So last week was a little crazy. CBC news caught onto a situation that’s been developing in the publishing world. The tl;dr is that a combination of pandemic and shipping-related issues is making books more expensive and making it hard to stock and nearly impossible to restock physical copies of books on any kind of reasonable timeline.

Spent a few days on correspondence, recorded print/blog & tv interviews and a live radio piece on behalf of CWILL BC members. Decided it might be clearer to just lay things out in my own words. If you want the deep dive, it’s posted over on Medium.

The upshot of all this is that it gave us the kick in the pants we needed to finally launch our (CWILL BC) planned giveaway! If you live in British Columbia, click here to enter to win a stack of kids books in time for the holidays OR a free author or illustrator visit via Zoom.

UPDATE Cannot believe I won!! Thanks to my mystery nominator and the whole council team, volunteers, and supporters!

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A post shared by K.A. Wiggins | 🇨🇦 Bookaholic (@kaie.space)

Original Post: September 9:

This was a definite higlight of my summer: someone nominated me in the annual Abbotsford Arts Club Arty Awards!

Congrations to my fellow nominees in the literature category, local authors David Tickner, Julia Rohan, Emily Isaacson, and Lauralee Sí:tel Á:la Kelly! The awards ceremony will be held remotely on September 25 at 7 pm.

If you’re a visiting and looking to check out my work in hardcopy, you can find paperbacks locally to borrow through the Fraser Valley Regional Library, or for sale at The Bookman or Hemingways Books and Records. Thanks for...
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Aaand just like that, summer’s over! As usual, I’ve been too busy to share updates as they happen, so here’s a quick rundown of what you may have missed:

Threads of Dreams Complete

Burn the Skies launched on July 6, completing the trilogy. Binge the whole series today!

Elections

The Children’s Writers and Illustrators of British Columbia society elected me as president on June 30. If you’re a published (or professionally indie publishing) illustrator or author of books for the under-18 crowd living in British Columbia, please join us at cwillbc.org. We’re doing a ton of cool stuff!.

Awards

Not sure I’m allowed to share the news yet, but there’s a super fun awards nomination in the works that I’ll be able to shout about soon. Thanks to whoever nominated me, btw!

Instagram Catastrophe UPDATE: It’s back!

On the not-so-fun news side, my Instagram (@kaie.space) got unexpectedly shut down. Not sure if I got hacked or flagged by bots or something else, but it doesn’t appear to be recoverable. Sad to lose 3,000+ connections and 5+ years of work, but moving on and starting over with a new handle. Join me @kaiewiggins for pretty(?) book photos and book recs featuring YA fantasy and Canadian authors! Main account @kaie.space was reinstated (after a month . . . ) with their apologies, so we’re back up and running!

Student Showcase & Recommended Resources

Just launched two new website sections to feature creative projects by emerging writers I’ve had the privilege to teach and compile writing and publishing resources. Between teaching and leading CWILL, I’ve been getting an increasing number of questions about where to start with x or y, so while I’m no publishing guru, hopefully this provides a helpful starting point to refer questions to. It’ll likely grow as I have time and questions increase. Students of past workshops or who I’ve connected with at presentations are welcome to get in touch at any time with a creative project they’d like featured on the showcase page.

Up Next

I’m still dithering about what project to dive into next on the writing front, but I’ll be teaching two anthology workshops with Creative Writing for Children in the fall term, growing CWILL BC’s reach and effectiveness, and taking a continuing ed workshop on short fiction with WMG Publishing. Somewhere in all that, I need to plot and draft the next release, genre and title TBD. Stay in touch via the newsletter or social for all the details as they drop!

Pop-Up Book Sale

Date: December 11, 2021

Time: 4pm - 7pm PST

Location: Academie Duello at 412 West Hastings, Vancouver, BC

Type: Book and Craft Sale + Live Reading

Fantastic BC small press Pulp Literature is hosting a local author book (+craft+art) sale in the super cool and spacious Academie Duello swordplay school space in Gastown and you need to check it out!

It’s open from 4-7 pm, and I’ll be rushing over after my workshops end at 5 in Coquitlam, so come say hi if you’re there after 6! My books will be stocked all event, and friends’ books you should definitely also pick up while you’re there include CWILLers Bryce Raffle, Cynthia Heinrichs, and Ellen Schwartz, plus Vancouver-area author Tanya Lisle!

Masks and vaccine passports will be required. It’s a large space, so crowding shouldn’t be...
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