Book Covers Paint Pictures

 

                  Please click this link for book, author and purchase information.

I like BWL's process for designing book covers. It begins about six months before a book's release, when we authors fill out a Cover Art Form. This includes factual information, such as the book title and author name to appear on the cover, a back cover book blurb, details about the story, keywords for online searches, and -- my favourite part -- ideas for cover images. After we submit the CAF, Art Director, Michelle Lee, designs our covers from purchased stock images. She combines and manipulates the images and adds background and other elements to create covers that hint at the story inside.  

I published my first BWL novel, Ten Days in Summer, in 2017.  At that time, the CAF stated that most of the covers would feature at least one person. When I searched for people images on the stock images website, I discovered a few problems. My main character, Paula Savard, is an insurance adjuster. A keyword search for her gender and job turned up images of women meeting with clients or examining construction sites and damaged cars. In this story, Paula investigates a building fire with a suspicious death. I expanded my search to 'female detective' and got pictures of women holding guns and magnifying glasses. The women looked in their twenties, while Paula was fifty-two. My search for 'professional women in their fifties' unearthed a few possibilities, although none looked like my image of Paula.  

A basic problem with people images on novel covers is that writers and readers form their own images of fictional characters. My searches made me realize that a full picture of Paula might inhibit this reader engagement, although partial images still maintained enough mystery. This explained why rear-view images of women had become popular in novel cover art, but so common they were now considered cliché.  

For the CAF, I chose the best of the images I could find for Paula, plus female images shrouded in mystery -- a woman's legs in cowboy boots, eyes peering through a hole, and a silhouetted woman in a cowboy hat. Since the story backdrop is the Calgary Stampede and the second most prominent character is a self-styled cowboy, I added images of cowboys in silhouette, the Calgary skyline, and fire, for the incident that sets the story in motion. 

I sent the CAF to Michelle, who found images for the cowboy, fire and skyline that were different from the ones I'd suggested. She meshed them together to produce a cover better than any I could have dreamed up myself. 

Two years later, BWL reissued the first book in my Paula Savard mystery series. During this time, the trend in cover design moved away from people to symbolic images. Now the CAF stated that most BWL covers would not feature people unless we insisted. I searched for people images anyway, since I found this fun, but was glad to focus on images related to the story setting and mood. For the new cover of A Deadly Fall, I sent Michelle images of the Calgary skyline, falling leaves, fall trees, and pathways through fall woods. The murder takes place on a Calgary walking path in -- you guessed it - fall. Michelle scored another hit with a cover design of leaves framing the Calgary skyline in glorious fall colours of gold, orange and yellow, along with the red of Calgary's Peace Bridge. 

In February I completed my CAF for Winter's Rage, book # 3 of the Paula Savard mystery series. This time, Paula investigates a hit-and-run collision that resulted in a woman's death. Images of a tire on a snow-covered road, broken windshields, and car headlights in the dark would suit the story, but I wanted this cover to continue the series style. One problem. A Deadly Fall's autumn time frame and Ten Days in Summer's building fire resulted in covers with similar colours. Yellow, orange and red don't evoke winter in Alberta. On the CAF, I suggested we bend the brand and go with white, blue or black winter shades. Michelle agreed. She created a scene of snowflakes falling on the Calgary skyline draped in snow, the Bow River shining ice. Yellow letters echo the two earlier novels.  

The front cover of Winter's Rage gives the first hint of the story. The back cover blurb reveals a little more. You can read what it's all about this August.                      

Where do you get your ideas?

 

                                                                                                                                                                          Please click this link for author, book and purchase information

"Where do you get your ideas?" This might be the number one question readers ask authors.

My quick answer is that ideas pop into my head all the time and they come from everywhere. My personal experience, conversations with other people, places I've lived in and visited, the news, books I've read, TV, movies, perhaps a painting or line of music. 

This winter, I'm editing a novel-in-progress, book # 3 of my Paula Savard mystery series, while mulling ideas for book # 4. With a series, many of the basic ideas are already there. I start with my sleuth, Paula, a fifty-five year old insurance adjuster, and her cast of supporting characters, who impact her personal life and, in some cases, her sleuthing. Paula and most of her family, colleagues and friends live in my home city, Calgary Alberta. I could send Paula to another location for all or part of the next book, but I see her as grounded in Calgary. Unlike me, Paula isn't drawn to travel, although book # 3 presents her with a future travel opportunity. For now, I think her adventures in book # 4 will continue in Calgary. 

 

    An often deserted pathway behind Calgary's Saddledome arena inspired my idea for the murder in the first Paula Savard novel, A Deadly Fall. 

My current novel-in-progress, Winter's Rage, ends in January 2020, with Paula at a crossroads in her life. Book # 4 will begin with her dealing with that situation. I've decided it will take place in spring, since Paula's first three mysteries happened in fall, summer and winter. But which spring will this be? January 2020 was right before COVID-19 changed the world. Will we next meet Paula in spring 2020, as she grapples with the start of the pandemic both personally and at work? Or will it be spring 2021, when the the pandemic is (we hope) nearing its end? I could jump over the virus and set the novel in spring 2022. This would make the time frame more contemporary to my publication date, although I find it hard to envision the post COVID-19 world. What things will return to the old normal and what will be the long term changes? The year I choose for this fourth novel will affect my ideas for it. Thoughts to mull during the winter.

 

Calgary's annual Stampede parade prompted ideas for a major character and an inciting incident in my second novel, Ten Days in Summer. 

  

While Paula got into solving mysteries as an amateur sleuth, I decided her subsequent ventures would come from her insurance adjusting work. Ten Days in Summer starts with a suspicious death resulting from a building fire. Paula naturally becomes involved in the course of investigating the property fire insurance claim. In Winter's Rage, she adjusts a hit and run collision and gradually suspects the fatality was no accident. 

This quiet, suburban Calgary street plays a large role in Winter's Rage.

For book # 4, I'm thinking that burglary could make a good cover up for murder. Last spring, my husband and I bought e-bikes at a local bicycle shop. I was intrigued by the store's booming business. With most of their usual activities shut down for the pandemic, Calgarians sought outdoor activities and many of us updated our old bicycles. That store and the two guys operating it are giving me ideas for the crime that will launch Paula's next mystery.            

I also want to include a ghost in book # 4, because ghosts both interest and frighten me. At the end of Ten Days in Summer, Paula's office moved to Inglewood, Calgary's oldest neighbourhood. Many ghosts lurk in Inglewood, a location for Calgary's haunted walking tours. The ghost rumoured to haunt her historic office building will challenge rational Paula, who doesn't believe in other worldly happenings. 

A ghost walking tour of Inglewood inspired my choice of  this "haunted" building for Paula's office.

All of these bits and pieces, swirling in my mind, will converge into the start of a story, when I eventually sit down and write the novel. As the story moves along, it will pluck more ideas from my usual sources. That's the plan, anyway, and it's how I get my ideas.    

  

E-biking last spring triggered ideas for my next novel 

 

Writing and Working from Home with Cats by Diane Bator

 

Writing and Working from Home with Cats

Every book I write, I create with a partner. Usually my cat Jazz who has become like a barnacle at my side daily and hates when I have to get up for any reason.

I am one of those people who have been working from home for the past nine months. There are a lot of good and bad that go along with that. For example, I’m thrilled to finally have a home office, but that only happened because my youngest moved out mid-pandemic. I also love that the bathroom is so much closer to my new office—but so is the kitchen. Rewarding myself for doing a good job has meant I wear yoga pants to work daily.

I have also had to juggle work and writing with two cats. While they weren’t too impressed with me being home every single hour of every single day, they seem to have adjusted. I can no longer sit in the livingroom during office hours. I can’t even go outside for a walk or run to the store without a lecture when I get home. Since my older cat Jazz is part Siamese, he can become very vocal.

Considering my normal job is selling tickets for a live-stage theatre, things were pretty quiet at my desk. Things have picked up a little now that we’ve moved to online performances. Still, there are days where I don’t have a great deal to do but stuff envelopes or help troubleshoot—and keep my cats amused.

So here are my top 10 ways I’ve kept busy over the past nine months:

1.  Cleaned and set up my new office.
2.  Rearranged my new office because there is only one set of plugs in the room.
3. Added a throw blanket and a rug under my desk because there is no heat vent in my office.
4. Weighed the pros and cons of moving the coffeemaker to my office from the kitchen which is ten feet away…then considered the lack of empty surfaces to keep said coffeemaker and the creamer. There may or may not be a hoarding issue in that room.
5. Added a second chair to attempt to keep my cat Jazz off my desk.
6. Stocked up on wipes since Jazz still feels the need to walk on the four inch path between me and my laptop at least twice during every Zoom meeting and leaves a trail of white hair behind.
7. Added another rug for my other cat Ash after stepping on her when she took to sleeping beneath my desk on the first rug.
8.  Started taking lunch breaks in the livingroom because Jazz feels the need to get away from the computer for several hours a day to have my undivided attention.
9. Started wearing slippers because Ash has claws and loves to play with my feet under my desk.
10.  Occasionally getting actual work done once Jazz and Ash are fed and appeased. Considering moving their food dishes ten feet closer to my desk…

I’m happy to say I have accomplished a little writing in between meetings and moving the cat off my desk. This year I have two new books coming out as well as a novella I wrote some time ago. I’m looking forward to another productive year. It helps to keep things light. A great sense of humour goes a long way!

                                                                     

By the way, Jazz has now become an honorary member of our staff as well as a couple writing groups I belong to. He loves to see who is on the screen during each meeting and sleeping next to me no matter what I do.

Ash is a lady of leisure. She prefers to keep her distance and join us at her own discretion.

As for me, I’ve been out of the office for the holidays. I’m currently organizing my calendars for 2021 and writing in my livingroom soon…

Happy New Year, everyone! 

 Diane Bator

 http://bookswelove.net/bator-diane/

Excerpt from Terror on Sunshine Boulevard: a Scary Read for Halloween

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose
Paranormal mystery
Click here to find more mysteries by J.Q. Rose released by Books We Love Publishing

📙🎃 📙🎃📙🎃📙🎃📙🎃

Hello and welcome to the BWL Publishing Insiders Blog.  I'm sharing a short excerpt from my "terrifying" novel that is perfect for a scary Halloween read, Terror on Sunshine Boulevard.

A reader told me she discovered she shouldn't have read Terror on Sunshine Boulevard before bed. She was too scared to turn off the lights and go to sleep!

📙🎃 📙🎃📙🎃📙🎃📙🎃

Back of the Book: Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Rescuing a naked woman lying in a geranium bed or investigating mysterious murders are not the usual calls for first responder Jim Hart. He expects slip and fall accidents or low blood pressure emergencies in his retirement community of Citrus Ridge Senior Community and Golf Resort. The ghastly crime scenes turn the winter time fun into a terrifying season of death and mystery when the authorities cannot track down the predator responsible.

Jim and his wife Gloria could escape the horror and grief by returning to their northern home, but concern for their friends and residents keep them in Florida. With the entire community in a dither over the deaths, the Harts participate in the normal winter activities of golfing, dancing, and pool parties with their friends to distract them from the sadness and loss.

Can Jim and Gloria work with the authorities to discover who or what is killing the seniors on Sunshine Boulevard and stop the increasing body count?

                                         

Excerpt: Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose, Chapter 8
Warning: This is the chills part of the blog post, not the giggles.

Turning on the warm water in the bathtub, she placed her hand under the faucet to gauge the temperature. When it was just right, she turned the shower on at full force, ready to step in for a relaxing indulgence with the warm water raining over her body.  Before Pamela could step in, she heard Noel’s moan from the bedroom. Terror clutched her throat. Oh, Noel, please don’t have a heart attack now! She yanked open the bathroom door and stood frozen in the doorway. The moonlight through the window added shimmer to the yellow stripes crawling across Noel’s naked body. When a blazing yellow light filled the bedroom, she slammed the bathroom door shut. The animal instinct to escape kicked in. Clambering onto the toilet and stepping onto the granite counter, she yanked the screen off the bathroom window and dove headfirst into the cool night air. She landed face down on top of the flowers in the wood-chipped flower bed below. Pamela’s screams pierced the night as she lay naked among the geraniums....to be continued.  

Do you enjoy being scared? Haunted houses? Horror movies? Scary books?
Please leave a comment below and let us know.

Happy Halloween!!

Click here to connect with J.Q. Rose online.

You are invited to return to the Insiders Blog on Thursday, October 22. 

On October 22,I will be featured as the author of the month and will have the opportunity to talk about how my life experience has influenced my writing.

Click here to join me on Thursday. Thank you.

Featured Author Susan Calder

https://bookswelove.net/calder-susan/

I am BWL Publishing Inc. author Susan Calder. I've published three mystery/suspense novels, which you can view and purchase by visiting my BWL Author Page.

I’ve loved mystery novels since I read my first Bobbsey Twins book when I was eight years old. From the kid sleuth twins I progressed to Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and, later, Agatha Christie whodunnits and Daphne Du Maurier dark suspense. I wrote my first mystery novel, A Deadly Fall, as a classic whodunnit combined with a coming-of-middle-age story. My amateur sleuth, Paula Savard, age 52, stumbles into investigating the murder of her childhood friend. The story events shake up Paula’s personal and professional life and lead her in new directions.

On the principle of ‘write what you know,’ I set the novel in my home city, Calgary, and created a protagonist similar to me. Paula was my age at the time I wrote A Deadly Fall. Like me, she grew up in Montreal and moved west to Calgary for opportunity. She’s an insurance adjuster; I worked as an insurance claims examiner. But as our shared traits diverged, Paula became her own person. She's divorced; I’ve now been married for 42 years. She has two grown up daughters; I have two sons. She enjoys sports and risk. I like reading and run from danger. 

Here’s Paula with the novel’s prime suspect, her murdered friend's husband. He’s invited Paula to lunch to learn what her friend had told her about him.  

Paula would reassure him and make it clear her friend had told her nothing. He would be on guard, but, perhaps, less guarded than he’d be with a cop. There was a chance he’d slip.

He was waiting for her reply. His face said, ‘Yes, no, either way, I don’t care’ while his hand opened and closed into a fist, opened and closed against his shaking leg. He was hanging on her answer. Saying ‘no’ would close the door. After talking with the police, she could cancel.

“I can do lunch tomorrow,” she said. “Where? What time?”

“Your choice,” he said.

She thought of a nearby restaurant. “Do you know Lily’s Café?”

“I’ve heard of it.” 

“Noon. I’ll give you directions.”

While writing A Deadly Fall, I realized that an insurance adjuster would make a good series detective. Adjusters are skilled in investigative work. They visit accident and crime scenes, interview witnesses and study forensic evidence to determine what really happened. Insurance claims could also reveal cover-ups for murder. Was the building fire an accident? Did an arsonist set the blaze to collect the building insurance? Or to kill a person sleeping inside?

A suspicious house fire is the subject of my second Paula Savard mystery novel, Ten Days in Summer. Paula investigates the fire from the property insurance angle. In the course of her work, she gets to know the family living in the house and gradually unearths their secrets. I set this novel during Calgary’s annual wild west festival, The Calgary Stampede. For ten days each July, Calgarians cut loose, wear cowboy hats and boots, party, line dance, and cheer on the daily rodeo and chuckwagon races. Paula’s mother from Montreal is visiting her this summer. Paula takes her to the Stampede parade, which kicks off the festival. In the midst of the revelry, business intervenes, when an insurance claimant/suspect returns Paula’s phone message to set up a meeting.  

Stampede Parade

       

Belly dancers, in halters and pantaloons, whisked guns out of their holsters. They twirled the pistols around their fingers and shot imaginary bullets into the air.

“A blend of the old and new Calgary,” Paula said to her mother, who was seated on the lawn chair beside her. Over the past few years, Paula had noticed more and more newcomers’ floats and acts in the Stampede Parade. Today, Asian, Muslim and Caribbean communities would march with descendants of the original pioneers.

Her cell phone rang. Brendan Becker.

“Great of you to call,” he said. “I’ve been bugging my sister Cynthia to contact the insurance company.”

The belly dancers moved on. A bow-legged man wearing riding chaps bounded toward Paula and her mother. He moved his arms in circles.

“Cynthia refused –”

“YAHOO,” the cowboy shouted.

“YAHOO,” the crowd answered.   

“YEE-HAW.”  

“YEE-HAW.” Paula’s mother joined in.

“You sound like you’re at the parade,” Brendan said against a backdrop of trombones.

“You too?” Paula said.

          

While working on his second mystery novel, I got an idea for a different suspense/mystery story. Calgary engineer Julie Fox travels to California to search for her mother who abandoned Julie when she was a child. This novel, To Catch a Fox, would alternate between five viewpoint characters. As the story progressed readers would understand the harm and danger the two 'bad guys' plan for Julie. 

My husband Will and I researched setting descriptions on two holidays in Southern California. Yes, writing can tough sometimes. Julie stayed in the Airbnb apartment Will and I rented in Santa Monica. All of us rented bicycles from a shop on the boardwalk. Julie questioned a clerk in the shop.

  

Julie hesitated, feeling foolish to hope the clerk could provide any information about her mother; yet how wonderful, how easy would it be if he did.

He looked up, his eyes bleary red, and asked what type of bike she wanted.

From her waist pouch, Julie pulled out the three pictures of her mother she’d brought. “I’m looking for this woman, who once worked in a bike shop in Santa Monica.”

“This shop here?”

“I’m not sure. It was in the late 1980s. Was this place operating then?”

The man’s grin revealed a gold front tooth. “Beats me. I only bought the joint two years back.” He picked up the pictures.

“Could you put me in touch with the previous owner?”

“Not likely. He’s dead.”

Bike shop on the Santa Monica boardwalk

After BWL published To Catch a Fox in 2019, I returned to my mystery series. I’m currently working on the third Paula Savard book, Winter’s Rage. Paula investigates a hit and run collision that killed a woman and seriously injured her husband. Was it an accident? Or a pretext for murder? The insured vehicle owner, an eighty-five-year old man recovering from heart surgery, insists he wasn’t driving. 

    “I can’t tell you more than what I told the police,” he said. “Them showing up at my door yesterday was the first I’d heard of anything.”

“Our insurance perspective is different from that of the police.” Paula had explained over the phone that she was the independent adjuster assigned to the claim, but repeating that could insult him, and rightly. So far, he’d impressed her as being mentally on the ball.  

He leaned forward, lines flaring from his nose bridge. “When they talked about my car being in an accident, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I haven’t driven for two months. Doctor’s orders.” He rapped his chest with his gnarled hand. “I was sitting right here, reading, that whole evening until I went to bed.”

“At what time?”

“About 9:30, my usual these days.”

“It was your birthday,” she said. 

“At my age, that’s nothing to celebrate.”  

Every book publication is something to celebrate. BWL has scheduled Winter’s Rage for publication in February 2021. After the celebrations, I'll move on Paula Savard mystery # 4, which will be set in spring, the season of hope.         

             

My front yard this spring

Women's History Month: Thank You to the WWII Women's Air Force Service Pilots

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Rescuing a naked woman lying in a geranium bed? Investigating mysterious murders? These are not the usual calls in a Florida retirement community for volunteer first responder Jim Hart.Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by J.Q. Rose at BWL Publishing

Women's History Month

March is Women's History Month: Thank You to the WWII Women's Air Force Service Pilots by J.Q. Rose

March is Women's History Month and the perfect time to share some photos I took when in California for the Rose parade in 2014. One of the floats honored World War II USA Women Air Force Service Pilots. (WASP)These women were unsung heroes during WW II. I am proud to share their history and inspiring story with you today.

"Our Eyes are on the Stars", the title of the float celebrates the courage of the Women Air Force Service Pilots.

The Wingtip to Wingtip Association float in the 2014 Rose Parade, featured the 1102 women who served their country as Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) and honored their contribution to the war in 1942-1944. 

These brave trailblazers dreamed of flying for their nation. Because there was a shortage of male pilots for combat duty, the women pushed to become pilots to free up the men for fighting the war. 

The WASP group members were assigned to ferry military planes between military bases in the USA and flights from aircraft factories to ports of embarkation. 

They also towed targets for live anti-aircraft artillery practice, simulated strafing missions, and transported cargo. A few exceptionally qualified women were allowed to test rocket-propelled planes, to pilot jet-propelled planes, and to work with radar-controlled targets.

The reproduction of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to the WASP decorates the side of the float. The 38 stars around the medal salute the 38 WASP members who lost their lives in service to their country.

The courageous women were not considered members of the military and received no recognition as veterans until 1977 when the WASP records were unsealed. When they returned to civilian life, even with their flying experience, they could not get jobs as pilots.

According to Wikipedia, on July 1, 2009, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress awarded the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal. During the ceremony, President Obama said, "The Women Airforce Service Pilots courageously answered their country's call in a time of need while blazing a trail for the brave women who have given and continue to give so much in service to this nation since. Every American should be grateful for their service, and I am honored to sign this bill to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve." 

More than 15000 red Freedom roses decorate the length of the float.

The first issue of the Fifinella Gazette was published on February 10, 1943. The female gremlin Fifinella was conceived by Roald Dahl and drawn by Walt Disney and used as the official WASP mascot that appeared on their shoulder patches.

We salute the WASP members who opened the skies to later generations of female pilots in the military. Thank you to all those who serve in the USA military service both past and present.

★★★★★

Connect with J.Q. Rose online at

J.Q. Rose blog 

Author Facebook Page

The Challenges of Updating My Novel for a Second Edition

                                Click this link for author, book and purchase information

This month BWL published a new edition of my first novel, Deadly Fall. BWL chose to title the book, A Deadly Fall, in part to distinguish the new release from the original. I have long wanted to update Deadly Fall, to bring the time frame in line with the sequel, Ten Days in Summer. Deadly Fall was set in 2004. Due to the years it took me to find BWL, Ten Days in Summer wasn’t published until 2017. I asked BWL publisher Jude Pittman if I should make the sequel’s story contemporary and Paula, my protagonist, thirteen years older? Or set the sequel in 2005, making it almost historical? Jude advised me to set Ten Days in Summer in 2017, but pretend it was taking place ten months after the original Deadly Fall.

“No one will notice,” she said.

Jude was right. Nobody who has read both books has questioned me about Paula and the world’s peculiar aging. I wish I could be lucky enough to age like Paula. 

For the original Deadly Fall, I was specific about the story year and referred to events of the day, such as the Iraqi hostage crisis and the jail sentencing of household guru, Martha Stewart. I even kept my local newspapers to make sure the story weather matched that of my real-life story setting, Calgary, Alberta. This was a mistake, I realized later, since Calgary enjoyed an unusual period of mild weather those September weeks in 2004. Calgary’s typical fall swings between warm and freezing, sunshine and snow, would have added interest to the story.

Since I didn’t want to radically change the second edition, I kept the mild weather from the original and found that it fit a story theme. A Deadly Fall ends with a forecast of a radical weather change, which symbolizes the changes to Paula’s life ahead as a result of the murder. I had to update the news references for the 2016 story, but tried to keep them more general. Syrian refuges arrived in Canada that summer, which they did in other years. 

As I worked through my revision of 2004 Deadly Fall, I realized how much the world changed in those twelve years. Paula, like me, was a little old-fashioned regarding modern technology. But in 2016, her answering machine with a tape-recorded message had to go or she’d be totally out of date. She did keep her land line phone and daily newspaper delivery, although the Calgary newspaper she receives dropped its Sunday edition sometime between 2004 and 2016. This newspaper also abandoned its ‘Community' section, but its re branded ‘You’ section works for Felix, a secondary character who writes a weekly column.

In 2016, the television program Cheers didn't appear in afternoon reruns. I changed this to Modern Family. The Canadian penny disappeared from monetary circulation. Paula no longer has a flip-open cell phone. She watches Blu-rays and Isabelle, a secondary character, works in a music store, not a video store.

I had to change numerous cultural and personal references for Paula, who is now born twelve years later than she was in the original book. Paula used to be a baby boomer, with typical attitudes of a child of the sixties. Now she’s born in 1964, past the boomer wave, with different memories of music and world events that shaped her life. 

The new release also allowed me to correct small mistakes that slipped past my first publisher’s proof-reader. Missing words like ‘a’ or ‘the’ and absent punctuation marks; the word pate that should have been plate and reign vs rein.

But my most critical editing task was fixing formatting errors caused by converting the PDF file of the published Deadly Fall to a workable WORD document. The conversion resulted in some odd fonts. Acronyms like TV, DVD, ID, BC and SUV appeared in lower case. Hyphenated words at the end of a line left out the hyphen. The WORD document omitted scene breaks and italics and often broke lines mid-sentence, or didn’t start a line of dialogue on a new line. 

I poured through the document with eagle eyes and had my husband do a final proof-read. After he caught my archaic penny reference, I had my character flip a quarter instead. Between us, I hope we caught everything and helped BWL produce a better book for new readers to my Paula Savard mystery series.   

          

A Tale of Two Writing Conferences

                                         Click this link for book and purchase information

Every August I attend When Words Collide Festival for Readers and Writers here in my home city of Calgary. I don't need to travel far. The weekend festival takes place at a hotel a fifteen walk from my home. In February, I travelled farther, to Lethbridge, a two-hour drive south of Calgary, to take part in Wordbridge, Lethbridge's first writers' conference.

Since the Lethbridge panels were only scheduled for Saturday, I initially planned to make it a day trip. But the conference also included keynote speakers at a snack and chat in the evening. To take full advantage of the event, I decided to stay overnight. My husband Will agreed to go with me and spend the day and evening walking outside if the weather was nice, reading, playing computer games and watching TV. We booked a motel room not far from the downtown venue using our credit card points.        

Me in Lethbridge, Sept 2015 - The coulee park in downtown Lethbridge is a cool place to walk

The weekend turned out to be brutally cold. Will spent most of Saturday inside with his computer, while I stayed warm inside the Lethbridge library. 

At the conference, I sat on an editing panel and shared my experiences of working with editors. One of my tidbits of advice was to suggest that writers early in the process of a writing a book get a manuscript evaluation, which can provide insight into a story's larger issues that will need to be solved before an expensive edit. The Writers' Guild of Alberta offers this service to members for a reasonable price. I might take advantage of it for my next novel. 

Panel on Working With an Editor 

  
Seventy-eight people attended the Lethbridge conference. We met together in a basement room in the central library for panels that took place on the hour. I enjoyed the intimate atmosphere. The organizers were so pleased with Wordbridge's success that they have already scheduled a second conference for Feb 7-8, 2020, adding a day of pre-conference activities and another room for two tracks of panels.

Wordbridge attendees at a panel

Wordbridge still has a long away to go to match the activity of Calgary's When Words Collide, which anticipates 800 attendees this summer and 10 tracks of panels, presentations, blue pencil cafes, pitch sessions and more, over a three day period. I expect to participate in a few panels and spend a lot of time in the Merchants' Room helping with the BWL book sale table.  

Nancy Bell and Jude Pittman at 2017 When Words Collide

But it's not a competition between Lethbridge and Calgary. Wordbridge and When Words Collide complement each other. I'm sure this is why the Lethbridge organizers scheduled their conference for the dead of February, the opposite time of year of August's When Words Collide. A writer friend suggested that we go to Wordbridge next year with a few other writers and make it a girls' getaway weekend. That sounds like fun, especially if next February is a tad warmer than it was this year. 

Downtown Lethbridge in winter