As of this morning, I’ve officially tapped out of the Debris, Pauls, and Pillow Tour, where I read in a bunch of towns around Ontario with Jess Taylor (Pauls – BookThug), and Andrew Battershill (Pillow – Coach House Books). I started it off with Jess on the 15th of September, in Guelph, and then read with Jess and Andrew in Hamilton, London, Kingston, and Ottawa.

Big thanks to the following bookstores/venues that had us over, and the people who helped out at each stop…

September 15th – The Bookshelf – Guelph (especially Andrew Hood)

September 20th – Epic Books – Hamilton (owner, Jaime Krakowski, and staff)

September 22nd – London Public Library, Landon Branch – London (librarian, Carolyn Doyle)

September 28th – Novel Idea – Kingston (manager, Oscar Malan, and their staff)

September 29th – Octopus Books – Ottawa

Without those folks we’d have been reading on the corner for nickels. Or just at home, alone, in our respective hobbit holes.

We also would not have been able to do any of this without great enthusiasm and support, and a lot of work, from all of our publishers. Huge thanks to my publisher, Biblioasis, for helping a guy with the credit of a small child stay in hotels and get on trains, that includes Meghan Desjardins, Andrew Kovacevic, Grant Munroe, and head honcho Dan Wells. I also want to thank the folks at Coach House, including Alana Wilcox and Veronica Simmonds, and, especially Hazel Millar at BookThug, who really put in a lot of work to coordinate everything. I sort of just jumped into this tour and did my part, but all of those people did the planning and booking, and I appreciate that very much.

I’ve got one last event this fall. I’ll be at the Wild Writers Literary Festival in Waterloo next weekend (November 6th to 8th) as part of a panel called Fiction: Pushing Boundaries. With Rhonda Douglas, Kevin Hardcastle, Russell Smith, and Kathleen Winter, and moderated by K.D. Miller. That one takes place on the Saturday at 1:30pm. Come by and watch me be weird amongst a bunch of way more established and experienced authors. Probably it’ll change your life. I don’t know…

Thanks, finally, to Jess Taylor and Andrew Battershill, who put up with me during these past few weeks, and who are off to Montreal to read today. While I go back to Toronto to watch Halloween movies and transcribe things. Good luck to you my friends. You do not suck at writing, nor are you terrible human beings. Godspeed.

Hardcastle