Packaging Your Imagination II

Bought at Packaging Your Imagination

• The Alchemist’s Portrait by Simon Rose

• The Mysterious Mummer by L.M. Falcone

• Good Times Travel Agency: Adventures in Ancient China by Linda Bailey, illustrated by Bill Slavin.

I wanted to buy one of Sharon Jenning’s Bats books for reluctant readers but I only saw her books for younger readers.

Workshops (1 of 3)

Simon Rose — History is a Thing of the Past: Looking Into Time Travel

Rose was witty and amusing. He got us thinking about where we would like to travel in the past and what devices we would use to get there, and back. It was interesting to hear other people’s ideas.

I wanted more discussion of classic time travel paradoxes and overworked plot ideas. I have read a fair bit of science fiction but that’s not the same thing as studying it…

I did enjoy hearing Rose explain that his first novel was the most difficult to write. It was published five years after he started it. The Alchemist’s Portrait contains one of the best time travel devices I have encountered. A painting, created in the 1600’s, allows the hero to step into it and then step out into every era in which the painting existed. The catch is, he can only emerge at the location where the painting is hanging or stored. This is better than the usual ‘cheats’ Rose observed in children’s time-travel fiction:

• automatic travel in space as well as time ex. visiting “Ancient Rome” by stepping into a time machine located on the second story of a building in New York
• automatic transformation of modern clothes into convincing period clothes
• or, to use a tired World War II example, the hero knocks out a German soldier with one blow and takes his uniform and boots, which always fit
• automatic avoidance of hazards on arrival (time travellers are never eaten by a dinosaur the minute they exit their time machines)
• the hero speaks the local language, such as Ancient Egyptian, or the locals understand modern English

Rose gave an amusing, stimulating workshop. I’m not the only one who walked away with ideas for a new time travel story.

More about my workshops with L.M. Falcone and Sharon Jennings another day.

Right now I have to polish up some pages and send them out to the Toronto Public Library’s writer-in-residence, Robin Maharaj. I’ve met him twice now, once by chance, and he seems like such a nice person!

I have also entered two contests this month: The nation-wide CBC Literary Awards (no competition there!) and the Writers’ Union of Canada‘s Prose contest for Develping Writers (I sent them an S.A.S.E. in case they think my piece is worthy of a comment.)

Do I expect to win? Probably not but if I don’t enter, I know I won’t.

Happy reading…