Blog No. 294
I’ve been doing this blog for a number of years now, and I’ve never been part of a blog tour (or blog share, or whatever). I did have a guest post at one time, but it wasn’t what I had in mind, and the particular person doesn’t do much posting anymore. Given the number of authors I know who do have active blogs, I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to try again. I suppose part of it has to do with my obsessive need to not play well with others, but I genuinely like these folks and while they may not all write the kind of stuff I fancy, they are very good at what they do. (Just because a book isn’t your type of genre, doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate how well written it is). For the next four weeks (starting next week) I’m going to be featuring one of these authors and one of their works. The group came up with some formats for the posts, but I like to be difficult, so I’m doing kind of whatever comes to me in the moment. I hope they like it (and you, obviously).
First up is going to be Justine Alley Dowsett, author, publisher, cool person to work with, and her newest book, Mirror’s Deceit. I’ll be talking about her and her writing and probably a lot about me. I like to talk about me (something I’ve been trying to be more aware of). Since this is my blog, I think it’s probably fine. For the second week, I’ll be writing about Sharon Ledwith and the first book of her new series Lost & Found. Week three is going to be Brittni Brinn and her novella The Patch Project. Then it’s all about me and The Thinking Machine. I don’t think I’ve done a proper behind the writing for it, so I’ll got into depth about how the book was written and what I think it’s about. But that’s all starting next week. For the rest of this post is about that last reading I did.
When I say the reading last Thursday was last minute, I mean it was a week from hearing about it to doing it. It was more Christian’s than mine, but more Charlie Angus’ than his. Charlie, an MP with the NDP, was going to be in town, and since he is a Juno nominated musician, he wanted to do a show. The idea was to do readings and music, sort of like ChiSeries, but the headliner was Charlie, not the readers. Like a flip-flop. Since Christian knew the venue, some local readers, and has experience hosting events, he was asked to run the show. He then asked me to take part and I assumed I would be co-hosting, so I willed it to happen. The show was at Phog and since they have a billion shows a night, time was limited. The organizers also wanted five readers, so it was going to have to be a tight ship to make the time crunch.
As always, things were nice and relaxed. There was a great turnout, too. Charlie Angus has some fans and the local NDP folks were there to support. Unfortunately, the show wasn’t quite as smooth as hoped. The music was awesome, the readers did a good job (if I say so myself) but the readings went longer than requested and things had to be cut off the end of the night. I was up first since I was fighting that cold. Christian and I like to bookend readings when we can, so we can keep those moments consistent. That meant his reading was axed. I felt awful since I was partially to blame. I was doing the sound, so I was introducing the last few performances, and a missed text led me to believe I was bringing Charlie up after a reading, but it was planned to have Christian slip in before Charlie ended the show with a few more songs. Not ideal. He seems fine with it and he’s all focused on some great potential interest in his novel, so I’m letting it slide. Even with the little jumble, it was a good time and I got a couple books sold. Never a bad thing.
Ben Van Dongen 