Woodstock Writers Festival

Here's A Link For All You Writers Out There

www.woodstockwritersfestival.com

Check out the workshop schedules to see what they're up to at these events

My girl, Julie Powell is a guest-speaker at this festival. She was my inspiration for starting this blog. Do you know that the movie Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep, was based on Julie Powell's blog, right here on this same www.blogger.com site? Yes indeed.

From her humble little blog -- recounting her efforts to cook each and every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking -- came a best-selling book and then eventually a box-office movie hit! Fabulous, don't-cha think? And look, now she's guest-speaking at writers festivals. LOL!

If only the same could happen to each and every one of us. Hah! Keep blogging my fine friends. You just never know what the cosmos have lined up for YOU!

You Must Be Flexible: you can not demand order from chaos

http://www.firstnations.com/tj2000/tj97-visionquest.htm

The above title is a paraphrase from an article by Jody Patterson on July 24, 1997:

http://www.visionquestsociety.org/PattersonArticles.htm

If you get a chance, check out the series of articles written by Jody Patterson, a Times Colonist columnist (wow, that's a bit of a tongue twister, LOL), back in the summer of 1997. I came across the site while I was doing research and development work for my novel, Murder On Pink Mountain. I was looking up the official account of the murder of RCMP Const. Michael Joseph Buday in Teslin, Yukon in 1985. Certain elements of the incident, that ended with the death of Const. Buday, are very similar to the storyline of my novel.

However, back to Vision Quest -- in 1995 RCMP Staff Sgt. Ed Hill and his friend, Roy Henry Vickers, painted the Teslin Lake scene that was the last thing Const. Buday saw as he lay dying on the shore of the lake; shot in the back by the murderous draft-dodger, Michael Oros. He had been descending into a crazed state for thirteen years, culminating in that tragic shooting.

Sales from the painting raised over $100,000 and was the beginning of the official fundraising efforts for the vision Roy Vickers had held in his heart from the time he was 28; to build a treatment centre for others, like himself, who were sick of battling the grip of addiction. In 1997, Vickers was 51 and addiction-free.