Arthur Slade's Blog, page 27

Sage Hill/Day 3/Mazes real and imagined

It's day three of being the facilitator of the "writing for young adults" lab at Sage Hill Writing Experience. Yesterday, I called myself an instructor, but truthfully facilitator is a much better word. I'm just here to make things run a little more smoothly. All the students are here for the various classes now and the retreat centre is popping with action (there was even drumming, banjoing, and fiddling last night). Oh, and many people tried out the maze. Great thing is-if you get lost, you ca

Go Go Gadget Steampunk Arm

Look, it's Miss Hakkandottir's arm! Just a bit of the cover concept from The Dark Deeps. The other stuff is even more cool. Uh, but I can't show you right now...

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Teaching YA Writing at Sage Hill

Well, it's day one of teaching young adult writing at Sage Hill Writing Experience. The course takes place at St. Michael's Retreat near Lumsden, SK. As you can see it's a lovely place. There are several courses being taught so all of we "faculty" get to arrive a day early, get settled in, and get a good sleep before the massive onslaught of students arrive. My class will be 4 students who have completed novels and want to "improve" them. A bit of lecturing, some class discussion, and then one o

Great Moments in Steampunk History#1: Spring Heeled Jack

In 1837 the first sighting of Spring Heeled Jack occurs in England. He was tall and thin, had metallic claws, fiery eyes and could leap great distances. He committed various devious crimes then would leap over a wall or fence to escape the bobbies. The last reported sighting was in 1904 (at which point he must have been a Spring Heeled Jack with a walker).

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On the Cover of Rolling Hunchback Stone....

I love book covers. I admit it. And I often do judge a book by its cover. Then later on I judge it by the story, etc., But a cover is your first introduction. It's the book saying, "Hello, how are you, pleased to meet you."

So, obviously, it's even more fun when the cover is on a book that I've written. So here's the ANZ (Australia/New Zealand) version of The Hunchback Assignments (this isn't the final final version, but it's getting there). Dr. Hyde, the villain, is looking kind of grim in th

Odd Victorian Factoid#23: Whoa Nellie!

Odd Victorian Factoid#24: It took fictional character Phileas Fogg 80 days to go around the world. In 1889 Nellie Bly (a real person) did it in 72 days. She was a journalist and her real name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She also faked insanity in order to study a mental institution from the inside.



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Virtual Visit to Preeceville

Another successful virtual visit, this time to Preeceville, Saskatchewan, Canada. Yes, a school in my own home province, but many miles away! They were great. They laughed at my jokes. Listened attentively and didn't throw any tomatoes. Err, at least none of them came through the webcam, anyway.

This is what I saw:



They used a smartboard at their end, which worked out well. And to show the images I used a program called Dabbleboard. I found it a really effective way to put covers and other photo

Odd Victorian Factoid#23: ELEPHANTS!

Odd Victorian Factoid # 23: On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum proved the Brooklyn Bridge was stable by having Jumbo, and a parade of 21 elephants, walk over it. Very clever marketing.



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Back to the Past: Virtual Visit at Lake Wilcox PS

Well, I meant to post about this ages ago! I had a virtual visit with Lake Wilcox PS in Richmond Hill, Ontario way back on March 13th. Hmmm. Is 13 unlucky? Can virtual visits go wrong? Read on, dear reader.

When we attempted to do our test run the day before we discovered that the school's servers "shut out" Skype and iChat (technically the crucial command in each program is ghosted due to school security restrictions). There was no way around this (that we could quickly fix) so the only way to d

A Virtual Classroom Visit Down Under (In The Future)

Well yesterday I had the joy of talking to a group of students in Coleambally, New South Wales, Australia. They're about 14 hours ahead of me (I'm in Saskatoon, SK, Canada), so technically they were in the future. And I tell you, the future looks fun!

We started off getting everything set up before the students arrived. We used Skype for the video and sound and I used Scriblink so that I could show images to the students. Once we had the speakers turned on and the projector going I was ten feet