Bonfires, Poetry and Fireworks

A lot has happened since my last posting.

Let's see...

Hallowe'en was a joy as always. It's my favourite holiday and always has been. Unfortunately our street is one of the oldest in town with large spacious lots so the number of steps between houses create a poor distance to candy ratio for the trick and treaters. We got about twenty or twenty five visitors before the older kids started showing up in their teenager costumes.

I submitted a collection of poems - yes, poems - to the CBC Literary awards collected under the title Sign Post Deep in Snow. I've never really been much of a poem writer but I am pleased with wjat I came up with. Now it's wait and see.

During the weekend to family attended a Guy Fawkes celebration a few days late hosted each year by some ex-pat brits we know. There was of course a bonfire and fireworks - our host told me that the fireworks were technically illegal as Victoria Day and Canada Day are the only two days you can lauch fireworks in Canada without a permit (don't know if this is true or not but I'll take the word of the guy with the lighter and mittful of explosives). The location makes the annual bonfire an event to be attended. The house is large and was built for entertaining. It is litterally a stones throw from a small lake (more of a pond really - you can walk around it in ten minutes) with a cleared torchlit path around it. The fireworks were set off over the water so you got the double effect of the reflection. The kids loved it. When we got home we even got a chance to catch a bit of V for Vendetta before retiring to bed.

Currently I am working on finishing Root of Evil - before returning to The Witch.

Happy Hallowe'en!

It's that time of year again!

All the ghouls and ghosties and witches and princesses and superheroes and werewolves walk the earth tonight.

It's a funny night for parenting. Consider - we all, as parents, spend a considerable amount of time teaching our children the perils of taking candy from strangers and then for one night only we throw that all out the window and encourage it. Guess that just adds to the scariness of the night!

I have finished my collection of winter related poems and submitted for the CBC Literary Awards (deadline is tomorrow). Now I can move back to the scary story I was working on - kind of fitting, this being Hallowe'en and all.

Have a safe and scary day!

Holy Crap!!! I'm writing poetry today!!!

It's true!

Last week I was reading over one of my posts and it struck me as ever so slightly poetic. I cleaned it up a bit and what you know? It really was a poem.

After that I wrote another and today I find myself struggling with yet another poem. All of them share a common element and so I've decided to keep plugging away and write a few more to enter into CBCs annual literary awards.

A common element they share is snow or wintertime. I know it's hardly original but for the CBC awards the more Canadian the better. I haven't yet written anything about lesbian Inuit heroine-using interpretive dancers - I don't know if it needs to be that Canadian - but hey, the day is still young.

In other news, the Old Timer story that I was pretty sure had found a home was very kindly and apologetically rejected over the weekend. The publication where I submitted Old Timer is moving to a shorter fiction format. They now have a firm 5000 word limit, with preference for stories between 3 - 4000 words. Old Timer, at 6700 words, was just too much for them to accommodate. I have today submitted it to a different market where I am certain it will find a home.

The Witch, is brewing. I've put that story on hold for a little while so that the elements can simmer while I work on something else. The something else is another horror story told from a unique point of view. I also have something else rattling around in my head about a demon and a glassblower. Should be fun.