The Rt. Hon. Paul Martin was in Ottawa last Friday night to promote his new memoir, Hell or High Water: My Life in and out of Politics, to a crowd of over 300.

This was my third meeting with the former prime minister having had similar successful events in Toronto and Montreal. What continued to amaze me was his energy. He’s been steadily touring the country with a couple of weeks to go and yet each event that I have attended has been like a first for him. His energy is amazing and his passion for his beliefs inspiring. He signed multiple copies of Hell or High Water Friday night while catching up with old friends and answering questions from the public. All the while there was a smile on his face.

And I discovered I share a love of chocolate chip cookies with the former PM. He was even gracious enough to share one with me! Now if only he’d offered a glass of milk…

Last week I got to help out at a Debbie Travis event at Indigo Yonge and Eglinton. She was there as part of her cross country tour to support her new book Not Guilty: My Guide to Working Hard, Raising Kids and Laughing through the Chaos. I was there to look after our BookLounge VIP winners, making sure they had great seats, complimentary books and a special gift from Debbie.

She was hilarious and so down to earth. I already knew that she had a number of successful television decorating shows, plus a line of products at Canadian Tire but I had no idea the number of other shows she produces with her husband but doesn’t star in. Debbie mentioned that given the current economic situation she’ll be back on the air with a new DIY show. The whole in-store audience (me included) wanted to know more but it’s top secret until the summer.

Even though this new book is a departure from her regular area of expertise, it has some great stories in it, including her whirlwind romance of 2 weeks with her now husband of decades and how she balances a thriving business while parenting her two sons. Plus she shared with us a story that didn’t make the book, something about her sister in a cemetery, with a boy and a missing pair of knickers…

I love my job because I’m always getting to do something new and exciting. My newest project is coordinating our very first Literary Live Blog, which you can catch on Monday, November 10 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Authors, publishers and editors will converse from their keyboards, with moderated comments from readers. Participants include:

Doug Pepper, President and Publisher, McClelland & Stewart
Martha Kanya-Forstner, Editorial Director, Doubleday Canada
Nino Ricci, author of The Origin of Species
Vincent Lam, author of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
Doug Hunter, author of God’s Mercies
Terry Fallis, author of The Best Laid Plans

Discussion topics will include:

- getting published
- the importance of authors and editors working together
- the impact of winning a major literary award

Want to join in? No need to get dressed up, or call a cab. Just click here on Monday at 11:30.

Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you I love two things: Books and the supernatural. As a kid, the first two sections of the library I went to every weekend were Horror for fiction & Occult for non-fiction. Over the years, I have developed quite a collection of paranormal fiction, from Christopher Pike to Anne Rice and Kay Hooper. If you’ve been following our new RandomHouseCA twitter feed, then you know that my absolute favourite author is the wonderful Kelley Armstrong, author of the Women of the Otherworld Series and the new Darkest Powers Series for young adults.

In order to develp a plan for the release of her latest book, Living with the Dead, I have been living and breathing her books since late summer. I’ve had the opportunity to meet with the company big-wigs as the “resident Kelley Armstrong fan” (What a title!) and get a sneak peek at the books coming next year. I’ve even worked with Kelley via email to develop a Facebook application, (you can check it out here), a first for both of us.

But the cherry on the cake was finally meeting Kelley in person. She was here in Toronto last night for a signing at the Chapters Queensway. (By the way, they have signed copies of the whole series in stock right now!) It took me an hour by transit, but I hauled my first edition hardcover copy of Bitten, the first book in the Otherworld series, all the way down there to be signed. And to my delight, Kelley turned out to be one of the nicest people. We spent nearly an hour talking about writing (yes, I am an aspiring author myself) and what it’s like to write in the supernatural genre.

The whole evening confirmed that Kelley has rightly earned her place as my personal hero.

A caveat: I am a production manager, and thus work behind the scenes rather than up front like publicity and sales. I don’t always get to meet authors or illustrators. I am also an unabashed comic-book nerd.

This is why I let Dave Gibbons, author of Watching the Watchmen and artist of Watchmen, use my forehead as a canvas.

It isn’t every day that you can turn into Doctor Manhattan, especially by one of his creators. I figure I scored nerd-points in the hexadecimals after this little Sharpie-driven sketch.

This occurred on November 2 at a reception held in honour of Dave’s Toronto visit, and while it would have been wonderful to show it to the hundreds of fans who turned out for his signing earlier that day, sadly my Gibbons-original forehead was seen only by a few dozen people. Well, in the flesh, at any rate. Now I’m sharing it with you!

The signing and interview with Mark Askwith were terrific, and Dave gave everyone some tantalizing hints about the upcoming Watchmen film and an upcoming project with Frank Miller. He also described, in terrific detail, some of the creative process he, along with Alan Moore, used to create Watchmen.

Dave received much-deserved applause and cheers coming and going, and then sat down to sign close to 1,000 books, comics, and even pieces of original art. There was even one Rorschach, one of the major characters from the graphic novel.

I still feel I got one of the best signatures.

I had a wonderful day at the Ottawa International Writers Festival on Sunday. At 2:00 p.m., Sarah Dearing chaired our panel on Canadian literature. Bill Gaston started things off with a wonderful reading from his new novel, The Order of Good Cheer. I read next from my novel The Best Laid Plans. The crowd was very kind and laughed in all the right places. Then Stephen Henighan read from his book of essays, The Afterlife of Culture. Then, with all four of us on the stage, Sarah Dearing posed questions to drive a discussion on the state and future of our literary culture. I was a little intimidated by the topic but the discussion flowed easily with several questions from the floor as well. After 90 minutes (that seemed more like a half-hour), we moved to the foyer to sign our books. (The signing didn’t take long but it was fun.)

After our session, literary comet Joseph Boyden, hot off of his Giller shortlisting, read from his new novel Through Black Spruce, to a packed house. CBC radio personality Laurence Wall adroitly moderated the session. Beyond the moving reading and insightful discussion, the highlight of the session had to be Joseph Boyden performing three different moose calls (I kid you not!). The line up at Boyden’s signing table after the session snaked around the foyer and almost certainly left him with a swollen pen hand.

The final session I attended brought together three amazing writers for a reading and discussion. South African Booker nominee Damon Galgut read from The Impostor, Amitav Ghosh read from his Booker-nominated novel, Sea of Poppies, and then Kenneth J. Harvey read from his epic masterwork Blackstrap Hawco. What a thrill to hear these three celebrated authors.

I spent the evening choosing my selections for a reading I’m doing at the Ottawa Public Library tomorrow (Monday) and sifting through some great memories of a wonderful OIWF weekend.

Appearing at readings and writers’ festivals is still a new and wondrous experience for me, as is bearing the surreal label of “writer.” If you’d have told me six months ago that this weekend I’d be reading, and on a panel, as a “writer”, at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, I’d have suggested reassessing your medication. Yet here I am.

I arrived in Ottawa by train on Saturday and met fellow writer and panelist Stephen Henighan, author of The Afterlife of Culture. Good guy. Smart guy. We checked in at the Delta and then headed over to the National Archives building a couple of blocks away on Wellington Street where the festival has been unfolding all week. We made it in time for a reading and discussion with prolific writer Bill Gaston, award-winning novelist David Bergen, and the much celebrated author Rawi Hage, recent recipient of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. What a line-up! These wonderful writers read powerful pages from their new novels. To coin a phrase, “the audience was listening.”

After the session, Stephen and I helped ourselves to some dinner laid on for festival staff and authors. I learned that tofu can actually look exactly like beef bourguignon and I was reminded why I remain an inveterate meat-eater. Did the tofu taste like beef? Not so much.

I’m looking forward to our panel discussion on Sunday afternoon. Stephen Henighan, the aforementioned Bill Gaston and I will each read from our books, and then we’ll be led in discussion by award-winning novelist Sarah Dearing on the current state of Canadian literature. Yikes! I expect I’ll be doing a lot of sage head-nodding punctuated by the odd “agreed” and “exactly.” A friend has also suggested that I consider “steepling” my fingers in a thoughtful pose. Good advice. Stay tuned.