Cold-cocked: the Blogger's Take & Flirt:The Interviews

After beating the traditional bushes to try and get some play, we sent review copies of Lorna Jackson's Cold-cocked: On Hockey to some of the leading hockey bloggers in the land. Over the last few weeks, several of these have posted reviews. They can be found by following the links below:

On Frozen Blog: http://www.onfrozenblog.com/2008/02/25/cold-cocked-is-a-hot-read/

Hockey Blog in Canada: http://hockey-blog-in-canada.blogspot.com/2008/02/tbc-cold-cocked-on-hockey.html

Scarlett Ice: scarlettice.blogspot.com/2008/02/scarlett-ice-library-cold-cocked-on.html

Untypical Girls: /untypicalgirls.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/book-review-cold-cocked-on-hockey/

Women's Sports Blog: ftlouie.typepad.com/womensports/2008/02/le-book-review.html

There were a couple of others I can't seem to locate right now, but i'll direct them to your attention later. More also quite likely to follow.

Lorna's next book, Flirt: The Interviews should come back from the printer within the next week. There's three hockey-related "interviews" in this collection -- Bobby Orr, Markus Naslund, and Janet Jones-Gretzky -- to go along with Ian Tyson, Alice Munro, Richard Ford, Michael Ondaatje and Benjamin Britten. "Interviews", in quotation marks, because they are, of course, fiction, or a pastiche of fiction, interview, news articles and biographies, and lord knows what else. It's the oddest book we'll be publishing this year, the hardest to define, and perhaps the most enjoyable. A collection of linked fictions in interview form conducted by a woman who would much rather tell her own story than listen to those of her famous subjects, by a woman who simply cannot stop talking about herself. Everything is about her, from Richard Ford's feelings about landscape and Bobby Orr's oft-injured knee, to Ian Tyson's lyrics, Alice Munro's motherhood, Markus Naslund's spirituality. Janet Gretzky's curves. Flirt might be a comic essay on adolescent grief. Or a comic essay on creativity. But perhaps its best to leave it as a collection of linked comic short fictions that mock real interviews and question the sort of information we often find in them.

As I said earlier, the pitching begins. And this is certainly one of our spring books that y'all should make sure you pick up. It's as much fun as you're likely to have between two covers. Which, alas, may say something about those of you who tune into this blog semi-regularly.