new book / great start

Despite the general sluggishness of summer, when all you want is to drink something cool and laze about, Five Roses has been getting off to a good start.

Lookee-look! at this wonderful review in the Montreal Review of Books. 
http://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/v4/reviews/five-roses/

They hosted a well-attended launch party for the anniversary of their 50th issue at the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore on July 8th. Myself, Xue Yiwei, and Sylvain Neuvel read.

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to take a picture of the inside of the bookstore--brick walls lined with books--but I was too excited. However, before the reading I took a picture of the front window where Five Roses gets chummy with Rudie Nudie.

An excerpt from Five Roses has been published in the US in the handsomely produced magazine, Apogee. There's a special pleasure to seeing your words on good paper, the pages illustrated with fine artwork.

Also last week, I was invited to the Pointe division of the Legion Hall where I was entertained with a wealth of stories about the Pointe from a couple of decades ago--bank robberies, the flatbed truck heaped with Christmas gifts from the West End gang (that was), a three-shift restaurant to feed the rail yard workers. All "for my next book."

As a footnote to the review above, here is how you set a table for breakfast.

And though I never made a cake this pretty when I was a child (to this day, decorating is not my forte), I have this picture permanently filed in the same compartment of my memory as Popeye and Felix the Cat.