Friday, December 3, 2010

I juggle my time so much - I should join the circus!

Another wacky week in paradise!  Jennifer and I (mostly Jen at this point) are working at finishing "Emily Finds a Dragon" and getting it to the printer.  I finished  "Jimmy and Cinder" and I'll be hunting for an agent in the new year for this middle grade chapter book.  Plus, the real estate industry is going full tilt even though were heading into December.

I'm working away on two new projects, one is mostly at the research stage, although I write scenes as they come to me, but I'm primarily focusing on another middle grade (or YA) book to finish first.  I like to have a couple of things going on at once since some days, when i sit down to write, I'm not mentally sharp enough to be creative so I do research on the other.

Jen and I spent some time at the Magnetic Hill School fall fair a few weeks ago.  We sold 33 copies of "Owen and the Dinosaur" which puts us close to 2200 sold.  We're really pleased with the way it continues to sell and we hope to finish up the ones we have as we start promoting "Emily Finds a Dragon" in the new year.  From what I read, self published books rarely sell more than 500 copies, so if we sell 3000 in total, we're doing just fine.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Thanks for the pass Earl

Hurricane Earl, downgraded to Tropical Storm Earl (how embarrassing for him) gave the Moncton area a pass and just dumped a fair amount of much needed rain on us.  Thanks Earl.

Halifax took a bit more of a hit and a big chunk of Nova Scotia seemed to be out of power for most of Saturday and into Sunday.  It may just be my imagination, but I think the NS grid is a bit fragile compared to the NB one.  No wonder Quebec wanted to buy ours and not theirs.  It seems that if a Minke Whale in the Bay of Fundy is pointed the wrong way and passes a bit of gas, as whales are known to do, NS looses it's power.  I could be wrong on this but the had 157,000 people without power and we had 600, just saying, that's all.

Anyway, it wasn't as bad a Hurricane Juan who paid us a visit 7 years ago.  Juan was a category 2 and he made his presence felt like a bad burrito.  Of course, we Maritimers, who rarely get real hurricanes, and fell at one with the ocean take the approach of a hurricane a bit differently than our friends to the south.

When a hurricane approaches the southern climes, people stock up on water, put plywood over their windows and hunker down.  What do we do?  Go the the liquor store, stop at Tim Hortens for a coffee, and go down to the shore to "Watch 'er come in." Duh.  It must keep God busy protecting us Maritimers because we generally don't get killed when we do stuff like that.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Away we go again!!

I'm starting my writing blog over again.  My previous one had gone stale because I couldn't keep it fresh along with, 2 real estate blogs, 2 twitter accounts and facebook and LinkedIn and...oh yes, actually do some work!!

As my writing career slowly grows with my second book coming out ina month or so, I realize that I need to spend more time promoting this side of my life.  I think I'll even have to figure out how to do a web page.  I have a lovely on for my real estate world but it was designed by our franchise.  I know there are free sites out there so i just have to DO IT!

My last child, #1 daughter is heading off to University tomorrow so my wife and I will be alone together for the first time in 23 years.  It will be just like a second honeymoon.  We were very active with our kids - hockey, golf, dance, etc. so it was a big time commitment.  Now some of that time can be added to my writing time.  The rest will go to trying to organize our house after 23 years of chaos!

I fyou come across this and want to keep an eye on what I do follow me at twitter - @peburns, or find me on Facebook and LinkedIn.

I look forward to hearing from you.