My publisher dropped by today, to give me the final Advance Reader Copy of Fallsy Downsies, which I’ll be sending to Laura Mayne in Mississauga. She won it fair and square in our Mondegreens contest on Twitter. (Search the hashtag fallsydownsies to see all the amazing, hilarious entries.)

This is the pleasure of working with a small, local publisher. Drop-by, in-person service. In addition to dropping off an ARC, he also physically removed from my house an overly curious neighbourhood cat who wandered in the front door while we were talking. He always has my back, Robbie does. 

He also let me know that by about Tuesday, I should have in my hands the final, published, yellow-covered, edited, proofread, page-proofed, signed-off-on, available-for-sale Fallsy Downsies. 

Cue the stomach swoops.

It’s finally (almost) here!

As for that Mondegreens contest, what a pleasure to send a book to Laura Mayne. She went to the same grade school as me and my siblings, but several years before any of us got there. She went there when my father taught there. She recently happened across my sister on Facebook and asked whether she was related to Ray Domet. They finally met at a jewellery trunk show my sister held in Mississauga. A few weeks ago, Laura came to Halifax to drop her daughter off at university. Her first purchase? A copy of Homing. And now she’s won an ARC of Fallsy Downsies. A little bit it feels like a nudge from my dad, from beyond. 

It feels exactly right. All of it.