What's up with schools?

In the past three days there have come to my attention no less than four incidents involving schools. On Tuesday, my son's school had to be evacuated due to a bomb threat at the bank that is adjacent to the school. It turned out to be untrue, the burglar had a stone wrapped up in a parcel and only claimed it was a bomb, but steps had to be taken, of course. The RCMP bomb squad had to travel from Halifax (we have nothing like this in Cape Breton? That's a whole other story, I guess) only to find out that there was no real threat. I must say that the evacuation was well-handled and most of the children had no idea there was any possible danger. Kudos to the school for that.

The same day there was a stabbing at my niece's high school (which most of the students didn't know about--it was a love triangle thing and kept quiet). Fortunately the victim was not badly hurt.

Then yesterday, of course, the terrible shooting rampage at Dawson College in Montreal. Too horrible for words.

And this morning the news that an elementary school in Cape Breton burned to the ground in the early hours.

Weird. I want it to stop. I want schools to be safe places.

The writing is continuing to go well, although I'm realizing that there are things I've forgotten about in the writing hiatus. I've started reading through the manuscript again, specifically looking for those things so that I can either follow up on them or cut them out. We also had a great writing group meeting last night. I think folks are getting excited about taking up fall writing projects.

I've broached a crazy idea to my daughter and niece--to co-host (with me) a podcast in which we'll review middle grade, teen and young adult fiction. It's all still in the working-out stages but I think it will be fun and also good experience for them.

And the countdown is on: only 47 days to NaNoWriMo and not a solid idea in sight yet.