The good folks at the OLA who organize the Forest of Reading celebrations asked each nominee to provide a youtube of a brief reading from their nominated book. Since Call Me Aram is nominated for the Silver Birch Express award, I needed to do this.
The timing was not ideal. The email arrived in my inbox on Jan 10th with a due date of Jan 15th. My first Stolen Child book launch was scheduled at the Brantford Public Library on the 11th. Jan 15th was Family Day, and on Jan 17th, I had five events for Stolen Child scheduled in Toronto!
I emailed my contact at the OLA letting them know that I could not meet the Feb 15th deadline but would do the best I could.
Fate intervened in a lovely way. My friend Elizabeth Yates emailed to ask if she could do a video of me reading from Stolen Child at the book launch on Jan 11th. I told her absolutely, and if there was time, could she please also do a video of me reading from Call Me Aram? She agreed.
I’ll post about the launch later, but suffice it to say that there was no time to do those videos on the 11th.
But I got another email the next day, from Roy, the owner of Green Heron Books in Paris. I love this independent book store. Roy is very supportive of Canadian authors and always stocks books by authors who live in the area. He wanted to know if I could drop into his store to sign stock copies of Stolen Child.
I said sure — on the 16th. And then I asked Elizabeth if she could do a video of me reading Call Me Aram at Green Heron Books. So she met me there. Ironically, Roy had sold out of most of the Stolen Child by then so I dropped by again on Thursday.
Thank you, Elizabeth and Roy!
