The only downside to SSI is that rentals have become so much more expensive in the 11 years since we first came here. Like everywhere, I guess. Wherever you are, I hope you’re seeing/hearing/smelling some signs of SPRING!
Three bookish things that made me smile:)
I’ve been doing some school author visits this month, which I love doing since it reminds me how much I love kids! And how much I admire all the adults in the schools – heroes all of them. I took a few pictures of some of the wall/door art I found:
I’ve had three bookish things happen this month that really made me smile:
a) a high school student in Saskatchewan reached out to me because she had read A HARE IN THE ELEPHANT’S TRUNK for a school project, and she had to do a six-minute speech impersonating me! She wanted more background info than is available on my blog. I was happy to help and to hear that she got 100%!
b) I also got a note from a man who had read HARE, thanking me, and telling me he is not young – he’s in his eighties:) It’s such a treat for an author to hear from people in various corners who’ve connected with one of your books.
c) During one school visit, I had shared SKY PIG, and then I asked the kids to draw their dreams. If they could have anything in the world, what would it be? Kids love this activity, and they come up with some great ideas. As I walked around one classroom (P/1), I noticed one little boy sitting quietly, but not drawing anything. When I crouched down and asked if I could help, he remained silent. I asked an EA in the room if he didn’t speak, and she told me he had just arrived from Ukraine before the holidays. I then went back and really worked to help him understand what he was to draw. A few minutes later, I noticed him staring at the wall behind me, while drawing on his paper. He was using a red crayon, and when I went back, he was carefully copying the Canadian flag behind me! “Your dream is to live in Canada?!” I exclaimed, and he gave me a big grin and nodded his head. This was definitely one of the best moments of my writing life. I had a painting of a dog carrying a Canadian flag at home, so I put it in an envelope and mailed it to the Principal to give to the boy. I hope it makes him smile:)
Wherever you are, I hope January is being kind to you and yours.
2023 Highlights
I hope you’re launching into 2024 with a sense of hope and a heart full of kindness. I’m going to cheat and post only pictures to summarize my 2023. My year was all about Ada and Noelle (who are now 2), but they’re still not appearing on social media, so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say they are the most amazing toddlers in the world:)
Saint Simons Island, Georgia – beach walking and pelican watching.
Approaching Quebec City from the ferry out of Levis (easiest way to visit Quebec City without the parking woes).
This picture of my shoes and Ada’s never fails to make me smile. (I got her Keenes at Frenchy’s)
I had such fun spending the winter on this project for Camp Triumph on Prince Edward Island. https://www.camptriumph.ca/why-camp-triumph
Sadly, this moose was put down after wandering along highway 118 in the Haliburton Highlands for several days. Not sure why…
Haliburton Sculpture Forest – magical place for a walk.
My Beach Meadows writing women – we’ve been retreating together for over a decade, and we never run out of things to talk about!
Lahave River Books – with surprise guest, Holly Doll, publisher at Fitzhenry & Whiteside (and her furry friend, whose name I’ve forgotten). Such a cozy, warm bookshop.
Squeezed in some sister time with Nance.
Pine Lake in the fall – the tractor mower mulches all the leaves pretty well.
Ada and GP at Benjamin Bridge winery, fall, 2023. Think I can post this one because it’s from the back…
I have to say I do love being able to take pictures with my phone. They’re not the best quality, but it’s so great to have a record of the year since they’re passing by so quickly that they all blur together it seems.
I wish you good health, peace, contentment and plenty of time with your people in 2024. This Neil Gaiman quote is popping up everywhere this year, although he wrote it in 2011.
“May your coming year be filled with magic, and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw, or build or sing, or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
I READ CANADIAN (and first lines)
And I hope you read Canadian, too. November 8th is I Read Canadian Day this year – a day set aside to celebrate Canadian books. I was thinking of first lines of novels the other day, and as a writer and a reader, I know how important those first lines are. When I begin reading a novel written by a favorite writer (after I’ve read their Acknowledgements, which is a habit I have), the first line immediately lets me know that I’m in good hands, and that I’m about to enter a world that will engage me and my emotions and cause me to become invested in that world’s people.
So, here are my novels’ first lines:
A HARE IN THE ELEPHANT’S TRUNK (Red Deer Press, 2010)
PROLOGUE: “Jacob held his pointer finger just above his thumb, forming a small, rectangular box in the air. He closed one eye, held the box up to his open eye, and trapped puny little Majok in the frame.”
AND CHAPTER ONE: “From the gnarled branches high in the leafy baobab, Jacob saw Mama kneeling by the river. Even in the blue-gray dusk, with the sun glowing red on the horizon, he could see that she was the most beautiful of all the mothers, like a queen with a crown of braids.”
THE POWER OF HARMONY (Red Deer Press, 2013)
CHAPTER ONE: “The mirror on the back of the bathroom door’s all cloudy. Makes me look like an angel. A skinny, freckly angel in an itchy white dress. I’ve got the voice of an angel, too. That’s what my music teacher tells me. Only I don’t want to be in God’s heavenly choir. Not yet. Since that’s just a nice way of saying somebody died.”
ROCKET MAN (Red Deer Press, 2014)
CHAPTER ONE: “First day of basketball tryouts. The gym smells like rotten socks and last year’s sneakers. It’d be a fail, a colossal fail, to play D2 in Grade 8. I’ve gotta make Division 1 this year. I’m warming up, doing some power crossovers, when Roy Williams struts up to me, steals my ball, slam-dunks it, then hangs off the rim for about an hour, doing chin-ups.”
TALKING TO THE MOON (Red Deer Press, 2018)
CHAPTER ONE: “My real mother, Moonbeam Dupuis, disappeared on March 20th, 2008. On my fourth birthday. 2,699 days ago. Sir Isaac Newton died on that same date, only in 1727. He was the first scientist to notice that water could separate light into all the colors of the spectrum. Sir Isaac discovered gravity too – the invisible force that keeps us stuck to the earth, like what roots do for trees, so we’re not all the time astronaut-floating. Hugs are one of my Dislikes, but sometimes it feels like the earth’s not wrapping its invisible arms around me tight enough. Like gravity and my missing mother are both avoiding me. Part of me disappeared with Moonbeam. Since it’s an inside bit, the only one who knows it’s gone is me.”
SAY WHAT YOU MEAN ( Nevermore Press, 2019)
CHAPTER ONE: “I didn’t even know you were lost and needed to be found. Until we saw the note – under one of the scratch-and-sniff pizza magnets on the fridge. One of those yellow sticky notes you keep in your shirt pocket, the ones you leave the riddle clues on when we play hide-and-seek up at Gram’s. Only this was one messed-up clue. “GONE OUT WEST TO FIND MYSELF. SORRY.”
THE HERMIT (Nimbus Publishing, 2020)
CHAPTER ONE: “Hey, Danny! Wait up.” Huh? Why does he sound so far away? I look back over my shoulder at mini Ben, still at the very bottom of the mountain I just got done climbing. I collapse onto a massive log, help myself to some tasty wild blueberries, and prepare to wait for my super-slow friend.”
Interesting to type out these lines, especially since I wrote them years ago, but I remember so well the hundreds of times I rewrote these lines, and in fact, the entire first chapters of each of my novels. When I visit schools, kids are always surprised to hear that my novels all took more than three years to write – sometimes I’ll start something, then leave it for a time to work on something else, but the editing process is soooo… long. I started working on some of my picture books a dozen years before they were published ! I love working with editors because I know we’re both working toward creating a stronger book – and they have such great eyes for detail. And I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best in the business!
If you’re reading a Canadian book this week, which one is it? Happy reading!
Time Flies … Summer, 2023
I’m always a little surprised when I finally make it back to my blog and see when I last posted. Oh, well. I’ve been in the Haliburton Highlands at our family cottage for most of the summer, seeing lots of Ada and Noelle, our grandbabies who will soon be two years old already! Sadly, they’re not appearing on social media, but trust me when I say they are the two sweetest little girls who ever lived😊 They’re so different and changing every week as they’re learning to talk, experimenting with the potty, etc. Grandparenting truly is the best gig ever.
We’ve heard lots of live music here in the Haliburton area, listened to lots of Canoe FM, spent time in the woods as well as in and on Pine Lake most days. I’ve never lived anyplace with so much sunshine! Surprisingly, the lake level doesn’t seem to go down much, even though we’ve had very little rain all summer. We were back in Nova Scotia for a month in the middle of the summer, and people say it rained in Haliburton then, and the grass is still green, so maybe we missed it. While in NS, I got to enjoy my annual week at Beach Meadows with writer friends Marcia Barss, Jackie Halsey and Jill MacLean – lots of fog, but I did a lot of painting and the conversation is always rich. I’ve been busy uploading my soul smiles greeting cards, which you can find here: https://jancoates.ca/soul-smiles/ – I’m happy to mail them out to you (in exchange for an e-transfer:) BIG THANKS to everyone who has supported my fledgling business over the past 4 years. They’re also available at Stirling Farm Market just outside Wolfville.
Just signed a contract with Fitzhenry & Whiteside for a kids’ book about iconic Canadian artist, Doris McCarthy, scheduled for publication in 2024. Doris lived between 1910 and 2010, and I got to be writer-in-residence for a month back in 2015 at her former home on the Scarborough Bluffs, Fool’s Paradise, where I became smitten with all things Doris. As a young artist, Doris spent a lot of time here in the Highlands painting with her friend Ethel Curry, so I’m thinking of her often as I roam about. I’ve had a couple of nice chats with the CEO of the Haliburton County Public Library system, Chris Stephenson, and his mother was a student of Doris’s in the 1960s at Central Tech – I hope to have tea with her someday since I’ve met few people lucky enough to have known Doris.
Sadly, the CEO of Fitzhenry, Sharon Fitzhenry recently passed away. She and her sister Holly Doll (who was nice enough to come to my book event at cozy bookshop, Lahave River Books, in late July, as pictured below) have been the faces of F&W for many years, and their dad started the publishing company back in 1966. A great loss to the CanLit community.
This is a very welcoming place to be, and I’ve so enjoyed our first summer in the Highlands. Haliburton only has about 1000 full-time residents, but there are over 500 lakes in the vicinity, so it’s bustling in the summer. Now that it’s fall, things will quiet down I expect. We just bought the cottage in the fall of 2022, so there’s always lots of work to do. The previous owner built it in 1975, and he basically left everything (EVERYTHING) here when he sold it. We’ve made lots of donations to SIRCH, the local community helper agency, and I’ve become a big fan of FB Marketplace, where I recently found these pinch-pleated drapes for $60, allowing me to get rid of the orange circa 1975 ones, but still use the existing tracks.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the summer of 2023 and had a chance to spend time with the people who matter most to you, as I have. I’ll leave you with the cover of the book I did for Camp Triumph in the spring, and this moose we saw close-up on Highway 118 last week. I hope he made his way back to his family as he looked kind of lost… Cheers!
Playing with Fonts and School Visits
I’ve been having so much fun working on a picture book I’m doing for Camp Triumph, which is on Prince Edward Island – a nurturing community for kids who have a sibling or parent with a serious chronic illness or disability. Started by the Sheriko family, formerly of Wolfville, almost 20 years ago, this is a dream project for me. The Sherikos ran Wolfville Minor Basketball for many years, and the dad, Tom, lived for almost 20 years with a brain tumor while Kathi and Tom’s three sons, Jordan, Jeffrey and Matthew, were growing up.
As part of the process of creating the book, I’ve been playing around with fonts. Fonts I like include: “Unkempt,” “Aprilia,” “Delius,” and “Lucida Bright.” I wanted to show them to you here, but apparently Word Press doesn’t recognize them. Oh well – each has things I like and things I’m not a big fan of, so we shall see…
It’s amazing how many thousands/millions of fonts there are out there!
Love this poster, spotted at Coldbrook School during a November school visit.
I did a few school visits in January and February, one of them in Stephanie Carver’s grade 6 class at Rockingham Elementary – she’s the daughter of Peter Carver, the now-retired editor of my Red Deer Press books. Her students were completely engaged and had a ton of great questions for me. And I could see her dad in Stephanie’s smile😊 I also spent two snowy mornings at Falmouth & District School with grades P-2 students – always fun to spend time with little ones (in 30-minute increments😊)
My morning with grades 3 and 5 students at Wolfville School was an easy visit – I walked down the hill! The resource teacher, Jenny Collishaw, was my warmly-welcoming host. The grade 3 students were excited to share the bulletin board they’d created with projects they’d done based on some of my picture books. Most of the pictures taken had kids in them, which is a no-no, but here’s their bulletin board, proof that teachers continue to do amazing work in our schools, despite snow days and everything else heaped on their plates. Kids really are the best, and it’s such a treat to spend time with people who have read my books!
And Jenny made me this lovely gift as a memento of my visit. So nice, all of it!
Huge thanks to Linda Hudson of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia who organizes the Writers in the Schools program. And thanks to you for stopping by. I hope sunshine and warm spring breezes will soon arrive in your corner of the world!
I’m Still Here!
I can’t believe I haven’t made it onto my blog for so long, but I’m finally here. Seems time just keeps skipping by more and more quickly the older I get!
We bought a family cottage in the Haliburton, Ontario area a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve already spent five days there, most of them without running water… But I already love the beautiful lake-rich area, the friendly people we’ve met so far, and the cozy cottage. The previous owner is 94 now, and with his late wife, he built the Viceroy home in 1975. He planted many hardwood trees around the property which are quite big and shady now, and he left just about everything in the cottage, so other than fully winterizing it, there’s not much for us to do but enjoy when we’re there! I’m hoping it’ll be a place where we can watch Ada and Noelle grow up – they’ll no doubt think it’s our house since I expect we’ll see more of them there than here in Nova Scotia.
I had kind of a big book week this week. Tuesday night Red Deer Press hosted a historical fiction Zoom launch for Christine Welldon’s new middle-grade novel, Knight of the Rails, and my new picture book Anna Maria & Maestro Vivaldi, with stunning art by Francois Thisdale. It was so great to finally meet Francois, who I’ve gotten to know through a lengthy set of emails as he was working on the art for this book. I’ve admired his work for years, and his passion and enthusiasm for his art is inspiring. I’m very grateful to have had an opportunity to create a book with him. Plus, he regularly bikes 35 kms a day as part of his artistic process (6,000 kms total in 2022) I’ve also gotten to know new Red Deer Press editor Bev Brenna through email, and it was wonderful to meet her, sort of in person. Thanks to friends and family who tuned into the Zoom launch, including baby Noelle, the youngest-ever participant on a Red Deer Zoom launch😊 Giant thanks to everybody on the Red Deer Press/ Fitzhenry & Whiteside team, including former editor Peter Carver and former publisher, Richard Dionne, who acquired this book back in 2019.
If you didn’t make the launch, but you’re interested in hearing how both the words and art evolved for this book, here’s the link. Our bit starts at about the 23 minute mark:
Passcode: .v7F7$z1 (note there’s a period in front of the “v”)
I spent two mornings this week at Coldbrook School (the wall outside the office above), visiting grades primary to two classes, and I completely enjoyed talking about writing and being with kids again (I wore a mask as much as possible since everybody is coughing these days). Thank you to all the young writers who shared their energy, dreams, grandparent poems, and guessing games with me. A special shout-out to Mrs. MacLean’s grade 2 class, my first audience for Anna Maria & Maestro Vivaldi – they listened so closely, and I loved your energy for the guessing game activity. Hope to see you again! There are so many teachers, educational assistants and students absent with various viruses these days – even though they’re tired, the adults in the building keep the school ship afloat – not an easy task at the best of times. Thank you!
Hope you’re settling in for the winter and enjoying spending time doing things you love with people you love – cheers!
Jan
Time flies…
Summer is whizzing by, as it always does. Bit of a heat wave in Nova Scotia right now, but we always know snow is coming – eventually, so I try not to complain too much about the hot days.
Granddaughter Noelle made her first visit to Nova Scotia earlier this month – I’d love to post some pics to show you how sweet she is, but permission hasn’t been granted😊 She did dip her tiny toes in the Minas Basin, Lake Peter and the Atlantic Ocean – she wasn’t a fan of the waves. It’s interesting seeing the differences between parenting in the age of Google, compared to our experience of essentially parenting by instinct/guess/luck/friends’ advice. Pretty sure there’s too much information available in some cases, but, of course, a lot of useful/great info, too. Happy we’ll get to spend some time with both Noelle and Ada in August in Ontario (and their parents, of course).
We’re on our 12th annual creating retreat this week, our third visit to The Mighty Atlantic in beautiful Beach Meadows – lots of crashing waves and pounding surf music this week – and nice, cool temperatures compared to many places. We’ve been fogged in a bit, but most days the sun has appeared before dusk falls. A fox family living in the woods near the beach has been an added delight this year. Great conversation – we haven’t solved any of the world’s problems, but not for lack of trying. As always I take too many pictures, but I especially love the sand trees carved by the endless waves. Happy summer to you and yours!
“The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn’t subdue you and make you feel abject. It’s stimulating loneliness.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Jacques Cousteau
“When anxious, uneasy, and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.
It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
Sublime Saint Simons Island, GA
Like most people of a certain age, I sometimes think about how I’d like to be remembered, after I’m gone. When I’m here on SSI, I love walking along the shore reading the bench memorial plaques (I wrote about them five years ago, too: https://wordpress.com/post/jancoates.ca/1967)- such a thoughtful and meaningful way to remember loved ones, while at the same time sharing a beautiful spot for passersby to sit and enjoy the view! I hope you’ll enjoy reading these ones – what would you like your family to write about you?
Happy 2022! (better late than never)
After finally getting to finish my highly-personal, and exciting, dedication for ANNA MARIA & MAESTRO VIVALDI (Red Deer Press, 2022, art by the amazing Francois Thisdale, whose work I’ve admired for years), I’m taking some time to reflect on November and December. We were in Ontario for those two months, back and forth between Kingston (a very easy city to live in/get around) and Toronto, spending time with Shannon & Peter, Liam & Rachel as they awaited their first babies.
Ada Jane (AJ) Vooys (named after my late mum and Peter’s Grandma Jane) arrived on November 22nd, on what would have been my parents’ 64th wedding anniversary, and Noelle Clara Coates arrived on December 21st, the first day of winter. Sadly, I can’t show you pictures as their parents have wisely decided to keep them off social media, but I’m completely in love with both of these sweet little girls. It’s early days, but it already seems they may have very different personalities – who knows? I’m just so grateful for their safe arrivals – thanks to their Mamas who did the hard work of growing them!
They’re so beautiful, snuggly, soft, sweet, cute – all the baby adjectives, and I loved them from the moment I met them (or possibly before they were born), something that kind of surprised me. I loved my own kids from the moment they were conceived, I think, but I didn’t know it would be the same for grandbabies. Best of all is watching their sleepy parents love them, too, as they figure out this parenting thing. Both couples will be such great parents, and they’re all taking a teamwork approach, supporting each other, exchanging bleary-eyed smiles, even across poopy diaper changes, with Vaseline-slathered hands😊
Both AJ and Noelle are lucky little girls to have the parents they do, and I am so looking forward to being part of their life stories as they unfold, chapter-by-chapter (diaper-by-diaper)! Fortunately, my almost-forgotten baby-holding skills kicked in immediately – there’s nothing like that new baby smell and warmth to send a new grandma into raptures.
Meanwhile, back home in Wolfville, I’m still making masks – I stopped counting ages ago, but it’s well over 5,000. Lots of snowy days to work on my illustrating, too. Hope you’re able to tune out Omicron for the most part, and that you’re vaccinated, boosted, and finding your way through this endless pandemic.
Jan L. Coates - "What if...?" 