All the spellings have been changed from British to American, and some of these made me gulp a bit:  can ‘skeptical’ really be correct?  Doesn’t it look too much like ‘skool’?  This Americanisation of the text - which doesn’t worry me, fond as I am of the British and Canadian spellings - was complicated by the fact that the novel uses 19th century Arabic transliterations as well, some of which were Lucie Duff Gordon’s own;  for instance, one of these,’hakima’, or ‘healer’, does not correspond to any Arabic dictionaries’ current spelling.  The copyeditor also came across a number of small errors in my text, things that we did not notice here in the UK when we copyedited the book, ‘elder’ instead of ‘eldest’, ‘more’ instead of ‘most’, etc.  So that was interesting, if a little embarrassing as well. 

Many tiny red marks were devoted to my use of the em dash.  At first I misunderstood and thought that they were trying to deprive me of my beloved em dash (though before yesterday I didn’t even know it is called an ‘em dash’).  But no, the little hieroglyph actually means they are keeping the dashes but allowing less space on either side. 

So, I’ve gone through it now with my own blue pencil and added to the general mark-up mayhem of the text, and am posting it back to NY shortly. Yippee!!

It snowed while I was in Montreal as well as Toronto, thus fulfilling my sad little ex-pat desire to experience a proper Canadian city winter once again;  however, the snow in both cities turned out to be very wet.  Instead of pristine snowdrifts covering up the cars and houses and city streets, we got epic piles of slush and huge slushy puddles where, really, the only appropriate footwear was knee-high rubber boots.  Hideous.

But I’d go back again tomorrow for more of it, happily. 

We saw a lot of inspiring work over the four days of the conference:  highlights for me included work by David Jhave Johnston, Roewan Crowe, Fred Wah, Steve Tomasula, J.R. Carpenter, and D Kimm.  (I’m finding the network here a little slow so will put up the urls at a later date.)

Yesterday I did a talk at the Banff High School for 50 Grade 9s (14 yrs old).  I showed bits of ‘Inanimate Alice’, including a couple of the episode 5s that have been created by other students, and encouraged them to create their own versions of Episode 5. 

The other evening I went to a fabulous performance, ‘The Idea of South’, an improvised score on piano by Simon James Phillips, accompanying ‘South’ the film compiled from Frank Hurley’s photographs and film footage of Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to Antartica, when the Endurance was trapped and then crushed by sea ice. 

Tonight I’ll be speaking in Canmore, just down to the road, for Cafe Books (more details on the Events page).

It’s great to be going back to Canada so soon after my numerous trips last autumn; it will be fun to be in the country during the Winter Olympics, and it will be great to further some of the work I’ve been doing with my publisher, booksellers, book clubs, and readers.  Winning the GG continues to provide huge opportunities for me, and I still can’t really believe it.  Maybe this time when I land at Calgary the immigration people will tell me it was all a big mistake, and I need to give back the leather-bound artist edition of the novel, the cheque, and all those photos of me and the GG. 

Next week I’ll be doing events in Canmore and Calgary, as well as Montreal and Toronto - including the ‘Eh-list’ reading series at the Toronto Public Library.  Check out my Events page for the details. 

My current website is nearly ten years old, which is practically written-on-papyrus in this day and age.  It was designed by Simon Mills, whom I met through trAce, and with whom I work at DMU.  When he built it, mouseovers were very cool.  I’m still fond of the red and the black, and the white on black aesthetic overall, but it was time for a change.

I’ve gone for a much airier, brighter look, and have integrated the blog into the actual website.  There are other new sections, most notable of which is, for me, ‘WMD – a revision’.  More on that project later.

The site was built for me by John Biggins at Aerta.  It’s a fairly complex site, as far as writers websites go, and he’s done a great job.  I managed to crash the entire new site yesterday when I uploaded a massive photograph without bothering to resize it.  Still!  Looking great!

(I’m copying this from my old blog to my new one as we prepare to launch the new website)

January has been tough so far, though compared to most of the world (Haiti, Pakistan, etc), these things are relative.  Lots of seasonal illness in my immediate family, kids too-sick-for-school lined up to take their place on the couch under the duvet.  And although I’ve been working hard since the beginning of the month, I still have that post-Christmas holiday sense of how did I get here/what is it I’m supposed to be doing/wouldn’t I rather be under that duvet?

I have, however, started to think about starting a new novel.  When I finished The Mistress of Nothing there was a big part of me that felt like it might be a good idea to never write another novel ever again.  That book was painful to write.  It took me so damned long.

But, as faithful readers of My Secret Blog know, I won a prize for it.  And, the downside of winning the prize is that, I’ll admit it now, it has encouraged me.  I am going to write another.

However, I may be some time.

Rising Stars will be at BETT this week - the annual education technology fair -  previewing ‘Lifelines’ to interested teachers.  ‘Lifelines’ is the brand new series of multimedia stories that Chris Joseph and I have created for Rising Stars, a London-based educational publisher.  Chris has created a special preview of the story ‘I am Rose’ for BETT; this story is told from the point of view of a London girl who witnesses the first day of the Blitz from the roof of her block of flats.  All nine of the new stories are told from the first person point of view of a child; the range of stories is great fun, from an American girl whose mum chases tornadoes for a living to a Victorian chimney sweep.  The whole series will be published later this month.