About a month ago, the good folks at CEO TV shot a segment about TBLP and my day job as a PR professional. They also sent a camera crew up to Orillia for the Leacock Award weekend to help round out the segment. Well, it aired nationally on Global a week or so ago and in case you need a laugh, you can watch it here…
I’ve just returned from the family cottage on Georgian Bay where I’ve just spend two weeks offline with my family. It was wonderful despite an unusually high mosquito count. I read several books, swam, slept, ate, and watched movies at night with my two sons. It was strange being completely discounted for two weeks (although my BlackBerry worked sporadically if I stood at the highest point on our property and stuck my BB in the air like the Statue of Liberty’s torch) but I managed. My in-laws arrived from Nova Scotia and we had a great visit. We saw some wildlife when we dropped off our recycling one day and my mother-in-law took this great shot.
We also took them on a day trip to Orillia to visit the Stephen Leacock Museum. Here are a couple of shots showing me sitting in Leacock’s library and the display in the Leacock Medal Room showcasing books and artifacts from the 61 year history of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.
I’ll be back to Orillia on July 25th to do a public reading at the Summer Leacock Festival. I have to read for 30 minutes so I’ll need to decide which sections to present. My heart rate is slightly elevated already.
By the way, here’s the great Hamilton Spectator article by Mark Leslie Lefebvre that I mentioned in an earlier post. Thanks Mark!
Stay tuned for more information about all the events I’ll be doing in the fall to coincide with the release of the McClelland & Stewart edition of TBLP.
It’s nice to be back…
After a very eventful yet wonderful spring, I’m off to the cottage for two weeks with my wife and two sons for our summer vacation. I’m looking forward to reading and continuing my fledgling efforts to map out the sequel to TBLP. In the meantime, the M&S edition of TBLP is well into the production process now. The cover design is complete, cover copy is approved, and the book layout, all 314 pages or so of it, is done. I met earlier this week with the publicity team that will be doing all they can to make sure copies of TBLP fly off bookstore shelves in October. I’ll be doing a number of speaking/reading gigs to support the novel including the Ottawa International Writers Festival and the Headwaters Arts Festival in Orangeville. There’s apparently an article about, and/or review of TBLP podcast coming out this weekend in the Hamilton Spectator written by Mark Leslie Lefebvre. I hope to be able to read it just before packing up the minivan and heading up the 400 to Twelve Mile Bay.
(Update: In fact, two Mark Leslie Lefebvre articles ran. You’ll find the TBLP podcast review article here and a second interesting piece here on how independent authors are using podcasts to build an audience adn break through into traditional publishing. Nice job Mark and thanks!)
By the way, a segment on Global Television’s CEO TV about yours truly and TBLP will air Saturday, July 5th at 11:30 a.m. You should also be able to catch it on the CEO TV website by Monday, July 7th.
I’ll check in as soon as we’re back. (I’m not sure how I’ll survive offline for two weeks but I’m looking forward to trying…)
A couple of weeks ago, I appeared on stage at the Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto’s historic Distillery District, to do a reading for a People for Education fundraiser. It was a great evening. Also on the bill were Nicholas Campbell, Paul Gross, Claudia Dey, and Molly Johnson. I was way out of my league but had a blast nevertheless.
My wife, two sons and I have just returned from Orillia, Ontario where we’ve spent the weekend attending a number of events surrounding the Leacock Medal for Humour. It was a wonderful time spent with the incredibly warm and welcoming people who manage one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious literary awards. I was presented with the Leacock Medal at an amazing dinner for about 250 people at the Geneva Park Conference Centre on shore of beautiful Lake Couchiching. As is tradition, I spoke for about half an hour trying to strike the right humourous-serious balance. I think it went well. Before and after the dinner my time was spent inscribing books. Don Ross, the owner of the great local bookstore, Manticore Books, took care of selling 65 copies of TBLP while I handled the signing.
The medal itself is amazing. The photo above doesn’t do it justice. It’s solid silver and shines like it’s emitting, and not just reflecting, light. It was quite simply one of the high points in my life so far.
To top it all off, the whole family sat in the Toronto Dominion Bank Comfort Zone, four leather arm chairs, at field level along the first base line for the Toronto Blue Jays - Baltimore Orioles game this afternoon. At one point we looked and found ourselves on the Jumbotron. My ever-resourceful son Calder took this photo.
Here’s the new cover from Douglas Gibson and the great creative team at McClelland & Stewart. I love it. I really like the way the Globe and Mail quotation free forms its way around the cover. I also think the wordplay on “Plans” with the “s” scrunched in at the end because of bad planning, is great. I think it will be difficult for bookstore patrons to walk by this cover, and that’s the whole point. It says satire and humour more effectively than the original cover. Plus, the prominently placed Leacock Medal doesn’t hurt either. Full steam ahead…
My friend and fellow writer Mark Leslie Lefebvre just wrote an article for Canadian Bookseller magazine about the rise of free podcasting as a way of building a pre-publication audience for a book. This is the approach I tried out with TBLP. The TBLP podcast was up and available in its entirety many months before the novel was ever published in print. I’m convinced the interest and community engendered through the podcast really helped when TBLP finally became an actual book. The article is interesting and foreshadows possible changes in the world of traditional publishing as more and more authors employ social media tools like blogging and podcasting to drive interest and build audiences. Thanks for the profile Mark!
On a whim last fall, I submitted TBLP to the Independent Publisher Book Awards in the U.S. in the regional category, Canada-East Fiction. Well many months later, the results were finally announced today. As if winning the Leacock Medal weren’t enough good news, TBLP just won the gold medal. Known as the “Ippy” awards, they recognize excellence in independent publishing, including self-publishing. Now that TBLP will be published by McClelland & Stewart in the fall, and I hope any subsequent books I may write, this may be the only independent Publisher Book Award I’ll ever win.
All of this seems too good to be true. I sure hope I’m not in for a run of bad luck…
I was browsing on Indigo today when I noticed an “Online Bestseller” banner across the top of TBLP. I have no idea exactly what it indicates, beyond I suppose that sales lately have been strong. I’m curious to know what it really means and have e-mailed Indigo in the hopes of finding out. In the interim, I’ve certainly no complaints about being tagged as an “online bestseller.” I guess the Leacock Medal honeymoon continues…
Back in February 2007, Steve Paikin, the outstanding host of The Agenda, TV Ontario’s great nightly public affairs program, was kind enough to interview me about the then unpublished TBLP. Here’s the blog post Steve wrote in the wake of the Leacock Medal announcement:
The Funniest Book In Canada
Back in February of 2007, I interviewed a political wise guy named Terry Fallis. Terry has been around the block in the political world. He now plies his trade at an eponymously named consulting firm.
But once upon a time, he was one of those back room boys who worked for politicians and tried to get them elected.
He’s a smart guy and figured there must be a funny book somewhere inside him, given all of what he’d seen in politics.
So he wrote a book, set on Parliament Hill, and followed the travails of a once naïve, now a bit too cynical back room boy who’s seen too much of politics’ seamy underbelly.
His book is called The Best Laid Plans and Terry rolled it out in unusual fashion.
Once a week, he downloaded a chapter of his work into podcast form on his website. He narrates the action himself. He did it this way because no Canadian publisher would print his work. Not a one.
So rather than wait for that, Fallis got the book into the readers’ hands with the newfangled technology so many of us are using these days. And what do you know: he ends up winning the Stephen Leacock prize for humour.
While the credit is all Terry’s, I take a certain amount of pride in saying we were the first program to interview the author, when, quite frankly, no one was beating his doors down to give him any attention.
So, to see and hear my conversation with Terry Fallis from last February, about his own political history, and his successful political novel, watch this web-exclusive video and enjoy.
Thanks Steve. You were there at the beginning and I’m grateful.
Welcome to the podcast of The Best Laid Plans, a satirical novel of Canadian politics written by Terry Fallis.
Learn a bit about the author and podcast narrator, Terry Fallis »
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