New Blurb and Other Miscellany

I’m being a very bad, bad blogger here, breaking the number one blogging mantra I promised myself I never would: going AWOL for more than a few days for no particular reason.

Baaaaaaad Newbie Novelist.

But I’ve got something good for you… a new blurb from the lovely and fabulous (and just as petite as yours truly) Michelle Cunnah (whose website rocks…www.michellecunnah.com – I don’t care what anyone says about pink, it still rules, as do flower and martini glass cartoons):

Fashionably Late is a wonderful story of East meets West. Aline Hallaby, a young Canadian-Lebanese woman, navigates the waters between her overprotective family and their traditional values, and what she really wants for herself in life. I read it in one sitting! – Michelle Cunnah, award-winning author of 32AA

Somebody pinch me.

In other news, just picked up my copy of See Jane Write by fellow Montrealer chick Sarah Mlynowski and editor Farrin Jacobs and IT LOOKS SO COOL! How could a writing how-to manual with chapter headings like “How Writing Chick Lit is Like Therapy” and “What I like About Me: Creating Your Main Character” fail to be cool? If only this kind of book was around when I was trying to figure out how to write in a genre that, by its very nature, breaks all the genre rules and yet isn’t quite mainstream… I’d read writing advice like “but no one will like your character if she swears/drinks herself silly/sleeps with her best friend’s fiancé…” and I’d think: but what about Samantha of Sex and the City, or Rachel of Something Borrowed or the infamous Bridget? And the best part about this book? No more trying to figure out exactly how Tolstoy’s characterization methods can be applied to your humble chef d’oeuvre… all examples are pulled from some of the most popular chick lit out there. So yay Sarah and Farrin for writing this! Next month I’ll be picking up Cathy Yardly’s chick lit writing how-to and I’ll be happy to tell you a bit about that too.

Last but not least in my list of miscellany… flying to Little Cayman tomorrow on an impromptu weekend getaway!!! I’ve been living in Grand Cayman for four years now and I have yet to hop over to our tiniest of sister islands. I did happen to be on a commuter plane once that stopped there to let off some passengers on its way to Cayman Brac (the ‘middle’ island in terms of size out of the three) and we landed in a field. A field with a tractor-buggy thing not three feet away from the propeller. (Yes, it was a Kodak moment that was duly captured.) I’ll be staying at the reportedly blissful Southern Cross Club, and will post pics just as soon as I figure out how. Just to give you an idea, Grand Cayman is, as the name would suggest, the biggest of the three Cayman islands. At its widest point, GC is 8 by 22 miles…now can you picture Little Cay?...