Dad and Daughter Dining

The assignment last week at my creative writing course was to write about a dining experience from the point of view of the opposite gender. (I was surprised how difficult this was for several people, mainly the women). I decided to make it a little harder on myself and make my woman a young woman and a vegeterian. If that wasn’t enough, I decided to experiment with a new style (for me, at least), free verse. I was inspired to do this after reading Sharon Creech’s book entitled Heartbeat.

Here’s what I came up with…

Leaf Letters

I’m taking a creative writing course at Concordia. I took advantage of one of the assignments and wrote it as a picture book. It’s called Leaf Letters and I hope to send it off to some Canadian publishers today. It got mixed reviews from my critique group, but I’m going to test the market anyway. I think the main problem with it is that it is targeted a bit too old for the picture book market. I think it is a bit “the giving tree-esque” which is a picture book but definitely aiming at adults. We’lll see what happens.

Ideas I’m Working On

I thought as a start I’d let you in on some of the stories I’m working on:

1. Kay, a Canadian girl about 13 whose diplomat family recently moved to Rio de Janeiro. Kay has to struggle with the typical problems of making new friends but also picking up a new language and even more difficult, learning a new ballet style. I’m aiming this at the young adult novel market.

2. Stu is a typical 9 year old boy. His over-achiever parents can’t understand how their son could be such a goof-off. When they take him to a new restaurant on his birthday called “All in a Stew” the adventure takes off. Stu is the long awaited child prodigy stew maker who takes the humble stew to new heights. I’m aiming this at the middle age market.

3. I’m working on an action-packed idea about two 16 year olds and their lives as pizza delivery boys.

Recent mailout to publishers

On Canadian Thanksgiving  Day I had to drive down to Vermont. I took advantage of the  opportunity to drop some manuscripts in the US mail box. I sent my picture book “Bo” to 5 US editors and my picture book “Backyard Friends” to 3 US publishers

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