Look what the postwoman brought an hour ago; review copies of Sister Mine! These are also called "advance uncorrected proofs", because they are printed up before the proofreader has had a look at the manuscript. So there will be small errors in them that shouldn't be in the finished version. These A.R.Cs (advance reading copies) are printed with a thin card cover and on thinner paper than the final version will be. They're like a blurry snapshot of your book-to-be. So exciting! This part never gets old.

This handful of ARCs is for my personal archives. The publisher sent them to me as a courtesy. I don't know how many copies the publisher printed, but now they will be sending them out to potential reviewers. Which means that reviews should start showing up soon. So now I'll be on tenterhooks for the next little while, waiting to see what the reviewers think.

This past Tuesday, I taught a writing workshop in Toronto for Toronto Street Writers, in the lovely Impossible Arts Academy space.

A few days -- and a haircut -- later, I gave a reading and an interview at the Impossible Words reading series in the same space. My interviewers, left to right, were Chanelle and Idil from Toronto Street Writers. They both also read some kick-ass writing of their own, and their questions of me were to the point, well-researched, and thoughtful.

Before the readings, there was a musical/spoken-word set by Sandra Alland and Y, a.k.a. Zorras. They call their style "Poetry-music-video-weirdness fusion. With megaphones." They were outspoken, fearless, and danceable. (Thanks for the cd and lyrics, guys.)

Also, I danced. With Y from Zorras, with Idil, and with David.

Storm willing and the creek don't rise, I head to Toronto this Thursday. World Fantasy Con first, then Impossible Words.

Since 'tis the season, I'm going to provide links to descriptions of some of the supernatural creatures I referenced -- with some artistic license -- in The Chaos.

Scroll down the page on this site to find a description of the rolling calf

The site also describes a number of other folklorical creatures I've referenced in other stories, such as River Mumma, Ol' Higue (old hag), and spirits of the ancestors living in silk-cotton trees.)

And here are links to some of the others:

-Anansi the spider man.

-Brer Rabbit and the tar baby.

-The kappa.

-The phoenix.

-The Sasquatch.

There were probably others, but these are the ones that come to mind. And some of the others, I simply invented. I'm especially proud of carnivorous Tinkerbell.

We're heading into trickster season/Anansi o'clock/Hallowe'en. Today, as it does so often, my to-do list far exceeds my capacity to get it all done. So of course, I'm blogging instead of tackling the insurmountable tide of expectations and obligations. Just for a few minutes more, and then I'll get to it.

I have been dealing with a lot of soft tissue pain; twinging, aching and cramping all over. I haven't been able to continue the Argentine Tango class I started. I was enjoying that, too. :( Yesterday, practically every movement hurt. Does slow a body down a tad bit. I don't know whether it's the fibromyalgia, or something else, or something else exacerbating the fibromyalgia. But I'd just read that celery seed can do wonders for fibromyalgia pain, so I hobbled down to the health food store and got myself some seed and some tincture. Drank a goodly amount of it yesterday. I doubt I'll see full effects immediately, but anecdotal evidence says that it'll only take a few days. Whatever the reason, the pain is noticeably less this morning. Also trying D-Ribose for energy, but that'll take weeks to show any effects. Fingers crossed. I'd like to get back to the gym, and to tackle a dance class again.

I'm not wearing a Hallowe'en costume this year, but at least my dress will be thematic (go, team Anansi!):

Here's a draped hip dress I saw on Ebay:

And here's one from a site called Bebe Clothing:

And here's the one I made myself last night, out of two $2 tshirts:

Lindsey Rose, my editor at Grand Central Publishing, is sending me the first pass pages for Sister Mine. They should arrive in a few days. They'll show me what the text will look like when it's laid out on the page. She's also going to be working on descriptive copy for the galleys and the book jacket.

Blackheart Man has been a novel-in-progress of mine for lo, these many years. It was under contract to Grand Central, but it was during my inexplicably ill years, and when four years went by without my being able to complete it, the publishing company needed to close its books, so my editor had to cancel the contract. But things are going much better for me now. I've completed a couple of novels, a chapbook, and a few short stories. I'm nerving myself up to tackle Blackheart Man again. It currently stands at nearly 400 pages, so it's probably close to done. But still, many a paragraph stands between me and that finish line. Here's an Agony Column podcast of me reading from Blackheart Man.

Canada's CBC Radio runs Canada Reads, in which five jurors debate which should be the novel to recommend to all Canadians that year. I was one of the jurors on the first Canada Reads. A few years later, CBC asked a number of previous jurors to each write a short story that contained the titles of all five of the novels for that particular year. It was a doozy of a challenge. At the time, I was descending farther into the as yet undiagnosed anaemia which would steal my ability to concentrate on anything for a few years. I was having a really difficult time writing. But the notion so caught my fancy that I guess adrenaline pulled me through it. When I read my story a few years later in San Francisco, Rick Kleffel from The Agony Column was there to record it. Here's Snow Day. Can you pick out the five titles? I'm betting that at least one of them will be familiar to you.