The image above is [South Glen Road Bridge](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:South_Glen_Road_Bridge.jpg), by F.W. Micklethwaite, and it's in the public domain courtesy of [this website](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). On Thursday, I went out to Eden Mills to attend a media event held in one of the organizer's back yard. About a dozen of us turned up, including reporters for the Guelph Mercury. I gave a brief reading from my novel, **Fathom Five** and the reporters moved about, interviewing everyone. [You can read the Guelph Mercury's take on the event here](http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/367866). I also saw the line-up for the [Eden Mills Writers Festival](http://www.edenmillswritersfestival.ca/) on [Sunday, September 7](http://www.edenmillswritersfestival.ca/schedules_and_maps.html). Barring changes, I'll be reading a section of **Fathom Five** in "The Common" at 3:30 p.m. with three other young adult and children's writers, including (gulp) Dennis Lee. No pressure, huh? Anyway, it's a great honour to be invited, particularly for the 20th anniversary, and if you have a free day that Sunday, I highly recommend that you come out. If you love books, if you love reading, or hearing authors read, there is no better venue. Eden Mills is an idyllic setting that manages to shoe-horn over a thousand other book lovers along their main street strip for that day. For writers and readers, there are few better ways to bolster one's creative juices than to be surrounded by so much literary appreciation. I have a copy of **Alligator Pie** that my mother read to me that I'll be having Dennis Lee sign. Governor General award winners [Kenneth Oppel](http://kennethoppel.ca/) and [Arthur Slade](http://www.arthurslade.com/) will be there to promote their latest novels, along with Jane Urquhart, Robert Sawyer, and [many more](http://www.edenmillswritersfestival.ca/adults.html). There will be books to sign and, of course, thousands of books bought and sold. I'm really looking forward to it. In other news, I've been working on edits for **The Young City**, officially due for release on January 17, 2009. Barry Jowett has been very diligent, correcting typos and those niggly bits of punctuation that drive me up the wall, and he's made some astute comments on plot elements that need to be made clearer. I myself am pleased to have caught a couple of continuity errors that I'd missed up to now. I just happened to find a resource that I wish I had had back when I was writing **The Young City**. The folks behind the Wikipedia project have gathered together an image archive, full of royalty-free, public domain images, and [Toronto is well represented](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Toronto). Check out [these historic images of Toronto in the 1880s, the decade in which **The Young City** is set](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Historic_images_of_Toronto,_1880s). Looking at these photographs and looking at my narrative, I must say that I'm glad that I found this website _now_ to make sure that I got the setting and atmosphere basically correct (fingers crossed). Thanks to Bill Robb for pointing this site out to me. Anyway, I'd better get back to work. I have more edits to do, and after playing catch-up to two kids, I'm very, very sleep-deprived.