The season of trying to lighten up with a spritz

These are strange and often dark times, try to find the light!

Today’s themes are: darkness, light, writing, what’s coming soon, and some extra random thoughts. Let’s proceed!

Darkness

So, how are we all doing?

Last time I checked in, it was…November? Wow. A lot’s happened. Dumpster fires abound.

I’m on the Canada side of what’s going on in the world (and more specifically in North America), and as none of our stories from Canadian news outlets get out into the world via Meta because of their “news” rules, the high-level summary sentiment up here is: A: I hope my American friends and family are good, B: I won’t be travelling to the U.S. any time soon, and C: it’s hard to see that global despair is higher than ever, when so much of it is preventable.

On the North American front: yes, we in Canada have seen those weird videos of Gavin Newsom inviting Canadians to California where we’ll be welcomed with open arms. Umm, cool, except: no thank you, or more plainly: absolutely the fuck not. It doesn’t matter what Gavin is saying, I don’t want to be harrassed, risk questioning about my feelings on Trump, have to show what’s on my phone which is against my rights, or much worse, just for the sake of visiting LA or New York, (even though I love both places), or some other American city that’s still on my list.

That being said, I certainly know people in Canada who’ve gone to the US recently, or are planning to, and aren’t worried at all, but the difference between those people and myself, is that they are white. That doesn’t mean they won’t randomly get questioned at the border, too, but the risk of them getting more seriously harassed is much lower, than for someone who presents as a person of colour or has a name that sounds a certain way. Anyway, that’s called privilege, for anyone surprised by such an obvious fact (you’d be surprised).

In summary: I miss you, American friends, but right now just ain’t it.

Shall we move on to lighter things?

Lightness

Actually, the lighter things are kind of connected to the darker things, because with all this cloudiness and despair, it’s more important than ever to seek the light. It can come in the smallest forms, like the lightness of being around trees that have finally woken up again, the warmth of the morning sun, that first sip of coffee, even stopping to take a dedicated moment for five deep breaths in a row (it really helps me to lower those stress levels).

So, I hope you’re finding your lightness in whatever form you can. I also had my first limoncello spritz of the season last week. I don’t care that it was only early May! It was glorious, and it did succeed in driving some of the darkness away.

Writing

I’m currently in the middle of writing, and finally feeling motivated to be a writer of novels again, after a long and bumpy stretch of having to tend to life things that drained my ability to even think about fiction, let alone write about it. I’m still dealing with some tricky things, but I’ve been finding it a lot more possible to find those moments for writing.

(Funnily enough, this book would be finished already if I was using AI to help me, but I’ll save my side-eye stream-of-consciousness mini-rant on that for my next blog post (next month—keep an eye out!). Because I want that side-eye rant where EVERYONE can see it, haha.

Since I’m deep in writing, or in thoughts of writing until I get back to writing, I’ll leave it at that for now, and hopefully I’ll be in a great spot with this book by the time we get to the official start of summer.

(Speaking of writing, this cocktail napkin from a Toronto hotel bar wins for best napkin writing:)

Coming soon

I’ll end with something I’m really excited about: I’ll be a guest panel at the Appleby College Festival of Authors on May 24th, speaking on a panel called “Characters with Chemistry” with fellow romance authors. Overall, this festival celebrates Canadian authors, and there will be several authors there I’m really excited to see—and some bookstagrammers too! If you’re in Oakville that day, you should register for a ticket and come on by, as there will also be book signings (I’ll be participating in one after our panel). Hope to see you there!

Extras

I saw a spoiler for the Last of Us season 2, and now I’m avoiding watching beyond season 2, episode 1. Sigh.

Severance season 2 was freakin’ amazing, and now that everyone is watching it, I feel smug about being one of the “early adopters” who watched the first season in real time as each episode dropped. I just love feeling like I’m better than everyone. *happy sigh*

I love Silo as well (isn’t Rebecca Ferguson the coolest?), and season 3 just wrapped filming. If you haven’t read the books by Hugh Howey which the show is based on, I highly recommend them (did you know they were originally self-published?).

The show The Studio is freakin’ hilarious to me, and I love the nostalgia its steeped in, as well as how it centres around the desire to make meaningful art in a modern world that tries to crush that—feels relevant for our times.

Hmm…okay, it appears that most of my updates are about shows, but what can I say? It was a long winter of existential dread, and a first half of spring that was often rudely cold. We needed our escapism! And hey, even in the summer we love a show or two, but…it’ll be nice to swap streaming with more spritzes, too.

I’ll end on a food note. I thought it would be fun to take my mom to Eataly for Mother’s Day, as she’s never been. She loved the wild restaurant/Italian market/bakery vibe (yay!), and we shared this amazing vegetarian appetizer dish that everyone should know about: thin curls of zucchini and yellow squash, fresh ricotta, olive oil, flakes of sea salt, and this incredible pistachio and mint pesto. Highly recommend it.

That’s all for now—will be back soon!