Guest Blogger

    Standing up and standing out is easier than you may think!   Picture this scene: You are speaking confidently in front of forty people in your company, delivering a special presentation. Your heart is beating fast, but as you scan the audience, you see smiles and looks of appreciation on the faces of your colleagues. You know all is going very well; you feel confident, proud, appreciated, and skilled.   Now,...

Guest Blogger

    The original drafts of a novel create its structure and determine how the story will unfold. The years and years of editing that follow infuse the book with character, crafting it into the best possible version of itself. And the final edit, when you know in your gut that you are finally done, gives the writing its shine.   At least that's how it appears to me, having...

Guest Blogger

I wish to share my experience about writing my first book. Picking up my first run of 30 copies, seeing the cover, seeing the barcode, realizing that this is real and that I am now a published author has been a very rewarding experience.     Deciding to Write   I had put writing a book on my bucket list about 10 years ago. I started to write a fiction novel in...

Guest Blogger

This year, after many years of procrastination, failing, and heartbreak, I decided to give myself one last chance at success: I was going to win NaNoWriMo.   For those unfamiliar with this perilous and crazy endeavour, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month: www. nanowrimo. org) is a challenge that comes about every November and entails writing 50,000 words in a 30-day period. All these words should amount to a novel, or...

Guest Blogger

I love stories. As part of my first career as an assistant manager at Ten Thousand Villages, I got to tell and listen to a lot of stories. The mission behind Villages is to connect customers with the people who make the products that they buy. So if a customer ever asked “Who made this?” I could tell them about the artisan, the group that they worked...

Guest Blogger

When I turned 40 someone sent me a postcard with Bette Davis holding a pillow stitched with the words Old Age Ain’t No Place For Sissies. It was like a battle cry for me to do something with my life. So, I finished a degree I had started when I was 18, learned to tap dance and drive a car, got married and moved to Canada.   In...

Guest Blogger

In her blog of August 12, Beth referred to my publication Marguerite Nakhla: Legacy to Modern Egyptian Art. I first learned about Ms. Nakhla (1908–1977) when I became the Volunteer Curator at St. Mark’s Coptic Museum in Scarborough, Ontario.  While we had six of her biblical scenes we did not have much information about her except a few letters indicating that she was a highly respected artist...