Fun at Frontier Days - Swift Current's Summer Fair

Frontier Days Fair and Rodeo in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, is typical of summer fairs across Western Canada. It has its share of cowboys, cowgirls, ranchers, cattle, horses, midway rides, midway food, exhibits, cowboy hats, trade show items for sale, home-cooked food, and entertainment.

DriverWorks Ink had a booth at the Frontier Days trade show this year and Al and I spent time visiting with lots of great people, including Bryce Burnett, author of our book Homegrown and other poems. Bryce is a local rancher as well as a poet and a member of the Swift Current Ag & Ex board of directors, serving as chairperson of the Livestock section of Frontier Days.

Here's a photo journal of our time at Frontier Days 2015.

Howdy, partner! Welcome to Swift Current's Kinetic Park!

This is the door to the office of the Stockade Building, where we were set up as part of the commercial exhibits/trade show.

Here's my partner in publishing (and my husband too), Al Driver, telling customers about our amazing Prairie books written by Prairie authors, including me. 

Outside the Stockade Building, there was a lot going on too.

West Coast Amusements was set up to entertain with amusement rides, games, food, etc.

Doc's Town is a section of Kinetic Park that features preserved Prairie buildings and other features such as farm machinery.

I didn't know Case tractors were ever blue. I suspect this one was painted and then moved to this property. The Case tractors we drove on the farm, when I was growing up in Alberta, were a distinctive orange colour like this one - which looks a lot like the one we had. (Seeing the photo of this two-toned orange Case tractor just took me back almost 50 years to my days as a 10-year-old frantically trying to reach the clutch and brake as I turned the corner while pulling the baler behind the tractor. Yikes!)

But back to Swift Current's Frontier Days...

Walking around the grounds, I enjoyed the old buildings, but I did stop and do a double-take when I saw this...

It's a DINOSAUR!

A man dressed as a dinosaur actually - moving every so often and freaking out whoever happens to look that way. It's part of an educational display to tell folks about that era. 

"Alright, heart... you can slow down your beating again now..." I said to myself.

At supper time, this was the best place to go on the grounds. 

The Tea House offered home-cooked meals, like this turkey dinner, complete with lemonade and a dessert of lemon cake and ice cream. 

For $14, this was all ours to enjoy. That's right, ours. Al and I shared this delicious meal as well as the roast beef dinner the following evening. 

Another fine feature of these meals - the profits from the meals went towards the maintenance of Doc's Town on the grounds. Win Win!

We got a chuckle out of this ironic sight - a burly Hutterite farmer holding this very pink, very feminine, inflatable "Princess Power" mallet. It just goes to show you the warm heart of this fellow.

And we saw cowboy hats. Lots of them.

Even on little guys like this one, who was enjoying his berry-flavoured drink on a hot, hot summer day. (His parents gave me permission to take and share his photo.)

On another stroll around the grounds, I headed toward the barns. I enjoyed seeing this operational "General Store" selling cold drinks, snacks, and various hardware and other items.

These cattle are being led between the barns.

A 4-H Angus class is being judged here. (Our author and friend Bryce Burnett raises Black Angus cattle and Tarentaise cattle, by the way.)

These riders are lining up for their turn in the ring.

A heavy horse event is being judged.

I asked this woman's permission to take a photo of her shirt. Every time I see angel wings, I think of eight-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner, subject of my award-winning book Never Leave Your Wingman: Dionne and Graham Warner's Story of Hope (shameless plug). 

This woman graciously stopped walking and posed for me.

I thanked her. She will never know how many people have smiled and been given a tiny bit of joy and hope because of the shirt she wore that day.

I got a kick out of the prizes offered on the midway. Minions were everywhere...

... including in the lap of this tiger!

Minion Fall Down ... Can't Get Up!

WHAT ... IS ... THIS?

That's exactly what I said to myself as these spry young fellows walked by our booth one afternoon.

I caught up to them a couple aisles later and, being the shy young men that they are (not), they quickly began posing for me when they saw my camera. Clever guys. 

But it must have been ridiculously hot in those outfits since it was plus 34 degrees Celsius most days of the fair! The things some people will do to make an entrance, hey?

We were pleased to see people stop at the booth of STARS (Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service Foundation, which operates in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba). "STARS offers time, hope and life-saving transport to critically-injured patients."

Jeffrey Dickson, the STARS community relations officer for Saskatchewan, was selling lottery tickets for STARS. 

My favourite line from Jeff came when a man accidentally tripped on a chair by Jeff's booth. Jeff quickly responded with, "This is the right booth if you're going to get hurt." Jeff may not be a paramedic, but he has a great sense of humour and works for a good organization.

And the BIG NEWS of the fair for us?

Bryce Burnett has been notified that his book, Homegrown and other poems, has been named a Finalist for a 2015 Will Rogers Medallion Award. How great is that?

Bryce's book of cowboy and other poetry celebrating Prairie rural life has already won an Honorable Mention in the Poetry category of the 2014 Great Midwest Book Festival. How nice would it be to win another award!

Congratulations, Bryce! Well done. 

(Bryce and I stopped for a selfie to celebrate his book being named Finalist in this prestigious competition.)

The Will Rogers Medallion will be handed out this fall in Fort Worth, Texas. We'll keep you posted on how Bryce's book fares.

Al Driver and Bryce Burnett had a visit at our booth one evening, when Bryce could take a break from his Ag & Ex duties.

And our daughter Lisa Driver visited us for a bit one day too. Lisa is the author of the award-winning spiritual wellness book, Opening Up: How To Develop Your Intuition and Work With Your Angels.

Shortly after this photo, she and I drove to Regina to get ready for her bridal shower! yes, this is going to be a great, busy summer!

But first, farewell from Swift Current's Frontier Days!

May your summer include time for you to relax and have some fun.

May you find joy in the simple things, the images and sights and sounds that surround you.

Most of all, may you find time to be with the ones you love.

Happy summer, everyone!

Award-winning Books & Their Foil Sticker Problems

Of all the problems for an author or publisher to have, this is a good one. Should you put a gold foil sticker on your award-winning book’s cover or not?

I’ve been saddled with this pleasant conundrum several times in the last eight years – ever since the second book I wrote (Never Give Up: Ted Jaleta’s Inspiring Story) won an Honourable Mention in the Biography category at the 2007 Hollywood Book Festival. That now out-of-print book was also shortlisted for Publishing In Education and for Reader’s Choice at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards.

It is pretty exciting when a book you’ve written or worked on wins an award of any kind, so my business partners and I purchased gold foil stickers locally to announce the Hollywood Book Festival award. We were excited and decided to save time by carefully placing the stickers on the covers of most of our books, trying hard not to cover any part of the face of the book’s subject or any of the book’s title words. We thought we had made some clever decisions about sticker placement on that dark blue and black cover. A while later, we discovered that not only does a black, glossy cover show every mark and fingerprint, but a lower-quality foil sticker can show signs of handling, too, with scratches quickly appearing and some of the wording disappearing with the handling. Argh. Lesson learned, I thought.

A couple years later, Seeds of Hope: A Prairie Story by Mary Harelkin Bishop won several awards (Finalist in Children's Literature at the 2009 Saskatchewan Book Awards, Honourable Mention in Teenage/Young Adult at the 2009 Nashville Book Festival, and Honourable Mention in Teenage at the 2008 London Book Festival). Again, we purchased foil stickers. I can’t remember whether they were purchased locally or through one of the award competitions, but they were foil and presented similar problems. Although we placed stickers on only a few books at a time, the lettering would come off if we weren't careful with the books. Some of the permanent adhesive stickers also eventually showed signs of wear.

In following years, we added more books to our stable of award-winners:

-          -  The Little Coat: The Bob and Sue Elliott Story by Alan J. Buick received an Honourable Mention in the Biography category at the 2010 Hollywood Book Festival

-          -  Never Leave Your Wingman: Dionne and Graham Warner’s Story of Hope by me, Deana J. Driver, received an Honourable Mention in the Biography category at the 2013 Great Midwest Book Festival

-       -     Letters to Jennifer From Maudie & Oliver by Sharon Gray received an Honourable Mention in the Cats category of the 2013 Animals, Animals, Animals Book Festival.

  

We did not purchase stickers for any of these books. We announced our wins via media releases and social media, with posters, and small Post-it notes on the covers at various selling venues. A temporary sticker seemed to do the job just as well, but we did add the words ‘National Bestseller’ to the cover when we reprinted The Little Coat.

We recently entered our five newest books in the 2014 Great Midwest Book Festival, and were absolutely thrilled that ALL FIVE books received awards. As a Saskatchewan Publishers Group e-brief stated, DriverWorks Ink “cleaned up” at the awards festival:

-          -  Opening Up: How To Develop Your Intuition and Work With Your Angels by Lisa Driver was the Winner in the Spiritual category

-         -   Homegrown and other poems by Bryce Burnett received an Honourable Mention in the Poetry category

-        -   After the Truck Hit: Jennifer Kuchinka’sTrue Story by Jennifer Kuchinka received an Honourable Mention in the Wild Card category

-          -  Gina’s Wheels by Mary Harelkin Bishop received an Honourable Mention in the Children’s Books category

-         -   Jamie and the Monster Bookroom by Kerry Simpson with Jamie Simpson received an Honourable Mention in the Children’s Books category.

So that’s a LOT of awards ... which is wonderful, but it brings us to the current conundrum of whether to put stickers on those book covers or not.

 

I admit that I am a bit of a purist when it comes to covering up our book covers. We work hard to try to ensure that our book covers tell the stories of what’s inside while enticing potential readers to pick up the books and take a closer look.

Which part of the artist’s creation or the carefully chosen photograph should be covered permanently to announce an award?

Do award stickers even matter? Do people make decisions to purchase a book because the book has won an award?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this. 

At our recent DriverWorks Ink Open House/ Christmas Party, a friend commented that she appreciates gold foil stickers to announce awards and we should definitely be purchasing some and placing them on all our award-winning books. She said she recently purchased an award-winning children’s book from a Winnipeg author. She told us that the author had one gold sticker on her display book and then, once our friend had purchased the book, the author placed a foil sticker on our friend’s book. Clever, I thought. But a bit time-consuming if you are at a busy signing or event.

What do you think?

Stickers or no stickers? Do they matter to you when you purchase a book?

While you’re at it, please tell me where you would place an award sticker on our newest award-winning books. I look forward to your response.

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.