The bears of Canada

As Chapters is located in downtown Vancouver, we get a lot of international tourists. Many of these international tourists want to purchase books for their grandchildren, children, nieces, nephews or some other random child. As a result, the staff in the kid's section created a table of attractive Canadian children's books. We are quite happy with our selection.

However, we have noticed a rather disturbing theme. Many visitors are obsessed with children's books about bears. For some reason, they want pictures of bears and somehow associate bears with being Canadian. As I have never seen a bear in any city in Canada, I wonder about their obssession.

Instead of buying one of the attractive Canadian children's books, some customers have even purchased a four dollar book printed in Taiwan which has some ugly pictures of bears in it.

However, I must admit that I have encountered this fascination with bears while living in Indonesia and Mongolia. People in these countries loved hearing stories about personal experiences with bears.

I have decided that I will write a children's book about Canadian bears. I predict that it will be a bestseller.

Some loverly freelance work

Tomorrow (and Monday) I will be doing some contract work at Raincoast books . Raincoast is a local publisher which publishes many fine books, including the Canadian versions of Harry Potter. I might be able to get some work for most of June and July.

We shall see.