Marsha Skrypuch tagged me in a post and here's my response to her questions about the

Next Big Thing I'm working on.  Check out her blog for her next project. That woman is

amazing. PLUS - she has links to other authors' works-in-progress that sound very interesting!

What is the working title of your book?

Morton Magic

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A twelve-year-old girl goes camping with her boring family and has a

ghostly adventure.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

There’s a place on Lake Winnipeg, near Gimli, that our family liked to visit called Camp Morton.  Back in the 1930s it was a children’s camp and some of the original buildings still stand. So all I had to do was use my imagination, like the protagonist of the story, and the ghost was ready and willing to share. I’m not sure if it works, (my writer insecurity is on high), but I did have a lot of fun imagining this ghostly tale.

What genre does your book fall under?

Middle grade contemporary mystery

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Tough question.  I see so few movies.  The protagonist is the opposite of Hermione (Emma Watson) - and that’s the only kids’ movie I can recall.  A female version of Ron Weasely (Rupert Grint) might work.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Is there no third choice? I’m hoping for a publisher – but am not trying the agent route.

What other books would you compare to within your genre?

I’m thinking maybe Barrie Summy’s I So Don’t Do series. I got to know Barrie when I was a member of the Class of 2k8 – an online marketing group that I had to drop out of when my book was delayed. I read all Barrie’s books. She’s a very funny writer. Light-hearted mystery.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was inspired to write this story because I’d written The Kulak’s Daughter about something that happened in the 1930s in another part of the world, and I was fascinated with the idea of children living here – attending a camp that wasn’t a gulag (labour camp) – and the idea grew from there. Also, my own children (now young adults) inspired the story. Childhood is so fleeting and the story is about how dangerous it can be to hold onto the past.

What else about the book might pique a reader’s interest?

This story is Made-in-Manitoba. There’s much to explore right here.

I’ve just finished a re-write of  Morton Magic from a third-person, to a first-person story. There have definitely been some challenges in doing this, because I have to limit everything to the protagonist’s point of view. No room for an omniscient narrator. I hope it works. Now I’m going to review the story again with a copy of Martha Alderson’s The Plot Whisperer as my guide. I find that book very helpful, because plot is my weak spot.

After this mystery-break, I’m looking forward to applying The Plot Whisperer to my East Prussian Princess – the sequel to The Kulak’s Daughter.  It’s a story very dear to me because it’s fictionalizes my mother’s life.  Morton Magic was just a way to procrastinate.

Thanks again, Marsha, for asking!

Thursday was an almost-blue-moon night. I was at a soccer game on the outskirts of town and got to watch the lunar rock slowly change from a pale white to a shiny silver. The more the sun faded, the brighter the moon became. It was quite the show.

In between the moon and sun there was me and the dog watching a soccer final.   (Maybe this isn’t quite true. The dog was more into sniffing than watching  And I don’t want to know about those bones I heard him crunching.)  As the sun set in glorious prairie fashion, a swarm of Canada geese, who’d been feasting in a nearby field of recently cut wheat,  rose up into the pink and purple sky.  It was all quite soul-stirring.  Makes me think of this great prairie song.

Throughout all this, of course, is the soccer game. The green team against the blue team, and I guess in the end, on the eve of a blue moon, the blue team had the advantage.

Prairie skies are special places - add a blue moon and it’s quite surreal.

I hear the next blue moon won’t happen until July, 2015. I plan to attend.

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was a gift - not sure I would have picked it up on my own. However, I did enjoy it very much. There was a touch of Marilyn French in there - one of my all time favorite authors.

It's a spiritual book. I found myself copying out the forty rules as a sort of life-guide. It's not meant to be a fast read. Highly recommended.  I'll have to read her other work, too.


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Happy 145, Canada!

Happy 145th birthday, Canada. How grateful I am for the gift of being Canadian - a gift that my parents gave to me. I was born within the first year of their arrival in this country - back in the fifties.  They were newlyweds - both in their mid 30s - both homeless and grateful for the new opportunities that Canada offered. My little parents - each only about five feet tall - were the proudest Canadians around. They loved everything about this country. The freedom, Trudeau's multi-culturalism, the lakes, the fishing, the mountains, the distances,  and the wonderful friends and neighbours they made along the way.

Canada is my home because my parents chose to move and start their new family here. They never took its gracious compassion to the homeless for granted. I hope Canada continues to be a refuge for the homeless - a place with room for families to grow.

I saw the EuroCup Final on TV this afternoon. My kids didn't care to watch because Germany had been eliminated. On the one hand, I think my dad would be proud of that German gene in his grandkids, but on the other hand, he'd have happily watched Spain beat Italy in Kyiv.  A soccer match is so much better than war.  

I've finally managed to plough through Andreas Kossert's book, Kalte Heimat. This book is a companion to his other book, Damals in Ostpreussen. The books have only whetted my appetite to learn more about this place. I want to go there. In fact, I'm thinking that retracing the steps of my mom's life would be a great retirement project. The towns of my mother's youth have all been renamed - whether in the former Soviet Union or in the former East Prussia. No wonder her new home here in Canada became so important to her. And me - I just wanted to be a plain little Canadian girl. I was so resentful of my parents' hidden past. I wanted grandparents to visit and English spoken at home. But now I'm starting to get it and to appreciate who my parents were, and therefore, to understand more of who I am.

Interesting memoir

The Remains of War: Surviving the Other Concentration Camps of World War II by G. Pauline Kok-Schurgers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was a real page turner. It's a memoir of a nine-year-old Dutch girl's survival during WWII in Sumatra, Indonesia. I had no idea that Dutch civilians lost their freedom over there. But then, I had no idea that the Dutch even had their people in Sumatra. The book is published by iUniverse and is very well written.

For me, even more interesting than the historical setting, is the psychological tension between mother and daughter. What's needed is a follow-up. How did those horrible years affect the children as they became adults?

A memoir doesn't get better than this. Highly recommended. Here's a youtube clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URZfwU...

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