Adam Lewis Schroeder's Blog
August 1, 2016
August update
A new blog post, vaguely addressing two upcoming pieces of writing and specifically addressing the miracle that is the Spoke Literary Festival. Seats still available!
http://alschroe.blogspot.ca/2016/08/a...
http://alschroe.blogspot.ca/2016/08/a...
April 28, 2016
October 7, 2015
October update
As of September, All-Day Breakfast is for sale in the US at many fine independent stores as well as at all fine Barnes & Noble stores, where as of December the book will feature prominently in their affiliated Foreword Reviews magazine.
Upcoming events, none very near to the other:
Singapore Writers Festival. Outside Looking In: Overcoming the Risk of Exoticising, with Madeleine Thien, 1 Nov, Sun 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM; and The Appeal of the Undead, with Lefty and Nicholas Yong, 1 Nov, Sun 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM.
San Diego. Mysterious Galaxy Books, Saturday, January 2, 2 PM.
Kelowna Fan Xpo, Saturday, March 19. Time & venue TBA.
I'd planned to read at Bookmark Shoppe in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn on October 11 but have had to cancel due to a dumb sick-cough-chest infection. I will reschedule because Brooklyn.
Upcoming events, none very near to the other:
Singapore Writers Festival. Outside Looking In: Overcoming the Risk of Exoticising, with Madeleine Thien, 1 Nov, Sun 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM; and The Appeal of the Undead, with Lefty and Nicholas Yong, 1 Nov, Sun 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM.
San Diego. Mysterious Galaxy Books, Saturday, January 2, 2 PM.
Kelowna Fan Xpo, Saturday, March 19. Time & venue TBA.
I'd planned to read at Bookmark Shoppe in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn on October 11 but have had to cancel due to a dumb sick-cough-chest infection. I will reschedule because Brooklyn.
May 20, 2015
Do You Live in Alberta or SE Asia?
Blog update of utmost interest to Calgarian & Singaporian readers.
http://alschroe.blogspot.ca/2015/05/u...
http://alschroe.blogspot.ca/2015/05/u...
April 8, 2015
Question #2
"All-Day Breakfast" Giveaway Contest, Question #2:
Miss Federici is a teacher at Colts Neck Elementary. To whom or what are both these names a reference?
Direct message me your answer for a chance to have this killer new novel mailed straight to your door, where it won't necessarily kill you. It will only kill your MIND. Answers due noon PST, Friday April 9.
Miss Federici is a teacher at Colts Neck Elementary. To whom or what are both these names a reference?
Direct message me your answer for a chance to have this killer new novel mailed straight to your door, where it won't necessarily kill you. It will only kill your MIND. Answers due noon PST, Friday April 9.
Answer #1
"All-Day Breakfast" Giveaway Contest: Shawn Pol, Marta Albricht and Rebecca Wickens correctly answered question #1 as The Thing. Then Ms. Wickens' name was pulled in the draw!
April 1, 2015
"All-Day Breakfast" Giveaway Contest!
"All-Day Breakfast" Goodreads Giveaway Contest! Three ADB-related trivia questions posed over the next ten days. Only direct message answers will be accepted! Correct answers for each question placed in a draw, winner will receive a free copy of All-Day Breakfast direct from Douglas & McIntyre. You don't have to have read the book to play, just guess!
Question #1 (answers due by noon PST, Saturday, April 4):
After losing a pinkie, Peter compares himself to which three-fingers-and-a-thumb superhero?
Question #1 (answers due by noon PST, Saturday, April 4):
After losing a pinkie, Peter compares himself to which three-fingers-and-a-thumb superhero?
March 6, 2015
National Post review
All-Day Breakfast "makes detached limbs and coagulated purple blood downright charming."
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/...
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/...
February 6, 2015
All-Day Breakfast Q&A, Including Surprising Medical Facts
How did All-Day Breakfast get started?
I’d written half of a historical novel set here in Penticton, it was going well, but I read a lot of comic books so I took one of the early Walking Dead collections out of the library, a while before the show came out. My wife was talking about this fictional character she loved, a massive American ex-MP named Jack Reacher, and all of his traits like wearing clothes for three days then throwing them away, only ever eating the same meal which involved a haystack of bacon, and how he wandered the country kicking ass in the name of homegrown justice. So thanks to the Walking Dead in my hands we spit-balled how Reacher might get along as a zombie—some cross-country mission, kicking ass even while his limbs dropped off, craving bacon instead of brains. We have wonky conversations like that all the time but this particular hodgepodge had momentum. Plus I’d have to eat heaps of bacon as, you know, research, so All-Day Breakfast got to jump the line in front of the historical piece. It would be non-stop good times.
Do you feel the novel is good times right from the start?
No, I guess not. It takes a turn about page 25, but initially it’s sad. For such a possibly-cartoonish concept to feel halfways genuine I had to populate it from own experience, so right off the bat Peter wasn’t an unencumbered ex-MP but a teacher and father of two who was unfortunately really grieving. I’d just lost my dad, grandpa and father-in-law and was about to lose my stepdad, and I really loved them all, so I guess it was a combination of what I wanted to write with what I needed to write — Peter arrived in that state, there’d been no plan for it. At least he gets to be sarcastic from the first page.
As you worked were you heartened to see the rising popularity of zombies—the Walking Dead TV series, World War Z, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?
I assumed that tide would crest long before I finished, but happily it still seems to going strong. And I steered clear of the new zombie stuff so that my guys could strictly be my zombies, without any other ideas inadvertently shuffling through. So I only learned yesterday, three years after the fact, that there’s a 2012 first-person zombie novel written by another Canadian author, Corey Redekop, though outside of that one conceit it doesn’t sound like there's overlap. But his name made me jump, because Gary Redekop is my neurosurgeon.
You consulted a neurosurgeon for the novel?
Not deliberately. During substantive edits, after the years of writing were finished, my legs swelled and I had dizzy spells, and in March 2014, right before copy edits, I was diagnosed with Cushing’s Syndrome, which meant I had a benign tumour on my pituitary gland, right in the bottom of the brain. A small tumour can be pulled out your nose but mine was nearly the size of a Rubik’s Cube, a “massive macroadenoma,” so it had to come out the side of my head at VGH in Vancouver—the first Redekop did an amazing job. And I’d written a similar, far less-precise brain procedure near the end of All-Day Breakfast, so that made two creepy parallels.
Are there any more?
Near the middle of the book there’s a lengthy misadventure involving Peter’s poor jaw, and when I first went into hospital they found I’d broken mine—I have no idea how, though I realized I’d only been eating soup for the previous three days. I got to have true-life experiences based on a novel, rather than the other way around.
Do you still eat heaps of bacon?
Not nearly as much, though if All-Day Breakfast has one message it’s to eat as much as you possibly can while you have the chance.
I’d written half of a historical novel set here in Penticton, it was going well, but I read a lot of comic books so I took one of the early Walking Dead collections out of the library, a while before the show came out. My wife was talking about this fictional character she loved, a massive American ex-MP named Jack Reacher, and all of his traits like wearing clothes for three days then throwing them away, only ever eating the same meal which involved a haystack of bacon, and how he wandered the country kicking ass in the name of homegrown justice. So thanks to the Walking Dead in my hands we spit-balled how Reacher might get along as a zombie—some cross-country mission, kicking ass even while his limbs dropped off, craving bacon instead of brains. We have wonky conversations like that all the time but this particular hodgepodge had momentum. Plus I’d have to eat heaps of bacon as, you know, research, so All-Day Breakfast got to jump the line in front of the historical piece. It would be non-stop good times.
Do you feel the novel is good times right from the start?
No, I guess not. It takes a turn about page 25, but initially it’s sad. For such a possibly-cartoonish concept to feel halfways genuine I had to populate it from own experience, so right off the bat Peter wasn’t an unencumbered ex-MP but a teacher and father of two who was unfortunately really grieving. I’d just lost my dad, grandpa and father-in-law and was about to lose my stepdad, and I really loved them all, so I guess it was a combination of what I wanted to write with what I needed to write — Peter arrived in that state, there’d been no plan for it. At least he gets to be sarcastic from the first page.
As you worked were you heartened to see the rising popularity of zombies—the Walking Dead TV series, World War Z, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?
I assumed that tide would crest long before I finished, but happily it still seems to going strong. And I steered clear of the new zombie stuff so that my guys could strictly be my zombies, without any other ideas inadvertently shuffling through. So I only learned yesterday, three years after the fact, that there’s a 2012 first-person zombie novel written by another Canadian author, Corey Redekop, though outside of that one conceit it doesn’t sound like there's overlap. But his name made me jump, because Gary Redekop is my neurosurgeon.
You consulted a neurosurgeon for the novel?
Not deliberately. During substantive edits, after the years of writing were finished, my legs swelled and I had dizzy spells, and in March 2014, right before copy edits, I was diagnosed with Cushing’s Syndrome, which meant I had a benign tumour on my pituitary gland, right in the bottom of the brain. A small tumour can be pulled out your nose but mine was nearly the size of a Rubik’s Cube, a “massive macroadenoma,” so it had to come out the side of my head at VGH in Vancouver—the first Redekop did an amazing job. And I’d written a similar, far less-precise brain procedure near the end of All-Day Breakfast, so that made two creepy parallels.
Are there any more?
Near the middle of the book there’s a lengthy misadventure involving Peter’s poor jaw, and when I first went into hospital they found I’d broken mine—I have no idea how, though I realized I’d only been eating soup for the previous three days. I got to have true-life experiences based on a novel, rather than the other way around.
Do you still eat heaps of bacon?
Not nearly as much, though if All-Day Breakfast has one message it’s to eat as much as you possibly can while you have the chance.
