Book Scare

I never get used to presenting myself to a bookstore to introduce my book. My heart beats insanely rumpTHUMPA rumpTHUMPA rumpTHUMPA, I break out in a feverish sweat, I can't swallow, in fact, I can't even see, and now my stomach is making weird swish swash noises.

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I slid back to my little hometown in Ontario (Stratford/Goderich area) with my book last month. It was oddly emotional, perhaps because this is the land of my childhood. This is where I started illustrating as a little girl. First my mother's grocery lists every week, then filling pad after pad of deliciously white unlined 'BIG JUMBO DRAWs' from Zehr's, and then all of the hundreds of school projects that I managed to incorporate my doodles into.

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And so my book has gently arrived in Ontario, to the places that made me. Fanfare Books in Stratford is a little independent store that my grandmother used to take my mother to when she was little, and my mother took me to when I was little. It lives with the beloved picture books of my early childhood at the Stratford Public Library. Thank you for feeding my soul so many years ago.

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to be continued....