So it seems a bit absurd not to blog about the writing panel I was on yesterday at the Writer’s Union AGM … considering the panel was on blogging.
I was one of three panelists, the other two being George Plumley and Michael V. Smith. We had a fair turnout, and fielded your typical questions of “Why should I blog?” The best part about yesterday wasn’t the panel, but the people I got to meet. I met Kristyn Dunnion, a fellow YA author. I had actually met a friend of hers who lives here in Vancouver, kind of a chance meeting at the bookstore where she and I started talking about YA books. I can’t recall if her friend or if I had mentioned Mosh Pit, but we’d gotten onto the topic of Kristyn somehow. Anyway, Kristyn became my Myspace pal and yesterday we got the chance to meet face to face. It was awesome.
Another cool thing was when the Child Lit authors started talking about what direction they’d like to see the Writer’s Union go in, and everything they mentioned were things that CWILL has been doing for the past 2 years. I never realized before just how progressive of a writer’s organization CWILL is, and just how lucky I am to be a part of it.
In other news, I got wind that Pyre will be shipped on the 26th of this month. This means it should start hitting bookstores sometime in July.
of course, the great part of the panel was that the diversity of the speakers brought great breadth to the subject – about blogging, imagine!George has a more commercial bent to his approach (he advises folks on how to blog/use the ‘net); James has practical nuts and bolts experience and can differentiate sites like myspace, blogger, facebook; and Michael (the most ‘out there’ of the three) had wise things to add around privacy, public-ness, and being true to an artistic vision…very good panel…
I agree that it was a great panel. I’ve had a couple of blogs for a while, and I’ve been using the internet for book promo for a loooong time, but I was taking notes. Great new ideas. Thanks,Jo Beverley