Punk; Vaudeville; Markley launch; Pre-Xmas push



That's me in Calgary Public Library's Dutton Theatre on November 6th doing my portion of the Cowtown / Punktown presentation. What an enjoyable experience. We got a good crowd, and Dan Hayes put together a really impressive historical account of ye olden days, which set up my reading from Love Minus Zero perfectly. The part I enjoyed most was taking questions at the end, because you never know what people are going to throw out at you. I think we both had a lot of fun. Drinks and dinner at the James Joyce after with my old punk rock colleagues was fun, too.

Also enjoyable was the Literary Vaudeville event last Thursday night, a joint reading by four local authors: Rea Tarvydas, Ian Doig, Rita Bozi and Ken Cameron. And in spite of the January-like weather we've been having, they also managed to get a good crowd. Congratulations to all the readers -- you put on a great show.

This Saturday is the launch of Jan Markley's new MegaByte mystery Dead Bird Through the Cat Door, 2 PM at Owl's Nest Books. Looking forward to celebrating and perhaps having a cookie with Jan.

Hoping to keep the final pre-holiday push on my new novel going here, much as possible. The weather is helping in some ways -- outside is definitely not a distraction at this point. On the other hand, my mom's ALS continues to worsen (I just think that word 'progressing' doesn't really work). I have to say I'm not impressed with the consistency of care she's getting. It's all right, most of the time, except when they send people who can't deal with her equipment. Or when nobody comes at all, like happened yesterday morning. She would have been lying there for fourteen hours if we hadn't shown up at noon. Nice. So it's onto the phone once again tomorrow (naturally the person I need to talk to doesn't work Mondays). Ah, bureaucracy.

So over and out for now. Want to write while the writing's good.