Gail's Blog | Gail Bowen

The Saskatchewan Question

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:25:52 -0600

On July 23^rd I’ll be launching the 12^th Joanne Kilbourn novel, “The Nesting Dolls”, at an event called LOVE, Saskatchewan 2010 at Harbourfront in Toronto. The title ‘LOVE, Saskatchewan 2010’ has the bounce and fizz appropriate to a summer celebration of Canada’s easiest-to-draw province. That said, a phrase that juxtaposes the words “LOVE” and “Saskatchewan” sets the teeth of our province’s writers on edge. We know that at some point in any interview we give, we’ll be asked “If you’re any good, why are you still in Saskatchewan?”

Saying that you live in this province because you love it will brand you as a hopelessly hay-chewing stubble jumper whose interview should be truncated immediately if not sooner. Here are some answers that should buy you enough interview time to at least mention the title of your book.

1. Saskatchewan’s landscape is a powerful motivator. A scholarly book a few years back suggested that in a world where the landscape is horizontal (read ‘flat’) and human beings are vertical, we are driven to write (a) because we’re terrified at being the tallest thing around and hence a target for the gods or (b) because we’re thrilled at being the tallest thing around and hence clearly the gods’ darlings.

2. Saskatchewan editors are famous for being both excellent and kind. Like all writers, our province’s writers embrace the cliché that editors are generals who comes down from the hills after the battle is over to shoot the survivors. But we know that, beginning with Caroline Heath, editor-in-chief of Grain and founder of Fifth House, Saskatchewan has been blessed with editors who shoot only when it is absolutely necessary and then with hearts full of sorrow for the pain they are about to inflict. Saskatchewan writers appreciate that.

3. The logistics of life are simpler here. When I get ‘the works’ at Holt Renfrew in Toronto – a luxury I am able to afford only because my daughter’s friend, Michael, a cutting-edge stylist at Holts (hair pun #1) never forgets that his roots are in Stockholm, Saskatchewan (hair pun#2)--I dedicate the entire morning to choosing an outfit that’s Holts-worthy, figuring out the subway route to Holts from wherever I’m staying and afterwards finding a place to have lunch that’s worthy of my hair. Here in Regina, it takes 10 minutes for me to brush my teeth, pull on my jeans and walk to Chantal, the stylist at Head to Toe. With an early appointment, I can leave looking as good as I’m going to ever going to look in time to hear my oldest grand-daughter play her clarinet solo at the spring recital, pick up some groceries and still have time to walk the dogs and work on a chapter before lunch.

4. Necessity truly is the mother of invention. Whatever you’ve heard about Saskatchewan winters is true, but multiply the horror factor of 10. When you’re heading into the second month of minus 40 temperatures and the wheels on your car are square and the streets are either (a) impassable because of snow or (b) impassable because of sheer ice, it’s wise to retreat to the basement and curl up with a warm computer. You’re not missing anything. Your friends haven’t been good company since Halloween and it’s too cold to have an affair. Stick with your manuscript.

5. In a province whose population is slightly over 1,000,000 the concept of 6 degrees of separation is ludicrous. In Saskatchewan 2 degrees of separation is the norm. Everybody knows everything about everyone, and ours is a story-telling culture. Research in Saskatchewan means buying a guy a beer and listening.

6. Any province that can nurture writers as diverse and brilliant as Lorna Crozier, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Maggie Siggins, Sandra Birdsell , Louise Halfe, Yann Martel, W.O. Mitchell, Sharon Butala, Robert Calder, Anthony Bidulka, Gary Hyland, Randy Lundy, Trevor Herriott, David Carpenter, Maria Campbell, Sinclair Ross, W.O. Mitchell, Robert Currie, Louise Halfe, Dianne Warren, Suzanne North, Jo Bannantyne-Cugnet, Robert Currie, Connie Gault, Alison Lohans and Lois Simmie has magic in its ecosystem, and even bad writers are smart enough to know that it’s just plain dumb to mess with magic.

Rendez-vous@Janes

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:22:20 -0600

Yesterday my older granddaughters and I celebrated summer with our first serious pedicure. Madeleine is 12; Lena (as she always phrases it) is almost 11; I (as I never phrase it) am almost 68. Some of us have waited for this particular indulgence longer than others of us-- to a woman, we agreed we’d waited too long.

We went to a place called Rendez-vous@Janes which came highly recommended and promised ‘classic Hollywood style manicures and pedicures’. Jane and her colleagues delivered.

Our first task was to select our nail lacquer. The names were provocative: Teal the Cows Come Home; Blue my Mind/ Do You Lilac It?; Don’t Know…Beets me! Flashbulb Fuchsia/Pink Before You Leap—and there were more --- many, many, many more. It was tough, but in the end, Lena and I opted for Baguette Me Not (a gentle coral shade—that I was relieved to later read Katie Holmes is wearing this summer); Madeleine chose I’m His Coral Friend. Madeleine has the unerring fashion sense of a girl born knowing the shade of nail lacquer Katie Holmes will wear.

We were seated, tucked in with pink tufted pillows, handed cool drinks and then instructed to plunge our feet into something that smelled fresh and lovely while the three pedicurists worked their magic. As we were brown-sugared and massaged and buffed, we watched Paris When It Sizzles – an old Audrey Hepburn, William Holden movie. The sound was turned down, but watching the incredibly beautiful Audrey in her beautiful Givenchy wardrobe was pleasure enough. The granddaughters loved the clothes, but felt Audrey’s arms were ‘way too skinny’ – which in fact they were. The walls at Rendez-vous@Jane's are decorated in framed black and white glossies of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. All the soundless movies Jane’s shows feature one of those iconic beauties—classic Hollywood indeed.

The cost of the three pedicures at Jane’s was more than I earn for a Canada Council reading. The experience, however, was priceless.

Using Adverbs is a Mortal Sin

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:51:42 -0600

Last weekend I taught a course in fiction writing at St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, Saskatchewan. The monks are in the Order of St. Benedict, and they are a hospitable group. Of course, any order that gave us Benedictine – half of one of my favourite drinks—knows how to welcome guests. The monks appear to have a puckish affinity for existential humour. In the bathroom just inside the entrance a hand-lettered sign over the toilet instructs: Hold Down the Handle Until Everything Disappears.

For the second time this summer, Ted and I were in a dormitory together. After 42 years of marriage, Ted is still a fun guy to sneak into a dorm room—especially when the church bells toll to summon the faithful to ponder their sins.

There were 16 people in my class – twice my usual maximum and four times the ideal number for a weekend course. That said, I wouldn’t have traded one of them. We were a disparate group: a family physician, a true crust punk, a lawyer, a crime reporter, two retired teachers; two men who are currently teaching; three students of St. Peter’s College and a nice sprinkling of people who were simply interested in writing. I wish we’d taken a class picture.

Because of our numbers, we decided to have a two hour class the first night, an hour and a half class every morning, then spend the rest of the day in one-on-one interviews. Evenings were for wine, cheese and readings.

As someone who has spend her adult life teaching, I’ve always been fascinated by how groups come together. Perhaps because we were sleeping in dorms and eating together, we were quick to bond. We laughed a lot and the students learned a lot—not just from me but from one another. The first night people were reluctant to read from works in progress, so I read a chunk from “The Nesting Dolls”. The next night – perhaps because my first reading had already pleasured them enough, the students were eager to participate. Without exception, they were sensational.

We opened our classes in the morning with Elmore Leonard’s rules for writers and the responses other writers had made to Elmore Leonard’s rules.

At the end of our last class, I read the rule that I felt was the most important at the It comes from writer Helen Dunmore: “Don’t worry about posterity – as Philip Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed, “What will survive of us is love”. I think perhaps our weekend together at St. Peter’s had already taught our little group that lesson.

Two and a Half Cheers for the CBC

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:31:45 -0600

Yesterday, Ted and I got back from two weeks at Anglin Lake in Northern Saskatchewan. Leaving Paradise is never easy but I was eased into reality by a very nice note that appeared on my BlackBerry when I was loading up my cart at the grocery store. The note came from an artist in the Maritimes. She’d been kneading bread, watching the clouds and listening to CBC when she heard an interview with me on Shelagh Rodgers show.

My correspondent said some kind things about the interview and asked for the name of a visual artist I’d mentioned. The artist’s name is Scott Plear, and Ted and I own two of his paintings. Like Scott Plear, the woman who wrote to me is a colourist. She gave me the address of her website. I went to it and was dazzled. She has painting of iris called “The Yellow Surprise” that I would willingly sell all our pop bottles for.

A few minutes after I answered the first email, I got an email from the sister of another artist. This woman had been driving in Northern New Brunswick when she heard the CBC interview. She said she thought I sounded like an interesting writer, and she’d search out the Joanne Kilbourn series. She, too, gave me a website address—this one was for her sister. I liked what the sister said about making art, and her work was mesmerizing. Another happy discovery for me.

After that, I received five emails from friends, here and there across Canada, who had heard and enjoyed the interview, so I got back to them with our latest news. This morning I received an email from another talented visual artist who had heard the interview. I’ve been to his website – like his work very much and when I’m through with this, I’ll drop him a note and tell him so.

Years ago when Ted and I were living in rural Saskatchewan awaiting the birth of our first child, Peter Gzowski’s “This Country in the Morning” introduced us to people who, like us, felt the need to connect with the lives of other Canadians. Peter Gzowski was a gifted interviewer and his interviews with the brilliant and the famous set a standard that has never been exceeded. But when I remember “This Country in the Morning” and “Morningside” and “This Morning”, I remember people talking about books they were reading; exchanging recipes for jam and pickles, and telling family stories – doing pretty much what I did in the interview with Shelagh Rogers that was re-broadcast yesterday.

If my experience is any indication, it seems that, despite programming changes with which many of us disagree, CBC is still managing to keep Canadians in touch with one another. And for that, it deserves two and a half cheers.

The Bill and Gail Show

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:24:00 -0600

One of my best memories of the Mystery Writers Retreat at Saltspring is of the morning when William Deverell and I talked about the writing process. Because Bill’s beautiful wife of 50+ years and my wonderful husband of 42 years were in the room, Bill and I were forced to be more honest than we might otherwise have been about how we write.

Bill is a hermit. He has a cabin on their property where he goes when he’s working on a book. It seems that Bill enters a kind of parallel universe when he steps over the threshold of his writing space. Teckla says he is not to be disturbed and that when Bill’s working, she ceases to exist. Like any couple in a long and successful marriage they have accommodated themselves to an arrangement that from the outside seems daunting. Teckla is involved in politics and has a large organic garden that she works and enjoys. When Bill emerges with a completed manuscript, they resume their life together. He’s a fine and prolific writer and it’s apparent their marriage is a solid one, so obviously Bill’s approach works for him.

I need to have Ted and the kids around when I’m working. My writing space is a sunny porch off the second floor front bedroom of our house. I never am without a dog when I write—most often, they’re both here. Over the years, I have shared one corner of my built in desk with my grandchildren. They have craft supplies there, and when they’re of a mind to, they cut and paste and draw. They all come upstairs after school to fill me in on the days’ events. When my daughter comes home from work to pick up the children, she wanders in too and we gossip for awhile, and sometimes we have a glass of wine together. I am not nearly as prolific as Bill, but I manage to get done what I need to get done, and like Bill and Teckla, Ted and I are content.

The point that both Bill and I made with the writers at Saltspring is that while all writers have the same tools at their disposal, the conditions under which each of us writes most effectively are personal. Bill needs silence and isolation to enter the world that he creates through his writing. I need to feel connected.

One of our dogs is a bouvier. Bouviers are family dogs in a very literal sense – they need to be with their human families. To punish a bouvier, all you need to do is close the door between them and you. I think that I have bouvier blood. I can’t write with a closed door.

The Girls in Their Summer Dresses

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:12:54 -0600

There’s a wonderful short story by Irwin Shaw titled “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses”. No one much reads Irwin Shaw any more, but the title of that particular short story is so evocative that I think of it as soon as the days begin to grow long and hot and lazy. Shaw’s summer girls wore demure flouncy dresses in ice cream pastels; today’s girls favour very short short shorts and tank tops in bold colours with bolder messages.

My grand-daughters go to Catholic School, and they are burdened by a dress code. They arrive here after school dressed the way a grandmother likes to see her grand-daughters dressed, and then they change into something more to their liking but to less to mine.

I went to an Anglican girls school. In winter we wore navy tunics; long-sleeved white blouses; black stockings; black oxfords and a red blazer with the school crest. In spring we wore navy tunics, short sleeved white blouses, knee-length socks, black oxfords and a red blazer with the school crest. I still remember the thrill of the sun on my knees.

Perhaps because I spent my formative years in uniforms, I have no interest whatsoever in clothes for myself, but I love watching what other people wear. There are many young, lovely fashionable women on my street, and I get a boot out of watching them dressed for the dozens of events young, lovely fashionable women attend.

Yesterday I had lunch with my friend, Marjorie. Among the many topics we covered in our long and indulgent lunch was the immense pleasure we take in the fact that we are of an age where we can wear sensible shoes and comfortable clothes. But as we sat talking of weighty matters, Marjorie and I both took note of the many girls in their summer dresses who brightened the tables of the restaurant. Irwin Shaw wasn’t there to celebrate their sunny beauty, so we did it in his memory.

The Happy Yellow House

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:24:44 -0600

All of us who gathered at Saltspring the week of June 6^th for the Mystery Retreat were book people: writers—published and emerging--an editor and an agent. We talked about books constantly—how to write and edit them; how to market them; the ‘elevator pitch’ or how to pitch your book to an agent in less than 60 seconds. Everything we talked about was pointed towards a single goal: shepherding the promising manuscript on your desk through the journey that would deliver it, handsomely printed, glossily covered, utterly irresistible, to the “New and Noteworthy” front table of bookstores all over North America.

The six of us who worked in books collectively had at least 120 years of experience in the business. We all loved books. We all believed in writers. Certainly the group of emerging writers who gathered on Saltspring were as good, as hardworking and as determined as any professional writer I’ve ever met. It was a great experience. We learned from one another; we laughed a lot; we formed relationships that we all hope will continue. Much that was valuable came out of our week together; yet the overwhelming message we all came away with was that the book business was in serious trouble and that,contrary to what I had always believed, these days even a fine manuscript may not find a publisher. It was grim news, underscored by the fact that after she returned to her office after our week together, Dinah Forbes, who edits Peter Robinson, Bill Deverell, Maureen Jennings and me (among many others) had been laid off after twenty years at McClelland & Stewart.

It was difficult to find a silver lining in all these clouds and yet when I visited Orca Books in Victoria I found one. From the outside, Orca doesn’t look very corporate. It’s an old house, painted bright yellow. The area out back, now a warehouse for Orca’s books, was once the building where cows were milked. Across the street from the company is an old painted bus that looks as if it might have played a role in Tom Wolfe’s novel the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Behind it is a well-run organic farm. All of this is a stone’s throw from downtown Victoria.

Inside Orca, there are people everywhere. It made me think of the story of the Old Woman who lived in the shoe who had so many children she didn’t know what to do. But even if their office is a cubby-hole on the stairwell or a desk cheek by jowl with that of another employee, everyone at Orca knows exactly what they’re doing—more importantly, to my eyes at least, they appeared to be happy with their work.

Orca publishes books for children and young adults. I was there because my new Charlie D series for adults with literacy challenges is one of Orca’s new ventures. Bob Tyrrell and Andrew Wooldridge, who own and run the company are low key, affable, respectful of their writers and of those with whom they work. They are also very, very smart. They move slowly and surely, and they’re successful.

The Happy Yellow House is a good place to be. I wonder if it might provide a useful model for those who care about the future of books.

Pelicans

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:11:12 -0600

Ted and I have been on the west coast for two weeks. At Saltspring Island I spent a week as a ‘mentor’ in a retreat/workshop for mystery writers, and after that we spent some time visiting friends in Victoria and Vancouver. We came home to province with serious flooding problems, particularly in the southwest. Here in Regina, the rainfall has been benevolent – everything is very green and when we took our dogs for their morning walk yesterday, we saw pelicans swimming on Wascana creek.

My friend Marjorie, who lives around the corner, had emailed to alert me to their presence. The creek offers a congenial home to many creatures: ducks, cormorants, red winged blackbirds, beavers, otters, the ubiquitous Canada geese, but these are our first pelicans. Yesterday after school three of my grandchildren and I went down to the creek to check them out. We arranged to meet up with Marjorie on her way back from her work as a Court of Appeals Judge.

Marjorie and I have been friends for twenty-five years. She’s the smartest person I know, but much as I love her, she never struck me as being an adult to whom children would be drawn. I know many lawyers who hyperventilate at the mention of her name, but she is hands down the favourite adult of the young Bowens, so we were all happy to have her join us.

I’m always intrigued by the transformation in our grandchildren when Marjorie appears. The kids are with us every day after school, so much of our time together is spent in companionable silence. When Marjorie comes, everyone jockeys for position. The girls, who are 12 and 10 and ½ tell wickedly funny stories about school and boast of accomplishments. Yesterday, Lena had been in a track meet for all the Regina Catholic Schools. She won a 4^th in the broad jump and 8^th in something else. She had ribbons to prove it. The ribbons plus the fact that, for reasons known only to Lena, she participated in her track and field events wearing dangling earrings, a tee shirt saying “I’m small but sweet” and pajama bottoms imprinted with doggy footrints and the legend “Bite Me”, gave her an edge in the Marjorie sweepstakes. However, Madeleine, Lena’s older sister is not without weapons. Her French is excellent, as is Marjorie’s, so Madeleine attracted Marjorie’s attention by expressing a longing to see Paris, one of Marjorie’s favourite cities. Ben, their almost five year old brother, had the most potent weapon, he simply grabbed Marjorie’s hand and talked non-stop for our forty minute walk.

We took the kids to Mac’s to get slurpees. Marjorie was wowed as Madeleine made her brother his favourite ‘swamp slurpee’ – comprised of shots of each of the fifteen slurpy flavours. Refreshed, we went home and Ted and Marjorie and I had a glass of wine out on the deck. Then it was Ted’s and my turn to compete. I told stories of Saltspring; Ted told stories of Victoria (where Marjorie spends three months every winter). Ted was in charge of the wine so he won easily.

We all had a great time.

No one spoke of pelicans.

20 Writerly Questions for...Gail Bowen

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:47:16 -0600

1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence?

“The Nesting Dolls” is about the potency of secrets and the redemptive power of love.

2. How long did it take you to write this book?

Two years, but during that time I also wrote a children’s play about the last of the Galapagos tortoises and a short novel for adult readers with literacy challenges. I also attended 186 recitals/badminton games/track meets and Christmas concerts in which our grandchildren played roles of varying significance and success.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

Truthfully, Anglin Lake in Northern Saskatchewan. The lake is pristine with a large population of loons that still feel at home around non-invasive humans, and every day birds drop by the feeder outside the window where I write.

3. How do you choose your characters’ names?

For close to twenty years I’ve had people bid at charity events for cameo roles in my books. I think by now I might have raised about $50,000 for organizations like Oxfam, many cancer societies; literacy groups—in general just groups that I believe in. This year’s crop will include characters whose names were purchased by donors from Grandmothers 4 Grandmothers and Camp fYrefly a place where gay/lesbian/trans/ and other teens can feel comfortable being themselves.

4. How many drafts do you go through?

I’m a Virgo. Don’t ask, because even though the books in question, are already published, I’ll feel compelled to do a final polish.

5. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?

“Charlotte’s Web”.

6. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?

Six of my books have become made for tv movies starring Wendy Crewson. I thought they were great. I ask everyone reading this to write to CTV requesting more – Ted and I have modest plans for our old age. We would like to make them less modest.

7. What’s your favourite city in the world?

Regina.

8. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?

W.B. Yeats. I would ask him how he could have written a poem as brilliant as “Among School Children” with the lines that always stop my heart by their beauty. “O body swayed to music. O brightening glance/How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

9. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind??

When I’m having a difficult writing day, Glenn Gould with the “Goldberg Variations”. The rest of the time, whatever strikes my fancy—from Green Day to Renee Fleming. I listen to Glenn Gould a lot.

10. Who is the first person who gets to you read your manuscript?

My husband, but only after it’s been sent to my editor. Ted and I’ve been together for 42 years and I have plans for the next 42 that don’t include me being sullen because of an ill-chosen metaphor.

11. Do you have a guilty pleasure read?

I’m an Anglican. We’re not massively into guilt.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?”

“The Emperor’s Children” – Claire Messud (a re-read because I just finished her earlier novels and was dazzled.)

“Solar” Ian McEwan

“The Uncommon Reader” Alan Bennett

“Innocent” – Scott Turow

13. What is the first book you remember reading?

“Madeline” by Ludwig Bemelmans

When our daughter named our first grand-child, Madeleine, and I read our grand-daughter the ‘Madeline’ books, I felt as if I’d come full circle.

14. Did you always want to be a writer?

Probably, but I’m a Virgo, so I became a university professor first.

15. What do you drink or eat while you write?

I start writing at 5:30 a.m. At that point I drink herbal tea. I have one cup of good coffee in the morning and one in the afternoon. Both are rewards. When I stop writing I have a glass of vermouth before dinner. That’s my ticket to perdition—no more writing till the next morning at 5:30 a.m.

16. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?

Laptop and pen and paper. As a Virgo, I seize every moment and that means hard copies to work on.

17. What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time.

Nothing. I’ve often been saved by ignorance. My first publication in “An Easterner’s Guide to Western Canada/A Westerner’s Guide to Eastern Canada” was a fluke. I wrote my submission at the request of my first two children’s godfather. It was fun. It was published, and I figured that was it. After that, it became more complex.

18. How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from?

As a feminist, wife, mother, grandmother, academic and political person, my POV was a no-brainer. I wanted to write from the POV of a Canadian woman in mid-life who realized she lived a privileged live and wanted that life for others.

19. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?

A cleaning person and a copy of “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White’.

Two Graduations, One Book Launch, One Dance Recital within the Hour

Fri, 28 May 2010 17:52:01 -0600

Today two of our grand-sons graduated from pre-school. Our grandson, Ben whose graduation was in the morning, is in Mes Amis, a Catholic French-immersion pre-school. We entered St. Pius XII in the midst of the Hail Marys – in both English and French. In the gym, we linked up with Ben’s other grand-parents and with other grandparents whom we have known since we were all young parents. The graduating class who had made mortar boards out of construction paper and many, many stickers, marched in with great dignity. They sang and recited in French. We watched a 10 minute DVD of their adventures over the school year. We ate cake and fruit and drank punch and coffee and then there were games with a parachute and a number of rubber chickens.

In the afternoon we went to our grandson Peyton’s graduation from The Gingerbread School –a secular pre-school that meets at a Lutheran Church. In the church, we linked up with Peyton’s other grand-parents and with yet more grand-parents whom we have known since we were all young parents. This is, after all, Regina. The graduating class entered wearing hats with pictures of animals signifying their roles in a performance of “The Little Red Hen”, sang two songs and did a square dance. They then left and returned wearing store-bought mortar-boards to receive their diplomas. We ate cake (that our talented daughter-in-law made)and fruit and drank punch and coffee but there were no rubber chickens.

Our boys wore matching shirts that Ted and I gave them. The shirts had a gorilla on the front and were emblazoned with the message GRAD – 2010.

My book launch on Tuesday night was also gala affair. There were no gorilla shirts but there was a dynamite cake made by the Sioux Chef, Dickie Yuzicapi. Because the cover of my book “Love You to Death” is black, red and white, Dickie made black icing out of squid ink – mighty tasty. The launch was held at the Heritage Centre of the RCMP – a stunning Arthur Erickson building with a women’s washroom that my grand-daughters (who know about such matters) rate as the best women’s washroom in Canada. It is, indeed, spectacular, but we had the launch in a different space because it seemed wrong to exclude men.

A book launch in Regina is a lovely affair for a Regina writer – it’s like going to your own funeral except having fun. Tuesday night, the Heritage Centre was filled with friends and family. All our grand-children and children were there. My publisher, Bob Tyrrell from Orca Books had flown in from Victoria for the occasion and the CEO of the Heritage Centre introduced the event. Elder Mike Pinay offered a blessing.

It must have taken because this is a week in which I have felt truly blessed.

Book Launches

Thu, 27 May 2010 10:20:23 -0600

Last summer when I was WIR at the Toronto Reference Library, I went to some stellar book launches. My friend Jeffrey Round’s launch at Charlie Pachter’s Moose Factory Gallery last June was a stand-out. The Moose Factory Gallery is open to the public and if ever you’re visiting the AGO in Toronto, the Moose Factory is steps’ away. It’s filled with Charlie Pachter’s work--lots of images of the queen and her moose together and apart, and many other provocative and rewarding pieces. Fittingly for a hot event, Jeff’s launch was held on the hottest night of the year. The Moose Factory is a large space, but people (99% of whom were gay) were cheek to cheek (and mighty handsome cheeks they were). The food was tasty and the wine was so plentiful that I don’t honestly remember whether the book being launched was Jeff’s mystery “Death in Key West” or his literary novel, “The Honey Locust”. Whichever, Charlie Pachter made certain Jeff’s book got one great send-off, and that’s all any writer ever hopes for.

A.S. Byatt’s launch of “The Children’s Book” at Harbourfront was more sedate. Ms. Byatt was interviewed on-stage by Eleanor Wachtel and the most shocking moment came when Ms. Byatt said she found the entire Bloomsbury Group ‘tedious’. The people who admire A.S. Byatt tend to be the same people who admire the Bloomsbury group. Our collective gasp of horror at Ms. Byatt’s apostasy still echoes along the lakeshore in front of Harbourfront.

I’ll be reading at Harbourfront on the weekend of July 23rd. That occasion will be the book launch for the 12th Joanne Kilbourn novel, “The Nesting Dolls”. I hope we’ll have fun, but I promise no gasp-worthy moments.

The 24thof May/Is the Queen’s Birthday/If we don’t get a holiday/We’ll All Run Away.

Mon, 24 May 2010 23:12:16 -0600

That was the chant we school kids used to sing as we raced out of General Mercer Public School on the Friday before the first real long weekend of summer. Most families in the west end of Toronto where I grew up set off their own fireworks. For weeks we kids would study the fireworks possibilities at the hardware store, but in fireworks as in most areas of our lives, it was our fathers who made the final decision.

The 24^th of May was the only day on which we set off fireworks, so there was a great deal riding on the choices our fathers made. If they chose exotic untried fireworks that fizzled and spun and expired without drama, the chorus of groans and wails that came from their grieving children would haunt their dreams for a full year. With that possibility hanging over their heads, it was little wonder that so many fathers were traditionalists who, year after year, went for the old reliables: rockets, Roman candles, spinners, star shooters and the ceremonial finish for all displays in my neighbourhood: the little red schoolhouse.

Sparklers were, of course, obligatory. So were mothers’ warnings that if we weren’t careful we would poke out our eyes or somehow manage to set ourselves on fire. We didn’t care. The thrill of running around with our sparklers waiting for the sky to get dark enough so we could finally light them, write our names in the air and set the whole wonderful evening in motion, was worth the risk.

Fathers don’t buy fireworks anymore. Mothers don’t issue warnings. There are still fireworks of course – large public displays whose timing is announced in our morning papers. Like everyone else in our city, my family and I troop off to watch the fireworks from a safe distance. The fireworks our city chooses are lavish and perfect. There are no duds. No disappointments. The effect of every whooshing rocket and shooting star is calibrated to lead us inexorably to the Big Bang. Like everyone else in the crowd, I oooo and I ahhhhh as the night sky lights up with the climactic explosion of colour and noise that marks the end of the evening. But I’m faking. I miss the little red schoolhouse.

Parsnips

Fri, 21 May 2010 11:56:04 -0600

At the luncheon where we had the exquisite parsnip soup with our friends, I mentioned that in “The Nesting Dolls” my protagonist, Joanne Kilbourn, is making chicken soup and among the vegetables she throws in the pot are parsnips. When my editor read the manuscript, she vetoed Joanne’s parsnips, saying they would sweeten the soup in a distinctly unpleasant way. I stood up for my parsnips, saying I added them to MY chicken soup, and if it was good enough for me, it should be good enough for the fictional Joanne. My editor and I didn’t come to blows over this, but only because we were half a continent apart.

Our hosts at the parsnip soup luncheon aren’t writers, so they were taken aback at the scope of an editor’s duties. They had assumed that editors simply clean up grammar and spelling. My friend, Clare, who also works in publishing, was at the lunch and she and I were and quick to explain that an editor’s duties go far beyond reminding a writer that ‘accommodate’ is a very accommodating word because it can accommodate two sets of double consonants.

A useful job description for an editor is that she saves a writer from him or her self. An editor corrects errors of fact; plot contradictions; stylistic excesses and garden variety slovenly writing. I could write several books about the editorial suggestions that have saved my bacon. However, instead of celebrating the people who’ve been paid to edit me, I’m going to thank the readers who discover the misstatements and factual errors that slip through the cracks.

I’ve learned a great deal from readers. My children’s godfather, Dr. Roy Crawford, who taught poultry genetics and breeds dogs, cats and other critters, leapt on a scene in one of my novels where a vet named Dr. Roy Crawford identifies a tortoiseshell cat as a male. This is apparently not a genetic possibility. Many alert readers noted that in another novel, Joanne sought spiritual help by walking through the doors of Holy Rosary Cathedral but when she left the church, it had mysteriously become the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. An Anglican all my life, I mentioned that communion involve a belief in transubstantiation – this is not so for Anglicans, and many readers correctly took me to task for that. I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

I’m always grateful when readers point out contradictions or just plain weird stuff in my work. Last week, I had a letter from a Ph.D at UCLA who had read all eleven of the Joanne Kilbourn novels within a period of a month and had caught a huge error about when exactly Joanne Kilbourn met a character who plays a significant role in several of the novels. I’m planning to bring this character back in the novel I’m currently working on, so when I told her how much I appreciated her help, I meant it.

All writers owe a debt to their editors and their readers. That debt does not extend to omitting parsnips from a recipe that he or she knows will be vastly improved by that vegetable’s sweet and nutty flavour.

A perfect Sunday lunch and the concept of blessings

Mon, 17 May 2010 14:45:43 -0600

Yesterday Ted and I and our houseguest, a book publicist and mother of four who was in Regina to attend a conference for the parents of children with Down syndrome, were invited for lunch with some dear friends of ours. The prairies have been struggling with spring, but yesterday was a perfect May day, warm, sunny and still. Our friends are gardeners and because our spring has been late, the daffodils in their garden were blazing.

We sat in the sunshine, drank champagne and then because one of our hosts was born in South Africa, ate the kind of lunch we would be eating if we were in Pretoria: a gingery silky parsnip soup; Bobotie, a curried ground lamb dish that’s baked in a rich egg custard; curried rice and of course. all the condiments: bananas, chutney and a kind of salsa. For dessert we had homemade cardamon ice cream and sorbet and melon.

The food was sublime and so was the talk. Our conversation was wide-ranging: the freedom each of us had experienced in our very different childhoods; the busy and organized lives of children today; the importance of allowing children to learn how to handle crises; the bizarre world of book publishing; the way the world has changed for gay couples like our hosts who after 25+ years together were married two years ago, and of course, there was a leavening dose of gossip and anecdotes. We drank well but moderately, laughed a lot and enjoyed one another’s company immensely.

Our houseguest was new to our small group, but she fit in effortlessly, and one of our hosts talked about the joy he experienced when old friends brought good people into their circle of acquaintances. He found it transforming. So do I.

That morning the focus of the Sunday School lesson I taught the 3 – 5 year olds in my class was ‘blessings’. The intent of the lesson was to make each child realize that he or she is a blessing. As always in our class, there was more than a little silliness, but the children readily grasped the concept that each of us has incalculable value to those who love us.

Saturday night Ted and I had dinner with the families who were attending the conference for families with children who have Down syndrome. The parents’ joy and pride in their children was palpable. There was no need for them to hear my lesson about the worth of every human being. They knew that lesson by heart.

Bok Choy

Wed, 12 May 2010 17:40:44 -0600

This time last year, I was twelve days into my term as Writer in Residence at the Toronto Reference Library. It was one of the happiest experiences Ted and I have had. In retrospect, I realize how fortunate we were. Peggy Perdue, the librarian with whom I worked most closely, was lovely, smart, funny and immensely helpful. The writers who came to me were, without exception, pleasant and eager to learn. And we found the perfect place to live.

I grew up in Toronto and went to U. of T. but it’s amazing how much a city can change in 40+ years. We visit Toronto often, but visitors aren’t knowledgeable about the safety of neighbourhoods or the availability of public transit. An old university friend suggested I check the ‘accommodations’ ads in the U. of T newspaper. We found a main floor flat on Hamilton Street that was exactly right for us: clean, affordable and very central—right on the edge of Chinatown.

Our block of Hamilton Street was a mix of gentrified duplexes and homes that had been in Chinese families for a very long time. The gardens of our gentrified neighbours were stellar – the plantings were thoughtfully coordinated, so that from the first warm day to the first frost, something was always in bloom.

My favourite garden on the street belonged to my neighbour, an old Chinese lady who sat on her porch every morning saying her rosary and watching the rest of us go about our business. When Ted and I arrived on Hamilton Street, her front lawn was covered in inverted vegetable crispers from old refrigerators. Beneath these portable greenhouses, my neighbour’s bok choy plants flourished, safe from the ravages of insects or raccoons. When the bok choy grew too large for their crispers, she built an intricate system of garrisons for her plants out of bricks and oven racks. Again, they were able to flourish in safety. In Ted’s and my two month stay on Hamilton Street, our neighbour harvested one crop and began another.

Unable to communicate verbally, she and I developed a ritual. Every morning when I came out of the house she would come down the walk with her rosary and she and I would marvel at her garden. When it was time for me to leave, she would take my hands in hers and together we would say ‘bok choy’.

Hotels: Five Star and No Star

Sun, 09 May 2010 10:55:39 -0600

Like most grown-ups, all I ask of a hotel room is that it’s clean, convenient and relatively quiet. Over the years, Ted and I have stayed at some truly spectacular hotels: Jasper Park Lodge; the Banff Springs and the Harbour Castle – to name three. We enjoyed every moment of our stay. We have found equal enjoyment in the no-tell motels that beckon seductively from the seedy side of cities and from the mom and pop motels with hand-stitched Biblical verses on the wall and real breakfasts in the lobby that manage, against all odds, to thrive in small towns.

Just after 9/11 Ted and I, our three grown children, their partners and our two grand-daughters stayed at a very elegant hotel apartment in downtown Chicago. Because we were next door or next door but one to the Sears Tower we were virtually alone in this vast and lovely place. The Sears Tower was rumoured to be the target of the next terrorist attack, but we adults assumed that because of the attention being paid to our surroundings, we were probably registered in the safest hotel on planet earth. At ages 3 and 2, the girls had the kind of hotel experience that Eloise had at the Plaza in New York.

This weekend we brought our two oldest children and their families to Winnipeg with us for a Mother’s Day weekend—our treat. Ted and I booked three rooms at the Inn at the Forks, a place we’d stayed at before and liked very much. The Inn at the Forks is a fine hotel – the location is great: a market that sells everything a 12 and 10 and ½ year old girl could dream of owning is a stones’throw away, as is a Children’s Museum, a Children’s Theatre, a skateboard park (where truly cool boys can be spotted at any hour of the day). There are also kid-friendly restaurants with names like Muddy Waters BBQ and The Spaghetti Factory and antique shops and, of course, the drama of the meeting ‘at the forks’ of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.

From our window we (and more importantly our four year old grandsons) could watch the construction of the new Museum of Human Rights. There was much discussion about how cranes and back-hoes operate and whether any grandchild of mine would ever work 15 stories in the air operating a crane. They voted ‘yes’, but I had the final vote.

The girls luxuriated in bathing in the splendid bathrooms, using every toiletry offered up for their beauty needs and marveling over the terry towel robes.

Yesterday our kids and their kids took the train back home. Ted and I moved to more austere digs: the dormitory at Canadian Mennonite University. Our place is clean, quiet and convenient. It costs $90.00/night (towels and toilet paper included). We are content, and contentment is always worth five stars.

Recitals and other Rites of Spring

Tue, 04 May 2010 21:18:47 -0600

For lovers of grandchildren’s recitals, this is a season of plenty. Friday morning we went to our grand-daughter Madeleine’s band recital. Each Grade 6 French immersion child studying clarinet in the Regina Catholic school system played the same number. It’s called ‘Minuet’ and the same pianist accompanied each child. The children acquitted themselves with varying degrees of proficiency; the pianist was very good, but my grand-daughter noticed that by the end of the first morning the pianist’s smile had grown tight and there were many, many Grade 6 French immersion clarinet students still to come down the pike. Madeleine got a first in her class; I hope the pianist got the biggest martini ever made.

Saturday we went to the strawberry fair – the major fund-raiser for our cathedral. A portion of the funds comes from the sale of flats of strawberries driven in from a place where the weather is kind. The weather is never kind when the strawberries reach their destination in front of St. Paul’s. Saturday, we had snow/mixed with freezing rain. Saskatchewan strawberry fair weather.

At the white elephant sale, I suffered an attack of the 70’s and bought blue mountain pottery. Proving that there is a caring God, someone beat me to the clay cooker, the fondue pot and the collection of kitchen witches.

Saturday afternoon we went to the Met HD production of Armida. Six tenors, Renee Fleming and New York fries. Transcendent!

Saturday night, Madeleine’s dance class performed for an inner city fund-raiser. She wore makeup and was incredibly mature. By the time she and her sister got back to our house for the night, the makeup had worn off and so had the maturity. We watched the Food Channel and the kids ate bad for them cereal, as they frequently do on Saturday nights with us.

Sunday night we had dinner at the home of our former bishop and his wife. A couple of years ago, they moved out of their large gorgeous family home into a trendy condo over a store downtown. They invited us to their housewarming and I repaid their kindness by using their condo as the scene for a particularly nasty murder in “The Nesting Dolls”. The moral to this story has something to do with the wisdom of allowing a writer to cross your threshold, but you’ve probably already figured that out.

"Saving Lonesome George" Comes Home

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:25:34 -0600

Tomorrow, after over a month performing at schools throughout the Niagara area, the company of “Saving Lonesome George” will present two final performances at their home theatre in St. Catherines. The Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse is a lovely setting for a farewell.

I wish I could be there to say thank you to everyone associated with the production, but I would like especially to thank Pablo Felices-Luna, the Artistic Director of Carousel and the director of “Saving Lonesome George”, and Jane Gardner, the theatre’s General Manager. Both have shown a shining belief in the play and incredible endurance in making certain that “Saving Lonesome George” found an audience.

I am not blushing as I include the teacher comments the production received at the half-way mark. This is all about the joy the actors brought to their young audience. I’m very grateful.

Saving Lonesome George – Teacher Feedback

“The production made children react and aware in a fun and entertaining way to the stories. The reactions of the students to the play – lots of excitement, laughter, positive reactions, particularly to the actions of the characters and involvement in the song was wonderful. Please keep it up – you have the right formula for whatever subject you select.“ Teacher, Central Public School, Burlington

“The students loved the “gold” and sound effects. The story line was great. The sets were fantastic – loved the “double” characters” Teacher, DeWitt Carter Public School, Port Colborne

“A wonderful play with an entertaining and clear message. Great props (animals on shoulders looked real) and silly costumes were fun. The children loved it. They understood the message and enjoyed interacting with the actors.” Teacher, DeWitt Carter Public School, Port Colborne

“The play fits in well with our character education program as well as our critical pathways for literacy, science and social studies. The children loved the production. Many realized that they can each do something to make a helpful difference. Great to have you back with another play.” Teacher, DeWitt Carter Public School, Port Colborne

“The kids enjoyed the interactive parts of the play – the coins, singing and actions. They were totally engaged and had a lot to talk about afterwards. The kids loved the swordfight, the beginning with the skateboard, the KOALA! name calling, and the hacky sack battle.” Teacher, Eastview Public School, Oakville

“Good message behind the story. Well done – the question and answer session was great for students.” Teacher, Father Hennepin, Niagara Falls

“Excellent voice projection, use of visuals and media sounds – very engaging with an appropriate message about building character traits of courage, honesty and integrity. The students thoroughly enjoyed the play and liked the interactive approach which involved them in making sounds. An excellent production – very engaging and relevant to students and environmental issues.” Teacher, Ferndale School, St. Catharines

“I liked the way the actors stopped the older grades from chanting “cheater”. This affirmed our character education, as did the questioning of the audience re “name a character” – did the sword fight solve the problem or free the tortoise? The questioning tied everything together especially re character education, which was the most important and appropriate part for our age group (JK/SK). I also liked the explanation of how you become actors – a great introduction to drama! I really liked the way the audience became more and more involved in the play as it unfolded. Super show!” Teacher, Forestview Public School, Niagara Falls

“As we move towards “greening” our school and community, this play was very timely. The students went ballistic at the climax! One even stood up and thought about tackling the female lead. It was amazing to see how “into it” they all were. Vanier appreciates your offer of this performance. Besides being your usual first-class production, it was a great gesture.” Principal, General Vanier School, Fort Erie

“It was a rollicking good yarn. The students were able to make connections with the story, identify with the characters and enter into the action. Their rapt attention, interaction with the performers/characters, and their questions showed the students’ enjoyment of the performance. They all talked like pirates following the show. The content was pertinent to our next unit. We will be referring to the play in the coming weeks, I know. Although swordplay is necessary for any pirate tale, the gratuitous violence (the bop on the head) could be replaced. For example, the boys could be “tricked” into getting on the ship.” Teacher, Kate S Durdan School, Niagara Falls

“The play was very entertaining for both adults and children. The actors took great effort to involve the audience. The students loved the play. They were engaged, focused and actively participated. The teacher package was helpful to activate student thinking before the play.” Teacher, Lincoln Centennial School, St. Catharines

“An entertaining play that included important lessons and themes.” Teacher, Memorial Public School, St. Catharines

“Excellent play – great message. The students were engaged and entertained. Keep doing what you are doing. Well done.” Principal, Niagara Peninsula Children’s Centre, St. Catharines

“The actors put forth a powerful message about friendship and helping the environment. The addition of humour kept the audience’s attention throughout. The students loved it! They were glued to the characters and action in the play.” Teacher, Quaker Road School, Welland

“My grade one class could not stop talking about the play. We discussed the setting, characters, the problem and main idea. It was very easy for the children to get the point. Very well done. Thank you for the question period.” Teacher, Richmond Street Public School, Thorold

“The children were completely involved and engaged. The acting was fabulous. Please take out “blue booby” as the name of a bird and find a swearing alternative to “son of a biscuit” – children know what you are substituting it for. We don’t want those messages presented. It encourages a lack of respect for God’s creations.” Teacher, St. Brigid School, Georgetown

“The kids loved the play and I’m able to tie it with the upcoming Earth Day activities. The students were still discussing the issue and the characters as they got ready for home. The play was engaging, purposeful and easy to extend. Don’t change a thing – loved the debriefing afterwards as well.” Teacher, Westdale Public School, St. Catharines

Mary

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:28:46 -0600

My friend, Mary, died last week. I met her in 1968, and we never lost touch. One of the privileges of keeping friends close over a period of years is that you get to see the arc of their life: what they were like when you knew them first; how they dealt with the joys, the slings and the arrows, and finally, how they faced death.

When I met Mary, she was 27 and I was 25. Ted and I were living in an old farm in Blucher: raising chickens, growing vegetables, brewing bad beer, discovering the not inconsiderable pleasures of an outhouse. Mary and Marshall had their beautiful home on University Avenue. Even then, it was filled with beautiful pieces that Mary made by hand. Mary and Marshall gave elegant dinner parties and had New Yorker cartoons in their downstairs bathroom. They were the most sophisticated couple we’d ever known. They even had a child—a nice one. Marshall and Mary were, in every way, grown-ups.

The Gillilands and the Bowens began a series of collaborative lunches with another couple and an occasional guest chef. By this time, the candied violet excesses of the early 70’s had come to dominate cuisine. We were the Gourmet Generation. We began to compete with one another—our dishes grew more elaborate. We outdid one another in our search for rare ingredients, rich and complex sauces and brilliant presentations that never quite looked the way the illustrations in Gourmet promised and made us cranky when we finally sat down to eat. Mary watched all this with her bemused Mary look. Then she volunteered to bring the centerpiece for our next gourmet lunch. The centerpiece Mary brought was a clown’s head that she’d made out of a cabbage, a carrot and some other humble vegetables. We got the point. We scaled back on the Julia Child and started having fun again.

Mary was always fun—even when life was not going well for her. Once she was in the midst of the kind of personal crisis that comes to us all. To help her over the bad patch, Sean made Mary breakfast in bed; his beverage of choice was blueberry Kool-Aid. When it comes to beverages, blueberry Kool-Aid is pretty tough to beat, but when Mary came to my house, I did my best. I poured our bottle of Beau Sejour sherry into our snazzy German decanter and got out our finest wine glasses. Mary’s and my conversation that afternoon was very serious, and we were both very emotional. When she stopped talking and stared fixedly into her glass of sherry, I thought perhaps she’d had an epiphany.

In a way, I guess she had. What Mary discovered in her glass that grey afternoon was a toenail – and not a new one. It was the kind of toenail that might have been aging in a bottle of Beau Sejour for a very long time. Mary fished it out and held it up. “There’s a toenail in my sherry,” she said, then she grinned. “Things have to get better after this.” And amazingly, they did.

Like everyone who knew her, I have thousands of memories of Mary, but there was a phrase she used that I believe captures her. Once at one of our long-ago lunches, Mary’s eyes had been larger than appetite. I offered to take her plate, but she stopped me. “In my family we had an expression, Mary said. “‘Thee took it. Thee eat it.’”

Many things ended up on Mary’s plate that she didn’t choose. She and I had both had breast cancer. No one chooses that, but Mary handled her diagnosis and the endless complications she faced after the initial diagnosis with intelligence and unwavering courage, grace and humour. The last years of Mary’s life were filled with difficulties that most of us would have found insurmountable. Mary didn’t. The emails she sent about Marshall’s last illness were characteristically Mary. She never took refuge in euphemism when truth was called for; she never wallowed in self-pity when she could enquire about our lives. Mary loved life and she lived it well.

In Mary’s obituary Sean and Bernie alluded to that perfect piece of material Mary was always seeking to complete her quilts—the piece that would bring all the disparate colours and shapes into something that would unify them and make each piece more beautiful and more connected than it was alone. At the risk of sounding hopelessly cheesy, I think Mary had that perfect piece in her back pocket all along. It was her.

CFQC and 'The Habit of Art'

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:14:20 -0600

When we moved to Saskatchewan in 1968, our local TV station, CFQC, was a family affair. Every Friday, the General Manager would come on and tell us why he had chosen the programs we would be seeing in the following week. Once, after a trip to Toronto, the General Manager reported that Toronto was a fine city, but it was full of strangers. One April 1st, Vern Pryor who did the noon show which included BINGO, announced that he’d be leaving CFQC because he’d been fired. Only an emergency non-Friday appearance by the General Manager to remind us that it was April Fool’s Day kept the station from being toilet-papered by Vern’s many supporters.

My favourite story about our family relationship with CFQC is that on holiday weekends, the station would schedule an extra late night movie because they knew that we didn’t have to go work the next day. Nice, huh?

We live in more complex times. I couldn’t even tell you how many channels our television here in Regina receives. I gather that explaining some of the programming choices would require the argumentative skills of Eddie Greenspan. Something has been lost, but of course, something has also been gained.

Thursday night, Ted and I went to a local movie theatre to see a live to tape performance of Alan Bennett’s “The Habit of Art”. It was a brilliant National Theatre production. The program notes on the plot are so concise, I’m going to quote them. “A rehearsal room at the national theatre: a group of actors are rehearsing a play called Caliban’s Day about a meeting between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten. There are interruptions from Auden’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter, who narrates the play, and a rent boy called Stuart The director of the play has been called away so Kay, the stage manager, is in charge of Fitz (who plays Auden), Henry (Britten) and the other. The actors continually disrupt the run through of the play to question the author, Neil on the nature of biographical detail and the ‘truth’ of the piece. Fitz keeps forgetting his lines and the stage management have to fill in and play items of furniture. When the day is over, Kay agrees with the author that, one way or another, there is always someone left out.”

When it comes to the kinds of programming available to all of us, including people like me who live in a middle size city, I tend to disagree with Kay. As those of you who read this blog know, Ted and I never miss the MET HD broadcasts of the opera. Our sports-loving son sees every game he wants to see in HD. Our film loving daughter and her husband can see the most experimental film in their living room. Our drummer son can watch Neal Peart. One of our four year old grandsons patiently explained the “On Demand” feature on our television. ‘On Demand’ allows him to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants at any hour of any day. We’ve come a long way.

But as W.H. Auden said. “In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things in life are earning one’s living and loving one’s neighbour.” Now that’s a philosophy that the long-ago station manager of CFQC Saskatoon would have applauded.

Bloody Words 2000 and Earth Day 2010

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:31:43 -0600

On this earth day, I am recycling a piece I wrote earlier today for this year’s Bloody Words’ program. Bloody Words is a gathering of mystery writers and mystery readers. This year it will be held in Toronto from May 28 to May 30^th. It’s a neat weekend and if you’re interested being part of it, visit http://www.bloodywords2010.com/bw2010-reg.html

I think the piece below is self-explanatory.

* * *

On being the first Guest of Honour (Canadian) at the first Bloody Words

It was hot—sidewalk-meltingly, armpit-drippingly, lung-searingly hot, and the Arts and Letters Club established in 1908 to house “a dynamic community of men and women for whom the arts is an essential part of life” and site of the first Bloody Words was not air-conditioned.

My speech was long – very long. I am a Virgo and I took my assignment as the inaugural speaker very seriously. I prepared a speech that offered a comprehensive history of the mystery from Aesop to Jane Tennison, with long and loving stops along the way to discuss (at length) Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Sayers, Hercule Poirot, Raymond Chandler, Lew Archer, Mickey Spillane, Sara Paretsky, Charlie Salter, Benny Cooperman and Kate Henry. After that, I turned my attention to the future of mystery writing in Canada.

There were no chairs in the room in which I spoke. The audience, bludgeoned by the heat and by my endless drone, grew glassy-eyed, pale and faint, but I had been asked to speak and speak I did.

After I took my bow, Bloody Words took a turn for the better. That weekend at The Arts and Letters Club we all experienced the “good conversation and the companionship of kindred spirits” that the Club has offered since its founding. It was a great beginning.

Gail Bowen – April 2010

Winnipeg!!!!!!

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:59:27 -0600

I don’t fly. A few years ago, my adaptation of Peter Pan was being produced in eastern Canada and the icing on the cheesecake of the contract was two airline tickets so we could come to London for opening night. I was forced to explain to the kind and forgiving General Manager that, while Peter Pan may fly, Gail Bowen doesn’t. The GM helped us trade our airline tickets for train tickets, and everyone was happy.

Some time I’ll write a blog on our train travels, but this blog is about one specific train trip our family will be taking in early May. Last year when our son-in-law and our grandson, Ben, drove Ted and me to the train station for my two month stint as Writer in Residence at the Toronto Reference Library, Ben was fascinated by the train. He loved the littleness of everything – the little sink, the little toilet; the way the beds would fold out of the wall. I promised Ben that his grand-dad and I would take him, his siblings; his cousin, Peyton and the new cousin who was arriving in July on a train trip when he was a little older.

Well we’re all a little older now, and when the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg invited me to do a reading on May 10th, I thought this was a great chance for the kids to log some train time. So Ted and I, our daughter Hildy, her husband Brett and their three kids and our son Max, his wife Carrie and their two kids are all going to Winnipeg. That’s Part I of the Blog.

Part II deals with the fact that while I’m in Winnipeg, I’m signing books at McNally Robinson on Saturday afternoon, May 8^th between 2:00 and 4:00. In order to stir up interest, McNally’s asked me to contribute to an online feature in which writers give recommendations based on the books that have recently been or are currently on their night-tables. Here’s my contribution:

For over thirty years, I led three lives: I was first, a wife, parent and grandparent; second, an academic, and third, a writer. By the time I’d finished with “Walter, the Farting Dog” (a book which, as the owner of a farting dog, I highly recommend); reviewed whatever was new, hot and student-friendly in Canadian lit and met my own writing deadlines, I didn’t have much time to read the way I read when I was a kid – with passion and without plan.

Two years ago, I retired from university teaching. Since then, I’ve been making up for lost time. Here are some books that I’ve read and loved within the last month.

“The Inner Voice”, the autobiography of the brilliant, beautiful and very wise Renee Fleming, is short on titillating anecdotes about the extravagant world of opera and long on frank and intimate advice about how to channel our passions so they drive our careers and enrich our lives. Brava!

The power of “Making Toast”, New Yorker writer Roger Rosenblatt’s unsentimental account of how he, his wife, his son-in-law and three of his grandchildren rebuilt their lives after the sudden and inexplicable death of Rosenblatt’s 38 year old daughter, Amy, can be expressed in a single exchange between Rosenblatt (whom his grandchildren called ‘Boppo’) and his oldest grandson. The prodigiously talented and loving Amy has died on her treadmill. Rosenblatt and his wife drive hundreds of miles to do what they can. Rosenblatt’s grandson asks: “How long are you staying, Boppo?” “Forever,” Rosenblatt replies.

A friend who writes for television in Toronto recommended Ann Patchett’s “Truth and Beauty” a year ago. The book is an account of the relationship between two female writers. It’s stunning. My husband and I now own the complete Ann Patchett oeuvre. Patchett’s books pass between our night-tables constantly. Her best book is “Bel Canto”, but all her books are magic.

The book I’m excited about reading next is Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Motorcycles and Sweetgrass”. As someone who taught at First Nations University, I know how significant clever and honest accounts of First Nations’ life can be for us all. Please do, pick this one up.

Of diners and book covers and opera and such...

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:45:10 -0600

I have always had a fondness for diners. A new one opened in Regina in last week – it’s called Mercury and the ambience is 50’s: red leather booths, lots of windows and a plainspoken menu. My friend Stefani and I had breakfast there on Friday. I’ve known Stef since she was a student at the J-School here; now she’s CBC’s legislative reporter. She’s smart, funny, thoughtful and a great animal lover. She’s looks like Courtney Love when Courtney Love used to be beautiful.

Stef is great company. She and I have a healthy reverence for gossip, but we also attack large topics. Friday we talked about how we’d both changed our positions on the nature vs. nurture argument. Then we moved onto the importance of self-knowledge and the damage people who lack self-knowledge do to their own lives and the lives of others. Good diner talk. If Mercury had a jukebox that played Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party”, our breakfast would have been perfect.

Friday, I received the cover for “The Nesting Dolls”. My son-in-law posted it on my blog, and I’ve had heated response: a friend says it makes her think of vampire babies; another friend says its reminiscent of the Battleship Potemkin; it makes me think of Rosemary’s Baby. I’m the only who’s read the book, so I can tell you that we’re all wrong. So far the number of people who love the cover is larger than the number who are iffy about it. I’ll keep you posted. For the record, I like it a lot.

Friday night we had old friends for supper. He’s a scientist and she’s involved with the wacky world of books, so our conversation was wide-ranging. We all four are food-lovers. Jean and Gordon grow wondrous vegetables in their garden. Every summer they have a communal garlic party – a potluck affair to which you can bring whatever you choose as long as garlic plays a significant role in the dish. Brilliant, huh?

Ted and I have grown passionate about the Met HD operas at our local Galaxy Theatre. The only problem is there aren’t enough of them, so I’ve ordered some DVDs for us. Saturday afternoon – right at 12:00 (opera time on the prairies if not in NYC), Ted and I sat down with our french fries and Diet Coke (opera fare on the prairies if not in NYC) and watched Thais with the gorgeous Renee Fleming—an experience as close to heaven on earth as I can imagine.

Later my friend Peggy came over to return the manuscript for “The Nesting Dolls”. She’s the only person besides Ted, my editors at M&S and my agent who’s read the manuscript and she was enthusiastic. Of course, it’s difficult not to be kind when the writer is six inches away from you with her lip quivering, but Peggy said all the right things, and I choose to believe them.

Sunday, our son Max put together our new bbq while we were at Church and our son-in-law Brett fixed a glitch with our computers. Then all of us had bacon and pancakes and went outside to play.

A fine and varied weekend, I think.

Slow and Steady May Not Win the Race...

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:14:07 -0600

But ultimately, it does get you to the finish line and you have enjoyed the scenery along the way. Today’s blog is about creativity, a subject about which--after 15 novels, 5 plays, two short stories, a handful of newspaper essays; countless speeches and some random pieces – I must admit I know absolutely nothing.

Once, over a very nice Mexican lunch with Ted and my editor (she had the mussels that I still wish I had ordered) I said I’d like to read a book about creativity. Dinah suggested that I edit one. I was too lazy to raise my hand for that project, but it wasn’t from lack of interest. Creativity in all its guises and with all its elusiveness, fascinates me.

The only real talk about creativity I’ve ever had was with Darrell Bell, a fine visual artist who owns a gallery in Saskatoon that I cannot recommend highly enough.

One of the continuing characters in my series is a 14 year old visual artist with real talent and potential. I’d asked Darrell whether he would ever have a show for a fourteen year old. After pondering the question for a few days, he said he wouldn’t because at fourteen, this young artist simply wouldn’t have enough to say to sustain an entire show. That answer led us into a discussion about creativity that lasted for hours. When it was over, I asked Darrell whether this kind of discussion was the norm for visual artists. He said, no—mostly they just talked about agents and galleries and money. I said it was pretty much the same for writers.

An interesting offshoot of the whole blog phenomenon is the insight it gives all of us into how some writers approach their work. Some writers seem to be obsessed by the volume of work they can produce in a day—they count words with the passion of a sinner whipping through the beads of the rosary. Some writers point with pride to the weight of their finished manuscripts as if they were selling off a piglet or birthing a baby. I’m not mocking these writers. My own habits would seem equally odd to them. When it comes to creative work, I’m with Frank Sinatra who when asked what he believed in, said. “Whatever gets me through the night.”

Well, as this blog title indicates, what gets me through a piece of writing is simply seeing my work as a job to be done. I love writing, but there are many things that I love--being with Ted and our kids and grandkids and dogs; being with friends, reading books, going out for dinner, staying home for dinner, going to the opera; doing readings; travelling; meeting new people. My point I guess is this: writing is a part of my life, but it isn’t my life.

I approach writing the same way I approached writing essays in college; fulfilling academic obligations for degrees, preparing lectures for my classes and marking papers. Every day, I simply sit down and do the job. When The Young and the Restless comes on, I stop and Ben and I play “Go Fish”.

A Shameless Attempt to Lure you to Salt Spring

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:40:17 -0600

Imagine spending a week with some of Canada’s top mystery writing minds: picking their brains, learning their techniques, and getting the how to’s of writing a successful mystery novel.

In this inaugural residential workshop, some of Canada’s best mystery experts will guide you through the crafting of writing crime fiction. You will work on your own manuscript in progress in one-on-one sessions with faculty advisers and attend group presentations by faculty and guest speakers.

You will be paired with a faculty adviser, who will have seen a sample chapter and outline of your manuscript. The adviser will act as your editor and guide, providing you with daily feedback and work assignments.

Each morning you will listen to presentations on writing skills, mystery specific strategies, and the basic rules for writing in this genre. You will work on your own in the afternoon, with twice-daily feedback from your adviser, to apply what you have learned to your manuscript. In the late afternoon, we will have informal chats on topics reflecting your particular interests.

In addition, the faculty will discuss the different subgenres within the category of mystery, the role of the editor and agent in the publishing process, self-publishing, and the steps to getting published.

At the end of the week, four selected participants will be asked to read from their manuscript at an open mike session to which the public is invited. Moderated by well-known mystery author William Deverell, this event will also feature readings from other faculty and guests.

This workshop is designed for writers who have completed or nearly completed a manuscript within the mystery genre. You will be required to submit a sample chapter and an outline with your application.

The retreat is located at the Cedar Beach Resort (http://www.saltspring-accommodations.com). All lectures and group work will take place at the resort, although there will be several off-site events. Evening meals, as well as morning coffee and muffins, will be provided. Participants will be expected to make their own arrangements for other meals.

The resort has laundry facilities, a swimming pool, a hot tub, and other amenities. Each cabin contains a kitchen, and some have additional features. SFU has reserved a block of cabins at the resort. Accommodations are based on single, double, triple, and quadruple occupancy. If you know one or more people interested in attending the retreat and would like to be in the same cabin, please make your reservation as soon as possible. The accommodations cancellation date is May 1, 2010.

Please contact Suzanne Norman at 778-782-5241 or pubworks@sfu.ca for additional information.

Faculty

Gail Bowen is widely known for her mystery series featuring Joanne Kilbourn, a university professor, sometime political columnist, and wife, mother, and grandmother. The first six books in the Kilbourn series have appeared as made-for-television movies with worldwide distribution. The Nesting Dolls, the 12th book in the series, is being published by McClelland & Stewart in August. In June 2008, Reader’s Digest named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist. Bowen has had plays produced at Regina’s Globe Theatre, the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, and The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.

Margaret Cannon has been the crime fiction columnist for the Globe and Mail for over 20 years. She replaced the late (and great) Derrick Murdoch, whose encyclopedic knowledge of mysteries was unsurpassed. Cannon, the daughter and granddaughter of mystery fans, read her first mystery novel, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, at the age of seven. She has never looked back. She taught courses in crime fiction and popular culture at York University for 19 years and began her writing career in 1979 at Maclean’s magazine. She often speaks to groups on various aspects of crime writing and loves to advance the cause of Canadian crime writers. In 2003, she was awarded the Derrick Murdoch Award by the Crime Writers of Canada.

Dinah Forbes was born and educated in England. She has been an editor at McClelland & Stewart for many years and is currently executive editor in part responsible for McClelland & Stewart’s crime fiction program.

Linda L. Richards is the founding editor of January Magazine, one of the most respected voices for books on the web. She is also the author of five novels, including Death Was in the Picture, published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. Richards was born in Vancouver and lives on the Gulf Islands. She loves talking about books and authors and enjoys working with writers to help them reach their goals.

Guest Speakers

Carolyn Swayze is one of Canada’s top literary agents, representing fiction and non-fiction. She established her agency in 1994, when W. P. Kinsella persuaded her to leave her law practice and sign him as her first client. Her background included a previous life as a freelance writer, (humour, business, and literary fiction), a novelist (a genre mystery published in 1977 in the US and a literary novel, publication of which was aborted when the Canadian publisher declared bankruptcy in 1984), and a rather scholarly biography, published in 1987.

Michael Slade, in real life, is a criminal lawyer. He has acted for both the defence and the prosecution in more than 100 murder cases. He argued the last death penalty case in the Supreme Court of Canada. From Headhunter (1984) to Red Snow (2010), Slade is the author of 14 bestselling mystery thrillers. Visit the Morgue at his website: www.specialx.net.

Moderator

William Deverell won the $50,000 Seal Award for his first novel, Needles, which drew on his experiences as a lawyer. He has published 14 further novels and one non-fiction book, and has won the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing in North America and two Arthur Ellis Awards for best crime novel. He wrote the screenplay Shellgame for CBC TV drama; created its series Street Legal, which has run in more than 80 countries; and wrote the screenplay for a feature film based on his novel Mindfield. His 2008 novel, Kill All the Judges, was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. His latest novel, a political romp, is Snow Job. Please visit his website at www.deverell.com.

Nathaniel's Interview

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:07:16 -0600

As I write this, our youngest son, Nathaniel who is just completing a Masters degree in public policy, is being interviewed for a position as an intern with our provincial government. One of the questions he will be asked is: “Describe a recent situation in which you took the initiative.”

Nat’s prepared for this one. After graduating from university with degrees in English and Political Science, Nat worked as a drummer, a drum teacher and, for the past four years, as an arborist for a company called Northern Tree. The owner and other crew members of Northern Tree are also musicians. It’s a sweet set-up.

Nat has always been passionate. When he was six he was passionate about gemstones. He bought himself a pair of fake ruby drop earrings that he wore everywhere. His siblings pleaded with him to take them off – at least in public, but Nat has never feared censure (public or private). Later he became passionate about dinosaurs; about the poetry of the first world war (the war in which my grandfather, after whom our Nathaniel was named was killed); about drums and in the last four years about environmentally responsible arborism.

Recently our provincial government brought down a budget that would kill our province’s Dutch elm disease program. The cost of the program is $500,000 a year. American elms are significant in our part of the province. We were the original bald prairie. 130 years ago when Regina was founded there wasn’t a single tree in the muddy bog. Now there are 350,000 trees in Regina and many of them are American elms and hence vulnerable to the elm bark beetle that spreads the fungus that causes Dutch elm disease and kills trees. Parallel situations exist in Saskatoon and in a number of smaller centres in Saskatchewan.

Somehow this one line in the budget missed public scrutiny, but Nat saw it and a week ago, he wrote a passionate and well-argued rant against the government’s short-sightedness. He emailed his argument to government members, friends, family and, most importantly, members of the media. This week Nat was interviewed on CBC Saskatchewan discussing the cut in the program; his boss at Northern Tree took a film crew to an area close to the city to show how real the threat to our trees is. Our local paper sent a reporter and photographer out to photograph Nat on the job and to talk to him about his concern. He made page 3 and the picture was large and flattering.

Today our local paper had an editorial urging the government to re-think their decision. I hope they will. I also hope Nat gets his internship, but even if he doesn’t, his family is proud of him.

"Where do your characters come from...?"

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:55:26 -0600

Yesterday I had two nice writer moments. The first came when a courier delivered a box containing my author copies of “Love You to Death”. There is something both satisfying and terrifying about looking at a finished book and knowing that, for good or ill, the book is now on its own. I have seen some very old manuscripts with the epigraph “Go litel boke…” as part of the frontespiece. I always remember that poignant farewell when I get my author copies.

The second nice writer moment came when I did a very long TV interview at our university bookstore. The interviewer was intelligent and thoughtful and we talked about both “Love You to Death” and “The Nesting Dolls”, the new Joanne Kilbourn that will be published in August. He asked, as many interviewers have, if Joanne is me. After we discussed that question, he asked where Charlie Dowhanuik, the first person narrator-protagonist of “Love You to Death” came from.

Charlie is an interesting guy. He’s a late night radio talk show host who’s smart, edgy, vulnerable and empathetic. It’s not often that I can identify the genesis of any of my characters with accuracy. Most often the people in my novels and plays start with a fusion of bits and pieces of people I’ve met, heard about or read about and then they become something new altogether.

But Charlie began with one specific man whom I met on a train 12 years ago. My husband and I were going to Vangroovy (as my kids call it)—Vancouver as the rest of us call it. Our train had stopped to take on new passengers and the first person in our car was an extraordinarily beautiful young woman. Behind her, was her boyfriend, a young man with a birthmark that covered half his face like a blood mask. He was wearing a t-shirt that said “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”. When he saw me looking at it, he said “Do you want to see what’s written on the back?” I said ‘sure’. He turned, and I saw an ad from a beer company. When he faced me again, I realized that I had misread the message on his shirt. In fact, it read “Beauty is in the eye of the Beer-holder”. “Great shirt,” I said. “We both laughed, and that was it. A 30 second encounter. . .

But that young man with the horrific bloodmask stayed with me. He knew that everyone who met him would have to deal with his birthmark. The T-shirt was a strategy, a way of dealing with the elephant in the living room. He charmed me as he had obviously charmed the beautiful young woman who got on the train with him. There was something in this young man that I didn’t want to lose.

In “Burying Ariel,” the sixth of the Joanne Kilbourn novels, Charlie Dowhanuik made his first appearance. In this novel, we learn about his tragic relationship with the woman he loved. Charlie appears in the some of the other Kilbourn novels, but he has a large role in the 10^th Joanne novel, “The Endless Knot”. I liked Charlie and I had plans for making him a continuing character in the Joanne series.

When CBC asked me to write Canada’s entry for the World Play Project – a project in which 8 public radio stations from 8 English speaking countries contribute a play—Charlie D, a radio host, seemed like a natural choice.

Two Charlie D plays were broadcast by CBC – both more than once. Last 24^th of May weekend, the radio play that eventually became “Love You to Death” was broadcast. Later that week, I received a note from Bob Tyrrell telling me about the Raven series. I had always wanted to write something that would engage people like some of my students at First Nations University—adults who needed to master skills but who needed to be drawn in by someone like them – someone who dealt with prejudice every day of their lives and who understood anger.

Charlie D was a natural.

Families

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:10:07 -0600

Someone once asked our grand-daughter, Madeleine, if she had any siblings. “Well,” she said. “Our family is somewhat complicated.”

I thought of this Easter Sunday, as we all got together for church and/or lunch at our house. Madeleine has two brothers and two sisters. Her seventeen year old stepbrother Kai was adopted by Madeleine’s step-dad, Brett, when he married Kai’s mother. Together Brett and Kai’s mother had Chesney, Madeleine’s 8 year old step-sister. Madeleine and her sister, Lena, are the children of our daughter, Hildy and her first partner, Felipe. When they split up, Hildy married Brett and together they have my card-playing buddy, Ben.

At our Easter service Ted and I and our son, Nat and his girlfriend, Ellen, sat with Madeleine and Lena’s biological grandfather, Polo, and his long time partner Janice. We have known and loved them for many years. We have a shared history, and on Sunday when Lena was serving and Madeleine was both crucifer and m.c., we four grandparents were both proud and grateful.

Our daughter Hildy sat behind us with her husband Brett and Chesney and Ben. Kai slept in, as 17 year olds are wont to do, but also as 17 year olds are wont to do, he showed up for the food at noon.

Our son, Max and his wife, Carrie, sat across from us with their children, Peyton and Lexi (who was celebrating her first Easter) and Carrie’s parents and her brother, Scott.

Polo and Janice were having their own celebration, but Brett’s mum and Dad, Carol and Vern joined us. Ted and Vern talked about Miles Davis. The kids played badminton on the front lawn, and we all elbowed one another out of the way for the chance to hold Lexi. In all, there were 14 adults and all 7 grandchildren at our house for Easter. It was complicated, but it was also very, very nice.

The dedication for my new book “The Nesting Dolls” reads:

To our grandchildren: Kai, Madeleine, Lena, Chesney, Ben, Peyton and Alexandra Kate Bowen, with love and gratitude.

That just about sums it up.

Ben's Reflections on What Comes Next...

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:24:57 -0600

As those of you who read this blog know, on weekdays our four year old grandson, Ben, comes here after school. At 4:30 while his sisters are either playing badminton on the front lawn or making nachos out of Triscuits, Balderson’s cheddar and whatever spices and herbs come their way, Ben and I go upstairs to sit on the treadmill; drink vermouth (me), apple juice (Ben); watch The Young and the Restless and play “Go Fish”.

Given the influences floating our way, we often ponder the metaphysical. In addition to being Ben’s grandmother, I am one of his Sunday School teachers. This week was Holy Week, so it was not surprising that Ben’s thoughts turned to large questions.

As I was trying to keep track of the game and of who was stalking Lauren on TYATR, Ben’s mind was on other matters. “You’re very old, aren’t you Mimi,” he said.

“I’m not young,” I agreed. “But I take pretty good care of myself.”

“Still you are going to die,” he said.

“Yep.”

“I’m not happy about that,” Ben said.

“In that case, I’ll try to put it off for as long as possible,” I said.

The next day, as he tends to when he plays cards with his grandmother, Ben was having phenomenal luck. On The Young and the Restless, the situation was looking dire for Lauren. Ben’s mind was, once again, on larger matters. “Here’s what I’m going to do when you die, Mimi,” he said. “I’m going to put you in that sandpile in my backyard, and every day I’m going to water you.”

It was an interesting concept. “So what do you think watering me every day will do after I’m dead?” I said.

Ben shrugged. “Who knows?” he said, then he drew his favourite card – the Ace of Spades.

Summer Plans...

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:29:54 -0600

Today, I found out that my participation in LOVE, SASKATCHEWAN, 2010 at Harbourfront Centre is a go. The dates are July 23 – 25, 2010, and I will shamelessly rip off the organizers’ description: “In this summer festival, Toronto unites with Saskatchewan to showcase and celebrate its arts and culture and shatter stereotypes about what Saskatchewan is in the 21^st century. The lens will be comprehensive and will include artistic presentations in all art disciplines and forms, and all types of creative practices from the grassroots to the most widely recognized.”

So there you have it! I would be delighted to shatter a few stereotypes with any of you who can make it to Harbourfront that weekend. If you can’t, Ted and I will be in Toronto and environs until after SCENE OF THE CRIME which takes place on Saturday, August 14^th at Wolfe Island near Kingston. Please check their website. Lots of fine guests – Michael Blair, Vicki Delany, Susanna Kearsley, James W. Nichol, and I’ll be there too.

For those of you who are mathematically inclined, you’ll note that there’s almost a month between events, so Ted and I will in Ontario for awhile—doing readings from “The Nesting Dolls” wherever two or more are gathered together. I’m reading on the evening of Monday, August 16^th at the Port Hope library, and Barb, the librarian, and I are hoping that we’ll be able to gather a crowd of at least two, so if you’re in the neighbourhood, please drop by. We’re planning for an outdoor evening event, and Port Hope is beautiful on a summer evening.. I’ll also be reading from “The Nesting Dolls” in Toronto – and a few other places when we get organized. More about all this later, but so far it looks as if summer will be a lot of fun.

A Speech to Biographers

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:00:27 -0600

Last night I gave a speech to a group of men and women who write and publish biographies of people who’ve shaped the city of Regina. I’d agreed to do this talk sometime last fall, when the end of March seemed at least 6 years away. Of course, the end of March arrived just when it always does, and the speech was due. I’d just finished the final edits for “The Nesting Dolls”. The weather was finally gorgeous. I didn’t want to work. I wanted to go out and play. However, a promise is a promise and so I set to work.

I once read a bleak description of the art of biography. The writer said ‘every biography begins with a cradle and ends with a grave’. Somehow, I didn’t think those words would have my audience rolling in the aisles. Fortunately, I’d been reading “The Inner Voice”, soprano Renee Fleming’s biography, and she said something that I thought I could build on. She wrote that children who are given a daily dose of the arts learn how “to imagine a better world and then create it”.

Regina is not a city of natural beauty. Someone (it might have been me) once said that Saskatchewan is the plain, flat-chested sister of the beautiful and voluptuous Alberta. The original name for our city was “Pile O’ bones”. There’s not a tree here that wasn’t planted, but it’s a lovely city because of a decision made over a hundred years ago and built upon by subsequent generations. In the centre of our city is 120-hectare man-made lake; it is surrounded by 930 hectares of parkland development, and it’s a knockout.

Wascana Centre figures in every single one of the Joanne Kilbourn novels. In the course of the 12 novels, Joanne has lived in two houses: both have been within a two-minute walk from the creek that runs into Wascana Lake. I, too, live within a two minute walk of the creek. Regina is on a migration path, so we have an amazing number and variety of visitors in spring and fall; we also have beavers and muskrats and great public art and fireworks and flowering trees and waterfalls and places to fall in love and out of love.

We have all this beauty because, to paraphrase Renee Fleming, Regina has had citizens who knew how to imagine a better world and then create it. Yesterday I really would have preferred going for a walk to staying cooped up in my office working on a speech for the biographers. But a promise is a promise. Besides if it hadn’t been for those visionaries, I would have been walking on the bald prairie.

Goodbye to All That...

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:03:22 -0600

Well at least for the time being.

I sent the final edits of the 12^th Joanne Kilbourn novel, “The Nesting Dolls” off to the publisher today. We had a very short turn-around time, so for the past four days I’ve been putting in the kind of hours I haven’t put in since graduate school. Anyway, “The Nesting Dolls” is now at the printers. By an act of cosmic synchronicity, Spring has finally decided to wrap her benevolent arms around Regina, so the sun in shining; the air is soft; the birds are singing and, except for a speech I have to give tomorrow night, I am without a deadline. Good times!

In fact, despite the looming manuscript, we had good times over the weekend. Thursday, dear friends and neighbours invited us for a lunch of (among other delicacies) pepperoni rolls – a rib-sticker known only to those who live in Fairmont, West Virginia, birthplace of our host. In addition to being really tasty, Pepperoni rolls have an intriguing history. Fairmont WV was an Italian-settled community, and pepperoni rolls were a favorite of miners who could carry them underground without fear of spoilage and eat them with little mess.

Saturday afternoon we went to the Met: Live in HD production of Hamlet. Simon Keenlyside (Hamlet) was amazing. The scene in which the players enact “the Murder of Gonzago” to prompt a confession from Claudius and Gertrude was brilliant. Act II ends with Hamlet pouring suspiciously blood-red wine over everything, including his hair and eyes. Good stuff! We went to the opera with an actor friend who told us that the knife the Met’s Ophelia uses to cut her breast and slit her wrists was designed for the first production of “Sweeney Todd”. Saturday night, more blood – we watched the 80’s teen revenge movie “Heathers” with our grand-daughters. We loved it. Our son and his girlfriend, Ellen, loved it, but the grand-daughters were not smitten. They did however, find the 80’s hairstyles and fashion hilarious – as indeed they were.

Sunday was Palm Sunday – one of my favourite Sundays in the church year. Our oldest grand-daughter, Madeleine, was born on Palm Sunday 12 years ago. Yesterday she was the crucifer at the 10:30 service. One of the junior servers manage to bring the taper too close to her lovely blonde hair – there was brief flare up, and the unmistakable smell of singed hair floated over the congregation. The junior server was fine. Our other grand-daughter loaned her a scrunchy to pull the rest of her lovely hair out of harm’s way and we all went back to waving palms and singing “Hosannah”. On occasion, there is real drama in being Anglican.

Recipes

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:29:49 -0600

This afternoon a young lawyer with whom we’d had dinner sent me two recipes I’d asked for. One – for a warm mushroom and spinach salad is straightforward. We’ll have it on Thursday when friends are coming for dinner. The other—for fresh rolls – is great but it looks finicky so I’ve already forwarded it to our son who is a drummer, an arborist, a masters’ student in public policy and a cook who can be flattered into making something as finicky as fresh rolls when we have a family dinner.

I like recipes. My memory for many things is less than stellar, but I remember the person from whom and the occasion upon which I acquired every recipe I have.

I’ve been cooking for over 45 years now. Not surprisingly, many of those who gave me recipes have joined James Beard, Julia Child, Laurie Colwin and the other great cooks who continue to be part of my life long after theirs have ended. When I look at my aunt’s elegantly handwritten recipe for Mazola oil cake or my uncle’s assertive script describing EXACTLY how to make Cherries Jubilee or Harvard Beets, these two dear people are with me again.

But recipes are more than a family album, they’re also a record of how we lived. My recipes are a sociology of the changing role of women. I have dozens of cookie recipes that came from the mothers at the lake who all summer long would begin baking on Monday mornings, so that when the fathers returned from the city on Friday night, every possible cookie they might have lusted after during the week was only a finger snap away. I have a dozen recipes for the spaghetti sauce, Jamaican chicken, beans and rice, gazpacho and Greek hangover soup that I cooked endlessly when I was an undergraduate. I have incredibly complex recipes for the six course meals that we used to serve during the seventies when every meal ended with liqueurs and every woman with pretensions had several full length hostess skirts in her wardrobe. I have dozens of the recipes that I cooked when I was doing graduate work and teaching and our kids were growing up – meat loaf, mac and cheese, pot roast, chicken Diablo, lasagna and the recipe for the birthday cake of choice for each member of our family.

Tonight Ted and I are having one of our favourite dishes. It’s one no child would ever dream of eating: angel hair pasta with caviar, lemon zest and melted butter. It’s from the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, but if you want the recipe, just drop me a line.

A Pointillist approach to my weekend

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:05:04 -0600

(Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure colour are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism.)

There has been a suggestion that my blogs are too wordy, so here’s another approach. Please imagine these small, distinct dots of pure colour as forming an image of a weekend that was happy but more Dali than Seurat.

Friday: Dairy Queen –

- to DQ to celebrate the Bowen grandchildren’s report cards. Our oldest grand-daughter believes there’s no glory that cannot be burnished by a trip to DQ; nor is there a sorrow a Blizzard cannot heal. On Friday we celebrated two girls with good report cards; one girl who was wearing her first ever hair extension, a remnant of a dance performance earlier that afternoon and one boy who simply wanted ice cream with cookie dough.

Later: A showing at our Central Library of a documentary about Kazakhstan that’s hard to watch but important to see. We come home with a deeper understanding of the Buddhist teaching ‘be grateful for a fortunate birth.’

Saturday: First day of spring.

Snow everywhere still, but also puddles – a promising start to a prairie spring. Ted and I cook for movie producer friends who lived across the street from us for almost 30 years, and other dear friends who we’ve known for almost as long. Because our movie producer friend is a serious cook, we plan our menu around two Muscovy ducks we’ve purchased from an organic farmer. Ted and I both have thoughts on cooking Muscovy ducks for the first time. After 41 years of marriage, we have learned the art of compromise. Our younger son and his girlfriend, Ellen, join us. Although she’s from Northern Saskatchewan, this is the first time Ellen has eaten duck. Last week, we were with Ellen when she saw her first opera; this week we were at the table when she ate her first duck. She was enthusiastic about both. Alfred Kazin wrote an autobiography titled “A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment”. That’s Ellen.

Sunday – church in the morning – in our Sunday School class, we read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, draw butterflies and discuss the Wonders of God’s world. Every child goes home with a bag of wheat to grow for Easter. Theology for 4 year olds is pretty straightforward.

n in the afternoon, the Bowens all come over to plant their Easter wheat – the first time for Lexi, who was born on July 29^th – her dad’s birthday. Then back to Church because our oldest grand-daughter is the thurifer for Evensong. The thurifer swings the incense. I love Evensong. As the Dean of our Cathedral says, Evensong is about the individual worshipper and God. Something good to carry into the week.

Between the cracks:

I read and judged the Youth Write contest for CBC – Grades 7 – 12 – some impressive writing, also real sadness in too many of the pieces Our grandson in Grade 11 and I talked about high school yesterday afternoon. He’s a very involved kid and a level-headed one but he says he recoils when someone tells him these are the best years of his life. I told him that life after high school is a piece of cake. I also quoted that profound anonymous observation that nobody gets over high school.

"Ten Habits of Successful Screenwriters" (Part II)

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:12:24 -0600

6. Write Everywhere.

James Philips points out that while many writers go to coffee bars, as a parent, he has learned to make use of the time available by pulling out his laptop at hockey practices, dance classes and TaeKwonDo.

Me too. I always carry a folder with a chunk of work that I can edit by hand if I find myself on long drive (with Ted driving); cooling my heels in a doctor’s waiting room or sitting under the dryer at the hair stylist’s. It’s amazing how much work you can get done in the cracks. Those 20 minute periods waiting for kids to finish playing hockey or perfect a new technique at Fada Dance add up. Use them wisely, and you’ll surprise yourself.

7. Rewards and Consequences:

Laurie Finstad Knizhnik says, “I do deadlines, and I’m a bitch about those. Make them, or suffer the consequences. I tell myself I’ve got two weeks to get to the next stage or else. If I’m not there I work late. When I get there, I celebrate.

I’m with Laurie. As a writer of mystery series, I have deadlines. To keep everyone happy, I produce a novel every two years. That means having a solid first draft of a new novel on my editor’s desk 15 months after the last novel was published. Once the novel’s at my editor’s, her deadlines become mine. The rest of my writing (short stories, theatre pieces, my new Rapid Read series) is tucked into the spaces available.

8. Procrastination is Process…Until it isn’t.

While they acknowledge that experienced writers understand the value of a break to free up thinking, the writers contributing to the Canadian Screenwriter piece are frank about the dangers of the Internet. Alex Epstein says it is ‘one big baited trap.’ Others acknowledge the seductive powers of Scrabble, Hearts, online poker, or blogs.

I have many sins, but procrastination is not among them. Perhaps because I have combined full time work, motherhood and writing for most of my writing life, I am so relieved when I finally get to my laptop that I don’t waste a second. That said, online Scrabble does sound like fun.

9. Just Keep Typing

I like what Elan Mastal says. “Even if I’m in a suck-mode that day, I can fix it later. The point is to crank out the pages. That’s the only way to write anything good.”

I agree. Hemingway talked about keeping the well primed and that means never stopping before you’ve left yourself something to work with.

10. Oooo…Oooo…You Make Writing Fun

“I would generally rather be confabulating than having dinner in a nice restaurant,” says Alex Epstein as he celebrates the pleasures of writing with his partner. It does indeed sound as if Alex and his writing and romantic partner, Lisa, have fun, but I can’t imagine writing with my husband. A thousand years ago, when we were in graduate school together, I asked Ted for his honest opinion of a paper I had written about Northrup Frye. He told me. In forty-one years of marriage, he’s never made that mistake again.

Going to the Opera with Ellen

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:24:36 -0600

Last Saturday, Ted and I took our son’s girlfriend, Ellen, to see the Met: Live in HD production of Carmen. It was Ellen’s first opera. She’s taking a university music class and attending a performance earns her five extra marks. At this point in the semester, five extra marks are nothing to sneeze at.

We’re very fond of Ellen. She’s a young woman who’s open to new experiences—a good characteristic for a person who hopes for a career as a teacher. That said, the on-screen Met performances are ideal for people who want to dip a toe into the opera experience rather than diving in head first.

Ted and Ellen and I all wore blue jeans to Carmen. Ted and I have been regulars at the HD performances, so we know to arrive early enough to get our New York fries from the woefully overworked young person who doles out the fries and Diet Coke on our Saturday afternoons at the opera. Ellen went the popcorn route.

I told Ellen about the rush to the champagne at the New York performances. We all agreed that – elegant as the champagne rush might be--there was something pleasant about kicking back in our blue jeans and eating snacks that were as sinfully self-indulgent as the lives of the characters in opera.

Carmen was glorious. For some, Bizet’s opera may be a war horse, but it was Ellen’s first opera and she loved it. Like all of us, she recognized much of the music from the cartoons of her childhood, but Richard Eyre’s production was so fresh and touching that we were all dazzled.

Our Ellen bears a more than passing resemblance to Elina Garanca, the mezzo who sang Carmen in the performance we saw. Our Ellen is also young enough to respond to the passions that drive Carmen (the bad girl), Don Jose (the weak and vulnerable lover), Micaela (the good girl who loses all to the bad girl) and Escamillo, (the cocky toreador who wins Carmen’s heart.)

Elina Garanca’s raw and sexy interpretation of Bizet’s heroine was worth the price of admission. But there were bonus points for everyone in the theatre that day. The production was dazzling. Ted and I had the pleasure of Ellen’s company at her first opera. Ellen earned five extra marks towards her final grade. Best of all, Ellen wants to come with us again.

That’s worth a theatre ticket, a box of popcorn, and a Diet Coke any Saturday afternoon in the season.

Book Club

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:50:27 -0600

I’ve never belonged to a book club. To be honest, no one ever invited me to join one. Perhaps because, like the little match girl, I’m always on the outside looking in, book clubs fascinate me. I once met a New York psychoanalyst who belonged to a book club comprised solely of other New York psychoanalysts. Their reading list was restricted to fiction that dealt with psychoanalysts. My editor at M&S spends her working life editing people like me, reading manuscripts and going to meetings about marketing and publicity. She thinks about books 16 hours a day, but she belongs to a book club. Our need to discuss what we read with others is clearly a powerful one.

Friday night, I had dinner with a six-woman book club: two of the women are lawyers; two are visual artists; one is an advocate for people dealing with employment issues and one is an academic. My novel “The Brutal Heart” was the book under discussion, and our host had gone to great lengths to create an atmosphere conducive to good talk. Before dinner we drank the Blue Sapphire martinis that in the novel, Joanne and Zack drink on Zack’s birthday, and our main course was the paella that is the favourite dish of Joanne and Zack’s daughter, Taylor. Dessert was the ganache to which Joanne is partial.

The members of the club were all close readers, and their questions were excellent, but what intrigued me was how at dinner we moved from discussion about specifics in the book to larger questions about our own lives.

Two examples: Joanne and Zack’s daughter Taylor is 14 and she is a prodigy. Her birth mother was a brilliant artist, and Taylor inherited her mother’s talent and her passion for making art. I told the book club about a talk I had with Darrell Bell, himself a talented artist and gallery owner. I asked Darrell whether he would ever have a show for a fourteen year old, and after a long and thoughtful conversation, he said he didn’t feel a fourteen year old had the life experience to say anything original in her art. The question of whether Darrell was right or wrong got us through the appetizers, the paella and a large quantity of excellent wine.

Perhaps because of the excellent wine, the next question evoked passionate discussion. One of the plot lines in “The Brutal Heart” involves high-end prostitution. The question of what successful married men are seeking when they use an escort service led us to the larger question of intimacy in marriage and that led us to a discussion about whether sex is always a bartering tool in a relationship. Exploring that question got us through the ganache.

The next day one of the women in the group sent me pictures she had taken of herself reading “The Brutal Heart” when she was in France and Corsica in February. I was thrilled. It was almost like being in a book club.

"Ten Habits of Successful Screenwriters"

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:56:47 -0600

I’m not a successful screenwriter; nor for that matter am I an unsuccessful screenwriter. I am, however, a member of the Writers Guild of Canada, and that means I have a subscription to Canadian Screenwriter. Like the best trade journals, Canadian Screenwriter offers insight into a small and fascinating world; it also offers plenty of solid advice about how to succeed at a craft.

The spring edition’s “Ten Habits of Successful Screenwriters” seemed worth passing along. Here, edited and interlaced with my own thoughts are the top ten:

1. Coffee, Toast and Writing. Writer Karen Walton says “If I don’t start in the morning –first thing, first cup o’ joe—I’m doomed to squander the day.”

Me too. I usually wake up around 4:00 – do an hour’s yoga, have breakfast and watch a political show called “Morning Joe” on MSNBC”; shower and hit my desk. I write till 10:30 – walk the dogs with my husband, and work till lunch.

Like Ross Dunn, who is also quoted in the article, I figure two quiet hours at 5 am “equal 4 hours of regular work time.”

2. Use the Snooze. Laurie Finstad Knizknik writes in the morning and says, “after lunch, I’m dull and sleepy. Naps are good. If you’re facing a problem you can’t solve, frame it for yourself then take a nap. Often enough when you wake up, you’ve solved it.”

This advice is solid gold. I started napping when I was pregnant with my first child. She is now 37, and I’ve never missed a nap. During my 30+ years teaching university, I ate lunch at my desk, locked my office door, turned out the lights and took a 20-minute nap on my yoga mat. It’s amazing what those 20 minutes can do, and Laurie FK is right about framing a problem before your hits the pillow and waking up to discover the problem is solved. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

3. No interruptions Please. If you have a day job, this one is tough to manage, but when I was department head I scheduled meetings in late afternoon when I wasn’t particularly productive as a writer, but I could handle the day-to-day business of an English department. Now that I’m retired, I make certain all my appointments and meetings take place over lunch or in late afternoon.

4. Get Your Ass Out of the Chair. My three best times for ideas are: * between 4:00 and 5:00 when I’m doing yoga – I know I’m not supposed to be thinking when I’m doing yoga, but even when I focus on my 3^rd eye, ideas arise unbidden.

• After I’ve walked the dogs for an hour around the creek;

• After I’ve done my ½ hour on the treadmill.

5. Keep Your Ass in the Chair. The article advices 25-minute sprints of work with a five minute break between. Apparently, this is something called The Pomodoro Technique and if you’re interested you can find out more at pomodorotechnique.com.

I’ve been doing this for years, although I didn’t know the technique had a name. I reward myself with tea; a quick nail polish job; a play with the dogs or a phone call to a friend.

Next 5 tips tomorrow.

A Collaborative Effort

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:53:26 -0600

SAVING LONESOME GEORGE has a cast of four:

JESS: a boy who, except for his squirrel, Charlie, is alone in the world

H.D.: a cool kid, who loves his wheelies and is expert at the art of hacky sack

HYACINTH MACAW: a bird-like woman of great beauty, flickering intellect and penetrating vision/MAD ESMERELDA BRILLIANT: the villain. A pirate with warm feelings for her Cumbrian red squirrel, Fancy Frank, but no respect for endangered species. – these roles are played by the same actor, a fact that fascinates our young audiences.

SWEET SOLOMON BUNCH: a pirate in the wrong profession

* * *

I’ve lost sight of the number of workshops our play has received. I think 8 is probably a fair guess. Perhaps because I’m a writer, I’ve always believed workshops are intended to help writers tighten and strengthen the script. Others may have different ideas, but this is my blog.

Here’s what happens in a workshop. The director, the actors and the writer sit around a table. Each of us has a script. Sometimes the director will ask the writer if there are particular concerns or questions she might like to have addressed after the reading. Sometimes we just barrel on in. The actors read through the script without interruption. Everyone makes notes. We take a break and then the director describes the form the workshop will take. Some directors prefer to have the actors phrase all thoughts about their characters in the form of a question: (“I wonder what Mad Esmerelda Brilliant’s attachment to her squirrel reveals about her sexuality?”) Sometimes actors are simply asked to raise their own questions or concerns about their characters.

I am making this process sound incredibly dry and tedious. It is anything but. A good workshop is filled with tension and laughter. The actors build on one another’s comments; they reject possibilities or are ignited by them. They tell dirty jokes, and because they’re actors, they tell them well. They try out dialects and increasingly wilder readings of lines. Then when the entire workshop threatens to float away like a bunch of wayward balloons, the director asks questions designed to give the writer control over all these new and shining possibilities.

Accepting my premise that there have been 8 workshops for “Saving Lonesome George”, 32 actors have brought their ideas to these characters. Two directors have helped shape the script but only my name appears will appear as the playwright. I’ve never felt this was quite fair. And so, as Carousel’s “Saving Lonesome George” prepares for its maiden voyage, I thought I’d set the record straight, and acknowledge the talent, wisdom and generosity of all the theatre people who have contributed to the script.

The script, of course, is just the beginning. There are designers of costumes and sets and lighting; stage managers and prop managers. People who turn on the lights and turn them off. People who make arrangement for venues. People who create the study guides that help teachers use theatre for young audience as a starting point for further learning. People who keep all of us running on time.

Theatre is a journey. Those four words have become a cliché, but they are the truth. At the end of any journey, we are changed by what we have seen and by what we have learned from our travelling companions. This is just to say, I’m grateful to mine.

"Saving Lonesome George"

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:16:37 -0600

Yesterday, Jane, the General Manager of Carousel Players in St. Catharines, Ontario, sent me a couple of photos of the boat that will be used in their production of my play “Saving Lonesome George”. She also gave me some nuts and bolts information that I will now pass along.

The play is a travelling production that has several performances at a stage in the beautiful Grand Theatre in London and several more at the equally beautiful Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre (Carousel’s home theatre) in St. Catharines, but most of the time, the play will be performed on gym floors in schools throughout the Niagara district of Ontario.

The play hits the road on the 22^nd of March and has its last performance on May 6^th. In the weeks between opening night (or in our case, morning) and the final performance, 9,000 children, aged 4 and up, will see the production.

This is the second go round for “Saving Lonesome George”. A couple of years ago, my friend, Kelly Handerek of the U. of R. Theatre Department, directed a production for Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon that visited schools throughout the province. It was a great hit with the kids. Pablo Felices-Luna, the Artistic Director of Carousel, came out, caught a performance and decided he’d like to mount his own production.

One of the many gifts of theatre is that it gives everyone a chance to revisit a project—to fix what experience has shown needs fixing and to showcase what works. Second chances are rare for writers, and tomorrow I’ll talk about what I’ve done with this one.