For Writer's Digest, I wrote an essay about my experience correcting errors in my book, Regret The Error. It's somewhat similar to the monologue I did for Definitely Not The Opera recently. One difference is that my WD piece offers advice to writers about preventing errors. And it includes an image of the accuracy checklist I produced earlier this year.

As for Reader's Digest, the current issue in Canada includes a lengthy excerpt from the Mafiaboy book. And Michael "Mafiaboy" Calce is on the cover. We're really thrilled about his.

This recovery process included sleeping for 12 hours last night, which is almost unheard of for me, and spending most of yesterday afternoon and evening lying on a couch and trying to avoid anything resembling work. Last week was the MagNet/PWAC conference, the National Magazine Awards, and the Arthur Ellis Awards. I was involved in some way with each of them. In the end, I finished the week having given out two awards, won two of my own, and connected with editors and freelance writers from all over Canada.

It was a very, very good week. Allow me to share the highlights.

A super "super conference" -- For the first time in its more than 30 years of existence, the Professional Writers Association of Canada joined with other organizations for its annual conference. I'm a former Quebec Chapter president of PWAC and currently sit on its board of directors, a volunteer position. This year we teamed up with MagNet, the big magazine conference, the Canadian Authors Association, and Canadian Society of Magazine Editors to create a joint conference. I love my fellow PWACers and it was great for us to be able to mix with other organizations. The result was that Canadian magazine editors and writers (among other industry folks) were together in workshops and at meals. I met several editors and made some good connections.

Giving Out Awards -- As PWAC's Quebec Regional Director, I handed out the award for Regional Volunteer of the Year. Then, the next day, I announced that Jennifer Walker of Best Health magazine was the winner of PWAC's Editor of the Year Award. That was a lot of fun. Congrats to her and the two Honourable Mentions, Diana Swift of Canadian Health and Ian Johnson of CBCNews.ca.

Taking Home Some Hardware -- On Thursday night around 10:30 pm, I found out that Michal Calce and I had won the Arthur Ellis Award for non-fiction crime book of the year. Mike was at the ceremony in Ottawa (I was in Toronto at the conference) and I can honestly say that we are both shocked and thrilled by the win. The other books on the short list were very impressive and I didn't think we'd win the award. I also didn't expect the win to generate so much press coverage, which then resulted in a ton of congratulatory emails. Then, on Friday night, I received a Silver Medal at the National Magazine Awards. (Read the winning article here.) The gold in the humour category went to Bruce McCall, who contributes to The New Yorker, Vanity Fair etc. So, uh, pretty good company. And one hell of a good time.

Thanks to PWAC, MagNet, the Crime Writers of Canada, the National Magazine Awards Foundation, Penguin Group (Canada), Maisonneuve magazine, the Transatlantic Literary Agency and the other groups and people that made it possible.

Crime Writers of Canada, the organizers of the Arthur Ellis Awards, on Thursday announced the nominees for the 26th edition of the annual literary prize. The awards are named after Arthur Ellis, the nom de travail of Canada's former official hangman...

Nominees in the best non-fiction category are:

• Daphne Bramham, The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect (Vintage Canada/RHC).
• Sharon Butala, The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder (Phyllis Bruce Books/HarperCollins).
• Alex Caine, Befriend and Betray: Infiltrating the Hells Angels, Bandidos and Other Criminal Brotherhoods (Vintage Canada/RHC).
• Michael Calce & Craig Silverman, Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken (Penguin Canada).
• Kerry Pither, Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror (Penguin Canada).

This was totally unexpected. I had no idea our book was submitted, and I never would have guessed that we'd score a nomination. The only downside is that the awards ceremony will be held in Ottawa the day before the National Magazine Awards are held in Toronto. I'm already booked to be in Toronto that week so Michael Calce will have to represent the two of us at the ceremony. I wish I could be there, but this lovely suprise is good enough as far as I'm concerned.

Over the last couple of years, I've been working with Michael "Mafiaboy" Calce to write a book about his story. The resulting work is Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken. Here's the book's website, which was just launched. It will hit bookstores in Canada in late September/early October. You can pre-order it now from Chapters and Amazon.ca. (The French version will come out in November; a US edition comes out in Spring 2009.)

For those who need reminding, Mafiaboy was the alias of the Montreal teenage hacker who launched massive denial of service attacks in 2000 that brought down websites such as Yahoo!, eBay, E*TRADE and Dell. The attacks were huge news, inspiring a ton of media reports and speculation about who was responsible. President Bill Clinton even convened a special Cybersecurity Summit at the White House in the days after the attacks hit the Web.

After an international investigation that included the FBI, RCMP and other law enforcement agencies, it turned out that the person responsible was Michael Calce, then a 15 year-old kid living in a Montreal suburb. After being apprehended in a late-night raid, Mike eventually plead guilty to 56 charges related to computer crimes and was sentenced to eight months in custody and a year of probation.

Mike has never spoken publicly about the attacks or his court proceedings. The first part of the book tells his story in his own words; the second part examines our current state of online security, and how things have gotten worse since his attacks.

We're really happy with how the book turned out, and we hope it will help rasie awareness about online security, not to mention provide extremely important details about his case. Mike is going to do his first ever interview on the October 8 edition of The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos. Be sure to tune in to CBC at 11 p.m. That appearance will be followed by a lot of other press.

It's going to be interesting to see how people react to Mike finally breaking his silence. I remember when I first met with him at a coffee shop in downtown Montreal back in 2006. He had gotten in touch with my agent, who then asked me to meet Mike and see why he wanted to tell his story. (At one point in my career, I spent three years working at a computer security company in Montreal, so I was a natural pick to see what Mike was all about; I had no idea if we'd end up working together.)

The first thing I asked Mike was why he wanted to write a book. It was a test. If he had said he wanted to make money or regain some of his celebrity, I would have told my agent to walk away from the project. But Mike started talking about the fact that he needed to wait all these years since his arrest in order to mature and get a better sense of himself and his crimes. (He was forbidden to do a book until he had served his probation, but that had ended years before we met.) He said he felt his story could be a cautionary tale, and that he wanted to help raise the average person's awareness about online security.

I'm sure some folks will assume he's doing this for money or fame, but those two things have never come up during the years we've worked together. I'm excited to see Mike get a chance to tell his story. I hope you'll tune in for his appearance on The Hour and, of course, buy the book.