If you’ve had a story (or a book!) published, if you’ve won
or placed in a writing contest, if you’ve gotten yourself an agent, or if you
have any other news, send me an email so I can share your success. As writers,
we’re all in this together, and your good news gives us all a boost.
Email me
at: brianhenry@sympatico.ca
Hello,
Brian.I hope you're keeping
well!
I'm so excited to share
that my debut picture book, Greetings, Floof! won the
2026 Magnolia Book Award — the Children's
Choice Award for the state of Mississippi! I’m so honoured that children in
grades Pre-K – 2 chose the book as their favourite.
You were instrumental in
helping me to get published. Thank you so much for all your help and support
over the years!
Warmly,
Chang
C.J. Hong
Children's Book Author
Greetings, Floof! (Kids Can Press,
2024)
cjhong.com
***
Note: If you’re interested in
writing books for children or teens, don’t miss our Kid
Lit workshop coming up Aug 23
with guest speaker, Patricia Ocampo, senior editor, at Scholastic Books. See
here.
***
Hi, Brian.
I'm looking forward to the
Oct 18 – 22 writing retreat at Sherwood and will start fasting now.
I signed with Three Seas Literary in February and my agent
is Kara G. We are currently getting one of my interactive stories
ready so she can start submitting.
Also, within two weeks of
this, inbetween books offered me a contract to publish my picture book A Monsters Guide to Children. (You helped
me a lot with this). Hoping for a release in late 2027. I
still don't think I've really even processed this yet but definitely want to
thank you for all of your support and feedback to help A Monsters Guide to
Children come to life.
Can't wait for the fall
retreat.
Susan
Wollison
For information about
submitting to 3 Seas Literary Agency, see here.
inbetween
books is
a new children’s publisher, and they’re looking for manuscripts. See more about
them here and, for submitting, see here.
For information about our
fall writing retreat (at Sherwood Inn on Lake Joseph in Muskoka), see here.
Hi, Brian.
I wanted to share that I submitted one of the short
stories I wrote during one of your Creative Writing courses to All Your Stories
and Poems, and it was published in their June 2026 issue of All Your
Stories.
It's a convoluted website (I think it is) but the
webpage with my story in it is this edition here.
It's a simple story and one of my first ever
efforts but pleased to see it in a collection with other authors!
All the Best,
Catherine de Korte
Hi, Brian.
I'm having a wonderful spring and summer for news. As
always, thank you for cheering us on and sharing your knowledge and expertise.
Here's my little update.
Two exciting writing gifts found me in the last
couple of weeks while I have been recovering from surgery.
I received copies of the French version of My
Amazing Race Car Brain. I
am super proud of Mon incroyable cerveau -voiture de course. Thank you, DC Canada Education Publishing, for believing in this project and message.
My TV Pilot, Moosekeg County FM, was #44 in the
Capital Fund Screenplay Competition Hot 100.
I don’t know much about this list, but it says,
“This well-respected list is published and provided to film industry financiers
around the world and includes the top 100 Scripts of the year.”
No one has called and waved wads of cash in my face
for the script, but I did receive an email this morning informing me that I
earned a ten-cent royalty from Draft to Digital for a collaborative novel,
which brings my total to $1.67. Don’t worry, they already took off $0.26 for
tax.
I'm looking forward to your fall classes.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Dianne Koebel-Pede
To see what kind of books a publisher publishes,
always check out their recent catalogue(s). For DC Educational Publishing, see here.
See their submission page here.
See where else your fellow writers are winning accolades or getting short pieces
published here (and scroll down).
See all of my upcoming weekly
writing classes, one-day workshops, and four-day retreats here. ~Brian
Writer to Writer
Hi, Brian.
It was nice to see you at the Muskoka Authors’ Association
Publishing Summit (here)! At the time you asked what everyone was working
on and I'll admit, I held back. Besides the Middle Grade Novel that I'm
doing a final edit on, I had an inspired idea to create a journal in February
and was able to bring my vision to life! I'm self-publishing and had the
prototype completed in June.
A Creative's Journal is unique in that it provides a highlighted section
at the bottom of each page to store inspired ideas until you're ready to work
on them. I journal almost every day and often writing ideas come through and I
would have to stop to look for my "ideas" notebook, or if I didn't,
it was often hard to find those ideas later when I was ready to work on them.
One of the key ideas that came through was to create such a journal.
Here are some key highlights:
- Hard Cover, Black leatherette
- 365 lined pages and several blank pages for
sketching
- Quotes about creativity included throughout.
It's now available for pre-order on my
website: www.catherineleighmccallum.com
This is meant for all types of creatives – from
writers to artists and other professionals. I thank you in advance for
sharing with your readership!
All the best,
Catherine McCallum
https://clmccallum.substack.com/
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