Cavendish, Prince Edward Island

All day long I've been thinking - "oh, it's Father's Day". And it is. But when I looked at the calendar, I realized it's 20 June - and the 2-year anniversary of the world premiere of "Nine Lives"!

About this time two years ago I was really about on the verge of freaking out - excited, nervous, and thinking about 17 million details. Not to mention I had my own lines and choreography to worry about! But when our Maud and Anne sang "An Epoch In My Life" - because that night was certainly one for me - I watched from the wings and was just overwhelmed with complete and total awe that we pulled it off, and on the date we said we would, too. For whatever else that came before or has since, we did do that!

So this anniversary is an appropriate enough time to mention that, in lieu of doing a full show this year, we are doing something totally exciting and different - The Nine Lives of L.M. Montgomery Concert Tour! I've been way busy with it lately, to the point I had to stop working on the rewrite, but I'm pretty jazzed about it. We're taking a 90-minute concert version of the show - just the music - to all parts of Prince Edward Island from 13-24 July. The west end of the Island, the east end...everywhere in between. And while of course we'll do the familiar songs people have come to know the last 2 years, we decided we'd also throw in a few songs that we recorded for the demo in 2007 which were cut before the premiere. Plus, there are two new songs that are part of this latest rewrite that we're going to try out. So it's kind of a way of showing audiences how a musical develops, and I like taking that different angle of it. We hope y'all can make it!

Oh - also wanted to mention that Haley Batchilder, who was playing Ingénue Maud at this time 2 years ago, is back with us. Audiences really loved her, so it stands to reason they'll love her singing the full version of Maud. We've got a few other previous cast members joining us, too, plus some new faces...and me. Somehow, no matter how hard I try, I always end up in these shows! :) Not that I totally mind, because I do love performing, but I swear, it ends up being by necessity and not by design!

Tickets are $20, and all shows are at 7:30. I could go on explaining on how to get tickets, but all that info is on the web site: ninelivesoflmm.com. The site's in the middle of a major renovation (just one of the many million things I'm doing right now), but the main page as all the ticket info in print and via video. There's also some videos up from last year's show that are pretty spiffy. I've discovered how to implement a photo/video viewing device called a "shadowbox" and I love it! It's a lot of work and coding, but man when it's all done the way it looks makes me all goose-pimply!

That's all for now...happy 2 years to "Nine Lives"! My, they grow up so fast! :)

Cavendish, Prince Edward Island

Already the end of May! And the Island has pretty well transformed into its signature greenness - spring came a little early this year. Ah, I really do love this place...

Anyhow, it's been a busy time, between planning something that we're about to announce...and the rewrite. Can you believe I'm still on it? It's been over 2½ months since I started on it. It takes what it takes - it just always takes way longer than I hope it will. Plus, while Act I was easy in some ways, Act II has been a bigger challenge. Not that that was unexpected - the second half of Maud's life was much more complicated, more packed with detail, and of course darker. Try as you might, there are just certain truths about Maud's life that you can't get around. What I've been trying to do is balance out the darkness of her life with successes, with other positive things she might have focused on, and with an increased presence of the fictional characters which literally everyone likes. I feel, for the most part, that it's coming together. Of course, I won't know that for sure until I get to the end (because I like to write - and rewrite - in order) and read it from the beginning.

I'm almost at that point. The past few days I've been working on what I call the "season finale" scene - the last one before the very final scene after Maud's death where she's declared a Canadian of National Importance. In this "season finale" scene, everyone's storylines have to wrap up - Maud's, Chester's, Stuart's, Ewan's, and even the fictional characters. This one was always a toughie because of Maud's suicide. It's meant removing the song "Where Is My Happy Ending?", which we'd already shortened and sanitized for the bulk of the '08 run. Truth be told, even though it's a barnburner and a great vehicle for an actress, no one wants to sit and watch Maud lead herself to suicide while she boo-hoos about her life for 4½ minutes. So what I'm attempting now is a different song - a bookend to the new song at the top of Act I that consolidates her childhood. Maud's there for a part of it, but when we get into the really dark stuff, Maud's gone and it's her fictional heroines that cover it. I'm hoping that will work better than what we had before. It's not like I'm ashamed of what we had before - it was just time for a change, especially at the 11th hour of the show.

The tricky part of this "season finale" scene is that I'm also trying to better incorporate the show's throughline - the "power of imagination", or, as it's more commonly known, the law of attraction. We become what we think about. Focus on the good and we create more of it; complain about how bad it is and we create more of how bad it is. I really do believe in this theory - although I admit I have a hard time applying it. Negativity is a nasty habit to break! I've been trying to weave things in the show closer to this throughline, but I feel it's especially necessary at the end. If you're going to make a point, that's where to make it. The trick is, doing it without coming off hackneyed or preachy. Or repetitive. Plus, there's a speech of Anne's that I want to keep - it's just working into the new focus of the sequence that I'm finding a bit of a challenge. And then, it's got to time out to the underscore that's already in place. I think it'll be just fine - but sometimes it makes my head spin a bit.

Once that's done, I'll likely take this draft out somewhere by myself - I'm envisioning Maud's Cavendish Beach this time - and read the whole thing aloud to myself. And make notes and changes as I go along. Plus, since I'd skipped a few sections for lack of information, I will still have to go back and fix those up. Then Leo will read through it and he'll have his feedback; also, there were some lyrics he wanted me to take a look at, some of which I'm sure will change. After all that's over, my plan is to have a private reading done by past cast members and some that will be new to the material, just to have a nice cross-section of folks who will be able to help me determine whether or not these changes work. Still weeks away from that, though...and, like I said, we've been busy planning something else.

But that will have to wait 'til it's announced next week!

Cavendish, Prince Edward Island

Wow! Not a word on here since the night we closed the show last year. Almost 8 months ago! Well, admittedly, I was more burned out on the whole thing than I'd ever been before. It's not like I didn't think about the show at all, but I wasn't about to address it any time soon. I knew another rewrite was in store - although audiences were quite complimentary, the consensus still said it was "too long and too dark" despite my best efforts - and I needed some time off before I could even attempt it. Creativity is one thing when you're coming up with something from scratch - but when you keep having to rewrite the same thing over and over (and over and over!), it kind of takes the joy out of the whole proceeding.

Which is why I'm glad I waited. Leo and I have talked about some ideas and I'd taken lots of my own notes over the last several months...and somehow I find myself in a different place about this material than I ever have before. One of the things that was agreed was that there were still too many details about Maud's life. Hey, my intentions were honourable - I wanted the show to be an accurate depiction, after all. And it still will be. But when I started looking at stripping out some of the details, and thinking of things from that perspective, it was like it set off a chain reaction of other things would benefit from changes. I also revisited a playwriting book I'd read when preparing for the '08 show - and, like most books, you get something different out of it the second time. I became more attuned to conflict and motivation and throughline and being even less expositional still. I knew that Act II needed most of the changes, but I have to go through the script in order to make sense out of it, and to maintain (and create new) continuity. Still, I didn't expect to make many changes to Act I.

Which is what made it so surprising when unexpected changes started presenting themselves! I've been at it now at least 2 weeks...I guess closer to three. (Obviously I'm not chronicling this stuff as voraciously as I did in '06!) One thing I'd realized from the show last year is that we spent way too long on Maud's childhood - 25 minutes - and that it was the first section that needed a major reinvention. So that's kind of the mindset I started with, and it's persisted all the way through so far. Tonight I've been working on the top of Act II, and I'm just finding myself thinking about altering things that hadn't even occurred to me before. Nothing's written in stone, of course - it's all kind of an experiment and Leo hasn't seen any of it yet (even if he were in town, which he hasn't been for over a month, I wouldn't show it to him until I was finished anyway!). The changes might not necessarily work. But I'm all for heightening connections, heightening emotions, stressing throughline, letting the script be more self-referential in spots. All this while trying to address the too long/too dark conundrum. Look, I'm still proud of the show we put on last year - unlike all previous versions of the script, at least I can stand to look at that one still! But I'm in a very...mercenary place. If it doesn't need to be there, it goes. And if I have to add something new to solidify something or change the energy, then I try to do it sparingly.

There's going to be some changes to the web site, too, that follows that same philosophy. When we first started it felt important to document absolutely everything. Every picture, every article. Now that I'm feeling mercenary I'm desperately wanting to reinvent the site, too - especially because (for you technophiles), I've been doing it up using HTML all along since that's the only code I knew how to do, but it seems so early 2000s now, especially since so many sites are using CSS in combination with it. I'd been dying to learn CSS so I could pretty up my own site as well - but my brain fries so easily these days that I didn't know if I'd be able to make sense out of it. When this year started I finally figured out how to use a "lightbox" effect so that pictures would pop up and I wouldn't have to create a whole separate pages for them. And that's what the "Nine Lives" site needs, too. I'm happy to say that just in the last couple of days I'm starting to get this CSS thing, and I've worked it into a dummy page which is pretty much 95% what I want things to look like. So, in addition to the rewrite, I will slowly be reinventing the web site to look better, be more efficient, drop some of the unnecessary stuff but add some new goodies as well. Which is pretty much what's happening to the script! My plan is to have it done by the end of April, but it could easily be May before I get a chance to get it all done. Famous last words, of course. :)

So, what's up for summer 2010? There is something in the works but it's not confirmed and I can't talk about it yet. But it's been part of the triptych of my activities these days - rewrite, web site, and...well, this. "All in good time, my pretty...all in good time." I hope to make an announcement sometime soon!

Well, that's it for now...I just wanted to blog while I was actually thinking about it and inspired to - I've been in that place many times over the last few weeks but didn't just go ahead and do it. So I thought I would before another 8 months went by. This rewrite is going to be the one, y'all - third time's the charm! (And hey, lots of my favourite TV shows didn't hit their stride 'til 3rd season, either. So I feel like I'm in good company!)

Cavendish, Prince Edward Island
For reasons it would take too long to get into, Leo and I are now living in Cavendish! No, we didn't do it on purpose - it was Kijiji! Though, as it turns out, the lady who owns this house is a descendant of Chesley Clark (one of Maud's suitors), and her great-grandmother made Maud's wedding dress. And the sewing machine was actually in here until we moved in! How's that for synchronicity? There's also a big chance that Maud was actually in this house; it was built in 1910 and she left for Ontario in 1911. I just thought - what if she had her fittings for her wedding dress in here?

Anyway, there's another bit of history to think about today - it's closing night. Already! Obviously it's been maddeningly busy between the show and the move, which is why I haven't posted since opening night. It's been quite a ride. Tourism has been down dramatically on the Island this year, so all the shows took a hit. We were no exception. Thankfully things have picked up the last couple of weeks! We've also been incredibly blessed to have such a great cast who gives 110% no matter how many are in the audience. I've gotten so used to working with them now over the last 10 weeks that I'm bummed I won't get to anymore. Many of them are either returning to Ontario or just going there period; some are leaving tomorrow morning already.

Of course, it's all the business stuff that I've enjoyed the least. And the promotional stuff takes up a lot of time. So, whenever someone asks me "Did you enjoy your day off?", I'm like, "What day off?" It's pretty well non-stop. My favourite part remains actually being in the show. I'm sure I'm not supposed to be, but I've enjoyed it very much. I like getting into costume and putting on the make-up and greasing down my hair and putting on the microphone and getting out there and working with the actors. As I may have mentioned, my main role is Chester, and most of you know he's a bit of a bad boy. That's always fun to play. But I put lots of vulnerability into him so he doesn't come off like a cartoon character. It doesn't excuse him doing hurtful things to his wife and mother, but he does it because he perceives himself as hurt to begin with. I wrote him before Mary Rubio's biography came out, which had lots more about Chester, but I didn't want to incorporate any of that into the show. It's Maud's show, anyway; us other characters just influence her! :) The pinched nerve thing I mentioned before has persisted; usually with enough ibuprofen I can do a show fairly easily, but the last few shows have been more difficult. I guess I really shouldn't be doing the jitterbug with a pinched nerve! After tonight I'll rest it...at least I've been getting some exercise up there!

So, the question everyone asks is, "What's next?" I don't know. Honestly, I've spent all of 2009 working to get the show up and then actually doing it, and that was my sole focus. So I don't know what's next. All I know is that there are still some changes we'd like to make, but first I need a significant break. So I'm hoping to not deal with Nine Lives through September if I can help it. I'd like to take a look at the manuscript for my third book that I abandoned in 2004. I'd like to record some of my own songs that have also been languishing on the backburner. But yes, the time will come to revisit Maud and the gang, and work on getting another production going for 2010. I have some ideas...I'll have to do some of the legwork in September, but, as for creative changes, they're waitin' 'til October if I have anything to do with it!

Ironically enough, it was 5 years ago tomorrow at Cavendish Beach that Leo first said to me "Why don't we write a musical?" Of course, at first that concept was continuing Anne's story - and Anne & Gilbert had long since beat us to that idea, which is how Nine Lives came to be. The irony comes from the fact that, 5 years ago, we had come here on vacation. Now we can walk to Cavendish Beach in about 7 minutes! So I think tomorrow morning deserves a pilgrimage. It's also fitting that this production ends right on the anniversary - it's like coming full circle somehow. I dunno - I guess you had to be there!

I'm having a lot of feelings around the show ending and I think I'm just kind of trying not to pay attention to it right now. But I know it's going to be a bit of an emotional night. There's a good amount of relief, too...but I hate goodbyes. I'm way better at them than I used to be, but the actual moment of it is usually hard. I'm just glad we pulled off another show, and that it was better than last year's all around. That is gratifying!

I guess that's it...have to finish getting ready and then get out of here. Call time isn't for 4½ hours, but we've got closing night errands to run. I don't know what else to say except thank you to those who keep reading this and from Cavendish, PEI, this is AMJ signing off for two thousand nine! (The 2009 production, I mean...not the entire year! I'm sure you'll be hearing from me...from Whatever Comes Next.)

New Perth, Prince Edward Island
This is it! The official start to Season 2 of Nine Lives. Last night was the "unofficial" start, because we had an invitation-only preview night. Kind of takes the edge off - I was more nervous last night, but so far am feeling fairly mellow about tonight. Maybe that's because I actually got 8 hours' sleep for the first time in over a month! As for nervousness, ask me again in 4 hours! :)

These past 4 weeks have pretty well been a blur. But we have a really great cast, which has really helped. The first week was really like summer camp, and everyone just got along from the very first. Of course the work got a little more serious in the weeks that followed, but everyone's been very patient and just gone with the flow. Tech Week (which started Sunday) of course is the most nerve-wracking, especially with a show as technically complicated as ours. But it's really come together, and we've got some LED lights this year which is really making things more colourful the way we wanted, and no one can say the lighting's too dim this year.

Part of the reason for my blur is from not only directing (thank you to Rob Reddin for being an awesome stage manager and assistant director!), but from all the promotion and administrative stuff that has to get done, and the video/audio stuff I've had to do, and then there's actually being in the show. I wasn't supposed to be, but it turned out that way - personally, I love performing and it's kind of been my favourite part of the whole thing this year. But I literally have to be on my toes! When I was in the show last year, I was sort of a glorified extra - I was in one number, had about five lines, and just had to fake my way through one little waltz step. This time I'm playing Maud's son Chester, so I have rather a lot of lines in comparison, plus I've had to learn a jitterbug, and a bit of Highland step for the wedding dance at the end of Act I. It's been hard to find the time to work on everything! But at least last night I felt closer to nailing the jitterbug than I have so far. It's all the more tricky because I seem to be having a recurrence of a pinched nerve thing I had 9 years ago, which makes dancing - and practicing dancing - varying degrees of uncomfortable. But I'm a firm believer in "the show must go on", so as long as I can stand I'll be up there hoofin' it!

Well, not much more to say - nor time to say it! I've spent most of my day trying to fix up a technical problem we've had (computers are great, and I certainly couldn't live without one at this point, but boy do they present their problems and idiosynchracies!)...that sucks up a lot of time! So, have to start getting ready, and try and deal with the sore back that cropped up overnight that goes with the pinched nerve! Oh, well...as long as history doesn't repeat itself and I don't get sick after the second show, I'm good!

Nine Lives is back - and we're at the Carrefour. TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

New Perth, Prince Edward Island
I guess it's real now - in about 10½ hours we'll be having our first rehearsal with the 2009 cast. It's kind of funny to say that as if this happens every year, since this is only our second, and when I first started keeping this 9LoLMM blog the idea of a cast was so far in the distance that it barely merited thinking about. But now, here it is - again!

It's very late and I have to get to bed, so this is going to be uncharacteristically short. (Or at least I say that now. LOL) It's just, like last year, a little surreal to be starting rehearsals. Not only does it mean we're actually opening in 4 weeks (4 weeks! What happened to 4 months?), but, because the show has evolved since last year, it's like putting it front of folks for the first time all over again. It's always one thing for Leo and I to bandy words about it; it's only part of our universe then. But rehearsals mean the beginning of putting it in front of the world - or at least the Island. :) That, of course, is what you want when you create something, whether it be a musical or a book or a song or any kind of art - you want it to be seen and/or heard by "the public". Yet, it's always a little unnerving - especially if you're the kind of artist who puts a lot of yourself into your work. I'm definitely one of those. But I think I always go through this process - I did before the workshop in '07 and I know I did when we started rehearsals last year. And I'll go through it again on opening night. I guess it just comes with the territory!

Well, that was rather philosophical. Happens when I'm up late and I'm overtired!

So, are y'all ready for two thousand nine? Because it starts tomorrow afternoon whether we're ready or not! :)

New Perth, Prince Edward Island
I'm up way too late - quelle surprise! As I'm sure many of you know, working on web sites takes time. But this "retrofit" was for a good reason - tickets for this year's production at the Carrefour go on sale in 8 hours! On May nine, of course! Click here if you want 'em!

It's been pretty well non-stop since I last left you - didn't I predict it would be? Not a day off, pretty much not a waking moment where something having to do with the show isn't being done. Hard to believe we're only 2 months away from another opening! Aside from all the administrative and promotional stuff I've been up to, in April we went to Toronto, and then in the middle of everything I worked on the rewrite. I had the hardest time finding opportunities to work on it! The last few rewrites, I at least had committed chunks of time for them. Not this time. It was pretty well whenever I could spare, with a few of those chunks available if I was lucky. I know Maud talked about having to write that way and, if I didn't know what she was on about before, I do now!

But, I think it was worth it. I feel pretty good about this one. I stripped out a lot of the detail that I thought was important before and consolidated some things and shortened down others - I just tried to get to the point of things faster and put more emphasis on the characters. We've also been reimagining the staging, since last year's - in retrospect - could have used a little more energy. I think it'll be more kinetic now. I even wrote a whole new song. When I first started it, I thought it was going to be impossible. It had been too long since I wrote the other material and there was so much story that had to be worked into it and I wasn't feeling the magic. But somehow, a piece at a time (even at one point with a lyric coming to me in the car on the way to dinner, which I wrote down on a menu when we got there!), it fell together. Leo just finished orchestrating it. And it will serve to replace some of the talky sections of Act II. I feel pretty good about the song, and pretty good about this new version of the show. You still never know what it's really going to be like until it gets onto the stage, but having already gone through this process now has been a big help to me - kind of overall!

Anyhow, auditions are done (and now you know where a lot of the administrative work went) and I'll be able to announce the cast by the end of the month. Bringin' back some old faces, bringin' in some new faces!

That's the best I can do at 2 in the morning...I'm really wiped...that web site stuff is deceptively exhausting. But we've got a show, and now we've got tickets. Hopefully you'll have tickets, too! (Plug plug.)

Funny...it seems like a lifetime ago since last year's show - yet it feels like this year's show is tomorrow! There's still so much that has to be done...many times I wonder how it's all going to happen. I just know that it did already once, and that's what I base my faith on! For as burned out as I was when we closed last year (secret: I was burned out before we closed!), I do find myself looking forward to doing the show again - only because I think we'll be able to do it better this time! No sophomore slumps allowed in this show!

Sleep really shouldn't be allowed either, not with all the work that needs to be done - but one must have it. So, good night and see you next time!

New Perth, Prince Edward Island
OK, so I haven't journaled in forever. It's down to a lot of factors, really. Back in the beginning, it seemed important to document every little thing - and the novelty of that has certainly worn off! Plus, a lot of what's been going on has been on the business end of things, and not only is that not particularly appropriate to write about, but it would be incredibly boring if I did! Finally, I just always seem to be too busy. I thought things would cool down after the run ended in August, but they just kind of haven't - always five new things to do for every one thing I accomplish! Such is the world of "Nine Lives"!

But I'm not complaining. Remember, two years ago I was doing data entry. At least everything I do now is toward the show! And the interesting part of it is, last year we were almost totally flying blind with everything; this year we've got last year's experience to work from, and it does make things easier to a point. Or at least more informed!

So, undoubtedly you've heard by now that we're doing it again - the show, that is - this time at the Carrefour in Charlottetown. We don't open 'til 11 July, so you'd think we'd be able to breathe a little bit for a while before things start getting crazy, but they already kind of are. Now that we're able to get an earlier start, we're just trying to be better about getting things into place earlier. So I suspect things might hit a lull once we get a lot of these initial things scratched off our to-do lists. See - I told you that kind of stuff is boring to read about!

But what's got me finally on here is...well, kind of a throwback to the old days. You may recall that, last year, we had to make changes to the show in the middle of the run. Leo kind of takes stuff like that more in stride, but it was pretty tough for me. It's hard to write under that kind of pressure, and there's nothing particularly creative in writing in that atmosphere, at least not for me. Was I ultimately glad we made the changes? Yes. I think it ended up playing well and the audience response seemed to prove it. Still, I knew more changes would have to be made, but I was so burned out after the show that just thinking about the script was exhausting.

But slowly, Leo and I have discussed some things, and, now that there's a new production in the works, I sort of am feeling my mojo coming back. I read through the 2008 script and made tons of notes. There's still a lot of things I'd like to do with the material that I'm not yet sure how to accomplish, but I had a rather nice moment with it tonight. I knew I had to start getting back to it, so I thought I would at least transfer some of the easy changes from my handwritten notes - a different word here, a line out there. You know, to start building up to the big stuff. One of the things Leo was talking about doing was cutting a chunk out of It's In My Nature. I resisted it at first but then saw where he was going and agreed - only thing was, the part he wanted to cut included the line the power of imagination just won't be suppressed. Considering the power of imagination (AKA The Law of Attraction) is our throughline, I wasn't sure how to make the cut and still retain the line. Really, I have felt much more laboured in my writing lately - it doesn't seem to come as easily. So I'm sitting there with this song thinking I didn't know how to make it work. And suddenly...it came to me...I knew exactly what to do! And when I did it, I wondered why I didn't do it before and what took me so long to think of it! I know that's probably not a big deal to anyone, a couple of lines in a song, but it was kind of like "the old days", sitting in the office at the Field-Cech Agency in '06 writing the first draft when everything just poured out of me. I really needed that glimmer, and I hope it's just the first of many. I've still got some work to do!

That's pretty much where things are right now. I get overwhelmed a lot, feeling like everything I have to do in the next 5 months is a big mountain in front of me. But then, as Leo reminded me, I just have to do what's in front of me today. True, that. I just have to know it'll all get done. Hey - we pulled it off last year! And so we shall pull it off again. And I honestly do think the show's going to be even better this year. That's the plan, anyway!

So if I don't end up journaling again for a few months, you'll know why...although I will do my best to at least pop in every few weeks or so. It's good to have my journaling mojo back again as well!

New Perth, Prince Edward Island

Over three months already since the last entry? I honestly don't know where the time goes anymore - this is the first time I've even journaled from the house we've been in since June!

Hopefully...this will make up for it. :)

Kings Playhouse
Georgetown, Prince Edward Island

Hard to believe it was a month ago tonight we took to the stage. Even harder to believe I haven’t had a chance to blog since then! I’ve really kind of fallen off the wagon with documenting the show, ironically, right when there’s the most to document. As we speak, Haley (Batchilder, Ingenue Maud) is on stage performing An Orphan No More. During shows is sometimes the only chance I get to sit for a while, so I thought tonight I would take advantage of the time and tap out a few words to y’all! Especially since I’m not up until I Am A Newspaper Woman! Yes, I ended up being in the show – OK, deep down I really wanted that, but once we got everyone cast I thought it wasn’t really my place to snag a role. Turns out I have four of them!

Anyway, it’s been one heckuva ride, and it’s hard to believe we close two weeks from tonight. In so many ways, it feels like the show is out of my hands – taken on a life of its own. That’s only right, I suppose, and I don’t think about it much at this point, but at times it’s still weird considering it was just something of mine and Leo’s for so long. Now thoughts of what comes next keep coming up, and I get very attached when I’m doing a show – I find myself not wanting to think of what happens when we say good-bye to the cast I’ve gotten very used to having around on an almost daily basis.

Over the last month, a production company that’s producing a documentary about Maud and the 100th anniversary of Anne followed us around with cameras for a while, the Japanese network NHK also followed us around with cameras (the piece aired 4 July; I can’t wait to see it even though I won’t be able to understand it!)…what else…well, there was the L.M. Montgomery Conference, where I spoke, and also where a bunch of us from the show performed An Epoch In My Life and Maud Meets Her Public. And then the apparently inevitable time came where we’d gotten the show up on stage in full only to find out certain things didn’t work, so we ended up trimming off close to 20 minutes to make it even tighter, and not as dark. I don’t think we realized it had gotten as dark as it did. But we fixed it, and we’re pretty pleased with the show the way it is now. Then there’s been the bit about getting out and promoting the show. We didn’t have a show last night, and my fellow cast members keep asking me “Did you have a good day off?” Pshaw! AMJ does not get days off! :)

Now Maud is finishing up More Important Things. You know what’s weird? I’ve been mentioning these titles in this journal for close to 2 years – now people are downstairs performing them!

Now Maud and Ewan are asking What Do You Propose. I just got done with Publishers’ Relay (an instrumental where us four publishers unilaterally reject Anne of Green Gables – curs, ain’t we!). It’s my understanding that there are some folks from The Confederation Centre in the audience tonight, which could mean that some of the actors that were in our workshop last September (was that 10 months ago? Dang!) are here. Boy, has the show changed since then!

Gotta go do Maud Meets Her Public. Plus I like to listen to An Epoch In My Life first. Shame I don’t get a chance to see it, though!

Well, that’s it for me until the top of Act II. Which isn’t long from now! Maud Meets Her Public is my favourite number to perform. What I also enjoy is being down there during certain visuals – even though I can only see them backwards because of the rear-projection! And hey – how many people do you know who get to hug Anne every night? :) I get to dance with her, too, sometimes, during Folly In Love. I rather like our Anne!

I really forget most of the time now that I wrote all of this. That’s probably the trippiest part.

I think I’ll just journal periodically through the to the end of the show. Give y’all a chance to know what it’s like during a show – and maybe it’ll make up for my lack of posting! Right now, Ingenue Maud is getting married for the end of Act I and discovering it’s Too Late. Adult Maud takes over for her from there.

I still can’t believe how fast we were able to pull this off. Some say it takes 10 years to put a show like this together. And here 5 months ago we didn’t even know for sure if we’d be able to do a show this summer. I forget that tiny detail more often than not. It hits me once in a while during the show, at random times. “Wow, this was just in our heads not that long ago.” But I’m sure that’s not the first time I’ve expressed a sentiment like that!

Well, before I forget, I have to change my vest for the top of Act II. Congregation Man doesn’t do much except stand there with his hands behind his back trying to look serious, but he must look right. Although there have been times where Michael Farrell (Ewan) and I whisper silly comments to each other and almost start to laugh!

OK, just did 1917. I found out who a couple of the people are who are here from the workshop. I just think back to that workshop version…it’ll be interesting to hear what they think!

Gotta get back down to do “backing vocals” for Eternally Lost!

Well, that’s it for me! Got through The Dream Life Waltz, and now no more Congregation Man until the curtain call. But I usually hang out backstage through most of this Act after I’m done for some reason. One night last week I took the video camera back there to get some documentary footage, but it was just too dark to get anything. Even after I tried this trick of shooting it at 4 frames per second, which I discovered lets you “see in the dark”, essentially. The only down side is that it looks like a slow-motion security camera – or at least the way it used to be when you looked at videos on-line in the late ‘90s!

Ah, yes…Character Analysis…we usually get a little silly down there. Can’t resist doing it again!

I guess this is long enough for now – not really telling you much at this point! Besides, Adult Maud (Lori Linkletter) is down there doing the “new and improved” Where Is My Happy Ending? Which, aside from The Alpine Path reprise, is our happy ending for the night. So I guess I’ll pop back on here the next time I get a moment – hopefully it won’t take a whole month to do it!

This is over in two weeks already? Lord, that was fast.

Georgetown, Prince Edward Island

I have really wanted to journal more on here in these weeks leading up to the show, but it's just been impossible. There's been way too much to do with precious little time to do it - rehearsals, props, visuals, posters, programs, press...the list goes on. Plus, Leo and I moved from Stratford to New Perth in the middle of all this; we're essentially living out of boxes because we haven't even had time to unpack!

But now I write from Kings Playhouse in Georgetown, where, in 13 days, we will unleash our show on the world after pushing 3 years. The cast and crew have gone home, but Leo is working on painting the train facade; I was working on re-editing the visuals for Eternally Lost, which I just finished. Then I wanted to see if I could get onto the Internet with our new laptop. Success!

It's a kick to write you from the theatre. Heck, we've been here more than home these days anyway! And, while it feels like there are still so many elements up in the air and part of me is wondering how on Earth we're going to pull this off in less than 2 weeks, I have to say that the show is really coming together. We have a pretty talented group, and they ask lots of questions in their effort to put forth their best performances. Some things are still a little rough, of course, but, considering the amount of material we're asking them to put out there, it's really going pretty well.

And you can now include me in their number. We had a little trouble casting our Ewan; what ended up happening is we shifted some roles around so that Michael Farrell, who's playing Hugh, could take on Ewan as well. It wasn't our intention to have the actor playing Maud's father also play her husband - what message does that send! LOL But he's really tackling it with gusto, and we're glad to have him. What it means, though, is that Michael's former peripheral roles were left without an actor - so it's me to the rescue! Oh, OK, I admit it - I very much wanted to have a cameo role in at least this first production. I haven't been on stage for 6 years and I really missed it. So I'm playing things like Congregation Man and Publisher Holt and Reporter #1. But it's nice to be in our own show - at least I know the material! :) Not that knowing it hasn't stopped me from going up on a line or two. That's show biz!

It is tricky, directing and acting at the same time. Generally, as we're now doing complete run-throughs of acts, Leo and I are to sit and watch and take notes to give to the actors afterwards. I can do that now only up to a point before I have to go around and get on stage to do my thing, and I can't exactly take my notebook into the wings. So I don't always get the most accurate notes. Fortunately, our stage manager, Andrea, pays incredible attention to detail, and Leo certainly makes notes of his own - between running the backtracks, that is! But boy, has it been an experience.

An experience I haven't really had much of a chance to...well, experience. There's so much to do and so much to remember, and I feel quite overwhelmed by it all, and pretty soon this part of the show will be over and I'll be lucky to remember any of it! I'm also disappointed because I really wanted to thoroughly document this process on video and have only gotten a percentage of the footage I wanted - if only because I've had to man the video camera myself, which wasn't what I had in mind. So, the slant of my eventual/hopeful documentary may have to change. I wanted to have it end with opening night, but I may have to go into the actual run. After 20 June, once the show is up and running, we won't have much to do in terms of directing anymore, so that might free me up to do some of these other things...the documentary...and the pop tie-in I've been absolutely aching to write and perform...

I can't believe we're already 4 weeks into rehearsals. Things are only going to get more intense over these next dozen days, so I may not get another chance to blog before then unless I can get on-line here at the theatre again. I admit I haven't paid nearly as much to the Law of Attraction/power of the imagination as I'd like to - but the fact that we've come this far hasn't escaped me, and I guess I'm just sort of assuming everything's going to come together in time. God knows we've had more than one miracle even recently - admittedly we could use a few more!

Oh - before I forget...you may be interested to know that we filmed at Green Gables yesterday. The weather finally cooperated (mostly!) and the leaves are finally out. But so were the bugs! I had to edit them out of the footage - the suckers would fly right into the lens, and, given the size of our screen, they'd look like 747s! We got some nice footage in Lover's Lane, and we went back to the homestead (where Maud lived with her grandparents) and got new footage there. I've essentially got everything except for two sequences - three if you count the 1919 movie version of Anne, but we're shooting our own version of that tomorrow. We're also recording the voice-overs that will be used in the show tomorrow. Who said Sunday was a day of rest!

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I wanted to get a decent post up here to make up for the lack of them these past weeks. I'm grateful we're getting to do this finally instead of just talking about it, and we will soon see what people have to say about it. The one thing I'm most proud of is that we're getting to world premiere on the exact 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne, which is what we wanted all along, even when we first started doing research in 2005! Whatever happens, we'll always have that. And that, my friends, is the power of imagination at its best!

Now I'd just like to bring some more sleep into my reality!

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Dare I say it? - one month.

It's pretty wild, after thinking of 20 June 2008 and marking 18 months, 12 months, even 6 months. To be down to one month is...well, let's not even think about that!

But things are pretty well full tilt over here. We started rehearsals with the cast 10 days ago and we're chugging along. Sometimes I think we're making amazing progress and sometimes I think it's all going too slow. Which probably means things are progressing at exactly the speed they're supposed to. I have been feeling pretty stressed out lately - I keep saying "I don't have time" for this, "I don't have time" for that. And what have I been preaching about all along? The power of imagination, right? Law of Attraction? Sure, Mike - keep saying you don't have enough time, and you won't! So I'm doing my best to correct my thinking. Things have been in pieces today, but I'm trying to just pay attention to the forward movement.

Today has been about the visuals, since the cast had the day off. Some of it's been cluttered by which computer to use, which program, blah blah blah. Still, even that's moved forward. The visuals are actually the thing I've been most stressed out about, simply because we decided to have so much of them!

And I have never paid so much attention to leaves in my life. Call me crazy, but my memories from my childhood paint a picture of leaves budding way earlier than this. I thought we'd be able to get some decent footage of nature in late March, early April...here we are heading up late May and we're only now starting to see the trees do their thing. Thank heaven for small mercies. Maybe by the weekend or early next week we'll finally get that footage. In the meantime, I've gone around and gotten as much footage as I could that doesn't involve leaves! Bluffs, ocean, water. It's getting there. It's all getting there.

I really want to be enjoying this ride more - it's the fruition of close to three years' worth of dreaming and working - but I'm finding it difficult. Still, every once in a while it hits me. The first time I heard one of our songs rehearsed at Kings Playhouse, it became especially apparent. But I guess I feel if I don't ride herd on all of this stuff, it won't get done in time. Which goes back to changing the way I've been thinking.

Anyway, one month from tonight, we're on. Our cast is on. And they're an amazing group, which at least puts my mind at ease about one thing!

Gotta get back to work. More video stuff to figure out. Come on, leaves - make it happen over here!

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
A real quick one, even this late. The last few weeks have pretty well been a whirlwind - and it's only just starting! Tonight I've been working on initial blocking plans, which all could go out the window once we start physically putting things onstage. It's a start, anyway. And while being sick, too! There's just no time to stop now, not even for a sore throat.

Spring has not sprung just yet - at least, not in the way I'd hoped, which means we're going to have to get most of the rest of the screen footage in May. A bit tight, considering rehearsals start 10 May and there's no telling how long it will take to have all the video processed. I'm just going on faith on a lot of this stuff. If I start thinking about how much time we don't have, it'll make me insane. So, using what little of the law of attraction I've been able to muster in the midst of all this craziness, I'm just assuming it will all come together and be ready in time. What else can I do?

Leo has to conduct Bugs Bunny on Broadway next week in Fort Wayne, Indiana - while he's gone, I'll be jetting off to Toronto. I have to look into adding to our kitty of costumes, but mostly I have to get more elements to display on our screen. I'm going to pop by The University of Guelph to see what I can get in terms of photos Maud took (especially interiors and exteriors of where she lived). But I'll be driving up to Lake Muskoka at Bala, Ontario where Maud and her family vacationed in 1922 to do some filming. You may recall we were up there in October. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. I don't even mind if it's a little cloudy or foggy - when Maud used Bala as her locale for The Blue Castle, she did fictionalize it as "Lake Mistawis". To me that evokes mist! I guess we will, as they might say in Avonlea, leave it up to Providence.

It's been a really intense time and there are moments where it all seems very overwhelming. And stressful, particularly. It helps me to remember where we were a year ago, 6 months ago - even 2 months ago - and just how far we've come. That usually gives me the juice to keep going.

Well, there you go, April practically over. I don't know when I'll be able to get on here again, but who knows - I may be pleasantly surprised. Somewhere under all of this I am extremely grateful, and hey - I could be back doing data entry like I was this time last year! Hard to complain when I put it that way!

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Just a little sense of déjà vu tonight. Tomorrow is our first day of auditions, and I'm spending the evening printing out "sides" - pages of dialogue for the actors to read. A little over 7 months ago, I was doing the same thing in preparation to audition the company of the Confederation Centre - you may recall their cast stepped in for the workshop. How much the same printing these sides up is, and how different!

Obviously, the main difference is that back then it was for the workshop and now it's for our own production. But the thing that strikes me the most is the libretto! I had to reference some of the older drafts over the weekend while I did a little cleaning up on the current version (I'd love to say "final version", but we still have to get a pesky 6 minutes out of this thing) and I about cringed! It's not that it didn't have its merits, but I've learned an awful lot about this the last several months and...well, it's not so much that it's painful looking over the old versions, but more awe-inspiring that there have been so many changes. And yet, it's essentially the same story, just reinvented.

There's a line in An Epoch In My Life, the duet where Maud and Anne marvel at the publication of Anne of Green Gables, where Anne says "To-day I go out and meet the world!" - and that's kind of how it feels. It's not just Leo and I discussing the script anymore. It's not even putting it in front of dramaturgs. Now we're really bringing other people into it. I'm not nervous, actually...it's just an interesting experience.

Well, back to work...and I don't dare count the number of days just now!

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
It's kind of weird how things come together. First off, I pretty well finished that new replacement song I was talking about before - all except for 2 lines I want to re-examine. Didn't have a title for it forever, and suddenly it came to me - Character Analysis. It's almost out of place among the other titles, but since in the song the characters are chatting about Maud it creates this trippy double meaning, and I love those. But it was a hard labour - I spent the whole weekend trying to write it!

Conversely, we changed the opening of Act II - more to the point, we pushed it forward by 2 years. Fine, except it made half of the lyrics in Mistress of the Manse obsolete. And, after a previous attempt at fixing it that didn't work, I was really dreading tackling it again. But today I decided to take a whack at it, and it didn't end up being nearly so hard! Of course, I didn't have to rewrite the whole thing - just certain sections. I think we now have something that works. I'll know tomorrow - I usually have to let lyrics sit overnight and come back to them to make sure. That, and Leo gets back from L.A. tomorrow, so they will also require approval by his eyes!

Mistress of the Manse, though, is kind of the set-up for how Maud felt she had to put her duties as a minister's wife above her writing. And here I am today, trying to write new lyrics in between finally getting to multiple chores that have sat undone for too long. Just sort of got into what I call my "Donna Reed Syndrome", and when that comes, I have to clean, because once it passes I don't feel like it anymore. So I'd work on a line, go do laundry, work on another line, clean the bathroom, have to come back to the song in the middle of it because I got an idea, and so on. But it was strangely fitting considering the subject matter!

Now I just have to bridge one gap that occurred when Leo shortened the 11 o'clock number, and I may have a workable libretto. Although I still have to get 6 minutes out of the thing! I did some consolidations and somehow only lost 17 seconds. Time for the dramaturg again, because Mikey's stuck. But I do intend to read it through again for continuity, and maybe something will come to me then.

85 days and counting.

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Whew! Quite a flurry since my last post - and I don't just mean the fact there's been new snow the last couple of days. I think in normal circumstances I wouldn't mind the late appearance, but we have more footage to get for the screen and I need things to be green again before long so we're not cutting it too close to the opening! As we have to have video processed and synched up to music - which theoretically I could do myself but A) I'm not really hooked up to do that high-quality of HD video, and B) I'd really rather not have to do it - I don't want to be filming stuff into May if I can help it!

Anyway...lots of press releases to send out and lots of stuff to do to get auditions under way. I'm only in the last couple of days really able to put that aside and get back to work on finishing The Rewrite That Wouldn't Die. I'm reasonably certain this is the best one, though. If anything, I'm juiced by certain new things.

The irony of the whole thing is...well, you may recall in late '06 I wrote a reprise for Maud called Why Did I Say Farewell, which depicted Maud visiting her father's grave for the first time some 40 years after the last time she saw him. Months ago, I realized it just sort of sat there and didn't advance the story any. So we were going to pull it. Then we got the idea to bring her father into it as a ghost, using a shorter version of the song. And we were pretty settled on it. Then it was just a matter of setting up a shot in a graveyard while snow was gently drifting down to use as a backdrop. Easier said that done. Of course, as I write, the snow is doing almost exactly what I would have wanted it to do. Not so the few times I tried to film it while Leo was away in Toronto. Usually it was a matter of too much wind that was blowing really wispy snow right into the lens. You should have seen me stomping across this one graveyard, trying to get to the other side, accidentally bumping the tripod into headstones! Anyway, finally on a different day I got a halfway decent shot - not enough snow, but at least the wind wasn't howling. Then when Leo got back, we gave it another try - again in oppressive wind, but at least it wasn't right into the lens.

Then, as we went over the last version, we realized that the song still was kind of bringing things to a stop. So what ended up happening was, Leo suggested actually giving the fictional characters a song to help consolidate events of the period. Only some of the characters had sung so far, and usually duets with Maud. This would be just among themselves - or at least, the characters that were in existence at this point in time. We've had our struggles over certain ideas lately, but this wasn't one of them - and we said a final farewell to Farewell. Leo recorded this new song pretty well on the spot, and, as we speak, I am trying to put lyrics to it. Always harder to insert lyrics into a predetermined rhythm - the only song I did that for was An Epoch In My Life, and that was only because I was so in love with the tune. But, on this snowy day, it's formulating. Of course, I'm journaling now as sort of a stalling tactic! :)

And, oh, yes, the irony...all that fussing to try and get graveyard footage, and now we're not even going to use it! I did wonder through all that trouble if someone was trying to tell us something.

Double oh yes! I almost forgot to tell you...I'm really psyched, because today I heard Two-Timin' Timmy and Folly In Love in their proper form. Leo did his best on these Big Band numbers - which come up during the throes of Chester's affair - but, as he's in L.A. again, he took his scores to an actual Big Band band. I just got the MP3s of the mixes a few hours ago and WOW! Are you guys going to be surprised. In a good way!

Well, I'd best get back to it. In the meantime, here's a pic from our press conference on 10 March while we were at the podium, speaking to the press.

Also, a shout out to Tickled Orange, a resource site for all things Anne and Maud - they plugged us on their site, and one good deed deserves another! They have all kinds of great stuff I wish I had time to go through! :)

89 days and counting...

P.S. If you want to see the newspaper bits about us, check out our Press page on the 9LoLMM site...

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Oy! I stay up way too late on this computer. But I wanted to update the web site, and that always seems to take way longer than it should. Mostly, our artwork for the show is starting to crystallize, in the form of Maud's signature - which I'm proud to say the Heirs have authorized us to use.

But better than that, peep THIS!



I told you it was going to be huge. :) There's so much else I'd like to say right now, but it's so late...suffice it to say this was mostly the reason I've been so quiet and cryptic on here in recent weeks. Lots of meetings, lots of figuring out, lots of stuff I couldn't really talk about. But this is what it's led to. And now the fun begins!

And the work, too - but it's not like I'm not already used to that!

Stay tuned...so much more coming...we have main engine start!!

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Well, tomorrow's going to be a big day in the history of 9LoLMM. I'm not going to tell you anything more about it at the moment, except to say this:

It's gonna be HUGE.

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
It's waaaaaaay too late - but I wanted to announce that the web site has been officially updated. New look, new pix, new...well, I won't tell you here. I'll tell you with a new video! Peep it below.

I really need to get to bed!

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Well, after a long and difficult labour, I seem to have given birth to the new version of the rewrite. I'm timing it as we speak. Pray to whatever you believe in that it finally comes in at the proper length!

I've also been working on something else like crazy. And that is the web site. There's been a change to the show, one that needed to be reflected on-line. At least it was an excuse to reinvent the look and add some more pix and other goodies. There will be some audio coming - excerpts from the demo recordings. Now how can you resist that? ;) Anyway, I'm going live with it tomorrow, so check 'er out and let us know what you think.

I feel confident the libretto will at least be closer. I did some major stuff! That, and I just cleaned up a lot of things, made it less expositional - apparently I am Exposition King of the Universe! But now I've seen the error of my ways.

Well, back to timing. Not much else to do on a rainy day, is there?

Rain in February? Thanks a lot, global warming! :p

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
I look forward to a day when I don't have to do any more rewriting. When the libretto is finished, forever and ever, amen, and needs no more re-editing, reconfiguring or reinventing.

I'm just saying.

(If Maud could have her grumble book, I can have my grumble blog!)

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
"Rip and tear! Rip and tear!"

That's a quote from SCTV's "Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses" skit - but it's terribly apt considering what's being done to the libretto! :)

I'm attempting to continue this rewrite - in between the increasing administrative stuff, that is. In some ways, grateful as I am for the progress, I'm reminded of how frustrated Maud would get trying to write in between all her minister's wife duties. I'm kind of only able to do this in drips and drabs. So, working on a scene that should've only taken a day at most has so far taken four.

You may or may not recall I had written two songs, The Correspondence of Edwin and The Further Correspondence of Edwin, all by way of describing the pseudo-triangle between Maud, Edwin Simpson, and Herman Leard. Well, the one thing that struck me during the workshop in September is that the whole sequence had a way of dragging, and now that we're trying to "stick to the through-line", I've had to reimagine things to make it tighter and more relevant. So, I've had to combine the tracks into one, and rewrite all but a few lines to make it reflect the new direction of the scene. It was much fluffier before, only leading up to the engagement. Now, the song is the engagement. I'd been used to the old version for well over a year, so when I started putting new lyrics to it, it seemed really odd. Fortunately, Leo likes the direction I'm going, and I think it actually makes the song more substantial while retaining its sense of fun. Obviously these are not changes I can implement in a 5-minute session! I'm having to go back through the journals, and even initial drafts of the libretto to try and make things make sense. Exhausting by itself! Let alone the three jillion other things that keep coming up to be taken care of.

That being said, I'm certainly grateful there's stuff to come up, considering not that long ago all was way too quiet on the Western front. And it's all leading to...well, something I hope to announce in the not-too-distant future; alas, I must remain quiet about it yet. :) I can tell you that we're not just trying to do this by ourselves anymore - more and more, we're getting help, and if that's not something to be grateful for, I don't know what is!

Speaking of reinventions, I hope to do one to the web site before long...if I can ever get the time, that is! (Wow - I really channeled Maud in that statement! LOL)

Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Well, there's a whole lot going on - but I can't tell you about most of it! Not yet. But there are some really exciting things in the works, and, as soon as I can make any kind of announcement, you better believe I will right here.

All the craziness in trying to get a show on its feet aside, my world recently has been about rewrites. Yes, it's certainly not the first time, as you know. But this time, it's kind of more about learning. And study. I got detailed notes from a theatre staffer and one dramaturg, plus Leo's had me reading this book called Naked Playwriting. So there's a lot of stuff that's been percolating in my head. In some ways, I can see where I made some tactical and structural errors, which I'm planning to fix. But the one thing I've learned about dramaturgy in the past few weeks is that, while they can give you suggestions, you don't have to take 'em! Things were suggested to us that I wouldn't do in a million years. Of course, it's all made me look at our show in a different way. Some answers I have - I just haven't implemented them, because I wanted to wait until I finished the book (which I did this afternoon). Others...well, they haven't made themselves known yet.

One thing I'd like to say here and now is...I hope you'll all forgive me! There are certain things I'm going to have to cut and certain characters that I'm going to have to cut, all of which is going to dilute the accuracy somewhat. Or at least the amount of it. I know some of you will be sitting there going "Where's such-and-so?" But something else I've become more acutely aware of is the through-line - and the necessity of sticking near it. For me, that through-line is and remains the power of the imagination - whether that's Maud's creative process and books, or the way she "imagined" positive or negative things into her experience. If you know anything about The Law of Attraction, or have read or seen The Secret, you know what I'm talking about. The school of thought that suggests the inner creates the outer, or that our thoughts create our experiences. I'm a rather stringent student of that particular school, even though I'm nowhere near mastering it. So, whatever doesn't contribute to that through-line - with a few exceptions - has to go. There are two characters in particular that I hate cutting, and never imagined cutting, but the story drags when they're there. It isn't just about getting the thing down to 2hrs 40mins or less anymore. Now I've got to make it make more sense structurally. In the beginning I was just determined to do a straightforward biography. And I'd still like to, but I see now that the only way to make this stageable is to have a theme and follow through on it. People have been telling me that right along, but...well, my skull is a bit on the thick side. :)

Anyway, it is still my aim to put something out there that accurately reflects Maud (I may have to leave some things out, but I'm not about to start making things up!) and that you'll all still enjoy. But don't hate me, OK, guys? :)

North York, Ontario
2008 is here! Funny how when we first started up with this show and decided to get it ready in time for a 2008 début, it seemed like this far-away, mystical number. And now it's here! And I have a feeling it's going to be the busiest year yet. Hopefully with the biggest payoff yet!

Anyway, Happy New Year to all Lucy Maud Montgomery fans and to everyone who's followed and supported us on our Nine Lives journey. May whatever you wanted that eluded you in '07 show its face in abundance in '08!

And happy official 100 years of Anne of Green Gables!

Stratford, Prince Edward Island