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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Look for the silver lining

As I meander away the waning minutes, hours and days of what constitutes my Christmas break, I received an e-mail from Writer's Digest Magazine.

The bad news was that I wasn't selected as a finalist for their annual Self-Publish e-Book Awards. As writers meet with rejection more often than success, this I can take in stride.

The good news, I guess, was the feedback of the judge who read 'The Barricade Diary' (minus the spoilers):

"Brent Cameron has written a fascinating novel that takes a little perseverance for it to get a hold on you... But if the reader perseveres they will be rewarded with a complex and interesting story... There are twists and turns that will keep the reader involved and wanting to turn the page. The writing, the voice, is very much of the time and feels authentic.  It flows nicely and moves the story along at a good pace. The characters are compelling and  the reader will be swept up into their lives."

There were 4 criteria being judged, and my aggregate score on them, on a scale of 5, was 4.2.

No - I'm not going to win, and that's fine.

My 'silver lining' is that my writing may have a place. These kind (and encouraging) words, combined with the equally kind and encouraging words in those Amazon reviews, make me believe that for those willing to give it a chance, there are people who enjoyed the journey.

A very happy and prosperous New Year to one and all!

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

An end to the interlude


And so, after an interlude from this blog, I have returned to posting.

The rule of blogging is to do the exact opposite of what I’ve been doing - to be regularly punctual, pithy and profound. As I am not particularly talented at the latter two, the least I could’ve managed was the former.

To you, my friends, I confess some significant reason for not being diligent in my writing. By way of full disclosure, my activities up to October 27th were directed toward some immediate goal. In the Canadian province of Ontario, where I reside, that was the date when all local governments and municipal level councils were elected. As coincidence would have it, both my wife and I were candidates for office.

While Jodi's run for School Board Trustee was agonizingly close - losing by less than 30 votes - I was elected as a member of council in the Township of Central Frontenac.

This has been something I have contemplated for some time, and it holds a great deal of significance for me.

I grew up in a municipality called Hinchinbrooke Township. It has its own Reeve and Council, fire and roads department. There was a Hinchinbrooke Public School where I first began my education. My grandfather was the grader operator and retired as the head of its roads department after over 20 years of service.

In the late 1990’s, there was a round of amalgamations of local governments in Ontario, and Hinchinbrooke was combined with three other townships to form the Township of Central Frontenac. Last year, the school was closed, and my grandfather has been gone for eight years.

What was once Hinchinbrooke is a district that has two elected representatives, and I’ve been honoured to become one of them. My term gets underway in earnest in 2015 – the year my grandfather would have turned 100 (Given his mother lived to be 103, not that implausible).

So, what does that mean for my writing?

Well, not all that much, really.

My council commitments will take up a lot of time, but my full time job at Queen’s remains in toto.  In addition, my writing time tends to be in the morning – after I arrive on campus but before I start work. Also, my employer closes between Christmas Eve and the New Year. Long story short – I can still write if the words and ideas are there.

Are they though?

Well, yes. Even though I am still pushing to get ‘Barricade Diary’ into a more public distribution, I have other projects in varying stages of development.

One project which I confess I did not plan on taking on was a sequel to ‘The Barricade Diary’. To be honest, I never considered it anything other than a stand-alone work. Of course, I had feedback from readers, and more than one wanted to know if a sequel was in the works.

I took a couple of weeks to figure out whether or not there was a story to tell, and I’m happy to say that there is. I’m still working on the outline, but it didn’t take long for the story to reveal itself.

Still no idea how long it will take to write, but given that ‘Barricade’ took, off and on, over 15 years, I’m guessing it will be quicker – even with my new ‘political career.’

December 16 - 7:36 a.m.



It is 7:36 a.m., a little less than a week before Christmas, and I am the closest I’ve been to a state of zen for a while.

As an employee of a University largely devoid of students between the big day and New Year’s, I am afforded a built in vacation period.

The same goes for my newly acquired duties as a local councillor (by virtue of the Municipal Elections held in Ontario on October 27th), although I expect that phone calls and e-mails regarding the condition of plowed roads will come up at least a couple of times.

Yesterday, with my son's birthday, we have transitioned out of the cake and candles season that, for my family, runs steady from late August to now.

As with my writing, what can I say? It is my guilty pleasure, and I try to fit it in wherever and whenever possible. Still on the quest for the Holy Grail of the unrepresented scribe, and my heart is full of hope. Having said that, my horoscope did say that “it’s smarter to hang onto your current job,” so who knows.

‘Absolom’ was momentarily put aside in favour of two other projects. One is a non-fiction paper for associates in the UK (which I would still like to tinker with), as well as an outline for another novel that I did not anticipate writing until about two months ago. With those dual tasks winding down, I hope that Absolom gets the attention that it deserves. I’m too novice a writer to have a ‘type’ or a ‘style’, but I think that people who read (and hopefully enjoy) ‘Barricade’ will have an affinity for this story as well.

Now it’s 7:48 a.m., and if I hope to snag a Tim Horton’s coffee before the pre-exam phalanx marches in, I better scoot!