We’d rather be writing still I think most readers would be surprised how often an author must stop to research things even for fiction. It ruins the right brain flow if we’re not absolutely sure about say, how a school might evacuate during a bomb threat. Â In the baby steps of my new mystery novel for middle aged readers, my brain froze at exactly this dilemma. Â I visited the Halton Police website and saw a phone number. Â
No I didn’t want to call and talk to anyone. Â Reluctantly I dialled Sergeant Glen of the bomb squad. Â I hate having to talk out an infant plot with someone I don’t know. Â So much rides on their cooperation and I can’t even promise if or when the story will be published, never mind a thank you in the acknowledgement or a free copy of the novel.
But this was a great phone call. Things I didn’t know:  how often kids prank call these threats during exam time.  Really?  Isn’t it easier just to study and take the test?  How much time is involved in investigating a suspicious package:  six hours minimally.  And it’s not all Die Hard Hollywood with a timer ticking.  Digital bombs don’t tick or have a visual timing device.  Sometimes they’re detonated by movement, light or a cell phone call.
Sergeant Glen immediately invited me to come down and see their equipment. Â Honestly, there was no need for me to do this, at least not for the plot of my book as it stood. Â Still. Â It would be cool.
I saw the squad’s blank white trailer (people get nervous if the bomb squad shows up in a labelled vehicle), looked at their safety suits and of course, took a photo of their detonating robot. Â See below.
Sometimes research makes a plot twist. Â I knew when I saw their detonating robot, it would need to crawl across my page. Â And yet they don’t even have a name for this $350,000 technological miracle.
We competed against Toronto’s best and brightest young readers and we didn’t lose. Â Oh sure, you think authors should score high on a quiz about books. Â What about a quiz on cartoons, cats, finance, flowers, prisons and prisoners, body parts, and beasts in books? Â
My fellow authors on the Write Stuff team, Bill Swan (Fourteen and Sentenced to Death: The Story of Steven Truscott), Wesley King (The Vindico) and Michael Betcherman (Breakaway) felt the same as I, Â as much as we love reading and writing, we’re fairly self absorbed and have no great retention for titles, characters and details in other peoples’ books.
We thought we would be scalded.
But we came in third(ish) in a regional heat–we were tie with another team. We should have boned up on our Harry Potter trivia. I did not know the name of Harry’s Aunt, she was in the flower category, hint, hint. I’l confess too I had difficulty understanding the KLQ creator and host, Wayne Mills, from New Zealand. What is the name of the Amazonian super hero? Â The word Amazonian in Aussie speak had many of us baffled. Â Answer: Â Wonder Woman.
To what do we owe our supreme not-failure: brilliant teamwork and good qualified guessing. Â
I know you probably want to know the winner. Â Here’s where self absorption and bad memory come into play. Â Let me just say that all the kids were winners because they love books so much.
Friday, February 1, 2013, Â CANSCAIP authors and illustrators celebrated their new creations with their favourite people, librarians. Â Who likes books better? Â As usual I cruised the aisles as did fellow volunteers Lena Coakley (author of Witchlanders) and Allison Bourda, Mabels’ Fabels bookseller extraordinaire, delivering handouts and the word about this Gong Show for writers and illustrators. Â They have four minutes to deliver the essence of a creation that took them years to write and perhaps illustrate.
How do we lure our librarian friends? Â “Free books! Â Anyone interested in FREE BOOKS!” Â
Then we raffled off FREE BOOKS and a cow and pig display from Werner Zimmerman’s new and old Farmer Joe Scholastic reading series. Â Energy, enthusiasm, fun! Thank you CANSCAIP launchers and OLA, especially Liz Kerr!
Multi-media, I love the sound of that word. As writers, our chosen media is usually print but Ontario Library Association wanted to produce some 15 second radio commercials to publicize the fantastic Forest of Reading Program. Because my novel crush. candy. corpse is up for the Red Maple which means grade seven and eights read and vote on it, I was privileged to be able to read a one page script for this commercial. Lisa Morales at Skyword Studio in Markham was my producer.
The first thing we noticed and I should have realized from my year of screen/script writing classes, is that one page of double spaced 14 font text is too long. It took me 40 seconds to read at a normal speed. In screen writing, one page equals one minute.
I offered to edit/cut the script on site, so that I wouldn’t have to drive back from Burlington to Markham, and then we conferred with Meredith Tutching to see which words absolutely needed to stay.
And then I read out loud, again and again as Meredith and Lisa timed. The neat thing is you can see your voice register on the computer screen. I should have taken a photo. There are mountains of colour showing inclines in your pitch, and valleys when it goes down. When you pause there are white gaps.
In order to get the message down to 17 seconds, Lisa deleted all the white gaps. One of her pieces of advice, “Smile when you talk into the microphone, the listener can hear it in your voice.”
The difference was amazing. You may be lucky enough to be in the car at the right time and place to hear this brief quip about the Ontario Library Association (OLA)’s amazing program that gets hundreds of thousands of kids across
But probably not. So here’s the gist. Visit the OLA website at accessola.com Register yourself and/or a bunch of your friends in your own Forest of Reading club. Read the list of age appropriate books, yes there’s one for adults,too, and vote. Then order tickets to the Festival of Trees in May and you can meet the amazing authors.
My daughter, Jennifer Filipowicz, a science fiction writer herself, introduced me to a new media form: blogging. Here Jennifer interviews me about crush.candy.corpse, writing and life in general. If you’d like to know more about her writing life visit her website jmfilipowicz.com
We’re all obsessed, writers. We look for book reviews and count the stars and worry about the comments and why someone can seemingly love everything about a story and then just give it 2.5 stars. As though the reviewer has a very limited budget of stars in their pocket that he/she must ration and parcel out miserly.
Enter the internet. No longer does a seasoned review writer sprinkle the star dust. Now we must endure the ravings of (say) the disgruntled student who must read the book for a novel study. In fact this year a library student in the thick of exams felt compelled to open a book reviewing blog in which she reviewed nothing else but crush. candy. corpse. She didn’t have time to read the whole book, what with a
thesis due and job applications, but still she launched a new blog specifically to diss the first chapter which admittedly she skimmed. In it she accused the author, me, of being lazy. Really.
I know what my reaction should be. Note the photo of my Jackapoo.
I wonder if the ranting reviewers understand that a disgruntled author could potentially track them down and tp their house. Or worse. I know, I know, writers should just ignore reviews and write from the heart.
Unfortunately another writer showed me a website called Bookmanager which shows sales rankings. A new form of self flagellation. Chapters/Indigo lists which stores carry my books and how many. Book by book I could follow how they sell and where. Googling can show me which libraries stock it. Couple that with the news that a potential publisher for my newest work is looking at
sales to determine whether they will make an offer and probably what that offer will be as though the past is a reliable predictor of the future. This next novel may prove my blockbuster. Or not.
The challenge for us perhaps is to step away from the Internet and remember our own inner sense of worth. Excuse me, I’m going to shut down now and go write something amazing.
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