Shelf Monkey: oh yes, it's worthy of awards

It is with great honour and humble acknowledgement of my genius that I accept this award...

Just kidding. About the false modesty part, not the award part.

Shelf Monkey has just been awarded Gold as Best Popular Fiction Novel at this year's Independent Publishers Book Awards!

From the release:

This year's contest attracted 3,175 total entries, with over 2,500 entries in the national categories and over 600 entries in the regional competition. Books came from 49 U.S. states (come on, North Dakota!), D.C., and U.S. Virgin Islands; 9 Canadian provinces (get with it, Northwest Territories!), and 16 countries around the world: Trinidad to Thailand, Croatia to Czech Republic, and France to Finland.

I've gone over some of the past winners of different categories - famed Canadian author Ray Robertson won for Best Regional Fiction (Canada East) in 2007 for his novel Moody Food, Dave Eggers won in 2007 for Best General Fiction with his novel What is the What, and Jim Harrison took home the gold in 2001 with his collection of novellas The Beast God Forgot to Invent. Pretty heavy hitters to be in company with. I'd better start lifting weights or something.

So, I humbly accept this award - although I won't be at the ceremony next week in L.A., I have been informed by my publicist that a representative of ECW will be in attendance, and will accept the award with a photocopied image of my face adhered with scotch tape to his visage. Classy.

Open Book entries just keep on rollin' on...

The next taste of brilliance is up at Open Book Toronto:

So, you’ve written a book. Bravo. You’ve gotten a publisher. Double bravo. Think you’re done? Not even close.

It’s time for Marketing 101; Putting Your Pretty Face Out There.

Yes, many authors seek the literary life because they enjoy the solitude. I could not tell you the statistics on how many authors are natural extroverts, but I’m betting it’s a low percentage. We have rich inner lives. It’s just you, the paper and ink, and whatever gossamer you can spin from the ether. We don’t aspire to the spotlight for ourselves; we want the work to speak for itself.

Read the rest of the entry here.

Open Book Toronto entry, Jan 12, 2008

The next sterling submission to the Open Book Toronto project is now up!

When I was young and marginally more stupid than I am now – ah, those heady days of youth, how fleeting they seem now to this aged mind! – I took a one-day course in skydiving. Well, parachuting, really, as you have to work your way up to skydiving freefall. Signing up, I had visions of every WWII movie I’ve ever seen; a lineup of eager recruits by the gaping door of a transit plane, each jumping out headlong into the endless abyss. Wheee!

The truth, unsurprisingly, was more mundane, and far more terrifying. Myself and two companions were walked through the basics of elementary parachute jumping, including (and this was quite a surprise to me) that one does not simply cannonball out an open door, but must instead walk out under the wing(!) and stand on the wheel, wait for the count by the instructor (who is holding the ripcord himself), and then let go, arch the back, count to five, and look over the shoulder to make sure the ‘chute has opened correctly.

Read the rest of the entry here.

Open Book Toronto entry for January 9, 2008

My newest blog enty at Open Book Toronto is now up:

Ok, you’ve been writing for hours. Your carpal is flaming, your fingers are numb, and you can’t stare at the screen without screaming. Time for a break. Time for a movie.

A movie about writing, of course. Can’t stray too far off topic here.

As much as I love the art and craft of writing, both as practitioner and audience, I’ll be the first to admit that writing is not the most…uh…visually dynamic of arts. Think about it: painters can spread their works across endless easels and wallspaces; sculptors take chisel, hammer, and blowtorch to inanimate objects; dancers warp their spines in pursuit of truth in body modification; and actors bellow to the back row. But writing, from an audience perspective, always comes down to a solitary figure hunched over a writing implement of some sort, huddled and lonely in the pursuit of translating a thought into symbols.

Read the rest of the entry here.

Open Book entry for January 4, 2007

My latest post at Open Book Toronto is now up:

I’d like to speak from my soapbox, if I may, on one of the most important tools in the first-time writer’s arsenal: luck.

Yes, talent, ambition, and perseverance still play a major part, don’t get me wrong. Yet – and let’s be honest here – how many of us have read a successful published novel by a name author and said afterward, “Someone published this?”

Read the rest of the entry here.

The constantly amusing musings of the Open Book Toronto Writer-in-Residence begin!

I'll be linking to all my posts at Open Book Toronto for the month of January. My first entry concerns (what else) New Year's Resolutions:

• Resolution #1 – Read more books.
  This may seem like an obvious choice, but no one was ever hurt by reading (I have no statistics to back this up), and I am a firm believer in reading as much as humanly possible. Any writer who doesn’t read to excess is in no danger of improving. So, in 2008, read more than you read in 2007. Be a gourmand, be a glutton. If you need incentive, there’s the Canadian Book Challenge at the blog The Book Mine Set. The object is to read at least thirteen Canadian books by Canada Day, and review then on your blogs. It gets you reading, and gets the word out on all the talent we have in the Canadian wilderness, nestling in the snow. The moderator has handily included a list of novels from every province and territory, if that’s your thing. Or, try to read thirteen books by Ontario publishers. The choice is yours. Prizes for whoever wins include a cornucopia of Canadiana: a hockey puck, a David Bergen novel, and a box of KD.

Read the entire entry here.