Hope to see some of you folks in Saskatoon tomorrow night (Wednesday, October 12th).  The place:  McNally Robinson bookstore on 8th Street.

The show starts promptly at 7:30.  (Here are the details.)

Yeah, I said “show”.  Because readings are public performances and I do my level best to make them as interesting and entertaining as I can.  The best I’ve ever seen was Timothy Findley; man, could that guy read.  And, natch, Tiff had a background in live theater.  He knew how to turn it up a notch.

Others…not so much.  I was at a reading once (no names!) featuring an award-winning poet, an icon of Canadian verse…and it was so appalling, so utterly fake and ridiculous, that it was all I could do to keep from shrieking with laughter.  Cripes, he was funny.  My wife kept trying to catch my eye but I refused to look at her, knowing we’d lose it and make a spectacle of ourselves.  Little beads of sweat trickled down my temples as I fought to keep my composure.

He’d speak in this silly, affected voice, dragging out certain words:  “The wind…moved through…the grassssss…”

Hee hee.  Still makes me chuckle.  What an arsehole.

I gave a reading on Baffin Island, sharing the bill with another writer who read so long that the candles in the wine bottles burned down and fell to the glass bottoms, extinguishing themselves.  The room getting darker and darker as more and more of the stubs dropped.  Pshh. Pshh.  Pssh.

About seventeen years ago, I made the mistake of agreeing to read in a bar in Ottawa.  The regulars tuned in for about the first six or eight minutes but then the noise level began to rise and I started frantically cutting passages as I read, rushing to finish the performance as quickly as I could.  Anyone who was listening (probably damn few of them) would’ve found the narrative completely incoherent.

Well.

There won’t be any horror stories tomorrow night at McNally-Robinson.  Nossir.  I’m well prepped and I’m reading some of the most exciting passages from my supernatural thrillers, So Dark the Night and Of the Night.  Anyone who shows up is gonna enjoy themselves, guar-an-teed; they sure as hell won’t be bored.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my rehearsing…