Facebook and SiWC and My Man Jan

I acquiesced to coercion and opened a page on Facebook today. (You can find me under kc dyer, though they insisted on capitalizing my k and d.)


I'm not sure what the value of this endeavour will be, but we'll see. My daughter suggested I use the page to publicize my books, but I have my blog and website for that... I guess we'll see what develops.


Spent the bulk of the day gathering up the last of the invitees for SiWC this year. There will likely be a few more over the next couple of months, as all things settle out, but the line-up is looking pretty darned stellar already. Since the author list in the public domain already, I'll post it here:


General Fiction: Don McQuinn, Stephen Galloway, Cecelia Holland, Jacqueline Mitchard, Timothy Taylor,

Historical Fiction: Jack Whyte, Diana Gabaldon, Anne Perry

Mystery: John Brady, Jan Burke, Hallie Ephron, Phillip Margolin, Patricia Smiley, Barbara Rogan

Urban Fantasy-Horror: Kelley Armstrong, Vicki Pettersson, Michael Slade

Romance: Karen Robards, Wendy Roberts, Nancy Warren

Children / Young Adult: Maggie deVries, Lee Edward Fodi, Dennis Foon, Bruce Hale, Eric Walters.

Speculative Fiction: Diane Duane

Non-fiction: Michael DeFreitis, Elizabeth Lyon, Anthony Dalton, Paul Lima, Lois Peterson, Daniel Wood.

Poetry: Bernice Lever, George McWhirter


The categories are almost useless, because virtually everyone of these authors writes out of genre now and again. Anne Perry belongs in mystery, and Bernice Lever belongs in non-fiction and Diane Duane writes for kids and so on.


But isn't this an amazing list? There are one or two surprises still to come. And when we add the incredible selection of agents, publishers and editors -- well, it's possible that Surrey might be the place to be for aspiring writers in October.


I'm just saying.


One other note. Today after school, being Friday, my children and I were in pursuit of DVDs (for them) and chocolate (for me, but of course they managed to score a bit as well). Whilst managing to meet our weekend quota of both items, we ran into a friend of mine -- Jan Hurst. I was thrilled to introduce him to my children. Such a cool guy.


It is a point of great delight to me that Jan's first foray into writing was a book about building kayaks , published circa 1931. He's written a couple of books recently; Thorfinn Thorhallson's Saga, published in 2001, and more recently a speculative fiction story called Ultimate Downsizing.


When I saw him today, he was on his way to a 'three-day' birthday party for his daughter-in-law, he said, with celebrating set for this evening and Sunday, and apparently a day off for the hang-over in between. He shook hands with my son, and remembered meeting my daughter at Word On the Street last September.


"You remember me," he said to her. "I'm the old guy from Bowen Island." He waved us good-bye and headed off to meet his daughter-in-law and go to the party.


On his next birthday, he'll be 95.


Here's his website if you'd like to check out his books. (Or if you need your kayak tuned up, he's your man.)


http://www.thorfinn.ca/author.html


~kc