Back In The Saddle

Been a while since I showed my face around here, so it's nice to see that not much has changed. The last time I checked in I was about to head off to the Great Blue Heron Workshop.  Normally when I go to GBH I take an Acadian bus to Antigonish, which is a four hour journey and entails changing buses at Amherst and again at Truro.  This year a pal of mine, Liza (or just Za, whom I met at the Seawords workshop at Brackley Beach here on PEI last year) was driving there and taking the ferry to boot (Yay!) ,so I offered to help out with gas and we rode together.  Much more pleasant than the bus and Za is a fun traveling companion, very easy going and interesting to talk to.  I actually ended up paying for us to get on the ferry, which is cheaper than the round-trip bus ticket, so it all worked out quite well.

As usual, GBH was a great week.  I was in Alistair MacLeod's fiction group (my second time working with him).  He actually remembered me from last time, remembered one of the stories we worked on then, and even remembered (much to my embarrassment) that I had inadvertently commented (half-jokingly) that he had “control issues” with his characters.  We had a good group of writers and our sessions together were pleasant and fruitful.  My one-on-one session with Alistair was also very encouraging.  He liked the story I was work shopping and had only a couple of minor suggestions for improvement.  He even asked if I would submit it to The Windsor Review (of which he is the Fiction Editor).  I've been published twice in that fine magazine.  After I've done my revisions on the story I may submit it to The New Yorker (which I try every now and then, being the cock-eyed optimist that I am).  No doubt I will be rejected by them yet again and will most likely end up sending it to the WR.  I guess that sounds like I'm settling for second-best or something, but I don't mean it that way at all.  I just think it is important to submit my work beyond the normal purview of my publishing experience.  I'd like to think Alistair would agree with me on that.  Of course, I would be more than happy to have my work appear once more in The Windsor Review.

In the middle of our week we had a free day and I had arranged to do a reading at Frog Hollow Books in Halifax.  They had recently moved from their location at Park Lane Mall to a new store nearby on Brenton Street.  It was a very cool and funky little space. The owner, Heidi, was very welcoming and had a nice little set up with Fatted Calf Blues displayed prominently.  Three people I know showed up and it was nice to catch up.  I read a couple of stories, which garnered the attention of some of the walk-in traffic and resulted in a couple of more sales.  I was really hoping that I would be able to go back and read at Frog Hollow some time in the future, but I am sorry to report that they are closing their doors permanently (after 25 YEARS!) near the end of August.  A very sad state of affairs indeed.  

I also brought copies of FCB to display at the Great Blue Heron book table and actually sold around eight copies.  

When I got back home it was time to get down to brass tacks and finish my novel so I could get it to my agent before the end of her reading period (after which she is very busy).  That is the reason for my recent absence from this blog.  It was quite a haul, but I did finish the draft a few days ago and then had to read it over to clean it up as best I could and make a few revisions.  Let it not be said that my agent wastes any time.  When I was done I emailed it to her at midnight and the next morning had got some early feedback on my first chapter.  There were some compliments and some criticism, accompanied by a heavy edit of the chapter attached to the email.  I thought the edit was quite good (my agent has many years of experience as an editor}. Now she is reading the rest and I expect to hear from her shortly, no doubt with some other changes that need to be made.  

Other than that, I'm looking forward to tackling the pile of books that I've been ignoring while I've been writing the novel.  Of course, I have a number of other writing projects on the back burner.  I think the next thing I will work on is a screenplay adaptation of my short story, The Most Important Man In The World (the opening story in Fatted Calf Blues) for a short screenplay competition. After a novel, writing in a different format that I can finish relatively quickly will be a nice change of pace.  A change is as good as a rest, as they say.