The image above is South Glen Road Bridge, by F.W. Micklethwaite, and it’s in the public domain courtesy of this website.

On Thursday, I went out to Eden Mills to attend a media event held in one of the organizer’s back yard. About a dozen of us turned up, including reporters for the Guelph Mercury. I gave a brief reading from my novel, Fathom Five and the reporters moved about, interviewing everyone. You can read the Guelph Mercury’s take on the event here.

I also saw the line-up for the Eden Mills Writers Festival on Sunday, September 7. Barring changes, I’ll be reading a section of Fathom Five in “The Common” at 3:30 p.m. with three other young adult and children’s writers, including (gulp) Dennis Lee.

No pressure, huh?

Anyway, it’s a great honour to be invited, particularly for the 20th anniversary, and if you have a free day that Sunday, I highly recommend that you come out. If you love books, if you love reading, or hearing authors read, there is no better venue. Eden Mills is an idyllic setting that manages to shoe-horn over a thousand other book lovers along their main street strip for that day. For writers and readers, there are few better ways to bolster one’s creative juices than to be surrounded by so much literary appreciation.

I have a copy of Alligator Pie that my mother read to me that I’ll be having Dennis Lee sign. Governor General award winners Kenneth Oppel and Arthur Slade will be there to promote their latest novels, along with Jane Urquhart, Robert Sawyer, and many more. There will be books to sign and, of course, thousands of books bought and sold. I’m really looking forward to it.

In other news, I’ve been working on edits for The Young City, officially due for release on January 17, 2009. Barry Jowett has been very diligent, correcting typos and those niggly bits of punctuation that drive me up the wall, and he’s made some astute comments on plot elements that need to be made clearer. I myself am pleased to have caught a couple of continuity errors that I’d missed up to now.

I just happened to find a resource that I wish I had had back when I was writing The Young City. The folks behind the Wikipedia project have gathered together an image archive, full of royalty-free, public domain images, and Toronto is well represented. Check out these historic images of Toronto in the 1880s, the decade in which The Young City is set.

Looking at these photographs and looking at my narrative, I must say that I’m glad that I found this website now to make sure that I got the setting and atmosphere basically correct (fingers crossed). Thanks to Bill Robb for pointing this site out to me.

Anyway, I’d better get back to work. I have more edits to do, and after playing catch-up to two kids, I’m very, very sleep-deprived.

Whether you’re stocking a bookshelf in a classroom, library or at home, every title in this guide has been given the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s stamp of approval.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Fathom Five has been accepted among the CCBC’s Best Books for Kids & Teens, 2008, a publication formerly known as Our Choice. I’m in good company with other excellent candidates, including Tom Henighan’s Demon in My View and Deborah Ellis and Eric Walters’ Bifocal.

The Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Our Choice publication has helped schools and libraries stock their shelves for the past several years, so this inclusion is not only an honour, but it should help sales.

I’d like to thank the jury of booksellers, librarians and authors who picked Fathom Five to be among the Class of 2008. I greatly appreciate the honour.

On Friday, I had the immense pleasure of being mobbed for autographs!

I was scheduled to read to about 51 grade 5 and 6 students at Ryerson Public School near downtown Toronto. The event was sponsored by the Deloitte consulting group, who brought in individuals to volunteer their time to foster a love of reading in inner city kids. I also was asked to lead two workshops.

I was sort of thrown in at the deep end. I made it to the school on time and was whisked to my classroom, given an introduction and basically told, “they’re yours, go to it.” Heh, no pressure. Fortunately I was prepared. I was told that the workshop was to have the students read a piece of a story and come up with their own ideas of where the scene or the story went from there. I read to them a couple of pages from The Dream King’s Daughter and they got together in groups and got to work.

I was privileged to have the help of the teachers and a number of Deloitte volunteers to keep order and keep the kids interested, and I was also privileged to have an audience of eager, interested and kind children, who took an interest in the scene, and came up with a number of great ideas as to where it could go from here. Some even wrote out enough of a story that they were able to put a “The End” at the end.

After the workshops, I read snippets from The Unwritten Girl for fifteen minutes, and answered a few questions to close the session. Deloitte provided copies of my book to the students, and I stayed to sign autographs.

I didn’t take pictures of the event itself. The volunteers from Deloitte were snapping pictures, and I’ll post them once they give me permission.

I’d like to thank Deloitte for arranging this event, and I’d like to thank the teachers for providing me with fifty-one students who made me feel very welcome. And I’d like to thank the students who made the visit such a rush. It was a very mixed group, but everyone was there to learn and they made the experience a lovely one. The kids are all right, as they say.

In other news, I’m pleased to announce that The Unwritten Girl has been chosen as one of the first books to be highlighted by the Anne Book Club run by Sullivan Entertainment, the people behind the Anne of Green Gables movie and cartoon adaptations. The idea behind this book club is to focus on books that Anne herself would have enjoyed if she were around today: classic and modern titles for kids and young adults, with a strong female lead, promoting family values and a love of reading.

On Monday, I’m going into Toronto to, among other things, be interviewed by Sullivan Entertainment for their book club website. I’m looking forward to it, and will let you know when the video is available for viewing.

Here are some more pictures from my Friday.

	Downtown Kitchener deserted in the early morning.
	The infamous wall of sound on the north end of Yonge/Dundas Square. I’ll have more to say later, but I would say here that the square appears to have survived the onslaught. Tellingly, though, most eyes of the people on the busy square were on the people around them, and not on these obnoxious billboards.
	Pity the poor man wearing a cellphone costume at the Eaton Centre
	Barbed wire on a TTC sign? Were people climbing it?

Just because blogging is a little slow here doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. Although you probably already knew that, what with the new baby and all.

Nora is doing well. She still feeds at 2, 4 and 6. Unfortunately, sometimes her two o’clock feeding lasts until four. Ouch. And, of course, with Vivian, there’s no way we can sleep while the baby sleeps. :Erin: and i are at the zombie walking stage.

And I’m still working on the latest book commission, a book about Space for a book series called Extreme Environments. The draft is due in two weeks. Fortunately, I’m well on my way to finishing that.

Things are actually picking up in the fiction side of my life. I have a few gigs to announce:

On June 16, I will be signing copies of The Unwritten Girl at Dundurn’s booth at BookExpo. The signing will take place at 2 p.m. and will be followed at 2:30 by my mother, who will be signing copies of her newly released novel, The Prism Blade I believe.

If you love books, and can make it out to BookExpo, you really should go. It’s like an injection of pure book energy into your arteries. The buzz in the air the last few years really gets my creative juices flowing. I’m really looking forward to this event, running into all the authors who will be present, and chatting with old friends.

On Sunday, September 7, I will be reading at the Young Adult tent at the Eden Mills Writers Festival and likely signing copies afterward. The festival is really a wonderful event, as this small, picturesque town really brings out the crowds, and some heavy hitting authors. People listen to books being read while sitting cross-legged on the side of a hills, or wander among the tables up the usually-quiet main street of the town. And everybody is so welcoming. Once I took refuge from the heat in what I thought to be an antique shop, but which turned out to be somebody’s home, containing a lot of old furniture. The owners didn’t mind; they’d just opened the place up for the event.

This is the second time I’ve participated at the Eden Mills festival, but the first time that I’ll be reading during one of their main Sunday events.

Finally, on Sunday, September 28, I’ll be reading from Fathom Five at the author’s tent at Kitchener’s Word on the Street. Again, this is an energizing event, seeing all of the people come to Victoria Park united with a shared love of reading. I’ve hosted or attended panels at the last two events; this is the first time that I’ll be reading there as an author.

There are other things happening as well, which I’ll report on as I get more details, but it’s looking to be a good season of promotions for The Unwritten Girl and Fathom Five, and we haven’t started working on promoting The Young City yet. Stay tuned.

Sometimes the author is the last person to know.

As you know, I’ve been busy these past couple of months, so I haven’t had a chance to chat with my publishers. But clearly my publishers have been hard at work as well, getting ready to bring the third book in my Unwritten Books series, The Young City into print. I haven’t received the edits for this story yet, but we already have a cover on Amazon.ca and Amazon.com. I’ve printed it here.

The catalogue copy is as follows:

Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister think their future is clear: they’re finally heading off for university. They’re thinking about finding apartments, picking courses, living like adults.

But what happens when the future becomes the past? While helping Rosemary’s brother move into an apartment in Toronto, Peter and Rosemary fall into an underground river and are swept back in time, to Toronto in 1884. It’s a struggle to survive and adapt to the alien culture of the late nineteenth century. Peter and Rosemary are forced to work together, to live together, and to become the adults they’ve only been pretending to be.

As the days stranded turn to weeks, then months, Rosemary and Peter begin to wonder if they’re really ready for a future together - and what they will do if they can’t get back.

Then someone brings them a watch, powered by a battery, made in Taiwan.

James Bow is the author of two previous books in the Unwritten Books series: The Unwritten Girl and Fathom Five. A transit enthusiast, urban planner, and freelance writer, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

Again, I have to complement the design department at Dundurn for doing such a fantastic job with their covers. They really have an advantage there, thanks to Erin Mallory (who did a great job matching the style established by Jennifer Scott in the previous two covers) and her co-workers, in creating covers that help the books leap off the shelves. It perfectly captures the tone of the story, and it looks very good. They really have a good eye for this sort of thing.

And thanks to Dundurn for this wonderful pick-me-up. It’s good to know that The Young City is on its way.

I’m here as part of CANSCAIP’s presentation of authors. I’m also blogging this on the OLA Super Conference’s website The organization of Canadian children’s authors, illustrators and performers has kindly selected a bunch of CANSCAIP authors who produced books in 2007 and given them a stage and five minutes each to talk about their book and why you might be interested in getting one for your library. Interest was so intense this year that CANSCAIP had to put names in a hat and draw out their selection at random.

This is a wonderful opportunity for all the authors, especially those from smaller presses that have to fight for attention among the bigger players, and there is going to be a lot of talent on stage.

So, if you happen to be at the Super Conference, come on out. The presentation is taking place at the Expo Theatre at the base of the 100 aisle on the Expo floor. It starts at noon and continues until about 1:40, after which authors will be on hand to autograph copies of their books. There is also a draw at the end of the presentation — a collection of the books being promoted on stage.

I’m looking forward to the conference. I enjoyed it last year, and I always enjoy Book Expo. There’s something about these conferences, like a critical mass of fun and knowledge, that just explodes on you. It reminds me that I’m lucky enough to work at this for a living and that, more importantly, I’m not alone in doing it.

I also hope to have a few spare minutes to sit down and write, a bit on The Dream King’s Daughter and a bit on a new project that needs to be done by February 18 (more on this later). And assuming that the City hasn’t called out the Army (though the last big storm was a bit of a feather in mayor David Miller’s cap — he got through it without armed personnel; Lastman didn’t), I hope to meet with my editor at Dundurn to talk a bit about The Young City, catalogue copy, and edits before this story goes to print.

More updates as I get them.

Why, it seems like only yesterday that I got news that my first ever book would be published. Today, I learned that I am now the proud father of a trilogy. The third and final (so far) book in the Unwritten Books series will be part of Dundurn’s Fall/Winter 2008-9 season.

Here’s the official e-mail:

From: “Barry Jowett” xxxxxxx@dundurn.xxx
To: “‘James Bow’” xxxxx@bowjamesbow.xxx
Subject: The Young City
Date: Fri, Jan 25 2008 11:44:13 AM GMT-05:00

Hi James,

At long last, we’ve given the go-ahead to The Young City and would like to publish it in the Fall/Winter 2008-09 season! I’m looking forward to it - I think it’s going to be a strong part of a strong Boardwalk list.

I’ll work on the contract in the next week or two and get that out to you. In the meantime, I need to prepare for a concept meeting next week and am hoping to have an initial run at the catalogue copy for that meeting. Would you be able to provide about 150-200 words about the book that we can use as the basis for the copy? Also, if you’d like to modify your author bio, let me know and we can incorporate any changes in the bio in the catalogue. (Or if you’re fine with what was used on your last book, we can go with that.)

Well, here’s what I worked out, with a lot of help from Erin:

Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister think their future lies clear before them: they’re finally out of high school and heading off for university. They’re thinking about finding apartments, picking courses, living like adults. Everything is certain, especially the life that they’ll share together.

But what happens when the future becomes the past? While helping Rosemary’s brother move into his basement apartment in downtown Toronto, Peter and Rosemary fall into an underground river and are swept back in time, to the City of Toronto in August 1884. It’s a struggle to survive in a strange new city, to adapt to the alien culture of the late 19th century. Peter and Rosemary are forced to work together, to live together, and become the adults they’ve only been pretending to be.

And as the days stranded turn to weeks, then months, Rosemary and Peter begin to wonder if they’re really ready for a future together - and what they will do if they can’t get back.

In other news, I was at a school reading in front of the grade 5-8 students of Ridley College Middle School. I had a great time talking to the students who were very kind and attentive. You can read more about my visit at my home blog.

I’m also pleased to report that Fathom Five has been nominated for 2007 Cyblis Award. The competition on the short list is daunting, but it is an honour to be nominated and, participant Sheila Ruth was kind enough to write up a favourable review. Thanks for this, Sheila!

Finally, if you’re wondering what I’m doing, I’ve been having fun working on a new story, outside of Rosemary and Peters’ universe called The Dream King’s Daughter. I’m posting first-draft excerpts over on my home blog here.

So, things are going on. Actually, lots of things are going on, but not many fit on this blog. But stay tuned; I’ll post more news as I get it.

As far as I could see, the event was organized by Marlene Turkington. I managed to gain an invitation after I’d approached her for helping me find someone in her area to do a literature unit for Fathom Five. Unfortunately, that fell through, but while we were talking, I learned about the event and asked if I could participate. She agreed, and I’m glad she did.

Marlene and her tireless team put together a smooth run event that packed in over 500 attendees inside the board headquarters (which is obviously a converted school building. Getting to various venues between events did bring up memories of my crowded high school corridors). There were a number of booksellers and authors at the event, but many came to see the featured authors, including Barbara Reid, Deborah Ellis and, all the way from Australia, the incomparable Mem Fox (author of some of the best selling picture books of all time; if you are a parent, you have probably read Time For Bed).

Mem gave the keynote address and it’s interesting how one’s skills as a teacher and a reader for young children applies to keeping an audience of grown-ups enraptured. It was an engaging speech about the importance of rhythm when reading aloud to our children.

I also had a chance to present, along with seven other authors, at one of the panel discussions later that day, and I had a good response to the five-minute snippet I picked from The Unwritten Girl. But, otherwise, I was in the vendor room, promoting myself and the Authors’ Booking Service, and that might sound boring, but there was a good crowd, and they were more than willing to engage a young author in conversation about his book, about what sort of school readings I did, and what I was working on next. It was a very friendly audience (they bought the six copies of my book I brought and seemed interested in buying more!), and one just thrives on that.

I’d like to thank Marlene and all of the people who helped to bring this event about. I hope it becomes an annual event, and I look forward to next year.

The panel had a good energy to it, thanks especially to an audience that trickled in as we talked, and grew to a decent sized crowd, and there were a number of teenagers who seemed interested in what was going on. So, all in all, a successful outing, and we all had a lot of fun.

After the panel, I headed on over to the authors’ reading tent and listened to my mother read from her latest book, The Ruby Kingdom. She also attracted a good audience, most of whom (there were a lot of kids in attendance and asking them to sit still and listen is always a challenge) sat in rapt attention. And of course, there were booths and lots of people, all there to celebrate the glorious experience of the written word. It’s always heartening to see how many people are interested in books, and it’s a wondeful world to be a part of. So, thanks to the organizers for putting together another successful event.

The next task for me is to prepare for a professional development day in London, where school administrators are organizing an event linking authors with teachers and teacher librarians from area schools. Noted children’s book author Mem Fox will be giving the keynote, and I’ll have a chance, along with a number of other authors, to talk up my books before a receptive audience. Wish me luck.

I’ve also written two pieces of, essentially, fan fiction, one relating to Doctor Who and the other relating to Fathom Five (yes, I think it’s possible to write fan fiction for your own universe). I don’t often do short pieces, so I was pleased to have been able to make the time for these two. Short fiction is an excellent way to keep your fingers nimble and our mind alert, but I’ve been spending too much time on my blog to really pursue anything here. Now you know why my blogging has been a little intermittent this month.

The Doctor Who short story (really short) is entitled Comparing Notes, and I have it stored over at my long derelict LiveJournal. This tale was inspired by Captain Jack’s first meeting with the tenth Doctor in Utopia, and the Doctor’s constant disapproval over Jack’s out-of-control sex appeal. The Doctor is one to talk, isn’t he? Read the story to see what happens, and you’re welcome to tell me what you think.

But the Fathom Five fan fiction story is a longer, more serious (but still funny, I hope) short piece entitled The Great Man-to-Man Talk. I wrote this story after some fellow writers, critiquing Fathom Five, questioned whether it was realistic that Rosemary’s father would so shamelessly tease Peter about being Rosemary’s boyfriend. Would a father so gleefully encourage a young man to become romantically attached to his daughter, they asked?

Well, my answer was that Rosemary’s father was teasing Peter and Rosemary because, while they were close, they weren’t romantically attached. That attitude would likely change once he realized that Peter and Rosemary were serious. But how so? Given that Rosemary’s father liked to play the cliché of the father asking potential suiters ‘what are your intentions toward my daughter’, I thought his reaction would be quite amusing, and this is the result.

In other news, Fathom Five received a glowing review from the Teen Book Review site TeensReadToo. Thanks to Carrie Spellman for giving me a wonderful ego boost!

In the meantime, I post regularly at my personal blog, and you are more than welcome to visit me there.

And that’s about it for the summer, barring other joint readings with Erin that her publisher is able to organize. So I guess I’ll settle in and work on getting the final book of the trilogy, The Young City into submittable shape. The editor wants to see it this September.

At the end of September, I will be participating at the Word on the Street in Kitchener. I’m leading a panel discussion with two other authors about our genres and the ability of the Internet to gather together a community of writers and readers. I’ll post more details as soon as they’re available, but I look forward to seeing you at the festival!

Bow, wearing a wizarding hat and a “will write for food” placard, will be stationed outside the Toronto independent bookstore Another Story, as it opens at midnight to accommodate eager Muggles. He will return the next day at noon to read from other novels and sign his own.

In Vancouver, authors James McCann and kc dyer will launch their latest novels at the Summer Dream Literary Arts Festival in Stanley Park “in defiance of the Potter juggernaut”.

The tongue-in-cheek protests, which have the support of their venues, are designed to bring attention to other books children and young adults could read once the final page turns on Rowling’s Harry Potter epic.

Who:   James Bow, author of "Fathom Five" (the Dundurn Group)
       kc dyer, author of "Ms. Zephyr's Notebook (the Dundurn Group)
       James McCann, author of "Pyre" (Simply Read Books)

When:  Friday, July 20, 2007 - 11:59 p.m. - 1:00 a.m. EDT (James Bow)
       Saturday, July 21, 2007 - noon - 1:00 p.m. EDT (James Bow)
       Saturday, July 21, 2007 - 1:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. PDT
          (kc dyer, James McCann)

Where: Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
          (James Bow)
       Summer Dream Festival, Lumberman's Arch, Stanley Park, Vancouver
          (kc dyer, James McCann)

For further information: James Bow (519) 590-9640, james@bowjamesbow.ca; kc dyer (604) 921-9562 contact@kcdyer.com; James McCann (604) 876-0033 writeguy@telus.net

This idea came about while I was promoting Fathom Five. I was well aware that a promotional wall was heading in my direction in the form of the latest Potter juggernaut. At BookExpo, I joked that the only way an author other than J.K. Rowling could get attention that week would be to appeal to sympathy. Noelle Allen of Wolsak and Wynn thought that this would be a good idea. Some protest or other form of guerrilla marketing would attract the attention of a media saturated with Potter coverage and eager for a different hook. She encouraged me to try this out and, as other authors and booksellers thought this was a good idea, I decided to pursue this.

We didn’t have much lead time. I had hoped that more authors would join us, but on such short notice, many had already made plans to avoid the bookstore crowds that weekend or, in some cases, had already arranged to attend a Harry Potter event with their children. However, I managed to find a venue and two partners. KC Dyer, author of the Eagle Glen trilogy and Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook and her friend James McCann were both launching their latest novels that weekend, and happily signed on. This gave us a national campaign.

I’ve never done anything like this before — I haven’t even attended any of these late-night release events — so I’m nervous and excited. But this is the sort of thing one has to do to get noticed in the publishing world, and I’m looking forward to making my mark. It should be a fun event, and perhaps I’ll see you there? If nothing else, I’ll be able to lay my hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the moment it’s released, which is a definite perk.