Blogging a book

by

Vernon Writers Festival and Installment 8 of “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie,” a Children’s Chapter Book

I, Gayle, have been busy at a terrifically successful and information-packed Vernon Writer’s Festival April 11-14; but unfortunately the neuropathy and arthritis in Ian’s feet have meant that he had to stay home. Those evenings I reluctantly skipped the book readings and open mic to go through my workshop notes with Ian, filling him in on some of the highlights. Thanks to Markella Mildenberger, our coordinator, and all the writers who participated, especially those who led the workshops: Ben Nuttall-Smith on “Dynamic Presenter,” “From Memoir to Novel,” and “From Scribbles to Publication”; George Opacic on “Using Your Corpus Callosum,” “E Publishing and E Readers,” and “Script-Writing”; Laisha Rosnau on “Story Structure”; Stella Harvey on “How A Novel Comes Together”; Patricia Donahue on “Character Development”; and Shawn Bird on “Blogging and Social Media”. I learned a lot, enjoyed selling some of our books and trading some for books by other authors present, as well as buying a few. Now I have a stack of great books to read by some of our talented British Columbia authors.

Here, then, is the next installment of the children’s chapter book we have been blogging: “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie.” We welcome any comments, suggestions for improvements or constructive criticism readers may wish to give us. If you have such, please comment below or email us at gayleian@gmail.com. And to our great-grandchildren, Leland and Hannah, who are consultants on this book, we eagerly await some more comments and pictures from you. Thanks!

“JAKE, LITTLE JIMMY AND BIG LOUIE”   raven flying 2

by Ian Moore-Morrans

edited by Gayle Moore-Morrans

Copyright © 2012

CHAPTER EIGHT

Louie Takes Off

You can’t really talk to a bird, whether it’s a little budgie or a very large parrot, and ask it questions, or have a conversation with it. It works something like a tape recorder, not nearly as efficient, but a lot more fun. You have to repeat the same thing over and over and over again and someday (maybe), the bird might repeat what you say, although it wouldn’t know what the words meant.

(The rest of the chapter’s content has been deleted prior to the book’s publication.)

Picture suggestions: Louie and Jimmy “beak-clicking.”   Louie flying away.

by

ALL ABOUT THE “REAL” JIMMY, AN EXCERPT FROM “CAME TO CANADA, EH?”

As I (Gayle) am preparing chapters of Ian’s children’s chapter book “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie” to blog, I’m also working on my second (and I hope final) edit of the sequel to Ian’s already published memoir: “From Poverty to Poverty: A Scotsman Encounters Canada.” I’ve already blogged an excerpt from the sequel which we have named” “Came to Canada, Eh? Continuing a Scottish Immigrant’s Story.” Today I’ve just completed editing a section in which Ian describes receiving his real-life bird, a cockatiel he also named “Jimmy.” I thought it might be appropriate to blog this section to give readers an insight into some of the things Ian learned about raising a bird and teaching it to speak and whistle. He later added some of these ideas to the children’s story that is now “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie.” You will notice that certain things Ian experienced with his cockatiel Jimmy later were used in the characterizations of Little Jimmy and also of Big Louie. I’m also including a 1998 photo of Ian and Jimmy, the cockatiel.

Ian and Jimmy

Excerpt from “Came to Canada, Eh? Continuing a Scottish Immigrant’s Story”

by Ian Moore-Morrans

edited by Gayle Moore-Morrans

Copyright © 2013

“Mary and I went down to Winnipeg to spend Christmas with Audrey and Eugene and our three grandchildren, Tammy, Calan and Ainsley in 1997. Then, since Mary and I had been married on the 29th of December, we returned home to Creighton to celebrate our anniversary. We were at Shirley and Brien’s house for a quiet evening on our wedding anniversary when Shirley suddenly appeared carrying a great big bird cage.

” Inside was a beautiful, young cockatiel. He and the lovely cage were being presented to us from our two daughters, their husbands and all five grandchildren, including young Ian and Tiffany. I was invited to take the bird out of its cage and hold him on my hand. He came with no bother and Shirley asked me what I was going to call him (it). Without any hesitation I said ‘Jimmy’ (after the little budgie in my unpublished children’s book, not caring what sex the bird was!). He was such a lovely surprise gift for both of us. And he really was a ‘he’, we found out later.

“Jimmy took quite a lot of looking after, for I had to feed him egg almost continuously, and clean his cage almost continuously, too! He was on the egg diet a long time, longer than he should have been. Brien had obtained Jimmy from a friend at work who bred them. From what Brien learned, Jimmy should have been on seed when he was still enjoying his egg. I had bought some seed for him, but he didn’t seem ready for it. When I was cooking for him, I would generally put two, sometimes three eggs in the pot and boil them hard, storing them in the fridge, for Jimmy seemed to be always hungry. I would cut off a little bit and wrap the remainder for later, making sure that Jimmy also got some of the yolk (that is what he went for first) along with some white.  In the beginning I’d chop the egg up for him, but I soon found that doing so was a complete waste of time, for his little sharp beak would slice through the soft egg just like butter.

“Soon I set about teaching the bird things to say and whistle. Being a musician, I don’t think it is bragging to say that I’m a pretty good whistler as I’m able to do quite a bit of fancy stuff like grace notes, triplets, warbles and different things—a lot of stuff that I did on the trumpet.  Soon our bird was saying ‘Jimmy’s a good boy’ (just like in my little story), ‘Hi Ian, wot’s up?’, ‘Hello, Mary’, ‘I love Shirley’ and so forth. He also started whistling the verse of “Bonnie Jean” from Brigadoon that I was rehearsing for my solo at our upcoming concert in Flin Flon. (I didn’t teach him this, he just picked it up while I was whistling it around the house and going through the words in my head.) In addition, I taught him to whistle the first part of ‘The Mexican Hat Dance’; the bugle call that goes, ‘You gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up in the morning’; a series of notes from a ‘custom’ car horn, and a silly something we used to sing in Scotland when I was a wee boy that ended with ‘Wee Bobby Geachy’s……white drawers.’ The latter bit used the popular rhythm that everyone knows: ‘Dah Dahdah  DAH  DAH…dah dah!’ However, what I taught Jimmy varied in that I substituted a wolf whistle for the last two notes (the last ‘dah dah’). Jimmy really did it superbly. (Sometimes I would whistle the first bit and he would answer with the wolf whistle and other times it would be reversed, with Jimmy starting it off.)

” Jimmy really performed to perfection the day I was dressed in my kilt just prior to leaving the house for the dress rehearsal of the show I was in. Jimmy’s cage was in the dining room and as I passed the door opening that would allow him to see me, he went, “Wheeet-wheeoo”—a perfect, long, wolf whistle.  I burst out laughing. It was like he did it intentionally, his timing was so right. My answer was, ‘Hey, funny guy. You’ve never seen a Scotsman in a kilt before?'”

by

Installment 7 of “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie,” a Children’s Chapter Book

Thanks to everyone who has contacted us through WordPress or email saying that they are enjoying our blogging of Ian’s children’s chapter book, “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie.”  We’re still glowing from our great-grandson’s very positive endorsement of the book so far. I, Gayle, will try to be more diligent in getting the rest of the book’s chapters blogged (now that I am off crutches and my new hip is healing nicely) so that we will be able to get into production of the children’s book, hopefully by late spring.

At the same time as this book is being blogged, I’m deep into editing the next volume of Ian’s memoir or autobiographical stories which we are calling “Came to Canada, Eh? (Continuing a Scottish Emigrant’s Story.)” Those of you reading this blog would perhaps be interested in reading an excerpt from that as-yet-unpublished book which tells of Ian’s beginnings as a writer. He began with this very children’s book that we are now blogging.

To set the scene, Ian and his late wife have just moved back to Winnipeg (again). Ian is 63 years old and deciding to finally do what he has always wanted to do but never before found time for. Here’s a excerpt from “Came to Canada, Eh?”

“My whole life I had always wanted to write stories, but the situation was never the way I wanted it to be. Whenever, for example, I wrote a letter to anyone in the Old Country, I would end up sending about 14-16 pages—and I would get one page in reply. Finally, at age 63, I said to myself, ‘Ian, if you don’t start to write now, then you’ll never do it.’ So I sat down and, over a period of three evenings, wrote ‘My Friend Jimmy’. It was a children’s story about a budgie that had no wings—just 16 pages. But I had to write everything longhand. I asked Audrey [our daughter] to keep her eyes open for an old, cheap electric typewriter for me.

“’What do you want an electric typewriter for, Dad? You’ll be wasting your time. Why don’t you get a cheap computer; that’ll do the same thing only better for you?’

“Oh, that was a terrible word to use in front of an old codger like me—a computer? Sudden terror at the thought of even having one in front of me! Well, she eventually managed to convince me that that is what I should get. ‘You can pick one up dirt cheap, Dad. Do you want me to look for one for you?’

“It was a 286, black and white monitor, no hard drive, just two 3.5” floppy disks; but it was a start. I then became a little more ambitious—going to the library and getting out one of those foldout learn-to-type books that stands upright on edge (like a pyramid) and I started to learn to touch type. Me, an old . . . well, something. And I was improving too—starting to type simple sentences without looking at the keyboard. Pretty soon I got myself a 386 computer, then later it was up to a 486, and then a Pentium! Hey, who was that guy who said that the 286 was all he would ever need? I got the Mavis Beacon typing course (on a CD) and was able to calculate that I was up to more than 20 words a minute, even allowing for errors! ‘Not bad for an oldie,’ I thought.

“While I was improving on my typing, I rewrote my children’s story, and kept editing it until it started to look a lot better. I changed some of the contents and then sent it away to a publisher, knowing full well that he would grab it and tell me that it was the very best children’s story he had ever read. … Some hope! Soon I could just about paper the wall with rejections. ‘Never mind,’ I thought, ‘where there’s life, there’s hope.’ I put the story on file and went on to write other stories, thinking that I’d give “My Friend Jimmy” a try again at a later date. (Little was I to know that the later date would be lots later—about 17 years!)”

Much has happened since the years those words were written. Since then Ian was widowed, then remarried – this time to me (an editor). So we’ve now published three books and hope to have this children’s book finally published before long. Below is our blog of Chapter 7 plus two drawings we found on the computer of an “adolescent” raven whom Louie might have resembled.

Raven 1 Raven 2

“JAKE, LITTLE JIMMY AND BIG LOUIE”

by Ian Moore-Morrans

edited by Gayle Moore-Morrans

Copyright © 2012

CHAPTER SEVEN

Louie Gives Jake a BIG Problem

The next day was Saturday. Jake was at his local library first thing in the morning, waiting for the doors to open. Once inside, one of the staff helped him look for books about birds.

(The rest of the chapter’s content has been deleted prior to publication.)

* ~ * ~ *

Picture suggestions:  Louie standing on the ground and “talking” while looking up at Jake and Jimmy, who is on Jake’s shoulder.

Louie flapping his wings.

by

“WOW!” – A RECOMMENDATION FOR IAN’S BLOGGED BOOK: “JAKE, LITTLE JIMMY AND BIG LOUIE”

Calan, Leland, GrandpaWe’ve mentioned before that the children’s chapter book we have been blogging, “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie” is also being sent to two of our great-grandchildren for their comments as to the appropriateness of the writing for children ages 7-12 and also to perhaps receive some pictures they’d like to draw for the book. Just today we received some real affirmation that we are on the right track. Here is the message received from our 12-year-0ld great-grandson Leland along with a photo of Leland with his dad Calan and great-grandpa Ian taken last summer in Winnipeg.

“Hey grandma and grandpa i just finished reading the first six chapters of that book you sent me and it was one of the best books I’ve ever read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

‘and im also starting to draw  the  picture for the second chapter, but i just started it because i was reading for about an hour so my eyes are really stressed out right now so im going to go to bed and i will continue tomorrow!

‘but it is a really good book so-far “

Thanks to Leland. We don’t think we’ve ever had such a great review! 

Watch for the next chapter to be blogged tomorrow.

by

Installment 6 of “Jake, Little Jimmy and Big Louie,” a Children’s Chapter Book

Here, finally, is Chapter 6 of the children’s Chapter Book we are blogging. Our great-grandson, Leland, who just turned 12, is acting as a consultant on the story to let us know if the story reads appropriately for kids ages 7 – 12, and our great-granddaughter, Hannah, age 7, has consented to draw some pictures to go with each chapter. We’re looking forward to hearing from them.This photo of a newborn baby bird will give Hannah an idea of how the baby bird first called “Thing” might have looked.   raven chick ugly

This blogging has taken longer than we had hoped but the blogger (Gayle) is still on crutches recovering from left hip replacement surgery on February 7th. I hope to be off the two crutches in another week and a half and then on to one crutch for a short time and working into walking with a cane. All is going well but doing anything takes a great deal of time and I also spend a lot of time doing my exercises. Deanna, my physiotherapist just paid another house visit today and left me with a new set of a bit more difficult exercises – very helpful but a bit exhausting, too.

We hope you will continue to enjoy the story. Please give us any feedback you think helpful as the book is still in the pre-publication phase.

“JAKE, LITTLE JIMMY AND BIG LOUIE”

by Ian Moore-Morrans

edited by Gayle Moore-Morrans

Copyright © 2012

CHAPTER SIX

“Thing” Becomes “Louie”

raven chick hungryIt was good that the owner of “Bill’s Budgie Barn” knew all about caring for baby birds, not just budgies—but even wild birds.

(The rest of the chapter’s contents has been deleted prior to publication.)

Picture suggestions:

A black chick with its mouth open (see photo sample above).  or

Jake holding and feeding the baby chick some water from an eye dropper, while little Jimmy is perched on Jake’s shoulder.