Canadian Authors Association - West Coast Branch - Poetry

Jean Kay, our inspirational poet,  greeted everyone at the door.  Our president Margot Bates introduced Dennis E. Bolen our Poet and MC for the night. Kevin Spence began the reading with his Surrey Poems and told us stories of his recitals across country in a variety of usual and unusual venues.  Kevin is a one man performance art.  Next, Mariner James, whose book is the Monument Cycles recited deeply moving poems of vast dimension.  Bernice Lever, recent recipient of several major awards for poetry and our CAA resident poet, recited from her latest book, Generations.  She read intimate and timely poems that touched the heart and challenged the mind to wonder. I’m sorry I’d not heard Christopher Leven’s poems before because I so enjoyed them and felt something missing had suddenly been found. His latest Night Visions book has been nominated for the most distinguished awards.  After the recitals Dennis asked questions of the poets about meaning and form. The audience joined in and soon there occurred those moments of profundity when poets speak together in rather lame English about their magical verse.   It was truly a writer’s night and I was glad to be there.

Summer Dream Reading Festival - CAA

I received emails last week from the Canadian Author's Association telling me about this weekend extravaganza, "Summer Dream Reading Festival" at Trout Lake. Whose who and everyone whose ever written prose, poetry or jibberish was going to be there. Definitely a premiere authors and poet's event of Vancouver, British Columbia, Western Canada and the United States.
Joanne at work reminded me on Friday. My friend, Laura, whose 5th grandchild was distractingly clamouring to leave her mother's belly to attend, told me Saturday "Margaret and Bob are reading at 2 pm".
I'd not been to Trout Lake. The Trout Lake Market is already a global event which brings cars, trucks, motorcycles and prams from all over the North American continent. The "Summer Dream Reading Festival" added to that. There was no parking before Squamish north and White Rock south. Gilbert, the dog, loved the hike from the car to the park.
Bernie Lever, poet extraordinaire, told me later there was all kinds of parking a hop skip and jump away, on the Nanaimo side, away from the Market. The "food for the belly" folk apparently got in close so they could waddle back to their cars and left the parking nearer the reading area for the 'food for the mind and soul' folk.
Personally, I was more impressed by the gigantic UFO hovering over the event broadcasting subsonically, "There is intelligent life on earth. It's very creative too!"
I was sitting at the Granville Stage listening to a woman reciting children's poetry when I heard Bob Mackay's unforgettable voice. Writer of the award winning "Soldier of the Horse" he was at the Main stage.. I scurried over to the Main Stage recognising poet Jean Kay's coifed white hair anywhere. Jean's poetry is highly inspirational and oftimes very amusing.
Margaret Anne Hume was on stage reading a delightful passage from "My Life, Adventures of an RCAF Flying Officer, Eaton's Manager and Family Man" written with and by her father, Albert Mair MacLean.
Barbara Mumford was manning the Canadian Author's Association table which displayed the wealth of Mumford writings from travels around the world as well as books by a dozen other CAA authors. Poet Lilija Valis was present in fine form with her recent book, Freedom on the Fault Line.
Anita Meittune, our very own Vancouver CAA writer's circle coordinator waxed poetic about writing circles, only to have a circle of authors surround her to listen as a girl with fairy wings magically rode by on a bicycle towing a folded throne.
Gilbert, my cockapoo presented his poetry for me. A real scoop! I was glad to archive it at first opportunity so bid adieu.








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Canadian Authors Association - Vancouver Branch - Oct. 12, 2011

www.robertwmackay.ca/
www.bennuttall-smith.ca/

It's October 12, 2011. The Vancouver Branch of the Canadian Authors Association is meeting tonight at 7 pm in the Alliance for the Arts building on Howe Street beside Waves Coffeehouse. I got an email from Ben Nuttall Smith saying that he and Bob Mackay were talking on publishing.

I'm a blogger. Who needs a publisher. Ha! I don't even use an editor.  Ha! Ha! And no deadlines either. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I don't get fan mail like a Published Author.  Only comments. I have to respond to comments or the comment might overshadow the piece I've written.  Commenters are often more pithy than bloggers.  They're the blogger world's equivalent of the critic. But I even get to censor the critics in blogger world.  Published Authors don't have that luxury!

Bob and Ben, however,  since they published their books last year have had women chasing them.  Bloggers don't get swarmed, like Published Authors. You'd think it was the Vancouver Sun Run the way the Published Author Groupies charge, whenever Ben and Bob make a public appearance.

Bloggers don't have to do those public appearance things, either.   It's highly unlikely that Harper, Obama or Oprah are going to phone up this blogger. In contrast Ben and Bob live at daily risk of having CBC call them and ask them to talk about their books.
Published authors.  I'd not be surprised to see those letters after their names.  Bob Mackay, PA.  Ben Nuttall-Smith, PA.

As a blogger I don't have to re write. I don't even have to 'proof' my material.  It's a bit like going to the opera in one's underwear, mind you.

Ben and Bob's writing is so much more presentable and polished.   A bit posh really.  Complete sentences. Actual story lines.  Meaning.  Big words and catchy sly bits.
Apparently people liked their story telling even  before they  got published.

As a blogger I could go from an audience of none to the whole internet of billions, not that anyone needs to take notice of a blogger.  Blogging is democratic and subtle that way. Not in your face like a real hard book you could hold in your hand. Not even something that would get on Kindle.

Bob and Ben's books, Soldier of the Horse and Blood Feathers and Holy Men, respectively,   actually have beautiful covers and jackets.
 I might be able to spiff up my blog a bit but it's never going to adorn a coffee table, unless it were a virtual coffeetable.  Everyone has been gifting their friends with Bob's book or Ben's book but I don't even know if I can give my blog away.

Google doesn't pay at all like a real publishing house does,either.   My on line income from blogging has a certain elusive quality like the media itself.  Money always did have that here today, gone tomorrow aspect to it for me. But Google's not actually given me any real money.  Keeps telling me I have to score 100 before they'll give me the 20's they owe me. A bit like Los Vegas.

I was kind of hoping to hear from Ben and Bob about all the real money Published Authors make.  It's a paper business. Those publishing houses should be able to print their own money.

Now that Bob's a real Published Author and Ben is too, I expect they'll be telling us about their yachts and lear jets. Maybe I'll go tonight and hear what it's like to "get your money for nothing and your chicks for free'. I keep thinking there must be life after blogging.  A Published Author's life, perhaps.

PS
I went.  Jean Kay, Perry Wilson, Anthony Dalton, Bernice Lever and all the other "usual suspects" were there. The room was packed.
Jan Furst had died just short of 100 so stories were already being exchanged about this delightfully remarkable Norwegian Bowen Island character, much loved in the author community.

Patrick Taylor, author of the Irish Country Doctor series, read from his latest in that series, A Dublin Student Doctor, set in 1930 and just out for publication this week. http://patricktaylor.ca/ 
It was a glorious night.  Ben and Bob both humbly shared that if they could get published so could we.  All it took was a good idea, a draft, a manuscript, editting, rewriting, an outside editor, perhaps, a good query letter, maybe an agent if he wasn't a complete dodo, a willingness to self promote, and a powerful publicity machine helped. Then a publisher would likely consider your work if that publisher  actually published romantic goth fiction. In Canada no author ever admits to sleeping with the editors of Pen and Porcupine but it's been considered.
Blogging was recommended as was a web site. The Surrey Writer's festival was coming in 2 weeks and it was also recommended. As was the CAA December social and AGM as well as a 500 word Letter to Santa contest.

Dear Santa, I want to be a Published Author but I'd also like a Lear Jet even if my publisher can't afford one. My character isn't developed as much as the characters of the Published Authors I heard tonight so you might want to add that to the list. A plot would help too.  I'm still not sure you can get from here to there.  The CAA is truly inspirational and it's evident that Authors Helping Authors works.  But Santa I could really use a bit of extra help from you.  Has Rudolf got out of celebrity rehab yet?  Bill  

Canadian Author's Association - West Coast Branch - March 9, 2011

I stepped out of my ORDINARY WORLD into the Art Alliance Building on Howe Street.  The Canadian Author's Association meeting is always a CALL TO ADVENTURE. I am RELUCTANT to join the creativity and genius, thinking I'd rather go home to watch another television episode of CBC's Insecurity or" barf out anotherblog" (as Perry Wilson so aptly describes it). But no ! (sorry Patrick for laughing at my own jokes, and Ed) But No!!!!.  I REFUSE THE CALL!  But I am encouraged by my MENTORS.

Bob  (ROBERT W. MACKAY)  branch president,  has a new book, "Soldier of the Horse" published by Touchwood.  I have to get a copy  before it's sold out.  I am already tasked to get   another copy of Ben Nuttall Smith's, new historical novel, Blood, Feather's and Holy Men too.  Perry Wilson has had her book "Closing the Circle" just released  through Amazon. At least  I can download a Kindle copy. Bernice Lever has had more poetry published.  Jean Kay and Margaret Hume are there.  They're all MENTORS. I was hardly through the door before I was discussing Churchill guide Mike Macri with Anthony Dalton, the president of CAA. I'd just finished his fascinatingly book called, Polar Bears.  I think I recognised, from his detailed descriptions and tales, the very Polar Bear that chased me when I was in Churchill"!"
Patrick Taylor, An Irish Country Doctor, arrived, only to be thronged.  He shared that 50,000 copies of one of his many books had just been printed from the old draft galley without maps and all the typos.  With characteristic wit and humor he described his news  "mixed".
I was at last  in a SPECIAL WORLD.  Worries and cares about'reality' simply slipped away.  "Characters" were all around me.  Genius and entertainment. Writers, authors, poets. The whole circus of story tellers.  A barb here and an eulogy there. Reparte coupled with hyphen, colon and question mark.  Discussions about exlamation marks, for God's sake! The English language sparred with French. Norwegian popped out of somewhere.  A syllable danced with a paragraph.  Hyperbole silenced the period.

Then Ed Griffin was introduced by Perry Wilson.

Ed was a Roman Catholic priest who marched in Selma with Martin Luther King.  Leaving the clergy he married, had 2 children and was a councillman in Wisconsin for years before coming to Canada. He had found creative writing at 47 and began teaching creative writing in jails.  Today he is the writer in residence at the Newton Cultural Centre in Surrey, where he began the Surrey International Writers Conference.   As a volunteer he teaches creative writing in Matsqui prison.  His own books include novels, Prisoners of Williwaw and Veto.  Dystopia written by Ed ,with former prisoner and writing class attendee Mike Oulton tells of the jail experience from inside and outside writer's perspective. It was published 2007 by Trafford Publishing.
Ed's talk was first about the Writer's Journey taken from the Christopher Vogler book of the Mythic Structure for Writer's.  Ed called it the Hero's Journey and shared how he started a book club at the institution and the prisoners, now reading Satannic Verses had just finished Joseph Campbell's , Power of Myth. In his talk he shared Jean Bryant's seven laws of writing which include 'write is an active verb. Thinking is not writing. Creativity follows passion. Originality equals vulnerability. Write for fun. Pleasure precedes profit. Write alot" and more.
I struggle with plot . Ed shared how  the 12 steps of the Hero's journey served to order plot.  . This structure could be found everywhere. It was just good story telling. Describing it in movies like Star Wars and Wizard of Oz we learned that  Margaret Hume knew a surprising amount about the Yellow Brick Road.
Ed went on to talk about the ORDEAL of prisons and the experience of the waste and failure of the system. He offered instead the alternative of  "restorative justice", describing how victim assistance and restitution worked.
The REWARD  was amazing in the question and answer period that followed. Among the writers present there were a former parole officer, a prison guard, a corrections officer and a lawyer.  I was surprised they admitted this after Ed had described the "US and Them" mentality that so permeated the prison system.   Being writers we had committed every criminal act in our minds so naturally identified with  the "US" and began breaking down chairs to make Shivs to attack "Them." Soon everyone was loudly dragging pens back and forth,  back and forth, across our computer keyboards. We were plotting  riot when Ed dragged us BACK to the ORDINARY WORLD , describing  the TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE of several prisoners who had taken his classes.
One is now a writer for the newspaper, The Province, having contributed a piece called "writing changed my life".Now he has the  regular column called the Incarcerated Inkwell.  Ed described how art and faith had helped the DEATH of the criminal past and lead to a RESURRECTION of self for so many.

He read from Dystopia. We all heard the rich creativity of an author whose sole former outlet of expression had been crime. It was a moving night.

By the end of evening we'd all  experienced the ELIXIR of Ed's enthusiasm and committment to writing.

Canadian Author's Association - Westcoast Meeting - Nov. 2010

Ben Nuttall-Smith was the CAA greeter 2nd Wednesday of November at the Alliance for Arts and Cultural Events, Ste 100, 938 Howe Street, Vancouver. He was beaming. I hate when other authors are beaming. They're usually a morose and sullen lot with furrowed brow ever in search of the bon mot. Beaming can mean only one thing. Ben's new novel had been accepted and is due out for publication in the spring. In the reflection in the glass behind him I watched my freckles turn green as he spoke about his writing achievements.
I just managed to congratulate him, shake his hand, get by him and damned if I didn't encounter another beaming author. This time it was Robert Mackay, President of our Vancouver branch of CAA. His new novel is due out in March 2011.
Trying not to grovel and kneel before greatness, I styled the diffident pose of a blogger. Blogger's don't need publishers. Bloggers are poor and self supporting. Bloggers give their works to the church of internet. Ben and Bob actually had found homes for their children.
I get by Bob with freckles and skin green, only to see another beamer. Who is that, I ask. I can only wonder as Jean Kay introduces Lila.

Lila's one of our very funny resident poets. She breaks into performance art reciting a work about the snakes that we meet in daily life. Obviously some of hers are men. I sit back and enjoy, loving her various takes on officialdom, listening as she brings the pompous and pretentious down a notch or two with cutting art.
Then Jean is introducing the other beamer. He's a really big beam. The more books published, the more beam, it seems.

This is Timothy Taylor. http://www.timothytaylor.ca/ No wonder he beams. Not only has he published books but he's had countless writing awards. He actually makes his living writing which supports his office in downtown Vancouver. Now that's a serious writer. His first novel was Stanley Park and is optioned for a movie. I've just downloaded his Story House from Amazon. He's reading tonight from his latest book due out like Bob's book in March 2011. It's got the word Project in the title, like Blair Witch Project, but I think there's a colour, Blue, like that movie the Vancouver police did about Vancouver downtown eastside. Blue Light Project. That's it. I ought to be a better researcher, like Taylor. He tells us that he started this book with the idea of a hostage taking in a theatre and three characters. One was a former star athlete. In this case a woman gold medallist in one of those diatholon, triatholon, biatholon whatever aggregate sports that will never take the place of hockey, try as they might. The other character was a street artist. Timothy Taylor explained how he became interested in these alternative artists who do city art, one fellow painting a dumpster to look just like Louis Vitton luggage. The third character was pullitzer prize journalist who'd fallen from grace through lying in a major piece only to end up doing scuzzy tabloids for a living. It was this alter ego latter character whose place at the hostage taking, Taylor read tonight.
It was priceless writing. Not surprising he's a beamer. Writes amazingly and reads well too. The girls say he's handsome. What's not to hate. We had question and answers after that. Always interesting to learn what authors say to authors questions. Some very useful answers about digital contracts and movie scripts. Then lots of applause.
I'm committed to buying Blue Light Project. It's going to be the first of a new genre, Literary Thriller. It's like the biathalon. Nobody's just playing hockey. Everything has gone Roccocco and Baroque. At least blogging remains the trailer trash of modern writing. I'm safe in my own Deliverance, resisting knocking out a few teeth and learning the banjo.
It was another good night at CAA. Inspirational for sure. Like getting to hear today's Robertson Davies, Farley Mowatts and Pierre Burtons reading from the great literature that will be taught in tomorrow's schools.

Next event is the Christmas Lunch, Whitespot Restaurant, 1616 West Georgia, Vancouver, Noon, Dec. 4, 2010.It's always a great place to play identify the poets from the novelists based on table manners.


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Blogging

A beautiful person just asked me about how to get started blogging. I was going to answer her email personally however when I began I found that I was sharing information that others might find helpful too.

I was first encouraged to blog in a meeting of the Canadian Author's Association. The president of the BC Federation of Writers had come back from a trip where she'd been visiting various editors and publishers. What she learned was that these people appreciated artists having blogs. Blogs gave them more insight into the people they were investing money in. Apparently the problem in the industry, which has grown lean and mean in recent years, was the one shot wonder. This was the author or artist who produced only one good work. Publishers invested money and time into 'branding' an author and work and were so often disappointed by the failure of the authors and artists in the past to continue. Often they don't make much money off the first book or works that they back and it's only in the continuation of the work of the artist that the publishers, editors and backer really make their profit.

I certainly appreciated this concern as a friend who was a record producer described how often he'd been 'burnt' by bands that fell apart after their first album. He said that this was why he had stopped backing bands with anyone in them that had a drug and alcohol problem because this was the principal problem he'd identified that lead to the short life of creative individuals and groups.

I personally had invested thousands of dollars in friends 'art' and 'music' only to lose the money because the individuals became alcoholics and their work which might otherwise have appreciated and made me money gathered dust and was overpriced 'pretty' but certainly not 'art' that I could even sell at the original price. I put it down to being a parent for friends, supporting their dreams and wondering if one day they will ever give up the drugs and/or alcohol and find the creativity and genius I'd seen in them before they gave it to the bottle or drugs.

That night I went home and started a blog. I used the Google "Blogger". It's on the google top bar when you pull down the "more". It really was very easy to do and follow through. I do know computers and such but the directions were rather 'idiot proof'. I had a blog set up and running really quickly adding pictures and videos and ultimately adding devices. I even tried to 'monetize' but there's no money in that as Google has it set up so that one gets a penny only if a person clicks on a 'google ad'. I never bothered to remove it when I realized that it was a bit of a scam and that someone was getting a whole lot for very little. I liked the fact that Google had the blog and that I could blog as others could so didn't particularly worry. There's probably ways to maximize income with blogging. I've not really looked into this much. Just every once in a while I'll "play" at the computer and add something to the blog like the 'monetize' or another time I joined it to Facebook and another time I added a stat counter. I see something someone else has and wonder in a computer geeky way, how do they do that, and if it doesn't take much time I do it.

I confess blogging has become something of an addiction. It's definitely detracted from my regular professional writing. I used to make hundreds or thousands of dollars a year publishing articles. I would write something like I do on the blog and then maybe edit it a few days later and send it to an editor and they'd kindly print it and send me a cheque. I rather liked that. Indeed the first cheque I got for writing 40 years ago I wished I'd framed rather than having spent like any other old money.

Writing is one of my joys in life. Sharing my thoughts with others. I've loved learning and teaching and writing and all that and over the years have enjoyed it much as I've enjoyed photography. I took pictures for a newspaper once as I also had a newspaper column once. The column paid me $100 a piece and the pictures got $20 a picture. That was a quarter century or more a go. Big money at the time. It was a city journal. Now I might make anywhere from $500 to $1000 for an article. I've just taken whatever the 'going' rate was. I've done so much pro bono work in my own regular work and in my writing but feel I should pay lip service to "business". It's not really something I've paid much attention to and yet I'm envious of people who are rich and acknowledge that they've focused more on this matter than I. I'm grateful that I have what I have.

So blogging has allowed me to 'connect' without that step where I send a letter to an editor and wait for a response. It's removed the paycheque from the equation too. I wonder about that. Yet I love the direct access. I began a diary when I was a teen ager and kept it for all the intervening years. An ex wife destroyed or kept my diaries, I believe, out of spite, or simply because she didn't care or because she thought she was doing the world a favour. I remember thinking that I'd always planned when I was older to write a book and here I was missing bits and pieces of the record. I had so much literally 'stolen' in the divorce process, poetry, paintings, sketches, wood work. I know no judge cares about this. It's like all that refridgerator art of children that has no 'value' to the world of politics and law. That's why I think money so often misses the mark and that so much of what is of the greatest value you can't buy.

I guess that's why I like the 'elusive butterflies' of thought getting out there. I've been fascinated by how 'censorship' of adults serves the most tyrannical governments. Right now India is interfering with Blackberry claiming it's for the 'good of the people' but as I've got older I've come to think when I hear it's for the 'good of the people' mostly somebody saying "it's good for me."

So I blog. It's direct. It's immediate. I've taken blogs I've written edited them and then sent them off for publication.

I was a very private person until my divorce. In my divorce all the lies and misinformation and personal details of my life and anyone else who chose to marry and was punished for not achieving perfection (dying in the saddle) became public domain. I think that caused me to feel that I'd rather have my 'diary' be public rather than have people read about me what others thought. I'm not my best advocate. I have enemies. People who don't are usually empty skin. Lives of quiet desperation. If you don't have scars you've never really done anything to threaten the tyranny and abuse that is prevalent wherever we turn. In deed the sad truth is that if you haven't any 'scar's you may well be the problem. The priviledged protected few are not the solution I envision. They're not the solution that the great religious leaders and indeed political leaders envisioned either.

I'm looking forward to reading the Autobiography of Anne Murray. I heard an interview of her on TV and she said the same thing. She'd rather people heard it from her rather than heard it from her detractors. She'd heard a biography was going to be written and decided to get out her autobiography. Anne Murray is one of my favorite Canadian singers and I do look forward to getting to know her better.

The other thing is that there is 'too much information' today. The problem is sorting it through. I was one of the greatest fans of Paul Johnson's writings. His history of Christianity is one of the very best as is his New York Times bestseller, Modern Times. Now a mistress has said he's been seeing her and he likes 'spanking'. Now this genius and great man of letters is known as "spanker Johnson". Lady Di was a drunk too. Prince Charles wanted to be Camillia's tampon.

I think we collectively have to get over the primitive hypocrisy that allows the very rich and powerful to buy or kill anyone that may ruin 'their' reputation. Bill Gates could like little boys but we'd never know it today unless the Apple Company was trying to discredit him. I don't think Bill Gates likes little boys. His wife is hot and he's one of my heros, just as Steven Jobs is. Yet as a society and the media we'll continuing to be swayed by 'false allegations' and "ad hominem's" without realizing that none of us get to know what the Bush family really does at private dinners. Maybe George gets his peepee out and his mother spanks it. Maybe Hillary liked to watch Clinton and Monica. I think that the media with it's 'one picture' and one sound bite and it's rank sensationalism has to be countered by the 'blog'. In a blog you get a 'bigger picture'.

When my friend went to prison for selling marijuania, I didn't think he was a 'bad' man. I didn't think his selling marijuania was good but the British Empire was built on selling booze and opium whereas the American empire is built on selling weapons. Knowing him as a guy who cared for his children, built things, told funny stories, I kept it in context of what the judge who I didn't know said about him.
My ex patriot friends from behind the Iron Curtain said that everyone knew someone who was 'out' eventually. Now everyone knows someone in North America who is 'out' in some context. Martha Stewart and Conrad Black are both scapegoats.

I think the blog gives a fuller dimension of anyone and counters that movement back to the utter hypocrisy of church and government of yesteryear. I encourage people to judge the fuller context of the information and where it is coming from because increasingly there are 'conflicts of interest' and marketing has given us the god awful "Golden Marbles" awards. I think Christianity is right when it says we're all sinners. I know the blog makes me vulnerable. But mostly it frees me.

The way search engines work is that people will find a blog based on the title. The fact is that few people are interested in Gilbert. I am. Laura is. My family is. My friends are. But when I write an article on a movie people check the blog and mostly don't look further. There's a new 'information age' that we're apart of. People learn in ways that are more holistic. I just tapped into a Chilean's blog because I liked what he said about something I was interested in. I liked his diversity of interests. I saw rapidly that he really was an 'authority' on the subject of interest. I check out people's blogs to see if they're just 'one dimensional' or phony or hustlers or really are true people I might want to learn from.

The institutions used to 'control' information by 'certification' and diplomas. I have so many certificates and diplomas and mostly found that I had to work under people who only had 'position authority' and 'raw power'. All freedoms frighten people with power because quite simply 'the reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo'. I'm a conservative and know that God is ultimately in charge so I trust the process more than another might.

The blog is amusing too. People comment. People tell me they read it. I remember when I wrote articles in the most prestigious medical journals that were juried and had all the trappings of power. Well, none of my colleagues read them. They're like the PHD treatises that support university. The Medical Post is the doctors' newspaper in Canada. It goes to everyone in medicine for free. I wrote for that and always I heard back about articles and stories I wrote. So I kept writing. I didn't need to 'publish or perish'. I had more writing and publications of note than many of my academic colleagues but whereas I'd shown the integrity to be a whistleblower on a corrupt imposter and killer those very same colleagues had stayed 'mom' and been rewarded by maintaining the 'lie'. Owen Barfield wrote the book "keeping up appearances'. The politics of the university has been said to make real politics look like children's play. I guess I was more interested in something else, that elusive butterfly thing.

It concerns me that I'm critical of some of my colleagues. I'd rather be like King Lear who paraphrased said "we'll laugh about who's in who's out and such courtly things." I like myself best when I'm able to be amused at my own and others foibles. I liked that Scott Peck called Earth, God's kindergarden.

I recently thought to publish a paper in an 'academic' journal but the process of 'submission' was such that it served the 'academic'. I'm in the 'front line' trenches. I know that we know the 'truth'. It's raw and right in our face. My 'academic' colleagues who write alot of the 'stuff' are often 'dead wrong' and eventually will be shown as such but the very nature of their work allows them all the time involved in 'courtly' things. Beurocracies are forever creating hoops and games that let only their own in, just like Kafka's Castle. I like the blog because it's simple.

I miss the editors. I've had some of the greatest editors at the Medical Post and other journals I've written for. The CAnadian Medical Association Journal had some good people and some of the newspaper editors have been saints. One rejected an article I wrote but kindly explained why it was 'shit'. That doesn't happen much these days. Most editors don't have the time. I've been an editor of a magazine too and I don't judge those who haven't the 'time' today. So few of us do now that we have all the 'time saving' machines.

Anyway that's blogging. There are other blogs. They're listed somewhere. I've loved Google Blogger. It's interfaced with Twitter and Youtube. I found when I got the Ipad it was difficult at first but Blogpress is a really good interface. Hope that helps.


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The Author is an Odd Animal

The Author is an Odd Animal
-William Hay
The author is an odd animal. Instead of living life he or she chooses to write about it. Alone he worships a blank page or screen until a God or muse fills that very space with words. Whether these words have meaning or validity isn’t terribly important. Like the Pentacostal whose ‘talking in tongues’ is interpreted by diviners, writers have critics, or better still a postgraduate English student who “interprets” their otherwise incoherent doggerel into high art.
A psychiatrist observing authors would declare them isolative and anti social. That they sometimes deign to hang out with other authors is just primitive tribalism. Gangs of authors who gather together around books are very little different than gangs of motorcyclists who gather around Harley Davidson’s. The latter have overt tattoos while the authors more discretely place their buttock expressions of ‘ex libris’ opposite their flamboyant heart tattoos containing the names of their first publisher’s.
The most hebephrenic of the lot, readily named psychotic by any sane shrink would of course be the poet. What writer claims more to depend upon the ‘muse’. These grandiose babblers talk in rhyme and clang associations. The most obsessive of their lot count syllables to the magic number of 17. Others beat and still others chant. The worst add music to their words and calls these noisy poems, songs.
No worse lot of writers lived. The lot would to be locked up were it not for the grace of warriors who drunk on victory throughout history have demanded poets celebrate their carnage in poetry and song.
It’s bedlam the way these folk meddle with words and make mockery of language. Some won’t even use punctuation. There’s no end to the madness of poets.
The novelists are little better. Liars, the lot of them. Anti social tale tellers and gossips who sometimes stoop so low in social depravity that they use pseudonyms to disguise their works.
They write as if they were somewhere when they weren’t and mess with time and place continuously Sometimes they don’t even bother to call their utter fabrications historic or futuristic. Some are so damned lazy they don’t satisfactorily end their works and leave the conclusion to the swindled reader.
They’re big on detectives, not surprising given the way they steal the hearts and minds of their readers. From Sherlock to Mallory to Alex Cross they’re inventing characters and making them do the most unbelievable things. But at least that lot tries to maintain some semblance of sanity. The writers of fantasy are quite simply over the top.
The worst of all are the children’s writers. They should be banned outright. They even babble like the children they write for. Such extraordinary tales about talking fish and flying children. They pollute the minds of pre formed citizens. The very worst steal authority from the august medical profession and claim that blathering of green eggs and ham are a doctor’s pronouncement. Children should learn accounting from a young age and be limited to spread sheets and facts while this lot would have them caught up in spider webs and magic spells

Prose writers are pretentious and pompous. The historians lie by selection and exclusion. They claim objectivity when they’re obviously biased or would not give a crap about the matter they’re writing about. They bring up all sorts of muck and re fight wars their side lost long ago. They make much of research but what they mostly research are other authors. Authors quoting another authors ad nauseum.


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The journalists are a particularly depraved lot. They churn out words by the thousands. They only slightly vary their formulas because the readers quickly forget what they wrote the day or week before. As often as not they change their opinions 180 degrees without any one noticing.
Some of these journalists even claim to be investigative but it’s clear that they are just looking for a story. They’ve got nothing of their own. Empty vessels desperate for someone else to give them their lives. The very worst give up writing all together and get on television. They’re especially fond of wearing clean well pressed clothes and pretty hair in front of scenes of war and poverty.
At least some journalists are a bit honest. These are called gossip columnists. The deceitful of this lot call themselves biographers. The biographers put a lot of this drivel together and compile books, but it’s really no difference. They’re all just identity vampires.
Just as some authors have no identity of their own others have multiple personality disorders. These ones only escape diagnosis because of the enabling of their fans.
The playwrights and screen writers have hundreds if not thousands protecting them from incarceration in the asylums. People point to sales as if the opinions of groups of stupid people with excess cash had anything to do with what is clearly a most severe form of mental illness.
They call the dirty authors erotic while the downright depressives are viewed as deep. The manics start off writing prophecies only to later get their own television shows as televangelists.
At the very bottom of the barrel are the comedians for sure. There I rest my case. A group of grown men and women making adolescent fun of bodily processes. I’m certainly not going to fart on stage to make my point.
Nothing is more subversive than the comedians. They actually make fun of the authorities. They mock prime ministers and presidents. They make potty jokes. They even stoop to swearing again and again while their audiences laugh and laugh at such contemptuous behavior. Nothing is sacred. Like a dog chewing on it’s own leg, they even make fun of themselves. Now that’s sick.
The latest in the constellation of writer’s, the bloggers, simply don’t bare mention.
The only thing good to be said about authors and writers is that, were it not for them, good and decent respectful law abiding obedient CENSORS would have a no means of making an honest living.

-presented at Canwrite 2010 conference Victoria, BC

CAA Literary Awards Banquet

Let me start by saying that authors clean up nicely. Even the Irish like Patrick Taylor looked almost civilized. Rhonda Lee Stephenson, Awards Committee Chair, looked simply ravishing. Anthony Dalton, CAA President and intrepid marine adventurer was probably concealing a .pdf (personal flotation device) under his clothing but outwardly looked almost Bay Street.

Julie and Colin Angus, National Geographic's 2007 Adventurers of the Year award winners and authors of their most recent book Rowed Trip, gave a truly d(h)aunting and surprisingly amusing account of their adventures bicycling Siberian blizzards, rowboating Atlantic Hurricanes and interpreting Bulgarian customs. After all that they even navigated publishers and started a family. Their youthful energy was exhausting.

The banquet food and service at the Harbour Towers was terrific. I do apologize to whoever ate my salmon. When the chicken came by first, I was famished so I just said that I'd ordered chicken. I really had no idea Laura chose salmon for us. I was feeling a bit fishy until I cleared that up. The chicken really was delicious.

R. L. Stephenson-Read presented the awards with flair:

The Bookland Press Emerging Writer Award went to British Columbian author, Rachelle Delaney for The Ship of Lost Souls, (HarperCollins Publishing).

The CAA Award for Poetry went to Newfoundland poet, Tom Dawe, for Where Genesis Begins,(Breakwater Books).

The Carol Bolt Award for Drama went to Manitoban playwright, Michael Nathanson, for Talk, (Playwrights Canada Press).

The Lela Common Award for Canadian History went to Ontarian Jonathan F. Vance for A History of Canadian Culture (Oxford University Press).

The Mosaid Technologies Award for Fiction went to Newfoundlander Michael Crummy, for Galore (Doubleday Canada).

Bernice Lever, a former award winner herself, presented the Allan Sangster Award, honouring long and meritorious CAA service, to British Columbian, Walter MacConville. Fellow poet, Sheila Martindale accepted the award for Walter who at 95 wasn't about to Colin Angus himself to some late night writer's banquet.

With that Jean Kay was called up by Anthony and R.L. so Margaret Hume could present her a bouquet of flowers with special thanks for all the amazing work and organization that she'd undertaken to make this a truly memorable conference that will be the 'buzz' for years to come.

CAA = Writer's Circle

The Writer's Circle has begun. Writer's don't write in summer. It's in their contract. No reading of their works either. Writer's Circles break for summer vacation and begin in fall. How else can writers get the sales on pencils if they don't buy in the fall when the students do. Summer prices for writing supplies are outrageous. A lap top computer which can be bought for a grand or two of a life time of Canadian Royalties would be priced Amercan in Summer.

Our Writer's Circle met tonight. A bit of a Writer's Triangle actually. A couple of members begging off, homewook not done, wild sex lives interfering, watching American Idol, putting finishing touches on an underground manifesto, getting writer's rates from terrorists who found their lack of spelling and punctuation was reducing their credibility, whatever excuses absent writers can come up with when they can't bring themselves to meet with other writers.

But we met without them. And gossipped about their work and their nails and their hair. "And imagine she dressed her character in the same sensible shoes she was wearing herself!"

That said, there was murder and mayhem with bodies strewn all over San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean. It's going to be a bloody year. Already 5 victims were mutilated, extinguised, savaged, excremented, put to the death, desisted, outsourced, and otherwise made dead by just two writers. Police, killers, private eyes, intrigue, adventure, magic and profound insights on life by writers who really do write.

And then we gossipped some more. Stories about families, work, and other writers. More gossip about the Canadian Authors Association writers. "Really!" "He said that." "She did not."

And then we went our separate ways into the night. We're be back at it in a couple of weeks. I'll have to kill another character if I'm to keep up with the murderous Jones. I can't wait to see whose still alive next week.