Sunday, February 03, 2008

Blog of the week January 3, 2008


February 3, 2008

I enjoy blogging, really, I do. But I never get around to it after all my other writing commitments. I’m going to try to at least put in one entry a week. So many exciting things happen to me. Yeah. Like I suffered through some gastrointestinal flu this week.I slept for a day then dragged myself around for another.

Then I applied for an Ontario Arts Council Grant. That involves a lot of careful reading and filling out of forms, double checking you’ve put everything together in the crafty way they’ve asked, finding the office equipment, envelopes, stapler, clips—the printer ink ran out in the middle of the first copy of five. Finally, with great relief, it weighed in at the post office and was mailed away.

Then I emceed what I think is the fourth annual CANSCAIP OLA Booklaunch. Eighteen out of twenty authors showed up at the Convention Centre in Toronto on this stormy day. Most businesses and government offices, certainly schools closed. Librarians didn’t all make it. But I think everyone enjoyed it. Just getting together with each other is fun. And publishers and librarians did drift in and out.

Today, the culmination of the week, I read a nice review of Last Chance for Paris by Gary Curtis in The Hamilton Spectator. He celebrates the fact that dialogue moves the story forward. Many reviewers feel disdain for dialogue, I think, because it brings a story closer to a television or film script.
But it does liven the pace. And who doesn’t want to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation?