My day is a train wreck

During our recent family vacation, we ended up revisiting the train wreck, just south of the Whistler mountain resort.

Rusty carriages are strewn throughout the woods, the result of a catastrophic derailment in 1956. Over the years, the cars have been brightened up with graffiti, adding an eerie aspect to the site. 

When we first discovered this place back in 2019, I was just hatching the idea for my next book, Spell Sweeper. The site made such an impression on me that it the location of a major event in Spell Sweeper’s plot (one of the chapters is even called “My Day is a Train Wreck”). 

It was fun to revisit the site and to discover how it had changed (one thing was that it was a lot busier than the last time we were there) and to see the new artwork and further degradation of the train carriages (which makes sense, given what I did to them in Spell Sweeper!).

Spell Sweeper is being released by HarperCollins Children’s Books on November 30. Want to preorder or add it to Goodreads (things that really help authors, by the way)? Head on over to this page on my website for all the links.

Creativity unleashed!

Whew! Just wrapped up the last of my creative writing summer camps: Galaxy, Fantasy, and Shipwreck were the three themes, so I explored many different genres and approaches to writing.

First, I’m SO proud of all my students. Look out world—there’s a wave of talented young writers coming your way! Above is a picture of the three anthologies of the students’ work, one for each camp, that we created for the kids.

Second, thank you to my teaching partners Stacey Matson and Marcie Nestman! Couldn’t have done it without you. 

Finally, I’m simply grateful for the opportunities to continue teaching the thing I love most: creativity. The pandemic has been challenging, but has also given me the impetus to expand my bag of tricks, learning new ways to engage students over Zoom, and to work with students not only in my own backyard in Vancouver, but across Canada, the US, Korea, China, Singapore, Australia . . . 

What’s next? A few weeks off to recharge, spend time with family, and to focus on some personal writing projects. Oh, and Spell Sweeper, my latest middle-grade books, is coming out in three and half months—in some ways, that feels like an eternity, but I know it’ll be here before I know it.