Sayings by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

 

 https://www.audible.ca/pd/Romancing-the-Klondike-Yukon-Audiobook/B09Y62PLWV?ref=a_series_Ca_c10_lProduct_1_3&pf_rd_p=e54256e9-89bd-44c1-980b-adcad688db4e&pf_rd_r=B5Z5R0XQPVWE3PBDZP1P

https://www.bookswelove.com/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

Be Careful What You Wish For is an old saying with an ominous warning to it and Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining is also an old saying but it has an upbeat tone to it. Both of them apply to my story.

Be Careful What You Wish For

For years women who had had breast cancer surgery were told not to use their arms for any strenuous activity for fear of causing lymphedema, a build up of fluid in the arm. Don McKenzie, a Canadian sports medicine specialist at the University of British Columbia, opposed this idea. In 1996, he formed a dragon boat team composed of 24 women with a history of breast cancer in Vancouver, B.C. They called themselves Abreast in a Boat. And they proved that strenuous exercise was good for their arms and for their overall health.

A few years later, they entered in the Vancouver dragon boat festival and I saw them on the television news. I had never heard of dragon boating before and I said to my husband. "That looks like fun. I'd like to try it sometime."

In January of 2001, I was doing a breast self examination and found a small lump. My annual mammogram at the Breast Centre in Edmonton was scheduled for February but I called the centre and told them my news. They booked me an appointment in two days. Although no one said the C word, after the questions, the mammogram, and the ultrasound, I was pretty sure it was cancer. Then I was told that I needed a biopsy and that it could be scheduled for the next week. However, they added "We have an opening in the next hour and we can do it today." I knew for sure it was cancer.

At my pre-op session a woman came in to tell me about a group of women living with cancer or who had had breast cancer that met every month for coffee and to offer support. I asked her if she knew of a breast cancer survivor dragon boat team in the city. She found the contact information for Breast Friends and two weeks after my surgery I joined the team. I wasn't allowed to get in the boat until three months after my last radiation treatment so I didn't get to actually paddle until 2002. Each summer we practiced on the North Saskatchewan River and attended dragon boat festivals in Alberta and British Columbia.

When I moved to Vancouver Island in the fall of 2004, I joined Angels Abreast in Nanaimo. We practiced in Departure Bay (staying out of the way of the ferries) and on the narrow strait between Vancouver and Newcastle islands. We went to festivals up and down the island and in Vancouver.

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

In 2006, an international festival was held in Vancouver to celebrate the ten year anniversary of breast cancer dragon boating. Besides the teams from Canadian, teams came from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Italy, and Asia. It was great to walk through the paddler's village and meet fellow survivors from around the world.

In Sept. 2007, another international breast cancer festival was held in Caloundra, Queensland, Australia, and Angels Abreast went to that. What a wonderful time we had. The residents of the city were friendly, the venue was excellent, and the hosts did a great job of organizing. The 100 teams of twenty-four paddlers, steersperson, and drummer paraded through the streets dressed in pink, and many people yelled "Canada" or honked their horns when they saw our Canadian flag hanging from our balconies. The festival lasted three days and again I met many special women. After the festival some of us toured around Queensland and New South Wales. We went out to the Great Coral Reef and even with my fear of heights I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. From Sydney we flew to Fiji for a week.

The next international festival was held in Sarasota, Florida, on October 24, 25, 26, 2014, and the team decided to attend. The other members were going to fly down, tour around some of the sites and head home. I wanted more than that, so my husband, Mike, and I decided to do a three month tour of the U.S. Since I needed to be in Sarasota by October 22 to practice with the team, we picked September 23 as our leaving date and Dec. 16 as our return date. I applied for and was given three months off work.

We had such a great time touring through nineteen states. In Sarasota I stayed in the hotel with my team for the three day event. Again, such a wonderful venue, although at 6:00am it was dark and cool. Once the sun came up, we warmed up fast.

The last international festival was in Florence Italy in 2018. Again, rather than fly there for just the festival and maybe some local touring, I opted to spend nine weeks in Europe. I did two bus tours, travelled by train and stayed in hostels and hotels for eighteen days and then did a Baltic Sea cruise.

Since my diagnosis I have met so many strong, caring, fun-loving women plus I have visited some awesome places around the world. I am now back living in Edmonton and paddling with Breast Friends again. Only one woman is still with the team from when I paddled here years ago.

I am looking forward to paddling this year and many years to come, the silver lining to my cloud.

Putting a Puzzle Together VS Mystery Writing by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

https://bookswelove.net/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

My daughter and son-in-law gave me a one-thousand piece puzzle. It has been years since I’ve put a puzzle together and I thought it would be fun. However, as soon as I dumped out the pieces on the table I realized that putting the puzzle together would be much like me writing a mystery novel.

     First, the big pile of pieces is like the big mishmash of ideas, clues, scenes, characters, and settings that make up the notes I have for my mystery. Before I can start the puzzle I have to turn all the pieces upright so I can see their colour, just as I have to sort through my notes when I start my novel. I have to decide where in the story my book begins much like I have to decide how to start my puzzle. I can outline my novel as some writers do or I can jump in and start writing. With the puzzle, I can find all the outer edge pieces and put them together or pick scenes of the picture and find the colours to match.

     I decide to start with outer edge and I sift through the pile to find them. I return the rest to the box. As I work on the edge I have to go back through the box to find edge pieces I missed, just like I have to go through my manuscript and find where I have missed adding some important information or missed putting in a misdirection.

     Because of the way they are cut, it is hard to decide if a piece is part of the outside edge or if it is a regular piece. Just like writing, is that a clue or a red herring?

     With the puzzle I know at the beginning what the end result will be because of the picture on the box. Sometimes when I start my mystery, I know the ending, however sometimes the characters say or do something that I hadn’t planned on and I am left trying to figure out how to get them out of a situation or how to diffuse something they have said.

     I learned that there are various names for the parts of a puzzle piece: loops and sockets; knobs and holes; tabs and slots; keys and locks; even outies or innies. Sometimes it is frustrating to try and get knobs to fit into the holes. The colour looks the same only the tab doesn’t fit correctly into the slot. Or the pieces lock perfectly but there is a slight difference in colour. If one doesn’t seem to fit in a spot, I have to match it somewhere else. That is the same with my writing. Sometimes I come up with a good line or a scene only to find that it doesn’t suit where I want it and I have to find a better match somewhere else.

     When I get stuck with trying to figure out where my story goes next, I can work on a different section in my novel. In the puzzle if I can’t seem to make a scene come together I can go to a different part and work there. Every puzzle piece is tailored to go with the rest to make the picture just like every clue, every scene, every red herring has to fit into the story properly.

     What is frustrating to a puzzle solver is finding that one or two pieces are missing at the end. This is true for the reader of a mystery. All the clues have to be pulled together, the red herrings explained, the mystery solved, and the murderer caught. I can’t leave any pieces out.

     And the last thing I realized about how putting puzzles together and writing mysteries are similar is that both of them are an excruciatingly slow process for me.

How I Became a Published Author by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

https://www.bookswelove.com/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

I took a few writing courses and began my published, writing career (as opposed to my unpublished writing career) with a short story titled  A Hawk's Reluctant Flight, in a small magazine called Western People. With that on my short resume, I had travel and historical articles accepted by other magazines, one of which didn't pay anything to the author. Then I took another writing course and one of the speakers was Grant Kennedy owner of Lone Pine Publishing in Edmonton, Alberta.

       At the time Alberta was divided into tourist zones and I had been thinking about doing a book on what there was to see and do in each zone. I sent a query letter to Lone Pine Publishing and the senior editor responded with a phone call. We set up a time for me to go to the city and meet with her and Grant Kennedy.      

      I outlined my idea and Grant said yes it was a good one but he thought that the books should be more on the people and culture of each zone. He liked his idea and I liked mine so we decided we couldn't work together. As I stood to leave I said. "Well, at least as I research the zones I will see all the backroads of Alberta." He replied. "I've always want to do a book on the backroads of Alberta." I sat back down and that was how I began my backroads series. Over the next ten years I travelled through and wrote two books on Alberta, four books on British Columbia and one on the Yukon and Alaska.
       My favourite books to read have always been mystery novels and after much thought I decided to write one. Since one of the mantras of writing is to write what you know I made my main character a travel writer. She was headed to southern Alberta to do research for a magazine and was drawn into the mystery of a skeleton found in a septic tank. When I was finished I sent it out to a few publishers. One wrote back that they liked it but my travel background was coming out and I had too much travel information in it. I was asked to remove some. So I did and resent my manuscript. Again, I was asked to cut back on the travel info. Again I did. The third time I was told that this was a mystery and I should stick with the mystery and leave out the travel stuff. I wrote back and said that the main character is a travel writer and is working on an article. She is not going to drop that and concentrate on the mystery. So needless to say we parted ways.
      I sent out the manuscript again and another publisher said they were interested in publishing it. They had one stipulation and that was that I should add in more travel information.
      I sent the second novel of what I was calling my Travelling Detective Series to the same publisher. After about a five month wait I received a letter that told me the publishing house had been bought out by another one and that my manuscript and all my information had been sent to them. I waited a few months the emailed the new publisher to find out what was happening. A couple of days later I received an email stating that they had no record of my manuscript. My heart sunk. But a few days after that I received an email from another editor at the publishing house that they had found my manuscript and they wanted to publish it.
       However, in the time between that email and the publishing date for my novel, the publishing house was sold again. The new owner was going to honour my contracts, but in the future wasn't going to publish mysteries. I knew there was no use sending my third manuscript to that publisher and after checking around I sent it to Books We Love. They immediately accepted it and e-published it. After two years of talking with my former publisher I was able to get the rights to my first two novels of the series and now all three are published with Books We Love Ltd. as a boxed set.

     Since then I have published one more mystery novel, two young adult historical, and one adult historical romance, Romancing the Klondike through Books We Love. The sequel to that historical romance, Rushing the Klondike, will be out in September 2022.

 

My First and Only Stage Play By Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

 

 https://www.bookswelove.com/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

Over my writing career I have written non fiction travel books, and mystery, historical, and holiday romance novels. One year, after taking a two day, play writing course, I wrote a stage play. I entered my play in the Fringe held in the small town where I lived. It was accepted and then came the hard part: finding actors and props, producing, and directing it.

      I needed a male and a female lead actor and I asked two people who had been in plays in our local theatre before. They agreed and I gave them each a copy of the play. We met and had a run through with us discussing how we each saw the characters. Their interpretation of their character's actions and attitude were sometimes different from mine, but, other than a few places where I felt a certain delivery was needed, I let them decide how to play the part. Through our many rehearsals with the props, which my husband, Mike, was in charge of, the characters evolved and took shape as we discovered better ways for them move, react, and relate.

      I also needed actors for a party scene and I approached people I knew and/or worked with in my quest. Even though I told them that they would only be on stage for less than five minutes, that all they had to do was listen to the male actor beak off about how good he was, and that they had no lines, many gave a flat no, explaining that they could never get up on stage in front of an audience. Some agreed so I gave them the times of our next two rehearsals. Most of them never showed up. I kept asking people: my cats' vet, the owner of a new store in town, the person who donated some props. But I only had the same two people show up for any of the rehearsals and it looked like Mike and I would be making our acting debut. I was beginning to worry. Maybe I would have to drag up some of the audience members.

      On the evening of the first presentation, two of the three who had attended rehearsals, two actors in another play and I made up the attendees of the party. For the Saturday matinee the partiers were, one of my three regulars along with two members of my dragon boat team, the two actors from the other play, a theatre volunteer, and myself.

      One thing I did learn was that for something like the Fringe where plays are being presented one after the other, having a lot of props is not a good idea. Because I was showing a story instead of telling a story, I had over forty props, some large ones being: fridge, stove, desk, computer, sewing machine, two chairs, table; smaller ones being: duster, broom, envelope, paper, boxes, material, pens, wine bottle and glasses, and many more. The play after me had only two tables, two chairs, a laundry basket and some beer bottles. Another play I watched had some tea cups and teddy bears.

      On the first evening there were going to be four separate plays, mine being the first. That was perfect because it gave us time to set up our scene. However, at the end, we had to get our props off stage so that the next play could set theirs up before their showing. Our actors became stage hands and things disappeared in a hurry. The same happened on Saturday afternoon.

      The important thing I learned was that while I had written the words, I was at the mercy of the actors to show up for the rehearsals, learn their lines, and speak those words on stage. My female lead was off book (I did get to know some of the lingo) quickly, but the male lead found it harder to remember his lines. He also missed some of the rehearsals.

      Putting on a stage play isn't like making a movie. You don't get to go back and redo a scene. When asked, the way I put it is, opening night did not go as rehearsed. To be honest, it wasn't even close. The male character kept forgetting his lines or changing them which threw the female character off, as well as the lighting guy and Mike who had to operate a smoke machine.

     The Saturday afternoon presentation went better. He still missed many of his lines but the audience laughed when they were supposed to and they understood, and laughed at, the twisted ending. I was elated and hearing that laughter made the whole process worthwhile. And I do believe I will try another play for next year, but I will keep the props to a minimum and have the actors tell the story instead of show the story.

      While there were many mishaps and problems getting my play to the stage, the most memorable is about our wine bottle. We needed a wine bottle for the opening scene, so I rinsed one out and filled it with water. We used it for our first on stage rehearsal and left it along with our other props for our full dress rehearsal the next evening. When I went to find it for that rehearsal, it was gone. We searched everywhere and couldn’t find it, so we used a beer bottle in its place. We laughed and hoped that the person hadn't decided to take it as a hostess gift to some fancy dinner. I found another wine bottle for our opening night. At the end of the evening I discovered our first bottle by the back door, empty. That person must have thought it was the weakest, worst tasting wine ever made.