If only there was a way to work some chocolate into this...

I just stumbled upon the coolest contest, featuring many, many things I love!

1) Cats
2) Black cats
3) Funny pictures
4) An excuse to surf the internet
5) The opportunity to write
6) Books!

In my world, that's almost a perfect evening!

Author Sean Cummings has posted an LOL Cats contest, featuring Gary in a pink bathtub.

(Exhibit A)

All YOU have to do to win a copy of Sean's book UNSEEN WORLD is come up with the funniest caption for Gary's photo.

Here's my submission:

All Hail the Digital Age of Publishing!

Key Porter Books announced this week that it has "suspended publishing operations and is considering selling off parts of its backlist. "

Yikes!

Canadian publishers have had a rough couple of years, and there's been a lot of speculation about how digital publishing, e-books, etc. are going to change the industry. Yes, some traditional publishers will fall away in the shuffle. But I'm not sure that the digital reading revolution is going to be as terrible as some think.

Consider the music industry.

Back in my day - aka, the 80's - the sharing of music was very uncommon. You might copy an LP onto a cassette tape for yourself, to play in your oh-so-tiny (see my tongue in my cheek?) Sony Walkman, or receive a mixed tape from your boyfriend if he really liked you, but it wasn't a common thing to share and trade the albums you'd purchased. For one thing, they were pricey. And volatile. Tapes could get "eaten" by rogue equipment; albums were easily scratched/dirtied/warped. Copying things was also time consuming, as making a mixed tape using several LPs meant you had to sit through each song, pausing the tape recorder after each selection. It used to take all day.

Fast forward to 2011: all I have to do to get new music is click a couple of buttons. If I'm clever, I don't even need to pay for it. I also don't need cumbersome tapes or discs, because I can store it all on my hard drive, or an mp3 player. And even though I'd be breaking copyright, I can post that music on other file sharing sites, providing it for free to millions of others.

Digitization, then, for the music industry, has probably meant lower sales, and lower revenues.

But for the publishing industry, it may work in the opposite way.

Let's go back to the 80's. Or even 2005, before I had the inside scoop on royalties.

Books were the original victims of "file sharing". If I got a book I liked, I would recommend it to someone else. And then I'd hand it to them. And they'd hand it to someone else. And so on, and so on. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my friend Karen's $5.95 copy of Flowers in the Attic made it's way through every girl in my grade seven class without one of us ever going out to purchase a copy. Books are easy to share, because unlike albums, we aren't as likely to revisit them, even if we love them. Besides which: the more we love them, the more we want other people to read them, so that we can talk about them. And so they have traditionally been passed around, person to person, in much the same way that digital music is shared today.

Digital books will actually reverse this trend. Perhaps having learned from the music industry, e-readers don't make it easy to share files. And the equipment required to read an e-book is expensive - and personal - enough that even when I enjoy something, I am NOT going to hand over my Kindle to someone else to read. Instead, I'll recommend it. And they will buy their own copy, so both publisher and the author will receive the royalties that they deserve.

Here's another little secret that I learned years ago, but have been amazed to discover that so many others don't know: the publishing industry has traditionally had a ridiculous, environmentally irresponsible model that needed to be overhauled. Here's how it works: books are printed and shipped to bookstores. Six months go by. Bookstores need more space. They return unsold books to the publishers. Who else does that? Seriously. Can you imagine a grocery store sending unsold lettuce back to the farmer who grew it? There is absolutely no pressure whatsoever on the bookstore to research its product or order responsibly, because they aren't going to get stuck with anything unsold. And they don't even have to pay for return shipping, because massmarket paperbacks just get the covers ripped off of them and then get destroyed. The covers are much lighter and less expensive to ship, and tearing them off for return proves to the publisher that they actually went unsold, so the bookstore doesn't get billed for them. Picture the same system in a jewelery store:

Hmm..this batch of diamond rings didn't sell! Oh well!
We'll just rip the gemstones out of their settings and send back the gold to
prove it....then we don't have to pay our supplier for any of the
unsold rings, and the publisher can just absorb the manufacturing costs themselves! <>

Pretty dumb, eh?

If ebooks can eliminate that kind of waste and stupidity then bookstores and publishers can both get paid for the things that sell, and
nobody has to take any extra hits for things that don't.

Best of all, trees don't have to die for my art.

Where does inspiration end and Copyright Infringement begin?

I've been thinking about art, and copyrights, ever since Boxing Day, when I read about this issue in The Toronto Star. They had a cover contest for an "emerging artist," promising to publish the winning entry - themed around Christmas in Toronto - on their front cover on Christmas Eve. And pay the winner $2500! (One wonders what might have happened if there had actually been BIG NEWS that day. But I digress.)

The winning illustration was BEAUTIFUL - an impressionistic "streetcars-in-snow" painting that captures the beauty of the season amidst the hustle and bustle.

The problem, however, was that the winning artist may have been "inspired" by a photo she saw on Flickr. She didn't mention it to anyone until the photographer approached The Star, at which time she claimed to have looked at a lot of photos for inspiration. You can see the comparison here, but to me, the composition and tones are so similar that there is no question that her work is based on his.

So is it copying? Or being inspired? Would it have been different if she had contacted the photographer, or acknowledged him in the original article?

And just when I was feeling completely indignant on behalf of the photographer, my friend Kirsten Koza sent me this very cool website, wherein artist Dave Devries embellishes children's drawings to look like professional illustrations. So magnificent. Or so awful. Maybe he's enhancing their work to make it appear the way they envisioned it. Or maybe he's saying that the way they did it themselves wasn't actually good enough.

As an art teacher, I struggle with that concept all the time. The "less-is-more" part of me (which, I'm sure you've noticed, is only the part that does my hair, and cleans my house, and creates visual art - not the part that tries to write short blog entries and then can't stop....) wants my students NOT to write their names in giant letters on the middle of the page. NOT to make fifty snowmen floating on the page at all sorts of weird angles. NOT to entirely cover their shiny silver ornament, carefully decorated with a handprint that becomes snowmen, in red Sharpie marker. But I don't want to squash their creativity, or make them feel that their work isn't valid.

On the other hand, when they ask, and I can help by suggesting we move a line a little to the left, or by making it more symmetrical, I love to see how delighted and proud they are as their art becomes more like that which they imagined.

I think we all - young and old - would love to have an art makeover by Dave Devries.

As long as we know he's doing it.

Oops - now I have to do another supersized post!

(Ahem). So many things to write about. So little time to sit down and do so.

Logically, I should save my topics (or pre-write them) and post more regularly. But someof them are "timely", and realistically, I just don't know if I'll get around to doing them individually anyway. So this post will be both eclectic and lengthy. Grab a snack. But don't whine to me about gaining "three pounds". Three pounds is nothing. Three pounds is just eat some fibre and away you go. And when you are clearly at a healthy weight, complaining about "three pounds" I don't know what to say because a) you may just be looking for validation but b) if I DO think you've gained too much weight you're either going to make me a liar (no - really - you look great!) or a big meany (yeah, those pants do actually make you look kind of chunky). And c) it makes me think you're a bit of a meany because - seriously - I need to lose quite a few more than three pounds and if you are being that harsh with yourself, I can only imagine what you are thinking about me. (You can deny it, and I can even believe it's possible that you're not directing your judgment to me, because we're usually harder on ourselves than on others, but remember: I am a WRITER. I will IMAGINE your internal dialogue and PUT WORDS INTO YOUR MOUTH if you give me reason to do so. I'm not saying you shouldn't be proactive and lose that three pounds before it breeds into twenty...I'm just saying pretend you are French and deal with it quietly.

And speaking of breeding and multiplying...remember Me, The Cat Lady? The saga continues. I have't seen my neighbour's black and white cat (identified in the post as "Sylvester") since summertime. I did ask my neighbour about him, because I was worried...and he said Sylvester was "at the neighbour's". Then he got into his car and drove away. Fast forward to the beginning of wintery weather - the grey and white one (identified as "Tweety") is cold. He has nothing to eat. He is hanging out in the driveway under our boat. He begins sneaking in. Majik loves him. They snuggle up together in the basement. Often. I leave a note for my neighbour saying "he's over here a lot - come get him". I hear nothing. I don't want to be accused of stealing him...but he likes it here. A lot. I don't think of it as cat burglering when he's free to come and go at will. And when he's just next door. And when his "family" (can you call them that, if they ignore him???) has been notified of his whereabouts. "Tweety" doesn't make sense as a name without Sylvester around. I'm calling him "Merlin" now. It keeps up with the magic imagery, and it's also a type of airplane. Even the cat-resistors in the house (yes, that includes Spencer) love him. So one year after Majik joined me (happy anniverary little guy!) I have gone from cat-less to cat-blessed. How cool is that?

Other stuff going on around here:

I went skiing the other night, just before Christmas, by myself. I'm very comfortable by myself, and when I'm doing anything even remotely athletic, I actually prefer it, because I can do things at my own pace. I especially love going at night because it's never crowded, and it becomes almost meditative for me as I glide down the hills, or float up on the chair lift. The other night, they were making snow, which added to the ethereal feel. Here's a picture:

And, speaking of Christmas, we did something different this year and STAYED HOME on Christmas Eve. Wow. Loved it. Woke up rested and not feeling grinchy on Christmas Day. Must do it again. Watched It's a Wonderful Life, which I have seen before, but only once. Thought it was kind of funny that, had the Jimmy Steward character never been born, the whole town would have fallen to ruin, men would have been jailbirds, alcoholics, poverty-stricken and homeless but the worst fate they could come up with for the woman who was his wife was that, without him, she would have been "an old-maid librarian". HA! I'm trying to re-frame it, and look at it from the point of view that she would have missed out on having love in her life, which would be tragic for anyone, but still, it's funny. And it says a lot about the era in which the movie was produced.





My favourite gift was this, from my husband:

It's a framed compilation of all of my book covers (including the French version of Painting Caitlyn). So cool. Thank you, Lobster Press, for coordinating the colours to look great together!

And speaking of Lobster Press, I see from their website that their "Grim Hill" series is about to become an animated television series. Jealous.

Are you still reading? Thanks! Happy New Year!

The Holiday Newsletter...

Where did November go? Why didn't I post? I don't exactly know...

Same thing happened to 2010 (and, to be honest, pretty much every decade since 1989).

Which leads me to today's hot topic: the holiday newsletter.

This is the time of year when magazines, bloggers, sitcoms and even comic strips are criticizing the holiday newsletters that some people send in their Christmas cards.

I, for one, am not going to take it anymore. I'm going to shout it out into the blogosphere: I LOVE HOLIDAY NEWSLETTERS!

And, yes, I write them, too.

I love catching up with my busy friends' lives via their holiday letters. I adore hearing about the great things happening in their families, and I don't consider it "braggy" for someone to share happy news, because I am happy FOR THEM. (Your kid made the honour roll? AWESOME! You finally took that tropical vacation? Hooray! More people should do that, because it's good for your health, and good for relationships, and actually makes the world economy go round...)

It means so much more to me to read a letter than to just open a card with a generic signature, because it reconnects me with the people who sent it.

Yes, it would be better to spend face to face time with people. Yes, the telephone is always an option. But timezones and schedules are often hard to sync, and even when calls happen, it's impossible to say everything.

So I'll probably be sending my own newsletter again, complete as always with pics of the dog and cat in funny Santa hats, because I don't have any kids to include. Some of the people I send it to might think it's hokey, or braggy when I say I published two books this year, but I hope that the people who care about me will delight in my good fortune as I delight in theirs.

On Friendship

I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately. Partly, I think, because of my recent visit to my former high school, and reunion with some university pals. Then, someone posted a comment about my books saying that they love books about friendship. And when I was doing the TRT Book Club interview, and thinking about how we all write about certain themes, I realized that friendship is one of my themes.

You know how some people spend their whole lives looking for that one perfect romantic partner, because they've read all the romances and seen all the movies about how it's supposed to be? And then the real people - the ones who burp and have messy hair and leave their dirty socks lying around - never seem to measure up to the Handsome Prince on a white horse that Person Number One imagined in their dreams?

I think I've spent a lot of my life suffering from that same kind of delusion - only instead of looking for the Handsome Prince/Romance, I've spent a lot of time in search of The BFF (Best Friend Forever).

Don't get me wrong: I have some amazing friends. Amazing. People who let me cry all over them for months on end when I needed to. People who let me call them out of the blue when they haven't heard from me in months, and are totally there for me anyway. People who have celebrated birthdays with me since we were nine years old. People who honoured me first by choosing me as a maid of honour, and then again by letting me do it a second time when their first marriage didn't "take". People who make me laugh and make me smarter and make me feel good about myself.

But just as happens with romances, I've had my "break-ups", too. Sometimes it's circumstantial, but other times, there has been no explanation, and they have simply disappeared, leaving me with that "it's not you, it's me..." feelling that always makes you think it really is you.

Which it may be. Because maybe I've got my own "intimacy issues". While part of me thinks I want that BFF who will there for me every day -- and who will want me to be there for her - another part of me - a part that I think is more authentically me - doesn't always want that kind of pressure. (I know, I know - if it's true friendship, it shouldn't feel like pressure, right?)

I love having time to myself! I get crabby when it doesn't happen. Ask my husband. Or my sister. Or my mom. Or anyone who has ever spent more than six hours straight with me. Even if we're doing something "fun".

Apparently, it started early. My mom tells me that even when I was very young, my sister would play and play and play with other children, while I would hang out for a bit, then quietly remove myself, go into my room, and just be.

I'm still like that. I enjoy hanging out with other people. I adore good conversation. But I need time alone too much to give all I have to any one "best" friend.

Instead, I have many, have had many, and hope to have many yet to come.

And in the meantime, I'll keep writing about friendship. And maybe I'll learn something about it along the way.

What to do on a November weekend?

Why not curl up on a good book?