Let me go back in time. On Sunday evening HarperCollins had a bookseller party here in London, my own home town, and invited me. It was a lot of fun - after I found it. For some reason I thought it was at TJ Baxters (it was at Oscar Taylors next door) and I went there and looked around - no party, I sat on the roof patio thinking, maybe they are late. Finally I phoned home and Joe checked my e-mails and discovered it was next door. So I found them. It was great to see all the HarperC folks I know, and meet new ones, and meet all the booksellers. What a great buncha people book people are.

And Thursday, after rainy weather for days, the sun came out and I went to the cottage and took some pics along the way. First one is of sweet-peas growing beside a country cemetery.



And day lilies by the side of the road



and Parkhill Conservation area - so pretty!

I've been doing some interesting research for my Dear Canada. Lots of stuff happened in 1937 - George Gershwin died of a brain tumour, Jean Harlow died of an unidentified illness, Edward married Wallis Simpson (you should see the comments about him in the 1937 newspapers!) and Amelia Earhart disappeared July 2, 1937. But along with that I did do some other things.
Look at this little fellow, one of seven, we found in the barbecue at the cottage. They scampered all over the place, jumping out of the barbecue and onto the deck.



And...Judy Ann's sister works for a furniture store and they were throwing out curtain samples so she snagged some and Judy Ann shared. Here are a couple of things I've made from those samples:

How Could I Forget! And today is my wedding anniversary - 36 years with the same person, years and years and years...tee hee. At least it takes the guess work out of a lot of things, like what does he like to eat, can I burp/fart in front of him, etc. I'm looking forward to another 36 years. At which point I will be hmmm.. 91. I guess it isn't beyond the realm of possibility.

I just finished, "The Delicate Storm" by Giles Blunt, a Canadian mystery writer, and I enjoyed it immensely. A lovely writer with compelling characters. It's about the FLQ. I was in my teenage angst years during the FLQ Crisis, but I remember it very well. I did occasionally come out of my self-absorbtion to see the world around me - very occasionally.

And...newest quilt - using my disgustingly large stash! Bird On a Wire. It's a baby quilt. I got babies on my brain these days as I count down the days to my granddaughter. Mid-august.




And detail of the quilt.

First picture day and now musing day. I was thinking about writing and creativity in general and one thing I've always believed is that creativity is a selfish endeavour. Especially writing. Writing mostly serves me, at first, and perhaps others later, but what I am doing when I'm writing, is trying to work my way through questions that I have. The big ones, like why are we here, and the smaller ones, like why can't I ever get my clothes just right. What I am doing is presenting these questions in my books and hoping like heck someone can answer them for me. Totally self-serving. My musings for the day.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so I decided to go up to the cottage for a few days last week. This baby fawn was roaming our neighbourhood for a couple of days and I hope it found its Mama.



And more pics.
Shop hop last weekend of May...



New quilt I designed.



quilt retreat at cottage last Saturday - SOOOOO much fun.



AND!!! I got a contract for a new Dear Canada book!

I saw the lamest Criminal Minds on Wednesday, and usually I like the show for the psychological bits, but this one was stretching it too far. It was all about a serial killer who abducted people from the streets of Detroit - only prostitutes and druggies - I mean he did have values - and took them by rowboat (oh puleeze) across the river near Port Huron into the "wilds" (forests, swamp etc.) of Canada near the "small town" of Sarnia. Okay, someone show me the "wilds" near Sarnia. Hey, someone just show me a tree in Sarnia! South of Sarnia it is all oil refineries. And show me a pig farmer that doesn't have a state of the art operation these days! Eh? Well, I better get my hatchet and cut wood for the fire, and then go hunt me some food for the day. Nah...I think I'll just go to the grocery store. Yep, we got them up here. We ski to them.

Many thanks to Allison Zinman for this wonderful book trailer for "Theories"

When my kids were young, every time I got on the phone or in the washroom, they would suddenly have something very important to tell me, or they'd go and climb pantry shelves to get cookies, etc. It's the same with my darn cats! I was on the phone, and Hubert is banging the cupboard door, that's how he gets our attention. He goes to the cupboard door, opens and slams it shut - bang- bang - until we come and see what he wants) and Leo starts tearing at my new Nate Berkus curtains - which is how he gets my attention because he knows I'll come running at him which is of course, great fun. Hubert, not so bad in the washroom. But at the moment I'm sitting with a bleeding thigh courtesy of Leo. Everything about the bathroom is fascinating to him. You pull out toilet paper - he attacks it (thus the thigh wounds from trying to get my paper back), he hides behind the shower curtain and attacks while a person is sitting on the throne - shoulder wounds, and of course, I have pjs with ties and as you adjust them, he leaps up to grab them - abdomen wounds - and the grand finale, watching the toilet flush. It's an entire experience for him. I'm left cut to shreds.

I worked on the weekend and all day yesterday and the final proof-reading of "Haunted" is all finished. It's time to say goodbye, pack up all the research and put it in a box with a copy of the manuscript and send my baby out into the world. And that is exactly what it feels like - like sending my sons to Kindergarten, or away from home - and they are no longer all mine - they are meeting other people (being read by other people). All I can say is that I hope you all like it!

Yoo hoo it's the first long weekend of the summer and I'm revving to go - party, camping, - oh wait - that was me at 16. Instead, I'll sedately take my cats and sewing and books to the cottage - where I plan to have fun, fun, fun! You can't take the 16 year old out of the middle-aged woman. I still rock out to Led Zeppelin -favourite song "Hangman" and I still that anticipation that I'm going to see the lake. Have a great weekend everyone.

A big hello to the students at Central Technical High School in Toronto! I had a great visit with them last Wednesday and what a wonderful group of students. This school is in the Bloor/Bathurst area and it was quite a drive, but I love Bloor Street. It is a bustling, multi-cultural centre of the city.
So, the woman who translated A is for Angst for the French publisher, told me she was in France in April, and on the Champs D'Elysse (spelled wrong I imagine) in Paris at a bookstore, she saw my book on a table next to Twilight! What a thrill to think of my book sitting in Paris!

What can a week of warm weather do in Ontario? It can bring out emerald shades in the trees and grass, pink red-bud blossoms, yellow forsythia, blue forget-me-nots, purple and pink violets, and creamy white magnolia blossoms. I love it!!! I also love the sound of the birds in the early morning - oh, Leo and Hubert told me they love that sound, too. For different reasons, I suspect. Hubert is fast clearing out the mouse population, two yesterday and two already today. I told him no more because the freezer is full. (That's what he thinks I do with them.)

Sometimes I need a kick in the backside to get myself going and I think Stephen King's book, "On Writing" is just the kick I need. I've really started thinking about my writing and where I want to go with it. I realize that I never give myself much dreaming time, or quiet time, or permission to give myself those times. I am ruled by guilt. I'm home in my pj's at noon and Joe is dressed and off by 7:30 a.m. I don't bring in a great amount of money, I mess up the house, I should be cleaning, not reading. Now, oddly if someone else told me this, I'd tell them how important that dreaming time is, but I wouldn't take my own advice. So, I decided to do something about it. First of all, I decided to go back to my daily walks, which got lost in being busy and going to curves. It was on those walks that I worked out plots and characters in my head. I'm turning off the television more (except Fringe - love that show) and reading. And this summer, I'm going to lay in the hammock and look at the sky and the trees and not feel guilty. Okay, that last one might be hard to do, but the others I've always put into place.

Oh, and has everyone seen that Susan Boyle video? A lot of people are saying, it's all rigged, blah, blah, and all I can say is, who cares? It's still a feel good video.

That's all I do is run up and down to the cottage. It turns out our insurance company will not cover the damage because according to our Home-owners policy (and maybe yours) you have to shut your water off if you away from your residence more than four days. I started to read all the fine print of the policy and seriously I think they would save more paper and time if they just listed exactly what they covered, which is a lot less than what they don't cover, including volcanoes, earthquakes, land contracting and shifting....etc. But here's the cover of "Haunted."

Well, it turns out "Theories" came second for the above literary prize in Belgium. It is so strange, yet cool, to know that people in different parts of the world are reading something I wrote. Oh, BTW, that is the subject line, including spelling, is from the e-mail that came to me from Belgium informing me of the award. Mind you, you should see my French.

I look out the window and April has morphed into December. ACK! Snow! Hubie keeps looking at me accusingly, like I made it snow just to keep him in. So he's picking on Leo to show his displeasure. Unfortunately, Leo is bigger than Hubert now, so that doesn't work too well.

I've been working on my copy edit - really, I have! But I also took a bit of time yesterday to bind these two quilts I made in February.


I designed and made this quilt at our quilt guild Quilt 'til You Wilt day in February. An easy, adorable baby quilt. I'm all into babies now that I'm going to be a grandma this summer. It is called "Baby Talk."




And the contest. My brain is having difficulty coming up with a name for this particular quilt. So....if you can name this quilt by Friday, April 3rd and we use your name, we will send you a free pattern of this quilt. The only rule is that it has to be the name of a song.

Still slogging through those copy-edits. But I did take a bit of a break on Saturday to go out with my DIL, Lisa, to Sharon's of Hyde Park, an upscale clothing store in London. Twice a year Sharon has a warehouse sale where she has racks of clothes, cool purses, jewellery, shoes, boots..you name it, that this Saturday cost anywhere from 99 cents to $99.00. I haven't been doing any shopping at all since Christmas, deciding to be more frugal, but then, what is more frugal than getting jewellery for 99 cents, and a fabulous, dressy coat for $29.00, two purses for $9.00 (each I mean), t-shirts for 99 cents... But, the funny thing is, it is so much fun just crowding in with the other women, pawing through clothes, chatting and laughing and finding something cool. And poor Lisa - she acted as my pack-horse, my fashion consultant (and saved me from some big boo-boos), standing-in-line person. Thank you so much, Lisa! You're the absolute best. And thank you Sharon, for your wonderful sales!

So, if there is anything more humbling than working on a copy-edit of your manuscript - I don't know what it could be! I'm working on the copy edit of "Haunted" and seriously, I don't know why they even took this book! My grammar is atrocious in places, my descriptions lame and unclear. I never feel more like a hack than when I'm doing a copy-edit.
And on a funny note: I called Maggie yesterday and she said, "Hi dear." tee hee
Oh yeah, yesterday, first I ran up to the cottage to meet a restoration guy to see how much damage our flood did, and then ran back home to meet the insurance adjuster who didn't seem to place much hope in our insurance company paying for the repairs.