5 years ago today, I received the ORANGE BANNER treatment on Amazon for my brand new young adult novel PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE! For those who don’t know, the orange banner indicates BEST SELLER. You get it when your book hits #1!
Happy 5th Anniversary of being #1, book!
It was such a moment, writing Pride Must Be A Place! I remember where I was, who I was…everything about the experience! Such a pivotal moment. What a rush!
I wrote quite a lot of it at the 72hr Muskoka Novel Marathon during the summer of 2015. A week later, Michael and I spent a week at his sister’s cottage and I wrote the remainder of the novel. We would take long walks during the day and discuss the story-line. It was a magical time I still hold dear.
Whenever a writer thinks back on a book they wrote, it’s often that time in their life that they reflect on. It makes them either love or hate their book more…the book is like a litmus test to the time in which they wrote it. That’s the way it works for me, anyway. I LOVE this book! I still love the book because it immediately brings me back to that time when I wrote it!
Desk shot – Muskoka Novel Marathon.
Click THIS LINK to visit my post about how Pride Must Be A Place is tied in with Lorraine Segato of The Parachute Club.
PRIDE MUST BE A PLACESynopsis:
Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.
I know it won’t get to the ORANGE BANNER status again, but if you haven’t read PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE…consider picking it up today! It’s good!
Hemingway knew about Paris and how it infiltrates you, once you’ve been there. He understood the ever-present need one has to return there, like a salmon running upstream and fighting against the current to return, to return, to return…for Paris gets into you, and calls you back. For Paris is a moveable feast hard to ignore, hard to stay away from. Hard, even, to turn away from.
We are returning to the magical city! Our passage is booked. We will spend a little of our September (2023) walking the streets of Paris once again. Two weeks this time. We will see the places we’ve already seen and some we missed. We will venture daily from our hotel on the outskirts of Le Marais this time. Nothing against the 9th Arrondissement (where we stayed in 2021) or Île Saint-Louis in the 4th (where I stayed in 2014)! We loved staying so close to the Moulin Rouge and Boulevard de Clichy! And I really enjoyed staying down the street from Notre-Dame! But it will be nice to stay in a different neighbourhood…experience a different vibe yet again. Besides, the Saint-Louis is only a stone’s throw from the Marais!
But this is still months away. 225 days, to be exact. Not that I’m counting. But let’s just be honest…I’m counting.
Having just disembarked from Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas not quite two weeks ago, I am already counting down to our next adventure with a degree of desperation.
Many of our mornings and nights in October of 2021 were spent walking into and out of our neighbourhood…which meant crossing the Champs-Élysées repeatedly. Look! There’s the Arc!
As we map out our stay in Paris, I already worry about our itinerary. Will we see everything we want to see? Will we forget something only to remember it when we’re on the plane on the way home? Will we have enough time? I’m already experiencing FOMO!
On our last night in Paris in October, 2021, we ran up the street from our hotel for one last view of the Moulin Rouge. Our last selfie in Paris that year. (PS: The bus did not hit us!)
This trip’s itinerary will have a mix of overlapping items with the last trip, as well as a lot of new items. There are some things I want to see during every Paris trip. Some of the new ones will be Paris Disney and Mont-Saint-Michel. As well as a few other sights we missed. I’m dying to visit Montparnasse!
Also, though a picnic was on our itinerary for 2021, we didn’t quite make it. It is my goal to do it this time around. It was great fun with the Left Bank Writers Retreat in 2014! Maybe somewhere in or near Square du Vert-Galant! That is the goal, anyway! We’ll get a baguette, some cheese, a little wine…it’ll be magic!
There are so many museums in Paris, that we only saw a fraction of them during our last visit. We’ll hit a few that we missed and probably do one or two that we have already visited. It would take a month to see all of the Louvre. It is impossible to see it all in one visit. Also, what’s a trip to Paris without going to Shakespeare & Company?! I couldn’t imagine it! I also want to go to their new(ish) coffee shop next door. I don’t know why we didn’t think to go there on our last visit.
One of my favourite days in Paris in 2021 was our DAY OF THE DEAD! This turned out to be a thematic day filled with all things dead, from the Catacombes, to Père Lachaise Cemetery to the Panthéon. It would have been the perfect Paris day, had the booked tour through Père Lachaise been unceremoniously and without warning cancelled. We had to wander through that city of a cemetery on our own. We still managed to find a lot of the graves we wanted to visit, but without the tour we felt we did not do it justice. Hopefully, now that we’re further along in this forever-pandemic, the tour we book this time won’t be cancelled at the last minute. I want context with my stroll through the cemetery.
La Closerie des Lilas, a must when in Paris for me!
The list of restaurants is growing so quickly, I’m afraid we won’t have enough days to visit all the ones we wish to see. We will be narrowing it down in the coming weeks. One I like to return to is La Closerie des Lilas. It’s not incredible, but it has an incredible literary history. It draws me to it. Maybe just a cocktail next time? Maybe with an appetizer?
From my June 2014 trip with Left Bank Writers Retreat…new writer friend, Nina! Atop the Arc.
If we miss anything, I suppose we can always do it on our NEXT trip after this one. There will always be a next trip, right?! There is never any end to Paris!
Only 225 days to go. That seems like a lifetime when there are several inches of snow on the ground and a cold-snap is threatening to overwhelm us. The countdown is on…
The cruise we booked for January, 2021, and was postponed again and again, finally happened. Now that the pandemic is eternal, I wasn’t sure the Royal Caribbean cruise we booked way back in 2020 would even come to pass. But it has. And much to my surprise, I loved it.
On January 7th, Michael and I boarded the Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas for an 8 NIGHT cruise that would take us to Haiti, Aruba, and Curaçao. With three ports of call, this meant we were facing quite a few sea days. My fear of cruising has always been that I wouldn’t enjoy my time on the ship, or that I would get seasick, or that I wouldn’t be able to contain or satiate my desire to wander. It’s my tendency to wander that made the Camino walks so enticing. Walking from morning to late afternoon through one town after another in a seemingly endless stream of days? That’s my idea of a perfect holiday. Staying stationary on a moving ship? I wasn’t so sure.
My first port of call ever! Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas, shortly after arriving in Labadee, Haiti, for a day of sun and beach fun.
Turns out there’s LOTS to do on a cruise ship. Also, when you’re with the right person of course you’re going to enjoy the experience. We had a blast! Michael and I cruised with his sister and her husband. Jenifer and Gary were great company!
Our route…
What I didn’t quite realize about cruising–though I suspected it–was that there are people who do nothing but cruise. Or at least people who have several or dozens of cruises under their belts. Even Michael has been on at least 20. I constantly overheard people aboard the ship talk of their many many cruises. I anticipated my first one with something bordering on dread, at first. But after watching a few YouTube videos, my dread was laced with a healthy thread of maybe. Eventually, this thread softened to a guarded anticipation. I could do this. I could cruise. I would have all the ports to look forward to. They would feed my desire to explore, to wander, to see foreign places. And the more videos I watched, the more I realized the wide and varied activities cruises had to offer.
We watched a great rendition of the musical Grease. As it was my first time cruising, I wasn’t aware it was the same show Michael watched back before the pandemic when he went on a family cruise on Harmony with his sisters. It was new and fresh to me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
We watched a puzzling musical called Columbus. The comedy, at the beginning, fell lower than flat and it was so groan-worthy I found myself cringing when the audience neglected to laugh (or even smirk) as lines were delivered. (I say this as a sometimes playwright who has sat in the audience of their own comedic plays both while watching an audience in the throes of uproarious laughter, as well as audiences lost in the deadly silence of unfunny one-liners.) But it picked up a bit and the music was great. Over all, I enjoyed it despite its often-times lack of humour. Sometimes a comedic show cannot survive the fact that it’s simply not funny, but this one did. I think I eventually caved at the dancing sharks. It was endearing.
There was a stand-up comedy show one night. I enjoyed that, but opted out of the show on ice. Ice reminds me of winter, which I hate. Ice while on a cruise to escape winter? No.
We ate at the specialty restaurants on the ship and they were, to a one, exquisite. From the enchanted Wonderland Restaurant (fashioned as a sort of trip down the rabbit hole and into Alice’s Wonderland world of topsy-turvyness), to Jamie’s Italian, to Chops, to 150 Central Park, to Izumi and more, it was all good. Incredible food and great service. No complaints.
We discovered early on in the cruise that DUCKS were a thing. People hide little rubber ducks about. Lots of little rubber ducks. At first, it seemed I would find one wherever my eye wandered to. One after the other they appeared. Then we set out to purposefully find them, walking about the ship hunting for rubber ducks. I did not foresee this activity being something I would be doing during the cruise, but there we were. As we wandered about Central Park looking amongst the shrubbery, we discovered more hunters. They were obvious to spot, despite their attempts to blend in with other strolling cruisers. There was a hunger in the eyes of the duck hunters. Their desperate glances would linger too long in the bushes. They quickly gave themselves up.
Four of our bounty of found ducks. If you’re ever on a cruise ship, look inside the planters, and under cushions and benches and chairs. Look everywhere. You may find yourself a little duck of your own. (-:
It was late in the game when Michael finally found his first duck, but he soon gained traction. We came home with 14 ducks, and a desire to hide our own on the next cruise. And, yes, I said NEXT. As early as day 2, I found myself imagining that I could do this cruising thing again.
The ports were all amazing. I had been to Aruba before, but never to Haiti or Curaçao. The three ports were enough to satiate my need to see new places. I was especially enchanted with the brightly coloured houses of Curaçao. We took a little tour of some of the island and saw lovely street art there. Let’s face it, to even be in the sunlight in January is a magical thing for us Canadians. It was warm and bright and who could ask for anything more!
There’s LOTS to do on a cruise ship. Harmony of the Sea was no end of surprises and fun. I’d definitely sail with Royal Caribbean again.
On the promenade, you can find a robot bar. You order the drink on a smart pad and watch the robot arm put it together for you…Harmony has both dry slides and water slides. This mammoth at the back of the ship, the Ultimate Abyss, is a 10-story dry slide. We plummeted down 10 decks at a rate of 9 miles per hour. It was over in seconds!The Ultimate Abyss, as seen from the bottom of the ride. It drops you off right between Johnny Rockets and Sabor Taqueria. World’s best milkshakes to the left, unspeakably good Mexican food to the right!
Our little getaway beach in Labadee, Haiti:
Shots from Oranjestad, Aruba:
Shots from Willemstad, Curaçao:
And I know the world has been wondering…YES, Harmony of the Seas does, in fact, have a carousel! And, yes, we did go on it. Of course we did.
KEVIN CRAIG 