Author: Marsha

Check out the new website for Authors’ Booking Service. I did it myself! Fools rush in, and all that …

It’s beginning to look a bit aged….

Okay, this salad was made a month and four days ago and it expired a month and a day ago and it’s still in my fridge. I just looked at it, and had I seen it just like it is now in the grocery store, I still would have bought it. The volume’s down a bit, but the spinach leaves are not yet wilted or dried. There’s a bit of moisture collecting on the bottom of the container, but no slime. The onions look perfect. The mushrooms look no worse than they did three weeks ago. Hmmm.

I am going into salad withdrawal, so I decided to make my own. I asked the produce guy at the grocery store about the expiry date for the romaine hearts that were in cello bags because I couldn’t find a date stamped on them. He said, “They don’t expire.” I asked him what they sprayed on them to make them not expire. He said, “Nothing.” I didn’t buy those romaine hearts. Fool that I am, I bought the organic ones. When I made a salad out of them, I was heartened by the brown spots.

Off to the farmers’ market tomorrow …

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Brantford Children’s Book Camp still has spots available. Here’s the application form.

And Burlington is holding its first annual Book Camp! Here’s more info on that. And here’s the application form.

I grabbed this from Hal’s blog:

Join writers/editor Marsha Skrypuch, publisher/novelist/poet and former Broken Pencil mag editor Emily Schultz and writer/editor Hal Niedzviecki for a 4 day writing retreat. Held in August from the 13th to the 16th, the event will include group work, one-and-one editing, publishing advice, plus visits from agents, editors and publishers. There is an option for low cost residency during the week in the Laurier Brantford dorms. Brantford is an Ontario town about 1 hour west of Toronto, just past Hamilton. There are 3 spots left (out of a total of 24) and university students may be eligible for a fee reduction so if you’re interested, act fast. Here’s the application form.

Hmmm…

This store-bought salad, made on May 10th with an expiry date of May 13th, is composed of:

spinach
sliced almonds
red sliced onions
whole cherry tomatoes
sliced mushrooms

As of today, the almonds have black mold on them, and the mushrooms are beginning to turn black. The spinach is beginning to get a few wet spots on the bottom, but generally looks fresh. The onions and cherry tomatoes look the same as they did when I bought this salad nearly a month ago!

Schools don’t seem to have world maps anymore. This is a bit aggravating for me, especially when I’m doing presentations to younger students. It’s hard for them to grasp the distance between Canada and Turkey, or Canada and Ukraine.

I was at the dollar store today and guess what they had? A portable world map! It’s approx one square meter in size and it rolls up onto a wooden stick. It weighs about half a kilo or even less. And it was only $3.99.

Last Wednesday was a busy day, what with the giant Peel event, followed by the visit to a school in Don Mills immediately after. As a rule, I will only do one full day of school presentations in a week. Any more than that and it drains me. I broke the rule several times during May in order to accommodate as many school requests as I could.

I got up early on Thursday morning and did the three hour drive to Leamington. That afternoon, I did two back to back presentations at a Leamington high school. The first presentation was in the gym with about 400 students, and the second was in the library. Initially, the second presentation was to be for 25 or so students who were in the reading club, but as time passed, the numbers crept up. The day before, the teacher-librarian emailed to let me know that 50 kids would be there. I had wanted to do a bit of a writing workshop with the students, and although 16 is the ideal number for that, I felt I could still incorporate a writing exercise with 50 if they were seated around tables.

When I got there, it turned out that 100 students had signed up! This was an honour, seeing as it was voluntary on their part, however, it’s hard to do any sort of writing exercise with a group that big. And there was no way to accommodate that many student around tables. So the teacher-librarian had set up rows and put an aisle down the middle. Many of the students had been to the presentation in the gym, so this second presentation was entirely different. I concentrated on the writing and revision process, answering questions about their own writing and also answering questions about my books — every single student in attendance had read at least one of my novels and many had read all.

And I did do a bit of a writing exercise. I was delighted with what the students were able to create during the exercise. Several read them to the entire group and they were fantastic! Any one could have been the intriguing beginning of a great story! I was thrilled!

That evening, Margaret Snow, teacher-librarian extraordinaire, took me out for dinner. Another local teacher librarian joined us and it was a pleasant evening. Then I drove back to my B&B and was asleep before I knew it.

The next morning, I did two back to back sessions at Margaret’s school, Gore Hill. Margaret had prepared the students so well for my visit that they were all familiar with my books and they asked excellent questions. One of the groups had concentrated on Aram’s Choice, so as a treat, I read them the first chapter of Call Me Aram, which is the sequel to Aram’s Choice and will be coming out in the spring of 2008. This was the first time I have shared the story with a class and they were all wanting more.

Margaret had arranged for a catered lunch and also had a huge cake that was iced with a greeting to me. I ate a piece of it as I was driving to the next school — yum!

The second school of the day was a small one and again, the teacher-librarian had prepared the students well. In the session for the younger children, there were letters each had written as if they were Aram, writing to his grandmother. There was also a stack of letters written to me with lots of questions. I incorporated the answers to those questions into my talk and also shared with them the first chapter of Call Me Aram. The second group was grades 6,7 and 8 and they had read the first half of The Hunger. It was also an interesting group of students who asked good questions.

After that 4th session of the day, I packed up and skedaddled before the bell rang. I wanted to beat the school bus out of the parking lot.

It wasn’t until I got home that the exhaustion hit. It took the entire weekend and more to recuperate. I don’t know why I don’t keep to my own rules and stick to the one day a week of presentations.

On May 22, I posted an entry about an old prepared salad that I had found in my fridge that was suspiciously fresh looking. I checked it today and it still looks fresh. The sliced mushrooms are not at all slimy and the spinach is still crisp. I checked out the date stamp on it. The salad was made on May 10th and expired on May 13th. I’m going to keep it in my fridge to see how long it takes to rot.

I have sworn off grocery store salads. Frozen vegetables or farmers’ market vegetables are the only ones I’m trusting now.

I did my last Forest of Reading event of the year and it was MASSIVE and very well-organized. It was for Peel and was held at the Powerade Centre on Kennedy Road in Brampton. There were 4,800 students in attendance! Other scheduled authors were Robert Munsch, Eric Walters, Peggy Dymond Leavey and Michael Boughn. I happened to be chatting with LM Falcone  — this year’s winner of the Silver Birch Award for fiction — yesterday and mentioned the Peel event. Lucy hadn’t been told about this event and wondered if perhaps she should contact the organizer to let her know that she would be delighted to drop by. I told her I was positive the kids would be thrilled to have the winner of the Silver Birch show up! I gave Lucy the contact info, she called, and was added to the program.

A young lady by the name of Samantha was my student ambassador. Not only did she have to say a short speech about me, but she had to carry an enormous sign that had been hand-painted about Aram’s Choice. It was beautiful, albeit heavy.

All of the authors’ signs were awesome! Peggy’s was especially spectacular. And even though Lucy was a last-minute invitee, there was a sign for her and a student gave a speech. I was very impressed with the speeches the students made. It was nerve-wracking for me to get up in front of all those people, but to be able to do it while still in grade school shows a phenomenal amount of poise and preparation.

I loved listening to all of the authors speak and it was also fun to see the students do the wave and hold up their posters. What an event! Kudos to Peel for a successful event!

At the end of the program, I booted it out with an egg salad sandwich in tow. Good thing I was wearing an egg salad sandwich coloured blouse because it’s messy eating and driving. I hopped on the 407 and got to a lovely private school in Don Mills with 5 minutes to spare. The students were already sitting in front of a comfortable rocking chair and the teacher-librarian was talking about Aram’s Choice. We switched places and I continued on. It was interesting, going from a group of 4,800 to a group of 30. The students asked pertinent and interesting questions and at the end of the session I was given a chocolate sundae. Yum!

Off to Leamington early tomorrow morning for two days of readings.