[Editor's note: Every April, the Toronto Public Library hosts a month-long festival called Keep Toronto Reading. As part of these festivities, the library selects one book they believe all Torontonians should read. This year's selection is Judy Fong Bates' Midnight at the Dragon Cafe.]

In my parents’ house there were no English books. The library in my small town was the size of an elementary school classroom. The shelves went to the ceiling and were so close together that even a small child like me had to walk sideways between them. I visited as much as three times a week after supper, and if it had been open, I would have been there the other evenings as well. That dusty crowded room transported me to worlds unknown. The women volunteers introduced me to Lewis Carroll, Daphne du Maurier, L. M. Montgomery, the Brothers Grimm, and more. For an immigrant kid like me, the public library was one of the primary building blocks in my love of words and stories. I am deeply indebted to the library of my youth. So, when Tina Srebotnjak told me that Toronto Public Library had chosen Midnight at the Dragon Cafe for its Keep Toronto Reading 2011 One Book, I was speechless!

The events that have been planned for Midnight at the Dragon Cafe are extensive and interesting. And on a personal level, I am flattered to see so many other writers and artists involved. Who would ever have thought that an immigrant girl like me would one day not only write a book, but have its cover on the side of a Toronto streetcar!

I am a huge fan of working dogs and especially admire Border collies. Many years ago I attended a sheep herding event on Saltspring Island. Afterwards, I fell into conversation with a shepherdess about her dog, Tessa who, the shepherdess explained was a delinquent, unmanageable dog she rescued from the local pound. Tessa had lived in several homes but was brought back to the pound because she was too unruly, too wild, and had way too much energy for family life. The shepherdess said, “I put Tessa in a pasture with a three or four sheep to see what she would do. Tessa had never seen or smelled a sheep before, and as far as I knew, never even been in the country.

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What an amazing couple of weeks it’s been since The Best Laid Plans was somehow crowned the 2011 Canada Reads winner. I’m still reeling from the news and don’t expect to touch back down for some time yet.

In the aftermath of Canada Reads, one of the comments I’ve often heard usually goes something like this:

“You must have had so much faith and belief in your book back in 2007 to podcast it and self-publish it, even when agents and publishers didn’t seem interested. You must have known people would like the novel if you could just get it into their hands.”

Well, I hate to burst that bubble, but the idea to podcast The Best Laid Plans had little to do with any confidence I had in the story. Quite the opposite, in fact. When I finished the manuscript, I honestly had no idea whether I’d written anything worthy of anyone’s time. I really didn’t know. When you labour over a manuscript for months, virtually immerse yourself in it, your perspective and judgement on what you’ve written can abandon you. Mine certainly did. Podcasting was simply a way to get a sense of whether people liked it. In short, I podcast The Best Laid Plans not because I believed in it, but rather because I didn’t yet. It was only after I received so much encouraging feedback from listeners that I felt comfortable moving ahead with the self-publishing process. I now understand, and am grateful, that many readers seemed to enjoy The Best Laid Plans, but I certainly didn’t know or expect that back in 2007. That just makes the events of the past month that much more surreal and gratifying. MORE…

Publicists have very clean cars. This observation may score low on the profundity scale, but it did make me realize that I could never do what they do. Not only could I not keep my car that clean, but I also lack the grace, patience and persistence required to trot authors around all day.

I have just finished the first leg of the Moolala media tour and I loved it. It was like spending three weeks at Disney World, in large part thanks to these great publicists. All I had to do was show up and I was escorted around, fed, watered, entertained, introduced and protected. I’m usually a very independent traveller and didn’t think I’d appreciate that level of service. But I did. To a seasoned book tour veteran I’m sure I sound completely naive, even deluded. But for now I’ll relish in the newness of seeing the book in an airport, hearing its title mangled by TV hosts, and being chauffeured around in a nice clear car.

[editor's note: If you missed Bruce Sellery on tour, check out these great videos featuring tips from Moolala.]

What would you be listening to if the end of the world was nigh? Nicolas Dickner, author of Apocalypse for Beginners, shares some of the songs that inspired his writing.

Five Years - David Bowie
Bowie provided the soundtrack for the first half of the manuscript. I longed for Cold War music - a weird musicological category, I admit - and Bowie was the quintessential Cold War musician, especially with his Berlin Trilogy. Five Years (recorded a few years earlier) is not only a great apocalyptic song, it also follows the rule of great films: talk about the monster, but never show it.

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One of my greatest pleasures as a writer, besides the work of writing itself, is sharing the result in public. Maybe it’s the vestigial acting gene I got from my father’s side of the family, or the other gene I think I can trace there, having to do with a taste for applause. Whatever the underlying factors, it’s simply true that I love giving readings. Writing is all about connecting with a reader, and sharing what you’ve written with an audience makes that idea real.

There’s a lot a writer can do to make the most of a public reading. Embracing the experience means really caring about giving people a good show, choosing passages from the book that give listeners an arc to follow and a feeling of reward for having listened, and actually practicing the reading for a good hour or more prior to the event. The writers who give more to a reading event usually get a great deal in return.

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Music was crucial in both the inspiration for and the writing of A Cold Night for Alligators. A big part of my enduring fascination with the South is the tradition of music - running the gamut from early Mississippi delta blues through Lynyrd Skynyrd and their suitably hairy offspring (lesser mortals like the Marshall Tucker Band) into chemical cowboys like Steve Earle and Waylon Jennings. I listened to hundreds of songs while writing this book (including a number by The Protestant Choir of the Wallkill Correctional Facility and Van Halen’s Somebody Get Me a Doctor). Here are just six of the key ones:

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Last Monday I was on television for the first time in my life.

I’m a magazine editor by day, crafter by night, and I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I’d be sitting on the set of CityTV’s Breakfast Television, waiting to tell the world about the brand-new craft book I’d co-edited, Create, Update, Remake.

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You may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. – Jane Austen

1. I come home from kindergarten in a quivery state of awe. “Michael Pearce can read!” I announce. “He read a whole book for Show and Tell!” My eyes fill with tears of bitterest envy: all I can do is look at pictures while I wait to be read to. Like a baby.

My grandfather says he will teach me to read. After dinner, he sits with me at the kitchen counter and begins sounding out words. “C-A-T, cat,” he says, writing it out. “R-A-T, rat.” Now it is my turn: B-A-T, he writes. “What does that say?”

I have no idea. Cat, rat…. “Catches,” I guess. No. Chases? No. Hits on head with giant rubber mallet? Thirty minutes later, I am thoroughly sick of learning to read. Also, I have not learned to read. Also, my grandfather is not a patient teacher. I am in tears.

But he persists, night after night at the kitchen counter, and eventually, I can read. The best day of the week is library day. The best days of the school year are when Mrs. Smith, the district librarian, comes to our class to tell us about the new books in our library. Sometimes she has to bore us to death with the Dewey Decimal System first, but she never leaves without reading. She is the best reader I have ever heard, changing her voice and accent and pitch as she shifts from character to character.

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