Pushcart Nomination

I am honoured that editor Janna Liggan nominated my story, "Weathering" for a Pushcart Award as one of the six best of the year in Lamplit Underground Magazine.

The story is free to read at https://online.fliphtml5.com/dnitz/jtai/#p=12

C.P. Hoff Book Included as a Kirkus Reviews Books of the Year

C.P. Hoff, a former EssentialEdits.ca author, is included in this year's "Kirkus Reviews Books of the Year" list:

for West of Ireland

Hoff's first novel, A Town Called Forget was edited by both Elizabeth McLachlan and Robert Runté and was accepted by Five Rivers Publishing and edited there by Lorina Stephens. A Town Called Forget went on to be longlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour, and is still available as an independant publication following Five Rivers closure earlier this year.

West of Ireland was edited by legendary editor Adrienne Kerr.

Aurora Awards (Canadian Speculative fiction) for 2020

Best Fan Related Work

Derek Newman-Stille, Speculating Canada

Best Fan Organizational

Derek Künsken and Marie Bilodeau, co-chairs, Can-Con, Ottawa

Best Fan Writing and Publications

Polar Borealis, Issues #9 to #12, R. Graeme Cameron editor

Best Artist

Dan O'Driscoll, covers for Bundoran Press and cover for On Spec Magazine #110

Best Visual Presentation

The Umbrella Academy, Steve Blackman, Dark Horse Entertainment

Best Related Work

On Spec Magazine, Diane L. Walton, Managing Editor, The Copper Pig Writers Society

Best Poem/Song (tie!)

At the Edge of Space and Time by Swati Chavda, Love at the Speed of Light, Ancient Hound Books

Bursts of Fire by Sora, theme song for book trailers

Best Graphic Novel

Krampus is My Boyfriend! by S.M. Beiko, Webcomic

Best Short Fiction

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, Saga Press

Best Young Adult Novel

5 by Susan Forest, Burst of FireLaksa Media Groups Inc

Best Novel

The Gossamer Mage by Julie E. Czerneda, DAW Books

I was blown away this year by the quality of the shortlist: there was no one nominated who didn't deserve to be there. Even though there were several categories where the winner wasn't the work I had voted for, it didn't matter because the winners were still works that I greatly admired.  The winners and shortlist makes me proud to be Canadian. The genre of Canadian speculative fiction, both in quantity and quality, has come a very long way since 1980 when the Award started.

I also have to say that the awards ceremony sets the new bar for virtual ceremonies. There were almost no glitches and host Mark Leslie Lefebvre covered perfectly, never fazed. The organization, the smooth switching from site to site, from speaker to speaker, was clearly the result of careful planning and behind the scenes workings of a dedicated logistical crew. It could not have gone better, and in many ways, was better than live (except could actual applause). 

Hall of Fame Inductees for 2020

Cory Doctorow; Matt Hughes, Heather Dale

Do You Keep Writing? Three Lessons by Lauren B. Davis

Guest Post. Lauren B.Davis is a critically acclaimed Canadian writer. Her latest novel is The Grimoire of Kensington Market from Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd (ISBN13: 978-1928088707)

Every day I hear from writers who tell me how impossible it is to keep going, how they are broken by this ‘business’ and they see no reason to continue. Often this means they see no reason to continue living, since being a writer/creator/artist is so deeply embedded in the soul as the archetype by which we make meaning in our lives. Without it, the world crumbles.

I understand.

I also understand that hearing these words from someone who has had a modest amount of success as a writer might ring hollow. Easy for me to say, right?

No, not easy. Hard won.

I didn’t publish until I was over forty. So there’s that. All the young people who think if they haven’t published yet, let alone won the Booker or the Pulitzer or the Giller indicates they will never have fulfilling lives as writers are just plain wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

How do I break this down?

I dance. The Bear watches. Maybe that’s not the widest audience, by he is the Bear of my Soul.

First, almost no published writer wins prizes. This has nothing to do with the quality of your work. If that’s what you’re hoping for you are setting yourself up for unending disappointment, based on the entirely unpredictable, arbitrary, often political whims of a tiny group of people you might not even like, or respect. I know people who’ve won these prizes. They had some fun for a while and then, well, life went on. I’ve been on prize committees, and trust me, try as we might vote for the BEST BOOK EVER, it generally doesn’t turn out that way.

Lesson 1) …take care of your LIFE first, for it’s all you’ve got, and your life is not about winning prizes. It’s about where your feet are, at this moment. The writing life is a metaphor for being in co-creation with the Source-Of-All, if you know what I mean. So, right now, jot down five things you value about your life that have nothing to do with prizes… lovers, ice cream, dogs who sleep on the bed, growing tomatoes, making snow angels, creme brulee, the smell of roses after a rain… come on, you can do it.

Second, almost no one publishes, and for those who do, it is as much the luck of timing, relevance, and politics, as it is talent. By which I mean, a lot of really great books never see the light of a bookstore window. How many books (both good and bad) come out in any season? It’s insane. Especially with self-publishing (but that’s another blog). Why am I telling you this? Because it’s true, but also because publishing doesn’t necessarily mean success. Sure it’s nice and I’m glad I’m published, but the truth is that even though I have, for a moment or two, poked my head above the turbulent waves, ultimately I sank out of sight again, while Atwood and Winterson and Franzen and a thousand other writers rose to the tip of the swell. Maybe they’re better writers than I. Fair enough. Might be. So what?

Lesson…2) See lesson 1.

Third…maybe you and I will never publish, let alone win prizes. Maybe we’ll never publish again, let alone win prizes. Maybe we’ll be dumped by a publisher we thought had our backs. that happened to me. Should we keep writing? Should we? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t please us any longer. Maybe it doesn’t bring us sanity or joy or satisfaction. If those things are true then, hell, I’m done. I’ll save feral cats and abused dogs. I’ll garden. I’ll work for environmental protection and for justice…you know, all the thousand things that make the world better. Not that we can’t do these things while writing, we can and many of us do, but if writing isn’t doing it for us, isn’t filling our souls, isn’t inviting us to surrender to the purpose our souls have for us, then for the love of what-ever-we-find-holy, let’s not do it!

However.

If, when we sit down in front of the computer, or the page, we feel our hearts filling, our spirits settling; if we feel the top of our heads opening and something entering us and wanting to be born, without expectation; if we feel ourselves filled with the wonder of this story’s becoming, this image’s becoming, and if after we have written 500 words or 1,000 for the day we feel elated and elevated and full of satisfaction and peace… then come on, let’s DO that.

Lesson 3… see Lesson 1 and 2 above.

What do you think? Shall we keep creating? Keep writing? Or is there another way you’d like to walk through the world? Tell me.

Reprinted from The Lauren B. Davis blog with permission of the author.

Fake Writer's Contests

An excellent overview of scammers using high fee contests to con writers out of their money is available at Writer Beware: Writer Beware for April 26, 2019.

I generally won't submit my writing to any contest that charges fees, the exception being one or two magazines/journals I planned to subscribe to anyway, where the contest entry fee gives you a subscription. I am a bit sympathetic to magazines forcing subscriptions on people submitting to their contests, since if writers want to benefit from the staff at that magazine they should perhaps be a bit supportive of that community--the minimum of taking out a subscription--but also, one does sort of have to read a magazine/journal before submitting to it. I find it strange that so many writers want us to read their stories, but have so little interest in reading other people's writing. But anyway, that's a different situation than where a contest sponsor wants you to send them $25 to enter their story contest, where the prize is, say, $200. So as long as they get 8 entries they break even, and anything over that is pure profit. And you have to watch the fine print or you may find that submitting gives them the rights to your story, even if you don't win--so 100 authors pay them to enter, and they only pay the three winners, but get to keep all the rest for free. Yeah, no.

Non paying markets that charge $3 for submissions are a different thing--the $3 pays for the submission system, so that's okay. I figure the $3 are what I'd pay in postage. But nonpaying and $10? Yeah, no.

Your mileage may vary. But watch out for the scams in the Writer Beware article. Those are just straight sucker exploitation.

The Singular "They"

As mentioned previously in this blog, various official style guides now accept the use of "they" as a singular pronoun, as one way to avoid sexist constructions using "he" when it could be either gender. For example, "they" is singular in the following sentence: "When an author finishes a first draft, they know they still have to do a second draft." Within this context, I give you the American Copy Editors Society's winning Limerick of it's 2019 Annual Grammar Day Tweeted Limerick Contest:

The all-purpose he is passé,
And he or she gets in the way.
Ip, ey, co, and heesh
Make readers say "Sheesh!"
Which leaves us the singular they.

            —Claire Valgardson (@CMValgardson, http://effective-editing.com/)

Editor as Secret Weapon

Toronto Star article that notes Giller Prize and Writers' Trust Award winners had top editor as a secret weapon:

Meet the secret weapon behind three award-winning Canadian books

Editors are secret weapons because their work often goes uncelebrated, and because a good editor can weaponize your manuscript.

The article does a good job of describing the role of an editor and what it is like to work with a great structural or developmental editor.

We can't promise we can turn your initial draft into a Giller Prize-winner, but we can promise we can take it to the next level.

Aurora Award Voters' Package available until Sept.

The Prix Aurora Award 2017 voter package (e-copies of most of the nominated novels, short stories, etc) is now available at http://www.prixaurorawards.ca/auror…/voter-package-download/. The package is free to members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association so they can read nominated work before voting.(Seems like a pretty sensible idea to me!)

Membership in CSFFA is $10/yr and open to any Canadian, and includes the right to nominate and vote for the Auroras.

My short story, "Age of Miracles", was nominated for a 2017 Aurora in the short story category, so is included in this year's voters' package. I'm really pleased because that means more people will likely have the opportunity to read the story, though the anthology it's from, Strangers Among Us is a good one (six aurora nominations in all!) and well worth buying.

Longlist Announced for Leacock Medal

The longlist for the 2017 Leacock Medal (in alphabetical order by author surname) is:

• John Armstrong for A Series of Dogs, New Star Books.
• Mona Awad for 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Penguin Canada.
• Gary Barwin for Yiddish for Pirates, Random House Canada.
• Judy Batalion for White Walls, New American Library/Random House Canada.
• Lesley Crewe for Mary, Mary, Nimbus Publishing.
• C. P. Hoff for A Town Called Forget, Five Rivers Publishing.
• Marni Jackson for Don’t I Know You, Flatiron Books.
• Amy Jones for We’re All in This Together, McClelland & Stewart.
• Jack Knox for Hard Knox: Musings from the Edge of Canada, Heritage House Publishing.
• Noah Richler for The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Doubleday Canada.
• Drew Hayden Taylor for Take Us to Your Chief And Other Stories, Douglas & McIntyre.

From the Stephen Leacock Associates Press Release:

This year’s longlist will be narrowed down to three Leacock Medal finalists, who will be announced in Orillia on Wednesday, May 3, 2017.

The final winner, who also receives a $15,000 prize supported by TD Bank Financial Group, is to be announced on Saturday, June 10, 2017, at a gala award dinner at Geneva Park Conference Centre, just outside Orillia, Ontario. The gala dinner is open to the public, and limited tickets are on sale exclusively through the Stephen Leacock Museum in Orillia.

In announcing the list, Taylor described the submissions this year as of exceptionally high quality. The judges and readers recommend all the longlisted books as entertaining Canadian works, worthy of consideration for this prestigious and unique literary humour award in Canada’s sesquicentennial year.

All the staff at Essential Edits are thrilled to see C. P. Hoff's A Town Called Forget on the longlist.

The novel follows the adventures of a young girl, sent without explanation to live with the eccentric aunt she didn't even know she had. As she tries to solve the mystery of her banishment, she slowly comes to terms with her aunt's skewed view of the world, and the exceedingly odd townsfolk of Forget.

From the moment we first saw the early drafts, we knew this novel was something special.

C.P. Hoff had already been working with Elizabeth McLachlan and had gone through several revisions before the Essential Edits group was formed. Recognizing Hoff's exceptional talent ("quirky" is the word Elizabeth uses to describe Hoff's writing), Elizabeth introduced the manuscript to Robert Runté, Senior Editor at Five Rivers Publishing.

Lesley Little, who had also reviewed the manuscript, told Robert, "You'll like it. It's really different. Quirky."

Robert passed it on to publisher Lorina Stephens, who at once recognized the manuscript's potential and personally took on the substantive editing of A Town Called Forget. Lorina calls Hoff "a unique, new voice", and when asked to describe Connie's style, replies with: "quirky".

Before it was sent off for copy editing, Robert line edited A Town Called Forget, and found it simultaneously hilarious and touching. "Hoff has created a narrative that is screwy and yet somehow completely credible—in a word: quirky!"

The entire Essential Edits team has its fingers crossed for the win.

This brings to three the number of books edited by Essential Edits staff that have been shortlisted for national awards, and the fourth for Five Rivers Publishing.