Imagine my surprise to see that Amazon’s bots decided to write this about my book: “Customers find the content of the book wonderful and great for kids. They describe the writing style as delicious and unique. Generated from the text of customer reviews.” One reviewer had said they thought it was a kids’ book, then wrote NOT, as she read it and discovered it was for adults.

Though now I hope parents buy it for their kids because they need to learn the importance of cannabis and alcohol early in life. It’d be fun to give it to a twelve-year-old who then says to their mom, “Can we make cannabis cookies, too?” Or give it to a ten-year-old who can expand their vocabulary with four-letter words that mean ka ka.

As usual I panicked, and because the liquor stores were closed and it appeared no end was in sight, I stocked up on a lot of vodka, and some tequila. Of course, soon after the hoarding was complete, the strike was over and now I’m left with the most interesting assortment of brands. The small independent stores soon ran out of the normal stuff I buy (nice cheap Smirnoff) and so I had to take whatever was available. Fear not, it’ll get drunk. Or I will.

Great joy as I remembered my old pal Steve MacNaull from the Kelowna Daily Courier and decided to google him to see where he was. It turns out he’s now working for Now Media, and so I met him there today in their absolutely gorgeous office space on the 16^th floor overlooking the lake and the autumn trees now changing colour within the neighbourhoods below.

We reminisced about the old days when he’d write articles about the government contracting business, Rucastle and Schiller Workskills. Then we talked about the fruitcake madness and how all of that went over the years. I gave him my memoir and told him to read it as I said, “you’re in it.” He immediately tried to look in the back and I said, “there’s no index, so you’ll have to read to find it.” Cagey, right?

I also baked fruitcakes a few days ago and brought him one of those. He very kindly got a knife and plate, and cut a piece then took a few photos of me holding my memoir in one hand and the cake in the other. When I saw the pictures, I was quite dismayed and said why oh why is my right eye so much smaller than my left? It’s not normal.

When I left, I asked about Now Media, and he said this story about my book will appear not just in Kelowna Now, but Prince George Now, Kamloops Now, and many other Nows. I don’t mind telling you I’m very excited about this as perhaps as we come up to fruitcake season, the article will arrive just in time to give people the nudge to buy the book as a gift for someone.

I’m off to Toronto tomorrow for a week of fun and am all packed and ready to go. Will just take a carryon for that amount of time. Actually, I took a carryon for my two weeks in Europe and when my male cousin arrived to drive me to the airport he looked at what I had and said “that’s it? For two weeks?”

Trevor and I are hoping today’s the final day of re-taping certain areas of the book that didn’t come out right. I’m willing to ignore all of the annoying swallowing just to get it over with, but there are some words that are just plain wrong and it has to be fixed.