Robert Rayner's Blog, page 3

Burning in Colorland

At last – the song from the book.

https://youtu.be/wYmhT8aYkLA

Talking About Defiant Island

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/philip-carroll/the-ya-books-podcast/e/bonus-episode-2-43298476

Thanks to Philip Carroll for another interview, this one on Defiant Island. The novel has just been published in a new edition, and the interview went live this week. Philip and I discuss Defiant Island’s characters, its (important) setting, and what the story is about, namely, a small, remote community under threat of disappearing.

The first edition of Defiant Island was published in 2007, and, looking back, was remarkably prescient with the threatened loss of rural communities in the news again, and likely to remain there.

For example, here’s the headline from the lead article on the Opinion page of the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal recently:

Shift spending to urban growth

The writer goes on to quote, approvingly, a researcher’s opinion that Atlantic Canadians can no longer live in a “fantasy land” where they can expect to receive all sorts of services at their doorstep, regardless of where they live.

So where do you stand on the Great Urban-Rural Rift?

Do you think rural communities should be allowed to disappear as government funding is directed increasingly to urban centres as the fairest and most effective way, through economy of scale, of utilising scarce financial resources?

Do you believe people from rural communities should move to urban centres?

Do you believe in forced resettlement?

Defiant Island presents the for and against arguments about the viability and sustainability of rural life through the microcosm of a remote island community under threat of disappearing through the ‘rationalisation of services’ proposed by a government forced by dire financial circumstances to make some tough decisions.

But the novel is not just a political tract. As Terry Seguin of CBC Radio and TV wrote in a kind review: Defiant Island is “… An absorbing story of a proud people’s fight to survive … a story of struggle and enduring friendship … a story about love.”

Philip and I discuss these themes in the Defiant Island interview, which you can find as follows:

On Stitcher at: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/phili...

On Philip’s podcast website at: http://yabookspodcast.libsyn.com/podcast

(This link should take you directly to the interview on Philip’s website:  http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/8/f/9/8f90ab80b01a5276/YABP_SE_Defiant_Island.mp3?c_id=11289079&expiration=1458913343&hwt=cf4a75ffb6063dd5402658ea3b6c5b21)

Or on iTunes where it’s listed as Bonus Episode #2 March 22 2016.

The new edition of Defiant Island is published by Speaking Volumes Press, of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

When Life and Fiction Collide (2)

In Footprints (Breakwater/Jesperson 2008) I envisaged the young man and the young woman at the centre of the thriller as a kind of latter day Heathcliff and Cathy, sharing a bond that had something elemental about it, something that superseded being boyfriend and girlfriend and that made it their destiny always to be together.

When it came to naming them, I wanted for the young woman a name that was somehow timeless, maybe old fashioned, something matching her quirky, enigmatic character, and after a web search came up with Isora, to which I added a local (for me) surname, Lee.

When I couldn’t come up with a name that seemed right for her companion, I did what I often do when stuck for a name. I went for a walk in a local cemetery and looked at headstones.

And found Drumgold – just Drumgold – on a stark monolith of granite. The name seemed, in its austerity, to match the cool, inscrutable nature of that character.

A few weeks after the book was published I strolled through the same cemetery again. I acknowledged Drumgold as I passed that headstone, walked on, and noticed not far away, for the first time, although I’d walked that way hundreds of times before, a headstone memorialising … Isora Lee.

 

 

 

 

Familiar Defiance

A small, isolated community is under threat from a fiscally prudent government intent on rationalising services to rural areas.

A familiar scenario?

I thought it was back in 2007 when I wrote Defiant Island, a poignant and gently funny story about a remote island’s struggle not only to survive, but also to preserve its independence in the face of government cutbacks. Rereading it in preparation for a new edition I was struck by how much more topical and relevant the novel has become.

In a kind review of the original edition Terry Seguin (of CBC Radio and Television) summed up the story like this: “An absorbing story of a proud people’s fight to survive … A story of struggle and enduring friendship … a story about love.”

Defiant Island was originally published by New Brunswick’s own DreamCatcher Press. It’s been out of print since the company folded a few years ago, but is now re-released in a completely new edition by Speaking Volumes Press.

I should receive advance copies today. Meanwhile, here’s artist Rick Turylo’s stunning and evocative cover of the new edition.

Libby Strikes Again!

 

What has a line of kindergarten students holding cardboard and foil microphones, and sporting feather boas, got to do with literacy?

Answer: They were part of Milltown Elementary School’s Libby Day, along with life size drawings of Libby, Etta and Celery, the principal characters in the story; homemade instruments replicating those played by Libby and her friends in the band they form, ironically and defiantly named The Underachievers; clay models of the same friends; Underachievers band t-shirts (various designs); drawings of scenes and characters from the novel; writing about My Favourite Character; an illustrated rewriting of the story; acrostic poems; and a whole school singing of the Libby Song.

 

 

Libby Day, shared by parents and guests, was the culmination of the New Brunswick School’s four month long project, Milltown Elementary Reads Libby’s Got the Beat, which started back in October, when I visited each class to read excerpts from the novel and to sing the Libby Song.

 

I wrote Libby’s Got the Beat (J. Lorimer 2010) with the underlying thought that the imposition of mass testing was taking the joy and excitement out of school and learning. How pleasant and rewarding – and flattering – then to see that little story about Libby and Etta and Celery’s revolt against provincially imposed tests bring such joy and excitement about books and reading to students at Milltown Elementary School.

 

Thanks to students and teachers and staff for building a bridge between the world of books and real life.

Oh – and the connection between the cardboard and foil microphones and pink feather boas and literacy?

You have to read, and see, the book to find out.

Since It’s Valentine’s Day …

Sentimentality, like the use of cliché, is one of those arch crimes of the writing world you’re supposed to avoid at all costs, although I confess I like to lapse into it, even wallow in it, occasionally.

But at certain times of the year, standards are allowed, even expected, to slip, and romantic bathos briefly flourishes. (Check out the movies that show up on TV this Valentine’s Day weekend.)

So, taking advantage of this, here’s a reposting of a little schmaltz from the musical world, the lovely, tear inducing, The Wind Beneath My Wings (in a Dan Coates arrangement).

On discovering myself in a used book store

Browsing through the shelves of a second hand book store (always exciting), I came across a copy of The Ragged Believers.

Nothing particularly interesting about that.

Except it’s one of my novels.

My first thought was – at least someone’s read it.

Second thought: Or have they?

I took the book off the shelf and flipped through it, looking for signs of reading, maybe a name at the front, or pages turned down at the corner, or pencil marks in the margin indicating particularly memorable passages, or dried tears on pages containing particularly moving episodes.

Nothing.

Did someone receive it as a gift and take it straight round to the used bookstore without even reading it?

I picture the PR (Potential Reader) unwrapping it and, with the donor hovering, exclaiming, “I can’t wait to read it …” and then as soon as the donor is off the scene, the PR thinking, “Thanks for nothing, a no name book by a no name author. Best I can do with it is part exchange it at the second hand bookstore for something worth reading.”

Or maybe the PR actually read it … and cared so little for it, he or she promptly dumped it at the second hand store, begging the question (well, my question) – How could the reader not treasure and cherish such a masterpiece? Maybe save it as an heirloom to pass on to future generations. Or treasure it to savour over and over again, or to quote favourite passages from, or simply for the joy of possessing a copy, just as you might treasure any work of art.

Then, moving from artistic to mercenary injury, I think – I’m being gypped! I got a meagre 10% from the original sale, while the feckless PR has made a few dollars in part exchange at the used book store, and the used book store owner in turn will rake in all of the second hand selling price, so it’ll have been sold three times over – and all I’ve got is still my original, miserly ten per cent.

It’s a tough life, finding oneself discarded.

But at least it gives me something to write about.

 

Privilege

6 hours + 14 classes + 600 students + 6 grades + 8 sessions = 1 writer with raspy throat and headache, toting battered guitar in broken guitar case (broken in the cause of literacy!), tottering from St. Stephen Elementary School after talking about writing and reading from own books and singing the Libby Song and the Toby Song, all in the service of promoting Family Literacy Week.

(But, hey, teachers do it every day, and I did it for years as a teacher myself, and I’m not complaining, just wondering when and how I got so out of shape for it.)

At the same time as I’m feeling a tad battered, I’m also elated with the privilege and excitement and reward of spending the day in the company of kids bursting with energy and enthusiasm and curiosity.

Walking down the hallway between sessions I hear chatter from the cafeteria, students conversing in French with their teacher from a classroom, not a sound from the next classroom where it’s SSR time, subdued voices from the chess club meeting in the library, singing from the music room. It’s easy to become inured to the pleasure of experiencing the variety of all this learning going on when you’re in the thick of it on a daily basis, but as just a visitor these days I have time to savour it and to realise how much I feel at home in it.

Thank you, St. Stephen Elementary School.

 

 

When Life and Fiction Collide

I love it when real life and fictional life collide, one overlaying and intermingling with the other, so that what you read (or write) weaves a subtle passage through daily life.

Here’s an example: I recently came across this description (in slightly paraphrased form) of a top photographer at work: “He really could hyperfocus, for better or worse … When you hyperfocus, you forget everything else… I’d talk to him and you just couldn’t penetrate, he was so locked and loaded on what he was doing.”

Now it’d be fun – except I don’t have the resources or means to offer prizes – to have a competition: Name the recent work of fiction in which the three principal characters learn to attain this same hyperfocal state, although they describe it in different terms.

So no prizes – unless you count the thought of the beatific smile that would cross my face at each correct answer …

… And the correct answer would be my recent crossover novel, Colorland (Speaking Volumes Press), in which the three principal characters, Ridge, Isolde and Wenden, refer to the attainment of this real life hyperfocal state as Going to Colorland.

For me, it’s prize enough to come upon another parallel between life and fiction.

Guest of the South Branch Scribbler

I was honoured and flattered to be one of the guest authors featured on the blog of friend and writer colleague Allan Hudson (aka the South Branch Scribbler).

Here’s the link to Allan’s masterful web presence: