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Monday, March 31, 2014

Love letters ~ Where your fellow writers are getting published

Hi, Brian.
The review I sent you for The Cassandra Project has been accepted by Quantum Fairy Tales, to be published as a guest blog.
Best,
Brandon Crilly
     For information about submitting to Quantum Fairy Tales, see here.

Hi, Brian.
As I mentioned in the class, I got to be a guest writer for a blog in New Brunswick. Check it out. They posted Chapter 1 of The King of Swords, my first novel, here.
In the meantime racking up rejection letters. Yay!
Cheers,
Connie Cook

Hi, Brian.
Thanks to the Wednesday Afternoon Intensive class, who critiqued a story of mine so beautifully – they saw it under the title "Woman without a past" – I was able to tweak and massage my work before I submitted it to the Burlington Public Library Short Story Contest in November 2013.
The story tied for third place!
So thanks to you as well, for facilitating many wonderful critiquing sessions, for bringing so many great writerly types together to help each other, and for adding in your own wisdom. Lovin' the classes!
Mary
     For information about classes starting in April, see here.

Brian,
Unbelievable!  CommuterLit has accepted one of my stories. This is the piece I started as an exercise at the Bestseller workshop on Saturday..  Woohoo!!!
Dave
     Read Dave’s story, “The Pitch,” here.

Hi, Brian.
 I have a story on CommuterLit. It’s the one I wrote in your workshop with Kelley Armstrong.
See you in class on Thursday, 
Hannah McKinnon
Read Hannah’s story, “The Jacket,” here. See her bio and links to all the stories she’s published on CommuerLit here. For information about submitting to CommuterLit, see here.

Writer to Writer:
Hi, Brian.
I am looking for a writer's group in Hamilton to meet once a month and share work, offer feedback, and provide encouragement.  Can you share my email, mich720@gmail.com, with others who may be looking for the same thing?
Thanks!
Michelle

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Barrie, Brampton, Bolton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Collingwood, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Stouffville, Sudbury, Toronto, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Blood: The Stuff of Life by Lawrence Hill, reviewed by Sally Wylie

House of Anansi Press, 384 pages, $19.95 paperback or $16.95 e-book, available hereFor information about submitting to House of Anansi,  see here.

Blood: the Stuff of life was written as a series of essays for the CBC Massey Lectures by Lawrence Hill. Hill’s essays describe ways that blood seeps into virtually all aspects of life:  religion, science, literature, politics, art, biology and history. From a social and historic point of view, blood unites and divides us all.

From blood transfusions to blood groups, HIV/AIDS to diabetes, Hill follows the trail of blood through history. For example, although the term blood quantum does not appear in the Indian Act (Canada), it does influence the ways in which the 614 First Nations consider membership. Hill explains how the Supreme Court rejected the concept of blood quantum of the Metis, and referred instead to the heritage of native peoples.

This particular section regarding blood quantum was informative, considering the variation of legislation from 1939 to 2001 regarding identities of Inuit and “Indians”.  Add to that the federal vs. provincial laws and understandings, and you’ve got the kind of blood mystery that Hill loves. He realizes that “blood” is more than identification; it can mean rights under treaties, getting housing, and other resources.

Most fascinating was his treatment of the language of blood; such as, “bad blood,” “bleeding hearts” and “blood brothers.” He gives us bloody good examples of pioneers in the research of blood such as Iganz Semmelweis whose 19th century studies caused him to be ostracized for his work, and then, in an ironic twist, died of blood poisoning.

But Hill is at his best when he describes his personal experiences such as in his opening anecdote of Hill as a boy watching his blood drip on the sidewalk.  “Looking back, I wonder about the mad impulse to hold out my arm and splash every sidewalk panel.”

Most readers can identify. From blood’s proof of his existence as a boy to his later understandings of blood’s profound impact on every part of his life, Hill pulls us in every time when he writes about his fascination with the stuff of life. 

Two stories seemed of particularly importance to him.  One story occurred in Niger in 1979 when, as a volunteer, he contracted gastroenteritis so severe that he needed a blood transfusion.  He describes well the process of his concern over whose blood he was receiving only to realize that it didn’t really matter if it was African or European. Blood would not make him someone else. Blood saved him.

The other story concerns blood as it relates to family. In many of his books, including the novel The Book of Negroes, blood is central to family.  Blood is used interchangeably with race or identity, blood lines or blood lineage.  Remarrying and acquiring stepchildren forced Hill to think about the meaning of family.

This topic which he explored fully should be essential reading for all families who have step-children, step-parents or adopted children. Hill worked out to his satisfaction the meaning of blood in his life. Perhaps we can acquire some degree of his heightened awareness of what it means to have blood and be blood.  We can learn from him.

When reading this book late at night, it is Hill’s personal stories which resonate far more than the collection of historical facts, conjectures and essay topics. Although thought provoking, the inclusive list of exhaustive subjects which relate to blood begins to coagulate.  Perhaps it is the kind of book which you read, reread another day, then puts away until it summons you again to explore those life blood issues.

Sally Wylie has recently retired from her career in Early Childhood Education.  In 2012, she co-authored her 4th edition of the text titled Observing Young Children: Transforming early learning through reflective practice with Nelson Publishing.  She has published numerous articles in Canadian Journals on subjects relating to early childhood.  She is happy to finally be writing fiction and be part of a writing circle!

P.S. For the past three years Canada Writes has put on a public writing challenge around the subject of that particular year’s Massey Lecture. In 2013, what resulted was a publically submitted collection to Canada Writes of Canadian stories about family trees called Bloodlines.

Sally Wylie’s Bloodlines piece, “Trapping Furs.” can be read here; Mary Steer’s piece, “Family Tree” can be read here; Val Cureton’s piece, “Born British” can be read here; and Bieke Steongos’s piece, “The Church Keys,” can be read here.

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Barrie, Brampton, Bolton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Collingwood, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Stouffville, Sudbury, Toronto, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Writing with Style workshop, Saturday, July 12, in Collingwood

“Writing with Style” 
~ A creativity workout ~
Saturday, July 12, 2014
1:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Collingwood Public Library, 
55 Ste. Marie Street, Collingwood, Ontario (Map here)

If you do any kind of creative writing, fiction or nonfiction, this workshop is for you. We’ll tackle the nitty-gritty of putting words on paper in a way that will grip the reader’s imagination. 

You'll learn how to avoid common errors that drain the life from your prose. And you'll discover how to make your writing more vivid, more elegant and more powerful.

Workshop leader Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada’s most popular blog for writers, teaches creative writing at Ryerson University and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Sarnia to Charlottetown. But his proudest boast is that he has helped many of his students get their first book published and launch their careers as authors.

Fee: 34.51 + 13% hst = 39 paid in advance by mail or Interac
or 37017 + 13% hst = 
42 if you wait to pay at the door

To reserve a spot now, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca

See Brian’ full schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Barrie, Brampton, Bolton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Collingwood, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Stouffville, Sudbury, Toronto, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.


Friday, March 28, 2014

CommuterLit seeks submissions for anthology and for daily publication, Bastion pays for science fiction, and Black Heart wants short fiction

CommuterLit seeks submissions for its new print anthology. The theme is “Arrivals and Departures.” Let your imaginations roam. “We’re looking for poetry, stories and memoir with a maximum length of 2,500 words.”
 Authors whose work is accepted for the anthology will be compensated via a cut from the sales. Submit through the regular CommuterLit General Submission channel; but mention in your letter you are submitting for the print anthology: here.
Deadline: April 21, 2014. More here.
CommuterLit also continues to accept submissions for daily on-line publication. They accept short stories, novel excerpts and poetry (one poem or a series of poems), in any genre, with a word count of 500 to 4,000. On occasion CommuterLit will run stories and excerpts up to 12,000 words in length, serializing the story and running it over a number of days. 
Submit here. Full submission guidelines here

Bastion is a new science fiction magazine publishing digitally on the first of every month. With the first issue coming out April 1, 2014. Each issue will contain 8 to 10 original short stories. Our yearly anthology will be available in both digital and print formats in early December.
Payment: $20 for the first 2,000 words then $0.01 for each word thereafter, up to a maximum of $50 per story.
Submissions: Bastion seeks great science fiction. How you choose to meet this requirement is up to you. Consider that science fiction is merely a backdrop from which outstanding stories are written. Horror, detective, and thrillers are all acceptable as long as there's some element of science fiction present (no romance or erotica). No serials, fan fiction, or anything unoriginal, please. Your story should stand on its own.
Length: 1,000 to 5,000 words. 
Deadline: Ongoing. Full submission guidelines here.

Independent online journal Black Heart Magazine (U.S) seeks short fiction for its weekday (M-F) publication cycle. Length: 1,500 words max. All genres accepted, with a literary angle preferred. Appreciates short-form modern literature, from pulp to literary fiction and everything in-between.
Deadline: Ongoing. Guidelines here. 

See Brian Henry's schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Barrie, Brampton, Bolton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Stouffville, Sudbury, Toronto, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.


Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Literary agent Caitlen Rubino-Bradway seeks middle grade and YA fiction, Lauren Galit seeks nonfiction

The LKG Agency
465 West End Avenue 2A
New York, NY 10024
http://lkgagency.com/ 

Caitlen Rubino-Bradway joined the LKG Agency in 2008. Before that she was with Don Congdon Associates literary agency. She is now beginning to build her own list and is actively looking for new authors.

 “I personally am looking for middle grade and young adult fiction,” says Caitlen. “Please, no picture books or early chapter books.  And please, no dystopian futures (it’s not really my thing), a lot of violence (also not my thing), or books written in the present tense.  (Wow, I just described The Hunger Games, didn’t I?)  Please, no zombies. 

“Vampires, werewolves, witches and wizards, angels and demons, the Greek Pantheon, Thor and Loki and Fenrir, superheroes, aliens, super-powered aliens — all good.  But zombies give me nightmares.

“Please do send fantasy, whether it be like Harry Potter and Sarah Prineas’ Winterling trilogy (contemporary fantasy about modern kids!); or Stephanie Burgis’ Kat, Incorrigible series, and Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer’s Sorcery and Cecelia (historic fantasy re-writes with both humor and heart!); or Kristen Cashore’s Graceling, Jessica Day George’s Princess of the Midnight Ball, and Erin Bow’s devastating Plain Kate (traditional fantasy!  With horses!).  And, why, yes, I am listing some of my favorite books on purpose, on the chance that you have read these and your book compares favorably to one of them.

“On a related note, please do send sci-fi, which I also love, having grown up on Star Trek: TNG.  Anne Osterlund’s Academy 7 will forever hold a place in my heart because it is a futuristic sci-fi with spaceships and lasers, but it also has a boarding school!  (I love books with boarding schools.)  Ah, that reminds me: please do send things with boarding schools.
Please, please, please send fairy tale re-tellings.  Please.

“In my spare time, I am an author in my own right (or is that write?).  My first book, Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, which I co-wrote with my mother, was released by Crown in 2009.  We also contributed to Jane Austen Made Me Do It, published by Ballantine in 2011.  My first middle grade novel, Ordinary Magic, was published by Bloomsbury Children’s in 2012.”

Query Caitlen at: CRubinoBradway@lkgagency.com

Lauren Galit, the lead agent at LKG is also looking for authors. She represents only nonfiction and specializes in women’s focused how-to, such as parenting, lifestyle, health & nutrition, and beauty.

“More than anything else, The LKG Agency is looking for books that pique our interest,” says Lauren. “Truly original memoirs with something to share, how-to with a new and interesting take on a subject, writers with a strong voice that carries the reader along.”

Query Lauren at: query@lkgagency.com
Please make sure to mention any publicity you have at your disposal.
Full submission guidelines here.

Olga Filina of  The Rights Factory
Brian Henry will lead “How to Get Published” in Guelph on April 12 with literary agent Sam Hiyate (see here), in London on April 19 with literary agent Olga Filina (see here), in Stouffville on May 24 with literary agent Carly Watters (see here) and in Ottawa on June 22 with literary agent Maria Vicente (see here).

And Brian will lead a "Writing for Children & for Young Adults" workshop on May 31 in Burlington (see here).

But the best way to get your manuscript ready for publication is with a weekly course. Note this new course: “Intermediate Creative Writing" on Wednesday evenings in Burlington (see here) and check out the details of all course starting in March and April here.

To register or for more details of any course or workshop, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca

See Brian's full schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Barrie, Brampton, Bolton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Stouffville, Sudbury, Toronto, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.


Monday, March 24, 2014

Procrastination....


And now it’s time to get back to work. Honest…

P.S. I’m offering a “How to Make Yourself Write” workshop in Kingston on June 21. Check it out here.

See my full schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Barrie, Brampton, Bolton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Stouffville, Sudbury, Toronto, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.


Saturday, March 22, 2014

Excerpt from Tears of a Painter, a novel in progress by Ingrid Haring-Mendes


My father had a dusty white pick-up for work, which he sometimes took me in to the construction site.  While he spoke to the foreman, I wandered through the stacks of steel rebars.  At the beams, I balanced, one white trainer in front of the other, hopping onto the next and then the next, in whichever shape they lay.  The challenge was not to step off the beam.  The ground beneath was a sea of poisonous water.  
Also, the site was an ideal place to find stones.  I searched out the smoothest, flattest ones from the large piles, rubbed them in my palm and dropped them into my little shorts pocket for hop-scotching on our verandah later on.  I would play against myself, favouring one stone then the other.  
One afternoon at the site, from my place on the top of one of the sand mounds, I saw a Land Rover arrive with a boy in the front seat.  His father stepped out and disappeared off somewhere to talk to my father, but the boy stayed sitting with his arm resting on the open window sill.  I stepped, sideways two skips at a time, grains seeping into my runners, down the mound.
“I’m Anna,” I said up through his window.  I tucked my thumbs into my pockets.
He bucked his head.  “What were you doing on the sand heap over there?”
“Climbing.  I might be a mountain climber when I grow up.  Do you want to come and try?”
He opened the door and stepped down.  He was taller than me.  He ran his hand through his hair – he had curls almost the same shade as the pale rusty sand mound. 
“Race you,” he called and sprinted off.
It took me only a second and I was after him.  Of course he arrived at the peak first.  I didn’t care.  I hailed from the top as loud as my lungs would allow.  “Daddy, look at us!”
The boy was Mark; his father owned the godown, his grandfather the whole coffee estate in the highlands around Mount Kenya.  He lived with his parents on the South Coast, across the ferry, past the shanty houses with tin roofs in Likoni, past the turn offs to big beach hotels where Europeans came to holiday, in a forest of coconut trees, by a broad stretch of white powder sand.
Our families grew close in a short time, and soon my mother, my father and I were spending the weekends at Mark’s house.  I learned how to swim in the spot of Indian Ocean in front of their garden.  Mark and my father taught me – from my father to Mark, from Mark to my father, I paddled, clinging to each one.  Back and forth, until I could move like a fish.  Above and under water.
Mark taught me how to sword fight with sticks we found in the garden.  He showed me the right stance from which to jut forward and attack, the right angle to raise my arm in defence.  
We dug giant holes on the beach, connecting each one with a tunnel that eventually lead down to the water so we could watch the surf erode our underground city.  
Under the sun, after a long afternoon, the copper streaks in Mark’s hair muted to a soft gold.  The freckles under his tan would spread wide over his nose and across his cheeks.  Sometimes we stayed inside and lay on our stomachs on the bedroom’s cool concrete floor and invented worlds with his collection of Playmobile figures. 
Our favourite business though, was playing Vasco da Gama, the first European explorer to reach Mombasa.  In the afternoons, while the parents sat in the sitting room under the ceiling fan with their ice-drenched gin tonics, to escape the heat, Mark and I snuck to the other side of the fence, to the abandoned plot next door.  
We trekked, swords in hand, through weeds that reached our knees.  The doors to the broken down house were locked, but we fashioned its dilapidated verandah into our ship.  Many times, by mistake, I stepped on one of the thick black thorns that grew from creepers along the edges of the beach, and Mark pulled it from my heel.  When a branch scratched my knee, he blew the dirt from the gash.  “You alright?” he asked.  I nodded and on we went. 
But one day, I was seven years old, Mark was inside doing schoolwork and I was playing with my father on the beach.  
My father was swirling me in the air.  With a swish, he swung me high, and held me flat like a plank above his head.  He swooped me this way and that, while he jogged along the water’s edge, so I could pretend I was a bird.
“Faster, Daddy, faster!  You have to create a wind, to lift my wings.”
“You’re asking the impossible.” He laughed out.  “It’s the middle of the day.”
“Try.  Just try, Daddy.”
He picked up speed, and I became a seagull, gliding through the spotless sky.  The sticky air flattened my face, fluttered my eyelashes.  Torrents of giggles spurted from my mouth, I couldn’t stop them.  
“I have to pee, Daddy,” I screamed between peals.  “Stop! I have to pee.”
With an easy whoosh, he landed me onto the warm powder sand.
“Stay here,” I said.  “I’ll be back in a second.”  
“You’re not going to run all the way up to the house, are you?”
“I have to, right away, or I’ll pee in my swimsuit.”
“You can go in the water.”  He winked at me. 
“That’s gross.”
“Try it, fish do it all the time.  And you don’t have to worry, the sea washes away everything.”
“Fish do it all the time?”
“Of course.  They don’t have toilets in the ocean, do they?  They have to pee in the water.”
“And jellyfish and the crabs too?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, I’ll be a crab.”  I scuttled sideways into the sea, with my arms and legs bent, until the ripples reached my shoulders, and I was treading water.  
When I came back out, my father and I decided to bury ourselves in the sand.  So we started to dig the holes.  My back was to the sea, and I was facing the garden, burrowing away like a frenzied dog.  I happened to look up, and there was Mark, sprinting across the lawn.  I jumped to my tip toes, lifted my hands to my mouth and yelled as loud as I could.
“Mark, we’re over here.  Come bury yourself with us.”
He zipped on as though he hadn’t heard.  All the way to the edge of the yard, where the bougainvillea fence with its five hundred magenta blooms separated this garden from the next.  
“I think he’s gone to the Baobab,” I said to my father.  “I’m going to go and get him.”  
And away I skipped along the beach until I was standing under the huge, old Baobab.  
The tree reminded me of an elephant.  It was a pinky grey, and probably the oldest and fattest of all the trees in the world.  It had no leaves at the moment, because we were in the middle of the dry season, when the Baobab loses its foliage and looks like a ghost tree.  But its branches were made for adventure: intricate, wide and hundred-fold.  I couldn’t wait to be old enough to climb them.  
The smooth trunk of this particular Baobab divided at the root, just where it left the ground, and grew up in three parts; Mark and I often stepped into the centre, leaned against one division and propped our feet up against another.  And we’d sit inside the centre of the tree.  We played there often, competing with the ants, who were also quite fond of the middle of the old Baobab.  
Some of the branches stretched all the way out over the sand.  A few times the tide had come up so high that when Mark jumped down from the lowest branch he landed in the surf.
His parents had left a wooden ladder leaning against the trunk for him to get to the lowest branches, and by the time I reached the tree now, Mark was already stepping off the top rung onto the first one.  I wasn’t allowed on the ladder or up on any of the branches.  But as I stood with my neck craned upwards, looking at him, an idea burst into my head.   
I had been dying to climb the way Mark did.  Every time I saw his legs dangling off that first branch or his arms gripping the one above, pulling himself up to sit even higher in the tree, my body itched to do the same and I imagined it was me doing all those things.  But now – now I was going to do it.  I was going to go all the way up. 
Ingrid Haring-Mendes has just completed her first novel, Tears of a Painter, a story set against the backdrop of East Africa.  When she isn't writing you can find her behind her camera or constructing elaborate Lego structures with her two boys.
See Brian Henry's schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Barrie, Brampton, Bolton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Stouffville, Sudbury, Thessalon, Toronto, Algoma, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.