Randomly, because that’s what I have time for.

1. I’m drinking a fantastic cup of coffee. 

2. When I’m done drinking this I will go back to editing the edits.

3. I’m almost done.

4. Don’t hate my editor. She’s very good, I like her, and every publisher has a house style. It is The Way Things Are Done, and an individual editor has no more power to change that then you have to change most things at your work.  All of my books have been published by an American publisher, and all of them have had US English spelling, and it’s been fine. There is no need to revolt now.  American publishers have a right to spell things the American way.  It’s an American company.

5. I just like to keep reminding people that I’m not a bad speller. I don’t mind that my spellings are changed (sort of- I understand it-but don’t like it) the only thing that ever puts me over the top is ignorance that there might be another system at all.  (Believe it or not, I’ve had emails correcting my spelling.) Americans have a right to Americanise English for their own purposes, and nobody will be even slightly irritated unless there’s no acknowledgement that the rest of the English speaking world has a right not to Americanise theirs without anyone thinking anyone else can’t spell their way out of a paper bag.  

6. If an American author was published by a Canadian/British/Irish/South African/Austrailan/Indian publisher, their house style would apply and their manuscripts would be changed too. We’d be rearranging letters and sticking U’s in all over the place, and I bet that author would be worried about appearing un-American and they would still change it.  The author, like me, would live.

7. In the Globe and Mail (big Canadian national newspaper) if President Obama is quoted about working on the border and he used the word defence (instead of the Americanised "defense") that’s how it would be spelled.  Even though he’s American, and he would have written it defense, that’s not how we write it here, and it is being published here. 

8. Just like my books are being published in the US.

9. Yes. I’m a proud Canadian.  I still don’t control the spelling in another country, and unbelievably, don’t think I should.

10.  I do agree that the Harry Potter books were better before the translation.

11.  I knit a hat to replace my current one, because while it’s a very nice hat,  it  makes me look like a penis.

12.  A lot of hats make me look like that.  If you don’t believe me, you can ask my friends or my mother. 

13. Right now someone is upset that I typed penis, as though it was a filthy word that could lead people straight into poor behaviour rather than a name of a body part.  There’s something about typing that word that just upsets people more than typing elbow.

14.  I could type all sorts of body part names all day and I wouldn’t get any emails.  I could say elbow, aorta, ankle, scapula, nose, lung- it would all be fine.  Type penis once or twice and whammo. You’ve got someone in your inbox telling you that you’re pretty depraved and aught to rein it in.

15.  Vagina and breast can get people pretty wound up too. 

16.  Damn.  Just typed those too. That’s going to be at least three emails.

17.  Four.  There will be one about saying damn too.  (Now five.)

18.  Anyway, to try and not look like a penis (six) I have been trying on lots of hats.  (This is Canada.  Hats are not optional, and it’s important to have one you like.)  I tried on Andrea’s a little while ago and it had absolutely no qualities that were reminiscent of any male organ what so ever.  (Better?) 

19. It was Wurm.  I knit it out of Cascade Eco+.  The colour is 2452. 

See?  Pretty un-penisey. (Seven – though now one of the emails will tell me I do too look like a penis.) 

20.  I don’t think I do.   I like the hat.