Italy was fantastic!

Italy was wonderful!  Sorrento where we were based is a small town on the southern coast. Olive, orange, lemon, nut and fig groves terraced the hillsides. The brilliant lemons and oranges were hanging from the trees and the magnolias and roses were blooming. Locals were often wearing winter jackets (12-17 degrees) which we found amusing. We explored the southern coast and then took the local ferries, hydrofoil and trains to Capri, Naples, Rome, Florence and Venice. We were in Rome when the white smoke came out of the chimney and were 150 feet away from the balcony when Papa Francesco Primo came out on the balcony and received his blessing. We found it incredibly moving with people from all over the world chanting, praying and singing.

While the south of Italy was more family and community oriented, Naples was like Toronto with lots of laundry and noise, Rome was cosmopolitan with the Tiber River running through, Florence was rich with ancient art in all forms (music, sculpture, architecture, paintings) and Venice, as pictured,  was absolutely unique.

The food was incredible, the people friendly and the history amazing. I filled two journals with my scribbles.

The only drawback is that pizza will never taste the same!

Still it is good to be home and writing again. Working with Tightrope on the cover for “Standing in the Whale’s Jaw.” It’s off to the copy editor. Ciao!

Kathy-Diane

 

TWUC Short Story Competition

Polish that short story you’ve been scribbling away at.  This is an excellent competition to enter for feedback.  I have helped judge the early rounds in years past.  Be brave….and good luck! Kathy-Diane

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

20^th Annual Short Prose Competition

for Developing Writers

$2,500 PRIZE

The Writers’ Union of Canada is pleased to announce that submissions are being accepted until March 1, 2013 for the 20^th Annual Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers. The winning entry will be the best Canadian work of up to 2,500 words in the English language, fiction or non-fiction, written by an unpublished author.

 PRIZE

$2,500 for the winning entry, and the entries of the winner and finalists will be submitted to three Canadian magazines.

JURY

Writers Ami McKay, Rosemary Nixon, and Mark A. Rayner will serve as the jury.

ELIGIBILITY

This competition is open to all Canadian citizens and landed immigrants who have not had a book published by a commercial or university press in any genre and who do not currently have a contract with a book publisher. Original and unpublished (English language) fiction or non-fiction is eligible.

HOW TO SUBMIT ENTRIES:

·         Entries should be typed, double-spaced, in a clear twelve-point font, and the pages numbered on 8.5 x 11 paper, not stapled.

·         Submissions will be accepted in hardcopy only.

·         Include a separate cover letter with title of story, full name, address, phone number, email address, word count, and number of pages of entry.

·         Please type the name of entrant and the title of entry on each numbered page. This is not a blind competition.

·         Make cheque or money order payable to The Writers’ Union of Canada. Multiple entries can be submitted together and fees can be added and paid with one cheque or money order, $29 per entry.

·         Entries must be postmarked by March 1, 2013 to be eligible.

·         Mail entries to: SPC Competition, The Writers’ Union of Canada, 90 Richmond Street East, Suite 200 , Toronto , ON M5C 1P1 .

 

Results will be posted at www.writersunion.ca in May 2013. Manuscripts will not be returned.

Comedy, Music and Books: Happy New Year!

The holiday have been good to the Leveille household. All the family is home.  My oldest son arrived from Toronto. Check out this YouTube of his latest comedy creation: School of College. Hilarious!

My youngest is visiting from Ottawa and writing his reviews of the top 20 albums of 2012 on his blog Kidnapping is Wrong.  We’ve visited a few second hand record stores and flipped through the old vinyl albums: Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, Carole King.  Brings back memories…

Mom and dad are unwinding by the wood stove. I got a Kobo reader and can’t believe how light it is and easy to read.  Books, DVDs and chinese food. What more could a girl want?

Happy New Year! Wishing you and yours all the best in 2013….

True E-Book Confessions

Let the Shadows Fall Behind You and Roads Unravelling are now available on Kobo and Kindle. Very exciting! And yet….

I must confess I still don’t have an E-reader.  It’s true. I remain enthralled with the feel of the printed book in my hand: the unique smell, the shifting weight, the color.  It’s as if my imagination can only truly expand unfettered when my nose is buried between a book cover.  I feel as if I’d be disloyal leaving my paper books behind somehow; closing the door on one of my deepest friendships. My oldest son showed me an e-book he was reading on his i-Phone.  I was impressed and fascinated by how easy and convenient it was to browse.  He lives in a big city, so it makes sense that it would be ideal to have that at his fingertips on a morning commute or lunch break.   

I live in a rural area on the east coast. The pace of living is hectic for the average snail.   For some reason in my mind, it’s an atmosphere that goes hand in glove with the delicious anticipation of holding a traditional book….as if all the writer’s hopes for the narrative, the words put to page, the promise and fullfillment, have come full circle to be unleashed in these quiet surroundings.

Since something inside me would shrivel and die if I couldn’t read, I know it’s inevitable that I’ll eventually buy an e-reader in some form or another.  I’m already intrigued by the potential to read a few pages anywhere, anytime in places where a traditional book just wouldn’t be practical. Take travelling for instance.  It would be wonderful not to have my suitcase bursting at the seams with so many books. I’m always afraid the one I absolutely need will be forgotten at home. 

There’s a place for both types of books, I think.  I’m comforted knowing that, despite the package a book comes in, the imagination is still all that matters. It ignites from the words, however they arrive, in the same way it always has… and the worlds it creates in each reader can never be manufactured or replicated or downloaded at the click of a button.  Happy reading!

    

“Picturing ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and recording their impressions with an intense clarity we associate more with black and white photos, Leveille is blessed with a flash of insight that lets the readers see far beyond the surface.” - The Chronicle Journal

Writer’s Retreat

Time to write the novel you always dreamed of writing!

Answering the Call  IX: Releasing the Writer Within

A WORKING WRITERS’ RETREAT

WHERE: The Villa Madonna in Renforth, New Brunswick (just outside of Saint John)
WHEN: November 16, 17 and 18, 2012

FORMAT:

 

November 16, 2012:
5 p.m.-6:00 p.m.- Arrival and settle into your room.
6 p.m. Opening Welcome: Answering the Call by Kathy-Diane Leveille
6 to 9 p.m. Meet and Greet, explanation of weekend structure, sharing optional writing exercise, social

November 17, 2012: Full writing day

7-9 p.m. Optional Critique Group

November 18, 2012:
11:00 a.m. Closing and wrap up.
1:00 p.m. Heading home after lunch and out by mid-afternoon.

FEE: $168.00 which includes single room and board.

This is not a leader-guided writing retreat. Rather it an opportunity to give yourself the gift of uninterrupted time to write. Over the years, Kathy-Diane has created a loose structure that provides touchstones within the weekend’s framework for optional opportunities (between writing) to connect with other writers.  How those connections happen vary with the individual and the ultimate shaping of each group. There is no predicting. Sometimes works-in-progress are shared, sometimes tentative ideas are given words and take more concrete shape, sometimes the room door is closed tight and the pen flies across the page. We each go willing to drop the hindrances keeping us from our writing and wait and see what unfolds. Rooms are single and private.

E-mail shadowsfall@kathy-dianeleveille.com for more information

(*NOTE: Cancellations after November 1 subject to a 50% refund/No refunds after November 10).

 

Award for excellence in the Arts!

A big THANK YOU  to Arts NB for awarding me a creation grant for ‘work of outstanding artistic merit.’  I’d submitted the beginning of my new novel “How to Be a Psychic.” It’s humbling to get this recognition from my peers, and also be handed the freedom to finish the book this fall/winter. Here’s the opening:

Tim Ward began to pack the carpenter tools away as he always did every afternoon when the shadows grew long and slanted across the wooden floor. He moved toward the window to close it from the fog that would soon be rolling in and was filled with a sudden queer irrefutable restlessness as the salty breeze fluttered the old cotton curtains his mother had sewn years ago. He fell against the dusty panes, the warmth of the glass pressing as firm as a woman’s cheek against his own, weakened momentarily by an overpowering yearning for once, just once,  life to surprise him.  For a moment, Tim reeled at the weight of  the longing. It hit like a vicious roller determined to knock him flat and fling him out to sea.  Then, just as quickly, the wrenching passed.

Nice to have something new to scribble away on as we start gearing for the upcoming release of “Standing in the Whale’s Jaw” with Tightrope Books.

Happy Readin! Kathy-Diane

“Roads Unravelling is a winding highway of quiet, still surfaces and yawning depths. Patrolling the flow are gape-jawed monsters and small glimmering pearls of real beauty.”  -The New   Brunswick Reader

Why I LOVE Book stores!

Here’s a confession: I am most content and peaceful when browsing in a book store, whether it be traditional or second-hand. Just the possibility of worlds and ideas lying between the covers; the adventures and challenges calling, the lessons beckoning, the dizzying expectations; all combines to lift me out of my day-to-day existence like nothing else. I was lazing on the deck, sated by the sweet scent of raspberry bee balm, when I eyed this passage in Natalie Goldberg’s “Thunder and Lightening:”

“…I have sought out bookstores in every town and city I pass through, the way someone else might search out old battle sites. I consider people working in bookstores my friends….If a town has no bookstore, I feel sad for the place.

….You can live in a small hamlet on the Nebraska Plains and if there’s a bookstore, it’s like the great sun caught in one raisin or the juicy flesh of a single peach. A bookstore captures worlds–above, behind, below, under, forward, back. From that one spot the townspeople can radiate out beyond any physical limit. A hammer and nails in the hardware store down the block, though fine and useful tools, can’t quite do the same job. Even an ice cream parlor, a definite advantage, does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.”

Out on the deck, as the robins hop through the cat mint and the breeze teases the pages of my newest read, I’m savoring the great sun caught in one juicy raisin.

“Roads Unravelling is a winding highway of quiet, still surfaces and yawning depths. Patrolling the flow are gape-jawed monsters and small glimmering pearls of real beauty.” -The New Brunswick Reader