Clea Simon's Blog, page 11

Crime Bake is back!

After a COVID hiatus, New England Crime Bake is BACK! Presented this year as a hybrid event, this (usually) annual conference gathers writers, readers, and fans to discuss the art and craft of crime fiction – with a special presentation by this year’s guest of honor Hank Phillippi Ryan.

I’ll be taking part in the in-person festivities tomorrow through Sunday at the Hilton in Dedham, MA . I’ll be on “Suspense/Social Issues: Kill Your Darlings” panel on Saturday, 2:15–3:30, (with Joanna Schaffhausen, Charlene D’Avanzo, and Glede Browne Kabongo) and also at the signing for the “Bloodroot” anthology – and just generally having fun at this small, friendly con. Usually Crime Bake is sold out by this time, but as I type this there are still places for in-person registrants – and certainly for those who want to join online. Don’t miss our triumphant return. Register here: https://crimebake.org/2021-ne-crime-bake-registration/

Rick Berlin’s Big Balloon (a love story)

I write about the Boston music scene, but Rick Berlin has lived it. Emerging from the COVID shutdown with two new recordings and a bunch of upcoming gigs (see below), Rick has also captured his particular wit and self-reflection in a new book. The Big Balloon (A Love Story) is the poet/artist’s second book, and I was lucky enough to get him to tell me about it here.

During the shut in I was able to record two records (7 SONGS) and (THE CHA CHA CLUB) and write my second book: THE BIG BALLOON (A Love Story).

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‘A brief encounter can be the most efficient dart to the heart’

I succumb to the Joni Mitchell Syndrome, often needing to be ‘in love’ to inspire work/art/music. These two records and this book are no exception.

It’s fair to say, at this late winter in my life, that I met someone. A notice-r. Someone who, visiting my house, sees what’s here. Asks about it. Pointed questions. Questions that, being asked, move me to answer fully. To be interrogated, even about something as offbeat as a heating pad for a cat or as memorable as reading out loud the liner notes on the cd of my first band ever, Orchestra Luna, is a savage gift, an awakening about parts of my life I’d lost interest in re-examining, forgot, or was weary of the autobiographical tape loop. To produce long buried details and anecdotes required an unusual heat lamp, an in-your-face, genuinely interested detective, someone who I could open up to from the heart and for real. 

Had he not been like this – intelligent, empathetic, inquisitive, hilarious, gentle and beautiful – these bits and pieces (I had sworn off a second book after ‘The Paragraphs’ was published) would have never been typed up. 

“There are somethings you don’t even know you know until you’re asked. But it’s so seldom you find anyone who’ll ask the right questions. Most people aren’t that much interested….” 

– Christopher Isherwood

After countless hours in front of the computer screen, developing bag lady swollen ankles and buying compression socks, I slammed BALLOON out in a few short months. 

Why the title?

Not sure when this happened or who said it, but it goes like this: 

“Rick, I’ve seen three of your apartments. The rooms always look like you blew up a big balloon and your stuff wound up on the walls and floors like Bang! Drag this mess around.” 

He’s right. In honor of his comment, I took photos of the inanimate in my house and wrote about each one. In so doing I fell down unexpected rabbit holes of memory, unlocking doors long shut. Portraits, observations and déjà vu recall, as humorous and amorous as they are disturbing. I pray that Balloon is not the Berlin edition of Capote’s Answered Prayers, the book that, once published, lost him all his friends. He betrayed them, exposed their secrets and burned every bridge. I also hope it doesn’t bore the shit out of you. Some are close to frivolous, but I think they offer relief from the headier, deeper cut pieces. 

There is no linear structure to this book. No over-arching narrative. Each entry is self-contained. One piece can relate to another, but it isn’t necessary to make that connection. The reader can pick it up, crack it open anywhere, read a section and put it down. The ‘chapters’ are just the rooms in my house. 

“He populates his writing with memories that will break your heart and wisdom disguised as tossed off one-liners. Walk through Berlin’s House, flip on the lights room by room, see what he has left there for you and all of us.” 

– Ryan Walsh, Hallelujah The Hills, author of Astral Weeks 

It could be said that I chose this odd-ball format for bathroom reading. For those with short attention spans. On the other hand, much as I love the twists and turns of a full blown story, the Haiku simplicity of disparate entries exposes Berlin as if opening the paper window flaps of a Twelve Days Of Christmas holiday card in no particular order. 

The Big Balloon is super personal. Most art, at least the art I love best, is personal. From another’s truth one extrapolates one’s own echo, wisdom, embarrassment and laughter. That’s what I’d hope for you, dear reader. That you’d That you’d laugh or at least find something self-relevant in these independent passages of my peculiar life. 

There are 150 photos each of which trigger the writer and lead the  reader down the path of memory. A memoir collage of sorts.)

The Big Balloon is available through indie bookstore internationally via BOOKSHOP. In the Boston area you can find it at PAPERCUTS JP and TRES GATOS BOOKS & RECORDS. (The book is also available through  AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, GOOGLE BOOKS, ABEBOOKS, SCRIBD, TARGET, BAM! and as an e-book  KINDLE, KOBO, RAKUTEN, BOOKTOPIA, LEHMANNS, FNAC (France), HUGENDUBEL.de (Germany).

The eBook version has links throughout BALLOON that connect you to songs, videos, people mentioned, etc. Jes’ sayin’.

Also, if you’re interested in my first book, THE PARAGRAPHS

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With heart,

Rick Berlin

Longtime songwriter/musician/videographer Rick Berlin has recently indie-published two books: The Paragraphs and The Big Balloon (A Love Story). The latter is best described as a memoire collage dating back to his early days with Orchestra Luna as well as insights into his relationships, friendships and family. It’s funny, disturbing and profoundly honest – a torn pocket on the shirt of an idiosyncratic heart. He can be reached at www.berlinrick.com, or on Twitter @rickberlinn

Rick will be performing Sat Dec 4 Wenham Street Cinema, JP Sat Dec 18th MIDWAY Fri Jan 21 Warp n Weft, Lowell Fri Feb 4 The Jungle, Somerville Fri March 4 The Plough & Stars, Cambridge Sat March 19 Sq Root, Roslindale

The Devil’s Music

A new Gabriel Valjan novel is always reason to celebrate, and this one hits close to home! Gabriel tackles many of the same themes that I do – the unreliability of memory and our tendency to reframe history to suit our needs – though in his case, that history is the post-war era of the Cold War, the Red Scare, and the rise of the Mob. Book three in “The Company Files, The Devil’s Music comes out today. Here’s Gabriel to talk about his process, and how we shape and re-shape history to suit our needs.

I write what is inside my head. I can point to two experiences that illustrate how my mind and imagination work. The first example occurred in a freshman history class in high school. I was shy, the youngest kid in the room, thirteen years old in a prestigious school and feeling every bit of what we now call Imposter Syndrome.

A priest came in and drew a graph on the blackboard. He said that the chart correlated the economy with a certain violent phenomenon in American life. The x-axis was labeled YEAR, and the y-axis was numbered in multiples of 50. There were two distinct lines in a quadrant above x-y axes, a dramatic inverse relationship. When something went low, something else rose. He asked the class what the graph depicted.

I raised my hand, hesitated, and lowered it. Since I was the only one in the class who was attempting the challenge, he insisted that I speak my mind. I did. He then asked me to provide my logic. I did. It turned out that I was correct. I had deduced two things: the relationship between the price of a commodity, and violence over time.

Cotton and lynching. As the price of cotton declined, lynching increased. The tell for me was that the price of cotton during the Civil War peaked and crashed in the 1890s, which corresponded to a spike in lynching.

The lesson I learned here was that Crime = Economics + Sociology.

The second experience was something my grandmother had said when I asked her what it was like living through World War II. She said that the war was the best thing that had ever happened to our country. Orwellian before I read Orwell, I’d heard, “War is Good.” Every time I hear the song, “War (What is it good for?),” I think of her.

What she meant was that the war had taken the US out of the Great Depression, more so than any of FDR’s New Deal programs. I learned from her that History was more than facts in a book. History shaped the emotional life and psyche of people. I concluded that if war was good for the country, then it was imperative that we either find an enemy or invent one. That this nation has been at war for 93% of its existence says volumes.

By disposition, I’m contrarian. For example, I was taught that slavery was America’s original sin; the Civil War, its great psychological crisis. I’d argue that failing to keep religion out of politics as the Founding Fathers had intended is our mortal sin. When I hear presidents end speeches with, “God bless America,” it sounds wrong to me. As for catharsis, I don’t think we’ll ever recover from a sense of defeat, whether it was the last chopper out of Saigon from the rooftop of the US Embassy in Saigon, or the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

An idiosyncratic and quirky sense of humor has shaped me as a writer. Our democracy is an oligarchy, and its bedrock is not some noble experiment; it’s tax evasion, of wealthy men who didn’t want to pay an absentee landlord. The American Dream is not the green light seen in The Great Gatsby, it is Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas who reminds his protégé that no matter what calamities befall someone in life someone is there to say, “F-you, pay me.”

The novel Devil’s Music—like the diminished fifth in music—is discordant and chaotic. I subvert and invert expectations. A woman is in love with a woman. A young girl is the oldest spirit. The CIA are the good guys protecting Nazis they recruited for the Atomic Race. The FBI are the bad guys because of Hoover’s megalomania. Criminals demonstrate more integrity than lawyers do. As the pages turn, the law is about revenge, not what is moral and just. Roy Cohn had chosen from among several statutes the one that made the death penalty inevitable for the Rosenbergs. Robert Kennedy uses his connection to Senator Joe McCarthy to further his ambition. McCarthy was a close friend of the Kennedy family, and godfather to Robert’s daughter Kathleen.

The Devil’s greatest accomplishment was not that he had convinced everyone that he didn’t exist. His achievement through the ages is that he played his music in plain sight, ever so seductive and impossible to ignore.

An irony to consider. The song “Strange Fruit” sung by Billie Holiday was composed by Abel Meeropol, the man who, with his wife, adopted the orphaned Rosenberg children. A song about lynching paid for their education and needs.

The Devil’s Music. 9 November 2021. (Winter Goose Publishing) 240 pages. ISBN-13: ‎978-1952909139

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Gabriel Valjan is the author of the Roma Series, The Company Files, and the Shane Cleary Mysteries. He has been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Silver Falchion Awards, and received the 2021 Macavity Award for Best Short Story. Gabriel is a member of the Historical Novel Society, ITW, MWA, and Sisters in Crime. He lives in Boston.

Sets & crimes & rock & roll

In real life, the wonderful New York Times best-selling author Caroline Leavitt and I talk about writing all the time. So she revived her blog to put down some of our Q&A. You can read an excerpt below or click over to her space here: https://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com/2021/11/clea-simon-talks-about-rock-and-roll.html

Clea Simon talks about Rock and Roll, the 1980s, memory, and her raved-about new novel HOLD ME DOWN

I am so thrilled to Host Clea Simon my blog! Yep, I blurbed her new novel, HOLD ME DOWN, because it is so incendiary, so thrilling, so important, too. And I’m honored to have her here. Thank you, Clea!

Hello! Thanks so much for hosting me, Caroline, and for helping me to celebrate my new psychological suspense, Hold Me Down.
Gal Raver was a rock star. But that was 20 years ago and as HOLD ME DOWN opens she is back in Boston playing a big stage for the first time in years. The occasion is a memorial concert for her late drummer and best friend Aimee, who cofounded the band with her. But as she’s playing she sees – or think she sees – a face from the past, which unsettles her. The next day she hears that that person was murdered behind the venue and Amy’s widower Walter arrested. When Walter chooses not to fight the charges, Gal is compelled to get involved – not only to save her friend but to understand why, for a moment there, she thought “it should’ve been me,” an investigation that leads her back into her own wild, rock star days.

Why did you set this book in the rock world?

For starters, it’s a world you and I both know well! Like Simon at the start of your wonderful With or Without You, Gal begins her journey living in clubland – as did I, once upon a time. Back when I was in my twenties, I not only worked as a rock critic, I lived for the scene. It was my “third place,” neither home nor work. Where I spent my free time, and where I forged so many relationships.
I guess, in a way, those relationships are key. Because it’s such a self-contained world, the relationships that develop in it are great for fiction: the same characters thrown together constantly, with generous helpings of alcohol and other substances, are bound to interact in interesting ways. For me as a mystery writer, the club world functions like an English village would in a classic Agatha Christie novel – whatever happens, whatever crimes and whatever motives – are going to spring organically from a contained cast of characters.
It also interested me, that for all that rock is obsessed with youth with the now, it also constantly seeks to memorialize itself. When we meet Gal, for example, she’s playing a benefit – songs that she wrote twenty-odd years before. And, of course, once something is written or recorded it becomes a time capsule – a reflection of what was happening then. With crime fiction that also allows you to plant clues or exposition  
What research did you do?

I tried to evoke the physical memories of those days: Listening to a lot of older garage-punk bands. Picking up my electric bass for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten how heavy it is and how you stand when it’s strapped onto your shoulder. 
Other than that, I talked to a bunch of people who were on the scene at the time, many of whom were willing to share some very personal memories. These conversations all fed into my memories – and into who Gal was becoming in my mind. For example, when a buddy who used to sing with a band mentioned how far back into a club she could see from onstage, I thought, “I can use that.” And then, when I have Gal noting that, I realized, well, yes, Gal can see all the way to the dark corners of the club. But is she really seeing hijinks back there, or is something else going on?So Gal is an unreliable narrator?

Not in the sense of, say, Gone Girl, where the narrator sets out to deceive you. Hold Me Down is written in close third person: Gal is telling us what she believes she knows. But what that is is unreliable as it is for all of us. Our perception of what is happening is always subjective. Throw in memory, and it becomes even less objective, as nostalgia, denial, and regret all tend to shift our understanding of what is real.
This uncertainty is really at the center of Hold Me Down. At its core are really two mysteries: Who committed the murder (and why isn’t Gal’s friend Walter defending himself), but also what happened to Gal to bring her to this point?
Hold Me Down flips back and forth in time, why did you decide to do that?

Really three times. We first meet Gal in the present day, when she’s jaded, sober, but kind of stuck in a holding pattern. In flashbacks, we see Gal at her rock star peak, when she was kind of crazy but unstoppable. But we also get peeks of the young Gal who first started the band with Aimee, nearly paralyzed with stage fright, dying to break though.
I’m realizing that one of my constant themes seems to be memory – not only nostalgia and regret but the way we the past sets us on specific paths
Not to give too much away, but you also deal with trauma – sexual assault and PTSD

Yes, Gal’s a survivor, as am I. As many of us are – but even though we survive, we’re shaped by what we’ve experienced. It’s like we’ve been pushed slightly askew by what hit us.  Our lenses on the world are maybe a bit warped. So again, Gal sees things that are maybe not quite as they should be.
Gal’s songs reflect a lot of what she went through, don’t they?

In a way they serve as touchstones for who she is at any given time. I really enjoyed exploring how she interacts with her own work. For example, when she’s young and anxious, she’s very careful about crafting a bridge to one of her tunes. Later, at her rock star wildest, she dismisses that same bridge as overly fussy and skips over it in concert. What else does she want to skip over?
But these songs exist outside of Gal, too, and the reader gets to see how everyone reacts to them, from the suits from the record label to the fans. And, perhaps most important, Gal’s bandmates, who may hear something different than Gal does – or perhaps than she intended. These songs take on a life of their own, and they serve to reflect back not only who Gal is at any given time, but how she is received in the world.
How would you describe Gal, as she is when we meet her?

She’s fiercely loyal. She can’t leave Walter even though he doesn’t want to defend himself. That’s partly because of her love for Aimee, which she’s transferred to Aimee’s daughter Camille and also to Walter. But she is also coming to terms with the damage she’s done to those she loved.
I love writing about process – what it feels like to channel something and then to craft it, whether that’s a song or a story. But it requires really making yourself vulnerable. You and I have talked about this, how as writers, we have to “go for the heat” and write about whatever feels most immediate or real. You’ve always encouraged me to be brave and do this, and I’m so grateful! I think it’s one of the reasons you’re such a great friend!

A former journalist, Clea Simon is the Boston Globe-bestselling author of three nonfiction books and 29 mysteries. including the new psychological suspense HOLD ME DOWN.  While most of these (like A Cat on the Case) are cat “cozies” or amateur sleuth, she also writes darker crime fiction, like the rock and roll mystery World Enough, named a “must read” by the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her new psychological suspense Hold Me Down (Polis Books) returns to the music world, with themes of PTSD and recovery, as well as love in all its forms. She can be reached at www.cleasimon.com, on Twitter @Clea_Simon and on Instagram @cleasimon_author

Kings River Life feels the HOLD ME DOWN beat

“This novel really takes you into the grimy world of a traveling band and the melodies behind the music….”

THANK YOU, Kings River Life! The magazine is also offering a giveaway. See below:

“Hold Me Down” By Clea Simon: Review/Giveaway

November 05, 2021

Review by Vicki Vass

Middle-aged rock star Gal returns to Boston to play a tribute concert to her dead bandmate Aimee. While in Boston, she sees a man’s face that causes her to freeze, and the next day she finds that the man has been murdered and her friend’s husband accused. This leads her down a rabbit hole of memories and discoveries relating to Aimee and their band. With a combination of suspense and procedural investigation, we follow Gal as she searches for the murderer while at the same time recalling her musical past, regrets and memories. Simon’s skills as a former journalist serve her well as we actually feel as if we are at a rock concert from the beat of the drum to the roar of the audience. 

Trapped in her memories and regrets, Gal is a truly sympathetic character especially when she recalls her time with Aimee, her dead drummer, and their rise to fame. She finds herself confronting demons that she had long cast aside, related to the sordid world of rock and roll and touring. And now it seems like the past is coming back to haunt her. This novel really takes you into the grimy world of a traveling band and the melodies behind the music. More than anything this book demonstrates that Gal is a survivor despite her guilt over the past and need to right wrongs. 

While I haven’t read any of the author’s other books, some reviewers claim this is her best work yet. After reading Hold Me Down, I will definitely consider picking up another of Simon’s works. 

To enter to win a copy of Hold Me Down click through to the KRL post here: https://www.krlnews.com/2021/11/hold-me-down-by-clea-simon.html

You have until Nov. 13 to enter.

Happy pub day, Cathy Ace!

One of the. most miserable parts of the pandemic is that I miss my friends! Ace author Cathy Ace – see what I did there? – perhaps tops among them! Smart, funny, and wise about the writing and publishing, Cathy is someone I always look for first thing when I surface at a mystery convention like Bouchercon. Someday soon… and luckily until then WE HAVE ANOTHER CATHY ACE BOOK! Cathy’s award-winning traditional mysteries – think smart puzzles with a bit of an edge – are always cause for celebration. So today let’s raise a glass to her brilliant newThe Corpse with the Granite Heart!

“…of bloody deeds and death…” 

(Source: King Richard III, Act 5, Scene 3, William Shakespeare)

Thanks to Clea Simon for allowing me to drop by today – most kind. If I had a cap, I would doff it, which might sound a bit odd, but you’ll have to forgive me…I have Shakespeare on my mind at the moment, so there’s a lot of “thou”-ing and “doffing” going on around here these days.

I’ve had a bit of a thing for Mr. Shakespeare’s work since the times in school when we’d read his plays and sonnets aloud in class. I still read his plays aloud now, at home, in the quiet of my office: I love the way his words feel as they as spoken. So – for the eleventh Cait Morgan Mystery, The Corpse with the Granite heart – I’ve taken the opportunity to share some of that love with my readers. 

One of the most wonderful things about being a writer is having the chance to share a passion; in this book you’ll discover I don’t just have a thing about the Great Bard, but that one of Cait Morgan’s favourite artists is Hans Holbein the Younger (because he’s one of my favourites, too…funny that, eh?!). In this book, Cait and Bud are visiting London, England, which means I sent them to some of my favourite galleries and restaurants – as well as forcing them to face up to a tragedy of truly Shakespearean proportions (this is Cait’s highest body-count yet!) as well as an especially nasty piece of work as the antagonist of the tale. 

Now, if this isn’t sounding terribly “cozy”, it’s not meant to. You see, despite the fact that Cait would probably win a gold medal (for Wales, of course!) if tea-drinking were an Olympic sport, these books are true “traditional mysteries” as opposed to the cozier version of the puzzle-plot mystery that’s out there. What does that mean? Well, you get the shape of a “Golden Age” novel, and a real Whodunnit to solve, but there aren’t a lot of “cozy” aspects. No, this is a story about how the toxicity of a recently deceased Shakespeare aficionado reached beyond the grave to poison his three children, and impact many others too. And not in a good way. 

As a writer who tackles the topic of murder head-on, I choose – in the Cait Morgan Mysteries – to do that from the point of view of a woman who is a professor of criminal psychology…so certainly a person familiar with the dreadful things human beings are capable of doing. But – and this is where I hope to maybe win you over – she does it with a passion for justice driving her on, a loving husband beside her who’s able to bring the experience of his lifetime in law enforcement to bear on every case, and a unique inability to see herself for who she is…bright, yes, but quite bossy, and a bit blinkered when considering her own fallibilities and shortcomings.

If you like spotting Shakespearean allusions, considering the wider application of art appreciation, solving a series of puzzling crimes, and fancy a jaunt to some wonderful London locations, where the Christmas decorations are already in place, then this is the book for you. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you fancy the idea of giving this book a try…while you plot your own decorating plans for the Holidays. 

Author of the traditional Cait Morgan Mysteries, the cozy WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries, and the psychological suspense novel The Wrong Boy, Cathy Ace was born and raised in Wales, but now lives in Canada. A Bony Blithe, IPPY, and IBA award winner, she’s also been shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award. Her Cait Morgan Mysteries, and The Wrong Boy, have been optioned for TV, and she’s currently working on editing the script (which, no, she didn’t write…not her skill set!) for the movie of The Corpse with the Silver Tongue. 

Ltd. 

Or on Kobo at https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-corpse-with-the-granite-heart

ISBN paperback: 978-1-990550-00-3

ISBN digital: 978-1-9992230-9-0

Find Cathy on FB: https://www.facebook.com/Cathy-Ace-Author-318388861616661
At her website: http://www.cathyace.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AceCathy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathyace1/

#TBTwith Mystery Maven Sara DiVello

Did you miss my HOLD ME DOWN pre-launch event with Mystery and Thriller Maven Sara DiVello? Not to worry, our host for the evening – Houston’s MURDER BY THE BOOK – has put our talk up on Youtube and Facebook and I’m sharing as a #TBT! We’re not taking questions anymore (though you’re invited to put any in the comments!) but you can join us again here!

Talking craft with Dale Phillips

I got to chat with fellow New England mystery author Dale Phillips over at his blog a while ago and hadn’t had a chance to share till now. We tackled the writing process, music books and how to craft a compelling story.

Here’s how it starts:

So how did this novel come to be? Was it envisioned from the start as a bigger canvas, or did it expand organically out of an idea? Please tell us a bit about the origin.

A. To be honest, I’ve been working on HOLD ME DOWN for so long, I’m no longer exactly sure how it started. In many ways, HOLD ME DOWN follows in the footsteps of my Massachusetts Book Award “must read” “World Enough,” in that it takes place in the Boston rock club scene and centers on the subjectivity of memory. I also wanted to explore how the music scene, which I dearly loved, monetizes some forms of dysfunction. After all, nobody cares to see a well-adjusted, happy rock star….

Read more here: https://daletphillips.blogspot.com/2021/10/interview-with-author-clea-simon-her.html

HOLD ME DOWN “will grab you by the heart…”

“Hold Me Down, acclaimed author Clea Simon’s new suspense novel about a hard-driving punk rocker dragged into the trauma of her wild past by a murder in her present, will grab you by the heart even as it makes you grip the edge of your seat.

Life as a successful rock musician has taken its toll on Gal Raver, the protagonist in this intense and compelling read. When she plays a benefit for her close friend and former drummer who succumbed to cancer, she believes all of that is in the rear-view mirror. But a glimpse of a man in the audience who later turns up dead sends her reeling back into a time she can’t escape. Hold Me Down is a mystery and a thriller, but it’s also a novel about grief, the glorious joy of making music, and what it takes to put a broken life back together…”

So begins thriller queen Emily Ross’s writeup of Hold Me Down. We then chatted for the literary blog Dead Darlings. Visit the site to read more: https://deaddarlings.com/meet-clea-si...

Chatting with Poisoned Pen’s Barbara Peters

The legendary Poisoned Pen Bookstore hosted this lively conversation last week ranging from guitars to Ginger Rogers!. Since it’s a recording, we can’t take your questions live – but if you have any, post them and I’ll do my best to answer!