First, the Penguin-mobile.

Second, Sima cruising atop the Penguin-mobile.

Lovely, ain’t it?

Thank you to Juliet, my amazing (and first) ex-editor, for sending me pictures!

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And then into that marriage that classic novelistic device: A stranger comes to town.

A stranger with perfect breasts.

Who happens to be Israeli.

Readers often express surprise that I chose to write from the perspective of Sima, a much older woman. That wasn’t a difficult choice: I was sick of reading fiction written by twenty-somethings about twenty-somethings (I happened to be in an MFA program at the time), and Sima’s voice felt very natural to me.

Writing an Israeli woman, however, felt like a leap. And of all the many things I beat myself up on when I first started writing Sima, Timna herself may have topped the list.

Given the political situation in the Middle East, I often wondered whether what I was doing was, well, kosher. I mean: the character is Israeli—just out of the army, and waiting for her own boyfriend to finish his military service—and yet the setting is entirely divorced from any kind of political reality.

And yet, the more I wrote Timna, the less I worried.

Read the entire post here.

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1. The Penguin and I, day 3

Oh yes, drowning in study cards and twitching every time my pager rang.

Well, I’ve graduated UBC Midwifery, mostly. The actual ceremony  & much anticipated after-party remains.

And a national exam.

And then there’s hospital registration & medical billing number assignment & insurance payments and a whole lot of paperwork. But that’s not really blog-worthy.

What is:  Sima the Paperback hits the shelves on May 25th.

(Which also happens to be my brother’s wedding anniversary. Happy 12th Mickey & Sandi!)

I’ll be blogging about Sima on Penguin.com next week. (And presumably posting links here as well, since clearly I’m not capable of one well-groomed blog, let alone two.)

Till then: Tell your book club, your mama’s book club, your mama’s best friend’s book club: Sima is in paperback, and if a novel set in a bra-shop doesn’t get a book group talking, nothing will.

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1. Penguin.com and me

Hebrew language rights have been sold!

Sima has been shortlisted for the City of Victoria Butler Prize!

Back-to-school Clinical-intensive-at-UBC news:

Orca whale sighting on my ferry commute!

And finally: results are in from the Duo Tang challenge:

Several Canadians emailed me about my spelling of Duo Tang. A PhD in Canadian Literature gently explained (well, actually she called me “rookie”) that it’s DUO tang. A grade school teacher (conveniently my sister-in-law) voted instead for Doutang or Duo-tang.

Why did they email me and not post on my blog? I have no idea. Very Canadian.

Regardless, since no Americans commented I will reveal nothing. Ask the Orcas.

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1. To market to market
2. Back to work

Kingsburg Village

Is that lovely, or what? Plus, there’s always the chance you could bump into Calvin Trillin. Not that I or anyone I know out here has ever done so, but it could happen. Really.

This marks our 7th summer out here. And my first as a local literary celebrity.

Okay, so no one has yet voted to name a hill after me –all the local big-wigs have hills named after them. But our neighbor across the street told me that not only did she love my book — it saved her back, literally.

“I’ve been wearing bras to sleep,” she said, leaning in close to whisper her secret as we stood barefoot in the center of the road (it’s important to strike up conversations directly in the middle of the road, because on either side are noisy dogs who want attention). “My back ache has totally disappeared –it has completely changed my life. But I guess you hear that all the time.”

Umm, actually, no. But that’s no small badge of literary honour, no?

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Amelia and Sima, Port Hardy Vancouver Island, July 2009

While I’ve been busy with my student-midwife life attending births in Alberta,  Sima has been getting around. Random sightings here & there (do synagogue bookstores count as random?), but none more so than this: my friend Amelia, a fellow student-midwife, came across Sima in Port Hardy, a small town on Northern Vancouver Island where she’s currently placed in a rural practice. Port Hardy, whose highway welcome sign reads: “Where the highway ends and the adventure begins.” Port Hardy: First Nations, Fishermen, and now, Sima. Amelia writes:

How excited am I to have found your book in a tiny bookstore/cafe in Port Hardy!?  I caused quite a stir as I started to rearrange their display to move your book to the centre and the Twilight series out of the way.  When questioned, I said ”This book was written by my friend, she’s local and it rocks, plus, those Twilight books are sooooooo last year.”  And I even convinced an old lady to buy it for her cruise ship trip to Alaska that was leaving in 10 minutes!

Hooray for Amelia, and for Sima!

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1. Sima has landed!

But before I go into that: can I talk about the flight? I was utterly sans children.  No need to entertain anyone during the customs line; no need to talk to anyone at all. All I had to do was sit still for 5 hours. I read a book. An entire book. And I slept. And I ate fine, because there was actually room in my solely carry-on luggage for my food. And…

Okay, I can tell, you’re bored. But as Jordan put it: traveling with or without one’s children might be one of the greatest discrepencies in the parent-game. And just this once, the without felt nearly luxurious.

Now–Vancouver. I had a reading last night at Diane’s Lingerie. Despite the fact that I showed up 10 minutes late due to a delayed bus at the ferry terminal(cut to image of me hustling down Granville, my rolling luggage banging along beside me), it went really well. 

(I know, I know: I should have taken a cab. But perversely, the longer I sat on the bus waiting it to depart the ferry terminal the more committed I became to staying on it….)

There was a  good mix of pregnant ladies & student midwives, for one. There were also women from a Lilith Magazine Salon, along with my personal publicity heroine, Rebecca Wigod of The Vancouver Sun. Wigod’s incredibly generous profile/review of me ran all over Canada, an act of good-will outdone only be a personal call I later received from her mother, who not only told me she loved my novel, but described exactly what I’d always hoped readers might love about it.

Meantime: it’s past midnight in NYC but I’m staying up to greet my parents, who went out to a Broadway Show this evening and got caught in Obama & Michelle-mania. Once again they’re outdoing me with their social life. But no matter–I have that brunch date tomorrow morning. With my editor & agent–or did I already mention that?

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1. Radio redux, and hold the babies, please.

It’s good. Really good. It means a whole new “package,” apparently: another cover, another launch, another chance. 

Very, very exciting. Even though I love the old cover & even though I have become a huge fan of Overlook Press, still, this is clearly a very good thing. June 2010: a summer read. I have to say, when I was writing Sima  I never really envisioned it on a beach blanket. But apparently it’ll be marketed that way.

It must be all those boobs.

Meantime: things continue on here, the daily routines similar each day while, at the same time, the girls change constantly. It’s an interesting contradiction. In the last few weeks Eva’s favorite colour went from pink to purple to pink again, plus white. Horses are out; dogs and cats are in.  She dresses herself easily, and has even started dressing Tillie–or rather, suggesting ensemble combinations which Tillie, unbelievably opinionated & strong-willed, mostly rejects, inevitably selecting something from Eva’s closet instead.

So Tillie trips along in size 4 dresses and Eva looks out for her. This weekend I watched in amazement as Eva carefully helped Tillie climb rocks, one arm protectively around Tillie’s back. They are both big into rocks, and right now Victoria’s best rock-spots are dotted with amazing blue wildflowers, an incredible setting which gives Tillie’s drowning-dress-look a very pleasing Little House on the Prairie aesthetic.

Another first this weekend: we had the kind of dinner party we all remember our parents having. You know, where the children amuse themselves in one room and the adults in another. As opposed to the kids being the entire focus. Don’t get me wrong: I like focusing on my kids. But my generation takes it too far sometimes. We’re so serious, so concerned, so protective…the other day I listened to Tillie crying out for freedom from the constrains of her car seat: “Up Mommy now! Up Mommy now!” and thought that when I was her age, if I were bored in the car I’d, well, go for a walk. I’d climb over the back seat, hang out in the “backity-back” –station wagons basically had playrooms–or crouch down in that soft spot behind the seats. 

My father thinks the car seat is basically my invention –he’s chided me more than once for my “obsession” with car seats. “Admit it,” he’s told me, watching me strap in the girls for what he’d consider a short enough ride to not warrant seat belts, “everyone has their shtick, and this is yours.”

I’ve tried explaining that the car seat isn’t my shtick–it’s a law. And sure we’re all in favour of making the roads safer for our children. But our kids have lost some freedom, too. So Saturday night we toasted to the Penguin deal out on the deck while a roving band of kids made a mess of the basement. Aahh. New starts, and a revival, too.

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“It made Jonathan Safran Foer ,” I was told.

Which is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, since as I recall Safran Foer debuted on the cover of the NY Times Book Review. Still: an amazing program and an amazing opportunity: the chance to get my novel into the hands of readers across the country.

So here I am, trying to balance personal appeal, story interest, and Jewness into a 2-minute package.

The trouble of course: if they do choose me, how the hell will I get the time off clinical placement?  And why does it feel so much like being pulled in different directions? And why does it feel so much like guilt? (Am I abandoning my book? Shirking my clinical training? And don’t get me started on my family…)

One step at a time. I had to audition–I just couldn’t not try for it– even though it means flying to NYC on Saturday and returning on Monday in time to start my next placement.  The good news is that if I lose I win– if no one wants me, no conflict arises. And if I win I win, too, because then my book gets more than life-support — a new jolt, defib!

(No: that’s not my midwifery-training talking, just the late nights watching Gray’s Anatomy.)

2 minutes. 2 minutes. Breasts, breasts, Jews, Jews, Mother, daughter. Anything else you think I should include?

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1. Camel vs caramel, and where are the reviews?!

Okay? Okay.

But who’s kidding who: I haven’t written in a bit because I simply don’t have much book news. I gave an embarrasingly long interview to an Australian ex-pat who has made it his business to interview every Jewish author around. I’m not sure what possessed me to go on, and on, and on, though I suspect his accent was to blame. At any rate, he’s posted not just the transcript but also the audio. I will never ever listen to it myself, but it’s nice that it’s out there for Jewish author posterity –in excellent company.

This coming Friday I have an interview with Jewish Week.  A bit of a coup for me–it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that my mother has been salivating over the idea of a Jewish Week review ever since the publishing contract got signed. When none came, she simply called them herself. She got the name & email of the book reviewer and passed it on to me; I sent an email explaining the situation re: my mother and my novel. Right away I got a response, and now an interview. Score one for the home team.

In other news: my midwifery placement ends this week, I’ve got a final on Tuesday, I have no idea where my summer placements will be (the idea is to work with obstetricians, nurses, and family physicians, but UBC has been mum on the details), and I have now committed to go to NYC the last weekend of May for Jewish Book Network auditions, which means I will parade around showing how Jewish and appealing I am while representatives from Jewish Book Fairs all across North America watch, deciding whether I am worth bringing to their venue. Which begs the question: if I am chosen, how will I get the time off? (And if I’m not?!)

All the usual craziness. But the real big good news: Tillie is toilet-trained! One month shy of 2, and totally brilliant. And with two kids in underwear, nothing can stop me. 

(Not even being out of Cheerios mid-week–even this trial I can face. So off to the supermarket I go–)

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