A big thank you to Rob McLennan of above/ground press for organizing the Ottawa small press book fair. I also want to thank all of the people who spoke with me and especially those that bought my book It All Started in Mandalay.
I had the chance to speak with a lot of writers whose tables were set up and were waiting eagerly for the doors to open. The first fascinating writer I met was Gordon Bowman who wrote the Scooter Diaries. He wrote a book based on his father's diaries with pictures of his mother and father "scooting" around Latin America a lifetime ago. The picture on the cover of his parents on a scooter looked remarkably like Gordon who was now more or less his father's age when he took the trip. This was also a labour of love as it was all based on his father's diaries and pictures and was published after his father passed away.
To help fund the book, Gordon directed me to an interesting web site called kickstarter. If you have an idea for a book or movie or an invention of some sort, you put your idea on the website, give backers a limited time to respond, like 30 days, and if you get the donations you go ahead with the product and if not you either spend your own money or forget about the idea! For those independent book writers this might be a great way to pre sell your book.
I had the chance to speak with a lot of writers whose tables were set up and were waiting eagerly for the doors to open. The first fascinating writer I met was Gordon Bowman who wrote the Scooter Diaries. He wrote a book based on his father's diaries with pictures of his mother and father "scooting" around Latin America a lifetime ago. The picture on the cover of his parents on a scooter looked remarkably like Gordon who was now more or less his father's age when he took the trip. This was also a labour of love as it was all based on his father's diaries and pictures and was published after his father passed away.
To help fund the book, Gordon directed me to an interesting web site called kickstarter. If you have an idea for a book or movie or an invention of some sort, you put your idea on the website, give backers a limited time to respond, like 30 days, and if you get the donations you go ahead with the product and if not you either spend your own money or forget about the idea! For those independent book writers this might be a great way to pre sell your book.
Authors write books out of love. Another remarkable woman I met was Margaret Kell Virany who wrote Kathleen's Cariole Ride who wrote about her parents having access to love letters and other artifacts she found. As I said in an earlier post, writing has to be a labour of love and I think Gordon and Margaret exemplify this.
Many of the authors I spoke with like Margaret had a background in journalism or editing, and often worked in this capacity still. I suppose they felt that it was time to edit their own words for a change and write about things close to their hearts. Scott Bury of Independent Authors International would be typical, I think. He even worked for one of the big five publishers in another life. He writes in a number of genres and you can read The Bones of the Earth, the Stawb Part, or One shade of Red, no, not Fifty Shades of Grey, but I bet it would be fun to read!
Many of the authors I spoke with like Margaret had a background in journalism or editing, and often worked in this capacity still. I suppose they felt that it was time to edit their own words for a change and write about things close to their hearts. Scott Bury of Independent Authors International would be typical, I think. He even worked for one of the big five publishers in another life. He writes in a number of genres and you can read The Bones of the Earth, the Stawb Part, or One shade of Red, no, not Fifty Shades of Grey, but I bet it would be fun to read!
Writers seem to come in all sizes, shapes and colours, but what they have in common I found at the fair was a love of writing, a creative spirit, an ethic of incredibly hard work, tremendous will power to be able to sit down day after day and write, a sensitivity to the world around them and great insights into life. I am inspired by all of the writers I met at the Fair and I am now even more determined to write with love and passion.
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