Bill Engleson's Blog, page 8

“My trumpeting sounds like a goose farting in the blog.” (with apologies to actor Alex O’Loughlin for toying with his quote)

I have been enjoying my year long journey as a first–time novelist. As I may have mentioned before, and certainly as many others have said before me, compared to the marketing of a book, the writing was a cinch. My marketing approach has been modest. One of the great things that has happened though has been the new friends I have met who have so generously assisted in the promotion of Like a Child to Home.

Early on, both Susan Toy and Madi Preda have offered amazing advice and assistance.

Madi has also arranged for my upcoming, Monday, September 22nd 11:00 a.m. internet radio interview with Allen Cardoza on L.A. Talk Radio

Very recently, blogger / writer /social worker Dyane Forde shared her delightful interview with me in her blog, Dropped Pebbles. Today, as I write this, Chris Graham, who blogs under the handle The Story Reading Ape, has mentioned me in a fine post.

In the near future, writer/poet/blogger Jane Dougherty may be posting a snippet or two about me.

All of these wonderful people have a far greater reach than I. It is hard for me to reciprocate their generosity. And while (and you may not believe this) self-promotion does not come naturally to me, I realize that it is about the best way to remind people about my novel and keep it somewhat in the public eye. There are hundreds of thousands of books published in the world every year. Most of us will hardly encounter any of them. So, I will continue to go against type and “trumpet” my unique little novel for the next while, and, all the while, try to spend more time writing the prequel.

Have a good day my friends and take a look at the blogs I have highlighted. All of these fine people, aside from creating their own written works, are promoting the world of writers in a most commendable way. I salute them.

Dispatch #2 from the Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival 2014

A few days have passed since the Denman Island Readers Writers Festival.  Although this 2nd and final post touches ever so lightly on my observations on the Festival, I confess that I was more concerned that the world beyond our esoteric activity was in discord; the shooting down and massacre of the lost souls on Malaysian flight MH17, the eruption of warfare and death in Gaza and Israel; the unending atrocities around the world; and even, on a much less apocalyptic, but much more personal dimension, my good friend and neighbour Mike’s hospitalization and the search to understand what had impacted him. Writing matters, of course, but on a different scale, I think, to the agonies (and the joys) large and small that seem unending…

Here is a brief summary of some of the Festival events…

July 18, 2014

This morning I participated in Caroline Adderson’s workshop on  How to Get That Novel Done.

It was a no-nonsense session that offered a panoply of approaches to help authors get a move on with their work. One of Caroline`s very helpful exercises was for workshop partners to create a list of lightweight and weightier questions to ask of our characters.  As authors strive to create real representations with a deep back story, it helps to view our creations with an historical clarity. One way to do this is to write obituaries for our characters. Obituaries are often concise and information-laden short stories that tell the history of the deceased, the style and the substance of their lives. While there is usually some fictional glossing over, the facts are rarely to be disputed. For an author to know a character as deeply as someone in real life is to enhance not only the reading experience but the writing experience as well.

I hope I have that grasp of the depth of my characters. The final arbiter is always the reader, of course.

July 19, 2014

This was a busy Saturday for me at the festival. I began with Pauline Holdstock’s workshop, Vanishing Tricks- Taking the WRITER Out of the Writing. While this might seem a peculiar workshop for me to take (I have no choice but to sheepishly own up that most of my writing is rife with ME) it turned out to be an enlightening experience. The first assigned task Pauline gave us was to write a brief personal story, hopefully pungent and meaningful. Then, each of our 3-5 minute bits of word wizardry was circulated to another random participant who was asked to rewrite the material, sticking to the given facts, but with fresher eyes. This interesting exercise clearly demanded, on rewrite, that the original author be excised.

In the afternoon, I attended a reading by multi-talented poet, teacher, unionist and environmental activist Rita Wong.

Following Rita’s powerful appearance, 7 local authors presented. Here they are and their specific genre (and a link if I can find one.) Lucy Dabbs – Fiction; Del Phillips - Sci-Fi novel;  Lorraine Martinuik – Poetry; Butch Leslie – Fiction; Annie Siegel – Memoir ; Hillel Wright – a select reading from his novel, Border Town and other writings; and Hersh Chernovsky – Satire

In the evening, we attended a Main Stage event, “The Writing Life”  where editor and publisher Douglas Gibson moderated a panel that (and here I am cribbing the promo notes) got inside the heads and hearts of four talented writers – Angie Abdou, Caroline Adderson, Pauline Holdstock and Richard Wagamese – as they shared their stories about becoming writers and surviving in the challenging world of Canadian literature.

They were a complementary group and the evening swum by effortlessly. At least for me as I sat in the audience.

July 20, 2014

The final half-day of the festival began with readings by 6 local authors, including yours truly. Host Keith Keller introduced each of us and hardly ever had to use the hook to pull any of us off the stage for going beyond the 12 minute time limit. Jo-Anne (JP) McLean – who read from Redemption, the third novel in her The Gift trilogy; Mica Gries – a self-described Weird Fiction writer; Howard Stewart – a Non-Fiction piece about the Salish Sea; Yours truly (again) reading from the first chapter of Drawn towards the Sun, my prequel to my first novel, Like a Child to Home;  Susan Marie Yoshihara, fiction; and Stewart Goodings – A delightful memoir about Petula Clark.

The final event was a Main Stage highlight. Moderator Des Kennedy, Maude Barlow and Chris Turner.

These three active environmental campaigners, each approaching the assault on our environment from a different platform, offered the standing room only audience attending this final show at the festival a strong sense of their hope and commitment.

July 21, 2014

The festival had ended, but life went on. In fact, I attended a celebration of life for long time Islander, Zella Clark, much of the afternoon.  Suffice it to say, it was an amazing experience, a total community activity, a reminder, perhaps, that life and art can be the same thing, at least every once in a while.

Dispatch # 1 from the Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival 2014

Thursday, July 17

Douglas Gibson is a Canadian publishing icon. He is also a delightful gentleman. Today, in a workshop at the Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival, after drawing out the wide-ranging, writerly inclinations of the 10 of us taking his course, Doug Gibson shared a wealth of information and anecdotes on his over 40 years of publishing (and editing.)

With an amusing story about the final novel  from the late great W.O. Mitchell to the brilliance of Jack Hodgins  and his classic treatise on  writing,  A Passion for Narrative,  to Gibson’s admiration for the hard work and enthusiasm of Leacock winner Terry Fallis, Doug Gibson filled the three hours with candor and delight.

For the organizers of this festival, most of the day was spent in setting up the venues and fine-tuning a whole year of planning. They are an amazing troupe.

As much as this post is about writing, I cannot avoid mentioning the horror of the shooting down of Malaysian Flight  MH17 and the inexcusable loss of almost 300 lives.

“Why people hate social workers…”

In an attempt to stay out of the sizzling sun the other day, I found myself engaged in a rare bit of housecleaning. As I was sorting through a couple of ragged old wallets, mostly full of ancient video rental cards from outlets far away and likely out of business, I found a photo given me by a young client almost twenty years ago. It is one of those small school photos we have all likely seen. Christy (not her real name, of course) has a big grin and looks for all the world like she could never have a problem. On the back, she wrote: “To Bill, Thanks for being a great social worker. I’m really glad you’re here to listen to me. You’ve helped me a lot.  P.S. I can’t understand why people hate social workers….”

As I recall, Christy had had very little experience with social workers at the time. Her judgement of what makes a good social worker may have been based on limited information (my involvement as her worker). The reason I probably kept the photo, other than simply forgetting that it was there which is not beyond the pale, was her declaration that she “can’t understand why people hate social workers.”  I can’t understand it either. We are a great profession.  Of course, Christy probably knew of friends whose secret lives had come to the attention of child welfare social workers and were engaged in some painful assessment. At some point, whatever little control her friends or their families had may have been supplanted by the absolute need for social workers to consider the best interests of the child.

Another reason why people may “hate social workers” is that the work we do (in my case, did) is little understood.  We often get involved in the lives of people when they are most vulnerable. We aren’t the only profession that enters the lives of people at vulnerable times but often our injection impacts the sanctity of family life (sometimes a dark and abusive sanctity) and if we are doing our job properly, disruption (or worse) may occur.

All around the world, child welfare social work is a maze of activity. The profession is constantly being reassessed. It is ever under the gun. Things can so easily go off the rails in the world of child protection. British Columbia has had a wealthy of inquiries and assessments of the work of social workers. Great Britain, for example, is currently going through a review of work decades old. It is all quite fascinating and unending.

As I prepare to read at the 2014 edition of the Denman Island Readers Writers Festival from a small section of my new novel in process, Drawn towards the Sun, a prequel to my first publication, a work that tells more of the story of my protagonist, Wally Rose,   I am strongly aware of my two principal reasons for writing:

I want to create something unique and interesting;
I want to render my vision of what social workers do, how they go about their job.  (I admit that I only touch on a small fragment of the world of child welfare)

I do not want to understate the gratitude I feel for the opportunity as a local writer to read at the Denman Festival. I am thankful not only for the opportunity to read from my new work but to continue to get the word out about Like a Child to Home.

 

If I have one regret…

If I have one regret about the quality of my practice as a social worker, it was my inability to find enough time to do everything that was expected of me as a child protection worker. One young client who should have been adopted before she entered her teens, never was. Truthfully, I thought she was in a stable life-long foster placement. I hoped that the foster home would adopt her. Though we discussed this reasonably often, especially after the notion of subsidized adoption became a policy talking point, adolescent acting out (and not even extreme acting out) kicked in and the placement broke down.

I truly hope the Children’s Representative and the Minister of MCFD are able to find permanent adoptive homes for as many kids in care as they can. As my letter in the Times Colonist today says, adding one more complex work demand on the backs of workers already reeling from caseload and workload overload once again suggests to me that the children of BC are being given short shrift by the MCFD and the politicians charged with ensuring its broad mandate is carried out.

Child Protection, in all of its incarnations, needs to be fully resourced. It is not now.

Child Protection always underfunded

I sometimes think government has a short memory. This letter was printed in the Times Colonist over three years ago. I have written a swack of letters to various newspapers over the years. This one is one I am especially proud of because it seems to me to have weathered the test of time. The recent announcement from the Children’s Representative and the Minister of MCFD that more money will be assigned to the adoption of kids in care but no new staff will result raises the obvious question: who will do this work? The answer seems to be the workers who are already overloaded. I have provided a link to the letter but here it is from February, 2011…

“It has been almost nine years since I retired from the Ministry of Children and Family Development. In my 24 years on the front lines, I cannot recall a time when the headline “Major gaps found in protecting

B.C. kids at risk” (Jan. 21) wouldn’t have applied.

The system has been perennially underfunded, perpetually understaffed, politically a pariah. Child protection is unquestionably a thankless and punishing mandate. There is never enough time, enough stamina to do all that needs to be done. You can never do enough. Never!

For many social workers, it can be a tortuous stepping stone to less challenging, albeit more rewarding, professional endeavours. There is a high burnout rate. Bunker mentalities take hold up and down the chain of command.

When the ministry spokeswoman offers her tired old talking point that “This is not a budget issue, but a recruitment issue,” primarily referring to acquiring and retaining rural workers, she continues the cultural fiction that the system is perfection personified and is simply in need of more worker bees.

Until our child protection system is awarded political respect (instead of being a graveyard for political aspirations) and structurally reconfigured so workers are supported and respected and afforded the real tools they need to respond to almost Olympian expectations for success, the gaps will continue. The children and families of the province will continue to be underserved by an exhausted system that is most often refreshed by a coat of cheap paint rather than any meaningful change.”

An overwhelming southern U.S.of A challenge…

On certain days, the complexity of protecting children seems overwhelming. The thousands of kids from Central America flooding in to the United States augers for an even greater exodus. This news report posits the challenge. I wonder how we would fare in British Columbia.

Creative housing amidst affluence in the 21st Century

Adequate housing is one of the key social determinants of health. This latest Tyee article, Meet Vancouver’s Tear Down Kids, is incredibly intriguing and a powerful statement about resilience and survival as well as saying something uncomfortable about our neck of the woods.

A few thoughts to catch up on…

Three months away from the 1st anniversary of the publishing of my premier novel, Like a Child to Home, I think I have settled in to the soft and gentle pleasures to be found in occasionally promoting and going about trying to interest people into taking a look at my work of fiction.

My recent reading at the Courtenay Branch of the Vancouver Island Regional Library as well as the books availability with VIRL were both satisfying accomplishments.

I am immersed in creating my prequel to LACTH, Drawn towards the Sun.

One consistent support I have found as a new author, and would like to mention here, is Susan Toy’s Reading Recommendation blog. Ms. Toy’s reliable and selfless support of authors has been inspiring. Here is a recent list of writers she has helped promote. You may find some as yet undiscovered reading pleasure if you check it out.

On a personal poetic note, one of my poems, Kitchen Sailing, was printed in the commemorative Spring 2014 issue of WordWorks, the Literary Magazine of the Federation of British Columbia Writers.

Another poem, Japandemonium, is scheduled to be published in a forthcoming e-book anthology, “Words Fly Away: Poems for Fukushima.”

Well, enough about me. It’s time to go chop some wood for next winter’s warmth

Remembering Mary Steinhauser…

Within my SFU Alumni e-newsletter today, there was an announcement about Brave: The Mary Steinhauser Legacy, a memorial set for March 29th. I have some personal, albeit second-hand, connection to Mary Steinhauser and remember well the events culminating in her needless and tragic death over 39 years ago.

Mary was a social worker (though her job title was Classification Officer) and midway through Social Work week, I thought I would post the first few lines of Chapter 15 of my novel, Like a Child to Home, that acknowledges, in a much too small way perhaps, her death in 1975.

“Chapter 15

Ernie

1977

It wasn’t all that long ago that two sets of grey prison walls held court in the

Lower Mainland. Both had squatted in the heart of the greater region for over

a hundred years. Both had housed generations of sinners, the lost, the corrupted,

the irretrievable and no doubt a few who were innocent, or at least

less guilty. Both prisons served as constant reminders of unending criminal

behaviour and the failure of social order.

Prisons now are out in the country, somewhat to the east, not exactly

hidden but camouflaged by green rolling farmland. They are reached, when

one is of a mind and has permission, by edging off the freeway and following

country roads that weave their way through the rural landscape. These prisons

are low-rise affairs that look like large storage complexes, which is pretty much

what they are.

The first old-style joint to fall by the wayside was the BC Pen. A serious time

federal lockup, it stood at a bend in the Fraser River, where the river took

a hard left to the sea, or an equally hard right inland, depending on which way

you might be heading. The pen had stood for over one hundred years. In 1975,

its fate was sealed after the death of classification officer Mary Steinhauser,

shot by guards trying to rescue her from three inmates…”