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Articles by Mitzi Bytes
Morse Code for Romantics, by Anne Baldo
I was soliciting picks for 49thShelf’s Summer Books lists when Stephanie Small from The Porcupine’s Quill got in touch. “It might not look like one from the cover,” she wrote, “but actually, I think Anne Baldo’s Morse Code for Romantics makes a good summer read,” which is an understatement if I ever heard one. For this is a book that is so steeped in summer, a collection of stories with sand between their toes, set along the shores of Lake Erie, scrappy cottages and rundown motels.
Denison Avenue, by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes
The nature of cities, of course, is that cities change (I wrote about this in my 2017 essay about Ann-Marie MacDonald’s ADULT ONSET, a book that maps on to this one in surprising and interesting ways), but anyone who loves that city or calls it home is going to struggle with that, or maybe that’s even just the baked-in nostalgia that comes from being alive.
Here are 70 Canadian short stories available free online
The 2022 CBC Short Story Prize is open! Get inspired by reading a great Canadian short story. This list was curated by writer Kevin Hardcastle. The 2022 CBC Short Story Prize is open! Get inspired by reading a great Canadian short story. (Credit: iStock/Getty Images) Kevin Hardcastle is an author from Ontario. His debut short story collection, Debris, won the Trillium Book Award in 2016 and his first novel, In the Cage, came out in 2017.
Kerry Clare's novel Waiting for a Star to Fall explores love, power and politics in the #MeToo era
Waiting for a Star to Fall is a novel by Kerry Clare. (Doubleday Canada) The Next Chapter11:33Kerry Clare on Waiting for a Star to Fall, This segment originally aired on Feb. 27, 2021. Kerry Clare is a writer, editor and blogger from Toronto. She is also the author of the novel Mitzi Bytes. Her latest novel, Waiting for a Star to Fall, is about power, sexual misconduct and the choices that people make.
New Literary Quiz!
About / Recently Read / Waiting for a Star to Fall April 28, 2021 Pre-Order my New Novel: Out October 27 Sign up for Pickle Me This: The Digest Stop Wondering about Blogging, and Build a Blog That’s Wonder-Full: Best of the blog delivered to your inbox each month! The Digest also includes news and updates about my creative projects and opportunities for you to work with me.
Constant Nobody, by Michelle Butler Hallett
March 26, 2021 I loved this book. It was 438 pages long and demanded a lot of my attention, but I was so sorry when it ended (even though the ending was perfect!), because to read Constant Nobody, Michelle Butler Hallett’s novel set in 1937 Moscow against the backdrop of Stalinist purges when nobody could be trusted, is to just be so engrossed by the language, atmosphere, and plot. And oh, and such plot—here’s how it goes.
Kerry Clare's novel Waiting for a Star to Fall explores love, power and politics in the #MeToo era
Waiting for a Star to Fall is a novel by Kerry Clare. (Doubleday Canada) The Next Chapter11:33Kerry Clare on Waiting for a Star to Fall, Kerry Clare is a writer, editor and blogger from Toronto. She is also the author of the novel Mitzi Bytes. Her latest novel Waiting for a Star to Fall is about power, sexual misconduct and the choices that people make. Waiting for a Star to Fall is about a young woman named Brooke who falls for Derek, the much older politician she works for.
On Teaching Algebra During an Insurrection
January 25, 2021 I was sitting in the kitchen when I learned about the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, alerted by an Instagram post around the same time that my daughter in the living room heard about it from this kid in her class who seems to be streaming CNN during virtual school.
Gleanings
Stop Wondering about Blogging, and Build a Blog That’s Wonder-Full: Best of the blog delivered to your inbox each month! The Digest also includes news and updates about my creative projects and opportunities for you to work with me.
Has Women’s Fiction Helped to Save Us?
November 6, 2020 Almost four years ago exactly, against the background of a horrifying US election outcome and a world I didn’t recognize, I wrote a blog post entitled “How Women’s Fiction Can Save Us All.” Which was more than a little bit self-serving, of course, considering my debut novel, Mitzi Bytes, was coming out the following spring.
What the Trees Were Doing
October 12, 2020 We called them Sad Covid Walks, but only in hindsight. At the time we were walking, they were everything we had, during those months when traffic was deserted and the only ads in the transit shelters were telling us all to stay home. We had a circuit through and around the university campus, a walk we took once a week to track the progress of spring.
Waiting for a Star to Fall: THE SOUNDTRACK
October 5, 2020 The question of why I insist on making playlists for my novels is definitely one worth asking, especially since all they really do is reveal me as a person whose taste in music is atrocious. But having come to terms with this fact, I can share that music is a really huge part of my process, of my entire life, and certain songs find their way into my fiction as a kind of subtle biography. These connections are rich and meaningful to me, not to mention catchy as all-get-out.
Brighten the Corner Where You Are, by Carol Bruneau
September 30, 2020 “Since Maud Lewis’s death in 1970,” writes Carol Bruneau in the Author’s Note to her new novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, “her story has become so mythologized it’s just about impossible to separate hearsay from reality, original information from an ever-deepening well of common knowledge.” And in Bruneau’s own novel, which is based on research and interviews to imagine the inner life of one of Nova Scotia’s most famous and fascinating painters, she attempts no...
If Sylvie Had Nine Lives, by Leona Theis
September 23, 2020 Okay, imagine the craft and form of Caroline Adderson’s Ellen in Pieces, a premise and scope like Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, and an attention to the details of ordinary life that recalls the work of Carol Shields? (There’s also a Bronwen Wallace People You’d Trust Your Life To vibe that I can’t quite put my finger on…) If Sylvie Had Nine Lives, by Leona Theis, is SO GOOD, a novel-in-stories (for real.
How to Do Self-Promotion
September 18, 2020 “There is nothing wrong with self-promotion!” someone tweeted at me a few weeks ago, an attempt at encouragement that demonstrated that they don’t know me very well, because clearly, I already know this . If I could afford to buy billboards for my selfies, I probably would. I really do hope that you will pre-order my new book (coming October 27 from Doubleday Canada!), is what I’m saying, but also that all self-promotion is not good self-promotion.
Songs for the End of the World, by Saleema Nawaz
September 10, 2020 When Saleema Nawaz’s Songs for the End of the World was published as an e-book in May, I wasn’t ready for it. I couldn’t do it. A book about a novel coronavirus that sweeps across the world in 2020, beginning in China, and then exploding in New York City.
Field Notes From An Unintentional Birder, by Julia Zarankin
September 9, 2020 There are book reviews, and then there are those reviews of books a reader has been waiting a decade for, ever since the first time the reviewer met the book’s author and was presented with an essay collection by Anne Fadiman as a hostess gift. My friendship with Julia Zarankin was forged over the essay form—though she also introduced me to Wallace Stegner. We contain multitudes.
Seven, by Farzana Doctor
September 9, 2020 There is a remarkable balance required to create a novel about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) that is a pleasure to read, but Farzana Doctor pulls it off with Seven, a book that is also about marriage, family, motherhood, sexuality, and rediscovering one’s self and purpose at mid-life. Sharifa has left her job as a teacher in New York City, and travels with her husband and daughter to India, her birthplace, where her husband will be working during his sabbatical.
Goodbye, Mildew. It’s Been Nice…
September 7, 2020 Everything sort of fell apart last week as the job of replacing our bathrooms tiles was undertaken, and then they realized the walls themselves would need to be rebuilt, and then after that the ceiling started collapsing, and it was six days before we were able to shower. And now we have a gorgeous new bath area, with white tiles and grout that isn’t mouldy. Our previous tiles were so gross, and when you tried to scrub the grout, it fell off, which isn’t a good thing.
Waiting for a Star to Fall
A Novel by Kerry Clare Description "A love story at its core, though one without an ending written in the stars. . . . Timely and insightful." --Karma Brown, #1 bestselling author of Recipe for a Perfect Wife For fans of Joanne Ramos, Josie Silver, and Emily Giffin, a gripping and powerful story that asks: Just how much are you willing to forgive in the name of love? Brooke has long been caught in the orbit of Derek, a rising political superstar.
60 works of Canadian fiction coming out in fall 2020
Here are the works of Canadian fiction coming out this season we can't wait to read. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Mexican Gothic is a novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. (Martin Dee) Mexican Gothic is a gothic horror novel set in 1950s Mexico. It tells the story of a young woman named Noemi who is called by her cousin to save her from doom in her countryside home, the mysterious and alluring High Place.
Why I am Still Not Freaking Out About School
September 4, 2020 I am still not freaking out about school. There are a lot of reasons why not, and some of them include denial, but mostly it’s that me freaking out about school isn’t going to make anything better. It will be as futile as all-caps screaming at the Education Minister on Twitter, and I don’t do that anymore. (Most of the time.) This is not to say that I have done nothing.
Still Summer: Books on the Radio
New Course Coming in June! Get My New Free Download: 5 MORE Prompts to Bring Back Your Blogging Spark! Best of the blog delivered to your inbox each month! The Digest also includes news and updates about my creative projects and opportunities for you to work with me.
Pandemic Things I Love
About / Recently Read / The M Word / Mitzi Bytes August 17, 2020 the sound of neighbours’ voices and laughter drifting over the backyard fences as they sit outside on summer evenings my children kicking the soccer ball outside people taking up space in the street—walking, cycling, playing ball, protesting, etc. etc.
I Went to a Bookstore!
August 12, 2020 I like how no mask could hide how happy I am in this photo. My last bookshop visit was March 8, a stop in at The Nautical Mind, the marine-themed bookshop on Toronto’s Harbourfront. Not that this experience was the end of me buying books, of course.
Summer Reads on the Radio
July 22, 2020 Summer Reads on the Radio What a pleasure to talk about books (and swimming, and books ABOUT swimming!) on CBC Ontario Morning today! If you missed it live, listen again on the podcast—I come in at 28.30.
Measure
July 21, 2020 I haven’t paid much attention to the numbers, at all, unless they’re good (just 102 cases in Ontario last Wednesday!), but when they’re not, they don’t concern me. Because my concern doesn’t help, I mean, neither me nor the province, and there are actual people who get paid to know about these things, so instead I wash my hands, wear a mask, and focus on the things I can control. Like remaining calm, which is to say measured.
Gleanings
About / Recently Read / The M Word / Mitzi Bytes July 7, 2020 One of the goals I set for my epic 2020 to-do list? Make more preserves and pickles than last year! I think if we really go deep and allow ourselves to answer those questions, the world would be a better place. All I know is that I feel beleaguered – by these strange and difficult times, and by people who are making it worse. Despite outside influences, my attitude toward dandelions sashayed as if in a dance.
Leftover Spaghetti Frittata (or We’ve Come a Long Way)
July 1, 2020 I made leftover spaghetti frittata for the first time at the end of March. This was when I kept scrolling news in hopes of good news, and there was none. I kept checking in on food writer @emikodavies under lockdown in Italy, and it was some solace to see her family’s daily life continuing, albeit in confinement. If they could keep going, so could I, was my reasoning. The recipe she posted in her feed also appealed to me for its frugalness.
Five Little Indians, by Michelle Good
June 26, 2020 ‘Lucy leaned back in her chair, hands folded in her lap. “They call us survivors.” “Yeah.” “I don’t think I survived.
The Last Goldfish and In the Shade
June 17, 2020 “Good reviews…prompt me to borrow a recently-published book on grief from the library. I read the acknowledgements, glance at the author’s photo, and skim the table of contents. Partner, child, parent.
Gleanings
About / Recently Read / The M Word / Mitzi Bytes Sign up for Pickle Me This: The Digest New Course Coming in June! Best of the blog delivered to your inbox each month! The Digest also includes news and updates about my creative projects and opportunities for you to work with me.
The Heart Beats in Secret, by Katie Munnik
June 11, 2020 There is a convention to covers of books by women, and the cover for Cardiff-based Canadian Katie Munnik’s debut novel The Heart Beats in Secret fits that bill. A woman shot from behind, a dress to suggest the domestic, the house in the distance—and even the title with its secret. A reader might think that they’ve read this book before…but stay with me.
The Trouble With Memes
June 4, 2020 On Tuesday morning, Instagram went black.
From My Mother’s Back, by Njoki Wane
June 1, 2020 Want to support a Black Canadian writer releasing a book this spring? Pick up Njoki Wane’s rich and generous memoir From My Mother’s Back, a story that weaves her childhood in rural Kenya with her current experiences as a professor at the University of Toronto, showing the long journey she took to meet her goals, but also how these two parts of her life are deeply connected, and informed by her strong bond with her siblings, her parents, especially her mother, and her ancestors.
Calm Is Still a Superpower
June 1, 2020 It was my fault—all of it. Do you do this too? Do you have a whole host of reasons why the disastrous spring of 2020 was a product of your own consciousness? Covid-19 has got me out of both jury duty and a colonoscopy, and it’s crossed my mind that I’ve likely engineered all this, my ability to control the universe gone terrifically awry.
Spring Books on the Radio
May 27, 2020 Today I had the pleasure of talking about these gorgeous books today on CBC Ontario Morning: a charming mystery, a breezy but cutting book about friendship, a book that delves into part of Chinese history I’d never heard of before, and the most philosophical book about Bigfoot that you’ll ever read.
Gleanings
About / Recently Read / The M Word / Mitzi Bytes May 26, 2020 It’s time to resist the siren call of pie season and make a galette instead. At my desk, in the night, I was thinking about rumours. Having the decision made for me by circumstances hasn’t changed everything about how I feel about teaching online, but it has made a lot of those feelings irrelevant. What I know about kitchens, is that we make them work, even when they don’t make sense.
The Wild Heavens, by Sarah Louise Butler
May 21, 2020 I was describing Sarah Louise Butler’s debut novel The Wild Heavens last week as, “Like Contact, but about sasquatches.” A novel set in the BC interior that begins with tracks in the snow, tracks that—in the book’s exquisitely written introduction—persuade a man to reroute his life, from the seminary to pursue a career in science, to explore the mysteries suggested by these outsized man-shaped footprints. Faith vs. science, but the dichotomy turned inside out, and what of mythology?
Need something to read while you isolate? Here are 73 Canadian short stories available free online
Kevin Hardcastle is an author from Ontario. His debut short story collection, Debris, won the Trillium Book Award in 2016 and his first novel, In the Cage, came out in 2017. He posted a roundup of short stories to read online on his personal website. This is an updated and adapted version of that original list. Calling all writers! The CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions! You can read a story by Hardcastle, Montana Border, that was published by The Walrus.
Need something to read while you isolate? Here are 72 Canadian short stories available free online
Kevin Hardcastle is an author from Ontario. His debut short story collection, Debris, won the Trillium Book Award in 2016 and his first novel, In the Cage, came out in 2017. He posted a roundup of short stories to read online on his personal website. This is an updated and adapted version of that original list. You can read a story by Hardcastle, Montana Border, that was published by The Walrus.
Need something to read while you isolate? Here are 70 Canadian short stories available free online
Kevin Hardcastle is an author from Ontario. His debut short story collection, Debris, won the Trillium Book Award in 2016 and his first novel, In the Cage, came out in 2017. He posted a roundup of short stories to read online on his personal website. This is an updated and adapted version of that original list. Why Kevin curated this list Kevin Hardcastle the author of the short story collection Debris and the novel In the Cage.
Rereading Jackson Brodie in the Spring of 2020
May 14, 2020 “‘Life’s random,’ he said, The best you can do is pick up the pieces.'” —When Will There Be Good News?
18 Ways That Living Through A Pandemic is ALSO Just Like Having a Baby
May 8, 2020 It’s been eleven years since the first time I had a baby, and in years since then, I have found that almost nothing is truly analogous to the experience. Until 2020, that is, notable for being the year I discovered not one but two analogies that were absolutely perfect. The first was when I got a sourdough starter back at the beginning of February, and I really wasn’t being facetious when I made the comparison—thought my approach was lighthearted, of course.
Gleanings
New Course Coming in June! Best of the blog delivered to your inbox each month! The Digest also includes news and updates about my creative projects and opportunities for you to work with me.
Open House, by Jane Christmas
May 4, 2020 Something that truly shocks me are the number of attractive book covers identical in palette to my hideous bathroom, a bathroom whose hideousness I can blame on the fact that I don’t own a house, have never bought a house.
Catching Up with THE M WORD
April 30, 2020 Last week, I was asked to blurb a memoir that’s coming out this September, and I was happy to say yes to this request, though I always have trouble reading books that aren’t actual books yet, and especially when they’re digital, because I’d have to read on my phone, and who wants to do that. But this book. Which I received on Friday and had finished by Monday night. On my stupid phone. Do you know what an endorsement that is?
Where I Find the Time To Read: The Global Pandemic Edition
April 27, 2020 This is the third and perhaps the least fun installment in a series of posts about how I find the time to read. (Part one was about reading with a small baby, and you can read the post-breastfeeding edition here.) And this post is remarkable because in the beginning of this, I couldn’t read at all. It was terrible, because the world was already upside-down, and then here I was unable to read—and if I’m not a reader, then who even am I?
Misconduct of the Heart, by Cordelia Strube
April 23, 2020 I was nervous about this book, and if you’ve ever read Cordelia Strube you’ll understand. Cordelia Strube whose previous novel was On the Margins of These Pages, There is Heartbreak, or at least it might as well have been. (The book was actually On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light, it was one of my favourite books of 2016, and won the Toronto Book Award.) But my capacity for heartbreak is so currently occupied at the moment by everything, and I can’t take any more.
Making Sense of What We’re Going Through
April 22, 2020 Spiritually speaking, magazines were a really terrible part of the first very bad weeks of this devastating global crisis, the new issues that arrived like vestiges of a different world, a world where there were events in March and April, arts festivals, hockey games, book launches, and photography shows, and museum exhibits. A world where one might require easy weeknight suppers, there being anything else to do on a weeknight besides cook an elaborate feast.
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