After this photo, my camera disappeared underneath the carpet in the back of my passenger seat. I only found it on Friday after a hunt through the house that turned up all kinds of other interesting things. So we travel back in time to November 18 when I enjoyed (re) meeting Rhonda Perry, Cobourg librarian extraordinaire. Each year her library engages several authors to visit schools to celebrate and encourage their writing contest. 
St. Joseph School was kind enough to allow a gifted class to join their audience on this particular visit. I walked them through my writing process on a book called Last Chance for Paris. In trying new ways to explore metaphor and similes, I often use paint chips and ask the students for the best shade of white to describe snow and then tombstones. I also explain what difficulty I had in coming up with new ways to describe blue eyes for the character Tyler. His eyes can be glacier blue since Zanna the main character now lives near the icefields in Alberta. Sometimes when he's friendlier, they're described as lake blue. Last question of the day was how would I describe the blue of my top which you can barely make out in this photo. It was a challenge rather than a genuine desire for information. The young man wore a crooked grin as he asked it. I explained that writers sometimes have to think long and hard about these things, they don't come instantly. That the cliche answer was royal blue but that if pressed, I would probably choose an emotion to describe the colour: sincere blue. I'd read somewhere that blue was a good colour to wear to job interviews because it's is considered a "true" colour, true-blue. Visiting schools is like a job interview, if you "pass" the students believe some of your writing tips and often read your books.
St. Joseph School was kind enough to allow a gifted class to join their audience on this particular visit. I walked them through my writing process on a book called Last Chance for Paris. In trying new ways to explore metaphor and similes, I often use paint chips and ask the students for the best shade of white to describe snow and then tombstones. I also explain what difficulty I had in coming up with new ways to describe blue eyes for the character Tyler. His eyes can be glacier blue since Zanna the main character now lives near the icefields in Alberta. Sometimes when he's friendlier, they're described as lake blue. Last question of the day was how would I describe the blue of my top which you can barely make out in this photo. It was a challenge rather than a genuine desire for information. The young man wore a crooked grin as he asked it. I explained that writers sometimes have to think long and hard about these things, they don't come instantly. That the cliche answer was royal blue but that if pressed, I would probably choose an emotion to describe the colour: sincere blue. I'd read somewhere that blue was a good colour to wear to job interviews because it's is considered a "true" colour, true-blue. Visiting schools is like a job interview, if you "pass" the students believe some of your writing tips and often read your books.
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