Friday 14 June 2013

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."