Manitoba Festivals

It’s almost summer time in Manitoba – and that means festivals every weekend.

Of course, I have a job where I work some weekends (this weekend, for example, I had off but I ‘worked’ the Manitoba Marathon as a volunteer paramedic – or, at least in my case, a glorified people pusher, I didn’t have any good calls but I suppose that’s a good thing) but I went to a Pirate/Renaissance/Steampunk Fair this weekend, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a Sparrowhawk there.

 

I included a sparrowhawk in Tower of Obsidian because 1) They’re very small and would probably be useless 2)Notoriously hard to train. I’ve been including side characters having raptors before, but this was the novel where I did my solid research where it was more than, “Guy with hawk rides by”. I’ve always included animals in my books (for the most part dogs, horses, cats) but some creatures are easier to see in real life than others (though, I have pet and held a bat before, but I was like 14) and even though I see raptors in the parkland all the time, this was nice and up close.

All and all, I enjoyed the educational venues the most (I already know how to bellydance, but I was tempted to ask the blacksmith how much for one of the arrowheads) and it got me thinking how I’d like to write another historical fantasy… and then I said to myself, “Yeah… no, not for a while.” And walked towards the place that did leather bustiers.