Just back from a whirlwind working trip to Ontario and Quebec, and starting to look forward to some really fun events in the coming months, including summer festivals like Lawnya Vawnya and Writers at Woody Point here in Newfoundland, and fall writers fests across the mainland, including Word on the Street, Kingston Writers Fest, and Calgary WordFest!
Looking to see me in 2018? Keep checking the Events Page here for dates and places. See you soon!
I’m delighted that I REMEMBER YOU — 
the UK version of Hysteria, published by Titan Books UK — hits store shelves today! Hysteria has had a fantastic reception here in Canada, and the good vibes are already rolling in from across the pond– witness this great review over at Liz Loves Books.
Heike Lerner has a charmed life. A stay-at-home mother married to a prominent psychiatrist, it’s a far cry from the damaged child she used to be. But her world is shaken when her four-year-old son befriends a little girl at a nearby lake, who vanishes under the water. And when Heike dives in after her, there’s no sign of a body.
Desperate to discover what happened to the child, Heike seeks out Leo Dolan, a television writer exploring the paranormal, but finds herself caught between her controlling husband and the intense Dolan. Then her son disappears, and Heike’s husband was the last to see him alive…
I Remember You goes on blog tour for the next couple of weeks, so you can expect to see more reviews, some sneak-peek extracts, and even a few guest posts written by yours truly. All the dates, places, and details are listed below.
You can order I Remember You from Amazon UK , or find it in bookstores everywhere… as of today! As for me, I’ll just be over here — celebrating with a cupcake or two. Happy book birthday!
Only a week after release, and it’s already been a whirlwind! We had a slam bang launch for Hysteria here in St. John’s — check out some fun photos below! — and today I woke up to find Hysteria taking up some serious real estate in two of the country’s biggest newspapers:
Hope everyone out there is having as good a weekend as I am. Here are some of my favourites from our launch party, at Eastern Edge Gallery here in St. John’s.
Local indie Broken Books was on the scene, pop-up style, to help peddle these wares.
Lucky to be reading in a space as lovely as Eastern Edge.
Me with writer Megan Gail Coles, and sister duo Katie and Maria Callahan
City Counsellor Hope Jamieson and family were there to have a good time.
CBC On The Go host Ted Blades with Kathryn King and Holly Hogan
Poet (and my sweetheart) George Murray
A very happy author with poet (and friend extraordinaire) Andreae Callanan
MLA Gerry Rogers with the very charming Jean Kelly Smith
After two weeks (!) in shipping limbo, this gorgeous creature just arrived at my doorstep. I am over the moon and cannot wait to introduce you all! HYSTERIA will be in stores on March 6th — but, of course, you could always pre-order it right now 🙂
If you scored an early copy of HYSTERIA and loved it, the very best way you can support your author (that’s me!) is to write a review. Posting your review on Goodreads, Amazon, or Chapters Indigo really helps other readers find books they love — and helps spread the word about a book you really enjoyed.
Here’s what some kind people have had to say about HYSTERIA:
“Hysteria is shout-out-from-the-rooftops good. It is unpredictable, laced with evil and mystery, and impossible to put down. A horrifying modern-day fairy tale, Hysteria is finely written, haunting in its construction, and compelling from the first page to the last.” —Lawrence Hill, bestselling author of The Book of Negroes and The Illegal
“In Hysteria, Elisabeth de Mariaffi has crafted an epic and haunting story that manages to be both rich in character and setting and breakneck in pace. You will find yourself thinking about it long after you’ve turned the last pages.” —Amy Stuart, author of Still Mine
“Hysteria is a creepy, at times terrifying, thrill ride—taut and smart, and totally unpredictable.” —Zoe Whittall, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist The Best Kind of People
“The story moves at a breakneck pace, the sense of place is both lush and foreboding . . . Hysteria not only provides the thrills of a suspenseful, disturbing read. On a deeper level, the novel highlights the manipulation, coercion, and abuse of women, that sadly, remains an urgent issue today.” —Quill & Quire, Jan/Feb 2018
Can’t wait? Me neither! Pre-order HYSTERIA from:
Buy Local — visit the buy local link at HarperCollins.ca
Want to hear more? Check out all the details on Hysteria here.
Like many of us, I spent much of yesterday thinking about Gord Downie and his incredible legacy. Very privileged to be asked to write some of those thoughts down here for the Globe. Downie’s loss is a deep wound. https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/…/why-ru…/article36645881/…&
Guess what I finally got to start working on this week? If you’ve been following along (and I forgive you if you haven’t), my concept for an ultra-fun, 
Vampires vs Flight Attendants movie won the WIFTV From Our Dark Side mentorship competition back in 2016. The movie — Fly Girls — was optioned by Triton Media back in December and with Hysteria put to bed (at least for now), I finally get to write my horror movie!
Well — horror-comedy.
I managed to dip my toes earlier this year, writing a screen adaptation of The Devil You Know for New Metric Media, but Fly Girls will be my first original screenplay. I cleaned out the office this week and started re-working my existing beat sheet… but what I really want to show you here is the amazing art Melissa Lee created to inspire me!
Melissa works with WIFTV on the Dark Side mentorship project, and we had a fun talk back in the fall about what kind of art she could make to help me push the project along. The best thing I could think of was a series of digital postcards that I could pass around here in virtual-world — but they turned out so drop-dead gorgeous that I’m going to print them up as glossy posters, I think, and wallpaper my office with them for the next couple of months while I’m writing.
I wrote up the slogans (with a little help from some pals who batted them around with me at a dinner party last year) and they’ve been pinned up on my cork board ever since. A fun reminder that this project was waiting in queue for my attention —
— and it’s finally here! Of course, Fly Girls is in early stages of development — so there’s no saying whether any of these will make into the movie’s official promo. But that’s no reason not to enjoy them now! I hope you love them as much as I do ❤
During the last few weeks of fevered rewrites on the the final draft of my new novel, I relied heavily on this clip of Kathleen Turner, as romance novelist Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone, literally crying as she writes the last few words of a book:
I’m thrilled to announce this great news! My next novel, HYSTERIA, will be published in Spring 2018 by Harper Collins in Canada. Right now, I’m working hard to finish the book: a story whose post-war setting in seemingly idyllic 1950s upstate New York strangely parallels a young German woman’s relationship with her controlling husband, an American psychiatrist– until the couple’s small son goes missing. As she struggles to find her child, the mother finds herself torn between the possibility that her husband is involved in the boy’s disappearance and the dark suggestion that something otherworldly has taken him.
Read the deal announcement here.
What we’ve learned is that the rights we hold most precious, the rights we believe define us as a people, are in fact alienable, if we do not protect them with our strong voices and especially our strong actions. Our takeaway as Canadians has to be how we choose here in Canada to react, and how we choose to move forward. Don’t fool yourself: we’re not any better. Our election process last year was threaded through with racist ploys to win votes. I watched with horror as women were attacked on the street for what they chose to wear – because of a campaign promise from the man who’d already been our Prime Minister for years. Across the country we are watching right now as governments of every level ignore the rights of indigenous people to clean water, to their land, and to a real say in its use. Kellie Leitch, hoping to gain the federal leadership of the PC party, has already sent out a campaign letter promising to bring Trump-style politics to Canada.
What I’m saying is: Now is a good time to decide what is important to you. Now and for the next many years is the time to fight more starkly than ever for full and uncontestable equality. For women, People of Colour, indigenous people, LGBTQ people, for people of all religions, for citizens and for refugees.
A few days before this election, my daughter called me from the city where she now attends university, to tell me the details of how she peacefully protested DAPL in solidarity from here in Canada, how she walked into her bank– a major investor in the pipeline– and demanded some accountability. I take heart in that. But we need people of all ages to participate, everyone.
There is no time left for complacency – even with a new Prime Minister, even with a new government in place. There is no time left to take anything for granted, because the wall that is really coming up is the wall of intolerance from the south. It has a fantastic media package. It will be hard to avoid being crushed.
For every one of us expressing these same thoughts, for everyone I can imagine nodding along as I type this, I also know there is another person, someone who is galvanized by this election result. Someone who takes it as permission.
Super pleased to share that The Devil You Know has been shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Prize at this year’s East Coast Literary Awards, along with superstars Robert Gray, for his book Entropic, and Mark Anthony Jarman for his book Knife Party at the Hotel Europa. (I have probably spent more time with Jarman’s short stories than those of any other Canadian writer, unless that Canadian writer is named Alice Munro, so this feels like stiff competition to me.)
I’ll be in Nova Scotia for a few days next week, around the awards ceremony. In the area? Come say hello!
Thursday, June 2, Raddall Prize reading in Liverpool, event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/278570965810147/
Saturday, June 4, East Coast Literary Awards, event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/527183197484352/
