This post is a lousy substitute for a novel.

A high-school English teacher told me once that novel writing is easy, that you can just go on and on as long as you want and that you're not restricted in any way at all. "But a short story!" she exclaimed, "now this is real work!"

She had just handed us a short story assignment. At the time I hadn't quite finished writing my first novel that burdened my poor typing fingers with 360 pages (all of them embarrassing to read today). Wet behind the ears as I was, I sure as hell knew then that writing a novel was real work.

But that was eight years ago*. The latter half of that time I've been working on a different book (and a short story too, but you'd hate it). I've made two startling changes to it and I'm a bit jarred by them:

(1) Since the beginning I've been married to this one, deliberately heavy and melodramatic sentence that's always started the story off**. Well, I thought, fuck that. I'm a writer. I can write a new sentence! Right away I will!

(2) I also renamed my two leading ladies. One of them was originally modeled after someone I know and I kept the same name, but they're like separate people now and the name was constricting her growth--the written one I mean. She's called Finnegan now. The other character has been in everything I've written to date (except that first novel, incidentally) and her beautiful-but-cumbersome name has become a little dead to the teeth after six years and three books***. So now her name is Mint.

'Finnegan' means fair-haired in Gaelic. In the same language 'Mint' means the collector of thoughts, and a determined protector.

This feels like a good change. Although my writing instructor in third-year, Rosemary, said two things to our group that preoccupy me still:

"It takes seven years to write a novel."

"There are only two people in this class that I really think are going to be writers."

Notes:
*eight years ago: I just swore when I wrote that. Nothing that'll send me to hell but then again I'm a Jewish hebrew-school dropout.

**this one, deliberately heavy and melodramatic sentence: "I only own one dish because I live alone." It would morph back and forth between first and third person, present and past tense.

***dead to the teeth: I just thought of that. Does it make sense?

Hillside this year was the greatest time ever. Without paling one or the other I couldn’t help comparing it to Coachella back in April. Where at Coachella the food was standard event food that they marked up by 200%; at Hillside all food was made by local vendors only and served on reusable dishes that were then washed by volunteers whose work tent was set up next to the main stage. It was as though they thought of everything, I could go on and on about how wisely they ran it. After 25 years I think they’ve got it down pat.

Tunes ruled too, but I have a feeling Mason will do a review or something, and he’s better at it than I am.

Camping was lots of fun. Although the next time I do it I’m going to bite the bullet and buy a real sleeping bag. One that I haven’t had since I was 8. I shouldn’t have expected to sleep, especially when 300 hippies partying all night long is a lot less quiet than it would seem.

My first angry letter! I changed names and all that stuff.

***********

[pharmacist's name]
Manager, DRUGStore Pharmacy
825 Don Mills Rd.
Toronto, ON
M3C 1V4

Dear Mr. . . .,

On Monday July 18 I came to your pharmacy to obtain a Plan B Emergency Contraceptive Pill to find that you dispense it on a prescription-only basis.

My on-call doctor advised me to seek this pill on Sunday night and informed me that recent changes have made this pill obtainable without prescription on consultation with a pharmacist. My doctor also further explained that the longer a woman waits before taking it, the lower the rate of effectiveness. After a 72-hour wait, the effectiveness is virtually nil. One of the reasons for Plan B’s introduction as an over-the-counter drug is that this timeframe cannot be compromised; your decision to dispense it as prescription-only does exactly that.

The woman who processed my purchase told me that your DRUGStore location, and Loblaws, is waiting to see the results of the drug’s sale over the counter before making the same move.

Dr. . . . , from whom I had to immediately seek a prescription at the Don Mills Family Care Center Walk-In clinic, told me that the drug is over-the-counter, and that she would need to speak with you about this.

I spoke with the DRUGStore locations in Superstores in Toronto (Gerry Fitzgerald Drive), Windsor, St. Catherines, London, and Ottawa, all of whom told me that they do dispense Plan B upon consultation with pharmacists, again without prescription.

Should you wish to discuss this further I can be reached during the day at 416-467-7883.

Sincerely,

. . .


cc. Carmen Fortino, Ontario Operations, Loblaw Companies Ltd.
Ontario College of Pharmacists
Dr. Lance Ceresne, Family Practice Clinic – Sunnybrook Hospital

***********

I haven't jumped to the conclusion that this was a moral decision on the Pharmacy Manager's part. Likely as not he thinks that Plan B is "the abortion pill"*, but he may also just love the bureaucracy of "testing" things, or maybe he's waiting to maximize his profits on Morning After Pills, or he gets off on breaking the rules until Head Office finds out.

I don't ever write these or cc. the bigwigs, but on a Monday morning when a girl's losing time and this is the only pharmacy she can go to, one guy cannot be the one to break the rules and decide, morally or otherwise, that his own store's policy is to limit access to the drug. Mr. Pharmacist, it's not up to you.

Notes:
*"the abortion pill": Couldn't be further from the truth. Gather round, kids: a fertilized egg has to attach itself to the uterine wall to be able to develop into an embryo. This pill prevents it from attaching to the uterine wall and so it bounces around until it gets, ahem, ejected. Oh and when I read the Plan B brochure I was thinking of the whole reproductive system as a light-up pinball machine. Better yet, my metaphor works.

For those of you who don't know all about what I do--and those who don't want to should skip the next paragraph--I work for an association of Canadian independent booksellers. Among the many things we do, we produce and sell bags and gift certificates and things useful to our member stores at low cost; we have agreements with courier companies who can give the best rates on returns to publishers; we publish a trade magazine for booksellers; we do professional development for people wanting to start up a bookstore; and we advocate for booksellers when changes to the industry threaten their livelihoods as independents. We don't just operate in reaction to Chapters-Indigo, but with the state of bookselling as it is, it's like sleeping with an elephant: we have to shift to every move they make.

All this being said, we had a lot of calls this week because of Harry Potter.

The first such controversy was the Real Canadian Superstore in B.C. that sold the new Harry Potter days before the book's release date. Our members and our Board of Directors didn't lose it here; mostly they called to chortle because to a big box store like a Wal-Mart or a Costco or a Real Canadian Superstore, books are just more product, more stock, more stuff to put on shelves*. The booksellers who had been sitting on their shipments and waited for 12:01 a.m. on Saturday the 16th understand books inherently, and that even if it was some lame seller you sell it on its release date and no sooner.

Raincoast is the distributor who years ago took a chance on a little book called Harry Potter and beat out Scholastic for it. It was interesting to read the public notices and announcements that followed the early-Potter crisis this week. They very quickly got a court injuction to prevent anyone who had their hands on one of these precious Potters from publishing or voicing--in any medium--the characters, plot, setting, or anything else to do with the insides of the book. In the meantime, they wanted these books back and they appealed to the lucky customers to please return the books for "safekeeping" until 12:01 a.m. on July 16. These appeals were directed both at adults and at children. I never saw legal jargon so cute.

Meanwhile two more stores--a gas station and another grocery store--did the same thing again. Do you know what happens to stores who make this mistake with Harry Potter? They never see a Harry Potter again. (I don't think it'd be the whole chain to suffer though, seeing as it'd be a loss for Raincoast.) It happened when a bookstore in Toronto once sold Potters too early and the owner hasn't seen a Harry Potter since. She had to close a location recently.

Later in the week we had members calling us, furious that they still, twelve hours before release, had not received their shipments. Oops! Looks like Raincoast sold out to the big boxes. They'll ensure all the Chapters and Sam's Clubs alike have 10,000 copies (est.) of a book at the expense of independents who can't get the numbers they want--even though it's the independents who handsell books, and who have had the Harry Potter parties, and who have the author events and who match the right book to the right customer if you just ask nicely.

Oh and even when it's Harry, approximately 60% of all books published and sent out are returned to the publishers because they can't be sold. Next time you look into a Chapters and see an elaborate display or "staircase" of books, remember the following:

1. Months ago, the store ordered an extra 200 copies from the publisher.
2. The publisher spent the money to make them, plus every other store's orders.
3. Then the publisher had to deny a number of books to independents. Costs and all that.
4. The huge store who didn't bother to really sell the books paid to send them back to the publisher.
5. Publisher tries to sell the now stale books at discount (remainder).
6. No remainder sale? Warehouse.
7. Don't want to pay to keep them in the warehouse? Shredder.
8. Recycling.
9. Toilet paper.

And that's a slice of the life cycle of a book.
If there is any point to this what-I-did-at-work-this-week, it's this: Buy smart. Buy independent.

Notes:
*a big box store: I should point out that not all big box stores are suffocating the book industry in Canada. I learned that McNally Robinson Booksellers Inc. are technically a bix-box chain, with two locations in Winnipeg, one in Calgary, and the newest one in Manhattan. Note that you can buy online from McNally Robinson. I encourage you to do this next time you go to chapters.indigo.ca or amazon.ca. McNally Robinson are righteous booksellers.

I've got no beefs with civilization, but the Coachella photo contest is bringing back memories. I knew it was a mistake to look back on one of my best weekends ever (definitely in the top 5) on a Monday morning.

Don't it just get your fun & idealism juices flowing?

The silver lining is that I find these only two weeks before Hillside! I think I'll move to England and bring my own grill and become a festival bunny.

Free books. Free books.

Take 'em now. Please. I got all these gently-used from working at the library and letting them sit on my 'things to read' shelf for over three years. Others are from pillaging the warehouse at the magazine hut where I was employed for a time. So, I'm sick of looking at these, and will send them out to whoever wants them (no Nigeran book scams please).

The Greek File by William Abranowicz
Actual-new (save for my flipping), coffee table photo book about Greece.

Lives of the English Poets Vol. II OUP by Samuel Johnson
Ye olde book.

Ecstasy by Louis Couperus
You know when old-timey books promise that they're all about sensuality and provocative hot touch and all the controversy is because they hold hands at midnight in the garden? That's what I bet this book is like. I read another one by this guy and publisher and the heroine just ran around naked and wearing wings the whole book.

Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery
Bought it for school. Never read it. So it goes.

The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse ed. Stephen Coote
This is actually very good I'm just sick of looking at it. It goes chronologically from Homer to Rita Mae Brown. Someone should claim it. Watch for the Tennessee Williams poem. I just read it. I'm keeping this one.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Back cover copy: "Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of the readers forever." Why would I get rid of such a powerful tome? My ex gave it to me saying it would change my life, and by that time I already had. You can only buy this version in India.

Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós
It's like those old-timey books about women in England. But this one's in Spain. I tried so hard to get to it but there are only so many Spanish versions of Middlemarch you can read.

Significant Things by Helen McLean
I've never read the flap copy for this book and I'm not about to start. Want it?

Classical Mythology by two people with lots of letters in their names.
It's a reference text. I don't do Greek mythology though, so whoever can use it it's a very handy book.

Mothers and Daughters ed. Alberto Manguel
Some anthology about mother-daughter bond, etc. Slight cover wear but spine uncracked.

Descant 118 & 121
118 is all about Turkey. 121 is called "The Writing on the Walls." Descant is pretty righteous.

Room of One's Own vols. 24:3 ("Home and Away"), 24:4 ("Road Trip") and 26:2 ("Juxtapositions")
I picked these up because I thought they'd be all about Virginia Woolf and never even opened them.

So click comment or email me with a yea or nay. Free books. If you don't live in meet-up-for-coffee distance I might haggle about the cost of the mail.

p.s. I will trade actual, good books--or food, or even money--if anyone has a ticket for me to go see the Go! Team on July 13 in Toronto.

Where to begin. Nowhere interesting, unless you get wickedly excited by Book Industry trade shows and a nice relaxing weekend up North during which I claimed to have lost the battle but won the war against the mosquitos, and found out later that it was the other way around. I've had a red mosquito bite on my left cheek under my eye for a week, and it looks like a cross between a black eye and a bad blush job.

There was a lot going on in Toronto the last weekend in June. This was a weekend for BookExpo Canada (BEC), Pride Week Toronto (it would have been my sixth or seventh), and three other festivals: one of our 35 jazz festivals, Drinking event at the Distilley, and another one that several referred to as Caribana-lite. Needless to say, with everyone neatly filed into their preferred crowd, BEC was the straightest, soberest, least rhythmic place to be that weekend.

But there were free books and buttons and cakes and tote bags everywhere, and I got put up in a very very lux hotel room--well at least for me.*

But work is busy and good. And the weather is nice but humid. And the weekend is coming. And I got back my urge/drive to write again, finally. Finally.

Notes:
*at least for me: that's right, the water runs clean! Not all brown like usual-like!

Shh . . . the next post is incubating.