I’m writing this blog on my flight home to NYC from being up in Toronto with Lost Boi! ::waves from the clouds:: I had such a great time and am so grateful for all the new and old friends I had the chance to spend time with and especially the number of people I’ve known only online who I got to meet face to face for the first time this week! While I was waiting to board my plane, I started making a list of all the amazing things that happened in Toronto that I wanted to write about in this blog, so many great things happened, and the more I started listing, the more I started remembering and then the list was really really long! So, I decided maybe the answer was that the list was its own blog ☺I also took a lot of pictures of things I saw you can find all the pictures on my facebook
20 amazing things that happened in Toronto ( in no particular order):
1. Learning that Lost Boi has been very popular with Canadian teenagers who have found the book at high school book tabling events Glad Day is part of
2. Hanging out with Amber Dawn and finding bubble machines and other silly giggle filled adventures & literary conversations
3.Meeting my friend Evan after 13 years of online friendship (we met on Live Journal) and having it not be at all awkward
4. Connecting with other authors who come to writing from zine culture
5. Getting to go swimming in my hotel’s pool every day and pretending to be a sea pony or a mermaid 😉
6. Glad Day Bookstore – the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore!!!
7. How responsive the audience was to the “Grit Lit” reading
8. Getting to meet Maranda Elizabeth (@MarandaDearest on twitter) in person and our picture book tattoos becoming friends! If you haven’t read their novel Ragdoll House you must!
9. The first Q&A question being about my peter pan dress because femmes know dresses are important literary topics
10. Engaging questions about writing and building writing communities
11. Bubble tea everywhere
12. A reader who brought me a toy minion as a little surprise gift
13. Glad Day bookstore – so amazing I need to mention them again!
14. Queer readers who love queer stories
15. Connecting with another writer who also has learning disabilities around spelling/ other writing conventions and being able to encourage her to write and seek publications
16. Getting emails after the reading that Lost Boi helped someone to understand the way a close friend chose to live a life in leather and that before reading Lost Boi she hadn’t been able to understand that friend’s relationship choices.
17. Picking up a copy of NOW Toronto on the street that has a review of the book in print!
18. Finding adorable nametags that include ze/hir pronouns at the bookstore
19. Ketchup chips
20. Reading in Toronto 1 year to the day I learned that Arsenal Pulp Press wanted to publish Lost Boi