Yes, the very first Lighter Side of Life and Death giveaway is happening at the Teen Reads Too blog where I'm hanging out today! Stop by to say hi and get entered. I'll be dropping in throughout the day to respond to comments and questions.

* Visit with C.K. Kelly Martin

In totally unrelated news I'm jealous of the folks who are going to the last night of Blue Rodeo's three night run at Toronto's Massey Hall tonight. I was at last night's show (and am therefore pretty sleepy today) but I still want MORE so I guess it's time to stick on their latest album, The Things We Left Behind.

No clips from last night's show yet but here's one of their classics, Lost Together, from the February 2nd Massey concert:

And I gotta say that I've always loved that Greg Keelor's such a romantic (just as much as Jim) but in this somehow simultaneously world-weary yet totally guileless way that gives us lyrics like:

“In your eyes I see that perfect world/I hope that doesn't sound too weird.”

Check out Jim Cuddy's February 2nd radio interview where he talks about gigging and specifically about playing Massey Hall:

Enjoy the concert tonight, fellow BR fans!

According to Punxsutawney Phil and Wiarton Willie we're in for six more weeks of winter. This should come as good news for the Vancouver Winter Olympics— in the Vancouver area they've been scrambling to import snow due to a dearth of it so far. Import snow—quite a bizarre concept, isn't it? Especially for the Great White North.

So anyway, I'll be thinking snowy thoughts for Vancouver while simultaneously hoping that the Greater Toronto Area stays dry for the most part. Some mild temperatures would be nice too because yes, I'm a wimp, always the first person in the room to feel a draft and throw on a sweater or hoodie! As I type this I'm wearing my big Beatles hoodie, in fact.

You can check out a brand new interview with my hoodie wearing self over at The Compulsive Reader today. There's information about my upcoming book, The Lighter Side of Life and Death, and my previous two novels, plus a little rant about cynicism (hate it, hate it!). Many thanks to Tirzah for her thoughtful questions!

Like over 27,000 other Canadians across the country yesterday I was out protesting Prime Minister Harper's proroguing of Parliament. Stephen Harper would love for us not to care about the torture of Afghan detainees, about the dangers in refusing to battle climate change, about responsible limits to a Prime Minister's power. To care, he says repeatedly, marks you as a member of the elite or a leftwing fringe group. Indeed this is his chief retort to any criticism levelled against him. Say a word against him and/or his cronies and you are a bizarro dissident. But what does it mean if, as a leader, you can't handle any kind of dissent?

Ironically, Stephen Harper himelf answered this question back in April, 2005 when he proclaimed, “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”

I suppose this means Prime Minister Harper would characterize his past self as a member of the elite or a leftwing fringe group! And the Harper of five years ago would probably be content to label his current self a fascist. If life were more like science fiction TV inevitably the paths of those two opposing Harpers would cross in an incident set during a rip in the time-space continuum and both be destroyed but real life is less convenient and means putting your mittens and boots on and marching through the streets in protest to try to set things right.

So kudos to all the concerned citizens throughout the nation (and those in London, England and various locations in the U.S. who showed up for local protests there too) for getting their message out to the Prime Minister yesterday! We do care, Stephen. Your recent prorogation of Parliament is undemocratic and we're not going to stand for it!

This was the scene at the protest in Toronto, beginning with me arriving at Dundas Square about twenty minutes before the rally:

The rally in Dundas Square in full swing:

Polar bears protesting on the march route up Bay Street.

Protesters passing Nathan Phillips Square:

Parliament in an open casket to the tune of bagpipes.

And here's a tiny bit of the march action from my Flip Video:

Meanwhile in Ottawa, Trevor Strong of the Arrogant Worms sang "The Wild Proroguer" at the protest on Parliament Hill (hilarious song and I love the King Steve-o puppet in the background!):

This time he's got some answering for indeed!

* “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”
— Stephen Harper, Canadian Press, April 18, 2005

* “The Liberals, apparently, want to prorogue the House. They want to run out of town, get out of town just one step ahead of the sheriff. Is the Liberal government committed to staying here as planned throughout the month of November so that it can be held accountable in the House for its actions?”
— Stephen Harper, Hansard, October 20, 2003

So obviously our Prime Minister thinks Canadians are stupid or apathetic or both! My guess is both. Anyway, if you're Canadian you're already aware that Prime Minister Harper has temporarily suspended Parliament for the second time in a year. If you disapprove hopefully you have already contacted your MP to let them know that.

And if you care about Canadian democracy and believe this is an assault on that democracy I hope you'll also make a point of attending one of the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament rallies being held in cities across the country this Saturday.

You can find your nearest rally at the sidebar on the No Prorogue! website or check out this Google map with times & locations, including protests in Dallas, California and New York. See you out there!

And now a message from one of our founding fathers:

I carefully avoided Some Girls Are reviews before reading it. I didn't want potential spoilers to dull its impact. But since the first three chapters are available to read online at author Courtney Summers's website I think it's safe to say that main character Regina Afton is not in a good place in Some Girls Are. Her best friend Anna is the meanest of all the mean girls at Hallowell High. Seriously mean. Together Anna and her clique (including Regina) have taken psychological torture to a whole new level. With these kind of toxic dynamics at play it's no surprise that when Anna's boyfriend Donnie tries to rape Regina at a party the warped clique is all to ready to discount the truth and label Regina a slut and backstabber.

You definitely don't want to be on the outs with these girls. And you don't really want to be in with them either. They're complete sharks, constantly on the lookout for weaknesses to be exploited. They seem to reserve the worst cruelties for those who were once members of their clique which is bad news for Regina. Very bad news.

If I had to sum up Some Girls Are in one word it would be relentless. The bad things don't stop. Mean girls seemingly do not rest and Regina, who has lived the mean girl life for most of her high school career, knows how to fight fire with fire. You have to admire her, nasty as she's been in the past herself, For not crumbling (even as she pops antacid after antacid) and instead plotting retaliation for the many wrongs committed against her.

But the character I admired most was Michael, a true to himself loner long ago labelled a freak by Anna's clique and who has since been relegated to “the garbage table,” the only possible place left for Regina to sit after being rejected and humiliated by her former friends. But will Michael give Regina a chance? And just how far are Regina's enemies willing to take their thirst to wound?

Some Girls Are is one hell of a hard-hitting book. Author Courtney Summers doesn't go easy on anyone—she ruthlessly peels back layer after layer of cruelty—while you wince and read on, transfixed. A brilliantly raw revelation from the author of Cracked Up to Be.

It was FIVE degrees and sunny here this afternoon (that's 41 for those of you who haven't embraced metric). Yes, it felt almost like a spring holiday from January and if the local weather forecast is right this spring interlude will last through Monday!

What else has been happening? For about twenty-four hours we thought about possibly getting a bird. I have a feather allergy but it's not one of my worst allergies and, you know, how much could one small bird make me sneeze? But then I started doing the research, stuff like wing-clipping vs. not clipping and I learned that birds crap every twenty minutes. So, when you let the bird out of the cage, there is almost instantly poop everywhere apparently. That could be okay if we had an extra room to dedicate to the bird's exercise, I suppose, but that's not the case. Farewell bird idea.

Like alot of other Canadians I feel very strongly that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent suspending of parliament was undemocratic, a strategic move to gain a majority on Senate committees while avoiding criticism over the Afghan detainee abuse issue. This is something that's definitely had me preoccupied lately. I know that many people have become politically disengaged (for various reasons) over the last ten years and it's easy to become cynical and think that we believe—and what we hope for—doesn't matter. In fact, I think this is what Stephen Harper counts on, that people are too tired and cynical to take a stand. We can't let him get away with it. Otherwise we end up with more Copenhagen type failures and more human rights abuses being shoved under the carpet. As a country, do we want to be better than this? Or, as Stephen hopes, are we happy to plop down on the couch and watch the Olympics while he does whatever the f@#% he wants?

Let me see, five degrees, pet birds and wannabe dictators...okay, that brings me to the new manuscript! I finished a new YA novel in the fall and in time hopefully I'll be able to say more about that. This past summer I actually started out writing a zombie novel and got the first four to five pages typed in but I just didn't feel any momentum happening. I think it probably would've turned out okay, maybe it would've been good even, but I just didn't feel as excited about it as I should've. So I stopped. And the same night I stopped another idea struck and held. I got about halfway into it before I realized I was actually writing a book that feels like this:

Which is kind of scary because I love the Airborne Toxic Event song Innocence with a passion. In fact, that song has hit me harder than anything else I've heard in the past five years. It kills me every time. Every time. So that's a hell of lot to live up to.

Anyway, it wasn't a fun book to write and at times it really emptied me out but now I kind of miss it. And isn't that just the way things go?