Where do you read?

The Globe and Mail has a new online books page with daily entries. Some good blogging, good links, mostly the same kind of reviews so far. I'd love to see an In Canada section reviewing and featuring only Canadian books and magazines, of course with The Checkout Girl in mind. We all want a review in the Globe. There is a poll asking people where they read: in bed, in the bath, while commuting, in the den (Den? Who has a den? Sounds pretty Father Knows Best to me.) and of course, other. Having just come from the bathroom, and not from the bath where I do read and where I also find solutions to writing problems, -- the warm relaxing water, my tree-top view of the ocean, nakedness, which must open some portal in my brain that is closed when I am clothed -- I wonder why "on the toilet" isn't an option, though I suppose it does fit under (or on) "other". My toilet-book this last while is Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame, edited by Robin Robertson (Harper Perennial, 2003). In it, famous writers reveal public humiliation: readings no one attends, interviews when the book hasn't been read, the logistics of getting to a bathroom before an interview begins, taking second place to a chili tasting contest, the often brutal comments of readers ("Why are all your women characters so crap?"), or a reader coming to a book signing to return a book because it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Families and friends know writers are ordinary; this book lets the world know. The fact that it is funny and sad and touching is a bonus.

Closer to home, two moose bedded behind our garden shed the other night. Rabbits continue to savage wee maples and wild apple trees. Their prints are everywhere. Cougar have been sighted in the area. And a baby bobcat has taken to visiting various neighbours -- see photos.

On another note, our friends John Roberts and Marion Thompson are being featured on Land and Sea (CBC TV) at noon on Sunday, February 1st, on a back-to-the-land segment. John & Marion still live in Indian Brook on the property seven of us bought together (see photo of their younger selves -- and me and our dog Eustace -- on the porch of their first log cabin), and where I built a house with Greg Mason on an old fishing boat called Roger Boy III, bought from a local fisherman, Scotty MacDonald, who no doubt thought we were crazy. Sorry about the zig-zag layout of the Roger Boy photos. They are scans of very old photographs that clearly need some cropping!

One last thing, there has been another nice review of The Checkout Girl and you can read it at this link: http://tabernaculum.blogspot.com/2009/01/skating-like-man.html

Novel writing and poinsettia murder

Is anyone else out there a plant killer? That's what I want to know. I don't buy poinsettias every year because I kill them by setting them outside to freeze to death when they start getting a bit ragged, dropping leaves because I have over-watered them, or forgotten to water them at all. So I alternate: I buy one and kill it, then the next year I remember feeling badly about killing it, so I skip a year. This is my poinsettia murdering year. Now I feel badly for a variety of reasons. I don't like the idea of disposable anything. I even save twist ties (how many of you are groaning now?) and plastic 1 litre milk bags, which, I should righteously point out, are the perfect shape and size for storing cheddar cheese after the package had been mutilated and the cheese has dried out in the fridge. Milk bag stored cheese is always perfect. Of course I use the saved twist tie to close the milk bag.

But I digress. It isn't only the bi-annual poinsettia slaughter I must confess to, I also let plants die when I am feeling harried and put-upon. When I was working on The Checkout Girl through last year and did not want one more thing to think about, one more thing to keep alive (because of course I am so powerful and amazing and arrogant and had Kathy Rausch and her mother Connie, and her sister Shelly, and all of those other characters to keep alive), when it came time to bring all of my houseplants indoors, I decided it was death to them, or find them new homes -- a bit like that puppy you've neglected to teach to pee outside and suddenly realize you will never teach it to pee outside because you aren't the patient loving person you thought you were, so you decide to give the dog to the Humane Society, who will of course not euthanize it, because that would be terrible and you wouldn't want to be responsible for that, so surely they will find it a loving and patient mistress. (I have never done this, by the way, but I can see how it happens.)

Dear reader, I did find my houseplants new homes, all of them, and if they are dead now it is not my fault. I did take cuttings from one plant though, a jade that was given me by my friend, the writer, Frances Itani. When Night Watch was published, she gave me a jade plant that she started from a cutting from W. O. Mitchell's jade. I have given slips of the same plant to other writers, and to my son upon his graduation from university. The plants whisper at night, wind sounds, of course. And now the cutting I kept is a lovely, healthy, lop-sided, shiny wonder that I cherish. Until it gets too big and commands more space and attention than I feel I have to offer, around the time I am finishing my next novel. I also have a new Christmas cactus, a vibrant pink geranium I saved from an outdoor planter, a variety of amaryllis bulbs and a surprise chestnut tree that sprouted in the amaryllis pot last week from a seed picked up three years ago in the Goderich Square, all of whom will be looking for homes then too. I'll keep you posted.

The Checkout Girl's first review

It's a good one and it made me laugh. Short but sweet, it can be found in the Winnipeg Free Press: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entertainment/books/novel_scores_with_skating_theme.html

On a more personal note, winter animals are on the prowl. After a snowshoe around Red Island Trail, my friend, Marion, and I spotted a beautiful, healthy young moose browsing alongside the road near the Fire Hall. Andy saw lynx tracks along our brook. There are sightings of mythical cougar, mythical because it is said there are no cougar in Nova Scotia. Honey and I flushed a rabbit on our early morning walk. And under a wild apple tree along our snowshoe path, Honey and I discovered what I can only think was a grouse hole in the snow. It been dug up by either a fox or a coyote though there were no feathers, no blood to show a grouse had been killed.

Fresh snow reveals all.

Happy New Year

2009, day 2: Blizzard conditions continue. The new year came in on a fierce winter storm and so far that's how the year is shaping up. We've shovelled out and cleared off the cars and now we're waiting for our friend, Merrill MacInnis, to come by with his pretty green plough to clear out the driveway. Perhaps it's a good thing he hasn't arrived yet because it's started snowing again.

Yesterday, strapping on snowshoes for a trek with Honey to the ocean to photograph the enormous crashing waves that were laying a bass beat to the roars and whistles of the wind around the house, I also took pictures of spruce trees laden with snow. I'll post some of the photos because they bring to mind a Jonathan Aaron poem from a recent New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/12/15/081215po_poem_aaron

On The Checkout Girl front, still no reviews, though I've had lots of very positive feedback in emails. I've not given up on reviews, not for a second, but I am beginning to research a vague but persistent idea that is agitating for a novel. A series of ideas, really, that might come together with a character who is not quite talking in my head yet, but is revealing himself bit by bit, suggesting to me that I should build a story around him. He's been apparent for some time, but he's becoming more defined, more than a little pushy, and no longer so easy to ignore. We'll see.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year to you all.