Flipping Bookworm

The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends  Short-listed for Best Young Adult Book 2018, The Word Guild Canada Book 2 of the award-winning Twisted Climb series I am very much a sports-loving person. Since Grade 3 and into high school, I participated in track and field (100m, 200m and 400m relay). I wasn't the fastest but I wasn't the slowest, either. Since becoming an adult sometime in the last century, my sport selection widened. I've played ball hockey, baseball, volleyball and martial arts kickboxing. Today, I'm still playing volleyball and working on purple belt in kickboxing. I've been in the same volleyball league for 35 years and the competitiveness of the league has grown in leaps and bounds - to the the point that players on the eight teams are switched every two years. In the sport of volleyball, there are six players on each team and the goal is to 'ground' the ball on the other team's court. A point is awarded to the team who 'grounds' the...

Darkness Descends,  Book 2 of the award-winning Twisted Climb series I live in rural Ontario, Canada, near the town of Alliston (population approximately 20,000). The town is about 15 minutes from home and is my typical shopping destination. Alliston is well known for its potatoes (vying for Canada's top spot vs Prince Edward Island), and the enormous Honda production facility, which encompasses 45 acres and employs 4,000 people.  Though it has grown by 25% since the 2011 Census, the town is still small enough to maintain that 'country charm' sought after by city dwellers. But what Alliston is most famous for is not pototatoes or Honda vehicles. Alliston is the birth-place of the renowned scientist, physician and painter, Sir Frederick Banting. Sir Frederick Banting, 1891 - 1941 Few people know the diverse traits of the man famous for co-discovering the insulin treatment for diabetes. Born in Alliston, Ontario in 1891, Banting was the youngest of five children. He attended ...

Short-listed for Best Young Adult Book 2018, The Word Guild Money. Who doesn't love it... want it.... need it? How about old money? I don't mean 'old' as in family wealth passed from generation to generation. I mean old money. 100-years-old money. My Irish dad (RIP), encouraged me to save coins that were minted for specific events, ie the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Or Canada's 100-year celebration of Confederation in 1967. He kindly gave me some old coins before he passed and I have many of them to this day. One of them is a Canadian 50-cent silver coin, minted in 1872. One side has laurel-type wreaths and the other is the bust of Queen Victoria. The words "VICTORIA DEI  GRATIA REGINA" are captioned above the Queen's bust, and "NEWFOUNDLAND" is stamped at the bottom. This coin was minted after Canada's Confederation in 1867 but well before Newfoundland embraced the concept of Canada as a unified country. (It wasn't until 1949 that Ne...

Darkness Descends, Book 2 of the award-winning Twisted Climb series My partner Ian and I are avid sailors. We own a 36' Catalina sailboat named Escape Route II that we sail all over Georgian Bay and also the North Channel, which, by the way, has been voted the best fresh-water sailing destination in the world. We're both adventurous souls when it comes to sailing and we've decided that in the next few years, we're going to upgrade to a bigger boat and sail to the Caribbean and points further south. And maybe even cross the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. So we've been checking out all kinds of boat manufacturers on the Internet, trying to decide which type and size to buy. It's difficult to gauge 'online' if a certain type of sailboat meets your needs because the best way is to actually board the boat. When it comes to checking out multiple sailboats, there's no better place than the Annapolis boat show in Maryland, U.S.A. It's the largest in-wate...

Award-winning sequel, The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends I often use personal experience when writing - if it's something I've heard or empathized with, or witnessed with my own eyes, my own heart, then I can write about it from my perspective. Personal experience often lends a more credible telling of the tale and hopefully lead to a closer connection with the reader. I use my home and sailing experiences in both The Twisted Climb and Darkness Descends. For example, shortly after we bought our property, we discovered 20-year-old vines twisted around many of our pine trees. They had slowly died a 'strangled' death. I used that twisted vine experience in the 'Drunk on a Slinky' chapter of Darkness Descends . Another example is from my sailing vacations. We sail to a gorgeous place called The Bad River, home to the Devil's Door Rapids, and I used these places as dream world locations in Darkness Descends.   My home is in a rural ...