I'm heading off to Ireland at the end of the week where I'll be largely without Internet and so won't be posting again until I'm back in June. Generally the Irish are just as addicted to the Internet as anyone but it happens that my in-laws are sans connection. To be honest, I think every year that we visit it gets a little harder for me to say goodbye to our free-flowing home Internet connection. It's begun to feel more and more like drinkable water, like something surely everyone has on tap which I realize is a pretty darn over-privileged sentiment because not everyone actually has constant access to things like clean water, Internet, or health care.

And yet here I am wondering how uncomfortable it will be to spend just over two weeks without ready access...that's not right on multiple levels. So, yeah, I think I need to start spending less time on the net. It's a world of information but then, so is the actual world!

Before I get busy packing and stuff I want to thank everyone who has expressed an interest in Come See About Me. It's going through copy-editing at the moment and I can't wait to get it out into the world. It's been very cool to see NA Alley, a blog devoted to New Adult fiction, spring up recently. A couple of days ago they posted a terrific entry explaining that the new adult category is a response to agents, editors and publishers who routinely turn down novels (or request aging characters up or down) with main characters deemed too young for adult but too old for YA.

It does seem that if we left the fate of books with twenty-year-old main characters solely in the hands of traditional publishing there would be precious few. So while I can understand people not warming up to the idea of an NA category because it may seem like pigeonholing, I think the pigeonholing has already happened around new adult fiction, leaving a gap. Can that gap be filled without putting a label on it when YA and adult fiction seem to already have been strictly defined to omit characters nineteen through their early twenties or would eschewing the label just mean those characters continue to be a rarity in traditional publishing?

In any case I'm happy to see writers taking matters into their own hands and releasing stories about young characters that neither fall under the heading of YA nor adult. Slán go fóill.
It seems that most years around this time I mention that May's my favourite month (see May 8,2011 and May 1, 2009) and post a ton of pretty flower and tree photos to my blog. May is so gorgeous that I can't help myself; I go a bit ga-ga. This year I'm using Amy Black, my editor at Random House Canada, as an excuse because she recently said that she'd hope I'd snapped a few of the cherry blossoms just as they start to fall. So, Amy, the cherry blossoms here are for you!

Burlington's Royal Botanical Gardens' Rock Garden site is such a vision of loveliness these days and this past Saturday was a perfect day for tiptoeing through the tulips. I was sure the flowers pictured below were the finest thing I was going to see all weekend but, as it happened, today when I slipped out to join Paddy in the garden area of our condo, there was a fox stretched out on the lawn, savouring the sun. The fox didn't seem disturbed by our presence in the distance, but he did raise his head to eye a few noisy birds now and then before adjusting his position.

We could see several of our neighbours getting a kick out of the fox too, staring down at him with binoculars from their balconies. Though the condo is close to natural lands this is very much the burbs so a fox isn't something you see in your yard every day. At first I thought it must have been someone's dog! Alas, I have no photos of the fox, but if you're looking for pictures of some of May's blossoming treasures, this is a good place to be.

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Cherry Blossom tree, Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Cherry Blossom tree, Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Having a bit of a sit down at the Rock Garden:

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

I'm afraid of bees but managed to stick my camera down here
next to this one for journalistic purposes.

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012

Royal Botanical Gardens, May 5, 2012
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