The Last (Official) Day

Fuelled by clementines and oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies, we shared our life stories, filled out our self-evaluation forms, and created our excerpt files in InDesign.

A quick recap (for those missing or distracted by chocolate chunks):

Life Stories:
Alexis still has no phone, but is warm and cozy when in her place due to wood-burning stove.
Michelle K. has lots of energy due to her increased intake of unusual grains.
Kari saw a hagfish at the aquarium and marvelled at the perfect union of form and function.
Cara is excited about her December travels.
Jordan is not excited about his.
Allison bought each member of her family a sweater for Christmas. (Hopefully they don't read this.)
Elizabeth shared her enthusiasm for crocheting but warned of its addictive qualities.
Sabrina went to see the wrong movie. (No cannibalism involved.)
Michelle W. has somehow continued to resist the temptation to drive the big bus.

ebook Production:
For those that can make it, we'll be meeting on January 7th at noon in the lab to put together the excerpt booklet. We'll be meeting again on January 21st at 10:30 in the lab to do the final preparation of the ebook. (These dates have been added to the calendar.)

Please!
A plea from the design team to please send your location information to them! (See Allison's post from November 18th.)

Thank you and good night.
Kari

Guidelines for E-publishing

Found the information today for what it takes to get our magazine sold through several e-readers.

http://www.kobobooks.com/companyinfo/authorsnpublishers.html
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2010/04/07/how-to-publish-your-book-on-the-ipad/
http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords

Your Coordinates Please

Hello All,

The design crew would be very grateful if you could help make our jobs a little bit easier by emailing us one (or more) of the following:

- the coordinates of the place your story is set
- the name of the place your story is set if you're confused about the coordinates
- an indication of setting of some sort (e.g. home, chair, tree, outside)

In the case of the last request, we might ask you to help us make the book more uniform by providing an arbitrary place, but let's try this for now since I know there was some concern expressed in our last meeting. Please email this stuff to Erin, Jordan and me by this Monday.

About Us

Cara Woodruff writes fiction. She loves the rain, beaches and mountains of Vancouver, where she currently lives.

An undergrad teacher by day, and a journalist by night from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sabrina Ahmad battled traffic, deadlines, high-strung fashion designers, and the frequently poorly-spelled essay. In 2010 without a second thought, she quit both her jobs, packed her bags and followed her heart all the way to North America, and arrived at UBC. The next chapter remains unwritten.

Jordan Abel is a First Nations writer from Vancouver. In his spare time, he enjoys listening to vinyl records and drinking cheap beer. His work can be found in Poetry is Dead, Broken Pencil and Arc Poetry Magazine.

Emily Walker was born in England, and lived on the island of Crete, Greece, before settling in Portland, Oregon. She has spent five of her last six and a half years in Vancouver, BC and intends to stay until her visa runs out, or she tricks someone into marrying her. She's very confused about the definition of "home". She splits her time equally between fiction and nonfiction.

Kari Lund-Teigen writes short stories and has been nominated for a Western Magazine Award for Fiction. She has also written how-to guides, disaster preparedness plans, and software manuals.

Michelle Kaeser writes fiction and stage plays sometimes. She also plays recreational flag football and is the fastest, toughest, most brutal defensive player the sport has ever seen.

Erin Flegg is a figure skating aficionado and a firm believer in Canadian poetry.

Allison Mills is a twentysomething first-year MFA student possessed of a very symmetrical name. She writes stories for young readers, including The Scenic Route, a novel in progress. She has presented at the UBC Graduate Research Conference on Children's Literature and Cultural Texts and has had a play produced with the Brave New Play Rites festival. Also, she thinks writing about yourself in the third person is weird.

Elizabeth Hand is a long-winded Southern writer who ought to be in a rocking chair on a porch, chatting the ears off of unsuspecting passersby about aliens. She came up north eight years ago to escape the competition.

Alexis Pooley was born in a bed, in a house, in the midst of her family's Thanksgiving. She often writes about beds and families. But not usually about families in beds. Because that might be weird.

Production calendar

Good morning!

I've added a (rather ugly) calendar to this blog to help us keep track of all of the upcoming deadlines. (See right hand side of this page.) If you're having any trouble viewing it, or if you would like me to add anything, just let me know!

Thanks,
Kari

style sheet

Hey Guys,

Here's the style sheet Alexis and I agreed on. Any questions, comments, whatever - just ask one of us. Enjoy!

Style Sheet

A-D

apologize

backyard

CDs

cell phone

E-J

Easter Bunny

fairy tale (noun)

fairytale (adj.)

Fox News

GameCube

googles (use the search engine)

high school

housewife

K-N

Kraft Dinner

LA

literature

Mom (proper name)

Nescafé

Nike-wearing

O-S

okay

prerequisite

soulmate

T-Z

T-shirt

thank you

traveller

TV

wild west

Other

-one space after periods

-no serial commas

-punctuation inside quotations

-spaces before and after m-dash

-no indent when there is an extra break between paragraphs

-no space after ellipses

-spelled-out numbers (from one to ten)

-brand names capitalized

Author write-ups

Hey everyone,

Just a reminder to send your author write-ups and pictures to Cara at her gmail account by Monday November 15th, @ noon, or else Cara and I reserve the right to take a picture of you inebriated at the next department function, AND to write whatever we feel like writing about you.

Cheers!