Krista Michelle Breen's Blog, page 2
August 2, 2012
Dead Dog Township (It’s kinda famous)
I live in a village called Rockwood in the township of Eramosa in Ontario, Canada. Eramosa is a native Canadian word meaning either “Red Dog” or “Dead Dog”, no one is really very sure. I like to use the deceased canine version, it is way cooler.
There are lots of neat things about Eramosa Township, it used to be the turnip capital of Canada, there is a guy that makes Canadian geese dioramas on his lawn every day, we have the best Major in the whole wide world and well, they make a lot of movies here. Through the magic of Hollywood, you’ve probably visited before.
"If we can find Krista's house there may be cookies"
The Baker family dropped by to film Cheaper by the Dozen 2. The gazillion dollar cottage inhabited by the rival Murtaugh family was actually on a lake in about 3 hours north of here, but all the crazy beach hi jinx were filmed in the beautiful Rockwood Conservation Area.
Hmmmm, I should probably watch this
The Jonas brothers stopped by for a very long summer of filming Camp Rock 2. All of the cabins for the camp were built on the beach and filmed at sneaky angles to make it appear that they were much larger. Joe, Nick and Kevin brought their guitars out every night and played tailgate concerts for the village kids. Apparently I’m the only female in Rockwood who has never watched this movie.
OK, so we’re seeing some kind of theme here. Not only is Dead Dog Township best known for sequel movies, it’s also a place for movies about adversity and competition and getting away from it all in a back-woods, beach style middle-of-nowhere-place. A place like Possum Lake…
July 6, 2012
Hey World! Welcome to Palouse River!
Hardware Amazon Kindle #1 Bestselling Horse Book
Something exciting just happened.
At the speed of light, my books became available to the whole wide world. Sure, for years savvy folks could order copies online. The publishing group here would package them up and ship them off anyplace anyone wanted. I’d be all giddy when a copy went to Norway, or a kid wrote me a letter from Scotland. T.J. and Adrienne were set loose in the world, but books are heavy and airmail is expensive. To see the world Dakotaroo and the girls were travelling by ship. Booksellers in the pony mad UK were happy to have more horse books, only each copy cost $7 to ship from Canada. I love books, but a $25 paperback is a pretty hard sell.
Then two things changed.
I had been using Bob Young’s fantastic print on demand platform for a few years. Lovely quality, lightning fast delivery, I’d write a book upload a PDF to the Lulu site on a Thursday and have super sparkly paperback candy in hand by the following week. If I timed things right I could even ship copies from Lulu in North Carolina to anyplace in the United States For Free. More and more authors realized this was an awesome idea. Sooooo many more that Lulu needed to grow. Now if someone is in England and orders a book from me online, Ka Pow that book is made by Lulu in England! No more stinky smelly container ship. It’s good for me, it’s good for the reader and it’s waaaay better for the environment.
Amazon, already the worlds largest bookseller, decided to enter the publishing game. In the past year they have sold millions and millions of Kindle e-readers. There are big Kindles and little Kindles, grey scale Kindles and Kindles with full colour fire. There are Kindle Apps available for so many PC and Mobile devices that you don’t even need a Kindle reader to read Kindle books at all. (There’s a Dr. Seuss poem in there somewhere.) If you are reading this post right now, you can turn your computer into a Kindle.
Thousands of Dakotaroo e-books now live on kid Kindles around the world and the journey has just begun.
If you’ve written a book and need help making it real, or you’ve been an author for years and want to reintroduce your back-list to the world, I’m always happy to chat.
It’s super exciting. More books fly away each day and more kids visit Palouse River for the very first time. Enjoy the ride!
March 5, 2012
It’s Pony Club time again
Last year was an amazing year for the Guelph Pony Club Prince Philip Games team.
After 2 previous years of competing at “Zones”, our plucky team finally won the right to represent the province of Ontario at the 2011 National PPG Championships in Vancouver, British Columbia. It had been 20 years since the Guelph club had made the trip to Nationals.
The Prince Philip Games are relay races on horseback. Developed in 1957 as a competitive, exciting sport for ordinary ponies, they are now played in over 20 countries around the world. Ted Arnott our local MPP gave us the fabulous provincial flag to take out to BC, and Ian Woodley equine photographer extrodinaire took the great team photos. As an Aggie I really like the 7″ high corn in the background. In Ontario we grow a lot of corn!
Keep your stick on the ice.
At the National competition, all the teams must race on borrowed ponies. The ponies are divided into teams of 5 and rotated through all the provinces. This makes it extra difficult for the riders. You need to be an awesome rider on your own pony to make it to Nationals, and an even more awesome rider on any pony once you get there!
Go Boo!
In the end plucky team Ontario finished in second place by a single point. We’ll always remember the great time we had in BC, the wonderful ponies that shared the excitement with us, and the very special Canadian Pony Club families who volunteer endless hours to make these fantastic traditions possible.
It's Pony Club time again
Last year was an amazing year for the Guelph Pony Club Prince Philip Games team.
After 2 previous years of competing at "Zones", our plucky team finally won the right to represent the province of Ontario at the 2011 National PPG Championships in Vancouver, British Columbia. It had been 20 years since the Guelph club had made the trip to Nationals.
The Prince Philip Games are relay races on horseback. Developed in 1957 as a competitive, exciting sport for ordinary ponies, they are now played in over 20 countries around the world. Ted Arnott our local MPP gave us the fabulous provincial flag to take out to BC, and Ian Woodley equine photographer extrodinaire took the great team photos. As an Aggie I really like the 7″ high corn in the background. In Ontario we grow a lot of corn!
Keep your stick on the ice.
At the National competition, all the teams must race on borrowed ponies. The ponies are divided into teams of 5 and rotated through all the provinces. This makes it extra difficult for the riders. You need to be an awesome rider on your own pony to make it to Nationals, and an even more awesome rider on any pony once you get there!
Go Boo!
In the end plucky team Ontario finished in second place by a single point. We'll always remember the great time we had in BC, the wonderful ponies that shared the excitement with us, and the very special Canadian Pony Club families who volunteer endless hours to make these fantastic traditions possible.
January 14, 2012
Lifesaver
Not as clumsy or random as a blaster.
I was sitting in a restaurant enjoying lunch with Boo today and couldn't help but eavesdrop into the conversation of the 2 boys behind me.
Not that I make a habit of listening in to the arguments of 7 year olds. They were just really loud and kept going on and on about how they killed this and smashed that using their "Life Savers"
"It's funny," I said. "Have you ever noticed that all little kids think a Lightsaber is called a Lifesaver?"
"What's it called?"
"A Lightsaber."
"It's not a Lifesaver?" she replied, looking at me as if I had lost my very last marble.
"No. It's a saber made of light. Life Savers are the little candies with the whole in the middle." I'm certain at this point the Jedi behind us had stopped recounting their brilliant killing spree and were now eavesdropping on us. Through hours and hours of Lego Star Wars, their Lifesavers had elegantly saved their precious little video game lives.
"Into exile I must go. Failed, I have."
"Why would a candy you could choke on be called a Life Saver and who the heck knows what a saber is anyhow? Of course all little kids think its called a Lifesaver."
"You can't choke on them that's why…wait, it's a saber, like a sword or a knife. How can you not know this?"
"Ahhh," she said. "Saber Tooth Tiger."
Help us Obi Wan.
January 4, 2012
Dead Heat (is the kitchen hot?)
I'm trying to catch up my reading with the last few Dick Francis/Felix Francis and Felix Francis novels.
Dick Francis was a British jockey who retired to write more than 40 mystery books set in and around racing. He wrote at an astounding rate of a novel a year and not only inspires me to match his pace, but has taught me a lot about the craft. Nothing about his work is ever really nasty. The bad guys are bad in a punchy, crashy, threatening kinda way. You never accidentally wander into a steamy bedroom scene, and all the really rotten stuff likes to happen to inanimate objects. Barns get burnt down, offices get trashed for their contents and rooms full of racing trophies get blown up.
Dick Francis books are like pony books for grown ups. You can recommend them to octogenarians or teenagers pretty safely.
For the last decade Felix Francis has taken on an increasing role in assisting his father with his volume of work, and he has been given co-authorship of Dead Heat.
The main character in ever Dick Francis book is basically the same guy. He's a different guy, with a different back story and a different career. Super likable, good looking, clever, witty and tough, he's also usually single without a fatal flaw, has enough money to drive a cool car and happily eats out every night.
In Dead Heat, Max Moreton is a Chef. His deceased father was a well known thoroughbred trainer and Max now caters upscale racing events as well as running his own restaurant The Hay Net. Yawn. Sorry, did I yawn. Probably because I find the whole Chefs-are-hot thing a bit like eating turkey.
We recently hosted this super-celebrity chef for an event at Sunrise. First, he is 18 feet tall and second, women were fainting at his good-looking chefness.
Max Moreton caters a private box at the 2000 Guineas, the grandstand gets blown up fatally wounding many of his guests, and he gets drawn into tracking down the villain. Fine, but maybe not horsey enough for me and I slogged through till the predictable ending entertaining myself by comparing Dead Heat to the other 45 Dick Francis books. Max is attacked by a Polo mallet rather than a wrench or a chain, but I knew by page 300 that he'd soon be duct taped to a chair someplace and threatened by one bad villain and one wishy-washy one.
Dead Heat is comfort food for fans and well worth the time if your goal is to read all the Dick Francis titles. If you're just in for a taste, there is probably a better one to cut your teeth on.
December 28, 2011
Unfinished Book #1 – Snowy Cooper Alien Princess
I write a lot of books. I write books that are finished and that people can buy…and then there are…well others.
Snowy Cooper Alien Princess is a fine example.
Phillip Brooks, Snowy Cooper and a decrepit battle-cruiser of 40 000 ponies in desperate need of rescue before they are dinner for the Vogon or the Klingon or somethingamagon. I'm forbidden to go into too much thrilling detail because my eternally supportive and endlessly kind editor Mr. Krista made me cry told me the whole idea is rubbish and to never ever go there. Ever.
"Nobody does science fiction with horses Krista."
Then we all watched this…
There are cowboys and aliens!
It has Cowboys and Aliens! Cowboy gunfights and Alien destruction. Red Cowboy blood and green Alien goo. Horses and Spaceships. In Cowboys & Aliens we even learn that Han Solo is a pretty good rider. 
But hey! Cowboys & Aliens did not boldly go where no man had gone before. (O.k. why are they both leaning?)
I'm not even sure what I think of that.
Snowy Cooper Alien Princess. Phillip, Snowy and I could pull it off.
