I decided to accompany John to work today and be a radio groupie out in Port Coquitlam. It was actually pretty fun for a small-scale promotion and it was for a very good cause. Petland was sponsoring a dog wash, all by donation and proceeds would go to help a young girl with autism get a National Service Dog. Chloe is 9 years old and would benefit greatly from having an assistance dog, unfortunately it costs about $18,000 to obtain, train and raise a dog for two years before it can start helping her out.

This is the first of many events to raise money for her and it seemed pretty successful. For more information about upcoming fund raisers for Chloe, contact Petland in Port Coquitlam.

Earlier on in the day a man stopped by the tent with his dog. After chit chatting for a while we found out he was Gordon Kirkland - acclaimed Canadian author, columnist and entertainer. He shared some amazing stories about his work and colleagues and informed us about the 3-day novel contest in which he’ll be participating, August 31st.

BookTelevision is bringing 12 writers from across Canada to participate in the world’s most grueling literary competition, the “3-Day Novel Contest,” live on national television….

…12 writers will write 12 novels in just 72 hours as they battle crowds, cameras, fatigue, each other, and themselves in the competition to become Canada’s next literary superstar. [BookTV]

It was a pleasure to meet Mr. Kirkland who does have an excellent sense of humour. His most recent book (launched this summer) is, “I May Be Big But I Didn’t Cause That Solar Eclipse” [Amazon.ca].

The 3-day novel writing contest will be live on television (BookTV). Best of luck to Kirkland in writing a novel in 72 hours… I know it just took me about 20 minutes to make up this blog post, so I can only imagine what a task this must be.