Author Archives: kitsmediatech

Happy New Year!

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Admittedly, I was asleep by 10:45 on New Year’s Eve, while my daughter and her friends celebrated downstairs, but I’m now wide awake and ready to celebrate.

There’s a lot to look forward to in 2020. I’ve been reading articles like this one, which offer some hope for the future. Greta Thunberg’s final post of 2019 on Twitter said, “This coming decade humanity will decide it’s future. Let’s make it the best one we can. We have to do the impossible. So let’s get started.” That seems like the perfect note on which to begin the decade.

On a more personal level, I have new writing projects to get excited about. Me and Banksy is finally hitting the bookstore shelves on January 7th. I say “finally” because birthing a book baby takes SO much longer than birthing a real baby, and this project has been in the works for a couple years. I’m so thrilled to see it in the world. Reviewers have been very kind so far. Here are some nice words from Publisher’s Weekly, and a starred review (eep!) from Quill and Quire.

Meanwhile, I’ve signed a new contract for a middle-grade non-fiction book with Kids Can Press and I’m about to send off a non-fiction book proposal co-written by my daughter. Fingers crossed!

I’m not one for resolutions, but my husband said something recently that struck a chord. He said you don’t always need to have fun. You can just be fun. I’m going to try for that.

Happy New Year, all! If you have resolutions or big 2020 plans, please let me know in the comments!

The Writers Festival

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I’m presenting at the Vancouver Writers Festival this week, which is entirely unlike what I usually do with my time (ie. sit in front of my computer wearing grubby clothes, eating popcorn, and wondering why I seem to have named all my characters after people’s great aunts).

Yesterday’s presentation was about my new non-fiction book, Under Pressure: The Science of Stress. Ironic, because I was feeling more than a little anxious as I sat backstage waiting for my cue.

The view from backstage at The Vancouver Writers Festival.

The event went very well, though. The kids were engaged and eager to volunteer (whew!), a big group of writer friends surprised me by getting tickets and planting their friendly faces along one side of the stage, and I only accidentally wore cat ears for half the time.

I am making funny faces in every single photo. Why? Also, I’ve decided this is my only presentable outfit, so I may have to do Thursday’s event in my pyjamas.

After the presentation, I went to not one, but TWO PARTIES! And I held a drink and a plate of snacks in one hand without spilling them on myself or on other people.

I know. Crazy.

Tomorrow, I’m at Event #34: Empowered Kids with Michael Hutchinson and Sara Cassidy. My daughter’s attending, so I can embarrass her by talking about which parts of Mya’s Strategy to Save the World are based on real life.

And then… would you believe… there’s ANOTHER PARTY?!?

I’m very grateful to be at the Writers Festival, and it’s run by the world’s smartest, kindest people, including a massive array of fabulous volunteers. A big thank you to artistic director Leslie Hurtig and Senior Artistic Associate Clea Young for including me!

The audio files

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Here’s some exciting news… Me and Banksy, my novel coming out with Penguin Random House next spring, is going to be an audio book!

My kids and I are big audio-book fans, so there were celebrations in my house. Everyone thought I was very glamorous for at least fifteen minutes, until they wanted to know what was for dinner and whether their martial arts gear was clean. But hey, those were fifteen dog minutes, and we parents take what we can get.

I had no idea how audio books were made. My friend Stacey sent me this great video, so I could pretend to be intelligent while on the phone with the producer, Ann. (“On the phone with the producer”… I wish I got to type that phrase more often.)

This is how an audio book gets made, from an author’s point of view:

  1. Ann sent me sample audio files from three shortlisted actors. I was asked to review and rank these files, on the understanding that the publisher would have the final choice, and things might depend on each actor’s availability.
  2. I listened to the audio files approximately one billion times. Fortunately, I had a live-in focus group and they were happy to give their opinions. We all loved an actor named Veronica Hortiguela. She sounded smart, funny, and emotional but not too emotional.
  3. I sent the opinions of my focus group to Ann, who right away said that she’d offer Veronica the part.
  4. Veronica said yes!
  5. After the director read through the book, I received a list of pronunciation questions. Some of these, I could answer. For example, I knew how to pronounce my name. Other questions were more difficult. How did I want emojis handled? (I quickly consulted the focus group.) Artist Rineke Dijkstra is mentioned in the text. How should her name be pronounced? (Um… thank goodness for YouTube!)
  6. Now production is underway.
  7. It’s always thrilling to see a new book in print, but this time, I get double thrills. I get to hear the new book, too!

WORD

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I had a wonderful time at Word Vancouver yesterday. I was at the children’s stage with the talented Kathryn Shoemaker, Lee Edward Fodi, and Mahtab Norsimhan. Missing in this photo is Norma Charles, who was there both to moderate our Between Worlds panel and to introduce her own new book, The Tree Musketeers.

Word is sometimes tricky, because bad weather can scare away the crowds. (One year, the entire children’s tent blew away — fortunately without the kids inside.) But this year, we had glorious sunshine and lots of happy readers gathered ’round. There were seniors and toddlers and teens… including my daughter, who I thoroughly embarassed by sharing the real-life stories that inspired Mya’s Strategy to Save the World.

Sorry, Silence!

While I was at the festival, I had the chance to see lots of inspiring writers and storytellers in action, including Kallie George, there to introduce her oh-so-lovely Anne of Green Gables adaptation, Anne Arrives. I also met Rachel Poliquin, author of The Superpower Field Guide: Moles. After I spent her panel whispering, “I wish I’d written that!” to everyone around me, I had to introduce myself.

Even the audience at Word was stacked with writers I wanted to talk to. Thanks to Stacey Matson, Kirsten Pendreigh, and Mark David Smith for coming out!

And thank you, Word Vancouver, for having me! It was bookish fun from start to finish.

Let’s hang out…

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Come and join me at these fall book events. They’re going to be a blast, and I would love to see friendly faces!

Word Vancouver
Sunday, September 29th, 2:50-3:50 pm
I’ll be on the children’s stage with the wonderful Lee Edward Fodi (author of The Secret of Zoone) and Mahtab Narsimhan (Embrace the Chicken). We’re downtairs in the Alice McKay room at the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch. Between us, we have books about butter chicken, skateboarding sisters, and skygers. What better combination could you possibly find?

Vancouver Writers Festival
Tuesday, October 22nd, 1-2:15 pm
Thursday, October 24th, 10:15-11:45 am
On the Tuesday, I’m talking all about Under Pressure and the science of stress. I promise, you will be so prepared if you run into a bear on the way home from Granville Island. On the Thursday, I’m talking “Empowered Kids” with Sara Cassidy (Nevers), Michael Hutchinson (The Case of Windy Lake), and moderator France Perras. That’s three wise, insightful people, and me!

Word is a free event, a whole jam-packed day of literary goodness. Tickets for the Vancouver Writers Festival go on sale September 11th for school groups and September 16th for the public. (And many events sell out, so get yours early.)

Hope to see you there!




Ciao, bella!

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Photo by Violence.

I’m just back from three weeks in Italy with the family. We started in Rome, where Violence, on the taxi ride from the airport, shouted, “Wait… Rome has RUINS!?” as if we’d been hiding this from him. (Thank you, Rick Riordan, for making ruins interesting to twelve-year-olds.)

From Rome, we went to Siena, then Venice, and finally to Lake Garda.

Travelling reminds me that even when the surroundings are different — shopkeepers are speaking another language and I can’t figure out the street signs and I may have just eaten a mushroom or it could have been pork and it’s rather disconcerting not to know which — people are in many ways the same.

When two little boys are poking at one another in the restaurant, and their mother raises her eyebrows, I know exactly what she’s thinking. When they keep going, and she scolds them in Italian, I know exactly what she’s saying. Because people are people are people.

This particular people is a little jet lagged at the moment, but slowly easing back into the writing routine!

I hope your own summers have been fabulous so far!

Summer thoughts

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I’m writing this blog post from the deck of Hillcrest Pool, surrounded by a million children. The lifeguards here are the most patient people in existence.

A few minutes ago, my son turned up dripping by my side to say he’d lost his friend in the pool during a game of hide and seek. I thought I might have to explain to the friend’s mom that her son had drowned as I was supposed to be supervising, but then I found the friend, sitting on a lounge chair. It turns out my son is as bad at finding friends in the pool as he is at finding socks in his sock drawer.

Trying to write on the pool deck is not so different than trying to write at home these days. My desk is on our stairway landing, which is perfectly fine during the school year, but significantly less convenient when my house is full of children.

My wise friend Stacey suggested I think of this as the season for inspiration and input rather than for productivity, and this idea has been helpful.

On the subject of input, I’m on the final pages of The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben and the book is mind-blowing. Trees communicate. They taste and smell things. They nurse their young. And this is all science, not Lord of the Rings. I will never again see a forest in the same way.

I hope you’re enjoying the summer, with all of its hiding, seeking, and splashing. I’m off to hug a tree, ponder the existence of ents, and think about what I’ll write once my office is again my own.

School days

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My son goes to an elementary school that’s more than a hundred years old. There was an open house this week, and I was helping at a table of memorabilia. We had Parent-Teacher Association notes from 1916, class photos from the 1940s, and — most popular with our visitors — a principal’s record of punishments, displayed alongside the strap.

Visitors found names in the punishment book of someone who’d gone to prison, someone who’d become head of maintenance at the Vancouver School Board (in the book for “repeated misbehaviour”), and a lot of little boys who couldn’t sit still. Some seniors remembered very clearly what it felt like to get the strap!

Here are a few other scenes my fellow volunteers and I witnessed…

“Johnny”

One man, dressed in a suit and tie, came along and looked at the punishment book. “I’m on this page four times, and I was only nine,” he said.

A few minutes later, a group of three men looked at the same page. “There’s Johnny,” one of them said. “Most likely to become a criminal.”

The suit-and-tie man wandered back over. The group of three looked up.

“JOHNNY!” they said.

Eleanor and Daphne

Eleanor was signing in at the guest book when she noticed the name above hers.

“I know Daphne,” she said. “We were in school at the same time. Is she still here?”

The volunteer looked around the room and spotted Daphne.

“Daphne!” the first woman called. “It’s Eleanor!”

And they had their own mini-reunion in front of the guest book.

The Strap

A older woman wandered by and glanced at the principal’s punishment records.

“Are you in there?” we asked.

“No, not me,” she said.

A few minutes later, she was back. This time, she was with a middle-aged woman who was scanning the pages carefully.

“This is my daughter,” the older woman said. “She refuses to believe me.”

Under Pressure

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Look what arrived on my doorstep this week! An advance copy of Under Pressure: The Science of Stress.

This was absolutely fascinating to write. I had no idea we experience so many chemical and neurological changes related to stress. Plus I got to research obsessive tennis players, fearless base jumpers, and feminist rat researchers. (Um… the researchers were feminists. I’m not sure about the rats.)

This is my first-ever book with Kids Can Press. They have been incredible to work with — not an ounce of anxiety involved! Plus they recruited the über-talented Marie-Ève Tremblay to do ever-so-subtly-silly illustrations.

I kind of want to sleep with this copy under my pillow. Would that be weird?

Speaking of weird, I have two more books coming out with Kids Can Press in the next couple years, both on subjects that also begin with the letter S. My accidental S-sound series will eventually include stress, stereotypes, and sleep.

The writing part of the next two books is complete, so I’d better get working on a new proposal. Smells, possibly? Snails? S’mores?

Under Pressure is out in September. But you could avoid any undue stress and pre-order your copy now.

TD Children’s Book Week

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I spent last week winding my way from Ottawa to Toronto as part of TD Children’s Book Week. The event is organized each year by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. The centre chooses thirty authors, illustrators, and storytellers from across Canada, shuffles them up, and sends them across the country.

The official TD Book Week banner.

There were LOTS of B.C. folks travelling this year. My friend Kallie George explored Prince Edward Island. Another writing group member, Sara Gillingham, flew around the Northwest Territories on frighteningly tiny planes. And Lee Edward Fodi zipped back and forth across Toronto.

I began my trip with a visit to the Carp branch of the Ottawa Public Library, which is on the grounds of the Diefenbunker, a steel and concrete structure built as a Cold War hideout for Canadian government officials. You could see it in this photograph, except… it’s underground.

This is where you hide from impending nuclear disaster.

I did a second presentation at lovely Elmwood School near downtown Ottawa, then I was off to the picturesque but teensy village of Sharbot Lake, followed by ever-so-slightly-larger Tweed.

Apparently North America’s smallest jailhouse.

Along my route, there were storybook farms and Canadian shield scenes which I’m quite sure came straight from my seventh-grade social studies textbook.

Probably a movie set? Could farm scenes this perfect be real?

Marmora had both the prettiest church and the prettiest school library. (Don’t you want to just stay here and read forever?)

Sacred Heart Catholic School in Mormora.

By Friday, I was worried my voice or my energy might give out, but Trent Lakes turned out to be one of my favourite stops. I signed an armload of books at Trent Lakes Public Library (home of über-cool librarians), presented to a super-enthusiastic bunch of students at Trent Lakes Elementary, and was given a “seal of approval,” complete with flipper clapping. Plus, THEY HAD MADE ME A SIGN! So I flew home on Saturday feeling like a rock star.

Those Trent Lakes kids really know how to make someone feel special.

A huge thank you to the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, to TD Bank, and to the teachers and librarians who spent hours organizing and who made the week an absolute pleasure. And to the hundreds of kids I met! You are all amazing, and many of you perform EXCELLENT dramatic death scenes, create highly realistic explosion sound effects, and invent absolutely ridiculous things with pipe cleaners. Thank you!