Tanya Lloyd Kyi

My February calendar is booking up faster than a socialite’s dance card. Well, okay, I have three engagements. But for someone who doesn’t usually leave her neighbourhood, that’s a lot!

• On February 2nd, I’m introducing Robert Heidbreder at UBC’s Authorfest. I don’t actually know Robert Heidbreder, and I may be making up his entire introduction (I wonder if he remembers that mud wrestling stage of his career?), but my daughter is such a big Don’t Eat Spiders fan that I had to say yes to this event.
• On February 23rd, I’m speaking to two groups of students at Dr. R.E. McKechnie School. It’s always good to have the opportunity to warp young minds.
• On February 25th, I’m speaking at Serendipity. I have 20 or 30 minutes to divulge everything I know about making non-fiction interesting to kids. And, I’m going to use Keynote for the first time. Because I’m crazy like that.

You will notice that I’m sounding quite cheerful about these impending public speaking engagements. That’s because they’re all still safely in the future. I find that full panic strikes about 72 hours prior. You can check back with me then.

As you may remember (that is, if you have nothing better to do than read and remember my blog posts), me and A.A. Milne go way back. Like, way back when we were very young.

And if you asked me to recite an A.A. Milne poem about a hat, boots, and a macintosh, I could do so, no problem. But, because I am a rather inattentive reader and also horridly neglectful about reading poem titles, I had never looked at the name of the hat, boot, and macintosh poem. I learned it today from a post on Brain Pickings.

It’s “Happiness.”

And doesn’t that make the poem even better?

I did the breakfast dishes this morning to the sounded-out words of I Broke My Trunk. I have to say, there is really nothing better than a kid who has just learned to read independently. My son is so darned proud of himself.

My kids have both been early readers, and I’ve had a few other parents ask for the secret. How do you get your kids to read?

Really, I think it’s a matter of aptitude. Some kids pick up ice skating quickly, or painting, or long division. Mine happen to be good with language. Thank God, because they’re never going to make the NHL.

Having said that, there are a few ways we make reading appealing around the Kyi house…

• We read in the afternoon. Evenings are great for bedtime stories, but the kids are tired. They have no patience for sounding out words or identifying letters. They want to hear a story and go to sleep. And I want to read a story and go have a glass of wine. So afternoon reading is a must.
• Reading doesn’t happen only in books. I write secret messages, scavenger hunts, and love notes. We play games in the car… Min calls out a letter, my son thinks of a word that starts with that letter, and my daughter spells it backwards. They think it’s fun. (I know. They’re weird.)
• You’re allowed to stay up half an hour later if you’re looking at books. You’re not allowed out of bed, you’re not allowed to play with toys, but you’re allowed to leave the light on and read. That’s a pretty good deal when you’re five.

Those are my secrets. Now, if anyone can offer advice on how to teach my daughter (or my husband for that matter) that brown pants do not go with grey shirts, I’m all ears.

With the world ending, and temperatures rising, and guys like Joe Oliver running the country, it’s so easy to think of the negative. So I’ve made a list of all the good things that happened this weekend:

• I wrote a chapter. I’m working on an early reader at the moment, and there are huge advantages to this. Three pages, and I’ve finished a chapter. It’s such a shortcut to that warm, fuzzy feeling of accomplishment. (For the sake of this all-positive post, we’re ignoring the possibility of future rewrites.)
• My family went sledding! Yes, it’s true. No one threw up. No one cried. We drove to a mountain and we accomplished a winter recreational activity. Hallelujah!
• I was once again NOT hit by falling space crap. Such a relief.

And, looking ahead to good things to come this week:

• My laptop, which was hogged by my husband all last week, has now been returned to me. (Actually, it was returned on Thursday, but without the power cord. I immediately hired divorce lawyers and they have since rectified the situation.) With luck, I can sit in Blenz, pretend I’m in Paris, and finish yet another three-page chapter.
• My friend Jacqui and I are going to a play! A play by Bill Richardson and Veda Hille. For that, I’d walk through space junk. Probably.

Some lovely person at Quill & Quire looked at Seeing Red, and had this to say:

Junior CSI fans might enjoy Seeing Red: The True Story of Blood (Annick Press, $14.95 pa., $22.95 cl., Feb.) by Vancouver author Tanya Lloyd Kyi, who informs readers about all things sanguineous, from sacrifices to forensics. One hopes accompanying illustrations by graphic novelist Steve Rolston only required a bit of sweat and tears.

Thank you, Quill & Quire, especially for the use of the word “sanguineous.” I wish I’d used that in the book!

As far as I know, Steve has now stopped bleeding from his eyeballs and is once again able to work on other projects.

As many of you probably know, my sister’s a cop. A highly mature and reasonable police officer. I know she’s mature and reasonable because of the things she doesn’t do. For example:

• When she’s in her own car and another driver cuts her off, she does not stick a siren on her roof, pull out a gun, and go all road rage on his ass.
• When a customs guard is grilling her about why she’s been travelling alone in Thailand, she does not mention her occupation until asked.
• When irritated by a group of drunken teenage boys in the local park, she does not shoot them.

See? These are all things that I would be highly tempted to do. Which is why they don’t give me a gun, a badge, or anything more powerful than a pen with four colours of ink.

The pen IS cool, though. I mean, not as cool as a taser, but still cool.

Crack cocaine. That’s what my daughter gave me for Christmas. It came in the form of The Way of Kings, the first in a new series by Brandon Sanderson. (If you’re a complete closet dork, like me, you’ll recognize him as the guy who’s finishing the Wheel of Time series for the unfortunately dead Robert Jordan.)

The Way of Kings has 1008 pages. ONE THOUSAND AND EIGHT. Who writes a book with 1008 pages?

So I said to myself: I won’t read it. Not until I’ve finished all my current writing projects.

That lasted 48 hours. And then I thought: I’ll only read the first chapter.

That lasted about eight minutes.

Did I mention crack cocaine? Yes. I spent several (several) days compulsively reading The Way of Kings. It was spectacular, if you’re um… into that sort of thing.

Still, I was determined to be good. I wouldn’t read the sequel, I decided. Not until next Christmas at least. And a few minutes later, I decided just to check on-line, to see what the sequel was called.

Well, it’s not available yet. It’s not available until next fall. And The Way of Kings is not the first in a trilogy. Oh, no. It’s the first in a TEN BOOK SERIES. So, if it takes two years to produce each book, I will be 58 years old before I finish the story. FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD!

I’m not reading them. Seriously. I’m not.

I read Joanna Karaplis’s blog post last week about retroactive resolutions and I have to say, THAT is the best idea ever. I hereby retroactively resolve to:

• Serve on the jury for a fiction award, fall in love with scads of wonderful middle-grade novels, and visit the optometrist about the eye twitch that developed part-way through.
• Leave the house at 8:46 each morning sounding more like Mary Poppins, and less like Cruella Deville.
• Finish my YA novel and submit it to agents.
• As the grocery gatekeeper, feed my family more vegetables.*
• Speak in public on numerous occasions, wearing appropriate clothing most of the time.

Success on all counts!** What a shocker. I’m so pleased.

* They did agree they would rather starve than eat kale. Even kale fried with bacon. But you can’t win ‘em all, right?

** With the exception of the whole Mary Poppins thing. Yeesh. Who can live up to that woman? Besides, the whole curtain-wearing thing didn’t work out, and I look lovely in black and white spots.

My resolution for this year consists of “keep working, keep working, keep working,” and does not make for good blog-post fodder. So, instead, I bring you my what-I’m-looking-forward-to list of 2012:

• New writing. There are projects in the works! Plus, nine months from now, I achieve the promised land of both-kids-in-school. I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about it. First of all, I’m going to miss my little guy around the house. And second, what if Min gets the crazy idea that I should get a job in my newfound spare time? I’m planning to channel all this nervous tension into abundant writing projects…
• Recreation. I always have big plans for our outdoor excursions, and they rarely come to fruition… but I’m still hoping. Now that the kids are getting older, I’m thinking some snowshoeing, some sledding, maybe a couple ski lessons. Everyone can bike now, AT THE SAME TIME. And once summer hits, my daughter and I are determined to go kayaking.
• SPAIN! Friends are getting married on the Costa Brava this summer so it looks like the Kyis are going to Spain! This will be our first ocean crossing since the pre-kid era so if I’m using a few unnecessary exclamation marks (Spain!!), you’ll have to excuse me.

I have to say, it’s looking like a pretty good year. What are the rest of you looking forward to?

Family vacations are wonderful, of course, and I always look forward to the stretch of unplanned days. But… I am hard-pressed to articulate just how amazing it is to have normal schedules resumed and to enjoy my first two hours of uninterrupted silence.

If a choir of angles appeared right now, I think I’d ask them to hold off singing, just ’til 11.

And I’m not alone. For the best post ever about the intersection of the writing life and child-generated noise, check out Deryn Collier’s blog.