I have two new courses this summer at the HALIBURTON SCHOOL OF THE ARTS:
Creative Access
A powerhouse of creative energy lives inside every one of us. In this course you will enjoy relaxation, meditation, self awareness and creative access exercises through which to move beyond the barriers of self-judgment and creative anxiety. Through nature, colour, line, sounds, body, and words you will connect to the place within you that is unique, finding your way towards the story that is yours to tell through any one of a variety of media. Once you have gained entry into your own mine of creative energy, you will be ready to apply basic storytelling techniques to a creative project in the media of your choice. This course is offered June 29 - July 3.
Writers’ Retreat
In this course you will devote a week to your writing in a stunning, inspiring and peaceful environment, then share the fruits of your labours with other writers. Each day will begin with a refresher lesson on technique. You will then disburse to work on your own or to consult privately with an experienced creative writer and teacher. Carefully focussed afternoon sharing sessions will allow you to hear your work aloud, and to share ideas with others. Students have been asking for this course for years. Now, finally, here is your chance to bring new energy, promise and commitment into your writing. This course is offered August 3 - 7.
To register call 1-866-353-6464 or visit www.HaliburtonSchoolofTheArts.ca
Also check out my new Psyche series photographs, one at the Rail's End Gallery, two at the Ethel Curry Gallery in Haliburton. Here's a sample:
2008 Indie Book Award finalist
HELP CHILDREN LEARN TO READ
My new novel, The Oak Island Affair, a finalist in both the General Fiction and Action Adventure categories of the 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, is now helping to raise money for Network for Africa's learning centre in Rwanda, where 35 - 50 genocide orphans and homeless youths go six days a week to learn how to read and write English so they can use the internet to create a new future. The novel uses the real 213-year old, multi-million dollar treasure hunt on Canada's Oak Island as a metaphor for its main character's search for the essence of love. The Rwandan centre, a project of love, is a real treasure.
Click on the book's cover to go to the Books and Plays page, where you can order The Oak Island Affair.
WEBSITE: AAGH! Something's pushing! My cyber-skin's splitting--! A hand! A head--!
VANESSA: Phew! (Looks around) Hello.
WEBSITE: What? Who are you?
VANESSA: Don't you recognize me? I'm Vanessa, from Jane's new novel, The Oak Island Affair, and I thought why stay cooped up in a book--?
WEB: Not Vanessa Holt, the main character?
VAN: That's right, and look, I've brought pictures.
WEB: Suffering syntax! Capering keyboards!
VAN: This is Oak Island from the air. That's Joudrey's cove in the upper left corner.
WEB: It looks like a pretty scrubby place--
VAN (laughs): You got that right. Those white buildings in the middle are where the treasure shafts have been sunk--
WEB: For 213 years, by so many different treasure hunting groups.
VAN: That's Smith Cove to the right, where they found the remains of an ancient coffer dam and the opening of a flood tunnel to the main shaft. This picture was taken in winter. This next shot is of the bay at Chester, where my Gran lived.
VAN: And this is our boat, Dancer, on the way to Oak Island. See, there's Joudrey's Cove dead ahead.
And there below is the Joudrey's Cove beach--
WEB (excited): Where you and Brigit landed, and you found--
VAN: Shsh, Web! Don't give anything away. Look, here's the original treasure shaft.
Fall in there and you'd be lost forever.
WEB: Who'd know more about that than you!
VAN: Web please! This last one shows the inside of that white building, where the latest shaft is. It's called Borehole 10X. See the top of the shaft, and the steel casing they sank to try to keep the walls of the shaft from caving in? Not that it worked.
WEB: Think of how many lives have been sunk down that hole. And now a new Michigan consortium is sinking even more money into Oak Island.
VAN: "And still the little island guards her secret," to put it in Jane's words.
WEB: Right. So let's hope they read the book! Did you know people are staying up until 2 am reading it?
VAN: I better get back. Now it's got a gold sticker on the cover. I wonder what that's going to mean for me?
Vanessa's gone back into The Oak Island Affair, but you can reach her by clicking on my Contact Me page. You should know that she is a magazine writer who grew up in Spain and was fleeing an unravelling relationship when she discovered a 400-year old diary written by a failed Spanish Dominican monk in the attic of her grandmother's house in Chester, Nova Scotia. This rekindled her obsession with a mystery that has brought treasure hunters, and investors such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, to Oak Island from Canada, the United States and Europe for the last 200 years.
Vanessa arrived at a new solution to the Oak Island mystery by learning to see beyond the barriers of reason. This plunged her into underworld depths from which "there was no turning back, where the rules of the surface world do not apply."
Click on my Books & Plays page to read the first chapter of The Oak Island Affair.
To find out more about what turned Jane Bow into a writer, or to see reviews of my work and what students are saying about my creative writing classes, click on the Bio/Reviews page. To talk to me, click on Contact Me.
Thanks for your visit, Jane, Web, Vanessa, and all the others
