After by being rejected by every other outlet - part of me wishes so hard that we had the finances to simply “astroturf” our Scrapbook Hardcover Kickstarter Campaign and buy the perception of endorsement. Thankfully the other part of me respects true grass roots movements and believes in the utmost honesty. Sure, I may create a lot of crazy banners promoting our project - but when it comes right down to it Scrapbook is more than the story of one artist, or one family of artists, it’s the saga of creative individuals everywhere working together for common goals and a common good.
Showing posts with label author. Show all posts
Showing posts with label author. Show all posts
Saturday, 29 August 2015
Can I be down to earth for a moment?
After by being rejected by every other outlet - part of me wishes so hard that we had the finances to simply “astroturf” our Scrapbook Hardcover Kickstarter Campaign and buy the perception of endorsement. Thankfully the other part of me respects true grass roots movements and believes in the utmost honesty. Sure, I may create a lot of crazy banners promoting our project - but when it comes right down to it Scrapbook is more than the story of one artist, or one family of artists, it’s the saga of creative individuals everywhere working together for common goals and a common good.
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Who is Dylon Whyte?
"If every fool wore a crown - I would be a king and not a clown."
Dylon has been influenced by creative environments since before he knew who he was, much like his father Jack Whyte. His childhood was filled with colours, smells, textures and the experiences of being raised by a fine artist. For him, this meant discovering the innovation of art and applying it to his own life.
Captivated by chainmail in his teenage years, Dylon found a new outlet for his inventive mind. His adventure into entrepreneurial adulthood included an interest in computers and combined with his passion for chain, led him to the creation of The Art of Chainmail; an illustrated book on how to create European patterned armour. He was later contracted by Lark Books and Sterling Publishing to produce instructional books on the topic of chainmail jewellery.
Dylon eventually found interest in other mediums and through a series of experimental projects discovered an opportunity to work with the artist he grew up with.
He has since produced a number of books, magazines and other literature pertaining to his father's artwork and the history of Manitoulin Island (Ontario, Canada). Dylon continues to pursue independent publishing and has recently released his latest project, 'Scrapbook: a story of art', which he co-produced with his father.
Dylon has been influenced by creative environments since before he knew who he was, much like his father Jack Whyte. His childhood was filled with colours, smells, textures and the experiences of being raised by a fine artist. For him, this meant discovering the innovation of art and applying it to his own life.
Captivated by chainmail in his teenage years, Dylon found a new outlet for his inventive mind. His adventure into entrepreneurial adulthood included an interest in computers and combined with his passion for chain, led him to the creation of The Art of Chainmail; an illustrated book on how to create European patterned armour. He was later contracted by Lark Books and Sterling Publishing to produce instructional books on the topic of chainmail jewellery.
Dylon eventually found interest in other mediums and through a series of experimental projects discovered an opportunity to work with the artist he grew up with.
He has since produced a number of books, magazines and other literature pertaining to his father's artwork and the history of Manitoulin Island (Ontario, Canada). Dylon continues to pursue independent publishing and has recently released his latest project, 'Scrapbook: a story of art', which he co-produced with his father.
Dylon Whyte - Author and Publisher?
I've been involved with creative writing for so long that it's hard to remember how I got started - other than faded memories of my grandfather's old portable Underwood typewriter and a wee Dylon plunking away at speculative fiction narratives at 6 or 7. Now at 41, between physical and digital, writing and editing, illustrating and publishing, I've discovered that I have 17 titles under my belt and ideas for a zillion more.
(in reverse chronological order)
Scrapbook: a story of art - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2015
Manitoulin Island Coloring Book - Technical Adviser-Publisher - (2015 pending publication)
The Tragedy of the Asia - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2014
THE ~IT~ CHING! - Author as T.P. Leaky - Self-published 2013
The Way to Canada - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2013
64 Shades of Bacomegle: Looking For Two Strangers - Author as Stranger Still - Self-published 2013
419 - A Fictionalized Novella Based On Actual Events - Author as Dyl W. - Self-published 2013
Just Desserts: Grandma's Country Kitchen - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2012
Affirmations: Collected Works of Irony - Author - Self-published 2012
The $hitch: Issue #1 - Author as Ditto.D - Self-published 2012
Manitoulin Island Notebook - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2009
Beaded Chain Mail Jewelry - Author-Illustrator - Lark Books / Sterling Publishing 2008
Autumn '08 - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2008
Manitoulin Island Sketch Book - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2008
Manitoulin Illustrated Volume 1 - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2006
Chain Mail Jewelry - Technical Editor-Author-Illustrator - Lark Books / Sterling Publishing 2006
The Art of Chainmail: Volume 1: European Patterns - Author-Illustrator - Self-published 2002
The Lonely Gunman - Earliest Blog - 2002
(in reverse chronological order)
Scrapbook: a story of art - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2015
Manitoulin Island Coloring Book - Technical Adviser-Publisher - (2015 pending publication)
The Tragedy of the Asia - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2014
THE ~IT~ CHING! - Author as T.P. Leaky - Self-published 2013
The Way to Canada - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2013
64 Shades of Bacomegle: Looking For Two Strangers - Author as Stranger Still - Self-published 2013
419 - A Fictionalized Novella Based On Actual Events - Author as Dyl W. - Self-published 2013
Just Desserts: Grandma's Country Kitchen - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2012
Affirmations: Collected Works of Irony - Author - Self-published 2012
The $hitch: Issue #1 - Author as Ditto.D - Self-published 2012
Manitoulin Island Notebook - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2009
Beaded Chain Mail Jewelry - Author-Illustrator - Lark Books / Sterling Publishing 2008
Autumn '08 - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2008
Manitoulin Island Sketch Book - Technical Adviser-Publisher - 2008
Chain Mail Jewelry - Technical Editor-Author-Illustrator - Lark Books / Sterling Publishing 2006
The Art of Chainmail: Volume 1: European Patterns - Author-Illustrator - Self-published 2002
The Lonely Gunman - Earliest Blog - 2002
Monday, 12 January 2015
Have you ever thought about writing your Memoir?
Courtesy of Yesterday's Memory Workshop Here Are 38 Titles To Help You Out!
1 - All Over But The Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
2 - Blackbird, A Childhood Lost and Found by Jennifer Lauck
3 - The Colour of Water by James Mcbride
4 - Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King
5 - Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
6 - Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir by Dava Sobel
7 - The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher
8 - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens by Alice Walker
9 - The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
10 - Paula by Isabel Allende
11 - Prozac Nation, Young and Depressed in America by Elizabeth Wurtzel
12 - Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
13 - Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
14 - An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
15 - Fireflies by David Morrell
16 - Midnight Mass: Stories of an Italian American Childhood by Gerry Albarelli
17 - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
18 - Ring of Bright Water by Maxwell Gavin
19 - Round Ireland in Low Gear by Eric and Wanda Newby
20 - Contemporary Creative Non-Fiction: The Art of Truth by Bill Roorbach
21 - Rolling Home: A Cross-Canada Railroad Memoir by Tom Allen
22 - The Only Snow in Havana by Elizabeth Hay
23 - Romancing Mary Jane: Life of a Failed Marijuana Grower by Michael Poole
24 - Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir by William Zinsser
25 - Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art by Judith Barrington
26 - Living to Tell the Tale: Guide to Writing Memoir by Jane Taylor McDonnell
27 - How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Life into Literature by Bill Roorbach
28 - Your Life as Story: Discovering the New Autobiography by Tristine Rainer
29 - Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
30 - Any Given Day: The Life and Times of Jessie Lee Brown Foveuax
31 - Writing Family History and Memoirs by Kirk Polking
32 - Writing Your Life: Putting Your Past on Paper by Lou Willet
33 - How To Write Your Own Life Story by Lois Daniel
34 - Story Only You Can Tell by Toni Sorenson
35 - The Book of Myself by Carl Marshall
36 - Writing the Family Narrative by Lawrence P. Gouldrup
37 - Your Living Legacy by Susan Fielder Mears
38 - How to Write Your Own Life Story by Patrika Vaugh
Do you have any titles to add to this list?
39 - If You Can Talk, You Can Write by Joel Saltzman
40 - On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft By Stephen King
1 - All Over But The Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
2 - Blackbird, A Childhood Lost and Found by Jennifer Lauck
3 - The Colour of Water by James Mcbride
4 - Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King
5 - Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
6 - Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir by Dava Sobel
7 - The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher
8 - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens by Alice Walker
9 - The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
10 - Paula by Isabel Allende
11 - Prozac Nation, Young and Depressed in America by Elizabeth Wurtzel
12 - Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
13 - Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
14 - An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
15 - Fireflies by David Morrell
16 - Midnight Mass: Stories of an Italian American Childhood by Gerry Albarelli
17 - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
18 - Ring of Bright Water by Maxwell Gavin
19 - Round Ireland in Low Gear by Eric and Wanda Newby
20 - Contemporary Creative Non-Fiction: The Art of Truth by Bill Roorbach
21 - Rolling Home: A Cross-Canada Railroad Memoir by Tom Allen
22 - The Only Snow in Havana by Elizabeth Hay
23 - Romancing Mary Jane: Life of a Failed Marijuana Grower by Michael Poole
24 - Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir by William Zinsser
25 - Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art by Judith Barrington
26 - Living to Tell the Tale: Guide to Writing Memoir by Jane Taylor McDonnell
27 - How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Life into Literature by Bill Roorbach
28 - Your Life as Story: Discovering the New Autobiography by Tristine Rainer
29 - Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
30 - Any Given Day: The Life and Times of Jessie Lee Brown Foveuax
31 - Writing Family History and Memoirs by Kirk Polking
32 - Writing Your Life: Putting Your Past on Paper by Lou Willet
33 - How To Write Your Own Life Story by Lois Daniel
34 - Story Only You Can Tell by Toni Sorenson
35 - The Book of Myself by Carl Marshall
36 - Writing the Family Narrative by Lawrence P. Gouldrup
37 - Your Living Legacy by Susan Fielder Mears
38 - How to Write Your Own Life Story by Patrika Vaugh
Do you have any titles to add to this list?
39 - If You Can Talk, You Can Write by Joel Saltzman
40 - On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft By Stephen King
Quote of the Day: You gotta what you gotta if you wanna do what you wanna.
Wednesday, 5 November 2014
Where Are They Now?
(If you are unfamiliar with G'Narr, please read "A Blast From the Past?" to set the stage for today's interview.)
Today, we have a real treat, as Diary of a Chainman was able to track down G'Narr creator John McFetridge for a classic Q & A interview. Plus, we received permission to post this lost classic on YouTube nearly 20 years after it's inception at a small Toronto airport hotel.
Hi John, thanks again for agreeing to this interview!
Q. Who are you?
A. I'm John McFetridge.
Q. Where are you from?
A. I was born and grew up in Greenfield Park, a suburb of Montreal and now I live in Toronto.
Q. What is your product, service, etc...?
A. I write crime fiction novels.
Q. What makes you laugh?
A. All kinds of things. Lately I really like found comedy, unplanned things caught on video or short video clips online. Slapstick. But I also like a good storyteller.
Q. Who were your influences getting started?
A. I watched a lot of TV growing up and I really liked sitcoms; Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, Barney Miller. They were like one-act plays. I liked Mel Brooks movies. I loved the Planet of the Apes movies. I liked Twilight Zone (but that I saw in reruns) and Star Trek. When I moved into writing books I was a big fan of Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy.
Q. What is the biggest challenge for fiction writers today to overcome?
A. We are usually our own worst enemies. Too much second-guessing, too much cutting ourselves off at the knees before getting started. For me, I needed to write a lot of stories that simply weren't very good before I was able to write things that better. But when I started I knew what I was writing wasn't good enough, the same way someone stating to play a musical instrument knows that they aren't any good the first time they pick up the instrument. But we have to work through that stage. I had to write entire short stories to find a scene or even a few sentences that were saying things the way I wanted them said. The temptation to give up can be overwhelming.
Q. What question would you most like to be asked and what is the answer?
A. You received more than a hundred rejection letters before your first acceptance, was it worth it? And the answer is yes.
Q. For an artist who discovers themselves ahead of their time, what is the best thing to do?
A. Keep at it, the world usually catches up. Don't change what you really want to do. When the world does catch up not only will it feel great, you'll have a lot of back catalogue ;).
Q. How did you get there from here? By this I mean, how did you go from G'Narr in 1995 to successful mystery author nearly 20 years later?
A. After G'Narr I got hired to rewrite an action movie and then I wrote a couple more movie scripts that were more drama than comedy. There's some real truth to that old line about dying being easy and comedy being hard. I sold a couple of options but the movies never got made and I couldn't get any productions of my own off the ground. I always felt that the script for G’Narr was good but the production wasn’t… let’s say, ‘what it could have been’ – I’m no director. I was still working on movie crews in Toronto (driver, location scout) and a fellow crew- member, Scott Albert came up with the idea of co-writing a book of short stories about working on a movie crew. The result was Below the Line. I was so happy with the way the book came together that I wrote en entire novel on my own, Dirty Sweet.
Q. Any Easter eggs, inside jokes or behind-the-scene memories that G'Narr fans might get a kick out of?
A. We didn’t really have time for anything like that. Maybe someday we could have a reunion and do an audio commetary, there may things in there I don’t know anything about. My wife is in it about three times. G'Narr is played by cartoonist Randy McIlwaine, the drinking game is take a shot every time a logo had to be digitized out. Almost every crew member ended up playing a part. I got to meet Spider Robinson and tell him how much I loved his story, "God is an Iron."
Q. What's next for John McFetridge?
A. I'm going to write a few more books in the "Eddie Dougherty" series, a cop in Montreal in the 1970s. And I am co-editing, with Kevin J. Anderson, a book of short stories inspired by songs by the band RUSH. Kevin's contribution will be a novella called 2113. Last year Kevin wrote the novel CLOCKWORK ANGELS based on the RUSH album of the same name.
Thanks again John, that was amazing! Be sure to let us know if there is ever a G'Narr cast reunion!
For interested fans I have created a separate page with YouTube links for the entirety of the G'Narr saga!
Hi John, thanks again for agreeing to this interview!
Q. Who are you?
A. I'm John McFetridge.
Q. Where are you from?
A. I was born and grew up in Greenfield Park, a suburb of Montreal and now I live in Toronto.
Q. What is your product, service, etc...?
A. I write crime fiction novels.
Q. What makes you laugh?
A. All kinds of things. Lately I really like found comedy, unplanned things caught on video or short video clips online. Slapstick. But I also like a good storyteller.
Q. Who were your influences getting started?
A. I watched a lot of TV growing up and I really liked sitcoms; Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, Barney Miller. They were like one-act plays. I liked Mel Brooks movies. I loved the Planet of the Apes movies. I liked Twilight Zone (but that I saw in reruns) and Star Trek. When I moved into writing books I was a big fan of Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy.
Q. What is the biggest challenge for fiction writers today to overcome?
A. We are usually our own worst enemies. Too much second-guessing, too much cutting ourselves off at the knees before getting started. For me, I needed to write a lot of stories that simply weren't very good before I was able to write things that better. But when I started I knew what I was writing wasn't good enough, the same way someone stating to play a musical instrument knows that they aren't any good the first time they pick up the instrument. But we have to work through that stage. I had to write entire short stories to find a scene or even a few sentences that were saying things the way I wanted them said. The temptation to give up can be overwhelming.
Q. What question would you most like to be asked and what is the answer?
A. You received more than a hundred rejection letters before your first acceptance, was it worth it? And the answer is yes.
Q. For an artist who discovers themselves ahead of their time, what is the best thing to do?
A. Keep at it, the world usually catches up. Don't change what you really want to do. When the world does catch up not only will it feel great, you'll have a lot of back catalogue ;).
Q. How did you get there from here? By this I mean, how did you go from G'Narr in 1995 to successful mystery author nearly 20 years later?
A. After G'Narr I got hired to rewrite an action movie and then I wrote a couple more movie scripts that were more drama than comedy. There's some real truth to that old line about dying being easy and comedy being hard. I sold a couple of options but the movies never got made and I couldn't get any productions of my own off the ground. I always felt that the script for G’Narr was good but the production wasn’t… let’s say, ‘what it could have been’ – I’m no director. I was still working on movie crews in Toronto (driver, location scout) and a fellow crew- member, Scott Albert came up with the idea of co-writing a book of short stories about working on a movie crew. The result was Below the Line. I was so happy with the way the book came together that I wrote en entire novel on my own, Dirty Sweet.
Q. Any Easter eggs, inside jokes or behind-the-scene memories that G'Narr fans might get a kick out of?
A. We didn’t really have time for anything like that. Maybe someday we could have a reunion and do an audio commetary, there may things in there I don’t know anything about. My wife is in it about three times. G'Narr is played by cartoonist Randy McIlwaine, the drinking game is take a shot every time a logo had to be digitized out. Almost every crew member ended up playing a part. I got to meet Spider Robinson and tell him how much I loved his story, "God is an Iron."
Q. What's next for John McFetridge?
A. I'm going to write a few more books in the "Eddie Dougherty" series, a cop in Montreal in the 1970s. And I am co-editing, with Kevin J. Anderson, a book of short stories inspired by songs by the band RUSH. Kevin's contribution will be a novella called 2113. Last year Kevin wrote the novel CLOCKWORK ANGELS based on the RUSH album of the same name.
Thanks again John, that was amazing! Be sure to let us know if there is ever a G'Narr cast reunion!
For interested fans I have created a separate page with YouTube links for the entirety of the G'Narr saga!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)