Recently in Bits of Life Category

Listen, young children, to my tale of farcical woe.

On Monday I got to go to the ball - or one of the nearest things to a ball in a writers’ life. (Writers’ lives are more about sweatshirts than ball gowns.) I put one of my two nice dresses and my one pair of heels in a grocery bag, bagged off my dayjob a bit early, and hopped the Greyhound to Toronto to attend the Scholastic Authors and Illustrators dinner.

And it was lovely. I caught up with lots of people, talked to Jean Little, who is one of my heros and I think might easily be a friend, and heard a delightful speech from Maggie Steivatter. (She liked Plain Kate! Yeah!) I had so much fun that I missed the 9:30 Greyhound, and ended up on the 11:30 one - the last milk run of the night.

It was 1:17 by the time I staggered off the ‘Hound at the glamourous downtown Kitchener buss terminal, with my dress-in-a-grocery-bag, my bag of books and swag, my computer bag, my brand new French copy of Simplement Kate. My water bottle was leaking down my leg and my coat was slipping from one shoulder. On the way to the taxi stand I discovered what was missing from that list: my purse. I went back to the platform by the bus had already left the station.

So I caught a taxi and called my hubby and said: “please put on your bathrobe and come pay the taxi,” and he did — but in the meantime the taxi driver and I hatched a plan. The taxi driver knew that Greyhound makes one last stop in Kitchener, at the University of Waterloo. I would try to catch up with it there.

So I got home, kissed poor sleepy hubby on the curbside, dumped stuff on the floor, and hopped in my car. I drove to the University and circled the ring road — just in time to see the bus pull out of the University and off into the wilds of Waterloo.

So of course I chased it. I mean, what else? I thought it might stop at Laurier or perhaps go back to the station. Waterloo, by the way, is not a city that never sleeps. At 1:30 on a Monday morning, Waterloo is taxi drivers and barfing students and police looking for people to pull over.

And me chasing a bus.

It kept running lights and I was afraid too - those bored cops! What was I going to tell them: “My driver’s liscence is on that bus!” So several times I watched it pull away and turn onto a darkened street. But eventually I caught up with it again. I was debating honking and waving and making a fuss - maybe cutting it off with a huge drifting stop, like in the movies! - when it stopped at a Tim Hortons.

And, lo, the bus driver had found my purse! Every twoonie intact. I could have HUGGED him, he was so sweet, and I was so punchy. I bought him a coffee and drove home (not getting stopped by the roving, bored cops) and that’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in my writing life in years.

Tonight’s the night for the Sunburst Awards: Canada’s science fiction and fantasy awards, for which my Plain Kate is up. They’re giving them out at Harbourfront in an Oscar-style surprise.

I wasn’t nervous until last night — I really don’t expect to win this award, and I’ve been too busy being nervous about the TD and the Vancouver trip. But now I’m officially a little nervous. Evidence: I took my bike halfway to work before realizing I needed to go home for my suitcase and figure out some other way to transport myself.

Mom said to me on the phone last night: did you write a speech? And I said: a speech? She: In case you win. Me: Oh, sh*t. She: Well, I’m sure you’ll be better than Frances What’s-her-name at the Tonys. A high bar indeed.

I did officially have my nails done, concerns about such things (frocks, nails — not hair, note the advantages of shaving it off) being my default anxiety displacement mechanism. I’d never had a pedicure before. They’re NICE. Of course, then I decided to wear boots.

Look for me at Harbourfront tonight. I’ll be the one chewing on my perfect fingernails.

This morning we again rose on East Coast time, had a beautiful cup of coffee, and then caught a cab to Third Beach in Stanley Park. It's a quiet, wild corner of the park: a steep slope of rainforest -- pines and cedars and ferns, moss and stone -- that spills onto a powder sand beach strewn with bleached logs and grey round boulders.

We sat down on one of the logs and took off our shoes, rolled up our jeans. The sand was cool, the Pacific (technically the Georgian Straight) cold, but not numbingly so. It washed in and out quietly, waves that didn't even top one's feet. Purple clam shells and shining black abalone shells. Ravens instead of seagulls. A place so different from anywhere I've ever been that I could believe it had a different origin: a Raven-creates-the-world place.

I walked for an hour. Saw little crabs, a washed up jellyfish, the breathing holes of clams (one spouted like a wee drinking fountain, confirming my guess at what they were). I picked up seashells for the girls and for me. Found a beautiful piece of white sea glass -- sea glass is a (literal) touchstone for me. Found two raven feathers.

Thought about this poem:

What can heal us?

Like men who have lost legs,
we cannot be restored,
but the tumbling world
makes lights of us --
the sea turns glass
to milk. A teacup handle
to a tool for divination.

The tumbling world.

And then I caught a cab, and then a plane. And here I am at another airport, and it seems a whole world away.

Greetings from Vancouver. Good times were had at the CBC Book Club taping this morning; Bookstores were located and stocked was signed per publicist’s request. So I feel all Official Author-ish.

Which is a strange way to feel. It’s a strange convention, generally, that writers should go out and be the public face of their books. After all, the core skill of an author is to sit alone and listen to the fictional people. Most of us are good at sustained alone time, at looking inward with a somewhat furtive intensity, as if we were eavesdropping with a cup against a wall. This is not a skill that translates well to, say, cocktail parties. But after the book is finished, we’re called upon (if we’re lucky — I know I’m lucky, this is not a complaint) to head out for the vast cocktail party of publicity — to meet people and tell them about ourselves and generally be charming. It’s just plain odd that we treat authors this way.

But we do, and so I’m here in Vancouver with my Official Author hat tilted just so. I get so nervous about this stuff. Deeply worked up. I didn’t sleep last night, and this morning I felt compelled to try on all three shirts I brought with me (one of them twice) and then post about that on Twitter. At least I don’t have hair to fuss with. Imagine the stress of that.

I get so nervous — and then it always goes just fine. In fact, I’m even good at it. Maybe I need the nerves in order to get the energy? I’m not sure. I do think no one I meet on these tours would guess how fundamentally introverted I am.

Anyhoo, the taping went well, and the audience had some interesting questions. I talked about physics more than I meant to — but then, people will always ask about it. I ended up explaining to someone, afterwards, how the quantum nature of the universe solved the problem of Newtonian determinacy and free will. I also pointed him to the official source for news about whether the Large Hadron Collider has destroyed the earth yet. I hope he feels better now that he knows these things.

And then I got to wander Vancouver a bit. What a stunning beautiful city. I had a Vietnamese style submarine from a street vender sandwich for lunch, a great unpretentious fusion of deli meats and spicy sour vegetables and sauce. I happened upon Hapa-palooza and had my heart thudded by a taiko (Japanese War Drum) performance. I caught a bus over the False Creek Inlet to another bookstore, and then James and I walked back from there, over the same high bridge: wind and sunshine, and unmatched views of the inlet and the mountains and the beautiful skyline. Now we are off for Stanley Park.

And I feel very luck to have fallen into such a strange convention, to get to trail my little book around the country. Thank you, TD, for sponsoring the Children’s Literature Award, and thank you, CBC, for featuring the nominees. It’s a privilege to be here.

Tuesday I was driving alone on a quiet highway. The clouds were high puffy storybook clouds, with lots of blue between them. When I was almost home I drove into the shadow of a cloud, and saw then saw the front edge of the shadow sweeping along ahead of the car: as if by driving I was pushing the light ahead of me.

The whole week has been like that: a delicate week of edges, beginnings and strangeness of light. It began last Friday when I finished the first draft of Children of Peace, a book that tumbled out of me in less than six months. I’m doing a few last minute edits, and hope to send the whole thing to my agent before the week is out.

I also got a new job. Starting Monday, I’ll be a writer/editor for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics — a gig so cool it nearly sounds fictional. I’ll be halftime, working for PI in the mornings, and retiring to The Bordello (my novel-writing office) in the afternoons. I probably will continue to say not much about my professional writing here (it’s not the venue) but I must at least mention this, because a) it’s a permanent job and b) PI is amazingly awesome place. I glimpsed Leonard Susskind, an inventor of string theory, today. Fortunately I was too far away to fangirl him.

Finally, Plain Kate has been showered with honours this week — not just the TD Canadian Children’s Literary Award, which I gave its own headline, but the Sunburst Award honouring Canadian literature of the fanastic, and the Rocky Mountain Book Award, which is Alberta’s children’s choice award. With the Sunburst I’m keeping short-list company with Charles de Lint. With the Rocky Mountain Book award, thousands of kids across Alberta will read the nominated books and vote. Once this sinks in I’m sure I’ll be thrilled.

So it really is a strange time for me: liminal, a threshold time. I feel vulnerable and happy; at a loss and excited. Ready to try something new.

Yesterday was the longest day of the year. Little Ninja Princess Scientist wanted to stay up to see the sunset — she’s been begging for a week. It’s well past her bedtime (she’s only five) but everyone needs a bit more special ritual in their life. So I said yes.

Not only that, I helped her back some snacks and a big quilt, and I took her and her grandmother the biggest hill I could think of: the one a McLellan Park, a re-purposed landfill given over to natural grass and trails.

There was no sunset to speak of — the time came on the clock and heavy clouds did not so much as blush. But the wind was blowing at the top of the hill, the sweet clover was in bloom, the grass was tall enough to hide in, and some guys were trying to fly a stunt kite that Ninja was thrilled to pretend would crash into her at any moment.

Then we got cookies.

“Can we do this every year?” Ninja asks.

Yesterday my five-year-old daughter asked me what my new book was about. I completely froze. I wanted to make it sound interesting (you know, worthy of the attention that could otherwise go to her) without freaking her out. And, just to note, she’s a kid that’s freaked out by Madeline at the Ballet.

Me: “Well, it’s about these kids who have to go away to school, like Christopher Robin. They are kind of scared and sad to be away.”

Her (skeptically): “That sounds boring. What else?”

Me: “Robots!”

Well, she didn’t quite roll her eyes and tell me “that’s nice, dear.” But it’s clear she’s not as interested in the doings of my imaginary friends as I am. I remember the time she asked me: “What’s taking you so long to write your book, Mom? Is it all the words?”