The past two months have been subsumed by festivals, workshops, travel, interviews, visiting book clubs, and anything and everything that has cropped up and is related to publicity efforts on behalf of my second book, The Juliet Stories. I’ve been quite unable to settle and give myself over to the project I was working on during the summer. But I knew in advance that it would be a busy time, as fall always is for our family, and I was prepared to burn my creative energies in other, smaller ways.
I write regular blog posts as Obscure CanLit Mama. It’s been particularly enjoyable this fall to recount my travels and experiences touring the book.
I am currently working on two essays for separate anthologies. One is at the editing stage, and is titled “Delivery,” and will be published next fall in an anthology titled How to expect what you’re not expecting, which deals with childbirth, loss, and grief. The other is an essay on food, for an anthology that has a working title that goes roughly like this: Mennonite Girls Can Write (about food). I was approached by the editors to contribute something, and it’s in progress.
All of the above fall into the category of creative non-fiction, which is strange for a writer of fiction to admit, but seems to be a direction I’m being pulled in, perhaps because of the blog. I began blogging about my daily life more than four years ago, and have become very comfortable with that voice, and with transposing real events into words and stories.
But I am also at work on a novel, and I look forward to burying myself in it as winter approaches. I am too superstitious to reveal much about it. My inspiration comes from disparate sources, including old photographs, feminism, and my own experience discovering my inner athlete at the age of 35. I’m eager to discover how all the pieces fit together. I’ll give you the working title: The Girl Runner.