Posts Tagged ‘art’
new book coming soon! Meniscus: Reckoning
Today, after many hours of editing and formatting, I sent for a proof of my new book in the Meniscus Science Fiction Series. Meniscus: Reckoning will be out in early May. This will be the story of a perilous journey to a distant city, over difficult alien landscape, to rescue a member of the Human Resistance. The book is set in the El’ban District of Meniscus, a city mentioned but not visited in other books in the Meniscus Science Fiction Series.
~
To find out a little more about the steps from draft to proof, have a look at the whole story here. Below is a peek at the first draft of the cover for Meniscus: Reckoning (the final cover will be a painting of the scene).
~
~
All my best!
Alexandra (a.k.a. Jane)
soundscape and birdsong
These last two weeks have been fun for bird watchers. I saw my first dark-eyed junco, just back from a winter spent to the south. I also heard that lovely, impossible-to-imitate song of a winter wren. And I have cleaned up our feeding area so the spring birds will be easier to watch.
~
This weekend, I am looking forward to talking with other bird watchers about my new poetry book ‘mnemonic – soundscape and birdsong.’
~
~
I am looking forward to the event, hosted by the folks at the L.P Fisher Public Library, who have been so supportive of my writing through the years! Wish you could come and hear me read …
~
All my best!
Jane
an alien flora
Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.
soon! a new children’s alphabet book
On my list of goals for the year is a project I haven’t talked about before. A friend and I have been working on her new book, A Child’s Botanical Alphabet.
~
I have known Jenn for years, since we both worked on Fredericton’s WordFeast in 2017. Jennifer Houle is a seasoned author, with two award-winning poetry collections, The Back Channels and Virga (Signature Editions). Her first children’s book, Un logis pour Molly/A Home for Molly, was published by Éditions Bouton d’Or Acadie in summer of 2022 in both French and English.
~
Here is what Jenn is saying about A Child’s Botanical Alphabet:
~
This book started out as a little rhyme I made up for my boys when they were toddlers. I loved teaching them to name common flowers & trees around the yard & neighbourhood. Having a vocabulary for things helps deepen imagination, sense of relatedness. I imagined it as a book that caregivers could read with children as they explored … the pages are meant to be coloured on & leaves & flowers pressed between pages. So it’s a book meant to be used. Oh! And there are Luna Moths fluttering throughout. . .presiding spirits.
Jennifer Houle, Facebook, March 20, 2024
~
When Jenn asked me to do the illustrations for her book, I said yes because I loved the concept and I had some suitable pencil drawings already done. I knew from the start I wanted the illustrations to be in colour, so I did my first work of this sort in the digital world. I used GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to colourize each pencil drawing. I have learned so much about colour and its presentation. Jennifer was easy to work with, so in spite of some learning curves, we are very happy with the result.
~
~
As we work on the last small edits, we are excited to see A Child’s Botanical Alphabet in its final form and show it to you. Stayed tuned for more information!
~
All my best,
Jane
including ‘sound’ in writing
I am so proud of my new poetry book ‘mnemonic – soundscape and birdsong’ (Chapel Street Editions, 2024) because it focuses on including sound in writing. Of the five senses (vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste), most creative writing focuses on vision. It is a bit of a challenge to include the other senses in order to give a more complete idea of the sensations contributed by your surroundings.
~
~
My book includes bird song as a main part of the soundscape. It also includes other sounds: the singing of a rock skipped across a frozen pond, the call of the spring peepers, the clinking of ice in glasses, the sound of a kettle boiling over a woodland fire.
~
~
For ways of including sounds in writing, you can look at some of my earlier posts here, and here.
~
I think my favourite poem in the ‘mnemonic’ collection is about my Dad who took us along the Yarmouth shore to find iron pyrite (fool’s gold). The sounds in this poem focus on the shorebirds. Here is a short excerpt:
4.
he takes us prospecting
we wedge into crevasses
keen for pyrite gold
cube within cube
embedded in stone
we always forget the hammer
we chip and scratch with fingernails
reach across rock
dare the waves
5.
a sanderling cries
quit quit!
6.
shorebirds
befriend me
a dowitcher sews a seam with her bill
bastes salt water to shore
the sanderling shoos back the tide
terns
plunge into the ocean
and complain they are wet
~
~
I hope you will have fun incorporating sound into your writing.
~
All my best,
Jane
book reading and signing
This week I am preparing for a launch of my new book ‘mnemonic – soundscape and birdsong’ at Westminster Bookmark in Fredericton. The poems are enjoyable to read and I look forward to talking about one of my favourite topics – birdsong!
~
~
Preparation means thinking about what I will say, choosing the poems to read within the time given and deciding what to wear. It also means letting you all know about the reading.
~
~
As you can see, I will be reading with another author whom I have never met: Christine Higdon. Her book title is fascinating and I am looking forward to reading her story of four Vancouver sisters in the 1920s. Reading with another author is great: it introduces you to someone you may not know and their books. It means the audience is treated to two readings instead of one. And it usually increases numbers of listeners.
~
My talk will focus on the idea of using mnemonics to remember bird songs and calls. Mnemonic means ‘a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations that assists in remembering something.’ Mnemonics are a well-know way of identifying bird calls.
~
This idea has been with me as long as I can remember. When my Mom heard a white throated sparrow, she would always answer with, ‘I love dear Canada, Canada, Canada.’ And I have always known the chick-a-dee by its name-sake call. In later years I have come to love some particular mnemonics and the birds they help identify: ‘who cooks for you?’ by the barred owl, ‘yank, yank, yank’ by the white-breasted nuthatch and ‘whirr-zip!’ by the northern parole warbler. A bird call I have never heard is the ‘cheer, cheer, cheer, purty, purty, purty’ of the northern cardinal – I have never seen a cardinal either! What are your favourite (or unique) bird call mnemonics?
~
Some of the best sources for mnemonics are Audubon Vermont https://vt.audubon.org/sites/default/files/bird_song_mnemonics.pdf and Stanford (South Bay Birders Unlimited) https://web.stanford.edu/~kendric/birds/birdsong.html a great place to listen to various bird songs is All About Birds https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/browse/topic/sounds-songs/
~
I am looking forward to the opportunity to read and talk to the audience on Sunday! Hope to see you there. And hope to hear an afternoon chorus of bird song mnemonics from the audience!
~
All my best,
Jane
squirrel-proof
As a result of our focus on feeding the birds this week, my head is full of birds and squirrels and deer. Hence, a poem…..
~
~
squirrel-proof
~
plan for success
buy a feeder, smarter
than any squirrel
~
fill the feeder
laughing
all the way
~
drive into town
to buy more birdseed
confident, smug
~
left turn
into the driveway
shadow
~
white tail
brown thighs vanish
around the corner
~
feeder empty
~
~
Photos are from years past. We don’t have much snow here in southern New Brunswick!!!!!
~
All my best!
Jane (a.k.a. Alexandra)
‘outside-in’
In the last few days, I was at the home of a friend and recognized a painting on her wall. I painted it years ago, in 2015, in a still life phase of my art. The things included in the painting were possessions I love and still have, mostly depictions of items normally found outside: a marble egg, a book of wild plant identification, two statuettes of mushrooms from my collection, a seashell from my Dad’s collection, a chunk of amethyst, a special fern-embossed candle holder and candle I keep on our mantle, red berries from our berry bush, and in the background, the fern curtains from our living room.
~
~
I looked up the others I had done in the series, all still life. No. 2 was a painting of the stained glass window in our house (I can see it from where I am sitting). Included in the still life are my hollow silver bird, my large glass jar, filled with potpourri, and a stack of plant identification books. The pine cones in the painting are from our yard … every year this time the big pine releases its cones in tight, sticky packages. After they sit in the sun a few days, they dry and open, releasing their seeds.
~
~
The first in the series was called ‘Outside-in’ and depicted the large green resin dragon I keep among my indoor plants. It also shows my moss garden inside its glass cloche. I makes me sad to see the vines of my Mom’s lipstick plant which died a few years ago.
~
~
In these days of de-cluttering and getting rid of things, I am glad to still have all the items in the paintings (except the vine). However, the paintings themselves are no longer with me, sold in Isaac Way’s Art Auction in Fredericton. Who purchased them? I only know the whereabouts of the one in the home of my friend.
~
Perhaps I will be inspire to do a 4th painting in the still life series, depicting some of the other things I love. We will see.
~
All my best,
Jane (a.k.a.) Alexandra
Coming in April: A Book Fair for the Moncton Area
April will be a welcome month for book lovers!
Come to the First Annual Greater Moncton/Riverview/Dieppe Independent Book Fair.
30 tables, 38 authors! Lots and lots of books!
~
~
I will be there with all my books:
Kaye Eliot Mysteries,
Meniscus Science Fiction,
award-winning poetry
and, for the first time,
a children’s book!
~
Wink in the Rain is about an elf who lives at the edge of a garden.
Wink loves the garden but he does not like the rain.
Visit with Wink and his friends as he finds a way to keep his wings dry.
~
~
I often include black and white drawings in my books
but the drawings for Wink in the Rain needed lots of colour.
I used GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to draw Wink, the plants in the garden,
the raindrops and Wink’s friend, the red-backed salamander.
~
~
I will be showing Wink in the Rain for the first time at the Greater Moncton Independent Book Fair.
~
Write the date in your calendar now: April 22nd. 10am – 4pm. Riverview Lions Community Center.
_
If you are an author who’d like to participate in the Book Fair, please contact Allan Hudson at gmrdbookfair@gmail.com for details and registration.
Stay tuned for more about the Book Fair
and
Wink in the Rain!
All my best,
Jane
Meniscus: Return to Sintha … meet the characters
I have completed the final edits of my new book Meniscus: Return to Sintha and my beta reader’s comments are in. The book is heading towards its publication in early March, under my pen name Alexandra Tims.
~
For this post, I will introduce you to some of the characters in the book. If you are a reader of the series, you will already know many of these characters, but some are new.
~
In the book, Abra and Drag-on set out on a journey to deliver critical information about the Dock-winders to every population centre in the Prell-nan District of planet Meniscus. Abra’s friends, Tagret and Rist, set out in the opposite direction to help with the distribution of the information. The information will, they hope, end the Dock-winder hegemony, the enslavement of Humans and the indenture of Gel-Heads. That word ‘hegemony’ is known to me because my son is a political science major, but it may not be familiar to everyone:
hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.
~
The main characters in the book are:
Abra: historian, who studies the languages of aliens on Meniscus; married to the Slain, Trath, she lives in the abandoned Museum in Prell-nan;
Trath: a Slain, a dealer in the illegal drug bellwort and an addict; Abra’s husband;
Drag-on: an alien native to the planet; looks like a forkful of spaghetti without the fork; telepathic and friendly to Humans;
Tagret: chemist, brought to slavery on Meniscus and freed by the Slain, Rist, who is now her companion;
Rist: a Slain, a courier, once married to a Gel-head named Semala; now companion to Tagret;
Semala: a Gel-head and Rist’s wife; died in an accident on the road to Sintha but she still haunts Rist and Tagret.
~
In each city, our heroes must find the small group of Humans who work for the Resistance.
~
The Resistance includes:
Aella: known as The Whirlwind, the one-woman resistance in Enbricktow;
Di-gett’ath Roth’: The Blood-Let, resistance movement in Prell;
Ora-nen Uth: Curfew Dark, resistance movement in Sintha, a spirited group who meet in the darkest of alleyways;
Ora-toll: Light Tunnel, resistance movement in Nebul-nan;
Marneth Hath-arn; the Shadow Builders, resistance movement in Bleth-nan, includes the triplets, Twilla, Titha and Trill who talk in their own secret language;
In De’men, the only resistance is a group of three street-sweepers;
In Tre’men, the only resistance is a wizened Gel-head named Weddle.
~
~
Now that you know some of the characters in Meniscus: Return to Sintha, I hope you will read the book, to find out what happens and if the information changes the hegemony on planet Meniscus.
~
On the release date, I’ll let you know where the book will be available. If you want to catch up on the series, you could begin at the first book in the Return to Sintha Trilogy — Meniscus: Rosetta Stone, available at Westminster Books in Fredericton, Dog Eared Books in Oromocto or on Amazon.ca.
~
All my best,
Alexandra (a.k.a. Jane)
nichepoetryandprose 