So I'm just back from Toronto, where I attended the Ontario Library Association's annual Super-Conference. That's me with Dayle Sutherland, marketing director at Orca Book Publishers, and Leslie Bootle, Orca's promotions coordinator.
On Thursday night, I had dinner with Dayle, Leslie and Halifax author Vicki Grant (Vicki is the author of several Orca titles including Pigboy and Quid Pro Co). Over dinner, Vicki had this to say about the secret to writing a successful mystery: "The thing about mysteries is you have to know the solution before you start writing."
On Friday, the day I was signing at the Orca and Lorimer booths, I managed to take a little walk with YA author Mahtab Narsimhan, who won the 2009 Silver Birch fiction award for her novel The Third Eye. Like me, Mahtab works full-time, so we talked about the challenge of making time to write. I also got to meet lots of librarians and teacher-librarians, always amongst my favourite people. Shelley Merton who works for the Kawartha Pine Ridge School District told me this: "My goal is to turn every single child into an avid reader." So here's to Shelley and all the other teachers and librarians and teacher-librarians out there! And many thanks to my friends at Orca and Lorimer for bringing me to this year's OLA Super-Conference.