Wearing Another Hat

My primary profession might be 'author,' but it turns out I wind up doing various other things as well. Some of my other jobs, like making video trailers for other writers' books, are really cool/fun/challenging and creative in their own right. Earlier this fall I travelled to the Slocan Valley in the Kootenays to shoot footage to be used to promote Margo Talbot's soon-to-be-released memoir, All That Glitters. Margo was a great sport, putting on her climbing equipment, perching on boulders, and repeating her 'elevator speech' about a gazillion times. The footage (and additional audio) we collected over three days will eventually become a series of video interviews and podcasts. Here's the first one, a video trailer for All That Glitters.


Curious about the Slocan Valley? Check out this book by BC author, Katherine Gordon. 

Venom Nominated for a Chocolate Lily Award!

Well this is quite exciting news! Venom has been nominated for a Chocolate Lily award! This blurb is from the website:

The Chocolate Lily Awards began with a desire to encourage B.C. grade school children to read books by authors and illustrators living in British Columbia. After seven years, Chocolate Lily has grown into a nationally recognized book awards program.

By exposing children to the best of B.C. fiction and introducing them to the creators of these quality books, we hope to ignite a passion for reading that will last a lifetime. 

The Chocolate Lily is a real indigenous flower that grows in woodland areas along the west coast of B.C. but no where else in Canada. 

***

Karen Ehrenholz

Teacher, Founder of Chocolate Lily 

Best of luck to all the nominees and happy reading to all the participants!

Orca Book Launch

Come One, Come All to Tall Tales Books

On Saturday, May 15, Orca will launch three of its spring 2010 titles at Tall Tales Books, a wonderful children’s bookstore in Victoria, BC. Robin Stevenson, Sylvia Olsen and Mike Deas will be on hand to sign copies of their latest books for readers ages 7–12.
In Ben’s Robot by Robin Stevenson, Ben discovers that having a bossy friend isn’t that much fun, even if it is a real walking, talking robot.
Sylvia Olsen’s A Different Game, is the sequel to Murphy and Mousetrap. Murphy and his three friends are nervous about trying out for the soccer team at their new school, but a diagnosis of leukemia proves more challenging than anything they encounter on the field.
Food Fight is the fifth installment in the popular Graphic Guide Adventures series, all written by Liam O’Donnell and illustrated by Mike Deas. In this exciting story, Devin and Nadia stumble upon a conspiracy involving genetically modified food and unscrupulous scientists. (Visit the Food Fight website for resources, games and other fun, free stuff.)
Come meet the authors, get your books signed and watch a drawing demo from artist Mike Deas. Or, just drop by for a snack!
Event details:
Venue: Tall Tales Books, 795 Fort Street, Victoria, BC
Date and time: Saturday, May 15, 3:00PM
Exciting folks you’ll get to meet: Robin Stevenson, Sylvia Olsen, Mike Deas

Paralympic Torch Hand-off

How cool is this? Sascha (my youngest brother) handed off the Paralympic flame to Dani (my daughter) on top of Whistler Mountain on the weekend during the torch relay. The day was glorious - brilliant blue skies, fluffy white clouds, and a fresh sprinkling of powdery snow...

Very cool! We're heading over to Vancouver for the Opening Ceremonies tonight and then back to Whistler on the weekend to cheer on our para athletes in some sure-to-be-thrilling downhill events.

Work on the Go

Work on the go – again. Well, you can take the writer out of her office, but you can’t take the office away from the writer. Thank goodness Dani also lives in a world ruled by deadlines. Here we are enjoying some of Seattle’s great coffee opportunities while diligently working on our latest projects.

Dani is busy putting together the new issue of BAB [link] and I’m hard at work on the latest rewrite of Fallout. When I get tired of that, I switch to another nifty project – working with Diane at Sono Nis Press to update the Sono Nis website.

Ferry terminal, waiting for our ride to Bainbridge Island: \

(snacking on amazing leftovers from our dinner last night at Wild Ginger - FABULOUS restaurant in Seattle...)

We’ve been having a great time in Seattle – more on our destinations in another post – and now find ourselves aboard a ferry bound for Bainbridge Island. Great, roomy tables, perfect for – working!

Upon arriving...

...we sought out a great local coffee shop

so we could... yes... do a bit more work...

Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

I’ve never made a pilgrimage to a place mentioned in a novel – at least, not before our trip to Seattle. Having recently read Jamie Ford's Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet I was curious to visit the area now known as Chinatown/International District. One of the locations featured prominently in the book is the Panama Hotel – in particular, the tea room and the basement where Japanese families about to be shipped off to internment camps stored their personal belongings.

Just like in the book, these possessions were discovered after the old hotel was purchased. The current owner installed a see-through panel in the floor of the tearoom. It’s haunting to look down into the basement to see the stacks of stuff left behind.

Leaving Dani to do a bit of homework in the tea room, I headed off to the Wing Luke Asian Museum. I was particularly interested in seeing a display mentioned in my guidebook – a recreation of one of the horse stalls at the Puyallup Fairgrounds that was converted to living quarters for a displaced Japanese family (again, important in the book). Alas, “Camp Harmony D-4-44” was not rebuilt when the museum moved into new digs in 2008.

The current display case and video of stories told by Japanese Americans who had to endure this dark chapter in US history is moving, but I don’t think it has quite the same impact as seeing the teeny quarters assigned to the families while they waited for the construction of internment camps father inland.

That said, the Wing Luke Asian Museum is excellent and I’m glad I checked it out.

Another pilgrimage I’m glad we made was to the Elliott Bay Bookstore. We were lucky enough to visit this fabulous, meandering, wood-floored, homey and packed-to-the-rafters-with-great-books shop while it was still in its old location. According to the website, this Seattle landmark has to move in order to survive. We could easily have spent the whole day lost in the stacks, but forced ourselves to move on after a respectable amount of time.









Seattle’s love affair with books couldn’t be better highlighted than in the amazing public library.

Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch architect, did a remarkable job on this oh-so-very-cool structure. We had a good wander around inside, checking out things like the in-floor way-finding system (the Dewey Decimal numbers are huge and easy to see), the way the main collection spirals up the core of the building, the incredible kids’ section – the awesome auditorium area. No matter which direction one points a camera, there’s some interesting visual combination of light, sky, angles, and Seattle buildings. Definitely worth a visit!

Rent-a-Pet

Awwww... look who was in our hotel room when we arrived!

Meet Lucia!

The hotel room at the Monaco in Seattle comes complete with a pet! How very cool is that? Provision of a goldfish is part of the hotel's Guppy Love program and is intended to provide guests with "the perfect kind of companionship, relaxed and quiet." True enough - so far Lucia hasn't made a sound.

At Sea - Somewhere Between Here and There

I’m writing this somewhere in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Vancouver Island and Seattle.

It’s pitch dark outside and every now and then the captain of the Clipper swerves, tipping me sideways before we straighten out again. When we were puttering out of the Victoria's Inner Harbour, the captain announced that when we were moving around the cabin (the Clipper is a large, fast catamaran-style passenger ferry) we were to keep one hand for ourselves, and one for the ship. As in, hang on! He explained that the waters around here are full of debris – logs, mostly – and that they do their best to dodge around such obstacles.


We’re moving pretty fast – the trip from Victoria to Seattle takes less than three hours – so my question is, how the heck do they see logs in the pitch dark? Or whales? Or small boats? Or people who may have fallen overboard? Not that over-boarders would last long enough in these chilly waters to be considered obstacles, but still.

Why, you may ask, am I on the Clipper heading for Seattle? A weekend in Seattle with Dani was her Christmas present for me! Such a lovely child, hey? The fact I’m heading off to meet her to have a few days of fun in a cool city (at least, this is what I am told – I can’t quite believe it, but I’ve never actually been to Seattle - driven through many, many times, but have never stopped there before…) is appeasing me slightly. Dani will be meeting me there after having spent the last ten days or so in California. Highlight of her trip? Attending the Grammy Awards!!!!!!! I am, obviously, quite a bit older than she is and yet – I have not been to anything even remotely so glitzy and cool as the Grammys. Grammies. Whatever. If I had been, I would know how to spell it.