The Power of Words

Bright and early Thursday morning, Katherine Hobbs and I drove to the Tom Brown Arena to attend the People, Words and Change's 2nd annual Power of Words breakfast. PWC is an adult literacy organization that has been around a long time - I taught evenings for them one year in fact in 1984!

I wouldn't be lying to say that it was a little daunting to speak in front of a full house that included fellow presenters Mayor Jim Watson, Brian Kilrea and Terry Marcotte as well as the Chief of Police and city counsellors Katherine Hobbs (not nervous about her :-) and Mathieu Fleury (whom I am pictured with here), sitting in the audience. My video guy Patrick Walton also came out and will be making another short video of the event so you will be able to see snippits of the morning. It was great fun!

The People Words and Change staff and volunteers are wonderful people and the morning really was about them and the students - several students got up to speak about how working with a tutor had changed their lives for the better. It's not an easy thing to go back to school as an adult and to face what can be a lifetime of school failure - courage is not always about the big heroic acts. Speaking of heroes, Moe Nattallah of the Newport restaurant cooked and donated the entire breakfast - how good is that?

So now I am working on publicity for the Capital Crime Writer and Ottawa Public Library mystery author event on October 22nd, another day that promises to be a lot of fun. I've got a news release almost ready to send off and will be sending out notices to blogs this weekend. My friend Darren McEwan set up a Twitter account for us under capcrimewriters so follow us if you are a 'tweeter' - you can also visit the new website at capitalcrimewriters.com

Can you believe this weather? Another lovely looking day out there but I will stay inside and type the ending of my mauscript. I'm almost there. I've got to decide today whether to kill off a character whose life is currently hanging by a thread. I know what I would like to happen but am not sure she's going to be around much longer . . .