I'm still mourning the end of the Toronto International Film — the eleven days in September when Toronto feels like the centre of the universe and when all the fun helps us forget that summer's drawing to a close. Toronto is truly at its best during the festival. So much buzz in the air. Walking from the Lightbox around the corner to Roy Thompson Hall around 8:15 pm on the evening of the seventh there were so many summery, excited folks in the street enjoying the atmosphere, celeb watching or in line for movies that it felt dreamlike.

This year I had the good fortune to catch six films: Words and Pictures, Philomena, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, Tracks, Stay and Sunshine on Leith.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby Q & A, Elgin theatre, TIFF,
September 10, 2013

Watch the Q A:

Sunshine on Leith trailer:

Sad as I am that the festival's over, it's absence has given me the chance to catch up on some other things. Like spending time outdoors.

Wye Marsh, Midland, September 22, 2013

 

Wye Marsh, Midland, September 22, 2013

I'm also still putting in hours at my old office job, working out of my former cubicle, funnily enough. And of course I'm gearing up for the upcoming Tomorrow blog tour (thanks to Shane at Itching for Books for doing such a fab job of assembling the tour!). You can click the below banner for info on all the stops. I hope you'll drop in somewhere along the route to find out more about Tomorrow and say hello!

I've got double-sided bookmarks ready for Tomorrow's release

and if you'd like a chance to win signed copies of Yesterday and Tomorrow, there are two weeks left to enter the Goodreads giveaway (open to residents of Canada, U.S.A, U.K, Ireland and Australia).

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Tomorrow

by C.K. Kelly Martin

Giveaway ends October 10, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I didn't intend to skip a whopping six weeks between blog entries but life is unpredictable. Between readying the Yesterday sequel for publication and other things that got in the way of blogging, well, here we are in September. There were some tough things about this summer that I can't really talk about because they're not mine to tell, but there were also fun nights out at the wind orchestra in an Oakville park, gelato-based outings and two trips to the CNE. The first time Paddy and I climbed on a bunch of amusement rides and got ourselves pretty dizzy, but I'm telling you, you couldn't pay me to ride the Mach 3. That thing looks INSANE. If you're wondering what I'm talking, about here's a clip of the same ride taken in Winnipeg:

I'm also doing a bit of work at my old office for the next while, filling in for folks on vacation, and now that the Toronto Film Festival's just days away I'll likely be disappearing from the Internet again for a bit. But before I disappear into movieland and my office cubicle, I wanted to announce the upcoming blog tour for Tomorrow which Shane (thanks, Shane!) at Itching for Books has been doing an awesome job of putting together. Click for details.

Meanwhile I'm holding a Yesterday + Tomorrow giveaway at Goodreads to celebrate the paperback release of Yesterday on September 10th and Tomorrow's October 10th release. Residents of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia can enter to win signed copies of both books.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Tomorrow

by C.K. Kelly Martin

Giveaway ends October 10, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I hope your own summer has been more of the fun parts and less of the tough ones! Personally, I'm also hoping for a September that feels more like summer than fall. I'm not ready to give up long evening walks by the lake with gelato in hand just yet.

So said Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. And Freya Kallas and Garren Lowe from my sci-fi thriller Yesterday are counting on it!

Yes, it's finally time to talk about Tomorrow: the sequel to Yesterday. I couldn't say much about it before because until recently the nature of its future was uncertain. But I started writing the sequel last April and have been finished a draft for some time now. Ultimately Random House decided Yesterday's sales didn't warrant a sequel but I still absolutely believe in Freya and Garren's continuing story. So I'm moving forward with it and will be sliding into the editing stage soon and releasing Tomorrow sometime in October, 2013.

In the meantime you can put it on your TBR list at Goodreads and check out the trailer:

And this is what the cover's going to look like:

Hope you like it!

So, Toronto typically gets about 75 millimetres of rain during the entire month of July but on Monday 90 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in just two hours at Toronto's Pearson Airport. And there I was last week complaining about the Irish rain—in particular the day we got drenched at Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. Now, when I say drenched I mean, yes, it was raining and we were tromping around outside for hours so we got wet. And, yes, it was windy too and only 12 degrees Celsius up at Giant's Causeway. But the rain was entirely normal and unremarkable in comparison to what we got hit with here two days ago so the next time someone hears me complaining about Irish weather, please remind me to get a grip, okay?

Usually Irish rain, which is indeed pretty persistent, is more drizzle than deluge. Much easier to deal with really. But Environment Canada and the Weather Network warned us that it was going to be a wet and wild summer for Toronto (lots of thunderstorms) and so far it looks like they're right. There's a severe thunderstorm warning in effect right now in fact. Dare I say I'm already starting to miss the cooler Irish temperatures and near constantly overcast days?

Since the contemporary YA manuscript I just finished is set mostly in Ireland I actually feel as if I'd been there for longer than two weeks. I hope to be able to share more information re. that book in not too long. Not to mention the Yesterday sequel, Tomorrow! In the meantime here are some photos from my time in Ireland.

Out in Malahide on a grey day.

I picked up a couple novels in the below Malahide bookstore. There's also a bookshop called Village Books a couple of blocks away.

Dublin Pride Parade: June 29, 2013.

Summer days are long in Dublin (longer than they are in Toronto) so this low hanging sun over South King Street doesn't mean darkness is right around the corner. The sun set will be blissfully s-l-o-w.

Our wettest day in Dublin was the one where we set off for Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. Take a look out this window and it'll give you an idea of how the day felt.

Approaching the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge.

We heard the employees over their walkies talking about how they were probably going to have to close the rope bridge soon so had to hurry across and then back again. I'm not gonna lie, the flimsy look of the thing in combination with the wind made me a little nervous as I dashed across. The rain poncho I bought on site acted like a kite, which didn't help. But the area is gorgeous, rain or shine.

As was Giant's Causeway. Walking on the long path down to the rock formations, my poncho blustering in all directions and my hair and jeans soaked, I lost it and doubled over with hysterical laughter re. the nastiness of the day, which got Paddy laughing nearly as badly. You'll note the rain spots on my camera lens in some of my shots below.

Dunluce Castle ruins, Northern Ireland

Thankfully the next day back in County Dublin was much nicer and we went out to Malahide Castle with family. They don't allow you to take pictures inside but the guided tour of the castle is well worth it, and the grounds are lovely. While you're there don't miss out on the Avoca Café which is expensive but offers scrumptious meals.

Irish pint in an Irish pub, July 3rd, 2013

Treats in Bewley's Café (Grafton Street) window.

I never realized that you could sit outside on the third floor ( Irish and English folks would count it as the second floor) but sure enough you can spy people up there.

And the evening we dropped into Bewleys it was crowded
so guess where we headed?

Here's Paddy's snack: a pear and almond tart & coffee.

And mine: cupcake with sparkling pink lemonade.

Finally, they're currently repaving Grafton Street sections at a time. The stones were intended to last twenty years and have now been there for thirty. The walled off sections being worked on had old photos of Grafton Street hanging on it.

Here's my present day shot of the same stretch of road, which brings to mind the Simon and Garfunkel lyric, “After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same.” Dublin, after changes upon changes, is still Dublin.

I'm heading off to the airport in about four hours (and afterwards will be mostly offline for the next two weeks while away) and didn't intend to write a blog entry today. Then, thanks to writer Neesha Meminger, I read the following article in The Telegraph: 

* Honest sex scenes in books will stop teens learning from porn, Malorie Blackman says 

Malorie Blackman, young adult writer and newly-appointed children's laureate for the United Kingdom told the British newspaper, "I was reading an article three weeks ago where this teenage girl was saying everything her boyfriend knew about sex he knew from porn. He was brutalising her, because that's what he thought sex was about from watching online. It made me angry and it made me sad. I thought well, this is exactly why we need not just sex education in schools but also books that tackle the subject of relationships and your first time. Otherwise teens and young adults will get their information from somewhere and in this case it was getting it from porn. I would rather my daughter read about a loving sexual relationship in a book—whether it works or whether it doesn't—but in that context, than getting her information from innuendo and from porn and the rest of it."

I'm mentioning Malorie Blackman's stance because as a young adult writer this subject is something I've given a lot of thought to over the years. Shortly after I began writing for teens I also began haunting comprehensive sex ed website Scarleteen to delve into how teen sexual relationships and issues had changed since I was a young person. I also read and continue to read as much other information on young people's sexuality as I can—studies, articles, books like Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, and Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture.

There have been some great strides made in Canadian society since I went to high school in the eighties. I never saw a pregnant girl at my Catholic High school the entire time I was there. No one felt free to be gay and out either. Unwed pregnancy and homosexuality were generally things to be shoved into the closet. Since then gay marriage has been legalized in Canada and several other countries, and we've been moving away from vilifying pregnant teenagers. There's still progress to be made in these areas, but at least we're heading in the right direction.

However, there are other areas of society where this is not the case. One negative thing my generation didn't have to deal with as teenagers was the ubiquitous presence of hardcore pornography based on cruelty and the humiliation of women and girls. Those hardcore materials existed, yes, but not within easy reach and unlimited access twenty-four hours a day. The much more common pornography of the day was pictures of naked women in Playboy or Penthouse magazines, exponentially tamer stuff than the majority of pornography accessed over the internet today.

There is evidence that suggests the developing teenage brain is especially susceptible to some of the long term effects of pornography. A recent Toronto Star article called Is pornography changing how teens view sex? cites experts who believe the use of porn among teenagers is impacting their notions of normal sexual behaviour and their views on women.

But first of all, what is pornography like today?

"In a 2010 analysis of 50 randomly selected adult films, researchers found high levels of verbal and physical aggression. Of the 304 scenes analyzed, 88 per cent contained physical aggression, including spanking, gagging and slapping, while nearly 50 per cent contained verbal abuse, particularly name-calling. In most cases, the men were dominant and the women almost always responded neutrally or with pleasure. Only 10 per cent of scenes contained positive sexual behaviour."

Adolescent sexuality expert Maree Crabbe's documentary Love and Sex in an Age of Pornography interviewed 70 young Australians as well as LA-based porn performers. In the documentary, veteran porn performer, Nina Hartley, says extreme, sexual "circus acts" have become mainstream and Imre Pager, "who performs as Anthony Hardwood since 1997, says there's been a shift from 'lovey, dovey sex' to 'one girl with four guys' who 'just take over and . . . destroy her'."

"Physical aggression depicted in pornography includes gagging, choking and spanking," Crabbe says, yet "a viewer doesn't see the target reacting to the aggression, they see a woman who likes being choked, gagged and hit...Porn not only routinely portrays gender stereotypes and unequal gender relations, it says that they're sexy."

Meanwhile a study of male undergraduates found that "nearly a quarter of them admitted they had acted sexually aggressively on a date, causing their date to cry, scream or plead." While official rape statistics are down in the U.S. there is some evidence to suggest that this may be due to shifting perceptions about what constitutes rape. "Almost 75% of women whose experience meets the legal definition of rape don't recognize themselves as victims. In the same survey, one in 12 men admitted to acting in ways that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape, but 84% of them said what they did was "definitely not rape."

Robert Jensen, author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity asks the question "If contemporary porn shows scenes that are cruel, degrading and violent to women, how does that affect the perception of those who are raping and being raped? Do they become more accepting of acts that would be deemed rape years ago? It could be that porn is shifting the way we even understand the term rape."

A three year long 2011 U.S. based study of 10-15 year-olds showed that those who watched violent X-rated material were six times more likely to self-report sexually aggressive behaviour. In the United Kingdom The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reports that the Number of sex offences by people under the age of 18 has risen 38% since 2009/10. Claire Lilley, policy adviser at the NSPCC said: 'We hope our findings will ring alarm bells with the authorities that this is a problem which needs urgent attention…While more research needs to be done on this problem, we know that technology and easy access to sexual material is warping young people's views of what is normal or acceptable behaviour."

Here are some quotes from fifteen and sixteen year-old British teenage girls I pulled from a 2010 article about teenage boys and internet pornography:

* "Boys just want us to do all the stuff they see the porn stars do. It's as if we have to pretend we are in a movie. They want us to dress like porn stars in sexy underwear, have bodies that look like porn stars, and sound and behave like them too when we are alone. That's why we like to have our friends around us now."

* "It makes me feel so unhappy to be even asked about this stuff by a boy. So I try not to be alone with a boyfriend any more, to have a third wheel whenever I can."

* "I wish my parents would say I'm not allowed to be home alone with a boy. I wish they'd say boys aren't allowed in my bedroom. They make this big deal about 'trusting us', but that's not helping me. They have no idea what goes on, and I'm too embarrassed to tell them."

* [My boyfriend] even starts talking as if he's in a movie. Suddenly, when we are being intimate, he'll say something that he must have heard in a porn film. For example, he'll call me a 'bitch' and use dirty language that he'd never use normally. It's awful. It's so obvious he's copying his actions from watching porn."

There are, of course, other articles and studies that refute hardcore pornography's influence on teenagers. One that is often referred to is a recent study which looked at 4,600 people 15 - 25 living in the Netherlands and concluded that only between 0.3 percent and 4 percent of the sexual behaviors in question could be attributed to pornography use. If the United States, Britain and Canada were on a par with the Netherlands regarding sex education and positive attitudes about sexuality, I might agree that internet pornography's influence on young people in these countries would be similarly limited. But in my own province of Ontario, where sexual harassment at school is rampant, the sex ed curriculum is fifteen years old (shameful!).

So as things stand I'm in agreement with the article Talking to Teens about Pornography over at Everyday Health. It points out that the Netherlands, is "leaps and bounds ahead of the United States when it comes to sex education. They have a dramatically lower teen birth rate, as well as a lower abortion rate and a lower incidence of STDs. Much of this can be attributed to their behavior regarding sexuality. While our country still struggles to keep comprehensive sex education in schools, students in the Netherlands feel safe discussing sex openly with their teachers and parents. Rather than viewing sex as dirty or shameful, they tend to take a more open and positive view of their bodies and sexuality. It's a distinct cultural difference and one that should be taken into account when discussing this study and pornography, because for many American teens, pornography is all they ever learn about sex."

As hardcore pornography isn't likely to disappear or shift away from negative images anytime soon, it's crucial that parents and schools provide young men and women with good progressive sex education, allowing them to cope with the hardcore messages and images they're inevitably exposed to (average age of first internet porn exposure = 11), and countering those with information on what a genuinely positive sexual relationship should look and feel like. We can't inoculate teenagers against the negative impact of pornography with an injection but the Netherlands study shows that we can accomplish that result with sex education and healthy societal views on sex. Like Malorie Blackman, I feel young adult literature has a responsibility here. It can and should play a role, reflecting realistic sexual experiences, both good and bad and thereby allowing teenagers to process aspects of the experiences before they are ready to engage in sex themselves. If you are writing young adult books that don't fade to black when it comes to sex scenes and if you're handling those scenes with honesty, without being exploitative, and neither glorifying sex nor demonizing it, you are already personally my favourite kind of YA writer. But more importantly, you're helping empower young people who are living in a highly sexually charged culture.

I'll be falling off the Internet in about a week when we head out on our annual trip to Dublin. Of course there's plenty of internet in Ireland, but my in-laws don't have a connection so it'll strictly be coffee-shop usage while I'm away (twenty minutes here and there). Because of that, if you message or email me while I'm gone I likely won't be back in touch until sometime after July 5th.

In the event that you're going to be in Toronto this summer, whether you live in its orbit already or are just coming for a visit, I want to share with you a neat free thing to do while in town. I'm a really big fan of walking tours and only last year discovered that the Royal Ontario Museum leads a range of free walking tours (Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings) around the city from June through October. You can find out more on this page of the ROM website but here's a list of the next several tours:

The Grange - Wednesday June 12
Wednesday, June 12, 2013 | 18:00 - 20:00

St. James Cemetery - Sunday June 16
Sunday, June 16, 2013 | 14:00 - 16:00

ROM and its Neighbours - Wednesday June 19
Wednesday, June 19, 2013 | 18:00 - 20:00

Whiskey, Wharf and Windmill - Sunday June 23
Sunday, June 23, 2013 | 14:00 - 16:00

Cabbagetown - Wednesday June 26
Wednesday, June 26, 2013 | 18:00 - 20:00

Historic Toronto - Sunday June 30
Sunday, June 30, 2013 | 14:00 - 16:00

The Annex - Wednesday July 3
Wednesday, July 3, 2013 | 18:00 - 20:00

The tours are led by knowledgeable volunteers and if you're curious about the city I highly recommend them. Also, if you're going to be here soon and are a theatre fan you really want to catch Kim's Convenience at Soulpepper in Toronto's Distillery District. It was a big hit for the company last year, they brought it back this May and the run has now been extended until June 26th. The Toronto Star's theatre critic has this to say about the production, “[it] has so many things right with it that it’s the kind of show that restores one’s faith in the theatre.” Having watched the show nearly two weeks ago, I heartily agree with him. Kim's Convenience was a deeply emotional experience. The writing and performances, particularly Paul Sun-Hyung Lee in the lead role as the owner of Kim's Convenience, completely awed me. Read the entire Toronto Star review here.

The other bit of entertainment that recently delighted me is one you can watch just about anywhere: Before Midnight.

 

If, like me, you were enchanted by Celine and Jesse's realistic yet romantic brief encounters in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset I know you'll want to catch up with them again. While this wasn't my favourite movie of the trilogy it's a perfectly believable, intimate portait of an aging relationship between two characters we feel we know so well.