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Welcome to Blue Heron Books
The unpretentious atmosphere of Blue Heron Books with its comfy chairs, wood shelving and creaky floors lends itself to a long slow, browsing session, but under that sleepy atmosphere vibrates a strong pulse. The store has a quaint, old-fashioned look with an up tempo vibe, because there is always something happening. The store is a hub for the community and a bastion of calm chaos where everyone is welcome, even the local dogs that drop by with their owners for a treat from the tin kept under the front counter.
62 Brock St. W., Uxbridge, Ontario. 905-852-4282
We recommend…The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
It’s 1996, and less than half of all American high-school students have ever used the Internet. Emma just got her first computer and an America Online CD-ROM. Josh is her best friend. They power up and log on–and discover themselves on Facebook, 15 years in the future. Everybody wonders what their destiny will be; Josh and Emma are about to find out.
We recommend…A Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize and #1 international bestseller, The Sense of an Ending is a masterpiece.
The story of a man coming to terms with the mutable past, Julian Barnes’s new novel is laced with his trademark precision, dexterity and insight. It is the work of one of the world’s most distinguished writers.
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they navigated the girl drought of gawky adolescence together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they swore to stay friends forever. Until Adrian’s life took a turn into tragedy, and all of them, especially Tony, moved on and did their best to forget.
Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career and a marriage, a calm divorce. He gets along nicely, he thinks, with his one child, a daughter, and even with his ex-wife. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove. The unexpected bequest conveyed by that letter leads Tony on a dogged search through a past suddenly turned murky. And how do you carry on, contentedly, when events conspire to upset all your vaunted truths?
Books and Brunch with Crime writer Giles Blunt….
Our guest on March 25th Books and Brunch will be crime author Giles Blunt. The event will take place at Wyndance Golf Club
(**** NOTE – do not use your GPS/Mapquest etc. to guide you. The direction they give take you on your own magical mystery tour through the backroads of Durham Region. )
“As distinctively Canadian as a Tom Thomson painting. . . . Crime Machine is as good as Canadian crime fiction gets.” — Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail
“A marvelously controlled writer, equally confident with characters and narrative.”— Toronto Star “Teeming with questions, possibilities and clever, enticing dialogue.”— The Hamilton Spectator
“With Crime Machine, Blunt delivers another twisting page-turner that will keep readers up late at night, proving yet again that he can deftly toe the line between terror and intrigue.”— CBC Books
“First-rate series. . . .You can hear the crunch of snowshoes through the bush, smell the buckshot mingling with fresh blood.” — NOW
Lynn Crawford – So Good, We Want to do it Again!
On the heels of a very successful event with Lynn Crawford on the weekend, Shelley is now in negotiations with the publicist to nail down a return date. Detail will be posted on the website and will be sent out in a future newsletter. If interested you may want to get your name on a wait list.
Lisa Hutchinson of the Passionate Cook’s Essentials had this to say about the event:
“Another special event co-hosted by Blue Heron Books and The Passionate Cook’s Essentials took place this weekend. We had celebrated chef Lynn Crawford of The Food Network promoting her new cookbook Pitchin’ In. A delicious luncheon pulled from the pages of the new cookbook was prepared by Jeremy Buckingham. A delicious time was had by all thanks to Lynn Crawford’s fabulous sense of humour and animated interviewing style. It was a thoroughly entertaining afternoon. And everyone walked away with a signed copy of her cookbook and a personal glimpse of Lynn herself.”
Another perfect pairing – Meals that Heal with the Healthy Gourmet, Julie Daniluk
Co-hosted by Blue Heron and Passionate Cook’s Essentials
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Julie Daniluk hosts Healthy Gourmet (OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network), a reality cooking show that highlights the ongoing battle between taste and nutrition by using unique groups such as bikers, dragon boat racers and ballroom dancers to challenge their taste buds with nutritious foods. She is a health expert for the Marilyn Dennis Show (CTV) and has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows including The Dr Oz Show, CTV’s Breakfast TV and Wylde on Health (CP24). Television viewers also recognize Julie from her “busted” segments on The Right Fit (OWNetwork) where she examines the foods people need to stay healthy, acting as a nutrition encyclopedia. Her fun and engaging style comes in handy when she creates a recipe that is packed with health tips for www.chatelaine.com
Inflammation is on the rise. Conditions such as allergies, skin disorders, asthma, heart disease, arthritis and any other condition ending in “itis” all have an inflammatory component. In Meals that Heal Inflammation registered holistic nutritionist Julie Daniluk shows how to change our immune response through diet. The first part of the book outlines the six causes of inflammation and gets to the root of the pain we experience. She then shows how to build a healthy kitchen full of foods that will contribute to our well-being. The book’s easy and tempting recipes include quinoa salad, salmon with fennel and even key lime pie. Extensively researched, and full of information about the healing properties of everyday foods, Meals that Heal Inflammation will be a mainstay in any kitchen with a healthy focus.
Details to follow.
The Fundamental Novelist
The Essential Elements of Publishable Book-Length Storytelling
This 10 week workshop provides writers with the essential elements of publishable book-length story telling.
The arc of the classes begins with an analysis of the key stepping stones. Participants will:
- - define the overarching dramatic question that their novel will answer
- - learn how to keep characters intriguing so that readers will care what happens to them
- - interweave themes to keep the story consistent and interesting
- - apply scene building techniques that will keep the novel riveting and ensure every scene is a keeper
- - select the ideal voice for the story teller
- - analyse the value of point(s) of view in the story
- - develop ways to maintain consistency throughout the novel timelines
While participants investigate and refine these storytelling fundamentals, the workshop will simultaneously encourage the parallel process of getting the novel in front of an interested agent or publisher. Participants will:
- - prepare a convincing pitch
- - draft an engaging query letter
- - finalize the first 20 pages of the story
- - practice pitching their story to each other and in front of a knowledgeable panel.
The author who has written the best story and displayed ingenuity in the related aspects of novel promotion, as identified by the Blue Heron panel, will be forwarded to Adrienne Kerr, Chief Acquisitions Editor at Penguin Books, for consideration.
Wednesday Nights, starting February 29, 2012, 7:00 to 9:30 p.m.
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James Dewar has been the publisher and chief editor of Piquant Press (www.piquantpress.ca) since he started the company in 2009. It specializes in publishing poetry, non-fiction and short story collections. He has previously edited and published ten chapbooks for emerging talents through CreativeJames Publishing and co-edited three poetry anthologies. As a freelance magazine editor for Metroland Newspaper Group, he has extensive experience in editing, magazine layout and design. He teaches writing and performance workshops, including the year-long workshop with Sue Reynolds, A Novel Approach, that guides writers to complete a novel or memoir in one year. His poetry has been published in The Garden in the Machine (2007) and several anthologies and literary journals. He is President of the Writers’ Community of Durham Region (www.wcdr.ca). For more information about James and his workshops, including the writing retreats that he and Sue Reynolds offer, please visit www.inkslingers.ca.
Fun with Freelancing!
with Dorothea Helms
Writing well is a fundamental step to getting published – but if you want to make money writing, you have to venture away from the right side of your brain and engage in business practices such as marketing, invoicing and keeping a set of basic books. Sound like a drag? According to Dorothea Helms, The Writing Fairy®, TOO BAD!
During this 10-week course, she will teach you to buck up, buckle down, stop whining and get moving on being an entrepreneur. Participants will learn what it means to be in business and how to translate that into freelance writing for a part- or full-time living. You’ll even have fun along the way!
Monday evenings, February 27 to May 7 (10 weeks, no class during March Break) $300
Time: 7:00 to 9:30
Click here to register
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Bio
Dorothea Helms is an award-winning, internationally published writer and popular writing instructor. She is the author of the highly successful book The Writing Fairy® Guide to Calling Yourself a Writer (now available on Kindle), and she offers courses, workshops and keynote speeches that inspire adults to write and publish their work.
Dorothea is also owner of Write Stuff Writing Services, through which she provides professional writing and editing services of all kinds to newspapers, magazines, businesses and individual clients. Over the years, she has served as contributing editor to dozens of publications, and has provided many writing colleagues with paying gigs. She also owns The Writing Fairy®, a business through which she provides humour writing, keynote speaking and writing instruction. Her “Business of Writing” workshop has helped to launch many freelance careers. For the past several years, Dorothea has pulled in six-digit revenues from her freelance businesses.
She has been teaching creative writing at the college level for 17 years, and is proud that many of her students have won writing contests, started freelance careers and become published authors. Dorothea’s work has appeared in publications such as Homemakers, Chatelaine, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun and Canadian Architecture and Design Magazine. She was featured on CBC Radio’s “First Person Singular” twice, and has twice had personal essays published on The Globe and Mail’s Facts & Arguments page.
She is known for her trademark humour. Where Dorothea goes, fun follows!
Small Worlds
Writing Short Stories
Short stories are still one of the best ways to break into the literary publishing market. This course will focus on the particularities of this literary genre. Character development, narrative structure, story arc and plot construction will be explored by weekly readings of published short stories, as well as by participating in writing assignments.
Week by week, participants will be working on short stories of various lengths. By the end of the course, writers will have created three short stories with a view towards submitting them for publication or to short story contests. Participants will also have one of the stories produced during the course published in the course anthology.
The best writing in the short story class as chosen by the Blue Heron Selection Panel, will be forwarded to editor Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Canada for personal feedback and consideration.
Course fee includes a copy of the text.
Starts March 6, 2012. Tuesday nights from 7:00 to 9:30
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Susan Lynn Reynolds is a writer and an accredited writing instructor in the Amherst Writers and Artists method. She is past president of the WCDR and current vice-president of the national organization Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP).
Her novel Strandia won the Canadian Library Association’s national Young Adult Novel of the Year award, and she won the Timothy Findley Creative Writing Prize three years in a row for her short stories and poetry. Her area of specialty is the therapeutic use of journaling and memoir, and her thesis on that topic received the Canadian Psychological Association’s Award of Academic Excellence in 2006.
She has been leading writing workshops for female inmates at Central East Correctional Centre for seven years, a program for which she received the 2007 June Callwood Award for Outstanding Volunteerism for that program.
She and her partner James Dewar run a freelance writing and web design business, and teach creative writing in a number of freelance workshops, at Durham College, and in their year long course A NOVEL APPROACH where participants take one year to write their book length novels or memoirs.
We've listened in for years, but this year CBC Books turned the spotlight on Blue Heron Books, naming it the Independent Bookseller for the month of January.
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