When Words Collide

For more information about Susan Calder's books, or to purchase visit her Books We Love Author Page.  

Three months from today I'll be hanging out at When Words Collide Festival for Readers and Writers -- the best deal in town for Calgary readers and writers. Where else can you get three full days and evenings of writing-related programming for $55 (less if you register in advance or qualify as a senior or student). Many writers from outside of Calgary find the trek worth making every year. I and others have been there since the festival began in 2011, seven years ago.

What has struck me the most about WWC is the energy. The multi-genre festival was inspired by science fiction and fantasy writers and readers, who know how to have fun at conventions. They aren't shy about dressing up in costumes.

Astro Hal at 2013 WWC

I also like the sense of democracy. Anyone registered can volunteer to sit on a panel or propose a panel or presentation topic. The first year I did a workshop on dialogue and was surprised by the numbers of people streaming in. Festival attendees choose from up to 10 activities each hour, including panels, presentations, blue pencil cafes, pitch sessions and book socials. Evenings feature parties and readings.

Here's an example of one panel offered this year. It is bound to draw a crowd, with these famous authors discussing this popular topic:

Historical Themed, Multi-Authored Book Collections with panelists Nancy M. Bell, Joan Donaldson-Yarmey, Victoria Chatham, Jude Pittman, and moderator Mahrie G Reid. Panel description: These collections are popular, especially in romance & fantasy. BWL Publishing Inc. (Books We Love) enlisted authors to deliver a collection called Canadian Historical Brides, 12 novels designed to celebrate Canada 150. (10 provinces and the territories) Several of the authors, including the publisher, Jude Pittman, will present a panel on the challenges and processes of planning, writing and publishing such a collection.

Nancy & Jude at 2017 WWC

Once again BWL will have a table in the Merchants Corner, with its authors' books for sale. The Merchants Corner is open to the public during the festival and is located in the Atrium building of the festival hotel, the Delta Calgary South.

Other free events open to the public are:

1. Festival Guest readings. This year's festival special guests will be reading at the Fish Creek Public Library on Thursday Aug 9 from 7-9 pm. They will also be reading at the Delta Calgary South Hotel on Friday Aug 10 from 1-3 pm in the Bonavista Ballroom (Tower Building).

2. Mass Autograph Session. The festival guests and 80+ attending authors will be signing books on Saturday Aug 11 from 8-10 pm in the Fireside Room (Atrium Building).

The mass autograph session follows the banquet, which always adopts a theme. Last year I participated in the autograph session dressed in my roaring twenties banquet costume. 

Ever since the banquet started encouraging costumes, it has sold out well ahead of the festival.

Whether it's planned or serendipity, When Words Collide has managed to find a sweet spot that combines lightness with serious learning, book promotion and networking for readers and writers. 

2013 WWC:  Jamis Paulson describes how small press publishers are born 

     

Prince Albert and the great diamond debacle by Karla Stover

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The entire diamond business rests on two supports—vanity and greed.

                                                              1997, anonymous

In 1850, James Andrew Broun-Ramsay. Earl of Dalhousie and India’s governor-general had the Koh-i-Noor diamond “sewn and double-sewn into a belt secured around his waist, one fastened of the best to a chain around my neck,” and left Lahore for Bombay where the gem would start its journey to England. “My stars! What a relief to get rid of it,” he wrote a friend.

Though it may be older, in 1304 the diamond is known to have belonged to Allaudin Khiliji, the Emperor of Dehli. Five years later, records written in Hindu reveal a curse was place on it—to wit: “He who owns this diamond will own the world but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God, or a woman, can wear it with impunity.” The gem was returned to its place of origin, Samarkand, in 1339.
Curse or not, the diamond was gifted by the Sultan Ibrahim Lodi to Babur Muhammad, founder and first Emperor of the Mughal dynasty. One of Babur’s descendants, protected the diamond and passed it on to his heirs.

Sadly, the dynasty was weakening and in 1739, the Persian general Nadir Shah went to India intending to conquer the throne. The reigning sultan lost a decisive battle and surrendered to Nadir. It was Nadir who first called the diamond Koh-i-noor, meaning Mountain of Light. After his assassination in 1747, he lost the “Light,” and Generals, Ahmad Shah Durrani became the next owner. In 1813, his descendants, Shah Shuja Durrani took the stone back to India and gave it to Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of Punjab and founder of the Sikh Empire.

Enter Great Britain whose forces defeated those of the Punjab and confiscated their properties. The Koh-i-noor was transferred to the treasury of the British East India Company in Lahore. The diamond was shipped to Britain on a ship where a story goes that cholera broke out and the keeper of the diamond lost it for some days before his servant returned it. On July 3, 1850, the diamond was handed to Queen Victoria. Shortly after, and in keeping with the curse, a man named Robert Pate struck her in the head while she was riding in her carriage.

In 1850, while the queen was giving birth to Prince Arthur, getting a diamond, and getting hit, her husband Prince Albert was working on the Great Exhibition, the first-ever international exhibition of manufactured products. People wanted to see the famed diamond, so it was put on display. A near riot ensued when crowds mobbed the building in which it was housed. For their efforts, the people were met with disappointment. Indian diamond cutters polished to preserve size not for maximum brilliance, and the Koh-i-Noor just didn’t sparkle.

Prince Albert undertook the task of making the stone more attractive to the western eye. He called in experts to examine the diamond and eventually chose a Dutch firm. In 1843, Queen Victoria made the House of Garrard the court’s Crown Jewelers. First, a small steam engine was assembled there, the cutters arrived from Holland, and the Duke of Wellington rode up on a white charger to watch. The engine driving the grinding wheel was fired up. The protective wrap made of lead was removed to reveal the first bit of the stone that was to be ground off. The price put the gem on the diamond Scaife grinding machine and the first angle was made.

All in all, it took 38 days for the Koh-i-Noor to “reduce the diamond from 186 carats to 108.03. Prince Albert was dismayed at the loss of weight, and rumors of the curse were repeated. In the end, Queen Victoria only wore the diamond occasionally. Her will stipulated that only a female queen should wear the Koh-i-noor, or if the head of state was a man, his wife would have to carry the diamond. After her death, the Koh-i-noor became part of the Crown Jewels.

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Vjaya Schartz' newest release from BWL Publishing Inc. Angel Mine an Fantasy Adventure sizzling with romance

Angel Mine

by Vijaya Schartz

is available at any of these digital stores:

Setting Goals and Achieving Them...

 Off The Grid - by Rita Karnopp ~ Living in the woods, surrounded by nature, is a fantasy of those living within the unethical confines of society.  But when you’re seventeen, even thinking about walking through the woods conjures up ghastly visions.

   Taylar must forgive her father’s intentional betrayal of bringing her family to live in the remote Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana.  Hundreds of miles from civilization, she must put aside her fears and do her part to help her family survive the challenges of dense wilderness, mountain lions, bear, rattlesnakes, and the worst animal of all – man.

Will their father realize that their neighbors aren’t what they appear to be . . . before it’s too late?  Will her almost sixteen-year-old sister, Brook, who loves hunting and nature, have what it takes to guide them out of the untamed wilderness and back to civilization?

I'm often asked how I work full-time and write several books a year ... and my quick response is ... I set goals. 

I firmly believe if you set a goal ... you can achieve anything.  Some days it's a struggle and others ... not so bad ... even good.  But the feeling you get from reaching that goal is beyond rewarding.

Here are three simple steps on setting goals and achieving them.  Setting a goal is important – in every aspect of your life.  Personally and professionally.  For most of us, creating a goal brings about a positive change. The bottom line is when you write down a goal, you’re creating a challenge for yourself. There are three things you need to remember when setting goals.

First, you must write It Down -  Once you’ve written that goal on a piece of paper … you’ve made a commitment.  Put that goal somewhere you’ll look at it often, or pass by several times a day. Like your refrigerator or on your computer.  It’s important to remember … write your goal in the positive.  For instance, don’t write, “I need to lose twenty pounds.”  Instead write, “I'm excited to lose twenty pounds by July 1^st, 2018.  Now you have a defined goal and a deadline date.  Keep in mind – a goal should be written in a short, easy sentence.

Second, break down your goal … so it’s manageable.   Maybe you’ve set a goal to lose twenty pounds.  Saying I’m going to lose twenty pounds not only sounds horrifying … the reality is it’s going to be a difficult thing to accomplish.  That's why you need to break your goal down into its different parts, because smaller goals are easier to handle. Losing twenty pounds seems overwhelming, but losing a pound a month for ten months is doable.

The third part of setting goals is to read your goal at least once … even twice a day.
Let’s face it, we get busy and your goals can sometimes be a nuisance … or you just don’t feel like striving toward that goal.  Unacceptable.  You’ve written down your goal and you’ve posted them where you know you’ll see them often. Your fridge, bathroom mirror, or on your computer.  Now it’s time to reinforce that goal.  Read your goal with enthusiasm, out loud, and with commitment.

This one sentence reminder can help you reach those goals … and it will change your life.  I have proof … I’m forty-two pounds lighter and I just finished my 19^th book, Secrets of Echo Cave (releasing in September 2018).  Without goal setting … I doubt I’d have achieved any of it.

Does Explicit Sex Sell Books? by June Gadsby

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Explicit sex – yes or no. Does it sell books? This is the question that’s been bugging me for years. And my husband has been begging me ever since we met to put more sex in my stories. In a bookshop he picked up a copy of Jackie Collins’ “Hollywood Wives” and told the shopkeeper: “My wife could write like this!” “You lucky man!” was the shopkeeper’s response. My husband bought the book – the only one I’ve ever known him to buy, read it at great speed and remarked that I could do better than that. Me? I’ve shied away from writing sex in my novels or reading sexy books all my life.

But let’s face it. Books that contain sex – especially the explicit kind and plenty of it – sell, and the author becomes famous. The reading public seem to love it. From Lady Chatterley’s Lover to 50 Shades of Grey, people get as passionate as the characters in the books. And they buy. You hear of a book that hasn’t hit the marketplace yet, but word is out that the sex content is pretty hot, so it becomes an immediate best-seller before anybody has read it.

Admittedly, one or two of my books contain gentle, inoffensive sexual or sensuous scenes, but I’ve never been comfortable with the explicit side of sex. At my age it may be too late to change, but having taken some time out from writing and just about everything else that was my normal life, thanks to some health problems, my brain has been working on the new planned novel, “Forbidden”. Well, the title just cries out for explicit sex of one kind or another and while I worked out the story in my head because I couldn’t sit at the computer, little pockets of explicit sex wove their way into the jungle of words that will one day soon flow from my brain to my fingers and then to the keyboard and screen.

Suddenly, I want to be up there with the sexy writers who give more readers than I have what they want. Dare I do it? Why not? It’s not, after all, ‘forbidden’.

JUNE GADSBY.

Looking for Love with Terri Richards

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Love is ON the Air

                What woman hasn’t called, texted, or met with a friend to discuss how a date went or how a relationship is or isn’t progressing? From the time we are still in grade school, when we ask “Do you think he likes you? What did he say to you?” it seems we are programmed to love hearing about love.

                Maybe that’s why there’ve been countless movies, books, and TV shows with a relationship at their center. However, in 2002, reality TV took romance to a whole other level with its show The Bachelor. ABC actually passed on the idea when it was first presented to them, but when the creators said they thought they could get a proposal at the end, ABC decided to take a chance. It worked out well for the network. Twenty-two seasons later, the show has become one of television’s biggest successes. It averages eight million viewers in the US, and there are variations in eighteen countries that include the Middle East, South America, Australia and Russia. The US also has The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, and The Bachelor Winter Games.

                Bachelor Nation, as it now likes to call itself, has spawned fantasy leagues, drinking games, and viewing parties. In just one US season, The Bachelor garnered more than 22 million dollars in advertising revenue. And it seems that there is not a day that goes by in which some current or former Bachelor contestant is featured in articles on the Internet. Yet, ironically, only two of the twenty-one US Bachelor pairs are still together. The Bachelorette has a little better statistics with 6 of the 13 still a couple. By this time, it’s clear, that for most, the perfect romance will sour soon after the final credits. So why do we still watch in such huge numbers?

                Some have speculated it’s because of our innate interest in dating stories. We like to hear about, read about, and talk about romance that is unfolding. Even if we’re not sure what we’re seeing on the show is completely real, it feels as if we get to tag along on fantasy dates and watch developing relationships filled with both romantic promise and tearful frustration. 

                Some say The Bachelor franchise is so popular because men talk about their feelings and emotions on the show. In real life, it’s often hard to get men to do that, so women are fascinated to hear the show’s hunks let themselves be vulnerable and express their emotions freely.

                Knowing how popular the whole franchise is now, I wondered what it might have been like to first imagine such a reality show and then pitch it to get it on the air. Though my new novel, Looking for Love, is in no way related to The Bachelor, it was a lot of fun to create characters who were a part of a crazy journey into reality TV romance. It was interesting to envision no real budget or developed plan for what would happen once the show got the okay. In the end, I think Looking for Love shows readers that romance is and is not what we expect it to be.

Some of BWL Publishing's best sellers. Click the covers to purchase from your favorite retailer

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