  thinking to yourself, Good. I don’t care about this daydream, this thing that hasn’t happened. I came here to read about what has happened, and how it happened, and what’s going to happen next. That’s fair. I’ll try to tell you:

What has happened: my book has been optioned. This is, essentially, the first step in a piece of intellectual property being made into a film or TV show. I kind of understand what’s going on, but I have a film agent who understands it better than I do, and thank goodness for that. It’s her job to understand it for me, so I don’t get myself into hot water or miss something important or sign a contract saying some Hollywood character can have the IP AND my firstborn son. So I don’t understand it well enough to tell you what’s going on other than that the aforementioned producer is doing a lot of work behind the scenes trying to get all of the stars (like the actual people stars) to align so he can make a Thing. Besides stars, he also needs backers and directors and screenwriters and so on and so forth. This is a huge job, and this is his job, and my job is just to, like, sit here and cross my fingers SO hard. (Cross your fingers with me?)

How it happened: Ok, so about two years ago (I think? Right, Paul?) this man named Paul Davidson reached out to me by email. He had written a book called The Small Stuff (click the link! Buy the book! It’s really good!) and was wondering if I could read it and offer up a blurb. I said yes. I read the book, loved it, wrote a little blurb, sent it back. Thus, we became friends. 

(Asking another author for a blurb is such a vulnerable, terrifying thing. If you do it, and they say yes, it’s pretty much instant friendship.)

We stayed in touch and I blurbed another book of his a year later (Company of Foos, also great, CLICK THE LINK BUY THE BOOK). When I sent the blurb along, he thanked me and reminded me that he was always happy to return the favour. I said, “Thanks! How about…right now?” 

And he was like, “Okay!”

So I sent him an ARC for I Think We’ve Been Here Before. 

A week later, I woke up to the sound of the front door opening (don’t worry; it wasn’t Paul. Wouldn’t that be funny though? If he read the book and drove all the way from LA to Canada to bust down my front door and yell into the house, “SUZY! WE’RE MAKING A MOVIE!” That might have been a more exciting story. This one is still good; it’s just less intense). 

The person opening the door was Barclay (this makes more sense, doesn’t it?). He was headed outside with Sully to shovel snow. I reached over to the bedside table and grabbed my phone, which dinged in my hand, alerting me that an email had come in sometime during the night. The email was from Paul. There were a lot of lowercase letters, but my eyes were still full of sleep and they grazed past all those lowercase letters and drifted directly to the ones in the middle of the email in all-caps: THIS SHOULD BE A MOVIE.

I woke up a little bit more and read the rest of the email. It was very kind, and there was a blurb in it, which you will find on the back cover of I Think We’ve Been Here Before when it comes out in September, but after the blurb there was a bit about how, though I knew Paul as an author, his actual day job was as an executive in Hollywood and a producer. He wanted to option my book. Turn it into something you could watch on a screen.

I was surprised to read this, as you can imagine. I yelled, “BARCLAY GUESS WHAT!” (Because he was still standing at the front door putting his boots on.)

He yelled back, “WHAT?”

And I yelled back, “PAUL WANTS TO OPTION MY BOOK!”

And he was like, “THAT’S COOL, BABE.”

But the words sounded so weird coming out of my mouth, flying through the house. They sounded…delusional. 

What if—and this was seeming more likely by the minute—what if Paul was just being nice? Like, what if this email wasn’t so much a business email as a friendship email, and him being like, “I want to option your book” wasn’t so much him being like, “I want to option your book” as it was him being like, “You said nice things about my books and now it’s my turn to say nice things about your book and the nicest thing I can think of to say about a person’s book is ‘I want to option your book.’” You know, like how people are like, when they’re eating a really good sandwich, or even just a sandwich made by someone whose feelings they don’t want to hurt, “This sandwich is so good; I want to marry this sandwich.”

They don’t actually want to marry this sandwich. We all know this. And maybe, probably, Paul didn’t actually want to option my book.

So I tempered my expectations and replied with cautious gratitude to Paul’s email, at which point he doubled down: he asked me to pass his info along to my film agent. It was like he got caught hyperbolically saying “I want to marry this sandwich” and instead of being like, “Obviously I don’t want to marry this sandwich,” he said, “Bring me a clergyman!”

And he has only continued to double down. There's a contract! There's a press release! There are phone calls being made! PHONE CALLS! So what I’m saying is, if he was just trying to be nice, he is in WAY over his head at this point.

(Can you imagine?)

As for what’s going to happen next: I am going to walk around my house with my eyes twitching all over the place, yelling, "THREE TWO ONE! ONE TWO THREE! WHAT THE HECK! IS BOTHERING ME?"

Oh, you mean, what happens next, like, with the option and the Paul and all that: I have no idea. Like I said, this is not my industry, not my area of expertise. What I hope happens next? I hope we attach a great screenwriter, an incredible director, a stellar cast, and a sweet studio. I hope someone wants to pay for all of it. I hope my daydream comes true. I could take or leave the girl who's all weirded out by my emotional outburst, but it would kind of be poetic if she was there, wouldn't it? I'd probably lean over and say, "Hey, you don't know me, but we've met before...in this dream I had." 

Actually, no, that's probably not a thing I should do.

In any case, I will absolutely keep you posted.

UPDATE: It's now February 5 and I've been given the go-ahead to hit publish on this ramble. 

Click on this to read more:

THREE TWO ONE...

Weirdness Journal Entry #1: The Mercury Cafe

I have now been in Publishing World for seven or eight years, and in that time I’ve never met any of the Publishing World main characters in real life. I’ve never met my agent, for example, never met any of the people who work at the publishing house (or any of the other authors there, many of whom I have become very close to online). I’ve never met any of the people working behind the scenes doing foreign translations or marketing or film rights stuff. There are even people I only communicate with through other people; I've not shared so much as an email with them myself. It’s a very disembodied thing, happening over the phone and the internet, which can make it feel a little unreal. 

And it’s not just the publishing professionals with whom I’ve felt this disconnect; it’s the whole literary ecosystem. Lake Union, who published my first two books, is in the States, so obviously they market my books to American readers (and they do a VERY good job of that). That’s where my readers live, where the book clubs are who invite me to join them on Zoom. Like the agents and editors and publicists, I don’t really get to meet readers. I get lovely emails from them, and they tag me on Instagram, but I very rarely get to see them face to face.

People say, you’re an author! That’s so fun! And I’m like, Yes, very fun! But…I’m not actually sure any of it’s real. What I might be is the victim of an elaborate hoax. It might actually be quite embarrassing.

So last spring, when my agent, Victoria, and I started talking about my third book, I threw out kind of a weird idea: I said, I want to stay with Lake Union, because I love my editors there, I love the way they treat their authors, I love their cover design and marketing and communication and—well, many other things. I love Lake Union. 

But.

Could we possibly, I asked her, hang on to the Canadian rights and sell those to a Canadian publisher? I even had one in mind: Radiant Press, an indie publisher right here in Regina. I met John Kennedy, the co-publisher of Radiant, at a Penny University event and had a brief conversation about publishing and marketing and creativity that was exciting to me, and I’d gone home and researched them a bit and felt very interested in working with them.

But also, and I didn’t say this to Victoria at the time, I’d long had this romantic idea of being an author who lived in the same city as their publisher—like every author in every movie, who writes in their New York apartment and then strolls down the street for an in-person meeting with their publishing team, who is VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! and leans across a table—a real table, with a good, solid cup of coffee on it—gesticulating wildly as they discuss cover design and marketing strategies and launch parties. I think I’ve grown out of my desire to actually live in New York, but I’ve developed a Canadian version of that daydream: I've pictured myself in Regina’s Cathedral Village, in the Mercury Cafe, in one of those bright red booths by the window, my editor across the table holding a cup of coffee and speaking in that Publishing World lingo I’ve grown so fond of but don't often get to use in my everyday life. 

This is the daydream I’ve been having for well over a year now. I’m not making this up. 

You’re thinking, Suzy, why would I think you’re making this up?

You’ll see. Hang on.

Victoria is wonderful. She is smart and industry-savvy and willing to try new things. Still, this plan made her pause. She warned me that holding back rights was a risky move, that most publishers wanted world rights, and that if I kept those rights and then couldn’t sell them, the book would simply not be released in Canada. 

At all.

So I paused too. For all of 30 seconds. 

And then I was like, “Let’s try it anyway.”

Because I had that vision, about the red booths and the coffee, about being part of the Canadian publishing ecosystem and meeting my readers and not feeling like I didn’t exist in my own country.

I should try to make a long story short, here, because a lot happened between this and the next thing. We sent the book off to Lake Union in...October? I think? 

We had a tentative offer in December; it came through while I was sitting in the school gymnasium waiting for Scarlett's Christmas concert to start.

The deal memo came in January, and I signed the contract in March—for world rights except Canada. It was official! We were going to try to sell the Canadian rights all by themselve. It was a bit leap-of-faithy, and pretty scary. What if Radiant didn't want my book? 

Then again: what if they did?

Ah, here's where I can shorten the long story a bit more: they did. 

Phew. Right? PHEW. 

I signed with them in November, a little over a year after sending the manuscript to Lake Union. (Publishing is nothing if not the actual slowest thing in the world.)

And then, in January of 2024, I got an email from Debra, the publisher at Radiant Press, and—I'm being 100% honest with you right now—in this email she asked me if I would like to meet up at the Mercury Cafe for coffee to discuss my book. 

It was only in that moment that I realized how weirdly specific my daydream had been, about meeting up with a publisher in one of the red booths at the Mercury Cafe. It's not like I live in a tiny village with one local watering hole, you know what I mean? There are many, many places to conduct business in Regina, Saskatchewan. But my brain was like, "THE FIFTIES DINER ON 13TH. THAT'LL BE IT." 

And it was.

Our meeting happened on Tuesday. I walked up to the Mercury, experiencing the oddest sense of deja vu, because it was just like in my daydream. And John was there, standing out front, and he turned to me and said, "Ah—Suzy?" 

And I said, "Yes, hello!" 

And we shook hands and he told me Debra would be there soon and we went into the diner and we stood there for a moment, surveying the space—tables and chairs to the left, the big red window booths to the right. John gestured at one of the booths, like he knew he was supposed to, and said, "Shall we sit here?"

Do you want to know what the weirdest thing about all of this is? My book, the one we met at the Mercury to discuss, is about a family who finds themselves at the end of the world. And as they face this completely unprecedented thing, they find that it feels like something they remember. And they keep having these moments of deja vu, these glitchy little things that happen that make it seem like they've seen into the future, but it doesn't feel to them like seeing the future, it feels like remembering it, like having a daydream and then having the daydream come true. 

So, I don't know, man. I'm having a weird time. You don't know the half of it.

ANYWAY.

The meeting was wonderful; it was exactly what I dreamed it would be, because of course it was. We sat in the big red booth for two and a half hours and I drank probably five cups of coffee. We talked about my book and about books in general and about cover design and marketing and launch parties and it felt collaborative and fun and New Yorky, but in a very Saskatchewany way. 

Life is so weird, isn't it?

Weird and good.

A New Project

I’m back at the Bean this morning. This is no small feat today; it’s almost -50 with the windchill and the walk from my car to the coffee shop was treacherous—by the time I made it inside, my eyeballs were frozen like grapes in their sockets and I’d completely forgotten what it was like to feel warmth or comfort or joy. Victoria was standing behind the counter and I stared at her for a moment, trying to catch my breath. 

“It’s cold out there!” I said at last. 

Because I am a writer, a wordsmith, a capital C Creative. 

I wonder how many times this past week and today and this coming week Victoria has had and will have this exact sentence spoken to her in exactly this way. It makes me sad to realize I am so derivative, so pedestrian, so lacking in pizazz or originality.

But I am cold, okay, my brain is frozen, the synapses are not firing; I am like a car who needs someone with a bigger, more durable winter brain to come along and hook me up to jumper cables.

In lieu of that, I am writing here, on this blog, trying to jump start my brain by myself. 

I’m working on a new project. 

I Think We’ve Been Here Before comes out next September, which means that I have eight months ahead of marketing and promotion and meetings and publicity. In some ways, this is my least favourite part of publishing. I hate—have always hated—talking about my books. (I thought this shyness would go away with time but it hasn’t.) But there are also things that happen in this period of time that I like a lot and am so excited for. Reaching out to my favourite book bloggers to send ARCs, taking fun little pictures for social media, brainstorming ways to make connections with booksellers and libraries and readers, holding the finished copies in my hands and reading early reviews. It sounds like such a contradiction to say I hate promoting my book but also I love promoting my book and I don’t know what to tell you: I contain multitudes. 

But I have found that the very best use of this time is to work on The Next Thing, so that’s what I’m doing, and I’m having a very nice time. It’s quite weird and I’m at the stage where it’s new and shiny and I’m just watching the words appear on the screen like someone else is writing through my fingers, just daydreaming and letting the story be as strange as it wants to be without having to consider whether an editor at a publishing house will be able to win over an acquisitions board with it. In some ways, this is my favourite part of publishing. I love—have always loved—being surprised by an idea as it forms, daydreaming about where it could go and where it will land. But there is also a very uncomfortable aspect to this stage, if I’m being honest, an impatience to get the whole thing out and send it off to my agent, to see if has any merit or if I’m just being silly. It sounds like such a contradiction to say I love the beginning part of writing a book but also that I hate it and I don’t know what to tell you. 

Okay. I think my brain battery has been sufficiently jump-started, so I’m going to get back at it. May we all survive this ridiculous polar vortex.