So, there’s a reading from Delible up on Trevor Cole’s wonderful site, Authors Aloud.

On the weekend, the Vancouver Sun did an interview/profile:

This Thursday, the OPEN TEXT reading series continues with Jon Paul Fiorentino reading at Capilano College at 12:30 p.m. (Cedar 140, Cap College, 2055 Purcell Way).

And Friday night (the 18th) is the Vancouver launch of Delible (Spartacus, 8 p.m.), and then on Sunday night, I’ll be doing a radio interview on Coop Radio’s Storytelling Show.

This past weekend, I read a letter from Talon Books that was so dire, the friend who showed it to me had hidden it from her partner (who has a truly stunning first book out this fall). She thought it’d depress him. Something about a big computer (named SAP) calculating book motility ….

While in Montreal for Blue Met, I met with Jeanette Kelly at All in a Weekend and was interviewed about the book. They’ve archived it here….

Highlights of Blue Metropolis:

• Seeing Francesca LoDico win the Accenti Magazine award for non fiction for her beautiful piece “The Disappearing Sicily.”
• Late night Chinese at VIPs with a lot of lovely folks, some old friends, some new. Seeing David McGimpsey, Jason Camlot, Donavan, and my lovely editor, Jon Paul Fiorentino (who was the best editor — thanks Jon).
• Dinner with Robbie Dillon and friends at a posh Sushi restaurant hidden away behind a non-descript metal door.
• Listening in on Suhayl Saadi’s interview at CBC; the man speaks like he writes, in beautifully articulate pages, ready for print. Sunday night, he joined a big and bawdy table of us for dinner.
• Seeing Nigel Thomas & Sherry Simon on a panel on writing about writers. When the panel was discussing respect for writers, Thomas said something about how a real sign of respect for writing might look something like a living wage…
• I’m in the midst of reading Claire Latremouille’s Desmond Road Book of the Dead and Catherine Kidd’s Missing the Ark (and also reading a brilliant masters thesis) and at Blue Met, I picked up a few more, among them: Language Acts (edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift) and At the Bottom of the Sky by Peter Dubé (who’ll be here in Vancouver to launch the book later this month).

So, Delible came off the press yesterday and Insomniac is shipping it out. I’ll see it for the first time when I arrive in Montreal for the launch at Blue Met.

This morning, Bernard Kelly had a smart review in the Gazette:

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If you’re in Montreal, I’ll be launching the new novel, Delible, there in a couple of weeks and would love to see you.

Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival
Weds, April 25th, 8 p.m.
DELTA CENTRE-VILLE Hotel
777, University Street, Square-Victoria Metro.
(Room: La Terrasse; free!)

I’m just putting in the last edits on the new novel, Delible (uh, again), which I’ve been working on forever, or so it seems (of course, abandoning a few 200 page drafts and beginning from scratch is an integral part of the process, which is why it takes me so long). The thinking began in April of 1999, when I was handed a missing poster. Throwing it out wasn’t an option, because the girl hadn’t been found. Putting it away amounted to throwing it out. So, I ended up putting up the poster over my desk, and when I moved to Vancouver, the poster moved with me. Every day, I sat down to write, and it was below the poster, seeing the girl’s unknowing smile. That picture haunted the edges of my thinking. It shaped the direction my writing took.

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So, what else but writing sees you ask yourself questions like: If one of the teenage rocker girls in my novel wrote a book report on The Lord of the Flies, what would she say? And what else but writing would allow you to then spend an inordinate amount of doing the hatchet job that is her homework? (This, though it has no hope in hell of making the final draft):

Two Hundred words on Lord of the Flies by Val Swynerchuk.

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