Bliss and I land on CBC's The Next Chapter

On Saturday, September 16, I had a chance to talk about BLISS on CBC's The Next Chapter.

You can find the segment, here: "Why knitting is a fitting metaphor for life".

Why I love indie bookshops

I picked up these beautiful owl cards at an indie bookshop in Charlottetown called Bookmark on a recent visit to PEI. I also browsed, and saw many writerly friends on the shelves, and didn’t buy any books because my TBR pile is huge and writing deadlines (self-imposed, mostly) are looming.

But paper things? Especially owls (my familiar, if you must know)? I just couldn’t resist.

At the checkout, I teased the (nameless, sorry) salesperson about the bust of William Shakespeare who appeared to be supervising her, and we talked about the recent talk by writerly colleague Terry Fallis at the store. How fun it was. What an impression he made.

So I told her that Terry had read and blurbed my latest book.

[Aside: I am terrible at self-promotion. My mother taught me never to brag, or, in her words, “toot my own horn”. It’s a curse in the writerly life, because OF COURSE WE HAVE TO SELF-PROMOTE, especially those of us without agents or Big Publishing Houses and their Big Promotion Budgets behind us. So this was uncomfortable for me. Okay, back to the action.]

She looked up. “You’re an author? Do we have your books on our shelves?”

Conversation followed, and in a second, she had a piece of paper, a pen, and was quickly taking down my details about books, publisher, genre. 

I felt so … SEEN!

So, here’s to indie bookshops and the people who work in them and visit them. Indies “get” it – the writing life, the importance of connecting writers with readers, readers with books, me with owl cards, even while Will Shakespeare is breathing down your neck. 

My list includes but does not end with...

Bookmark (Charlottetown, PEI)

Magic Pebble Books (Elora, ON)

The Bookshelf (Guelph, ON)

Mabel's Fables (Toronto, ON)

Munro's (Victoria, BC)

Woozles Books (Halifax, NS)

... and even my local yarn shop, String Theory Yarn (Fergus, ON), which has my latest book for sale.

Thank you!

A Yarn about Yarn - and More

Thanks to writerly colleague L.E. Carmichael for the opportunity to contribute to her blog, Cantastic Authorpalooza (aka"Life, The Universe and Everything").

I had so much fun writing this behind-the-scenes glimpse of the yarniac life that inspired Bliss Adair and the First Rule of Knitting, including the evil monkey named "My Precious" and the time that Katie saved Christmas…

You can read A Yarn about Yarn - and More here.