The camera tells the tale of why I might be egregiously late! Or wreck my back, whichever comes first.

Cat occupying Authorial Editing Chair (aka Perfectly Splendid Nap Place). The war has been going on since the weather turned colder. It shows no signs of easing up. I am (mostly) winning. But not always.

And the sad consequences of the above:

This is the Suffering Author Seat, to which retreats must be made when the damned cat looks WAY too comfortable. This does not not, dare I say, offer an ideal editing position. 

Need I say more? Really?

Journal post or editing … journal post or editing? Tough call. This is, of course, shamelessly meta as I am writing said journal post, therefore … hmm, as a Tristram Shandy digression, I know I have mentioned Laurent Binet’s remarkable novel of the Heydrich assissination, HHhH. Let me plug it again. Put in mind of it by his very self-aware technique. The novelist is very much in the novel.

This novelist will be only briefly in the journal today, though. Deadlines are real. And A Certain Person in production department advised yesterday that she’s off tomorrow for a long Asian holiday which means, of course, that she can’t possibly enjoy herself unless she knows Your Author is fiercely aware of said deadline before she flies off.

There may be a pattern here … some will recall a marketing director of yesterbook sending me to Winnipeg in dead of winter, to do (among other things) a photo shoot outdoors in way sub-zero, under a snow-laden tree, without my coat, as the photographer thought it would ‘look really out there if you are just in shirtsleeves, eh?’ … marketing person, meanwhile, was on beaches of Costa del Sol, though she did kindly promise to check emails to see if I was alive.

Teasing aside (for the nonce), deadlines at this stage are legit … publishers queue up printers and proofreaders and apparently Penguin and Roc are (for some reason) doing other books this spring. This means that if a manuscript backs up too much, others do, too. I have ‘good soldier’ in my genetic coding, and hate to be the cause of those problems. I also have ‘cynical author’ in me, and I would rather it be me moving fast, than someone else, who might make mistakes. A writer with only his or her book to worry about can focus more. Someone at the publisher has a lot going on across a lot of titles.

I’ve been furnishing proof of progress. Here’s the latest. Yes, I could be faking these, but I ain’t…

In 1984 the World Fantasy Convention was held in Ottawa, in the month my first book, The Summer Tree, was to be published. There are at least half a dozen great stories from that weekend. I just told one of them again on Saturday because Peter Straub (who co-stars in the story as the Innocent Villain) was at our Charles Brown dinner.

But one story, for here and now, is this: Martin Springett had just become an acquaintance, on the way to being the good friend he’s been ever since. He’d done the splendid, distinctive cover painting for the upcoming Canadian edition of the book (the worldwide first edition) and I had just arranged with him to buy the original. With nothing but instinct guiding me, I pushed him hard to clear the time and budget to come up to WFC. He listened. I claim he owes me for life.

Long story short, his artwork was seen in the art show there by David Hartwell of Arbor House and David Fielder of Allen & Unwin, my other editors, and picked up by both the US and UK for my trilogy (and eventually many, many foreign language editions). The painting was also seen by a number of other editors, and Martin received commissions to do artwork for their books, too. Eventually, he segued towards illustrating children’s books, and writing his own … but WFC in Ottawa, that art show, was definitely the start.

So, flash forward to last weekend. Martin came by here to collect all three paintings to show them together for the first time at a WFC – the one here in Toronto. He told me yesterday, dropping them off again, that he’d never had such a response at an art show, as so many people came to find him and say how thrilled they were to see them hanging together after all these years (he sells them as posters on his website, incidentally).

I know for a fact that a number of my initial readers were drawn to pick up The Summer Tree because they loved the cover. Maybe I owe him for life. Maybe that’s the way good friends should end up feeling.

In any case, here’s a picture he just sent me:

Note the additional dragons below The Darkest Road on the right. Springett=Dragons!

I didn’t even have to travel, WFC was here in Toronto, and I still feel as if I am returning to my life from far away. Conventions and conferences do that to you, don’t they?

It was a very good weekend, all credit to Con Chair Peter Halasz and his team. The usual blurred sequence of breakfasts, lunches, drinks, dinners, drinks, room parties with drinks. I recall, out of the mists, a really good rum quietly offered by Sally Harding of the Cooke Agency after their cocktail party, and a terrific dinner Saturday night, the Charles Brown dinner, as some of us think of it – a tradition in his memory. (Charlie founded and embodied Locus Magazine, and our dinners together were a highlight of any con for me.)

The line of the weekend may have been Rodger Turner’s, one of the World Fantasy’s executive members. As I was headed up to a publisher’s party around 9:30 one of the nights, I saw Rodger approaching along the hotel’s main floor. He looked tired. ‘Rodger, you okay?’ I asked. He sighed. ‘Guy, I can’t take these crazy 10:30 nights any more!’

The Saturday reading from River of Stars was a lot of fun. A very good crowd, and they were kind enough to laugh when the passage was funny, and not to laugh when it was’t! My kind of audience. At the awards ceremony, I was asked to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the quite wonderful Alan Garner, and to read out the letter he’d sent. It gave me a chance to very briefly express how pleased I was that the World Fantasy committee had conferred that distinction on him. Garner’s a powerful, passionate, challenging, important writer, and has been for 50 years.

Back in harness editing this morning, with a publisher meeting tomorrow, up at the Penguin offices to discuss some ideas they want to propose. And there is now a New York trip to be planned for the near future. I tend to start these online Journals as the marketing plans and production process for a book ramp up … and that’s exactly what is happening.

There were a lot of queries on the weekend, and I knew there would be, so I armed myself with the facts beforehand: the ARCs (bound galleys) will indeed be going out to variously selected targets, as actual copies or e-files, in early January. I still have some trouble processing how early that is, for an April book, but that’s the new game we all play…

Back to the red pencil work, cyber-version.

Okay, so give me a hard time if you like, but having very well-made cocktails midday, autumn, grey and rainy, sitting in a handsome 50s-look bar under a copper ceiling (!) with good company (albeit Australian) made me think of John Cheever. No, not ‘Mad Men’, I am (a little) more sophisticated than that. The Museum Tavern was perfect for the day.

Jonathan Strahan, reviews editor of Locus, came downtown from the convention hotel and brought Alisa Krasnostein, Publisher of Twelfth Planet Press. JS and I tend to try for at least one meal each time we’re at a convention. We covered a lot of ground, including why their most direct flight here was through Dubai. (Answer: coming from Perth, not Sydney.)

One of the virtues of a convention like WFC is the chance to get snapshots of the publishing mood from professionals in other countries. Why does the U.K. always ‘get’ Australian rights (and New Zealand, India, South Africa…)? How do Australian houses feel about it? How do readers feel? Actually, they haven’t all been thrilled to bits. One interesting law (which I’ve known about for a while) mandates that if the house that controls Australian rights does not have actual books on sale there within six weeks of a title appearing elsewhere in the English-language world, they lose their exclusive rights and must compete in an open market with houses in other countries (read: America).

This emerged because Australians became increasingly irked with the U.K. having their territory but sending 50-100 books by slow steamer, to get there … eventually. I’m exaggerating, but not wildly, according to my contacts Down Under. That law can actually make for some tricky timing and negotiations…

(I did say I’d use this Journal to do some backstories about the nature of the book world. No, that doesn’t mean naming the cocktail Strahan picked from a really very good list.)

Here in Canada, our biggest literary prize, the Giller, was awarded last night to Will Ferguson for 417. He’s another Penguin (not a Random Penguin, the merger will take a year or so, and the name will be the deadly correct Penguin Random House). It was major cause for celebration at Penguin last night and today – and on Twitter where the Tag Team Tandem were quite properly busy. (I mean, if they’ve lured me onto Twitter, they have to be there, right?)

I head up to WFC tomorrow to do a podcast interview, show up at the Opening Ceremony to support Gary Wolfe (good friend, MC this year) Peter Halasz, also a good friend and this year’s Chair, and the Guests of Honour who include John Clute (see earlier post here).

Then I am moderating a panel at the odd hour of 5 PM. It is right after the opening, so I plan to express my thanks to all of them for being our warmup act. (Good? Bad? Terrible joke?) Topic is “Fantasy and the Wilderness” and it interests me (that, need I say, doesn’t always happen with panel topics). I am allegedly a fierce moderator though haven’t (yet) used handcuffs and whips on panelists. Leaving that for entirely different sorts of author…

I am being told people like when I put photos in here. I will therefore manifest my almost unspeakable courage by attaching a picture taken so long ago there was no such thing, children, as the WWW (there was colour for photos, but this one is b&w, obviously). That’s the Canadian non-fiction writer Jack Batten, the English novelist Julian Barnes, et moi, before a reading night. No points for guessing who is who. Points for keeping a straight face, or applauding my bravery, or riffing on ‘where are the snows of yesteryear…’ Jack is probably explaining to us that he has heard of something called a ‘word processor’ that makes typing and revising easier and he predicts all writers will start using it. We are obviously being kind to him.

Before a reading at ‘ADifferent Drummer Books’. Long ago. Really long ago.

… but the editing review on screen is actually pretty straightforward. It depresses me how reasonable I seem to be becoming.

Five chapters in (though I am going to try not to be boring with a running count!). As always, Catherine’s focused and precise, and she’s done so many of my books that by now that she ‘gets’ my ear and rhythms. We natter back and forth a bit on some sentences, commas, tenses … but it is pretty low-grade by now and usually if she asks for some detail to be made clearer she’s right. (I can get way too far inside my awareness of characters and setting, the perspective of someone coming fresh to the story is important. Others do this for me too, but she’s reading most closely.)

I value it hugely when she catches me in a slip. I had a long scene with seven men, towards the end of it I mentioned ‘six men’ and she spotted it. I always write ‘good catch’ in the margin (e-margin now), and breathe a sigh of relief.

The only negative about doing this electronically is that it is harder to change my mind. I’ve often, in the past, rejected something she suggests, then moved down the page, glanced back up, thought about it again, and accepted. Or the reverse. It is trickier to look at two phrasings or punctuations at once now. Having said that, in the end it is just a shift in mental process.

I can do that. Yankees are done in baseball, I am well-and-truly focused.

Need to do a post about the upcoming World Fantasy Convention. It is here in Toronto this year. I’m giving the first public reading from River of Stars. And connecting with a great many friends. The hotel bartenders are in 2-a-day workout sessions.

Catherine Marjoribanks wrote me last night – she’d finished the copy-editing. Added that she had teared up reading, even though in ‘hyper-critical editing mode’. Yes, this pleased me a lot. Can’t imagine why. (I did check with her before mentioning this, she said she was happy to own up to it.)

Here’s a good example of the hyper-critical mode, what copy-editors do. She queried in the quick note whether I wanted councillors or counselors, the men giving counsel to the emperor. I needed to think. Opted for the former, as it focuses on the position, the office, the status (not the act of offering counsel), and in the world of River of Stars that’s key. Is that over-analytical? Not for me … I love that she’s on the case with these things. And that it makes me fine tune my own word choices.

Yesterday was a majorly (!) social day. Coffee with UK agent, lunch with a restaurant full of Penguin authors in for the Festival (and editors, sales directors, marketing people). Of course Charidy and Beth, the tag-team senior marketing duo who got me to Twitter, both tweeted about it. I replied. We got onto cocktails. Of course.

I think I may tweet more about cocktails. After lunch was another sit down with Nicole – President of Penguin Canada and my editor, then the thunderously loud, dense, jammed IFOA cocktail reception. Collapsed at home after to watch baseball and the debate – two sporting events?

But now, as of less than an hour ago, the copy-edited manuscript has been couriered from Sandra at Penguin. (Catherine sent it there electronically this morning.) Massive damned thing, sitting behind me on the second desk here. I do this run-through on paper not on screen. Hard copy. I am aware that Sandra probably rolls her eyes and mutters about Vexing Authors but I really like to see each novel on paper once before it goes to be typeset.

I feel it staring at me as I sit here. I have two red pens with which to defend myself. Am ready to turn and do battle…

Handle With Care

A: Half of them don’t need lightbulbs … they are reading off iPads.

IFOA Season. I’m off in a bit, possibly even wearing a tie (decision yet to be made), for four meetings and functions today – and I don’t even have any public performances this year. The International Festival of Authors is in full swing, and 100+ writers have gathered in Toronto … to watch San Francisco vs St Louis Game 7 tonight, No. To warch Obama vs Romney tonight. No. To check out the hotel bar and …

But yes, there are a lot of writers here. IFOA was begun a long time ago by a man named Greg Gatenby and has flourished. A somewhat controversial figure towards the end of his tenure, Gatenby is to be credited for creating and maintaining a literary event here in Toronto that is one of the most important in the world. He initiated a concept of treating his guest writers exceptionally well (there are stories) and IFOA glows brightly on the yearly map of such festivals. The culture media here (what’s left of that) and the publishing world (Canada’s is centred in Toronto, of course) go just a tiny bit crazy.

It is fun, and lively, and the gods know that the book world needs all the attention and support it can get. If I sometimes shake my head, with two scotches  in me, about the blurring of what makes good writing with what makes good stand-up comedy from an author or mellifluous performance, that’s nothing new in our society. We do steadily blur any line between the work and the maker. I worry at times about the gifted writer who doesn’t much like microphones, Q&A’s, cocktail parties, the people who became writers because they weren’t very much into social interaction let alone public performance.

Still, every age shapes the skill-sets that signify for it, and right now Twitter, Facebook, Journals such as this one, and being charming on stage are major elements of the literary process. And I do know that Dickens and Shaw and Dylan Thomas, among others, were stellar because of their performing, too.

Means lamenting this, trying to turn our focus back purely to the writing is pointless. King Canute is often cited as the poster-boy for arrogant monarchs … he’s said to have ordered the tide to stop coming in and (surprise!) appears to have failed. The true story seems to be otherwise. Canute was surrounded by sycophantic flatterers at his court, telling him that his might and prowess were so very great even the sea would obey him. Canute called their bluff, deeply aware of his limitations, and took them to the seashore to show the tide wouldn’t listen.

I find that story way more interesting. If Canute had only gone on the talk show circuit, or had enough Twitter followers, and told it that way a few times, we might regard him as a hero of sorts.

Off to hang with some of the 100+. Cheering for the Giants tonight. Expect the debate to be fractious and without any knockout punches. Also, glumly, predicting that election is so close there almost have to be legal challenges on election night.

It is so frequent, isn’t it … that we start thinking about a topic, or learn a new word, and suddenly it is everywhere. I was musing here a couple of days ago about character accessibility (can we relate to them??) and how it has become a wildly distorted expectation or demand of fiction, and then this morning I came up to a chapter in the book of essays I’m reading …

Howard Jacobson, Man Booker winner, novelist, columnist, commentator, very funny man, has a collection out called (wonderfully, after a Chico Marx line): Whatever It Is, I Don’t Like It. I just read the piece entitled “If It’s ‘Readable’ Don’t Read It.”

His take-off point for this short, smooth flight is a neurological study showing that the brain is triggered, engaged, all the lights go ON when subjects confront challenges in Shakespeare’s syntax; the need to process, adjust, absorb surprise in language and the illumination that follows. (Yes, I know, a pun, electrode-wired lights go on, etc.) Words that don’t just dully mirror back our ‘usual’ ways of speaking and writing.

Howard (I’ve met and corresponded with him, does one need ‘full disclosure’ in a journal post?) exults amusingly about this, but goes on to make core points, akin to what I was riffing on earlier this week. (Told you, major coincidence … or maybe just receptivity.)

Try this: “‘Then thank me for it,’ I always say, should the charge of ‘difficulty’ be levelled at one of my novels … ‘Struggling with a book has more of reading in it than flicking through it at a predetermined rate… And laying it aside to scratch your head does greater justice to a book’s contents than never laying it aside at all. They also read who are not turning pages.”

I’ll add (Kay, not Jacobson) that laying the book aside to absorb and respond to emotional intensity, real, unexpected feelings induced in us, is another sign of something reaching deeply into our lives from a book. Passages that take us off cruise-control. We pause to think, to grieve or celebrate, or be wrapped in mystery…

And then (Jacobson again), there’s this: “… those other reading-group inanities – ‘I can’t identify with the characters’ or ‘I don’t find the hero a very nice person’…”

I hate to say it, but he’s right (and not just because I wrote this two or three days ago here!). I suspect Howard hates to say it, or see it, too. The idea that books demand nothing of us implies that they offer nothing to us. Or, worse, that the measure of excellence in a novel is how swiftly and smoothly it slides past us (and then, as often as not, is gone forever).

Books that have a reader up at night but then also stay long after, that’s what some want to achieve as writers – and search for as readers. I want a great book to change me, not just make a plane ride pass. It doesn’t happen often. I always say that excellence is rare, in everything – that is why we value it so much.

Here’s the backstory.

A long time ago on a campus not that far away (U of Waterloo) some people in the English department asked me if they could do an ‘authorized site’ on my work. At that time (1999!) I was pretty down on author sites. They seemed deeply self-indulgent and mostly content-free. My sound bite quote when asked why I didn’t have one was Cato the Elder: ‘I would rather the Romans ask why there are no statues to Cato, than why there are.’ (Still love that.)

But the Waterloo team promised content – scholarship, art, showcasing other people’s ideas around my novels, and the concept that their students (many of them teach the books) would funnel material to the site year by year. It would be a real repository. I bought in. Drinks were involved, as I recall.

Meetings were taken, a committee was struck, students were recruited. A designer was found. Some of the students began chasing down scholarly articles (this was way before that was an easy web-search) and scanning book covers in prep for an Art Gallery on the site. Then, predictably, it rolled towards December and the students had exams and deadlines and the profs looked at each other and said ‘Where are the students?’ My good friend Neil Randall, who had spearheaded this, called me in mid-December to say, ‘We screwed up. It is always too hard to keep these things on track.’ More drinks were ruefully promised – and accepted, not unhappily.

I really wasn’t distressed. More amused, than anything. But then … I got a New Year’s email from Deborah Meghnagi, with whom I’d been corresponding for some time. Deb was then doing some web work for a company and in the immediae aftermath of the U of Waterloo collapse, I recklessly wrote the words, ‘One of these millenia I should get you to do a website for me…’ (Remember, this was New Years 2000! And yes, I know that isn’t really when the millennia started. Lost that argument back then with everyone!)

Cue music.

After not replying at all, and in something like three days (she’ll have the exact details) with a couple of all-nighters I think, Deb sent me, totally without warning, a url for the template of Bright Weavings.

She’d essentially done, on her own, what hadn’t happened in months through a committee or group. (Cue knowing nods of heads.)

I really didn’t think I could say no after that. It took her 6 more months of work, and brightweavings.com went live in, as best I recall, June of 2000. This Journal residesthere, as are the three previous ones, and a tremendous amount of content.

Over the decade plus Deb has scandalously proceeded with a life: husband, child, another on the way, a period as a senior editor for Toby Press, freelancing. I regard all of this frippery as irresponsibly going AWOL, of course. (I also regard teasing as a right.)

On the other hand – and this is a key to this post – the community that sprang up around her and the site led to four or five others stepping up and offering generous and creative support and expansion to her original idea. BW now has a Facebook page and a Pinterest board. It had a Twitter feed at @brightweavings until I was pounded into submission and it became @guygavrielkay (that tragic tale is part of the first post here, I think).

And when I speak of a ‘community’ I do mean it, and that’s what impels this entry. This weekend, about 20 of the denizens who have long gathered in the BW Forums will be actually gathering in Toronto from all over the place to hang with each other – for the fourth or fifth time.

I basically regard myself as no more than an excuse. Some years, when this meet-up happens, I’ve booked a bar for drinks, once we all had a Chinese banquet, this year it’ll be a breakfast gig. Then I get out of the way for most of the weekend, avert my eyes, ask not to be sent the more incriminating pictures…

But flippancy aside, I have to say that the emergence of this group of worldwide friends, spun from the website, has brought me enormous pleasure over the years. If anyone wants champagne and OJ with their breakfast and lattes this weekend, it’s on me.