Good morning, Readers!

Today marks the beginning of the Celtic new year, and is my favourite day.  Ever.

I've always been fascinated by it, but it wasn't until I learnt what this day was actually about in University that I fell in love with the day.

Today, you see, marks the return of ancestral spirits to their families.  They come by to check on their loved ones and spend some quality time with their families.  They are guided home with special lanterns carved from turnips (or pumpkins, in the new world), into which candles are placed.  Special breads were baked this day, and left out for the ancestral spirits to munch on overnight while they visited.

I don't find the idea of spirits returning to visit loved ones to be spooky or scary.  In fact, I think the idea is really very sweet.  I adore the idea of greeting my grandmother, of smelling her soft, flowery perfume.  I find great comfort in the thought that I might be able to have a chat with her, to tell her how I'm doing.  I love the idea of a thread connecting myself with generations past, that I'm not ever really alone, that they'll be checking up on me every so often.

I also fully intend to haunt my family every Hallowe'en when I pass.  Chances of having my own seem increasingly slim, so I will be haunting my sibling's children.  Perhaps my godchildren.  I don't think they'll be too spooked when I drop by.

Today is also one of those days that the Wild Hunt chases and captures the spirits of wrongdoers, or even beasts that have crossed the worldly divide what shouldn't have.  If you've done no wrong, then feel comforted that this band of ancient heroes (King Arthur is rumoured to be in their number), and the otherwordly hounds, are patrolling the land, keeping you safe.  It will also help your cause to light bonfire this night, as the flames will keep evil spirits and beasts at bay.  If you see the hunter and his hounds, bow your head and show respect.  It will not do to anger the Wild Hunt.

In Wales, you might come across Y Ladi Wen - the pale lady - who attends crossroads and graveyards, protecting travellers and guarding against other, darker spirits that may be there.

Anyway, whether you believe in ghosts or not, the idea behind Hallowe'en is lovely, and I'm all in on this day.  It's not spooky or evil, but sweet and comforting.  Even the Wild Hunt, while scary (but seriously, if you hear the hounds and the horn, bow your head as the hunt passes), is serving a protective role.

You know, I think I'm getting more witchy as I age.

I'm not mad about it.

Anyway, just dropping by to say that I can't wait to have a cup of tea and a chat with my grandmother this evening, and to wish all of you a joyous Samhain filled with sweet breads and lengthy visits with loved ones long gone.

Ciao!

Recipe courtesy of thespruceeats.com

Good morning, Readers!

Yesterday was a good day, the issues with OC Transpo aside. I went for a run, this time with a friend, who had asked if he could join me on occasion.  He did extremely well, I should note.  Far better than I when I first started writing.  It was a good run, all told.  The pace was slow, but steady, and I was feeling pretty good all the way through.  Then it was off to training, where in Kung Fu, we began a new broadsword form (one I've stated in the  past, but never finished), and I really like that form.  It helps that it's a sword form.  Weapons are kinda my favourite thing about training martial arts.

I arrived home feeling like I did something with myself yesterday, and that's not nothing.

During the day, yesterday, I started work on a commission I received during CanCon.  It involves drawing a tower.  Great.  A tower.  Of stone.  Which means drawing in all the stonework.  I've done it before.  It took for-freaking-ever then, it'll take forever now.  On the bright side, it is getting me drawing again, and I'm not mad about that.  I need more arting (is absolutely a word.  Now) in my life.

There are no more queries or submissions to do this week, so all that I have to do is art, writing (I should really get back on that), and French lessons.  By the by, the whole Duolingo thing is working out pretty well.  This isn't to say that I can speak French with any competence at the moment, but I am quicker to understand certain things, and I've been accidentally eavesdropping on French conversations happening around me.  This morning, someone said, for example, that they don't like that.

What was it they didn't like?  That.  Obviously.

I don't know the context, they were walking and talking, and I wasn't so keen on practicing my listening skills that I followed them.  You're welcome, random strangers.

When I've gone through the entire Duolingo class, I will graduate to watching films in French and listening to french radio to practice my listening and comprehension.  Hopefully I will also graduate to practicing speaking long before then, even if it's in small, childish sentences.

For the record, I find learning another language to be fun, and the right kind of challenge for me.  Perhaps I'll just continue learning languages... perhaps I'll become a polyglot late in life.

Anyway, I have a commission to get to, so I'll leave off here.  Hope you're all well.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I am currently in the midst of querying agents.  I'm hoping to find some representation for Outworlder, whose title I still despise, despite being told it wasn't terrible.  I have, in the last fortnight, queried ten agents.  This is, I've been told, about right.  I feel like it's excessive, but a source I trust told me it wasn't so... ten agents it is.

Anyway, there are two agents in particular I have queried that I'm genuinely hoping might take a nibble, then like my stuff enough to go all in.  No names.  I'm just really hoping.  Which, of course, means that it won't ever go like that.  I'm basing this off past experience.

I'm trying all the same.

For the record, I'm targeting agents that are also alright with horror, as much of my writing, while not actually horror, does tend to use some fairly dark imagery.  Plus, you know, maybe I might get into writing horror at one point.  It is the only SFF genre I haven't written yet.

Querying agents is its own terrible privilege.  Part of it is, of course, of my own making.  Typos that I realise too late (oops and also [expletives censored]), the waiting, the hoping, the inevitable disappointment...  It's also a lot of fighting the urge to continually check me email for responses.  Honestly, I'm torturing myself with the checking, and it's not like they've even had time to read the emails I've sent.  The earliest response I can hope for is not until just after my birthday next month.  Yet... here I am, chewing my nails as I continually refresh my inbox.

I do this to myself.

Patience is a virtue.  I am not a virtuous person.  I'm trying to be.

That is where I'm at currently.  If I seem to be distracted, that would be why.  I'm spending too much of my energy hoping for an answer before I've any right to expect one.

So, I have been, in the past couple of weeks, in my own special hell of my own making.  With luck, this time around, something will come of it.

Now, I have to go distract myself with French lessons.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I went to my godson's baptism on Sunday. It was a lovely service.  I did not burst into flames.  I do think, however, that perhaps Rumble by Zayde Wølf was perhaps the wrong choice for the day's anthem.  I was not, in fact, 'here to rumble.'

That, however, is not the reason I'm writing this blog post.  I'm writing because I have an announcement.  First, let me explain.  In September, 'round about the middle of the month, I went down a YouTube warren filled with videos about things people were doing to restore their local environments.  There was a mad lad from New Zealand, who was returning a privately bought sanctuary to wild forest.  The area was, thanks to human meddling, overrun by gorse, making it unusable for either grazing or crops.  Since that was the case, and it wasn't being used anyway, why not restore the native forests that once covered those hills.  So that's what the folks of Hinewai Nature Reserve did.

There's a great short film on the reserve called Fools and Dreamers.  I highly recommend people watch it.  It honestly filled my heart.

Further down the warren I went, until I landed on a video that perked my ears up.  It was a TedX talk about re-wilding Caledonia.  This TedX talk, in fact:

Now, I wrote a book that had the ancient forest of Caledonia as one of the settings.  Daughters of Britain begins and ends in Caledonia in the very late Iron Age.  I have a vague recollection of there being mention that Caledonia was once heavily forested, and home to not just deer, as it is now, but beaver, lynx, wolf, heron, and brown bear.  It was a lot more like Canada, in fact, than the Scotland we know today (I think I learnt this long ago, when I was researching the region for the purposes of academia and not fiction). 

I was utterly captivated by this plan and, seeing as how I had a book that was largely set in the area, I decided I can do something to help.  So I am.  I will be sponsoring a grove with treesforlife.org.uk, and splitting my royalties from Daughters of Britain with them. For every £12.00 I earn in royalties (So... something like $21.00 in Canadian), a tree will be planted in my grove.  It costs £6.00 to plant a tree.  I'd get the other £6.00.

This does mean that my grove will not be extensive.  Something like one tree might get planted every quarter, but hey, it's better than nothing.

Now, I've yet to sponsor the grove for a couple of reasons. The first is to start the grove I will need £106.00.  That's roughly $178.00 in Canadian funds.  So I'm still saving up for that, but I should have it soon.  The second reason is that the groves get to be named.  As this is all being done because of Daughters of Britain, I would like to name the grove for Mederei (the main character; a badass Briton I want to be like when I grow up).  However, Mederei's Grove​ sounds boring as hell.  I'd like to come up with a much cooler name for it.

So... if you feel you're up for it, I need a cool name for the grove I will be sponsoring with the royalties from Daughters of Britain.  If you've read the book, or not, what would you call a grove if you were to name it for the eldest of Boudicca's daughters, who spent her life fighting Rome for the freedom of her people?  Let me know.

I should have the grove sponsored in time for my birthday next month, and I'd love to have a good name picked out by then.

Trees, it seems, are having their day in the spotlight, because Trees For Life are not the only folks out there trying to make a difference.  For those of you who have been seeing this everywhere for the past couple of days, and might be confused, let me introduce you to #TeamTrees.

You see, a popular YouTuber by the name of Mr. Beast recently celebrated the acquisition of 20 million subscribers on his channel.  That's an insane number.  He asked his viewers what he should do to celebrate, and they came back with 'plant 20 million trees.'

Instead of scoffing, Mr. Beast was just like, "Alright, challenge accepted."

He acquired the help of former NASA employer and fellow YouTuber Mark Rober, partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation, and then enlisted the help of YouTubers everywhere (Jackspeticeye did an eight hour live stream for the cause yesterday. SciShow, Hank Green, Rhett and Link and many others have all joined in the fun) to enlist their viewers for the cause.

With every dollar raised, a tree will be planted - one for one.  So the goal is to raise $20 million by the end of 2020.  That means if everyone one of his subscribers donated just $1.00, that goal will be easily reached.  I'm really excited about this initiative, and I'm so thrilled to see this become a real thing that people are really pushing for.

If you have a dollar to spare, I do hope that you will head on over to teamtrees.org and donate it to plant a tree by the end of 2020.

We only have one planet, my loves.  Let's look after it.

Right, I have agents to go and query.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Still on the theme of the week - conventions in general and Can*Con in particular - I'm going to chat a bit about my meeting with Lee Harris and what I learnt from him.  You can thank Derek Künsken for today's topic.  It's by his suggestion.

Anyway, last Friday night I sat down to a one on one meeting with the editor guest of honour, Lee Harris of Tor.com.  Mr. Harris is a lovely man, who was not sure really what the meeting sessions were about.  Since I was in the same boat, we chatted for a little bit about stuff, and I asked him if he could come up with a better title for my WIP than the one I have.  He could not, and noted that the title was not terrible.  It wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible.  That made me feel a little better (he also said the same thing of the series title, and I was happier with that one.  Oh well).

Then I asked if he wouldn't mind reading my synopsis and helping me to sharpen it up because I was struggling so hard.  He took the paper I brought and offered me some seriously good advice.

First, he noted that the synopsis wasn't awful.  It was, as I already knew, a little blurby.  He also noted that the first time a character is mentioned in a synopsis, they should be in all caps.  I thought that was only a thing for screenwriting.  Apparently not so.  It's not something that I've heard mentioned in my research on how to write a synopsis, either.  In any case that's the first and easiest thing to change about my synopsis.

He then offered some exercises that he asks of writers he is interested in.  The first is to expand the synopsis to a full page.  Then pair that down to a single paragraph.  If that is successful, then bring it down again to a single sentence.  This sentence is not an elevator pitch.  It's a synopsis.  It should give some idea of the tone of the story and the flavour of writing in the novel.

As a general rule, if summing up the book in a single sentence (long sentences are permitted), then the idea is too complicated.  As a general rule.  Which means there are exceptions.  Still, it's a good rule to go by.

There wasn't much time for talking about anything else, as we had only about eight minutes.  Still, it was one of the most instructional eight minutes I think I've had, and I'm really glad I had that meeting.  I'm also über thankful that it wasn't a pitch session because I'd have been a terrible wreck of nerves and failing attempts at expectations management.  I could be more myself and not worry overmuch about trying to impress someone with my writing.

I'd like to thank Can*Con for providing the space and the time for such a meeting, and also Mr. Harris, who gave up his Friday evening to answer my questions and offer excellent advice on synopses.  The exercises suggested are also super helpful, and I have been working through them for Outworlder​.

This is what I've managed so far for the single sentence synopsis.

Good morning, Readers!

As of the writing of this, I am coming off of a wonderful three day speculative fiction convention in Ottawa. I’m of course, talking about Can*Con. I’ve mentioned it before. It was a hectic, people-ly, wonderful weekend. As wonderful as it all was, conventions, even 2019 Aurora Award winning ones (I had to brag. I had to), can be tricky for me to navigate. I am an extreme introvert – hardly a unicorn in the spec fic crowd, I know. While I love to be around my friends, or even friendly people, it can quickly become exhausting and even terrifying. Here’s how I survive a three day stint of extreme peopleing.

Good morning, Readers!

I have returned to normalcy... well... my kind of normalcy from a four day sojourn away.  By sojourn away, I mean of course only that I was rarely on social media due to a three day convention and a day of rest.  There was, I'm afraid, far too much going on for me to spend much time on social media.  Except yesterday.  Yesterday, my lack of social media engagement stemmed solely from the fact that I was largely a puddle of The-Great-British-Bake-Off-watching ooze.

Can*Con was, in fact, absolutely exceptional this year.  There was just this energy about the place.  It was lovely.  For me, it felt a little like a homecoming.  Though I arrived just before the dealer's room was officially open, and I was feeling rushed, AND I forgot my float (mate, the panic of not having any money in your cash box... OOPH), I was immediately happy.  This was my place.  Surrounded by my people.

I was fortunate in my placement this year, as I was beside my good friends JenEric Designs (and managed lots of snuggles from my goddaughter as a result), and across from Can*Con newcomer Heather Chambers, who not only has a really interesting-sounding debut novel, but was a lot of fun too.  By which I mean, my stupid dancing and other antics didn't irritate her.

As always, Can*Con was busy and wonderful and exhausting.  Friday saw my meeting with Lee Harris, from Tor, who was the editor guest of honour this year.  Mr. Harris is a lovely man, quite British (he was wearing a waistcoat, people), and really helpful.  It wasn't a pitch session, which was great, because if it was, I might have died.  Instead, he kindly gave me some pointers on my synopsis, and some things he might want ask for if he was interested in a manuscript. They're also handy exercises to do in general, so you can really get a good grasp on your story for yourself.  I'll be doing those exact things in the coming weeks.  The first thing I'll be doing is fixing up my synopsis properly, though.  Then, I think, this manuscript is ready for the multiple rejections that come from putting it on the market.  It's submissions time.... or will be, when the folks I want to look at it are open to submissions.

Saturday was particularly trying, as I spent the morning teaching marital arts, then fled to Can*Con to make it time for a panel at 1:00pm.  There I sat with the exceptional Sylvain Neuvel and Adam Shaftoe (who moderated exceptionally well) and we talked about endings and what, if anything, we owed our audience.  It was a great discussion, and I really enjoyed it.  It was also nice to meet the people I've been seeing in my online socials in person.  Kudos to the audience, who asked some really thought-provoking and interesting questions.

Afterwards, one of the audience members came up to me and very kindly said that she enjoyed me on that panel.  It's always lovely to hear that from people, and it made my afternoon.

The panel concluded just before 2:00pm, and, not having had anything to eat since 9:00am, I nabbed my friend Sue and we escaped for lunch.  I was back at my table shortly after 3:00pm, and managed to stay until the dealer's room closed, at which time I headed down to the venue for the Aurora Awards to set up for the live stream.  As I had a panel starting at the same time as the start of the Aurora Awards ceremony, I did a test, handed everything off to Tyler, who is on the Can*Con organising committee, and returned to the hotel to sit for a bit before heading into the panel.

In this panel, we talked about villains and why some villains gain cult followings and devoted fandoms.  That, too, was an exceptional discussion, and I had a lot of fun.  The audience here, also, was incredibly thought-provoking with their questions.  I adore audiences that ask, and posit, and give us something to feed off to fuel the talk.  Damn that was a good one.  A special shout out to Helena, who I think was the person in charge of the room.  She really did go above and beyond in making sure we panellists were looked after.  I was too tired and disorientated from running about like a mad thing to really make sure she knew I was grateful.  But yes, I felt very spoilt that panel.  Thank you, Helena!

I had intended to head back over to the awards to get the news and join in any post-award celebrations, but the ending of my panel also announced the end of the night for me.  Exhaustion hit like a truck, and so instead I went home.  Funnily enough, while waiting for the train, a man asked me in German if I spoke German.  When I said I didn't, he informed me that I looked European, not Canadian.  I... I'm not sure if that's a compliment, but it does make me wonder if all European women look exhausted and are covered in cat hair.

Alas, most of the people I was most rooting for to win did not, except for one.  Can*Con won for best fan organisation.  I am beyond thrilled that Can*Con won.  They've been deserving of the award for many years now and it's about damned time.  Can*Con is now an Aurora Award winning convention!  AHHHHHHHHH!  I'm so proud of the convention, and of Marie Bilodeau and Derek Kunsken and their team, without whom I wouldn't have this annual gathering of my people.  I'm so, so happy with this news.

Sunday was a much gentler day, thank heavens, and I spent the majority of it behind my table in the dealer's room, zoning in and out, playing with my goddaughter, and generally trying, and likely failing, to not make a nuisance of myself.  At the end of the day, I was interviewed for the Just Joshing podcast, and that was a great discussion, too.

Then it was home time.  I didn't have the means to attend the post-con party, which made me sad, but it's probably a good thing, as I needed the rest.

Rest I did.  I spent the majority of yesterday in bed, in recovery.  I left only to go vote, and then treat myself to a post-vote brunch (is it still brunch if it's past 2:00pm?), and went home again and starting binging the most recent series of The Great British Bake Off.

I did not stay up to watch the election results.  Instead I went to bed hoping against hope that Canada would, at the very least, not elect a horrible person as PM.  I'm pleased to say that we seemed mostly sensible.

As to the election results, most of me is incredibly happy to see that Scheer did not win.  He is a terrible person.  However, not an insignificant part of me is mourning that I cannot yet say, Prime Minister Singh.  Yet.  The NDP even lost seats, but Mr. Singh has managed to establish a base, one which I hope will grow.  Perhaps in the next federal election... perhaps then, I will be able to refer to him as Mister Prime Minister.

The Liberal minority government will do for now.  Trudeau has been disappointing, but he's also dealing with a lot of shite left over from Harper's terrible time at the helm, and I don't believe in my heart that he's a malicious person.  So, I'm alright with him for a while longer.  At least he's not Scheer.

Right, I've yapped on long enough.  There's a lot of work to be done today.  A lot of post-con catching up, some submission prep, and thence off to write some more.

​Ciao!