On litfic, and books of all sizes and shapes

As usual, the fab Will Johnson has inspired bookish thoughts in me, and another entry in my blog. Will's blog is just so great -- it's conversational, and intriguing, and funny, and I always come away from his posts eager to pick up my pen. (And trust me, these days I need all of the prodding I can get.) He always makes me see the world differently, in however small a way.

His latest post, filled with all of the nostalgia for good television and reading alike, had a smile on my face a sentence in. It made me think of my own forays into television this year, which haven't been nearly as extensive as Will's (I get lost in TV, and nothing else happens. My dishes pile up, the laundry goes undone, etc. So it's best to just leave it alone, or parcel my TV out in little bits, like my current one-episode-a-night non-marathon of Mad Men), but most of all it made me think of the books that I read while growing up, the ones that bring back the childhood, and the books that I devour now to keep me sane, and fill my heart, and make this whole writing business possible day in and out.

In praise of lovely little bookstores ...

Today my friend Julie opened her bookstore, JH Gordon Books, in the heart of downtown Hamilton. I'm so happy for her! In an age where it seems like all of the world's bookstores are dying or soon-to-be doomed, it's refreshing to know that there are still brave souls out there who think the mantle of The Independent Bookseller is a nice thing to wear.

Three cheers for JH Gordon Books!

So professional and cheery with her customers!

Author photos and all that jazz

A few weeks ago I had my author photo redone. Some time before that, ECW had sent me an email asking for an author photo to use in promotion and/or on the book jacket (!!!! Book jacket! My book jacket! Holy smokes, it's actually a Real Thing!), and I'd spent a few days going through self portraits that I'd taken over time. It rather quickly became obvious that none of them were really what I wanted on the back of that book -- even though one of them ended up being the photo that TLA used on their website.

This was further solidified when I sent a few shots to a friend and asked him what he thought re: their book cover potential. He oh-so-diplomatically wrote back and said, I'd be happy to take new ones for you. Heh. Strike one for Amanda and her somewhat photography skillz.

Anyway, after a delightful photo session in which I spent an awful lot of time squinting into the sun (I appear to be developing vampire-ish tendencies, it would seem), we got some fairly decent shots. And after some hemming and hawwing and further whittling down of the list, I found my author photo.

Author. Photo. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but yesterday I sent it off to ECW and thought, I've wanted my photo on the back of a book since I was five years old. 

The eternal conundrum

I've been thinking about going back to school.

Which is ridiculous. Completely. utterly ridiculous. Don't I have more than enough degrees already? Don't I have more than my fair share of student debt? Haven't I talked time and time again, on this very blog, about how one doesn't need to garner an MFA in order to be a writer?

More importantly: don't I already have an MFA ... of sorts? I have a Master's degree. I have a Master's degree in Creative Writing from my *first choice* of universities. And when I got that paper in hand four years ago, didn't I pause for a moment and think, "Hurrah! It's all done now!" ... ?? DIDN'T I???

Making Money ... or not

I've been ruminating on this post for the past few days, and this morning a happy coincidence arrived in the form of Seth Godin doing an interview on Q. Seth Godin, as some of you may know, is known to many as the Doom And Gloom Man of publishing. He's an author himself and has worked in the publishing industry for the better part of 25 years, and for the past two years or so he's come out with increasingly dire predictions about the future of publishing, the future of books, and what all of this means for us lowly, little authors.

Last year, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, author Ewan Morrison set out a spectacularly bleak argument for the demise of books that had me more than a little depressed. Mr, Godin, with his arguments about book income and what authors can/should expect from today's publishing world, seemed all set to plunge me into another depression, especially seeing as how I'd spent the past few days tossing around the idea that it might just be time for me to start trying to make money from my own work.