writers

NorthWords 2016

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2016-Northwords-Postcard-1-e1463278526749 copyThe 11th Annual NorthWords Writers Festival: Breaking the Mold – Identity in Stories will take place in Yellowknife in only three weeks: June 2-5, 2016. I am absolutely thrilled, this year, to be one of the title authors this year, along with Lawrence Hill, Craig Davidson, Shane Turgeon, Teva Harrison, Carol Daniels, Miranda Hill and Shelagh Rogers.

I will be participating in the following events:

Thursday June 2, 2016

Festival Opening and Family BBQ (Baker Centre: 5-6:30 pm)

FLASH: Your 3 Minutes of Fame Open Mike (Top Knight: 8 – 11 pm)

Friday, June 3, 2016

One on One Mentoring: You can book 30 minutes of my time if you want to talk about your writing and/or publishing. There are four time slots available: 10 am; 10:45 am; 3 am; 3:45 am. (Please register at the Yellowknife Book Cellar. Fee: $30)

11th NorthWords Gala Readings (Explorer Hotel, Katimavik Rooms: 8 pm)

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Signings with a Sizzle (Yellowknife Book Cellar: 12 noon-1 pm)

BLUSH: An Evening of Erotica and Sensuality Open Mike (Explorer Hotel, Katimavik Rooms: 8 – 11 pm) 

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Panel Discussion: What unites us –The heroine Explorer Hotel, Katimavik Rooms: 10 – 11:30 am)

For full program, visit: NorthWords

The things to do before writing

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A short time ago, I made a resolution to write a weekly blog post every Friday. Even though I have broken this resolution several times already, this morning I decided to try again. But in between writing sentences, I suddenly felt compelled to do the following:

  • Check Facebook at least five times: once to read yet another tribute to Prince; once to read an article about why a lifelong atheist started to believe in God; three times to just scroll through the Facebook flotsam for anything of interest. (I swear Facebook was invented by the antichrist of Getting Things Done.)
  • Check Amazon and Goodreads to see if there are any new reviews of my novel “Free Love.”
  • Let in the dog. (Not my fault. She was scratching at the door and I couldn’t leave her to freeze in the cold.)
  • Clean behind the stove. (Also not my fault. For some incomprehensible reason, my retired husband, Bill, got the idea, for the first time since we moved into this house four years ago, to pull the stove out from the wall. He found spilled coffee grounds, greasy clumps of dog hair, miscellaneous stains, abandoned almonds, grapes that had petrified into raisons, and more. I couldn’t let him clean it by himself, could I?)

And now it’s lunchtime and I’m only partway through the blog. Then there’s grocery shopping, and walking the dog and … oh well, this all seems to be part of some strange ritual I have to go through every time I break the virginity of the empty page.*

*Wow! Isn’t that last phrase amazing? I’ve completely fallen in love it. When that happens it usually means it’s really bad and my editor would make me get rid of it immediately. However, I do not have a blog editor: hee, hee, hee.