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Wow! Private kidcritters are just hopping! Three kidcritters have been offered contracts in the last week or so.

Hélène has been offered two picture book contracts, James Bow has his second novel coming out next spring, and kc dyer has her fourth coming out this coming spring. Well deserved, all!!!

If you are within driving distance to Toronto, come on down to the Bloor West Ukrainian Festival next weekend.

New for this year is a Literary Pavilion and Kobzar’s Children will be featured there. Several of the anthology contributors will be dropping by throughout the weekend to autograph copies of Kobzar’s Children and to chat about the stories. I’ll be at the booth on Saturday from noon til about 4. Sonja Dunn will be there on Sunday for an hour or so, starting at noon. I am hoping that both Natalia Buchok and Cornelia Bilinsky will also be able to make an appearance.

Hope to see you there!

Brantford Book Camp is starting on Monday! I am getting really excited about this. Our adult writing camp filled almost immediately, but applications for the kids’ camp trickled in right to the very end. “Full” for kids’ Book Camp is 48, but we take up to 56 kids. We reached 48 a month ago, and I believe we just had number 56 come in on Wednesday.

We have a lovely new building this year. Laurier Brantford is one of our sponsors and they have been wonderfully accomodating. Book Camp is being held at the newly built Laurier Brantford Student Centre. The facilities are state of the art. Lots of tall windows, comfy chairs and great A/V equipment. I also like the fact that the kids are being patterned into attending a university facility.

I am also excited about our new addition — Adult Book Camp. We decided to offer this due to popular demand and it is shaping up to be spectacular. We have a number of surprise guests dropping by and we will even be having  a phone-in workshop with a literary agent!

The adult writing camp participants are themselves pretty impressive. Several have received book contracts already and many are already published. This week will keep me hopping!

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted here! My husband and I decided on the spur of the moment to take a holiday. We went to the Galapagos Islands. Fabulous trip! We met some wonderful people and we saw amazing landscapes and bizarre animals. Truly a trip of a lifetime.

While we were gone, our house was struck by lightning. Not much damage — thank goodness — but our internet was wiped out. We just got back online on Thursday evening. Right now I am tackling my bursting inbox.

I had a neat email from Rumi Musha in Japan. We have been corresponding for a number of years. She and her husband run a translation school and they have used portions of my various books in their teaching. Her husband just read Aram’s Choice and loved it. He wrote about it on his blog. How awesome is that?

Sounds kind of strange, this urban poling stuff but I tried it this morning and it’s great. It doesn’t feel substantially different in terms of energy expenditure than plain fast walking, yet it burns more calories and exercises the upper body. Neat.

Kobzar’s Children has barely hit the shelves, but there’s already a lovely reader response up on Amazon.com.

Marsha Skrypuch, Carl Georgian and Muriel Wood at the Freckled Lion Bookstore in Georgetown Ontario at the book launch for Aram’s Choice. Photo taken by Ted Brown of the Georgetown Independent Free Press.

Muriel is illustrator extraordinaire and Carl is the son of a Georgetown Boy. Aram’s Choice is dedicated to him because it was his father’s story that initially spurred me on to write all of my Armenian novels.

Muriel Wood and I had a wonderful launch at Freckled Lion Bookstore in Georgetown on Thursday for Aram’s Choice.

There were two signing times — from 1 til 2 and from 7 til 8.

I met Muriel and her husband David at the former site of the Georgetown Boys’ Farm just before 11:30am so that Bonnie, the superintendant of Cedarvale Community Centre and park, could show us around. Bonnie was so very gracious. She let us wander around inside the building that used to be the Boys’ living area. We went through the top floor which was the dormitory, the kitchen, the former classrooms, everything. And then she kindly took us through her own home, which used to be where the housekeeper of the Georgetown Boys’ Farm lived. We got lots of photos. Muriel is in the process of doing the illustrations for Call Me Aram, which is the sequel to Aram’s Choice.

I got to Freckled Lion at about 12:30am and downed a protein bar for lunch. People began to arrive at around 12:45 and we had a steady stream until about 3! All of the Georgetown Boys themselves have died, but many family members came. Also, a number of my writer friends came, including Gillian Chan and her son Theo, as well as Elizabeth from the Books and Writers Forum, and Marina and Hélène from private kidcrit. Also, lian from TWUC and her mother Helen, who has written about one Georgetown Boy herself.

Many many Armenians came, including Carl Georgian, whose father’s story is the seed for all of my Armenian novels. Also Arsho Zakarian, who has helped both Muriel and myself in a thousand research ways. For the families of the Georgetown Boys, this signing was like a reunion. We heard many stories and shared laughter and tears.

We also found out where Stop 69 was! That was the radial railway stop for Georgetown and where the Boys got off the train. Muriel and I had guesstimated that it was about a mile from where it really was.

Sylvia Lesak, F&W publicist, was also there and she stayed until the evening. Then Tracey Dettman, marketing rep came and Sylvia left for home. We had lots of people come for the evening signing too, so we ended up staying until past 9pm.

Kate of Freckled Lion did a wonderful job of hosting this event. She had a huge tub of ice that was filled with all sorts of flavoured waters, and there was iced tea and hot coffee and all sorts of cookies and there were strawberries (not the saniflush kind!).

Georgetown itself is a nice place. It has a thriving downtown, friendly people and a country feel about it. And as for Freckled Lion, all I can say is I wish we had a bookstore like that in Brantford!

Never again will I buy strawberries at the grocery store.

I generally buy them at the Farmers’ Market or at one of the roadside stands in the country but a few days ago I was having fresh strawberry withdrawal and I was in the supermarket and the produce guy was putting out fresh sparkling red strawberries.

I bought a carton and brought them home. As I cut off the stems, I noticed an odd smell — faintly strawberry-like, but perfumey. I rinsed them extra well, then popped a few in my mouth. They did not taste like strawberries at all. I have never tasted saniflush, but if I ever did, I am sure it would taste like those strawberries.

I put the carton in the fridge and meant to take them back to the store to complain, but didn’t get around to it. Days later, the strawberries looked just as new and unshrivelled as when I bought them.

I went to the Farmers’ Market today and bought myself some real strawberries. These ones are such a dark red that they’re nearly black. And some have bruises and soft spots. And they taste marvellous.

I got a nice surprise in the mail today. A cheque! The Korean rights to Silver Threads have been sold!