End of Week Summary
It's been a busy week from The Forbidden Phoenix rehearsals to all my Read In Week visits to some very interesting developments on the writing front. Here's a recap.
The Forbidden Phoenix: I was at rehearsal on Monday, but I skipped the rest of the week. Reports from the stage manager were good. Progress is slow, but they should have a solid sense of the first act by the end of this weekend. Thankfully, the second act is much simpler to do (more acting and less spectacle). I wished I could have been with the gang, but I was running off my feet with...
READ IN WEEK. I spent the entire week at eight different schools. A lot of the kids had read The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul, and some students had seen me present at their old schools. The cool thing was when kids asked me to re-tell the stories that I had told at their old schools. It was like a request show. Very cool. A big shout out to the students at Father Michael Troy, Steinhauer, St. Martha, St. John Bosco, Katherine Therrien, MacKernan, St. Matthew and J.J. Bowlen. I hope you all keep reading!
With all the visits, I barely had time to work on my writing deadlines, so I have to work this weekend on my last two Edmonton Journal articles. I'm still a bit bummed to know that I won't be a regular columnist, but I think I'll try to find another publication who might be interested in my sense of humour. If I land another gig, I'll be sure to report it here first.
There were three newsworthy notes this week that I'd like to mention.
1. The Richmond producer is in talks to preview a short clip of The Forbidden Phoenix for World Press Day, an international gathering of media types to give the world a glimpse of what they can expect to see when they come to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. No definites yet on what or who will be a part of the preview, but I'm just thrilled to know the show is going to get international exposure.
2. A Vancouver producer just sent me an email confirming that he wants to produce The Bone House in 2009. The dark play will rise again. I'm very excited with all the changes I made to the script to account for today's cell phone users. I think people will be very creeped out. The producer wants to take the play to the Edinburgh Fringe and Toronto Fringe. Wow!
3. The best news of the week came at the end. I got together with Lorna Bennett, the illustrator of my picture book, True Story. She showed me the colour version of the cover. I was blown away. The cool thing is that we stood around the graphic designer's computer and played around with colour schemes and layout to pull together a little ad for the Thistledown catalog (that's the publisher who's carrying the book). What was truly inspiring was that this was the perfect meld of creativity and experience. Two graphic designers, one illustrator and a writer were reacting to the images. No ego got in the way. We just wanted what was best for the project. One designer came up with the brilliant idea of putting the two cats in a spotlight, as if they were caught in the act of doing something bad. Turned out this was the best idea of all. We're still tweaking the cover, but we have a solid base. I'm going to test drive the colour cover at every school I visit from now until the end of October. Yay!