Life in a Nut's Shell

Not sure how it can be "random", when it's planned in advance, but here goes...

I'm Not Her by Janet Gurtler. Read it!

Labels: I'm Not Her, Janet Gurtler

I will be at the Calgary Children's Book Fair and Conference on November 27. I'll be selling books, doing a reading, and presenting a talk on critiques.

http://www.calgarybookfair.com/

Come on down!

Around the interwebs:

http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/2010/11/critter-is-famous.html
http://holdyourhorsepg.blogspot.com/2010/11/banff-centre-for-arts.html

Friends, colleagues and recent photos.

Labels: Hold Your Horse, The Bookshelf Muse

I'll be guest blogging at the Teens Read Too Book Club blog on October 3rd, 2010. Stop by for a visit! http://trtbookclub.blogspot.com/
TRT Book Club

Ah, Banff, I miss you already. Having just spent a week with Tim Wynne-Jones and seven other students in the Writing for Children session, workshopping, critiquing and absorbing information, I am exhausted, but focussed. We were all working on novels, none of them even remotely similar. Three historicals (set in entirely different times and places), an sf adventure, a fantasy, a pirate book, a road trip, and a story of being lost in a strange land made for a fascinating mix.

Personally, I feel like I might have been better off if I had been making more advanced mistakes, but then I realized that since I don't have a lot of time to work on my current novel, I'm having to relearn how to write them every time I get back to it. I've been working on it for 3 years, but subjectively, it's more like 6 months, if that.

Tim is a wonderful instructor, and I only hope I can retain all of this knowledge!

Labels: Banff, Tim Wynne-Jones, writing, Writing with Style

I'm guest blogging at The Bookshelf Muse today. http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/ This is a great blog, useful to writers for the setting thesaurus and lots of other writing advice.

Labels: The Bookshelf Muse

The winner for Best Novel in English went to Robert J Sawyer, for Wake. (which means I didn't get the award, darn). But I'm certainly not annoyed by that -- Rob's book is terrific; and all the other books were strong contenders, too.

I didn't have any appearances on panels -- though, to be fair, when I looked at the programming grid, I felt I didn't have anything useful to contribute to the talks, except maybe Worldbuilding. The panellists that were already on it had more than enough competence to speak about that topic, so I didn't want to intrude. Since the theme of the convention was Egyptian, that would have been a nice tie-in to The Amulet of Amon-Ra.

Hayden Trenholm invited Ed Willett and me to join him in a couple of his panels, both about science. Since I'm primarily a fantasy writer, I elected to moderate (I later ducked out of the second one, because it was up against something I wanted to attend).

Things I enjoyed: meeting other writers; the Friday night Aurora Novel Nominee party; the Masquerade (lotsa energy!); listening to Sheila Gilbert's stories about being an editor for DAW Books; spending time with my room-mate, Susan Forest; being happy for friends who won awards; seeing Brian Hades in a tux; attending Michelle Cook's talk on her recreation costume of Queen Elizabeth I.

Labels: Keycon, Prix Aurora, The Amulet of Amon-Ra