Philadelphia Revisited

kc and her fellow Canucks storm the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Philadelphia, PA....

The story begins before dawn on a rainy, West Coast pre-dawn flight to Phoenix, Arizona. Much flying ensues.



Also lots of waiting.

But finally, West Coast sunrise leads to East Coast Philly airport. More rain. [This is the airport tower in the dark and rain, which looks MUCH cooler when seen through actual eyeballs, as opposed to a grainy iPhone shot...]


More waiting, as fellow-traveller Lee Edward Fodi was stranded for six hours in Houston, due to nation-wide travel computer glitch.


Interesting note: there is no food in the arrivals area of the Philadelphia airport. Also no free wifi, rendering stranded author entirely unable to catch up on email from frantically emailing travelling companion.






But all was finally well, and the two Canuck writers were
reunited in time to go to a 24 hour bar and eat veggie wraps.






After a couple of hours of sleep, the intrepid authors met up with friend and colleague Lori Sherrit-Fleming,
  and put on a rocking demonstration of how to use other modalities within the arts [drawing, music, drama] to entice children into and enhance the experience of becoming life-long writers and readers.




After which there was much walking around the conference floor, meeting up with old friends and signing books with new friends [this is Lee with author-illustrator Jerry Pinkney and author Malinda Lo].







All the while, the Very Busy Kari Lynn Winters was tearing up the turf in Prince Edward Island on the final day of her CCBC Tour. [Evidence that Kari Lynn is secretly a human whirlwind: this week ALONE, she flew to the Maritimes, did 16 gigs on her tour of PEI, flew to Philidelphia, attended the NCTE conference, plus a few other gigs thrown in for good measure, flew home and just yesterday was awarded the title of Doctor of Letters when she successfully defended her thesis in a 21/2 hour examination. WooHOOO! Let's hear a cheer for Doctor Kari!]

And yet... when she did finally arrive, she somehow managed to stay still long enough for me to photograph her with an ice cream cone on her head.

Mint chocolate chip, I believe, if you want to get technical.

Kari, Lee and Lori celebrate by actually sitting down together!



 





Other weekend highlights included a ghost walk... [in which we spied the remains of the ancestors of one of our missing friends in the McCann Family Vault], a trip to the Philadelphia Portrait Gallery [second largest in the United States only to the one in the Smithsonian],












....a wander around a very cool old bookstore with this amazing tree out front....






...its roots gnarled and growing around the old bricks from the road...



...and a visit to the Franklin Institute, loaded with lots of steampunk arcana [very helpful for the new book].

We topped the trip off with a palm-reading session,

complete with crystal ball [VERY illuminating -- note stack of US Magazines neatly placed close to hand...]

AND a Guerilla reading on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum.




But this last event has earned its own post...so hang on tight and you can read more, very soon, my pretties!

[And if you'd like to see more of the pictures in detail, you can check out the Philadelphia set on my flickr page.]

Back soon!

~kc

Flying Through Phoenix...

A quick word from Phoenix, Arizona – just a pit stop here en route to the NCTE conference in Philadelphia this weekend.

This was kind of a last-minute event, and I’ll be presenting with my friends Lee Edward Fodi, Kari-Lynn Winters and Lori Sherritt-Fleming.  I can’t believe they let me take part, when I only have TWO names, both lower case, to boot...

[This is Lee playing uh...not-golf, in not-Phoenix...]

Because this is a bit of a radical adventure for me, I’ll be tweeting and blogging on the fly – and I’m going to try to talk my compatriots into a couple of guerilla Canuck readings on the streets of Philadelphia.

More soon!

~kc

kc November Update

ello fair readers!






Well -- life is certainly interesting, is it not?

Fall is always a busy time for me, but a few family issues have ramped up the pressure a little. Busy is the new black. Or...frantic is the new busy.  Or something like that.

Anyway, this post will have to serve to bring you up to date on A Few Things I Am Up To, as well as A Few Things I Currently Find Interesting. Shall we begin with the former?

On chatting with my Most Wonderful Agent this week, I found myself promising to show her BOTH books I currently have Under Construction by the end of the year. [Insanity runs in my family. Have I mentioned that here before?]

One -- SEVEN DAYS, is a re-write. [In fact it is both a re-write and a co-write, as I am trying a new little social media experiment with the story. I'm hoping to be able to get more specific about this shortly.]

The second is the realization of a project [as yet unnamed] that has been several years in the making. [To give you an idea of just HOW many years, I began working on this story before I took a stroll with a certain Scots colleague through the streets of Edinburgh during the last winter Olympics.]

Yipes! Time flies. I took this picture on that trip. It's a distant shot of Edinburgh Castle taken from the North Bridge and across the city on a moonlit night. I still remember the wind.
Edinburgh in February -- beautiful!

Anyway, this project is the first in what I hope will be a series of steampunk y/a novels -- time travel a required element, of course.

I'm also working on a large desk-topping project [hardly ever do this sort of thing any more, but occasionally the draw of the dollar compels me to creep down out of my artist's garret and make a few bucks]. Not sure where I fit this in, but...will figure it out.

This week I am making a trek to Philadelphia, PA, in order to speak at the NCTE conference. This, for those who don't care to click the link, is the National Council of Teachers of English, and they are holding a giant conference in Liberty City. I'll be going [and appearing] with Kari-Lynn Winters, Lee Edward Fodi and Lori Sherritt-Fleming. Hoping to meet lots of teachers and share as much WALK as anyone will care to listen to!

After I get back, I have the performances of the New Westminster students' plays -- the fruitition of some of the writer-in-res work I've been doing.

And this week I collared Sean Cranbury who was crazy enough to agree to brainstorm a potential collaborative project starting in the new year. In the meantime, make sure you check out his site at Books On the Radio  . He has scored some amazing interviews lately!

More on all of these doings as they ripen. I'll be tweeting @kcdyer if you feel like following the action more closely. 

And to finish -- A Few Items of Interest [aka a tab-closing fest for all!]

*   The first is the blog responsible for the beautiful drop-cap I've inserted here today: DailyDropCap.com A click of the needles to knitting/blogging goddess Leanne Prain for the tip via twitter!

*   The Telegraph's List of a Hundred Books that Defined the Noughties. Definite UK bent, but an interesting means to open debate on the topic, just the same. How many have you read? And which others would YOU add to the list?

*   Just found out there is to be a mini-TED right here! TEDx-Vancouver ... the very idea of it thrills me no end. Not sure how it will all shake down, but you can follow the details HERE.
That's it for now -- more to come. Busy week ahead!

~kc