Top 5 Blog Posts from 5 Years of Blogging

Somehow I've been blogging for five years. I've posted 275 times, an average 55 posts a year, pretty much one post a week. As 2017 comes to a close, here are the "most-viewed" posts on this blog over the five years ...

Author, Sept 2017

I've written about books (mine mostly but not entirely), and about the writer's life (tips and pointers about writing get views). I've posted about my adventures in the Canadian Kid Lit world (always fun). I've put up my poetry and music, or pictures and letters from kids, snippets about my family, sailing, my dog, and more. I've tried to update my blog every week, rain or shine. 

It's been fun for the most part. It's certainly a record of this part of my life, if anyone is ever interested. As I write this, I'm creeping toward 80,000 views, which seems amazing. For a relatively quiet and reserved type, who knew I had so much to say!

The Top 5 posts from the past 5 years are a bit of a surprise, being memoir, music and monsters, so here they are ...

#5. The Tin Foil Fairy. A Christmas Eve memoir, I was six and my older brother's prank turned into the magical stuff of legend. I re-post it annually on Christmas Eve.

#4. My Brush with Mortality ... and Measles. Another memoir, here's the story of the spring when I was 11 years old, and went blind from measles (a message for the anti-vaxxer movement).

#3. When Authors and Editors Write Music Together. Super proud of this one. My first guitar album, Fifth Season, came out in 2015, with my editor. Lovely tunes, I hope you'll give a listen. The second album, Birches, is out now too. Listen free on the Free Music Archive, or pay what you will on Bandcamp. Enjoy!

#2. American Library Association Loves Myles and the Monster Outside. A great review for my 6th book from the ALA, in which they say nice things like "readers will be enthralled." Thank you!

And #1 is ... Myles and the Monster Outside KIRKUS REVIEW. Best review ever for my award-winning horror story for kids (book 2 in the Weird Stories Gone Wrong series). I love "Goosebumps from north of the border." We read R.L. Stine in this house until the books fell apart!

So the top posts (by views) are Memoir, Music and Monsters. Sounds good to me. We're all voyeurs at heart, so who doesn't love a good memoir piece? Or the curiosity of a lovely instrumental guitar album by an author and an editor? And a universal fascination with monsters? That goes without saying.

Will I keep blogging? Yes, for a while anyway. I hope to add reviews of Canadian kid lit authors, more writing tips, and more poetry in the year ahead.

If you're still reading, here are the next top posts from the past 5 years...

#6. It's Blog Tour Week for Everton Miles is Stranger than Me
#7. Book Reviews and How to Survive Them
#8. The Ghost of Lego Past: An Ode
#9. Carter and the Curious Maze Book Trailer is a Featured Video
#10. When Authors and Editors Write Music Together, Part 2

So glad to see a poem in there (#8), and if you're at all interested in magic realism, #6 is an exhaustive set of interviews about my YA fantasy series, The Night Flyer's Handbook. And as for book reviews, #7 is the best advice I can give anyone on that subject.

Thanks for joining me, and here's to another 5 years (wow, 2022, imagine)!

How to Create a Memorable Monster?

YOU HAVE TO LOVE YOUR MONSTER. Here's a memorable blog post from this week, last year:

Mary Shelley did it. So did Dante, Milton, Poe, Lovecraft ... and scores of others.

As a writer, I've often pondered how those great writers breathed life into their creations? What was so beguiling about Shelley's Frankenstein and his monster, Dante's demons, Milton's Lucifer, Lovecraft's worlds?

As a writer of horror and fantasy, I wonder: What's the secret to creating a memorable monster?

A great antagonist needs to be original, interesting, beguiling, and it helps if they have a fatal flaw, of course. A dark sense of humour doesn't hurt, either. But there's something more, too...

... what's that elusive ingredient?

This week on my publisher's blog, I talk about Monster Writing 101. All of my books feature some sort of monster, from a curmudgeonly 400-year-old gargoyle, to an old gardener who traps bored children in his time-travel maze. But my latest monster, Abilith the Rogue, from my new book, Everton Miles is Stranger than Me, is my favourite monstrous creation of all. And let's face it, every writer knows that monsters are really fun to write!

For more on ingredients for the perfect monster, here's an excerpt from my Dundurn blog post today. Read on ...

"I’ve always had a thing for monsters. It started in an English class when my professor asked me to explain what made John Milton’s Lucifer, the main character in Paradise Lost, so compelling?

I wasn’t sure. But I was intrigued. I began to wonder about monsters in literature: human monsters like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, and literal monsters, like Dante’s demons in The Inferno, or Mary Shelley’s monstrous creation.

Why do they move us, I wondered? What was the secret to creating a memorable, haunting antagonist?

A few years later I was sitting in a screenwriting course (Robert McKee’s excellent class, I highly recommend it), and the answer fell into my lap…

… AS THE CREATOR, YOU HAVE TO LOVE YOUR MONSTER."

What does that mean? Read the rest of the Dundurn blog post now to find out: Monster Writing 101

Everton Miles is Stranger than Me is now available in bookstores and libraries across the country.

This weekend I was at the Yonge/Eglinton Indigo for a book event. I had a great time, we sold a lot of books, and thanks to everyone for coming!

A few students turned up with an English assignment: they had to record an author reading to them for 5 minutes. An interesting teacher to send their seniors out to find an author to read to them! I was happy to comply, though, so a small crowd gathered at my feet, and I read from the book for 5 minutes or so. Always happy to help students finish their English assignments!

Here's a twitter video of the great-looking table: INDIGO

Everton Miles is Stranger than Me, Reviews:

Kirkus Reviews "A charming sequel...a page-turner that is funny, magical and entertaining:
Goodreads

MORE monsters for Halloween and stay out of the woodpile!

Looks like 3 monsters to me

Stay away from the woodpile!!

Here are a few more AWESOME monsters inspired by my new book, Myles and the Monster Outside. 

Thanks to great librarians who introduce our books (however monstrous) to young readers, and share the results with the authors, we really love it. A dedicated Viking-librarian reading Jake and the Giant Hand at right...

Gruesome AND fashionable!

I never liked bears.

Halloween Draw your Monster Contest

Here there be monsters!

Monsters are arriving for the Draw your Monster Contest at local libraries. The drawings are imaginative, weird and it's great to see what kind of monsters kids dream up.

There's still time to enter before Halloween, see the details below. Winners will receive 1 of 20 copies of my new book Myles and the Monster Outside, courtesy of Dundurn Press. All entries receive a bookmark. Be weird, be creative, draw your monster and enter at participating libraries:

Newmarket Library
Aurora Library
Palmerston Library
Bloor-Gladstone Library

Follow the fun on twitter: #drawyourmonster
Review of Myles and the Monster Outside in Kirkus Reviews
More reviews on Goodreads