The cat is screaming his head off for his afternoon walk-on-the-harness so I’m going to keep this brief (did I mention that J. and i brought a whole tree into our house just to try to keep him happy as an indoor cat? Here’s a picture 🙂 ).

People are starting to send me photos of This Has Nothing To Do With You arriving in their mailboxes and little reports on how they’re enjoying it which I LOVE.

(Notable Canadian author Sharon Butala, bestselling author of 20 books, even recommended the book on Facebook. “…she is GOOD,” she wrote. Gulp! And another gulp: appearing next to Lynn Coady’s new work on a 49th Shelf The Buzz List. I admire these women so much…).

Last week I also got to talk about the novel in depth when I did a wide-ranging and fascinating interview with Michael Elves for his feature Turning Pages on the University of Manitoba’s radio station (he had obviously carefully read the book!) You can listen to that here.

And as we move deeper into autumn, my days are starting to heat up as I get ready to dive into the Winnipeg International Writers’ Festival before I start hopping around the country a little bit to promote the novel.

If you’re in the area, I’ll be reading on the main stage at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People at the Forks on Monday, Sept. 23rd, with four other terrific writers (including Adam Foulds whose Giller-long-listed novel, Dream Sequence, I read this summer and loved although I did have some questions around the female character’s motivation – maybe we can chat about that!). 

All of my events – Portage La Prairie on Wednesday, to chat with author C.C. Benison about our characters’ experience of shattering violence, and then on to Alberta later on in October and Ontario in early November – are listed on my website calendar.

And, if you’re interested in hosting me for a reading or a workshop or having me drop by your book club, please do get in touch! You never know what’s possible! 

Other than that, I’ve got a playlist for the novel coming up soon (it was very fun putting that together!) and a guest post about building emotional resonance in fiction and a few other things. I’ll point them out as they come along…. 

And I’m also quietly working on a new novel (novella?) which is kind-of weird and causing me some uncertainty. Still, I keep at it… and whenever I think oh, come on, Lauren, this is just too strange, I remind myself of the bizarre yet utterly authentic and captivating world reality by Mona Awad (one of my very favourite contemporary writers) in Bunny.

So, I’ll keep stretching, trying new things, and working towards the heart of the story.

Not unlike Merlin who cries and cries and cries and cries to go outside… 

Persistence. Tenacity. Showing up.

Until the door just opens, like magic, and you go.