Ahhh...the Bard

Well, the weekend is here and this weekend a trip to Stratford is on the agenda. Long it has been since last I bent the boards performing the Bard. In fact, it was as Lear during University. I've always loved King Lear, his fragile ego and his stupid decisions. Nice to see that leaders haven't changed all that much since Shakespeare's day.

I am not seeing Lear this time. The Merchant of Venice is on the playbill this time. Not my favourite, but still up there in the pantheon of Dramatic Delight. I haven't been to Stratford to see a play for many a year and I'm looking forward to the magic of the stage. Reviews haven't been great, but I'm fairly light on criticism when it comes to live theatre - it takes iron nerves to mount any stage for a dramatic performance and it has to be pretty shitty acting for me to say boo.

In other news, I am dedicating several hours over the weekend to put a couple of projects to bed. I will be putting together a short story of the CBC Literary Awards. I will also be finishing Small Town Secrets. I'm not entirely sure where to market it but I really like the story.

I've put some minimal notes on The Platinum Ticket and the rewrite required there but no actual fleshing out has begun.

I'm discovering that having the discipline to write has been lacking over the last weeks and I'm going to need to pull it together. The demands of the new job are only going to increase, so I've got to build writing into a solid routine now while I can. It won't be easy, but it needs to be done...

Fleshing out...

Well, it was another disappointment for The Platinum Ticket and it would appear that I've pretty much tapped out the North American market for this one. At just over 23,000 words the piece is a difficult length - it's not a short story, nor is it a novel. There may be a few British markets that still entertain novella-length science fiction and if there are I'll find them but I really do think it's time to flesh Ticket out to novel length.

I have been repeatedly assured by those who have read The Platinum Ticket that it is a fine piece of fiction...and I'm pretty sure it is too, so I do think it is certainly worth the effort to build upon the root story.

I recently reconnected with an old high-school chum through Facebook - yes, I have a Facebook account - I know, I know - I'm too old and too grey but they say everyone's welcome and there's a lot of us over 40 folks sitting in our rockers typing away, I'll have you know... Anyway, this old friend reminded me of a road trip we once made in a convertible VW Bug with a shitty European heater in the dead of winter that I'm thinking is uniquely Canadian enough for the CBC Literary Awards. I'll have to get it on paper to see. Thanks for jogging the memory, Brett.

Well, tonight is the first night of the indoor soccer season for the young lad so I must be off.

yeah, that's the Ticket, baby!

It was an exciting weekend here at the Beynon homestead. My sweet missus was away for the weekend leaving me with the kids. It was great...but tiring.

What I would really like to know is who sneaks into the house and slips the kids the cocaine. Seriously, one second everything will be fine. Everyone will be full of love and happiness and then something happens and all hell lets loose.

Now I worked extra hard this weekend monitoring for the early signs of escalation and headed each potential derailer of harmony off at the pass but I was doomed to fail from the start. There's two of them and even though I'm the adult...they're smarter than me.

All told, there was no blood and only some tears and most of those were shed by me late in the day when I had finally cajoled, bargained and sang the kids to sleep.

When my wife came home on Sunday afternoon two lightning streaks swept by me to greet her. You'd have thought I'd had them in shackles from their reaction. I was equally glad to see her, though she did show up just as Mike Weir and Tiger Woods were closing in on the fifteenth hole of the President's Cup and thus had to wait for her hug.

Last night after the children were asleep I had to retreat for about an hour and a half to the basement to finish polishing The Platinum Ticket for submission to Jim Baen's Universe. I had forgotten about the September 30th deadline until earlier in the day. Fortunately I was able to tweak a few parts that needed some attention and get it submitted. Now the waiting game begins.

My wife has lent the manuscript for Patriot to a few of her colleagues at work and so far all of the feedback has been very positive. I've let a few friends take a gander at it as well and it has been received with some enthusiasm. Currently the manuscript stands at 112 pages - a typical length for an entry in the 3 Day Novel Contest - but Patriot could easily be fleshed out to full novel length without losing any of the spirit of the story.