Tag: The Vaults

From the vaults: Opening of Land Surveying in Saskatchewan

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, The Vaults
December 2, 2012
20 mins to read
1 comments

Commissioned by the Saskatchewan Land Surveyors Association, Land Surveying in Saskatchewan: Laying the Groundwork for Property Rights and Development talks about the work of surveyors past, present and future in the province. And here’s a good long chunk of Chapter 1, which (you should pardon the expression) lays the groundwork for the rest of the …

Saturday Special: Dave Rodney – From Yorkton to the Top of the World

By Edward Willett in Blog, The Vaults
August 25, 2012
8 mins to read
1 comments

(I wrote this feature during my recent short-lived stint as an editor for Fine Lifestyles magazines. It was supposed to be the cover story for Fine Lifestyles Yorkton, but I can’t see any sign Fine Lifestyles Yorkton made it off the ground. It did run in Business Saskatoon.) By Edward Willett Dave Rodney has twice …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: Orson Scott Card

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, The Vaults
June 16, 2012
11 mins to read
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I wrote two author biographies for Enslow Publishers’ Authors Teen Love series. One was on J.R.R. Tolkien, and the other on noted SF/fantasy writer Orson Scott Card. The former was easy because he was long dead and had been written about a great deal, the latter harder because he’s very much alive and hasn’t been …

Boilers of the sternwheeler Northcote at Cumberland House, Saskatchewan

Saturday Special from the Vaults: A History of Cumberland House

By Edward Willett in Blog, The Vaults
June 2, 2012
13 mins to read
4 comments

I’ve done quite a bit of writing for various historical sites around the province. Here’s something I wrote for Cumberland House a few years ago. I’ve never been there to see how it was use! Oh, and in case anyone is wondering…yes, the science column will return. It’s been on hiatus while I experimented with …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: Intro and Chapter 1 of Johnny Cash: The Man in Black

By Edward Willett in Blog
May 5, 2012
18 mins to read
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I’ve posted the openings to my Enslow biographies of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix–guess it’s time to give Johnny Cash his due. I enjoyed writing about Johnny Cash because a) he was a really interesting guy and b) I grew up listening to him. My folks liked country music, and Cash was one of their …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: Andy Warhol: Everyone Will Be Famous for 15 Minutes

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books
April 21, 2012
19 mins to read
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For this week’s Saturday Special, another opening to another biography written for Enslow Publishers, this one about artist Andy Warhol. Like my biographies of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, it was for the series American Rebels. I actually studied a bit of art history and minored in art at university, and we make a point …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: Janis Joplin: Take Another Little Piece of My Heart

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, The Vaults
April 7, 2012
18 mins to read
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Another Enslow book, Janis Joplin: Take Another Little Piece of My Heart tells the story of another ’60s rock star who died at age 27–within just a few weeks of Jimi Hendrix’s death. Since I also wrote biographies of Johnny Cash and Andy Warhol for Enslow, I spent several months kind of stuck in the …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: The Bounty Mutiny: From the Court Case to the Movie

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, The Vaults
March 31, 2012
14 mins to read
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One of the more interesting projects I undertook for Enslow Publishers was a history of the famous Mutiny on the Bounty, comparing the real-life events to the way they were portrayed in the movie starring Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian that came out in the 1980s. I’ve always enjoyed …

Saturday Special From the Vaults: Introduction to Jimi Hendrix: Kiss the Sky

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, The Vaults
March 17, 2012
5 mins to read
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For several years I wrote numerous non-fiction books for Enslow Publishers, ranging from science books to biographies. Among the biographies were four for a series called American Rebels, for which I wrote books on Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol…and Jimi Hendrix. For this week’s Saturday special, the introduction (complete with footnotes!) to Jimi Hendrix: …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: The opening to the first novel I wrote as a teenager

By Edward Willett in Blog, The Vaults
February 25, 2012
11 mins to read
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I’ve worked with young writers quite a bit over the past few years, teaching the Sage Hill Teen Writing Experience for three summers in a row, serving as writer-in-residence at Riffel High School and now, of course, as writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library. I’ve also edited the Saskatchewan Writer Guild’s magazine for young writer, …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: The Adventures of Bigfoot

By Edward Willett in Blog, The Vaults
February 18, 2012
2 mins to read
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I’ve not written a lot of comics…but here’s one I did, with an environmental theme, for Communities of Tomorrow via the Saskatchewan Science Centre. It appeared (maybe it still does, I’m not sure) in an exhibit at the Science Centre. I don’t think it was ever actually printed as a comic per se. The art …

Saturday Special from the Vaults: Janitor Work

By Edward Willett in Blog, The Vaults
February 12, 2012
12 mins to read
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This was one of the first, if not the very first, science fiction short stories I ever sold. It appeared in the 1984 Canadian Children’s Annual, the year I turned 25. The photo of the lunar surface is from Apollo 17. Darryl Norton looked glumly at the dust-covered object before him. It seemed to him …