"BUG" gets some press coverage

After a new book gets published, it is sometimes hard for me to pay attention to my next project because I am so curious about whether people will like the latest release. Book reviews and newspaper stories are always a distraction. The following story was recently published in the Whig Standard, the daily newspaper for the city of Kingston -- where I lived until last year.

Frank B. Edwards is back in the game with his new book, Bug,
a fun story about small-town life and shoes.

Greg Burliuk, Whig-Standard Staff Writer
October 5, 2007 -- copyright

Bug and Frogger have finally been reunited even though it took a lot longer than local author Frank B. Edwards originally anticipated. When Edwards wrote the children’s chapter book Frogger in 2000, the plans were to release a companion book called Bug a year or so later. But life often gets in the way of a good plan.

“In 2000, our distributor stopped paying us,” Edwards says.

“And, in 2002, they went bankrupt.”

That same year, Edwards also went through a divorce.

“When I sent a draft of Bug to my editor she said it was too dark so I set it aside for a while,” says the author, now living in a house he built in the Desert Lake area north of Verona.

The version of Bug that has just been published has little trace of that darkness. It’s a humourous tale of a 12-yearold girl, Bug Hapensak, who’s just about had it with her father Walter’s goofy get-rich schemes. The latest one is the riskiest yet. Walter decides to move from the city, buy an ancient truck, and fill it with 1,000 mismatched running shoes, then go to a small town and sell them for $5 a shoe. They arrive in the small town of Tichburg and set up shop at the fair taking place that weekend. And that’s when the fun begins.

The earlier book, Frogger, covers the same period of time but from the point of view of 11-year-old Frogger Archibald, a native of Tichburg, who’s got his own problems. Some of the events in both books intertwine.

“I was reading a novel called The Poisonwood Bible and that book had four or five different narrators in it,” says Edwards referring to the 1998 bestseller by Barbara Kingsolver about a missionary family who in 1959 move from Georgia to what was then the Belgian Congo. “So I got the idea of telling a story in two books, one from the country kid’s perspective and the other from the city kid’s. And they could cross paths.”

Edwards didn’t have to look far for a setting to to set both books. Tichburg is based on Newburgh where he and his family lived from 1979 to 1994. During most of that time he was working as an editor and writer and Harrowsmith and Equinox magazines. In 1985, he founded Pokeweed Press with illustrator John Bianchi to create children’s books, and since then, they have published more than 40 books with sales of more than two million copies.

Edwards loved being a dad in Newburgh, immersing himself in all the activities of the village including becoming a baseball coach. “I coached for three years and we never won a game,” he says. “But our team won all the individual trophies and we were the friendliest team. Baseball was what drove Newburgh. I also played in a mixed league on Thursday nights. It was how you got to know everyone.”

The author took the geography of Newburgh and re-arranged it to his liking to create Tichburg. Newburgh doesn’t have an annual fair but nearby Centreville does and Edwards simply moved it to Tichburg.

“When Frogger was published, there was a featured review in Quilland Quire by Sarah Ellis who said her one complaint was that the world of Frogger seemed unrealistic,” Edwards says. “[It said] it was unlikely that kids could wander around safe in this day and age. But that was Newburgh when I lived there.”

Edwards got the idea about selling mismatched sneakers – the engine that drives Bug – years after leaving Newburgh when he bumped into a former neighbour.

“He said he’d gotten a truck full of sneakers and dumped them in the Canadian Tire parking lot in Napanee and sold them,” he says.“And I thought that was just the plot device I needed.”

When he’s not writing children’s books, Edwards is an educational consultant, doing things like designing a student orientation program for the War Museum in Ottawa and creating student lesson plans for the Archives of Ontario. He has also written local histories such as "Cultivating The Wilderness: The Parrott Family of Lennox and Addington County"; and "A House Worthy of God: St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Napanee." Researching the Parrott family history, he discovered one of its members had been a spy for the British during the American Revolution. Edwards is planning to write a historical novel about the spy’s two nephews, who came to live with him after their own father was murdered.

And, of course, there are more Bug and Frogger adventures planned.

New things

WESTPORT. Well it sure was nice to wake up in my own bed this morning. September is turning into a busy month and I have been roaming the province for more than a week.

After a trip to Toronto (to start work on a new research project for the Archives of Ontario), I had gone to Guelph and the Erin Mills Author Festival (see blog, September 10th) before heading to Ottawa to spend a few days with Nancy, my partner. Then, it was back to Toronto for some more Archives work, then to Sudbury to visit my daughter Hayley who has just started studying social work at Laurentian University and, finally, another quick visit to Ottawa before returning home last night. 2,400 kilometres in 8 days.

Before leaving Ottawa, I attended a Raw Food Festival with Nancy to find out more about eating healthy vegetarian food that is not cooked. It sounds weird but we are both really interested in all kinds of different foods and diets. We don't eat a lot of meat anyway and the exhibitors at the festival had all sorts of interesting samples to try. Lots of sprouts (my favourite was turnip -- and spicy radish), a pizza made with a crust of crushed seeds and nuts with pumpkinseed paste and all kinds of crunchy vegetables, and, thank godness, wonderful desserts. And these deserts were all good for me -- no chemical additives or artificial sweeteners.

I'm not sure I will give up grilled vegetables or chicken burani on rice but it is always interesting to try something new, especially for a writer. I love travelling to new places, meeting new people and being introduced to new things.

My biggest adventure of the summer was my first flying lesson in a glider. We were towed to 1,000 metres by a plane with an engine and, when the tow cable was released, we spent a half an hour gliding gracefully above farm fields alongside the Ottawa River. The instructor handed over the controls to me for half the flight and we swept and soared under the clouds. It was wonderfully quiet -- no droning or engine roar. Even when we nosed down into a deep dive, there was just a rush of air as we hit 170 kph.

Two weeks later, some friends took me kayaking for the first time and I learned how much tippier kayaks are than canoes. A wave and a blast of wind almost dumped me and I spent the rest of the paddle sitting in a sloshing puddle of water. Luckily I didn't tip right over but it was very close.

I love visting new places as much as trying new things. Each year, I visit about 50 schools -- usually across Canada but occasionally in the United States and sometimes beyond. Over recent years, I have been to the Middle East twice (Bharain and Qatar), Houston, rural Ohio, Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and all over Ontario. Visiting schools always gives me a chance to meet the people who live in the communities which is way better than just passing through a town as a tourist.

When I was in Hopedale, Labrador several years ago, I was invited to the village's annual Guy Fawkes bonfire on a blustery November night. All the families came out to stand around the huge fire to celebrate a British tradition even though most of them were aboriginal. But the kids seemed to know a lot more about hotdog roasting than they did about the traitor who had tried to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.

My week in Prince Edward Island included watching the tail end of a hurricane hit the island in the middle of my visit. Because there was no power in the schools I was supposed to visit the next day, I got to spend an afternoon wandering long beaches, inspecting the damage that the storm had inflicted on the shoreline.

In Regina one February, I got a first hand taste of really cold weather when I wandered the streets in temperatures that dropped to -45 C. I wrapped a scarf around my face for the first time since I was a little kid walking to school -- and, of course, my glasses immediately steamed up and froze solid.

Some authors end up writing stories about the people they meet during their travels -- Robert Munsch is very famous for this -- but I haven't done that yet. Instead, I tuck my memories away in my notebooks and brain, pulling them out now and then to slip some fact or character into a story that I am working on. Incidents that have occurred during school visits or peculiar teachers I have met, are likely to find their way into future episodes of my Bug and Frogger novels but I don't think I will base entire books on a visit. But you never know . . .

Anyway, September is the month when I sort out what cities and towns I will be visiting in the coming school year so I will let you know later where my travels will take me. I am hoping to head to the Niagara region and hopefully back out west.

Cheers,

"Bug" is in the warehouse!!!

OTTAWA. Well it might be a dreary, wet and cold day outside but inside I am feeling pretty bright. My new novel, Bug, has been delivered to the distributor's warehouse (Fitzhenry Whiteside, Markham, Ontario) and the first orders from libraries and bookstores are being filled this week.

I will admit that the book is a bit late -- after all it was originally planned as a sequel to my first juvenile novel, Frogger, which was published in 2000. Frogger did really well, sold about 20,000 copies in the first couple of years and was nominated for a Silver Birch Award by the Ontario Library Association. Unfortunately about the time I was wrapping up the first clean draft of Bug, our distributor (General Publishing, Toronto) went bankrupt. Not only did they owe Pokeweed Press (the publisher of my books) a ton of money but the receivers wanted thousands of dollars to release all my other books from the warehouse.

It was a nightmare for both illustrator John Bianchi and me -- largely because John and I own Pokeweed Press. We spent the next couple of years paying off the printing bills for all of our 2000 and 2001 books. And to tell you the truth, we weren't sure we wanted to publish any new books again. I certainly wasn't feeling in a very humorous mood.

But, if we just skip ahead a few years and forget those nasty days, you will be ready to join me in celebrating the launch of Bug. My mother always said, "Better late than never."

For those who don't know this series (The Adventures of Bug & Frogger), Bug is a 12 year old girl who lives with her crazy father, Walter Hapensak. He is one of those business guys who is always dreaming up weird money-making schemes and this book deals with his weirdest one yet. He spends all their savings on an old wrecked dumptruck and then uses it to haul away 1,000 brand new running shoes from a factory that was going to send them to the dump. The reason? They are all leftover shoes that don't match. One thousand unmatched running shoes!!!!

But Walter figures that he and Bug can find a way to sell them to people who want expensive shoes at a really low price. He and Bug abandon their city apartment and head to the little village of Tichburgh to make their fortune -- one $5 shoe at a time.

Bug, of course, hates the idea. Finds it embarassing and is appalled when Walter likes Tichburgh so much that he decides they will live there. Bug is a city girl and life in tiny Tichburgh does not interest her.

While readers don't have to be familiar with Frogger to enjoy Bug, the two novels do share many of the same characters -- and, of course, the same village setting. Rather than a sequel, Bug is a "companion" story to Frogger. Both stories occur over the same weekend and their plots intertwine from time to time -- even though the first book is about Frogger's babysitting adventures (and trip to the fair) while the second is about Bug's arrival in the village.

During my visits to schools across the country, kids usually ask me where my ideas come from. Well, the unmatched-running-shoe idea was inspired by a neighbour of mine from years ago who really did sell a few loads of factory discarded running shoes. None of them matched but he just dumped them into the middle of a parking lot in XXXXXXXX (town name withheld to protect the guilty) and really did sell them. They went like hotcakes. He did it quite a few years in a row and used the money to put his two kids through college. I haven't seen him in years so I don't know if he still does it.

Well, time for me to get back to work on my next project. I have to start contacting schools in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario to arange my school visit schedule for the new school year. (Drop me a line if you want me to visit your school.)

Cheers

Erin Mills Author Festival

OTTAWA. Well it is Monday morning and I am a bit sleepy today. I was up late last night, driving back from the Erin Mills Author Festival near Guelph. Actually I drove right past my home north of Kingston because I was headed along the 401 to Ottawa for a few days of project research and to see my sweetheart, Nancy.

The festival was cool. I mean very cool -- but not in a good way.

And wet. Rainy wet.

There didn't seem to be as many people at yesterday's festival as usual. I was unveilling my brand new juvenile novel, "Bug," which has just arrived from the printers. As usual, I was manning a book display -- selling books for the ridiculously low price of $5 -- but it kept raining. Which meant that the books had to be covered with plastic every time the drops began to fall. Hard for people to buy books when they are under plastic. And for authors to sign them. Usually I sell about 150 books at the festival but yesterday it was only 50.

But, of course, I saw some authors I knew and a few friends too. Author/illustrator Ruth Ohi stopped for a chat (haven't seen her for years). Jo Ellen Bogart visited too. She has just written lyrics for four songs on a friend's new kids CD.

And Sonja Dunn, who was not hosting the children's area this year, almost got past me. I didn't recognize her at first because she wasn't wearing her usual storytelling costume. I can usually spot her a long way off because she normally wears a big floppy hat.

My big surprise of the day was to see my old university pal, Jon Fear, a newspaper editor from Kitchener. We met on the first day of journalism school (Carleton University) in 1971 and have been friends ever since. His wife, Caroline Oliver, another J-school friend, was at a gallery event in Kitchener (she is the big cheese at the KW city art gallery) so John was slumming by himself, listening to authors in the rain.

Anyway, the real treat was talking to kids and helping their parents choose books for them. My best customer was a two year old who threw a tantrum every time he walked by my display until he got a book. His parents bought three books -- 6% of the day's sales. Most of the other kids were a bit older and a bit nicer.

Also met lots of teachers -- they travel in packs. There was a lot of interest in "Bug" which is several years late coming out. But, as usual, my New Reader series for kids just learning to read was the most popular.

Well I am starting a new project today for the Archives of Ontario (on the display windows of the old Eaton's Department store in Toronto) so I had better sign off now.

Cheers.