A new book contract

Hello to family & friends,

Here is a friendly photo of a dead sailor 167 years after he was buried! Nice blue eyes eh?  Anyway this is John Hartnell, a sailor from the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, who is one of the happy victims of that disaster. The story about the Franklin Expedition will appear in the new version of Canadian Disasters which Scholastic will publish in 2013.  I've been working on new stories which will appear in the new edition, as well as re-writing some of the old ones. It's great the the Harper government has decided a great way to establish and maintain arctic sovereignty is to search for the Erebus and the Terror*
I really don't have a spy in the government who gave us a heads-up. Our list of 'new' stories for the book was agreed on last March.
The Titanic is another of the stories which I will write about, from a Canadian perspective.
Hey, it feels great to be seriously writing again after a year of house building.

*Did you know that the Terror, in its previous incarnation as a British gunship, was the one lobbing 'bombs bursting in air' on an American fort during the War of 1812, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write his famous poem, on which the American National Anthem is based? 
Hmmm?  

Look for more fascinating trivia in weeks / months to come.  Research is great!