Happy dog greeting!

Well, I’m home. It’s snowed twice so far. J. and I are in a battle over how high to turn up the electric rads because we still haven’t managed to order any wood. There’s a need to go grocery shopping. The cat and dog are happy.

Yes, back to normal, after the thrill of being a minor celebrity ushering Swarm from one reading to the next around southern and northeastern Ontario. Despite perpetual exhaustion, and the gradual corrosion of my tea-habit to stronger hits of coffee, I loved every minute of it. When can I do that again?

On my Facebook author page, I thanked all the folks who helped me out by hosting and organizing events but I realized as I gazed out into the dusk-muted boreal forest during my flight up home that I forgot to thank you.

All you people out there – old friends, new friends, and strangers alike – who came out to hear me read and picked up a copy of Swarm. Gosh, you made me feel really good!

I put five long years of my life into this book so it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g to share it with you, answer all those perceptive questions during the Q-and-A’s (including my 13-year-old nephew Jake’s insightful inquiries), and sign your books.

Seriously: when can I do this again?

I came home to Friday night Chase the Ace at the Legion where each drink earns you a raffle ticket for a jackpot that’s up over six grand by now and then it was my birthday on Saturday which we celebrated with a mini road-trip to Flin Flon and steak dinner out on the town.

How quickly life gets back to normal, although things are still happening with the book… I was part of this National Post discussion (along with fellow B&G authors Diana Davidson and Patricia Westerhof, our publisher Ruth Linka, and, you know, Margaret Atwood) about being a debut novelist in an autumn crowded with super-star books and this uber-fantastic review came out in the Coastal Spectator, saying  that Swarm “reads like an elegy for an entire population, an entire planet.”

Wow.

AND I’m reading in The Pas real soon…  (November 2nd, to be exact, at the library) and organizing other events.

But for this afternoon, things have sure quieted down, as befits, I suppose, the turning of the season. Snow spits out of the sky, a venison stew is bubbling in the crock pot and it’s about time we order a few cords of wood…