Coming home to launch book
PCVS grad Kerry Clare’s first novel Mitzi Bytes is being published by Harper Collins, with March 18 launch at Hunter Street Books
A writer who grew up in Peterborough and now lives in Toronto is coming to launch her debut novel at Hunter Street Books next month.
Kerry Clare will be launching her book Mitzi Bytes on Saturday, March 18.
The book goes on sale four days earlier in stores.
Clare says she’s a fan of Hunter Street Books, owned by novelist Michelle Berry.
“It’s a wonderful place – I’m so excited to come there,” she said over the phone from Toronto.
Mitzi Bytes, published by Harper Collins, is also having a Toronto launch a few days earlier.
Everyone’s welcome to the hometown launch, which Clare said was arranged especially for her parents (who live in Peterborough).
The novel features a particularly well-drawn woman character who is a mother, a writer and a secret blogger. It’s a first novel for Clare, 37. “I’m really proud of it – I love it so much,” she said.
Mitzi Bytes is about Sarah Lundy, a mom who has been secretly writing a blog for years – since before she was married.
Although it started out as the chronicle of her adventurous dating life, the blog later became a place for Sarah – aka Mitzi to record funny observations about her husband and all her friends (unbeknownst to them, of course).
When Sarah’s cover is blown and her nearest and dearest find out their foibles have been published online, she has a lot of explaining to do.
Although the story turns on the blog and the revealed identity of its writer, it also paints a true-to-life portrait of Sarah’s contented home life with her loving husband and kids.
Clare, whose daughters are aged eight and four, said she finds books tend to either focus on the bliss of having young children or on the nightmarish quality of family life.
“I wanted to show it’s a little bit of both,” she said. “Living with kids is incredibly annoying – but there’s a magic in it, right? This is an ode to that.”
Clare wrote the novel over a single summer, when her youngest daughter was a baby.
She wrote 1,000 words a day while the baby napped and the older daughter (age four at the time) watched the musical ‘Annie’ on TV in an endless loop.
“She was obsessed with Annie that summer,” Clare said.
Clare grew up in Peterborough and attended the arts program at the now-defunct Peterborough Collegiate high school on McDonnel St.
She moved to Toronto in 1998 to attend University of Toronto.
She earned her master’s degree in creative writing in 2007; her master’s thesis, a novel, was never published.
“My thesis project was not as good as a book has to be,” she said. “But it was a useful failure.”
Clare says aspiring novelists often worry that their first books will never be published – and this one wasn’t. But it wasn’t heartbreaking for her.
“Once you learn that failure is not a big deal, you can keep trying things – and later succeed,” she said. When the inspiration for Mitzi
Bytes struck, Clare said she carved out a couple of hours daily for herself to write, over a summer – and got her manuscript written.
She said she was tremendously inspired to write, that summer – and she doesn’t take that inspiration for granted.
“It feels like it was a gift,” she said. “I feel very lucky.”