Category Archives: Events

Library love

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I had such a good time visiting two Fraser Valley regional libraries this week: the George Mackie Library in North Delta and the Tsawwassen Library in South Delta.

I had lots of fun with grades three to five students, talking about subjects like blood and poisons and underwear and how those relate to people who changed the world.

And speaking of changing the world — I was hugely impressed by all the things the Fraser Valley Regional Library people do with local students. There were other children’s authors arriving on other days to speak to more classes; there were reading contests for intermediate students; there were even special pockets just for kindergarteners to hold their very first library cards.

I’m off to two more libraries next week, to soak up some more book love.

With feathers flying…

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I am just back from a whirlwind weekend at the Surrey International Writers Conference, and whew! I have never had days pass so quickly. Everywhere I turned there was someone new to talk to, or something fascinating to learn, or some literary argument happening. (I diffused one debate over the merits of the 50 Shades series with the story of my son’s anniversary gift.)

My presentations both went smoothly — more on those another day. In the meantime, here are just a few of my favourite conference moments:

  • Meeting two amazingly talented teen writers at my blue pencil sessions. One was 14!! If I could have gone to a conference like this at 14, I would have… well, I would have been too nervous to speak or move, personally, but what an accomplishment and what a huge opportunity to learn from so many writers and agents and editors at such a young age.
  • The flapper dinner. You know, there are too few chances to wear a feather boa in daily life. Why is that? I have to admit, there were multiple boas in my house from which to choose (Jacqui’s fault). I went with purple. I would show you a picture, but flapper dresses are remarkably short on pockets. I had to put my room key in my bra, and I’m just not endowed enough to comfortably hide a camera there.
  • Breakfasts. Do you know, every morning someone make breakfast AND someone else made my bed? And then another person took away my dishes and I didn’t have to wash them? No wonder people go to conferences. Best of all, while I ate, there were all these other presenters around me, discussing writing. What better way to start the day?

In case you’ve noticed that I haven’t been panicking on the blog about my public speaking abilities, and in case you’ve worried that the real Tanya has been abducted by aliens and replaced by a more secure imposter, you will be happy to know that I wore my shirt inside-out for half a banquet. Then, when I discovered this in the buffet line-up, I handed my name tag to the person next to me, whipped off my top, and put it back on in the right direction.

If I’m ever invited back to the Surrey International Writers Conference, I’m going to suggest a workshop called “How to Strip in Public with No One Noticing.”

Squee!

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And to think, I almost didn’t answer my phone.

You see, the calls began a week or so ago… unfamiliar Ontario number… right at dinner time… no messages left. No one answers calls like that, right?

Then the same number popped up one morning, and I grabbed the phone all ready to DEMAND to be taken off the list.

Yeah. It was the Ontario Library Association calling.

Thank goodness they didn’t take me off their list! I am so excited to have not one, but two books included in this year’s Forest of Reading program. The shortlists were revealed today.

I’m so looking forward to hearing what the readers think!

Word on the Street

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I took my Seeing Red show on the road yesterday (literally on the road) at Word on the Street.

Thanks to an audience chock full of friendly faces, it was great fun. (Thank you, Rachelle and Jacqui and Shannon and Megan and Kit and family members whom I may or may not have paid to attend.)

I got to talk about how the ancient Gauls sacrificed their enemies, how blood solved baby mix-ups in the early 1900s, and how early blood analysis techniques saved people from murder raps.

I also learned a great presentation technique. Get yourself sandwiched between the witty Susin Nielsen and the wonderful Kit Pearson. Voila! Guaranteed crowd!

An interesting coincidence: speaking before Susin was Gina McMurchy-Barber. Gina and I met almost a decade ago, at a great Booming Ground workshop led by Kit Pearson. And of course, Kit Pearson was speaking just a few minutes later. You have to love cosmic mash-ups.

Check this space tomorrow. Official announcement on it’s way…

Summer readers

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I had a wonderful visit yesterday afternoon with the Summer Reading Club at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. And wow! I always enjoy speaking to kids, but kids who choose to spend a sunny summer afternoon at a book talk instead of at the beach, two blocks away? Well, they’re a whole other level of awesome.

I also got to visit with librarian extraordinaire and fellow bhangra dancer Shannon Ozirny, who said that when she heard this year’s reading club theme of “strange but true,” she immediately thought of me.

A compliment? I choose to think so.

Thanks for having me, Shannon, and thanks to the West Van summer reading club kids!

(Incidentally, my own kids picked up their medals at the Kits library branch yesterday, after reading for at least 15 minutes a day for 50 days. But would you believe that in West Van they have a medal ceremony in September? And the MAYOR attends? I wish we could do as they do in Katroo!)

Hangin’ out with the big kids

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There was a nice little buzzing crowd around the table when I stopped by to see Deryn Collier at Chapters yesterday. I also got to meet her crime-writing friends, Hilary Davidson, Robin Spano, and Ian Hamilton.

Min took this picture, after getting heartily mocked for his reading habits (Diablo hint books, mainly) by people he’d just met. He’s a good guy to still hold the camera steady, no?

If you want to meet the crime gang in person, they have one more event in the ‘hood this week. It’s called Triple Threat: Chicks Who Solve Crime! and it’s Thursday, 7:00-8:30 p.m., at the Burnaby Public Library, McGill Branch.

Weekend learning

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I spent a lovely few hours on Sunday evening with the Book Burglars book club at Christianne’s Lyceum, talking about 50 Poisonous Questions. And wow! Every time I stop by that place, I learn things. Here are just a few of the eye-openers from yesterday:

  • According to an ex-military dad named Bernie, the best way to poison people and get away with it is to inject potassium chloride between their toes. (Bet that’s not what you thought we’d be talking about at a book club for intermediate students, hmmm?) What we couldn’t figure out, though, was how to inject people between their toes without leaving incriminating evidence. You can’t exactly say, “Excuse me, would you mind holding up your big toe for me while I get this hypodermic needle ready?” (And if anyone ever does say that to you, you should run.)
  • There is a type of underwear made in Vancouver called STUD briefs which is supposed to increase men’s fertility. We got talking about THAT because I’d brought in a copy of 50 Underwear Questions and apparently the makers of STUD live in Vancouver and their kids attend the Lyceum. Who knew?
  • There is no such thing as a brontosaurus. How crazy is that? Something about two palaeontologists fighting and both of them rushing to identify the most dinosaur bones and one of them getting the wrong head on the wrong body. Obviously, I need to look into this further.
  • I can draw a killer pair of oxen. I know this, because they were correctly identified while I was frantically trying to draw “dioxin” in a competitive round of Pictionary. Okay, there were guesses for deer, cows, and… um… bunny rabbits before someone (Bernie the ex-military dad, actually) hit upon oxen, but still. I think Ross Kinnaird now has competition. If we ever do 50 Oxen Questions, I’m totally illustrating it myself.

Thank you, Christianne, Laura, and Book Burglars, for an illuminating visit!

Warning: you may not wish to read this blog next October

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I’ve been booking presentations for the fall. So many presentations that I have now promised my husband to, as he puts it, “press my tongue against the roof of my mouth and say, ‘nnnnooooo’.”

The problem is, it’s all so exciting! And, since it’s only May, there doesn’t seem to be any downside to booking presentations in October. Right?

Okay, there’s a teensy chance that I’m going to start freaking out on September 30th. I might wake up at 5 a.m. every morning to worry about things that could go wrong, I might develop stomach cramps and acne, and I might occasionally snark at my family.

Or maybe this time will be different…

The Wikipedia challenge

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Here’s a little part of my Saturday presentation which brought some good comments and questions.

Non-fiction has changed in the last decade. Ten years ago, I could say “I want to write a book about famous fires” and six months later, Voila.

Today, there’s a teensy little problem:

You can look up fire on here and find everything you ever wanted to know, and more. There is absolutely no need to buy a book.

So, a non-fiction book today has to have a concept. Something to make it fun. Something that will make kids choose to read paper instead of screen.

It has to have 50 silly questions. Or, it has to have cartoons. Or, in the case of my new book, about blood, it has to have a side-story told in graphic novel form, about a boy slowly drawn into a society of vampires.

It has to have something.

Wikipedia limits us. We can’t create a simple collection of facts. Wikipedia challenges us, as writers, to do more, and do better.

And it also frees us. Because all the facts are here, at the click of a mouse. We don’t have to give our readers all the information. If they’re interested, they can look it up. We just have to hook them. We have to convince them that fire is way more interesting than they ever would have guessed, looking at a list of facts.

The Serendipity debrief

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You will be happy to know I was dressed appropriately at Serendipity this weekend. Well, mainly because Norma Charles caught me just as I was entering. She suggested that I rearrange my name tag so that my name faced out, and then she untucked my sweater from the back of my pants. (You thought I was joking about my inability to dress myself, didn’t you?)

Because 50 Burning Questions won the Information Book Award (thank you, Roundtables!) I talked about non-fiction for a while at the beginning of the day. And I was very, very happy to have spoken first because the next speakers were so mind-blowingly poignant and funny and wise that I would have been much too intimidated to speak afterwards.

The theme of the day was Year of the Dragon: Asian Themes for Young Canadian Readers. Paul Yee, author of Money Boy (a copy of which is now on my beside table) talked about embracing one’s own personal identity, past and present. Editors Marjorie Coughlan and Corinne Robson talked about Paper Tigers, an amazing website. Allen Say, with a lovely combination of gravity and dry wit, told stories from Drawing from Memory that made everybody cry. In the afternoon, Lisa Yee talked about contemporary fiction in which ethnicity is a factor, not a focus.

Looking for a quiet corner to eat my lunch, I found myself in a side room with Norma Charles, Jacquie Pearce, Ellen Schwartz, Beryl Young, Irene N. Watts, and Deborah Hodge. We had a lovely hour eating sandwiches and talking books, and I felt honoured to be in such company.

Oh. And I learned some Bollywood dancing. Yup. About three minutes after I leaned over to Shannon Ozirny and whispered, “maybe we should move back, in case they ask for volunteers,” we were on the stage. It’s even on video. But I’m not telling where.