Labor Day Thoughts 2017

With it being the first Monday in September, I'm enjoying the day off from work, as the majority of those within my former home of Canada, and my current home of the U.S., celebrate the Labo(u)r Day holiday, and the unofficial end of summer. In some of the recent years' past, I would spend the day at the corner of Cannon and Balsam in Hamilton, watching the annual 'Labour Day Classic' between the hometown Tiger-Cats, and their arch-rivals from up the Queen Elizabeth Way. Toronto Argonauts. Unfortunately, my Cats have returned to the form of their 2000's to the point where they are win-less halfway through the season. Needless to say, I'm not impressed with some of their front-office decisions lately, either, so I'm willing to write this season off as an epic fail.

Canadian football aside, I've been rather occupied as of late with my day job. I'm in the last few weeks of a temporary increase in hours from my previous part-time status to full-time. To say the job has been sapping my creative energy would be an understatement. Yet, I am looking at the upcoming autumn months with anticipation. I intend to make another attempt at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November, and as a creative warm-up, I have signed up for a new challenge to me: October Poetry Writing Month (OctPoWriMo). While NaNo focuses on writing a 50,000-word novel within the 30 days of November, OctPo challenges aspiring poets to pen a poem a day, every day, for the 31 days of October. In doing so, I have linked my blog to the challenge, so this October, my blog will be filled with daily postings of my poetic attempts. While I'm no stranger to prose (four poetry collections under my C. D. Melley persona to show for it), this will be a slightly new avenue to me. So, I hope those followers to my blog will enjoy my postings in a mere *checks calender* 27 days' time.

On the Book Front, I have put the long-awaited second book in my Prairie Fire Trilogy, The Prairie Fire Rekindled, up for pre-order on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and iBooks. The book will officially release on Saturday, November 4, 2017, so about a week or so before, I will hit the publish button for the paperback version, which means the paperback version will pop up on Amazon a few days before, depending on how quick Amazon builds the listing pages. Until then, you can pre-order the e-Book versions for the aforementioned devices and apps at the links below:

Kindle: http://amzn.to/2vGzS2t
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2w6ZeZY
Nook: http://bit.ly/2fRZkys
iBooks: http://apple.co/2fTkY5u

Finally, two of my detective/mystery books have been nominated for the 2017 Summer Indie Book Awards by Metamorph Publishing. Voting is ongoing until midnight, North American Central Time on Monday, September 11th, and you can vote once per day, per category. So, if you'd like to support this independent author, here are the links of where to vote for the books in question:

To vote for Kawartha Christmas Caper in the Crime category:  https://goo.gl/lwjy3G

To vote for Signed, Stolen, Delivered in the Mystery category:  https://goo.gl/iVL3uI

That's all from me now. I hope everyone has enjoyed a happy and safe Labo(u)r Day weekend, and like me, are dreading the return to work on Tuesday. 

Until next time,

Douglas