Author: Marsha

Over the weekend, the last story for Kobzar’s Children was edited.

I am really excited about this book.

The kobzars were the blind minstrels of Ukraine, who memorized the epic poems and stories of 100 generations. Traveling around the country, they stopped in towns and villages along the way, where they told their tales and were welcomed by all. During the early years of Stalin’s regime in the USSR, the kobzars wove their traditional stories with contemporary warnings of soviet repression, famine, and terror. When Stalin heard of it, he called the first conference of kobzars in Ukraine. Hundreds congregated. Then Stalin had them murdered. As the storytellers of Ukraine died, so too did their stories.

Kobzar’s Children is an anthology of short historical fiction, memoirs, and poems written about the Ukrainian immigrant experience. The stories span a century of history from 1905 to 2005; and they contain the voices of people who lived through internment as “enemy aliens,” homesteading, famine, displacement, concentration camps, and this new century’s Orange Revolution. More than a collection, it is a social document that revives memories once deliberately forgotten.

I just signed the contract for my tenth book recently, but this book is a first. It’s the first time that I’m an editor. The stories and poems in Kobzar’s Children were written by a diverse group of people. Most of the contributors contacted me initially after reading my books. They wrote to me and said, “I have a story too.”

I was moved by these stories. So many that have never been told before.

I began collecting these people and these stories together and many of us have formed an online critique group for Ukrainian story writers.

All of the royalties for this anthology are being donated to the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. To find out more about UCCLA, go here:

http://www.uccla.ca

Here’s the amazon entry:

http://tinyurl.com/kr6cv

I can hardly wait until I can hold this anthology in my hands.

Marsha Skrypuch
www.calla.com

Remember that Express Posted package that I sent to Elizabeth that got sent back to me — plus I had to PAY $7.50 to get it sent back to me?

Well, today in the mail, I got a lovely letter from a woman from the main post office in Brantford, apologizing for the mix-up. She also included $9.20 worth of stamps.

Made my day!!

If you’re Canadian and you need to get a passport, I strongly suggest that you fill out your application here:

http://www.ppt.gc.ca/

Then print it off and take it to a passport office. I did that today and I didn’t have to wait in line at all. You get issued a bar code when you fill it out online so it only takes them about five minutes to process. Kewl.

Ever had one of those days that it feels like you’re working hard but getting nothing done? I had one like that today.

I am on day 8 of a bad arthritis flare-up in my hands. I had trouble sleeping last night because my fingers were swollen and hot like freshly boiled bratwurst sausages. I decided to sleep in a bit later to make up for it but at 8am sharp, the doorbell rang. I bounded out of bed and greeted the Express Post guy who had an intriguing package for me. It was a wooden box about two feet by two feet and four inches deep and it had a little rope handle on it. I pried it open with a screwdriver and sore hands. Inside was a beautifully framed first page of Bill C-331, which recognizes the injustice of Ukrainians being interned as enemy aliens during WWI. It was signed by Inky Mark, the MP who brought forward Bill C-331 as a private member’s Bill, and he wrote a nice note on it about how fortunate the Ukrainian community in Canada was to have a storyteller like me.

Very nice. The nicest thing that happened all day!

Once I got out of bed for good, I plunged into a major ironing marathon. We drove to St. Catherines last night and had dinner with our son Neil (who is in 3rd year at Brock) and he gave me a month’s worth of laundry. Unlike normal 21 year olds who wear t-shirts and jeans, Neil doesn’t even own a pair of jeans, and he rarely wears t-shirts. He likes silk Hawaiian shirts and they need ironing. Being a Ukrainian mother, I also iron his boxer shorts. I ironed for two solid hours.

In the midst of ironing, the doorbell rang again. Our mailman (who also happens to be an alderman) had a package for me. I thought it was my contract for the sequel to Aram’s Choice. No, it was a package that I had couriered out at the beginning of the week to Elizabeth, a special little girl in London Ontario, who I send autographed children’s books to every month or so (not mine, but ones that I pick up when I get the chance). I had to pay $7.50 to receive my own package. I thought it was being returned because I hadn’t put enough postage on it. Seeing as I had sent it from the post office and put the postage on that they asked for, I couldn’t figure that out, but already this $20 book had cost me $15 in postage and it hadn’t gone anywhere. I had to mail another package anyway, so I decided to go to the post office and figure out what was going on.

Before I could go to the post office, I had another errand: to get a police check. I do alot of school and library readings (approx 150 this school year) and I had never been asked for a police check before, but the school I’m spending the day at next Wednesday asked me for one. When I phoned the police station, they said all I needed was photo ID and they’d process it in 24 hours. No problem.

So I drove to the police station. The guy at reception said he couldn’t process me because I live in the county.

So I drove to Paris to the OPP station. This is a 20 minute drive and there was a blinding snowstorm.

I got there and the woman who does the police checks said that I needed a letter from the school and said that I would need a different letter from each school that I went to and each time I went to a school it would cost me $25 for a new police check and it would take a week minimum to have each one processed. I felt pretty aggravated by all this but took the forms and left.

I drove to the post office and showed them my undelivered package. The lady said that it wasn’t postage due, but that the sender’s address didn’t exist. This was simply wrong. I mail packages to Elizabeth all the time. I went to look up the postal code to ensure that I had it down right (I did) but by then, there were a dozen people in the lineup so I left. sigh

When I got back into the car (still a blinding snowstorm) I took a good look at that police check form. It was all about sex offenders and people in constant contact with kids.

????????????

When I do a school reading or presentation, I’m up at the front with a microphone and the kids are in the audience.

I called the OPP back. The woman said, “Oh, you want _that_ kind of police check.” Turns out there are three different kinds. I had explained when I was there what I did but I guess it didn’t sink in.

So, I was about to drive BACK to Paris but the woman told me she’d only be there for another 20 minutes and it wouldn’t be enough time to process it.

Sigh.

So I called the teacher who had requested all of this in the first place. She said, “Don’t worry about it. We don’t need it.” Argh.

By this time it was almost 4pm. I had not accomplished anything for the whole day except to iron and open up a wooden box.

I drove to my local post office (ie, not the one from which I had mailed that dud package from). The women at my local post office are lovely. I showed them my package and explained to them that I had been forced to pay courier charges twice now and the thing was still in Brantford despite the fact that the address was 100% correct. They said, “You’ll have to go to the main post office to complain.” I said, “No.”

So they called the main post office for me. And I’m not sure but it looks like my package will be delivered and I’ll get my $7.50 back.

What a day. I’m back to where I started. And my hands are still sore.

Yesterday, Sharon Brooks, organizer extraordinaire of Kids Can Fly and also the key fundraiser for Brantford Book Camp, called with good news. We have received funding from the Ontario Arts Council for this summer’s Book Camp!!! This makes everything so much easier to plan. No scurrying around, asking for little donations here and there. We provide this camp to kids for a mere $50 for the week (fee waived altogether in special cases), but it costs something like $200 per child for us to put this camp on. Thank you, Ontario Arts Council! You have made many aspiring young writers’ dreams come true!

And then today, I got an email from my agent letting me know that the contract for I Am Aram (the sequel to Aram’s Choice) has come through. Muriel Wood will be doing the illustrations for this one too. She is such a joy to work with and I’m really pleased that she’ll be able to start on this new one as soon as she’s finished the illustrations for the first. The tentative publication date is fall 2007.

Yippee!!!

Brantford Book Camp has been running for two summers now, and in our upcoming third summer, we’re incorporating a parallel camp for aspiring writers who are no longer kids.

Our stellar Book Camp team of:

Sharon Brooks
Fleur-Ange Lamothe
Roberta Henley
and me

is doing a presentation at the upcoming Ontario Library Association Superconference on Thursday called “From Boot Camp to Book Camp.” In this presentation, we’ll give step-by-step guidelines about how communities can start Book Camps in their own communities.

In case you’re wondering what the heck a Book Camp is, check out last year’s page:

http://www.calla.com/bookcamp/index.html

While at the OLA conference, I’ll also be signing at the Dundurn booth at 3pm on Thursday and will be womaning the Ontario Coalition for School Libraries booth at 11am.

A few days ago, I got the page proofs for one of my upcoming books, Aram’s Choice.

This is a very special book. It’s a short novel — only 72 pages — but it will have full colour illustrations throughout. I have never written a novel quite like this before. It’s actually harder to write a novel as short as this because you don’t have the luxury of extra words.

The story itself is a simple one. It’s about Aram, an Armenian orphan, who comes to Canada in 1923. But he doesn’t simply arrive in Canada, he’s rescued. The story of the first 50 Armenian children to be rescued by Canada is a remarkable one and also a story that has been shoved under the carpet of time. This story is actually the one that compelled me to begin writing books in the first place.

The story is an emotional one. About a young boy who has already lost his mother and father and little brother because of the Armenian genocide in Turkey. But he now must choose to lose everything else that is familiar — his grandmother, the orphanage in Corfu that he considers home, and his beloved teacher — on the chance that he can gain freedom as a Canadian.

You’d think that because this story had been in my heart for so very long that seeing the page proofs would have no effect on me. After all, these are my own words.

But the page proofs include Muriel Wood’s astonishing paintings. They are so real that I had tears pouring down my face as I read my own words. She got inside of this story and made it her own. The paintings are so realistic that Aram and his friends are heart-breakingly real.

I am proud of this novel and I am honoured to have Muriel Wood as my illustrator. And now, I wait anxiously until the final book is in my grubby little hands.

Here’s the Amazon.ca page:

http://tinyurl.com/9mo9b

Here’s a question that popped up in my inbox today:

Hi Marsha!

Thanks for visiting my school today. After your presentation, I asked you the question ‘What advice would you give to a 10 year old who wants to publish some stories in a magazine?’ You had to leave for your next session but asked me to email you with this question.

thanks, R

Hi R!

Thanks for contacting me!

There’s a Canadian magazine that publishes stories by people under the age of 19. It’s called What If? Here’s some info on it:

http://www.whatifmagazine.com/aboutthemag.htm

I have seen this magazine and it’s professionally done.

Hope this helps —

Marsha Skrypuch
www.calla.com

Hi Elizabeth,

Your new novel opening is really good! Much more visual this time around. Within each line, you can expand scene to make it more visual. For example, your first few lines could be expanded thus:

“Katie! We need you over here!”

(It’s a good technique to open with a line of dialogue like this. The reader gets a sense of urgency and also that Katie is important. Tag this line of dialogue with some scene setting and context. For example, take a look at my additions (between the ///// marks):

“Katie! We need you over here!” /////Katie tried to swallow down her stress, then turned to see who it was who needed her so desperately this time. Solange, Katie’s personal hairstylist stood there, blow dryer in one hand and round hairbrush in the other.////

////Katie heard a voice from the other direction://// “We need her here!

////It was the set designer, Gabe, tapping his eel-skin boot tip with exasperation.////

////Solange stepped forward, brandishing her blow dryer like a weapon at Gabe. ////”We have to get her hair done before she can get any pictures taken!”//// she declared.///

“Can’t I have a break?” ////asked Katie, slumping down in the nearest chair. ////”I have been working for 7 hours straight now, its getting hard to stand up straight and look good in the pictures.”

I got an email from someone who is writing his first novel and it’s shaping up to be really good. One of the things I suggested to him is that instead of writing it in present tense, he write it in “past active”. Both past active and present active engage the reader, but past active gives the writer more flexibility and it seems less overt.

“What’s that?” he asked. Here’s my answer:

Here are the first couple of paragraphs, as published, from my novel, Nobody’s Child:

http://www.calla.com/nobody.html

They’re written in past active:

April 1909 — Adana, Turkey

They travelled on foot. That set them apart from the other migrant barley harvesters. The others travelled with donkeys or an oxcart. What also set them apart was that their group included women and children.

Mariam’s father and uncle kept pace a few steps in front of the others in their group, and right behind them walked Mariam’s mother. They each carried a cloth sack of supplies on their backs. They each brought their own large sickle.

Here they are again, written in the present:

April 1909 — Adana, Turkey

They travel on foot. That sets them apart from the other migrant barley harvesters. The others travel with donkeys or an oxcart. What also sets them apart is that their group includes women and children.

Mariam’s father and uncle keep pace a few steps in front of the others in their group, and right behind them walk Mariam’s mother. They each carry a cloth sack of supplies on their backs. They each bring their own large sickle.

At all costs, you want to avoid the past passive:

April 1909 — Adana, Turkey

They had travelled on foot. That had set them apart from the other migrant barley harvesters. The others had travelled with donkeys or an oxcart. What had also set them apart was that their group had included women and children.

Mariam’s father and uncle had kept pace a few steps in front of the others in their group, and Mariam’s mother had walked right behind them. They had each carried a cloth sack of supplies on their backs. They each had brought their own large sickle.

Present passive is also deadly:

April 1909 — Adana, Turkey

They were travelling on foot. That was setting them apart from the other migrant barley harvesters. The others were travelling with donkeys or an oxcart. What was also setting them apart was that their group included women and children.

Mariam’s father and uncle were keeping pace a few steps in front of the others in their group, and right behind them was walking Mariam’s mother. They were each carrying a cloth sack of supplies on their backs. They were each bringing their own large sickle.