Saturday, April 22, 2017

April Sightings and Excellent News

Such a week! Signing at Sleuth of Baker Street in Toronto on Saturday, presentation at the Ottawa Independent Writers' meeting on Tuesday, and an Arthur Ellis Award shortlist nomination on Thursday. And the fun isn't over yet. You can catch me at Coles Carlingwood today from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.

But first, back to last Saturday.

I met the Sleuth owners for the first time although I'd heard mention of their mystery store often in the past. Marian Misters and J.D. Singh co-own the store and greeted us warmly - by us, I mean me and my co-authors at the event: Steve Burrows and Leslie Shimotakahara. The store soon filled with readers and friends and we got busy signing and chatting. I was particularly delighted that a woman who used to live on the same street as me growing up in Terrace Bay came out to meet me - once again, it was great to see you Paulette! Steve, Leslie and I rounded out the afternoon with short readings from our books followed by an interesting question and answer session. I also thank my good friend Dawn Rayner for spending the afternoon with me and my husband Ted for driving us about.  Here are a few photos.

Me, Leslie, Steve and Marian

Tuesday evening, I spoke for about an hour to the Ottawa Independent Writers Association at the Hintonberg Community Centre. The topic was writing crime fiction and the very welcoming group asked many follow up questions. Thanks to Katherine Hobbs who came along for the presentation and who took the following pic of me in action. You can see the camera to my right - they recorded my talk and I'm told that parts of it will be on YouTube at some point.


Then, yesterday morning, I woke up to find that No Trace landed on the Arthur Ellis shortlist for crime novella of the year. This is the fifth book in the Anna Sweet mystery series from Grassroots Press, a series geared to adult learners. The Hard Fall, second in the series, was also shortlisted a few years ago so good acknowledgement for the books. The entire list can be found on this CBC link.

Writing went well this week on my latest manuscript as I managed a few full days at the keyboard. But for today, I'm off soon to Coles Carlingwood, a mall in my neighbourhood. Tuesday evening, I'm going to the Russell Public Library to meet readers and to do a reading and talk. 

Next Saturday, April 29, I'll be at Perfect Books on Elgin as part of Authors for Indies Day from 10:00 a.m. to noon; and then I'll be at Chapters Kanata from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. that same day.

I've had lots of writing events going on this month with a few more to come. I hope to meet up with you somewhere along the way!

No comments:

Post a Comment