Clutter, Crocus Blooms and Spring Cleaning – Barbara Wackerle Baker

 

 

https://www.amazon.ca/stores/author/B0BMTM18PW

Barnes and Noble 

I have a huge collection of knick-knacks scattered throughout the house. And I’ve kept some possessions well past their usefulness date. The clincher was when I found three pairs of jeans from my youth tucked away below a pile of towels in the linen closet. Dammit. When I put them there, I knew one day I would fit into them again. Or maybe my daughter would wear them. Neither happened. I needed a strategy to reduce, reuse (by someone else) or discard these items.

While hunkered down during yet another Alberta cold snap (accompanied by a spring snow squall) I decided we needed a new rule in our house. Being proactive I established it. This is how it goes - every time a delivery box arrives, whoever ordered it must refill it and take it for a ride to a thrift store, recycle bin, used bookstore or the dump within 48 hours. No exceptions allowed.

The first couple of boxes were easy to fill. Who knew there were so many empty picture frames in my office closet? And the stash of baby toys under the stairwell. I know the grandkids will never miss them. Off they went to their appropriate destination. I will admit that I rifled through my husband’s boxes prior to them leaving the house just in case he included treasures I wasn’t ready to part with. And when a long skinny box arrived, (a new rod for his window washing squeegee) it hardly seemed fair, but he grinned and played along with the rule.

 

When the weather cleared and there were no more boxes to fill, I went to the sun-warmed south facing hillsides for a stroll. The familiar purple hue of crocus blooms sprinkled the slope, their heads bobbing in the breeze. It had to be spring now. Within hours of finding 36 blooming croci, another squall blew in. This time six inches of heavy wet snow fell. I worried about those little darlings freezing their petals off.

  

Days later the sun melted the snow. The croci held their heads high like drops of paint on the damp and pungent soil. I decided when I grow up, I want to be as strong and resilient as a crocus.

 

Now that I no longer had to worry about the well-being of the hillside's flora, and there were no more boxes to fill, I decided to get into the spring-cleaning groove. For encouragement, I did a bit of research (my new word for procrastination) to ensure I didn’t miss any tricks or tips. Here’s what I learned and my thoughts on the ideas:

• slip a sock over the beater of a hand mixer to create a mini, vibrating pet hair remover for furniture. First I have to get a pet. And then, do I use ‘said’ mixer on my next batch of mashed potatoes? 

• clean tarnished copper pots and accessories by massaging them with ketchup and a pinch of salt – now I need to get a pet and a copper pot. 

• use vodka to spray and remove bathroom mold and mildew – off to the liquor store I go. 

• get down on hands and knees to see where dust accumulates. It apparently will give me a new perspective of how dirty my floor is. Do I really need a new perspective? 

• leave one cobweb in a corner of the room. Polish folklore suggests spiders bring good luck – I can totally get behind this one. 

 

I opened all the windows and kept an eye on the sky. Mother Nature was still throwing hissy fits throughout the day.

My house is clean. It smells great. I changed from flannel to cotton sheets which probably just jinxed tomorrow’s weather forecast but … oh well. The best part about my decluttering strategy – I now think twice before ordering online and at our current rate, we’ll be clutter free in … many years. If a crocus can weather change, so can I.

Have you got a spring-cleaning tip you’d like to share? 

Baker, Barbara - BWL Publishing Inc. (bookswelove.net)

Barbara Baker Author Page Facebook 

 

Summer of Lies by Barbara Baker — BWL Publishing

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SHILOH’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE VIII ~ Breaking Dad by Naguib Kerba

 

https://www.amazon.ca/Ordinary-People-Extraordinary-Naguib-Kerba/dp/0228632161

https://www.nkerba.com/blog/shilohs-excellent-adventure-breaking-dad

Outside-the-Box Promotion by J. S. Marlo

 

Wide of the Mark

(Click here to buy)

   

 

  

To buy any of my books, visit

J. S. Marlo's Books

Today, I want to talk about promotion. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't receive an email titled: We want to promote your book... Want some help promoting your book... Enhance your book promotion with... 

The price is never listed in the emails. You have to go on their websites and scroll to find out how much they charge, and when I say they, I mean whoever is behind the website in some obscure corner of the globe. And they usually charge a hefty sum.

There are legitimate sites that do promotion, but they all seem saturated with books, so where is an author supposed to promote?

Some do book signings, and fairs, and conferences, but these aren't always feasible options in small or remote towns.

My eleven-year-old granddaughter, who lives five minutes away from me, is a competitive swimmer and a rep team hockey player. Every season, she is required to secure sponsorships for both teams. So, this year, I decided to try something different. I sponsored her swim team!

As a sponsor, my logo is featured on the swim team website, and during local swim competitions, for the entire season (Sept 2025 to Aug 2026). I'm hoping it will pique people's curiosity, generate foot traffic on my website, and since I'm a local author, maybe new readers.

Time will tell if it's an effective promotion, but since I'm also getting a thank you photo of my swimmer, it's a win-win in my book.

Happy Reading! 

Hugs!

JS

 

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

Music Hath Charms by Eileen O'Finlan

 

Click here for purchase information

It is well known that many authors listen to music while writing. For some, music serves as inspiration. Some use specific types of music to match the mood of their writing. Still others find that music helps their writing to flow. I have found that I fall into that last category. I can write with or without music, but I more easily get into a writing rhythm (no pun intended) while music is playing. 

The type of music authors use varies widely. Stephen King, for example, is known to play loud, hard rock or heavy metal music while writing. While that type of music is definitely among my favorites, it is banished during writing sessions. It's not the volume, it's the lyrics. I can't concentrate on my own words when other words are competing. For me, writing music must be instrumental.

Classical music is among my favorite writing music, especially Mozart. Most of us have heard of the Mozart Effect. Listening to Mozart's music for 10-30 minutes is known to temporarily increase creativity. I can attest to being susceptible to it. Other classical composers are also included in my writing playlist. I especially love violin music so I'm a big fan of Joshua Bell. His CD Romance of the Violin is probably one that I play the most while writing. In fact, it's playing as I write this.

My other favorite violinist is Eileen Ivers. Her electric fiddle playing is perfect for when I need to find a faster, edgier pace to my prose.

Occasionally, I like to write to CDs of nature sounds, especially if they are mixed with instrumental music.

I don't know what it is about music that aids creativity in writing. Perhaps those who have studied the Mozart Effect can explain it. All I know is that I feel a definite difference when I write with music on in the background. My words flow more smoothly, ideas come to mind more readily, and I feel more relaxed as the music weaves it's magic spell.

A small sample of my writing music

Such a Long Journey to Perilous Facts by Debra Loughead

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Such a Long Journey to Perilous Facts by Debra Loughead

For pretty much my entire life I’ve considered myself a writer. Buried deep at the back of a filing cabinet in my home office, file folders contain tattered scribbler notebooks from my elementary school years, filled with the poems and stories that I dreamed up while not paying attention during math (much to my detriment in high school.) I’ve saved my scrapbooks where I pasted all of the compositions and even essays that I wrote between grades two and thirteen. Why? For posterity perhaps? Who can even say and who would ever want to read them?

Once upon a time many years back during my kidlit era, I was often invited to visit schools to talk about my books and where ideas were born. I brought along some of those elementary school scribblers and scrapbooks to illustrate to the students how long I’d been working on my writing skills, and how invested I was in turning words and sentences into books. Plus how much grit, determination and time it took to finally achieve my goals. Ten thousand hours of deliberate practice, as they say, in order to master your particular craft. 

One of my earliest YA novels, Time and Again, was twenty-five years from concept in 1981 to publication in 2004. But most of those were the exhausting three-sons child-rearing days, and much of my writing life had to be put on hold. Every creative endeavor took longer. 

Nevertheless, back in the 1980s and 90s, whenever I could manage to find the time, I was writing short stories, and found some brief success in submitting them to various Canadian print magazines, which sadly don’t even exist anymore. One of them was called Storyteller Magazine, a quarterly which published quite a few of my tales. One of them, a short mystery called Small Miracle, was subsequently short-listed for ‘The Great Canadian Story Contest’ in 2006. 

The characters and events in that story waylaid my brain. Ideas for developing the story into an actual novel began to emerge, and I started tapping away on my keyboard in between writing middle grade and YA novels, as well as various book series and language arts materials for educational publishers. I’ve always believed in saving everything you ever write, because you never know when you might need it someday. I’m glad I saved up all those copious notes and rambling early chapters. I’m glad I never gave up, and pushed through all the self-doubt and imposter syndrome (still have it), while asking myself ‘how do all of those thriller and mystery writers manage to pump out an new novel every single year’?”

And now, well, my original mystery story Small Miracle from twenty years back is finally about to become a full-length mystery novel, Perilous Facts, next month, thanks to BWL Publishing. It’s a relief to finally see it becoming a reality, except for the fact that it isn’t easy for a writer to let go of a manuscript, since there always seems to be another word or phrase that you can tweak. But at some point you have to release it into the wider book world and hope for the best. It’s truly a leap of faith. And here’s the maddening thing—once you’ve devoted so much time and effort into developing your characters, you don’t want let go of them. Which is when you start toying with the idea of a sequel. 

I’ve written plenty of book series for kids, and they were all mystery-type novels. But none of them over 30,000 words or so. I loved returning to the lives of the characters I’d created and finding brief new mysteries for them to solve. But adult novels are three times longer and even more. And there are so many more characters and sub-plots and red herrings to develop. And in my humble writerly opinion, it feels utterly daunting.

I once had an opportunity to speak with a well-known Toronto author, the late Pat Capponi, at a book event. She had just signed a copy for me of her second novel in a mystery series that was set in the Parkdale neighbourhood, an area just west of downtown Toronto. Pat had previously written a number of successful non-fiction books related to her career as an advocate for  mental health and poverty issues with CAMH in Toronto, before tackling this mystery series. And she earnestly admitted to me that her second book would probably have to be the last one in the series, because she honestly found the entire process of mystery writing far harder than any other writing she’d ever attempted in her life. 

I wholly agree with Pat Capponi. Except that I can’t shake off all those characters in Perilous Facts, and there are still a few storylines that I’ve left wide open just in case I might like to go back and explore them. At this writing, I’ve already made many pages of notes. And I’ve already written quite a number of pages. It’s just that I have another sort of mental-health thriller on the go right now which I really need to get back to, because I’ve already written ‘the end’ on that one, and now I have to revise it about a hundred times!

But I know for a fact that the numerous unique characters I’ve created for my first ever adult mystery novel will always be waiting in the wings to put in another appearance, and to take up space yet again in my too-busy brain. 

Perilous Facts, coming in May 2026 from BWL Publishing