#WriteMonday – A Whole Lot of Reading

This week I didn’t do much writing.  Instead I focussed on getting through Walkable City by Jeff Speck because I wanted to review it today on Sustainably North.  I’ve planned a few posts for that blog about transit and I wanted to be able to point to Speck’s book for those posts.

Oh, I also wrote a short article for next month’s The Walleye on the upcoming Toronto International Festival of Authors Lit on Tour event that will be happening here in Thunder Bay.

So this week I’m hoping to get those Sustainably North posts about transit written and posted.  I’m also hoping to edit the short story I wrote earlier this summer (and in a perfect world, submit it to a market!) We’ll see how it all goes. 🙂

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#WriteFriday – June 5th

So yesterday got a bit messed up.  My plan was to write all afternoon, then head out during the evening to visit with family.  Unfortunately I got called in to work during the afternoon, which left very little time for writing.

Luckily at work I have a few writing projects on the go.  I’ve got an @ Your Library article due for the end of the month, so I managed to do some work on a first draft of that yesterday.  I’m also going to be posting the seventeenth author interview on TBPL Off the Shelf next week, so I need to finish that up.  I did manage to do some work on that both on Thursday and today.  Hopefully I’ll get both of those projects done soon!  It helps that I’m working everyday until Tuesday; with luck I’ll have more time to work on both of those, as well as author interview number eighteen!

On the more personal note, just before I went to bed last night, I did some work on my NaNoWriMo 2012 novel.  I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to work on that, but I’m glad I did.  I ended up spending about a half hour or an hour coming up with better names for a few characters.  At the end of the night, I was quite happy with what I had.

I’m not sure how much time I’m going to have during this coming weekend for writing either, but hopefully I’ll have a bit more time (and can get back to my StoryNexus game!)

Article #25!

This weekend, my 25th article was published!  It’s my 24th @ Your Library Article (formerly Library Detective) article.  Back in January, the library changed both the name of the newspaper column and its function: rather than just writing about whatever we want to, each month, where possible, there should be one article on a library collection, one on a service, one on a program or event, and one on a patron’s feedback.

For this article, I decided to write about TBPL‘s partnership with Ohm Base, a local hackerspace which was losing its space.  I was actually hanging out with friends who are part of Ohm Base when they were talking about losing their space; this was around the same time that the library was beginning to look for partnerships with local organizations, so the timing ended up perfect for everyone!  Over half a year later, the makerspace is open but still a work in progress.  Ohm Base ran their first program at the end of April, so now seemed like an excellent time to talk about them for @ Your Library.

Now, typically I’ve been writing @ Your Library articles like an essay, using the structure of “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.”  That works really well when talking about books, like I’ve normally been doing.  Or when highlighting TBPL Off the Shelf (my 23rd article, which was the first one I wrote when we switched to @ Your Library) and our  March Break programs (my 24th article).  But for this article, I wanted to do something differently: I wanted to write it as a legitimate newspaper article, complete with quotes from the people who are setting everything up.  To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has done this in the column, so I thought that was really cool (although it’s not the first time I’ve tried something new in the column – I failed to write about it here, but I’m also the first one to publish an article in two parts.)

So if you have a chance, give my “makerspace” article a read (and let me know how well I did, writing it using the newspaper article format!)

The Origins of Santa Claus

My 21st Library Detective article was published last Sunday.  Because Christmas is coming, I decided to write about the origins of Santa Claus.  I was originally hoping to write about Krampus, but wasn’t able to find enough material on him.  But not to worry: I wrote a book review on Brom’s book Krampus: the Yule Lord, which will hopefully be in this Sunday’s paper!

My 20th Library Detective Article

Two weeks ago, my 20th Library Detective article was published in the Chronicle Journal!  To mark the occasion and to highlight the library’s blog, I decided to write about the author interviews I have been doing for the last nine months.  Because that topic gave me a lot to talk about, I ended up focussing on the books all the authors I’ve talked to recommended.

If you’re interested in reading it, you can find the article here.

Another Article Published

Today my 19th Library Detective article was published in the Chronicle Journal (my local newspaper). While this is may be my 19th Library Detective article, it’s also my 20th published article (not counting book reviews)!

This time I wrote about all the books and eBooks on game design the Thunder Bay Public Library has available. If you don’t have access to the Chronicle Journal but would still like to read it, you can find it here.

Since I haven’t really blogged about them all, I should also mention that there are links to my other Library Detective articles here. I’ve written about a diverse range of topics since “A Renewed Interest in Archery,” including zombies, procrastination, screenwriting, and the Tudors (which ended up the library’s first and only two-part article).

A Long Overdue Update

It’s been over a month since I’ve posted here.  And what a month it’s been!  The most exciting part of this last month (for me anyway), was Tink.  Tink was my aunt and uncle’s cat; they’re moving out of town and can’t take him with them.  So we’ve taken him in.  When they first got him, my then five-year-old cousin named him “Tinkerbell” because she thought he was a girl.  That got shortened to Tink once her family realized he was a boy.  My cat, Sasha, still isn’t very happy with this, but we’ve seen marked improvement over the last month (originally she would be hissing and growling when he was within about seven feet of her.  Now it seems to be about three, and she doesn’t hiss and growl the entire time).  They’re separated at night and whenever someone isn’t around (Tink stays with me all night).  He’s an incredibly laid back cat and I love having him around.

In other news, I did not make the short list for The Realm Crowd Sourced Story Contest.  But congratulations to those who did (and to the winner).  My friend, Leanne C. Taylor-Giles, was someone who did make the short list; you can read her awesome entry here.

I’ve also had two book reviews published in my local paper, the Chronicle Journal.  The first one was on June 9th, about The Last Unicorn graphic novel.  The second one was today, about Kevin Hearne’s book Hexed.  Neither one is available online at the moment (the Chronicle Journal hasn’t updated their book reviews on their website since early May), but I will post the links once I have them.  Most likely that will be when the reviews appear on TBPL Off the Shelf, whenever that may be.

Speaking of Kevin Hearne, I also interviewed him for TBPL Off the Shelf.  We talked about all things Iron Druid, including a bit about his new book, Shattered, which comes out this week.  The interview went live on June 11th; you can find it here.

On the personal writing front, I’ve done a little bit more worldbuilding.  I realized that Imezza wasn’t quite as ready to go as I thought it was, so I went back to that a little bit.  It’s still by no means done, but I was able to fix a couple of spots that needed fixing.  I think it’s now at a point where I can write some short stories, but that’s what I said last time, so we’ll see once I sit down with it.  I’ve also spent some time working on a second world.  It’s really shaping up in my mind, but right now I’m grappling with a few issues, so more on that once I’ve got them sorted out!

Finally, it was my birthday the other day.  I had a really great time going out for dinner then playing Rock Band with friends.

All in all, this has been a busy but fun month!  🙂

“A Renewed Interest in Archery”

Today my eighth Library Detective article was published in the Chronicle Journal. With the popularity of Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games, I thought that exploring archery would make an interesting topic. I’d heard that the books have inspired many people (particularly younger girls) to give the sport a try, so I tried to highlight some of the library’s resources for experts and beginners alike.

If you’re interested in giving my article a read you can find it here on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s Library Detective Blog.

“Spring Photography”

My seventh Library Detective column was published today in the Chronicle Journal under the title “Picture-perfect photography books.” This time I decided to talk about my photography hobby, linking photography with spring because there are so many amazing things to photograph this time of year. But while I was writing that article we had a large snowstorm, making spring seem much further away than it really is; that prompted me to open with the line “The signs are everywhere: the lakes and rivers are melting, the trees are sprouting leaves and we know the flowers are eventually going to bloom.” While we still don’t have any flowers blooming, the large snow fall has pretty much disappeared so I know blooms are immanent!

If you’re interested in giving my article a read, you can find it here on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s Library Detective blog.

“National Hat Day”

Yesterday my sixth Library Detective Article was published in the Chronicle Journal. This time around I wrote about National Hat Day. While I was looking for a topic, I consulted a list of rather crazy national holidays. Finding that January was National Hat Day, I decided to run with it. I consulted a friend in the Reference department, and he couldn’t find it listed on any official lists of holidays. But rather than scrap the idea altogether, I decided to run with it as an unofficial holiday. From knitting, nonfiction and fiction, there are quite a few books on hats to choose from, which helped make this column a lot of fun to write. If you’re interested in giving it a read, you can find it here on the Thunder Bay Public Library’s Library Detective blog.