Month: March 2024

Things ‘To-Do’

Earlier this week, I looked at my list of things to do, and realized I hadn’t yet booked the hall for my book launch for Charybdis. We’ll be doing a Zoom launch with my wonderful publisher, JC Studio Press in the UK, but I’ll also be doing an in-person launch for family and friends towards the end of May. So, as I said, I looked at my to-do list and then promptly forgot about it because a to-do list is only valuable when you’re actually looking right at it, and I probably should have a to-do list in my car that says ‘Look at your to-do list’ because that’s where I was when I suddenly remembered that I had NOT, in fact, called the hall in Princeton. Princeton, Ontario. And I specify that for reasons which will shortly become clear.

I was in my car, driving (and I don’t know why I needed to specify THAT because what else would I be doing in my car—reading?) and I was super-excited because I had just gotten an email from Value Village offering me 40% off on accessories and that, of course, includes purses, and I’ve been doing very well lately in the fancy purse resale market, and if I sell enough purses, I can justify keeping a couple of the really nice ones, right? But suddenly I had an epiphany about calling the hall, and even though you’re not allowed, I was on a deserted back road so I got out my phone and googled Princeton and District Museum and Archives. It should be noted at this point that I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses, but I wasn’t SUPPOSED to be reading (note: this set of circumstances apparently negates my previous sarcastic comment about reading in the car quite devastatingly, doesn’t it?) and I saw the number to call and I hit the button, activating my car phone. The phone rang and rang, then someone picked up:

Man (groggily): Hello…?
Me: Hi…is this the Princeton Museum?
Man: Yes, but we don’t open until 10. You’re calling a little outside opening hours.

At this point, I was confused. It was 11 am. Was he drunk? Because he sounded drunk.

Me: Okay. Anyway, I was in the library branch yesterday and the librarian told me if I wanted to book the museum for my book launch, I’d have to call because your hours are hit and miss.
Man: We’re open every day, 10 to 4.

Now, I was even more confused. I know for a fact that the museum is NOT open every day—in fact, I was there yesterday and it was NOT open. But the man was obviously drunk so…

Me: I had a book launch there last year, and I’d love to book the museum again—everybody loved the space so much.
Man: You had a book launch here last year? What’s your name?

I told him my name.

Man: I don’t recall that. You say it was last year?
Me: Yes. We used the theatre space and the hall. When would be the best time for me to come by and pay for the rental? I’m just heading to Brantford right now so if you’re there until 4, I could be there around 2.
Man: Brantford?
Me (thinking, Wow, this dude is HAMMERED): Yeah, just up the road. Like literally 20 minutes from Princeton?
Man: Where are you calling from? Like, what province? Because I’m in British Columbia…
Me: WHAT?! I’m in Ontario.
Man: So on the other side of the continent then? I don’t think you’ll be able to make it by 2.

Can you believe that there’s actually ANOTHER place also called the Princeton and District Museum and Archives in this country? Yeah, I’d called a town in a time zone 3 hours behind my own, so no wonder he sounded so groggy—I’d probably woken him up, although why the museum man was even answering the museum phone from his own bed is anyone’s guess. And then I compounded my lack of geographical knowledge when I told Ken about it:

Me: And then he said he was on the other side of the ‘continent’. What a dummy—I think he meant COUNTRY, lol.
Ken: You know we’re part of the continent of North America, right?
Me: Look at these cool purses I got today.

At any rate, ‘call Princeton Museum in Ontario’ is still on my to-do list.

In other news, Charybdis is out in the world and so far it’s been getting excellent reviews so thank you to everyone who’d taken the time to give it some stars or say something nice about it—it means the world to me!



Lost In Translation

You may remember that Ken and I recently turned part of our house into a space for a Writer’s Retreat and it turned out beautifully. But the one thing I really wanted, the secret library door, had proven to be logistically not possible. The weight of the books alone would make the door possibly pull off its hinges, and other options, like buying books and cutting them down so only the spines were attached was financially not feasible. But then I was on Amazon and saw this amazing wallpaper/sticker type deal that looked like books on a shelf and was long enough that it could be simply stuck to the door, giving the illusion of a bookshelf that would hide the entrance to the library/writing room. I ordered it and it arrived last week. It was in a long tube, so I unrolled it. You may be shocked to learn that it wasn’t quite what I expected.

Me: Those books are REALLY big, like bigger than what a book should be.
Ken: They didn’t look that big in the Amazon picture.
Me: I don’t know if this is going to fool anyone.
Ken: I can always put molding on it to make it seem like there are real shelves…

Some of the books had plain spines, but some of them had titles. And then I started looking closely at the book titles…

Me: What kind of book title is this? ‘Tales Of Homeopathic Gherkin’?!
Ken: This one says, ‘Conquest and Mushroom’. I don’t think these are real books.
Me: I’m inclined to agree.

The titles of the books were all, with one exception, absolutely bizarre, like someone had taken perfectly normal book titles and then translated them into another language, and then translated them back, like the way the movie Twister was translated into Run! Run! Cloudzilla! in Chinese . The one exception was King of Darkness, which could very well be someone’s take on Lord of the Flies or Dracula or something like that. But I thought, just in case anyone asked, that I should have a synopsis of each of these books so that we wouldn’t take any flack for our cheap and obviously reverse-translated weird-ass secret library wall. So here are the books that grace the entrance to the writing retreat, and here’s what they’re about:

1) Tales of Homeopathic Gherkin

This charming collection of stories focuses on a young man in a bit of a pickle after eschewing traditional medicine in favour of herbal remedies. That is, until he comes across Sally Zucchini, an Italian naturopath who shows him the joys of a good brine bath. It’s a truly ‘dill’-ightful read.

2) Brave Slipper

Brave Slipper is the story of ‘the other slipper’—the one Prince Charming DIDN’T try to jam on Cinderella’s foot. Alone and bereft of her partner, the crystalline orphan embarks on a rescue mission to save her sibling from being ground up, melted, and turned into a bong.

3) Conquest and Mushroom

Speaking of bongs, this fun romp centres on a troop of conquistadors who experience a group hallucination after imbibing some homeopathic fungi. Believing that they are now famous disco dancers, they take the world by storm with their ‘hustle’.

4) Spell Ingredients

I-N-G-R-E-D-I-E-N-T-S

5) Dawn Fly Stuff

In the vein of Apocalypse Now, this intense war retrospective was made famous by the line, “There’s nothing like the smell of RAID in the morning.”

6) Sapphire of Magical Sniper

Raised in a small village on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, Steve The Sorcerer finds fame when he discovers the Holy Sapphire of Sparta. Using its magical powers to destroy his enemies, mostly other two-bit magicians and by destroy, we mean reveal how they do their card tricks, Steve becomes known as the Magical Sniper (and also, ‘that dick, Steve’). Until the Sapphire is stolen by his arch-nemesis, Vlad the Impersonator, a pseudo-magician slash ventriloquist who hides the precious gemstone in his dummy, also named Steve. When Steve goes missing (the dummy, not the dick), the whole world of magic is in an uproar. Will Steve be found in time to help Vlad get on Canada’s Got Talent? Stay tuned!

7) 2037

The year is 2037. Suzanne finally has her secret library room…

Cat In The Hat

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law messaged me. She was out shopping and had picked up a book that she thought I would like. “What kind of book?” I asked. She sent me a photo of herself holding it. The picture was a little out of focus, but it was a cat. The cat was wearing a hat. “It’s a book about making hats for cats,” she responded. How cool is that? I thought. I can learn how to crochet, or knit or something. Maybe I could make a bunch of hats and sell them at the market. I’m no stranger to the textile arts, if you may recall, having halfway completed a patchwork quilt for my daughter before giving up completely and letting my neighbour finish it. And when I was a teenager, I knit myself not only a scarf, but also a whole sweater. It took months, but I did it, and now, I could see myself in the wing chair by the fire, merrily making head cozies for kitties.

And then yesterday, my brother and my nephew came for a quick visit.

Nephew: Hi, Auntie Susu. Mom said to give you this.
Me: Oh, my cat hat book! I can’t wait to start knitting little cat hats.
Nephew: Uh…I don’t think you knit them.

He pointed to the cover. There, above the very large title Hats For Cats: How To Craft Fetching Headgear For Your Feline Friends, was a much smaller title that read “Cat-Hair”. The book is “Cat-Hair Hats For Cats”. Yes, the entire book, all 136 pages of it, was how to design and create hats for your cat using their own cat hair—collecting it, rolling it up, and then shaping into…hats. For your cat. The authors of the book describe themselves as a “fun-loving couple from Japan” who use the hair from their two cats to make hats and then make their cats wear their own hair as fashion accessories. Except one of their cats died 4 years ago, and they still use his hats and put them on other cats’ heads, which I suppose is no different from a human wearing a human hair wig, the hair from which belonged to someone who died, which I imagine happens more than we would care to know about. The introduction to the book ends with the statement “Making these hats has become our life’s work”. According to the book, they’ve made more than 160 hats to date, and all I can say about that is HOW MUCH HAIR DO YOUR CATS LOSE?!

There are several chapters, including ‘Animal Hats: Transform your cat into different animals’, like cows, elephants, and koala bears. There are Birthday Hats, Graduation Hats, Holiday Hats, and one called The Coonskin Hat, like it’s not bad enough that you’re putting your cat’s own dead hair on its own head, but now you’re shaping it like roadkill?

But the best section was Character Hats, with the perennial favourite and everyone’s obvious choice: Amelia Earhart, a hat with aviator goggles made out of cat hair with the recommendation that you can finish the outfit off with a jaunty red scarf.

And I’m not trying to make fun of this book (well, maybe just a little), because it’s obvious that the people who put it together WORSHIP their cats, and to be honest, after going through this entire book, it IS kind of adorable in its own weird way. Just like me. And now, since I no longer have a cat, I’ll need to go to my neighbours’ houses on a pretense and secretly brush their cats because The Princess Leia is something no cat can live without.

Ho F*cking Ho

Charybdis Is Here!

For this week’s post, I’m forgoing the humour because I’m just too excited. No, I didn’t buy a new clock or Paris painting (okay, that’s a lie, but it’s a REALLY nice painting and the clock was just a very small one, more of a watch, really)–the excitement is over the fact that my new novel Charybdis has been released! Huge thanks to the amazing JC Studio Press and publisher Jane Cornwell, who believed in this book from the beginning. I knew that when I handed the manuscript over to her, the end result would be beautiful and wonderful and it is! And a huge thank you also to the advance readers who gave me such fantastic blurbs–they couldn’t all fit on the cover so there are also pages inside the book devoted to those people who took the time to read and review. Finally, I’m immensely grateful to my family for their unwavering support and especially to my aunt, Margaret Randall, whose poetry was so integral to the story–I love you very much! Charybdis is available for Kindle, in paperback, and even hardcover and you can purchase it here!

If you do buy a copy and you enjoy it, please leave a review–you know I’ll appreciate it. Also, if any of my blogger friends would like to review it, let me know!

Not Today, Satan; Things My Mother Left Behind Release!

This week, I had to get blood taken. I absolutely hate having that done, but my new family doctor wanted to do benchmark bloodwork before Christmas and it showed that my cholesterol was slightly elevated:

Me: What would cause that?
Doc: Mostly diet.
Me: Ahem…does drinking wine cause high cholesterol?
Doc: No, not really.
Me (internally VERY relieved): I’m prepared to cut any food out of my diet that I need to.

Turns out that the foods she identified were potatoes, salmon, steak, rice, and pasta (even the gluten-free kind). So yes, literally ALL the things I like to eat. She recommended the Mediterranean diet, and I’ve been trying to follow it, but there’s only so much chicken and quinoa a girl can eat. Otherwise, I eat pretty healthy foods and thinking more about it, that’s a complete lie and I should be surprised that my cholesterol isn’t worse. So anyway, on Thursday, I went to the lab to get blood taken.

Lab Tech: When was the last time you ate?
Me: About 45 minutes ago. I had fries from McDonald’s and a Pepsi. Considering this is a cholesterol test, that wasn’t a great idea…
Lab Tech: Haha. NO.

I rolled up my sleeve and turned my head, and when the needle went in it really hurt. I looked back and the tech had a perturbed look on his face, and then I remembered that he was taking blood from my right forearm, you know, the one with the words THE SEVENTH DEVIL splashed across it underneath devil eyes.

Me: I should probably explain—it’s the title of a book…I mean a book that I wrote…it’s not about Satan worship or anything…well, there are demons in it…anyway, I have one on my other arm too!

I showed him my left forearm and The Dome tattoo which graces it but he still didn’t seem convinced. He just muttered, “Okay,” and then handed me a cotton ball to stop the bleeding. In retrospect, perhaps the bulk of my lower arm wasn’t the best place to get a large devil tattoo as I’ve had to explain it on more than one occasion to a medical professional holding a large needle. And to add insult to injury, I got my lab results back yesterday and my cholesterol is STILL high–not quite as high as before, but still slightly higher than it should be. Screw you, quinoa. (Although I actually like quinoa, so maybe I just need to cut out the Mickey D’s).

In other news, Baxter House Editions has just released its second publication: the gorgeous poetry collection Things My Mother Left Behind by Susan Richardson. Susan writes the blog Stories from the Edge of Blindness and hosts a phenomenal weekly podcast called A Thousand Shades of Green. Things My Mother Left Behind is about the undeniable connections between love and grief, joy and pain. It is an exploration of one woman’s journey through the loss of loved ones, loss of sight, loss of control and innocence. It is about escaping into darkness and discovering light.

You can buy it here!