by Sylvia McNicoll | Feb 21, 2015 | Sylvia McNicoll
Okay, my first problem is admitting I’m a senior. After that, I really don’t even know what to ask about my new iPhone 6. Maybe if I were an organized person I might have written down a bunch of questions.
No matter. First off Heidi, my personal teen tech mate, showed me how to get to photos without inputting my password (or thumbprint in the case of my phone). We quickly snapped this beautiful selfie. Our third try, because Heidi showed me where to look so I didn’t appear quite so goofy.
Then I told her about some of my random problems. Correcting spelling errors in my texts for example. Who knew that Apple only lets you go to the beginning or end of a word to correct, not the middle. That fact explained why I couldn’t get to some of my typos.
(Late breaking news. iPhone and iPad users, turns out you can correct. You touch the screen until a magnifying glass appears and then you can delete and add letters in the middle. I was able to tell Heide, the Android girl about this one)
Heidi showed me that to select and copy text from a phone email or text, I just had to press the screen for a second and the select/selectall/paste button would come up.
For fun, she showed me an app called App of the Day and I downloaded Sticktext which allowed me to paste (into emails and texts) hilarious animated stick people doing things like sinking a basket ball, walking a dog, or throwing up. I immediately texted my teen grandson the puking picture.
Heidi coached me to use both thumbs typing. We searched for a thumb typing lesson app but couldn’t find one. Practise should do that all on its own anyway. We tried downloading magazine apps and found we did indeed need to pay for a subscription. Actually a relief to me.
Heidi is an Android phone girl but she proved again that once you develop a kind of let’s see-what-that-does attitude to technology, the attitude serves you no matter what the device is. Press buttons, try things, ask other people.
Asking other people helped me a lot in this case. Terrific fun. It was such a cool shift. Most often I’m on the teaching end, showing teens how to change paragraphs for emphasis or when to use italics or how to build drama and tension in a story. Nice to switch places.
And, Heidi has agreed to test out my work in progress: Perspectives–a story in which a senior and teen switch bodies and bond over…technology.
by Sylvia McNicoll | Feb 15, 2015 | Sylvia McNicoll
Somewhere out there is photo of me stripping at my launch. Another of me having a sari wrapped around to demonstrate research for the Indian engagement scene in Best Friends Through Eternity. To follow, I’m sure, on Facebook. Some thirty people attended, lots of writers but also some of my teen and tween audience, also some fans from the past who are 25 and 31 years old. Thank you to Gujarati Foods for supplying the pakora, chaat papri, and gulab jamun, all foods from the engagement party in the novel.
Thanks to Ian Elliot of A Different Drummer Books for hosting the event. I feel very blessed to have him on my side.
Thank you to all for your good wishes and kind words on the book.
May this success continue!
by Sylvia McNicoll | Feb 14, 2015 | Sylvia McNicoll
Thank you Burlington Public Library for tacking up my launch poster on your community bulletin board. Thank you to all my friends and colleagues and City of Burlington and MPs and Tundra for tweeting and retweeting:
T 
by Sylvia McNicoll | Feb 11, 2015 | Sylvia McNicoll
A brand new book is born and the world keeps spinning. Reviews come in, or not. A story makes a 10 best list. Or not. It’s nominated for a major award… Well, you get the picture.
We tweet, blog, post on Facebook, sign, and speak but mostly we just want to write. The rest we do so we can have that privilege.
What awaits my newborn creation? I’m terrified.
Still, no matter what, we must celebrate the process and the effort and the sheer impossibility of another book joining the shelves of the world. Not only my efforts but those of my Tundra team: several editors, Sue Tate, in lead, a designer, Rachel Cooper, and also a publicist Pamela Osti. Join me for the launch of Best Friends Through Eternity, Sunday 2:00 p.m. at one of Canada’s finest book stores, A Different Drummer Books.
by Sylvia McNicoll | Feb 8, 2015 | Sylvia McNicoll
People came! Always a speaker’s first concern but when you initiate and help organize a writing panel, you can lose sleep over it.
Frankly, I panicked when both our local book store A Different Drummer Books and our community paper The Burlington Post thought the event was only for those who submitted blue pencil copy.
Thanks to Joyce Grant for her tweeting efforts. To Royal Botanic Gardens (Burlington) for retweeting. To our panel Jennifer Maruno, Jennifer Mook-sang, Lana Button and Rebecca Bender for Facebooking and tweeting.
To Burlington Public Library for enduring my panicky emails.
To Oriana Marsh, a genuine fan and brilliant writer, for coming and making me remember why I write and why I do public appearances at all. And why we set books locally. “You can’t believe how huge it is when you’re a kid and read a story set in your own town.” I am paraphrasing.
Back to writing now.
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