I was a horse nut as a child.
No doubt about it. I ate, slept and dreamt horses. I remember a junior school teacher asking me once if I might consider broadening my topics to complete a book report, story or project on anything other than the horse. I thought he was crazy. At the time, I took his comment as a personal slight, but looking back, he was probably just bored.
Do you remember those Participation videos; the ones with Hal Johnson and Joanne Macleod, sweating it up in their tights, encouraging us couch potato television viewers to get up and get going? As a little girl, my dream, my goal for participation, was to be able to catch my own pony and saddle it up all by myself and the day I achieved this feat brought me immense pride. Read more
Life has certainly thrown us some hefty curve balls recently. We all have our stories about the misadventures, COVID-19 realities, home school nightmares, and working from home challenges on top of all our regular daily stressors.
How do you take an eight by ten foot room above an unheated garage, still holding the remnants of a boy growing into a young man, and turn it into a writing oasis? With spider webs, discarded nerf bullets, spilled chocolate milk curdled into the hardwood and holes punched in the dry wall from baseballs, hockey sticks and frustrated elbow jabs, this room was far from my imagined writer’s nook.
Before Covid-19 hit, one of my favourite writing spots was the local café. I loved seeing friends and neighbours, watching people chat and order their coffee, while I wrote. I have this unique skill, this ability to ignore everything around me and get fully engrossed in my own made up world. I took pride that some of my scenes were so engaging, I could disregard the rest of the world and fully immerse myself. I remember these times fondly.
Everyone’s path to publication is different. We’ve all seen the success stories–author’s publication tales–tweeted out to the world, where an author shares their journey to publication. I like to think of it as the