London Times Bestseller!!!

brilliant sunshine, bitter cold, temps minus 15

Dear Lord, how the climate changes! From torrential rain to blizzard to bright blue skies today.

And the literary climate has shifted as well for me! I just had a call from my editor in the UK, the magnificent Dan Mallory of Sphere/Little, Brown, to say the words I never dared dream I'd hear.

Bury Your Dead is on the London Times Bestseller list!!!

Poor Dan, I might have shattered his eardrum. How wonderful he was to call to tell me, instead of writing an email. He said he wanted to hear my reaction. I think it will be ringing in his head like tinnitus for years to come. A crazy canuck shrieking for joy.

Wow. Both an hysterical wow, but also a quiet, heartfelt, deep down wow. Wow.

How many times I heard, in rejection letters, 'Nobody is interested in a mystery set in Canada.'

And still we hear it. And still Canadians often feel they need to set their books in the US or Britain or elsewhere. But readers are so much more open than they're given credit for. Bury Your Dead, the most Canadian of all my clearly Canadian books, is the one that has been embraced in Britain.

And before that, the American put it on the New York Times list.

Wow.

Now, I have a personal favour to ask. Can you spread the word? Tell everyone you know in the UK about the books and the Times list? And maybe even more people in Britain will pick it up. Thank you SO much for your help!

In other fun news (not to do with me, you'll be happy and shocked to hear) - do you know Marshal Zeringue? He has a couple of Blogs. One is called the page 99 test...where he asked writers to read page 99 of their latest book and say whether it's representative of their book, and if people only read that one page, what would be their perception. A fun exercise.

But he also has a wonderful blog called Coffee with Canines - and after I mentioned Danny and Lucy a few times, and ran a photo of them in their bookstore (Brome Lake Books) with their dog Jessie, Marshal contacted them and asked if they'd take part in Coffee with Canines.

Danny did - and you can see the results if you google Coffee with a Canine and find the latest post...it's Danny and Lucy McAuley & Jessie. He actually sent a link, but I can't seem to cut and paste it into the blog.

the post is wonderful....exactly like a visit with them. Very funny, very moving, very warm.

Enjoy.

And thank you again for celebrating with me!!! Yippeee....