Last week, I was thrilled when super librarian Julie Found emailed me to say her students had created a book trailer for Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook #4. You can watch it on Julie’s blog: We Found the Library! (great title btw.)

I was so happy to see the video for many reasons. First: it’s MY book, obviously! Second: it’s kids making media, re-mixing my characters and making them their own, which is always amazing. Some writers are terrified if people play with their worlds, characters or stories, but personally, I’m honoured. To create something so meaningful to someone that THEY want to create with it tells me I’m on the right path.

Thanks to the kids at William Burgess for making great media and thanks to their rocking librarian, Julie Found for inspiring them to do so!

Watch the trailer here!

For you mystery fans keeping count Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook Volume 6 is out and available at fine book stores everywhere. I received my stack earlier in the week and proceeded to spread them on my floor and take a photo. Here’s the result:

Impressive, isn’t it? In fact, I have so many copies that I’m thinking a giveaway is in order. I’ve never done a book giveaway, but the good people at Goodreads and beyond tell me it’s all the rage, and I’m all about the rage.

So, stay tuned and I’ll have details about Max Finder Mystery book giveaway as soon as I figure out how go about it. Any experienced book giveawayers or book giveaway-receivers, interested in telling me how it’s done, feel free to drop me a comment down below.

I get this question a lot. It also comes in the variety known as: “How’s the writing going?”  Usually, I mumble something about what Max Finder has been up to, or how the  Graphic Guide Adventure series continues to do well. But that’s it. I don’t really talk about what I’m currently writing. That’s because I’m scared. I’m scared that when I *talk* about my ideas people will think they’re not so great and give me the ol’ “Good luck with that,” talk.

It’s also because sometimes projects don’t pan out with a publisher who promised they would pan out and then decides that panning out is not in their favour. But that’s the stuff of another post, because this one is about telling you what I’ve been workin’ on.

Two words? A murder mystery.

More? A YA murder mystery set in a gaming convention celebrating the world’s most popular Massively Multiplayer Online game. No, not that one, another one I made up. It is fiction after all.

The book is  for young adults, it’s called Ganked, and I’m having a blast writing it. I’m almost finished second round of edits and ready to send it out into the wild.

I’d love to tell you more but, as a writer I have a strict rule against telling when I should be showing.  Don’t worry, I’ll be showing more in the coming weeks.

For now, you’ll just have to wait . . .

I’m wearing many hats these days: teacher, librarian, video games and learning advocate and finally humble writer. Over at my blog, feeding change, I write my education / “video games aren’t evil” posts. Here at my main page, I like to stick to talking about my writing. And so, it is with great pleasure that I announce Power Play is nominated for a 2012 Diamond Willow Award!

The Willow Awards are Saskatchewan’s “Tree Awards”, part of the provincial children’s book awards started (I believe) by Ontario’s Silver Birch Awards. This is my second Tree nomination, the first happening in Halifax with Wild Ride nominated for a 2009 Hakamatack Children’s Choice Award. I was especially honoured back then and I am extremely especially honoured today.

Extremely especially? Yeah, I know, but here’s the deal: Unlike other awards, sponsored by a big bank with the winner chosen by a bunch of adults and then a lump sum of cash given to the winner (and used as a tax write/PR campaign off by the sponsoring bank), the winners of the Tree Awards are chosen by kids! Thousands of them, all reading, discussion and (hopefully) voting for your book.

Currently, I’m running the Silver Birch Club at my school and, let me tell you, it’s amazing to see kids reading, debating and sharing their passion or distaste for a particular book. I don’t need to tell you that young readers won’t think twice about explaining why a book is totally awesome or totally lame. They are your biggest supporters or your harshest critics. It’s always amazing to see.

The second great part about the Tree Awards is that every book nominated is the winner. A nomination means your book will reach hundreds of new readers who might never have heard of you before. For any writer, that is a prize worth more than any statue, plaque or cheque. (Okay, the cheque is nice too.)

Thanks to Orca Books for being such an amazing publisher and epic thanks and grats to Mike Deas for his uber cool illustrations on this whole series. And while we’re talking Mike, check out his new graphic novel series starring two lovable and totally lost aliens: Dalen and Gole. Two words: Hi larious.

Please check out all the 2012 Diamond Willow nominees. I am honoured to be in such fine company.

To celebrate the first day of school here in Ontario, CityTV’s Breakfast Television visited St. Margaret’s Public School in Toronto and Max and Alison tagged along for the fun.

The fantastic Kendal showed off a host of great books from Owlkids and Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook #5 was among them. Watch the BT segment here (skip in 18 minutes to get to the Owlkids book bonanza.)

If you were up early enough to catch the segment and are dying to get your hands on Max and Alison’s latest collection of mysterious adventures, visit the Max Finder Mystery page at Owlkids, your local Canadian Indy bookstore (American Indy bookstores here.) You can also always find them at Amazon, Indigo and B&N.

Happy clue hunting!