Lara Wood will be out in 2014. The paintings are going well. Once they are complete (sort of), I go back into them, looking to balance out colour, correct shadows, tones, etc, so that the images don't look too dissimilar and yet exciting on their own. It's quite the task, like trying to create 14 little masterpieces, a story within each, that leads to a dramatic conclusion. And it's a dark story, so I'm taking a risk in terms of sales. I have no idea how it will be received. I'm trusting the child creator within to guide me more than I trust the adult who has too many societal weights on his shoulders and worries too much.  The text has yet to be fully sketched, but it's looking good. I aim for five hours of painting a day, but I have to take days off to market the other books, work on other projects and continue with writing columns and reviews. 

And I took in a couple baby skunks. I kept them for one night. I Googled for some knowledge and figured they were old enough to be outside on their own, that their mother was probably alive and hadn't abandoned them. They like cat food. Didn't make much of a stink. After I let them out, they had joined up with another sibling, so there were three. And the night after an adult skunk appeared - a very big and fast skunk. After sighting this skunk, the three little ones disappeared from under the back porch. 

Two Months: Fun, Press, Painting and New Book -– BIG ELECTRIC CAT

Big Electric Cat has arrived! Years ago I took a break from working on Night Wall and after an exciting trip to Mexico, I completed BEC in six months. It was rejected by a number of publishers.

Finally it's out and after only two weeks parents are reporting that their kids are loving it. At the market where I was selling the book, kids were demanding the story be read to them a second time. Good signs!

In May students from the Confederation College Film program came to interview me for a documentary about visual artists in town. Click here to see the video. Andrea Feltrin asked very good questions. Two weeks later Luke Skalesky, in the same program, did an interview with me and other writers to ask about a writer's life, inspired by his brother who was completing a novel. He was able to capture on video the arrival of 3,000 copies of Big Electric Cat from Winnipeg. At the time I had just set up a show at the Sweet Escape Cafe and Bakery.

Evelynne Bernstein, a Teacher-Librarian at Lawrence Park C.I. in Toronto interviewed me for the glossy Teaching Librarian Magazine, distributed to all public schools in Ontario. I had to recall thoughts and feeling from years ago when I came up with ideas for my stories. I felt it was important to show how being open-minded to all sorts of influences allows for ideas to flow - creating "writer's waterfall."