Fashionably Late Around Town

So much to blog about today... and so much time?

Yesterday was a Cayman Islands bank holiday, which really, I shouldn't have "taken" seeing as I an NO LONGER AN ACCOUNTANT but my friends were all off and wanted to go to the beach, so what the heck?

I've also been enjoying long, uninterrupted (by guilt or otherwise) stretches of reading this past weekend, and can say, right now at least, that the itch has been scratched - I was wallowing in self-pity for a while, racked with guilt over needing to do one thing or the other, taking at least a little bit advantage of the fact I live on a Caribbean island and actually going to the beach for heaven's sakes, that I really haven't indulged my reading urge of late. Like a workaholic parent, I threw money at the problem, in lieu of time, buying every book I was dying to reading, and watching it languish on my shelves. No more. We'll see how long this euphoric state lasts, but I'm confident I'm turning a page here... stop laughing.

The other promise I've made of late (to myself and my publicist)concerns this blogging regularly thing... I recall throwing at-least-once-a-week out there once. It's not that I have nothing to say (HA! my friends are wishing for the day), but it's been pretty much the same problem as reading, as in if I have one iota of free time it should be spent writing, not working out, reading, making salads, or even blogging.

So here we are, leaf turned. Though I will try and make these posts more frequent, and less verbose.

Let me start out by saying I think I've found my dream publicist. My in-house publicist is wonderful as well, but I think independent publicists and in-house ones are different breeds of publicist and shouldn't be compared. I'll be delving into that with more detail in my next installment of The Promo Diaries, for Chick Chat, the Chick Lit Writers' online chapter. Maybe with some organization, I'll get those articles up on my website one day, since I hope all you writer chicks out there will learn from my promo mistakes. Or at least get a good laugh out of them.

Heather was lovely enough to alert me to this accidental picture of Fashionably Late in a primo spot out there in California. CALIFORNIA, chicas. For a Lebanese/ Montrealer/Cayman Islander, Calie may as well be Mars. I should probably write Megan and thank her for the unintentional promo (right back at you babe: Megan Crane's book, Frenemies, just came out recently, and you can read all about it here).

The weekend I went to Miami, I'd remembered to bring along my digital camera, but not the battery, which I'd left in its charger back home. Very smart. So I can't share with you pictures of FL's appearances on tables across the Miami area, but here are some pics from Montreal...

Here it is at Paragraph, a great indie bookstore that mainly serves students at the McGill University campus across the street. If you're ever in Montreal, this is one of those well-kept local secrets - super cute bookstore with state-of-the-art adjacent cafe, on the corner of gorgeous McGill University & Sherbrooke streets, a strangely serene place for such a busy part of town. Oh, and it overlooks the lovely Mount Royal park (imagine Central Park in NYC, but bigger, carpeted in dense foliage, and on a steep hill with spectacular views of the city below)


...and at Indigo (Canada's version of Borders)



...and here's another shot at Indigo (kudos to the marketing department at TOR/Forge who were spot on with the cover: notice how well it goes with the "summer reading" theme...



...and finally, the piece de resistance, at the "New Fiction" table at Chapters (Canada's B&N)



If you happen to catch FL anywhere yourselves, please do give me a shout, as you have no idea (or maybe you do, all the more reason!) of how incredibly thrilling it is to hear.

Besos,
Nadine