Remember when I said there would be more Fall For Anything giveaways? And you guys called me a liar? Okay, that ‘liar’ part didn’t happen but it all works out because I wasn’t lying! St. Martin’s Press is giving away 24 copies of Fall for Anything on Goodreads right now (US residents only). Check it out here. There are 32 days left to enter.

I’ve got a wealth of book related updates and then I am going to tell you a sad Halloween tale. First, I’m thrilled to announce that Some Girls Are has been nominated for OLA’s 2011 White Pine Award! I am so excited. The Festival of Trees is making less of a hermit outta me. I attended the celebrations last year and I will definitely be attending them next May in Toronto. They are way too fun to miss.

Second, Fall For Anything ARCs have been making their way around the book blogosphere (scary!). The amazing Sara of The Hiding Spot gave it a stellar, spoiler-free review that you can read here AND the rockin’ James from Book Chic Club featured FFA for Fragment Friday! Fragment Friday is a meme where you vlog an excerpt of your current or favourite read. Remember how I posted the first five chapters of Fall For Anything? Well, he read the sixth! Watch it here. Thank you, Sara and James!

AND NOW ONTO SAD HALLOWEEN STUFFS. If you have been following my blog for a couple of years, you know that pumpkin carving is a relatively serious past time in the Summers’ household. I say relatively serious because there are people that take pumpkin carving REALLY seriously and I don’t want to undermine them. Here are the pumpkins Megan and I carved last year:

This year, we had big plans. BIG PLANS! We got two pumpkins EACH. We were both going to outdo ourselves and carve the best pumpkins in town. Not only in town, BUT IN THE WORLD! But that is not what ended up happening. If we had known this, we might have made different choices. But we didn’t. Blissfully unaware of our pumpkins’ sad fate, we put these movies in the DVD player and watched them while we worked:

(Hocus Pocus, Disney’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Night of the Living Dead, oh yeah.)

I’m making grilled lime chicken with black bean sauce and braised onions from Simply Recipes. I made both of these things before, very recently, and they were big hits. So not the spookiest things ever, but something everyone will enjoy. Alterations to the chicken recipe: it’s baked in the oven with the onions. I also make garlic sauce to go with it (a bunch of minced garlic mashed with salt, mixed into some sour cream, mayo and lemon juice–all to taste) which–YUM! Tastes amazing layered on top of the black bean sauce. I am also debating boiling and simmering the black beans in vegetable broth for some ~extra flavor~.

This will be served with Martha Stewart’s Mashed Boo-tatoes because they are the CUTEST THINGS:

picture from Martha Stewart

picture from epicurious

It is going to be so good.

AND YOU ARE ALL INVITED!!!!

I have given you two day’s notice and left a trail of clues for you to follow all the way to my dinner table.

Now I am going to go start chopping cilantro in preparation for this fantastic feast, while my wrists can still work after all that traumatic pumpkin carving. :(

image via my confined space

image via wikipedia

image via google

Fun Fact about this Canadian: I did not always say “eh,” but my friends did. And I wanted to be just like them so I forced myself to say it until it finally became second nature. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if they decided to jump off a bridge? Probably I would have done it with them while screaming, “EEEEEEH!”

And they would have thought I was so cool and finally accepted me for the person I pretended to be when I was around them. *sniff*

I am celebrating Canada Day with this movie:

jerk

Also I liked how many artful Jason Vorhees shots it featured:

True story: this part of Friday the 13th Part 2:

IT’S TRUE.

Anyway, sometimes I look at where these blog entries begin and where they end up and I am amazed I write books.

So now that Cracked Up to Be is out there and people are reading it, I’ve been hearing from readers, which is awesome. One question has popped up in my inbox a surprising number of times (to me, at least), so I thought I’d take the opportunity to address it here just because, you know. I’m trying to get back into this blogging thing when I don’t actually have a whole lot to say (tricky).

Areyouready.

Will there be a sequel to Cracked Up to Be?

I have no immediate plans to write a sequel to Cracked Up to Be, but I’ll never say never. I can tell you one thing that’s holding me back is the fact that all novels generally require a conflict and I kinda feel like I’ve put poor Parker through enough. I can also tell you Chris and Becky totally got married. Maybe. Either way, it’s a very cool feeling to know that people still want to hear from Parker. And I’d be lying if I said the very question didn’t set me off wondering what tormented hi-jinx she could get into Post-Cracked Up to Be. Plenty, probably. With or without me to write them!

Speaking of questions, why am I such a slow reader? Does anyone know? I’m reading a bunch of books right now and they’re good and they hold my interest but I cannot read them in a timely fashion and this is bumming me out. I envisioned myself at the end of this week having read the five books I’m… reading. Also, I’m twitter-pals with a bunch of book bloggers and I swear they read a book a meal (Sarah, I’m looking at you!) and it makes me jealous. Literally AN ENTIRE BOOK. A MEAL! So that’s three books a day! I want to be able to do this! I don’t think it is possible without performance enhancing reading drugs, though. I guess you just have to be born a fast reader. Or take a speed reading course.

Nobody offer me solutions or answers to this flaw in my genetic makeup, just pity me, okay.

The loverly Adele posted an interview with me over at Persnickety Snark. It was much fun and I think I said more about Some Girls Are there than I have said anywhere while still being a tease. Thank you, Adele! Everyone make sure to check out Persnickety Snark and bookmark it up. It’s a fabulawesome book blog.

And I’m very honoured to have been invited to participate in Reader Rabbit’s Canadian Month, alongside many other amazing authors that I greatly respect (cough, cough, C.K. Kelly Martin anyone?). There is an interview with me here, where I discussed what it means to be Canadian and talk about some things that didn’t make the final version of Cracked Up to Be (guess what Parker originally did to Chris!). Thank you, Reader Rabbit! It was a pleasure! Yay Canada!

AND on the off chance I decided to visit AOL today (it was strange–I never do), they had an article about volcanoes! I think this is a good omen. Check it out: Volcano’s Lightning Captured in Photo. For the first time! It’s really incredible. If you go through the slideshow you can see an underwater volcano erupting off the Tonga Coast which is just jaw-droppingly stunning. Volcanoes! Underwater volcanoes! Isn’t that incredible? Volcanoes make me as happy as the weather changing and sleeping with the window open and being able to hear all the birds singing really early in the morning (like right now)…

And Toto’s Africa.

Have a good weekend, y’all.

Godspeed, Teeny.

Anyway, things here are pretty quiet and I am woefully behind in getting back to people about stuff. Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up which means food! Also giving thanks. And I hear we’re having an election next Tuesday. I made a promise to keep most politics off my blog, so I will refrain from telling you that I am voting Liberal. Meanwhile, I am doing the writing thing.

(Blog topics, I needs them!!!)

Cracked Up to Be round-up: the trailer can be found on bookscreening.com–bookscreening is a regular visit of mine because I think I’ve made it clear my life depends on watching book trailers–and was also briefly featured on veoh’s front page (it’s down now, but Daisy Whitney and my twitter pals witnessed it, I swear)!

Michelle reminded me that Cracked Up to Be is also in this Library Journal article about tracking down first fiction of 2008 (like I said, my book is a Time Lord). Scroll way down the list of forthcoming debuts and it is one of the two books under ‘Canada.’ You also still have time to enter my Last Lazy Galley Giveaway, AND, tonight while google-stalking myself (what), I discovered Cracked Up To Be is part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. If you’re a member of LibraryThing, you can request an ARC under the stipulation you review it, I guess! Check out the rules to see if you’re eligible etc. It’s over here.

If you are sick of all that Cracked Up to Be talk, I suggest taking a breather from it by reading the first two chapters of C.K. Kelly Martin’s upcoming release, One Lonely Degree. They are amazing.

Heckler in crowd: Why do you not go to Hollywood?
Pierre Trudeau: Well, I will go to Hollywood, and I will bring you along. And you will enjoy yourself.

I laughed for like, ten minutes straight. The only way his response could’ve been more perfect if it had ended with, “SO THERE.”

Best Prime Minister EVER.

But tired. Which might have something to do with posting this at 4 am, I do not really know. I’m just hazarding a guess there. It’s probably wrong.

It’s getting to be flannel pajama weather round these parts and flannel pjs, as we all know, are like wearing a bed to bed. What is not to love about that, I ask you. Bring on the falling leaves! And then the snow! And then bring back summer please.

So last week, I sent a letter to the editor of the local paper about the upcoming referendum, urging people to inform themselves and vote, and today it was right there on page two (and three!). Yay. It was pretty sexy as far as letters to the editors go and they’re generally REALLY sexy, so you can imagine how pleased I am about this. I signed it Courtney Canuck except not really, but you can all call me that from now on, if you want.

And I think you do.




… And that’s all I gots. Ah, blogs.

If you’re a citizen of Ontario and you don’t already know about the upcoming referendum on electoral reform, EDUCATE YOURSELF NOW. In the October election, there will be two ballots. The usual vote for your candidate and a vote for an electoral system. This is what the ballot will say:

Which electoral system should Ontario use to elect members to the provincial legislature?

o The existing electoral system (First-Past-the-Post)

o The alternative electoral system proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly (Mixed Member Proportional)

For those not inspired enough to click the links, here’s a quick summary on our current electoral system (FPTP) and the proposed (MMP).

Right now, Ontario has a one vote system, which means when I vote for my party’s representative in my riding, that vote also goes to the provincial party leader. If the provincial party leader wins the most seats, they generally go on to form a government. But they don’t have to have the majority of votes to win. Also, what if I love the provincial party leader but I loathe the party’s representative in my riding? Or what if I loathe the provincial party leader but I love party’s representative in my riding? I don’t like voting for a candidate I’m not thrilled about simply to keep the opposition out. And because the FPTP system often narrows the field to the two predicted leading parties, I feel like a vote outside of the red and blue spectrum will essentially be wasted, which is also not cool.

Man, smell those choices! Yum!

But with the proposed new electoral system, Mixed Member Proportional (which combines First-Past-the-Post and Proportional Representation), I will have two votes. Two! One for my local representative and one for a political party. Do you know what that means? It means that, in future elections, you and I can affect change on two separate levels: locally and provincially, which is more than we’re able to do now. It means more Canadians have a better chance of actually being represented by a government that’s supposed to be representing them anyway. It also gives us a better foundation than the one we’ve got for the coming generations to have and build upon.

How awesome is that?

Pretty damn awesome.

Your Big Decision.ca is the impartial website with all the information you need about the referendum if you don’t already have it. There you can learn about the old system and the new system and watch videos that can explain this whole thing a whole lot better than I did. Please spread the word and when the time comes: VOTE.

Vote vote vote vote vote.

It’s the most important thing you can do.

Links:
yourbigdecision.ca
citizen’s assembly

edit
Vote for MMP is a really helpful and informative site on the pro-side. It’s incredibly easy to navigate, is direct and straightforward and I was able to use their info to help further explain the positives of Mixed Member Proportional to people who were interested. I suggest everyone check it out!
(Thanks, Mark, for the heads-up!)

It’s definitely no secret to anyone who knows me how much I dig this country. It’s a beautiful place and one of my more achievable life goals, I think, is to see it from province to province.

And it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am going to wrap up this post with a Pierre Trudeau quote!

Pierre Trudeau: If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love.

Which is a kind of enjoyable feeling. It will probably become less enjoyable as I grow older and my heart gets weaker and people have to whip out the paddles to revive me, but.

So what I’m getting at is that Al Purdy’s At the Quinte hotel surprised the hell out of me. We’re talkin’ immediate love. It’s so dry and thoughtful and funny and complex and melancholy and layered that just like that it’s definitely become one of my favourite poems of all time.

It was ALSO made into an incredibly awesome short film. So if you’ve got 5:18 of free time, this is probably what you need to spend it on.

Sigh.

And now I am going to use this paragraph to express the shame I feel at probably being the last Canadian on earth not to know this poem: [shame].