Homegrown and other poems book released

Ta da! Here's the latest book published by DriverWorks Ink!

Homegrown and other poems is written by Bryce Burnett (below), a rancher and well-known cowboy poet from Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

In Bryce's book, you'll read heartfelt poems about his family and community.

Bryce tells stories of the pioneers who settled in his region of the Prairies decades ago.

He also shares his love for the land, and his respect for the animals that help sustain his ranch and rural way of life.

There are 44 photos in the book - many of them were taken by Bryce Burnett - to go along with his 63 poems. Here are two excerpts from the book:

The poem below, Rubber Boots, is one of the many humorous poems in Bryce's book.

Ah, yes. The Homegrown poem continues on page 61 and The Rubber Boots poem/story doesn't end on the one page either. You'll have to buy the book to find out what happens next.

See more excerpts here.

Buy the book here.

Never Leave Your Wingman book visits Prague - Blog Part 12

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself going to the Czech Republic. But then again, I'm a book - and I never imagined going anywhere other than home with people in a book bag, to be read and enjoyed and shared with those they love and care about. Usually, that sharing involves someone who is fighting cancer or has been affected in some way by cancer.

You see - if you haven't been following my blogs this fall, - I am a book about an inspiring, fun-loving, walking miracle. Dionne Warner is a seven-time cancer survivor in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, who dresses in costume and dances into her chemotherapy treatments with a smile on her face and joy in her heart. Alongside her is her wingman - her equally fun-loving husband Graham - who is also dressed in costume to support his beloved Dionne and help her bring hope and laughter to everyone she meets on the journey.

This is Dionne and Graham Warner during two of the 78 costumed 'themes' they'd had by the time I was written and published in summer 2012:

But enough about them for now. This is about me. And Prague, Czech Republic.

My author/publisher Deana Driver and her publisher/husband Al Driver travelled to Europe this summer and took me along for the journey of a lifetime. I've been blogging about our travels (see my first blog in the series), and we've visited eight countries to this point: Austria, Italy, France, Monaco, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany - not necessarily in that order. Well, Vatican City might be considered a country, too - so make that nine.

And here we are, in Prague, Czech Republic - a city resplendent with beautiful old buildings, incredible bridges over the Vltava River, and culture that just oozes from every corner.

The hotel we stayed in was built in 1895 - see the date in the floor tiles at the bottom of the stairs. The country of Canada - where I live - was founded in 1867, just a few short years before that. Wow. We could just feel the history that these walls must have seen. 

We smiled when we noticed the name of this place – Typical Czech Restaurant. 

I wonder what all the other restaurants in Prague are like if this one is typical.

We saw this bridal shop on our way downtown...

...so that reminded me of this little ditty:

"Something Old...

...Something New...

...Something Boar-owed (hee hee)...

...Something.... 

Pink...?" 

Sure, why not? I LOVE PINK!

Everybody loves pink!

Moving on.... 

In Prague, we saw a likeness of Hermes . I love his winged headgear. 

The downtown market had fruit and vegetables for sale, as well as a new treat we'd never seen before -  

... a long strip of pastry dough that was wrapped around a spindle and baked over coals, then sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.

This Czech-style doughnut was very yummy!

My author and Publisher Al also tasted wild boar sausage in the Prague marketplace.

“Tastes like pork, except more free-range,” quipped my author. (She thinks she’s funny.)

This man was working with his loom in the marketplace.

This woman was making glass jewelry.

The Rudolfinum in Prague was designed as an art gallery and housed the Czechoslovak Parliament in 1918-1938. It was showcasing the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra the day we were there. I loved the winged creatures on and around the building.

Now this is not a girly-girl statue.

It reminded me of one of my cancer survivor’s favourite new songs by Katy Perry – ‘Roar’. I am sure that if this statue could make noise, it would definitely ROAR! 

You go, girl!

Oh, and this man. Oh my. 

 He reminded me of the strong, handsome man I met in Barcelona. Ooh, I get shivers just thinking of him again. Sigh…

The 600-year-old Charles Bridge is the most famous of Prague's bridges. It has 16 arches and is adorned with 30 stone statues along its edges. 

Before we crossed the bridge, we met this young lady.

She was inviting passersby to go on a river cruise - on a boat called 'Regina'! 

How cool was that? I was pleased when she offered to hold me for this photo.

On our way up to the Prague Castle, we saw this couple getting their feet cleaned by fish in a tank in an Asian shop. 

It kind of creeped me out actually - but they said it tickled.

This woman was painstakingly hand-painting the lines on a huge door to one of the homes/businesses we saw on our way up to the castle.

The castle has several magnificent buildings on its grounds, including St. Vitus Cathedral. We were intrigued by many of them, but we had to giggle when we stopped for a sit-down break and saw this...

This young man’s private parts are definitely not private. In fact, every third person who passes by this statue in a courtyard at the Prague Castle stops to grab hold of his protruding part – to the point (ooh, sorry for the bad double entendre) that it has become quite the shiny bronze part compared to the rest of his tarnished body. We had to smile watching the various reactions of passersby – everything from shocked to disgusted to hilariously gripping the part and posing for photographs. People-watching is always fascinating.

The view from the Prague Castle is really something to behold. Although this guard did a good job of pretending he didn't care so much about anything around him, my publishers enjoyed the view. 

Holy Heels, Ladies! These Czechoslovakian woman walked downtown for at least 20 blocks in front of us on Prague's cobblestone streets and sidewalks – in these shoes! I was impressed.

We also saw what might be the oldest busker in Europe. He couldn't sing very well, but he sure could play.

 Don’t ask me what a life-sized shark is doing in the middle of downtown Prague. 'Freaking people out' would be my guess.

We saw this fellow, hanging from a harness and using a sander to polish the copper on these balconies. He yelled at passersby to stay out from underneath him as the corroded bits fell to the sidewalk below him.

Well, that's enough from Prague for now.

So from my author, her solid friend, and me - 

Thanks for taking in the scenery with us. I'll see you again soon.

Never Leave Your Wingman's Excellent European Adventure - Part 4 - Italy

You're back! Great! Thank you for following along with me, the Never Leave Your Wingman book, as I share my photos from my wonderful summer adventure in Europe!
(If you didn't read Part 1 , Part 2, or Part 3, these are the links for those posts.)

This kind of feels like you and I are in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Book club together. Pretty neat, huh? And speaking of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie - the parts of it that were filmed in Greece, anyway - well... hang on for a few minutes. I'll come back to that.

So the last time I blogged, my publishers and I were in Pisa, Italy and I was holding up the Leaning Tower, remember? Well, there was one other interesting place that we discovered in Pisa. And you'll probably be surprised to see what it was.

That's right - a McDonalds restaurant!  'And Here's The Party!' says the sign.

The folks at this restaurant had a hilarious sense of humour, and we had quite a few chuckles while eating our nutritious fast-food lunch. (Oh come on, somebody had a salad there some day.) 

Anyway, here are some of the signs we saw inside this McDonalds restaurant:

In case you can't quite make out this sign leading to the washrooms, here it is close up:

Hilarious, right? I wanted to cut that part of the door out and bring it home to share with my friends... but it wouldn't have fit in my travel bag and the airline would have charged me for extra baggage, so this photo will have to do.

While we were driving from Pisa to our next stop on our trip, we saw some really pretty fields. While Saskatchewan and Canada's other Prairie provinces often have bright yellow fields of canola in the late summer, here in Italy and other parts of Europe, we enjoyed this scene of bright yellow sunflowers.

My author Deana snapped a whole pile of photos of these fields. This is one of my favourites.

Did you know that in Europe, the semi trucks don't have solid side panels like our trucks do here in Canada? We found it strange to watch the canvas sides of the big trucks flapping with the wind. That can't be too aerodynamic, can it?

Here's Publisher Al driving us (himself, me and my author Deana, of course) to our next destination. 

Psst... that's the Mediterranean Sea in the background.

OH MY GOSH! I am SOOOO excited that we can see it!!

But wait. Before we could get into our next accommodation that afternoon, we had to park our rental vehicle... at the top of the huge hill leading into that town that you saw in the above photo. So this was the home for our VW vehicle - in a tiny (by Canadian standards) parking stall with its own pull-down door in a parking garage. Let's just say we've had more fun parking in other places.

Then we began the walk downhill....

...and further downhill....

...and still further downhilll....

...for about 20 minutes - not including the rests to catch our breath .... 

...to get to our room (up on the right-hand middle level of those buildings), at the seaside edge of the village of Riomaggiore. This is a working fishing village and is one of five towns close together in the Cinque Terre region of Italy which are popular with young tourists - "because young tourists still have good, strong legs that can handle the 45-degree hills," my publishers said. (Can you tell that my publishers are old and were a little cranky after going up and down this main-street hill that goes from one end of town to the other a couple times? Plus, it was only the day after they had climbed the 395,000 steps (or something like that) up to the top of the Duomo in Florence, too - so maybe they had a tiny reason to be a little tired and unhappy about more climbing.

 Anyway, my publishers and I took it fairly easy in Riomaggiore for the rest of the day. We just relaxed and enjoyed the views. 

Here are some photos of what we saw...

The view from our front walkway.

This village really reminded me of the rocky Greek village in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie - except we didn't have a donkey to take us up the hills. Oh, wait. I hear my author calling out to me. "A donkey! That would have been perfect!" (As if she just thought of this herself. 

Silly author. Where would they have parked the donkeys?) 

These pretty flowers were blooming from a vine growing on the rock wall in front of our room.

Cool, huh?

In front and below our room, a bunch of Italian men noisily worked together to build this.... this... I don't even know what it was. A pier perhaps? Anyway, they had a little trouble deciding who would give the orders and who would follow them, and we thoroughly enjoyed watching this process. We also giggled a little when the group took a break to share some bubbly. Only in Europe. 

This very secure (not) closure on the gas cupboard was a little unsettling for us. Our room was just behind this wall. Yeah, a little unsettling.

Now this photo... this is a different story. What? Were you actually looking at the big red boaty thing. Pshaw. The legs. Check out the legs under the red thing! Well worth watching as they rounded the corner and wandered up the stairs. Wooeeee! I LIKE ITALY!!! (And don't get me started on his teeny tiny swimsuit...)

This cracked me up. When you gotta go, the Mediterranean Sea is as good a place as any, I guess.

The sea offers many pretty sights... In daylight...

...And the early evening.

So goodnight for now ... from the northwest corner of Italy. 

I'll see you soon for my next update. It's going to be awesome... just you wait!