Celebrity Author at Pawsway

Well, Mortie, Bob and I spent the day at Pawsway Pet Discovery Centre. What did we learn from this event?
You need to bring your dog to get any attention at all. A lady who was talking about Border Collies did not bring
any of her Border Collies. No one visited her to talk. They all stopped at the therapy dogs, cute shitzus, mini greyhounds and one longhaired Dashund. One therapy dog was missing eyes, they had been surgically removed due to disease. So the therapy dog needed a guide dog. He seemed to manage pretty well though.

Mortie got some personal physiotherapy for his back right trick knee. He fell in love with many dogs and enjoyed socializing with so many canines, he's still conked out on the couch. His normal energy level is renowned so that's saying a lot.

The dancing dogs, golden retrievers had a whole corner full of brightly coloured nylon "crates" that looked more like mini tents.
I think Mortie needs one of those.

One chiuaua showed up in a mini skirt. Her owner said she liked dressing up because she knew that meant she was going somewhere.

Mortie scored some new kind of Purina dentibones. I sold under ten books but met some really nice people and neat kids.
Maybe later they'll all go to the bookstore and buy more. I know we'll be back to Pawsway. It's a fun place.

Meet me at Pawsway

Tomorrow Mortie and I head to Pawsway at Harbourfront. This is the one and only Pet Discovery Centre and they're celebrating working dogs and people who work with dogs. Because I write about dog guides, I will be there. I'll talk about Bringing Up Beauty, A Different Kind of Beauty as well as the final book in the series, Beauty Returns. Also my husband Bob, photographer extraordinaire, will be there and those who wish can have their photos taking with me and my inspiration dog, Mortie. Now Mortie is not guide dog material. Actually his amazing fly catching efforts, leaping up into the air as high as a building and as fast as a bullet, have been captured in a similar dog, Finnigan, in the historical fiction I'm writing about the 1912 flycatching contest.

Hope to see some of you there.

The Sandcastle Competition

August 23rd proved to be a hot sunny day, perfect for the beach! There were 14 competitors, two in the adult, about four in the children's section and the rest in the family division. What talent! Many beautiful and detailed castles were sculpted. A mermaid and sea serpent took awards. In this photo, you see the second place winners. They showed wonderful team work and excellent use of space. Next year August 15, 2009 will prove even better. There will be a workshop in the morning and a demonstration. Then in the afternoon--the competition!

Lots of time to practise.

Mortie's new swimming hole

This year we bought a Provincial Park Pass for Hunter, thinking we could take him everyday after school to the play barn at Bronte Creek. Turns out during the year the playbarn closes at 4:00 and while Hunter's class finishes around 3:15 by the time he surfaces it's often 3:45.

No matter, we're taking advantage of it now in the summer. We went to a "spirit night" where Hunter met some historical ghosts. We visited Spruce Lane Farm and he and some buddies tried out some old fashioned toys and wove.

The big plus turned out to be the dog park. No fence and just lots of free roaming area. Today someone told us about another leash free area in the camping zone. We had to drive in by another entrance. Then we could hike through fields and forest and more importantly through the actual creek. Lots of dogs were swimming in the fast moving water and Mortie joined in.

We also saw a dog named Cohoe who could pass for the wolf hybrid Paris in my novel Last Chance for Paris. Perhaps for book two we can shoot the cover in that exact spot.

Building Sandcastles

Next Saturday, August 23, from 10 to 2, I will be judging sandsculptures along with Sandi Castle Stirling, shown creating this marvelous castle, yesterday. She also gave out tips but I came to late to get any. I thought I'd bone up with some books from the library. Well, there are none on this topic except for Robert Munsch's Sandcastle story. Everyone knows you can't build a breathing barking sanddog, or?

In any case, I intend to google technique on the internet so that I can better judge this contest. I love sandsculptures anyway.

Mortie gets groomed for the wedding

We like Mortie fluffy but some dog owners suggested that since he had poodle in him he needed to be "groomed" read shaved.
So we thought we'd try. It's hot out, he'd at least be cooler. My friend Carol Bryant owns a grooming shop and only charged me "cat rates". How embarassing for Mortie. She shaved every part of his body and trimmed the hair around his ears.

What do you think? Should Mortie grow back the fluff or should he continue to visit Carol?

Big Day

What began as a beautiful day turned into the monsoons as the white stretch limo pulled up to the bride's house. Umbrella to umbrella, everyone's finery was shielded. At Geraldos at Lasalle Park, all arrangements required switching. No getting married in the terrace, too dangerous with the thunder, lightening and huge puddles so Eireann and Craig were piped down the aisle of the reception room.

However, everything else was perfect. Delicious food, great friends and dancing. Eireann and Craig performed some fancy steps and dips. Now they're off in Greece enjoying their honeymooning. Congratulations. Phew!

Karaokee Shower

My friends Cathy and Lynda have hosted a lot of parties and showers on my or my children's behalf. So for Eireann and Craig we were stumped for about five seconds. "What do they like to do?" Cathy asked. "They love to sing karaokee," I answered. So bestman Adam whipped up an Elvis e-invite and I rented a machine and Cathy and Lynda supplied the most delicious food imaginable and a home decorated Elvis style.

It was a tremendously fun evening and Ian Garden, Eireann's brother won the academy award, you didn't know there was one?, for Karaokee.

On the way home

One good thing about this trip is that Mortie has conquered his fear of car trips. He looks pretty comfortable, doesn't he?
Now we arrive just in time for Eireanne and Craig's Karaokee shower!

Beach time

The way I read it, our cottage was supposed to have a view of the ocean and I thought it was situated right at the beach.
But no. We saw a glimpse of ocean from across the highway. It was partially obstructed by herring smoking plants. Cap Pelee
is the smoked herring capital of Canada. If there had been a large herring monument, you know we would have been so there!
So we had to drive to a rather weedy shallow beach that sometimes smelled of herring, or seaweed. Lots of sea creatures scuttled around on the ocean floor so I didn't frolic as much as I'd hoped in the water.

The cliche New Brunswick Experience: Hopewell Rock

The list of things we had to do on our vacation was pretty small, eat Lobster, go to the beach a lot and visit Hopewell Rocks.
We arrived at high tide, took photos, ate ice cream and played on the equipment, well Hunter did, I just said "Good one!" "Go for it!" and such and walked Mortie around. Then at 2:00 in the afternoon we headed down and walked the length of the beach admiring the flower pot formations. The picture of me was taken by Hunter, otherwise I don't usually get to appear in my blog much.

The Lobster Experience

Some people asked me why I chose Cap Pelee for my cottage rental. It looked like a kid friendly cottage complete with a playground and toyroom and it was supposed to be on the beach. But it was close to the lobster capital of Canada. Of course we had to take pictures in front of the largest lobster and then we brought the smaller already cooked version home to try.

How can something so ugly and difficult to get at taste so delicious?

Research Part of Holiday

A few hours out of our way, the Pointe au Pere Sea Museum feature the Empress of Ireland. I wanted to really understand the deck system for my third class passenger/character ten-year-old William Alton. I'll have to compare my photos of models to the book I have at home. It's a lot of work for a few sentences in a book that's largely about flycatching.

Quebec City

This is the amazing fountain given as a 400th year birthday present from a department store owner to Quebec City. Originally, it won a prize at a world fair back in the 1800's. At the bottom there are frogs either spitting water to the next layer or projectile vomiting it right to the top.

Quebec is crowded with tourists and people celebrating the summer festival. The old town is quaint and filled with shops and cafes, still not a lot to entertain a seven year old. We did watch a juggler who climbed and balanced the ladder and then juggled torches from the top.

Pet Friendly travelling

Our first hotel provided a lovely two room suite, a kitchen sink but no microwave or fridge or more importantly pool.
That was all fine, however, they charged an additional $25 for our dog. Didn't matter that he wasn't a Great Dane or that
he never so much as woofed or shed a hair.

At the Quebec tourism board we asked about dining in outdoor cafe "avec notre petit chien". "Si il est calme" you can eat with your dog.

Naha. We couldn't eat with Mortie. So we shared an ice cream cone overlooking the old harbour and later snuck in Mortie to our next hotel. With the $25 we saved we enjoyed a Hawaiian pizza togther.

On the Road again...

We're very excited to be on the road to our rented cottage in Shediac. Mortie's not usually a good car traveller.
In fact he's the only dog I know who hates the car. But we loaded up his bed on top of a suitcase and snuggling with Hunter
in the back he slept most of the way.

Nothing exciting has happened so far but the trip has been good. We stopped in Montreal, did nothing but eat.
Today we're hoping for some historic scenery in Quebec City.

Owen's Christening

We ditched the dogs for a day to see Owen's Christening. Wow, once the church gets you in you have to kneel, pray, kneel, pray, kneel, pray..sing.

Still it was a lovely chance to visit with Kelly and Joey and baby Owen. The food was delicious. Owen was cute.
A happy day.

Mortie Has a sleepover friend

Some days when we know we're going to be away a long time we send Mortie to friend's place: Niles.
He's an older, slightly bigger, apricot coloured poodle who is very good natured. Mortie and Niles have
been running through the park together and wrestling.

The downside is that Niles has become too attached to me, emitting the most ungodly highpitched yelp when I return from say taking the paper in. Also he's not perfectly house trained.

Craig and Eireann are getting married

We attended the first shower for Eireann, my future daughter in law. Craig and Eireann announced they were getting married in April. The wedding will be August 9 and is going to be beautiful. How can it fail with such a beautiful bride! Eireann and Craig make a great couple and I love when they try to cheer a crying baby, singing songs and making faces together. Of course we don't have any crying babies around any more. Yet... Jen will have a baby December so that will change again

Mortie Gets to Go On a Press Junket

Mortie doesn't get invited to a lot of events but when PawsWay opened he not only got to go but ended up on television and in the newspaper all because he's cute. He also ignored some lovely biscuits, got weighed (11.5 pounds) and enjoyed watching other dogs go through obstacle courses. While he's super smart, he didn't do well on the pet intelligence test because it was all about retrieving a biscuit from under a big plastic cup. Remember those biscuits he didn't like? So he never bothered flipping the cup which would have made him a genius. Well he's smart enough to know what he doesn't like

Testing out the Go-karts for Today's Parent Toronto

The sales rep Maria Paguirigan for Today's Parent Toronto and I decided it would be fun to enter a team at the First Annual Downsview Park Media Olympics. So we entered ourselves and it was, fun I mean. Teamed up with Adam and Kristin from Easy Rock, We played soccer, beach volleyball and drove go-karts. Apparently I was the slowest driver by the electronic printout.
Parenting writers should be cautious and set good example besides those sports writers kept cutting me off!

We had a great day and even earned kind of a mini tree stump medal. Next year we hope for a bigger better team. Wait a minute, no one could have been better than Maria--lots of spirit and so fit for a pregnant person.

Creative friends

We had a great visit from Norma Charles, the author of The Girl in the Backseat and Boxcar Kids, along with many other books.
It was neat to take her to visit other creative friends such as Deb Loughead, author of Time and Again and president of CANSCAIP.
We also made a point of breaking up Janet Wilson's day so that Norma could buy her cover painting from Janet.

Besides being a brilliant illustrator, Janet is a great grower of rhubarb and she sent us home with tons. Great friends and wonderful deserts, it doesn't get any better.

Sneak preview of Mars

One of the many fun parts of my magazine editing job is that I get invited to press releases and sneak previews.
Here's a shot of me and my husband posing on a Mars Rover, parked right here on Earth at the Science Centre.
I tried almost gravity free walking, I operated under Mars conditions and successfully removed gall stones and I saw the Mars Imax film and ate space cookies. Lots of fun. I don't understand kids who ask me why I write. I don't get why everyone doesn't want my job.

What I'm working on now

When I wander the streets of Hamilton, searching for buildings that would have been around when 10 year-old Will Aitken
would have arrived, June 1912, it's the most eerie feeling. I think I'm being possessed by his dead spirit when of course he's a fictional character. Of course, I usually write first person and do the method acting transfer till I become the character. But this time I'm writing in third person and instead I feel like he's trying to tell me something. It's fascinating and yet spooky.

Anyway, Central Public is the school Will would have attended. Next week I hope to step inside and see what he felt like when he attended on his first day.

Things a writer wishes she knew at the beginning of her career

This weekend May 23 to 26 is The Writers' Union of Canada general meeting and I went to a workshop
entitled "Everything I wanted to know at the beginning of my career". There were a few interesting things that came out.
How at the start Nino Ricci's creative writing instructor W.O. Mitchell thought he should quit. Nino actually grew more determined.Another speaker said that you might have a great story inside you but you really needed to hone your craft.
Paul Quarrington spoke about how arbitrary awards were. So awards now act as reviews used to--if you don't win or shortlist
your book gets pulled from the shelf after a couple of months. And yet these same career building or killing awards are handed out with a fair bit of randomness. He also talked about humility and how you always found yourself next to a writer with a long line up of fans while you yourself had none or few, or how you had readings or signings where no one turned up except the librarians or booksellers.

I think what's humbling is when a writer starts out way after you and suddenly vaults to the top. Writing is subjective so everyone can say, well that writer's better and so deserves the quick rise. But I think we all have to accept that for whatever laws of the universe sometimes you're not the flavour of the month and, point of fact, sometimes you never will be. Despite whatever promotion you do or how hard you work. Another amazing truisim, to me anyway, is that I work just as hard at a book that gets rejected as one that wins an award.

Atikoken Trip

I regret that while in schools, I rarely take photos. It takes someone else to suggest it and then I hand over my camera.
So while I really enjoyed the students at St. Partircks, North Star Community School and Atikoken Highschool, the only images I took with on computer were of the cemetary headstones and the Little Falls there. It was a great day for a walk and the seagulls were calling with all different sounds. "Ow, Ow, Ow!" one of them screamed. The headstone reminded me of the one on the cover of Grave Secrets, my ghost mystery novel. I especially enjoyed meeting the young writers Alicia and Chris. Hope I read them some day.

The photo of the lake shows the Sleeping Giant. from Prince Arthur Hotel in Thunderbay. I bought some amethysists, the purple stone mined here, and some Persian donuts: cinnamon buns with strawberry icing that are Thunderbay's trademark pastry.

At Thunderbay I visited a school and visited with one of my favourite librarians Angela Meady. If you want to listen view our interview, visit: http://www.tbpl.ca/internal.asp?id=%2087&cid=5631

Sudbury tour

Best week ever in Sudbury. Algonquin Public hosted a great young author's day complete with television and media coverage. I spent a lovely day at Warren Public with just a handful of writers, see the photo. CR Judd, AB Ellis and Valleyfield all showed me great hospitality and enthusiasm. With the younger readers, I shared Slam Dunk Robot, a short grade two novel set right in Sudbury mostly at Science North.

Fun in Saskatchewan

After visiting schools, we enjoyed the long drives back to Regina. We stopped in Corner Gas Land (Dog River=Rouleau) and bought some souvenirs. We also stopped to just enjoy an old ghost farm complete with this great tractor.

On the way to Macoun

Touring schools around Estevan, I really enjoyed myself but we were never quite sure how long a drive would take--especially when there was a train derailment. It all worked well and I loved meeting the kids in Estevan and Macoun.

Swift Current Library

At work with my new readers in Swift Current--well, actually we're chowing down on some great homemade cookies, discussing writing and life in general. It's such a privilege to be able to travel and talk about what I like best, writing. Whenever one my student audience asks what made you want to be a writer, I'm always a little dumfounded. Like what other job is as good as this?

Why everyone should want to be a writer

When people think research, they may think of hoisting heavy encyclopedia volumes to a library table and leafing through the tiny print pages for information. Here is the best part of research. I needed to finish book five in my Norwegian and Swedish Series Et Vilt Liv and just to make sure things were exactly as I described them, my husband and I booked a helicopter ride.
It was everything I expected and less sickening in terms of motion than a small plane. Everyone should save for one ride in his or her lifetime. We also rented skis and took advantage of the great quantity and quality of snow for April. The trail was as wide as a six lane highway. Terrific fun!

The big surprise was hiking the ice canyon. We didn't know enough to rent crampons so at times where we needed to hike up hill or slide downhill, we crawled on all fours. Still I found the perfect location for my main character Zanna to be stranded.

On the road again...

This is a catchup blog from the first week of April. Invited to speak at the Saskatchewan Reading Conference, I decided to add a few days to my trip and tour schools in the area but first a little detour to Canmore for some research and vacation. While we were driving across the prairie I was once again astounded by the big blue sky and the way a train snaked across the entire golden horizon. It was my turn to drive when I took this shot. A plane had just carved a white scratch into the sky but I couldn't quite capture that.

New Baby McNicoll

Last Monday, Owen McNicoll was born in London Ontario. Weighing in at nine pounds, he's my latest nephew, and very cute.
We celebrated the next day, breaking pizza together. Babies are wonderful!

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?

Wedding in the Dominican

My nephew got married in the Dominican Republic. What a great excuse for an all inclusive vacation. I loved sampling the fruity drink of the day: banana mama, dirty monkey, the Titanic etc. Better was floating on the huge waves of the Atlantic, or swimming the saltwater pool. The wedding itself was very romantic, with three guitarist and a Fabio looking photographer. Guaranteed sunshine, lots of relaxation. I enjoyed spending the week with my brother and his wife too. I haven’t spent so much time with him since I was a kid. Hurray for celebrations!

Last Chance for Paris Launched!

Finally my new book Last Chance for Paris is out! What better way to celebrate than a party. Seconds before the official launch, okay, days actually,all our windows and our front door were replaced. Mortie the Jackapoo huddled, shivered and complained in my office as the house became an icebox.

Then we had to plow the rest of the house. We’d also installed new floors on two levels and the junk was moved to the next levels. For the party it all had to be placed or hidden.
There are things we’ll never find again.

Still on the day itself, all went well. A light sprinkling of snow made the world just a little bit more friendly and holiday like.

Lots of friends turned out and I sang the madeup country song from the actual story.

My baby left me for a body builder
She didn’t want to live with a pipe welder
I’ve got the tools
But He hangs around pools
I’ve got to get me a six pack
If I should want my baby back.
Oooh My beby left me for a body builder