Breakfast Reviews 2019: Part Three

Blog No. 332

Okay. Three months in and I already messed up. That’s fine. I’m not upset. You shouldn’t be either. I was trying to get a book out, so I may have been a bit distracted. I can do a breakfast review now and another one at the end of the month and we can pretend this never happened. I will point out that my book is on the way, though. Something to be excited about. I hope the copies are good. I’d love to start selling them as soon as possible. They weren’t cheap. I’m pretty happy with them, though, so I can focus on breakfast this morning. My favourite meal of the day.

Breakfast Spot Three: Deb’s Place

We started the our tale at the beginning of the year talking about my love of breakfast stemming from my Sunday morning meals with my grandmother. While nothing will top that breakfast (or those memories) after my grandmother passed away, I started to have regular Sunday morning breakfast with my parents. We went to Deb’s Place in south Windsor after church and the food there became the new standard from which I base my experience at every other breakfast joint. You may ask why I just don’t go there every time, and that’s a fair question. The biggest answer is the hours of operation are limited. The other, I suppose, is variety. Either way, it’s a solid go-to place in the city for breakfast.

One Down, Infinity to Go

Blog No. 325

The Guelph GenreCon is done, and I’m going to talk about it (here, in just a few sentences) but I want to start with tomorrow’s reading! It’s tomorrow! I’m really excited about this one, even though I was overwhelmed with all kind of things running up to it (some also exciting like GenreCon and some really stupid). Either way, I feel like it was partially in cruise-control and partially being steered by Christian while I was running around, waving my arms, as if I were on fire. Then, in the last moment, when the other stuff calmed down and the reality sinking in that this reading was just days away, I started to focus and get to work. By then, there wasn’t much more to do. I’ve practiced my reading, made some facebook posts, and delivered some copies of Thinking Machine to Biblioasis. Not much more to do before tomorrow, now. One last thing about tomorrow’s reading. You should go. It’s got Elly Blake, Brittni Brinn, Christian (if you like that sort of thing) and me! And it’s in a really cool place and we will have coffee and timbits.

The Holidays

Blog No. 317

Last week I was invited to a last minute event at Biblioasis, which was my last event of the year. I wasn’t expecting anything, but they asked me a few days beforehand if I would come to a Holiday Schmoozer with other local authors to be on hand to sign books and what have you. There were some other authors expected and our books were put on a little display table, but the crowd was mostly made up of other authors, too. Not to say that it wasn’t a good time. I just happened to not really be a draw for the store. Some books sold that night, but none of them were mine. I’m not too disappointed. I didn’t have much invested other than time, and I spent my time successfully Schmoozing, so things worked out just fine. I even got one of Biblioasis’ cool Christmas Ghost Stories for taking part. I’m going to call it a win.

Writing and Events (and more writing)

Blog No. 310

A bunch of my last posts have been all about The Neon Heart, the second book in my Novella Series. With most of my events done for the year, it’s what I’ve been spending my time on most. I am so close to finishing the first draft that I can taste it (though the word count just keeps growing). I’m eager to get it done so I can spend as much time as possible in the editing stage, and so I can finally start my next novel. I do have a potential ChiSeries reading in Peterborough on Nov 15th, but it hasn’t been finalized yet, so I’m not counting on it happening. Other than that, I’ve been pouring a bunch of time and energy into the last ChiSeries Windsor of the year. It’s the big fundraiser and Christian and I are going all out with trophies and everything. I’m hoping we can draw in more people than normal, especially since the whole concept relies on having participants.

Tri-City Super Con

Blog No. 307

I can’t remember if I’ve been to Kitchener before. I know I’ve driven past it on the 401, I think I’ve driven through it before, and I know I have definitely been to Guelph. Last weekend was my first time spending any time in Kitchener. Usually, when I’m in another city for an event, there isn’t much time to do anything other than sit at the table (and occasionally check out other vendors) and grab a bite to eat before crashing at the hotel. Getting to do other things in the city is almost always a no go. There just isn’t enough time and often not enough money after paying for the table cost, hotel, gas, and food. There were a bunch of things happening in Kitchener, like the famous Oktoberfest, and while I didn’t get a chance to attend those festivities, I certainly felt the impact. Sadly, it was negative in nature.

ChiSeries Six (Third of 2018)

Blog No. 306

Last week, when I was cocky and full of energy leading up to the ChiSeries Reading, I said I would wait a week to do a proper rundown of it since the event is on Wednesday nights and this blog goes up on Thursday. Now it’s been nearly a week and I’m tired and time moves so quickly in autumn (when I’m getting back on the productivity train). It feels like the reading was a year ago, and now I have to go over all the photos and try to piece together the evening. I think I can do it, it has only been a week. This may end up being a bit of a shorter post, though. Since last week was the longest post I’ve had in probably a year, it will certainly be shorter than that.

Blog Tour Week Three: Brittni Brinn

Blog No. 297

By now, you should have a good idea of what this blog tour is all about. If not, what are you doing here? Go back and read the last three posts to get the full experience. Or don’t, I’m not your boss. The basic idea is that a few of us local authors (and avid bloggers) have decided to dedicate a few posts to each other. It’s a delightfully easy thing since I think they are all wonderfully talented, friendly, and hard working individuals. This week, I’m going to be deviating from the format a bit. Rather than ask Brittni a bunch of questions, I’m just going to talk about her new book, The Patch Project, the impact she’s had in the area, and what it’s like putting a book out.

Blog Tour Week Two: Sharon Ledwith

Blog No. 296

Welcome to week two of the blog tour. If you just started reading my blog (first off, thanks and welcome) you may want to go read the last two posts as they pertain to this four week thing (that I’m lucky to be involved with). Also, if you’re new, go read all my posts. There are almost three hundred of them. What a good way to waste spend your time! For this week of the tour, I’m going to talk about author Sharon Ledwith and her young adult series Mysterious Tales From Fairy Falls.

Sharon is originally from Newmarket Ontario, but now lives in the lovely (I should go there more) Amherstburg, about twenty minutes from my city, Windsor. That makes her part of the local writing community, and when she got here, she hit the ground running. Out of all the authors I know, a surprising few of them take part in things. Some choose to avoid local events in fear of being pigeonholed as a local author, some just aren’t interested. I think those people are missing out. Sharon is not one of those people. She is often part of local readings, book fairs, markets, and other such things. And when she’s not part of it, she is always there to support the people who are. Published by Mirror World Publishing, the same Mirror World from last week’s post about Justine, Sharon has fully embraced the area.

Blog Tour Week One: Justine Alley Dowsett

Blog No. 295

Welcome to Week One of the Blog Tour. Where I focus on someone other than me. But only partially. I’ll definitely get to me. But for the most part I’m going to be talking about Justine Alley Dowsett and her newest book, Mirror’s Deceit. It’s part of The Mirror World Series of Fantasy books.

Justine has been writing for far longer than I have. She went into publishing (something I toyed with, with her help but have since abandoned) and is now the premier genre publisher in the city. The Mirror World books are written with her sister Murandy. Writing with another author can be enough of a challenge, writing with a sibling must take some serous control of your emotions. While I find that process fascinating (from what I understand, they act out the parts and write it all down, amazing) I am more interested in her choice of genre and how she writes books in series.

Local Books

Blog No. 282

Last weekend I had the pleasure of being invited to the first Windsor Small Press Book Fair. It was in a church hall over a coffee shop, and while the cold and rain keep the crowds down, there were enough folks there to make the day profitable. A great help was the low cost of the table. Not only did it mean that only a couple of books needed to be sold to break even (the key breaking point for any event) but it opened the fair to a bunch of new authors and publishers. Sometimes when events are not well attended, the day seems to go on forever. Having someone to talk to on those days is key. For this Book Fair, there were so many writers and publishers I knew (and some I hadn’t seen in a long time) that I was surrounded by people to catch up with, swap books, and talk shop. The customers were icing on the cake. All in all, it was a good start to the monster list of events going on.