Mare's War by the ever-fantastic Tanita S. David has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award. That's so damn cool that I have to type it again: NAACP Image Award!! Let us stare at Tanita's magnificent book for a moment:

Congratulations, Tanita! I love that this will expand the group of people who will come to know and admire Mare!

In non-book news, the Emperor Harper prorogued T-shirt Paddy and I designed showed up late in the week, well in time for the coming protest, and it looks just awesome. You see:

And here's the back:

I ordered this before I knew there was going to be a formal protest, just to wear around in a more or less constant state of personal protest. But now I really want to wear it at the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament demonstration on January 23rd so I've had to order a second, bigger T-shirt that I'll be able to fit over my coat. See, the cold weather here in Canada hasn't been prorogued, so most likely the temperature will be somewhere between markedly chilly and downright freezing on January 23rd, depending on what part of the country you're in and other factors. Don't let that stop you from attending a protest near you though. Fighting for democracy is definitely worth a few goosebumps. We just need to wrap up. Layers are our friend. Stephen Harper is not.

Finally, I want to mention that Some Girls Are (by fellow Canadian author Courtney Summers) arrived at my apartment late in the week too. I'll be diving into it within the next few days but here's the chronology of events so far:

First, I invited SGA in and showed it into the living room where it made itself comfy on my couch.

And then my copy of Cracked Up to Be came over to say hi. As you can imagine, they became fast friends.

Soon One Lonely Degree and I Know It's Over joined them and they were all getting along like a house on fire. At first it was nice to see but then they got a bit cliquey.

When my ARC of The Lighter Side of Life and Death bounded along they said it couldn't hang out with them because it wasn't a proper book yet. I thought that was snobby and mean and was angry on its behalf but The Lighter Side of Life and Death is pretty happy-go-lucky and easy-going and didn't really care too much.

Since that's the case I've decided to let them all work things out between themselves in their own time. These minor troubles aside, I'm very happy to see Some Girls Are.

Congrats, Courtney, on the release of your new book!

I sent off the below email to our Governor General this morning. If you're not happy about the proroguing of parliament I suggest you do the same. You can email her at info@gg.ca.

Dear Michaëlle Jean,

For the second time in a year I'm enormously disappointed to see how lightly you take your position as Governor General. It seems the position, while bearing a huge amount of responsibility (including allowing prorogation), sadly requires no guts.

With Stephen Harper on the run from the Afghan detainee torture issue you allowed him to prorogue parliament without even discussing it with the other parties. Without even meeting with the Prime Minister in person.

I didn't have an issue with the monarchy before but if having Queen Elizabeth as our head of state also means having a Governor General with the potential to wield such power (while clearly lacking wisdom, conviction and courage) I believe we should eliminate the position immediately.

Sincerely,
{my name & details}

A Canadian citizen who wants democracy restored.

Don't forget to email/contact your local MP too. If you're not sure who that is just type in your postal code here. Tell them you're pissed. Ask them if they believe in democracy. Ask them if they believe in accountability. Ask them to ignore Stephen Harper's request to prorogue parliament and attend anyway.

And here we go again with We're Not Gonna Take It, which I think makes an extremely apt protest song for this year's prorogation:

Don't forget to attend your local protest on January 23rd! I will be there, sporting one of these (which Paddy & I designed):

If you happen to want one I'm selling them at zero profit to myself on CafePress.

On February fourth I'm going to be guest blogging and doing a Q & A on the Teens Read Too Book Club blog. I'll be checking in there throughout the day so if you have a question drop by and post it for me. Anyone who comments will be entered into a draw to win an advance reader copy of The Lighter Side of Life and Death. This is the very first Lighter Side contest which is pretty exciting stuff. It feels like it's on its way to becoming a real live book!

There's a groundswell of anger rolling across this country. Canadians aren't taking Prime Minister Harper's prorogation of parliament lying down. They're contacting our Governor General (who approved the temporary suspension over the telephone this time!) and their local MPs to voice their disapproval and they're planning protests—nation wide. When I joined the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group last night at around nine o'clock it had already soared to 48,000 members and now stands at 67,000 strong and growing fast.

It's been one short year since our last proroguement (Stephen has a nasty habit of running scared when times get tough for his Conservative government) but Canucks have run out of patience with the tactic. In an interview Harper told CBC-TV correspondent Peter Mansbridge that Canadians aren't concerned “about allegations that the government engaged in a cover-up over the abuse of Afghan detainees.” Nope, he's confident that we're fixating solely on the recession. The same recession he tried to deny was in progress for as long as humanly possible. It's pretty clear that Stephen Harper would prefer if the citizens of this country didn't concern themselves with much of anything and just let him throw his weight around. Democracy! Such an inconvenient thorn in Stephen's side!

Read comedian Rick Mercer's incisive thoughts on the matter:

* Proroguing is for children (and Stephen Harper)

and then, if you want to show our Prime Minister he's wrong, and that we are indeed concerned about the torture of Aghan detainees and Harper's obvious contempt for democracy, join the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group and prepare to protest in a city near you on January 23rd. In the meanime, if you want to tell the Governor General you're pissed with her decision email her at:

* info@gg.ca

* and then fire an email off to your local MP. If you're not sure who your representative is you can find the info here.

Last week, to work out some of my prorogation frustration, I did my habitual anti-Harper blogging and took the Billy Bragg message “The revolution is just a T-shirt away” to heart and designed, along with Paddy, a suitable Emperor Harper T-shirt for myself and a few other folks. If you happen to want one I've made the profit margin on these a big fat zero so the only folks making any $ on this will be the ones at CafePress. Here's the front image:

And the back:

I've made it available in a few different styles and will leave the design up on CafePress for the duration of the proroguement, which, if the people reclaim power in this country, hopefully won't be long!

A little ditty for our power-hungry PM, from the citizens he purports to represent:

I know it's a wee bit early to start talking about favourite 2010 books and hell, I actually finished reading This World We Live In during the final days of 2009 but I'm confident that come the end of this freshly started year I'll still be raving about this no holds barred YA novel about the continuing struggle for life in a world forever changed.

If you've read Susan Beth Pfeffer's previous two meteor books, Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone, like me you're probably already hooked on Pfeffer's vision of the earth ravaged by a sudden and permanent change in the moon's orbit after its struck by a meteor.

In This World We Live In we learn what became of Miranda, the main character from Life As We Knew It, and The Dead and the Gone's Alex. During the course of the novel both teenagers struggle with responsbilities and haunting choices they could scarcely have imagined before the planetary tragedy.

Death and destruction are all around. The sun no longer shines. Food is scarce and may stop showing up in Miranda's hometown any week now. Scavenged soap is a luxury. Safe cities (where vestiges of civilization like hospitals still exist) are few and space in them is reserved for those with connections. Can family ties survive in a world like this? Can genuine new love take root?

Susan Beth Pfeffer is fearless in what she reveals about characters we've already come to care about and the nightmare realities of a broken and bloody world. This isn't a story for the faint of heart but I highly recommend it to everyone else. If you can handle it, This World We Live In will be one of the best things you read all year.

Out February 17th!

If you read this blog with any regularity and have heard the news that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen (Darth) Harper has once again prorogued parliament you'll probably already know how pissed I am.

As writer Colin Horgan wrote in the guardian.co.uk, “It will take a special kind of apathetic populace to collectively shrug off back-to-back cut-and-run attempts like this.”

If you don't know what I'm talking about the short version of the back story is that “former second-in-command at the Canadian embassy in Kabul, Richard Colvin, told a parliamentary committee in Ottawa that all detainees handed over to the Afghanistan government by Canadian soldiers were abused.” Colvin says he wrote 16 reports on the matter which were ignored and/or silenced. Opposition parties have called for a public inquiry but the Conservative government would rather we all forget the abused Afghans and go back to shovelling our driveways and watching Corner Gas and to that end have temporarily suspended parliament. Prime Minister Harper figures that by March third (when parliament resumes) he'll have accomplished this mind wipe, even if he has to regale us with his own personal cover versions of Beatles tunes to do it.

Remember when people thought Canadians were polite but boring? Ah, the good old days before we gave up on democracy and embraced apathy! Canucks, we need to earn back that reputation of yore, starting today. In fact, forget the polite thing and make as much noise as you can about our skeevy federal government trying to shove the abuse of Afghan prisoners underthe carpet.

Do we want to stand for something in this country or what?

Anyway, clearly the new decade isn't off to a brilliant start in this part of the globe! We can turn things around if enough of us want to. We can. We can. We can. Will we, that's the question?

On a more personal level I want to stress that we—all of us—can always start over too. We don't have to wait for a new year. You can start over any time you want and when things seem really sucky and like they'll never change it can be hard to believe that, I know, but like someone wiser than me once said, “Never, never, never, never give up.” —Winston Churchill

And equally important: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
—Mahatma Gandhi

Welcome to 2010! Be bold. Be true. Never give up.