Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Where do you get your ideas?
Sunday, November 15, 2020
A Few Strange COVID restrictions
As the Covid-19 infection shows no sign of diminishing, and people are becoming weary of the restrictions placed on their lives, it might be a time to look at some unusual constraints placed on people around the world, if just to relieve stress. Here then, are ten strange rules adopted by countries.
1) Weekend-only lockdowns: Turkey has instituted weekend-only lockdowns for all its citizens, while allowing mostly-normal, but restricted, operations during the weekday. However, persons under twenty or over sixty-five who have to stay at home even during weekdays. This supposedly protects the most vulnerable, while allowing for normal economic activities.
Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance (www.yogazapper.com) . He is published by Books We Love, LLC. (http://bookswelove.com/ashtakala-mohan/books)
Friday, June 12, 2020
I Can't Write the Future Anymore
On March 10th, I began the third draft of my novel-in-progress, Winter's Rage. Unlike my two previous mystery novels, this story shifts between three viewpoint narrators and two time periods. For reading ease, I placed a header at the start of each chapter with the narrator's name and the story month and year. For the main storyline, the date was January, 2020. But this March I thought, since the book won't be published until next year, why not reset it in 2021 to make the novel more contemporary? Later, I could insert any minimal changes needed or specifics to highlight that future date. I had done this easily for my earlier books to help bridge the time gap between starting a novel and its publication. In fact, draft #2 of Winter's Rage was written months before January 2020.
So I changed the headers for my first few chapters to January 2021, started revising, and realized I couldn't do this. In March, the effects of COVID-19 hit Canada with full impact. International travel shut down. Empty shelves, lineups and changed protocols appeared in grocery stores. Museums, restaurants and group activities closed. Each day brought a new development that I hadn't considered the day before. I couldn't predict what my world would be like the next week, never mind ten months in the future.
Even now, three months later, I don't know what daily life in January 2021 will be like in Calgary, my home city and the setting for my mystery novels. Will we have a vaccine or cure for COVID-19 by then? Probably not, but if I assume this and a miracle happens I'd have to significantly change any story I'd write now. And if COVID-19 is still with us, what rules, guidelines and customs will Calgarians experience in January 2021? Will schools be open, or will students continue to study online? Will we all be wearing masks? In lockdown or moving about fairly freely, keeping our social distance? What percentage of people will be working from home, or be unemployed? Will our economy have collapsed, flattened or revived with a renewed flourish? Will national and international travel be open? Will Canadian snowbirds travel south, as usual, to warm, sunny destinations or hibernate at home?
We can all make guesses, but no one is sure enough about life in Calgary next winter for me to portray it in the novel I'm in the process of finishing now.
I returned to the first chapters of Winter's Rage and reset the date to January 2020, when I and many others lived in the old normal, oblivious to what lay a month or two ahead. As I revised my manuscript, ordinary behaviours I'd included struck me as strange in our current time. Characters shake hands when they meet for business. Some touch people who don't live in their own households. I'm sure they often stand closer to each other than two metres (6.5 feet or, in Canadian terms, about the length of a hockey stick).
Paula, my insurance adjuster sleuth, visits insurance claimants in their homes. No one thinks twice about inviting her into their living room. In an early scene, Paula helps a claimant prepare hot chocolate in his kitchen. The man is 85, recovering from heart surgery and at high risk for serious complications from COVID-19. He and Paula pass each other mugs, utensils and the can of chocolate powder without hesitation. In these details, my novel and others set at the start of 2020 will chronicle our society immediately before everything changed.
Too close |
But how can I have dramatic interactions between Paula and suspect strangers when everyone with something to hide has the perfect excuse to tell her, "Stay away, I won't talk to you in person?" How does an insurance adjuster/detective do her job without meeting people face to face? I'd better start researching this before life returns to a new normal and people forget the details of this peculiar time we're living through.
Social distancing on Hunchback Hills, Alberta. In the past, my hiking club would squeeze together for a group photo. |
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
E-Biking Though the Pandemic
COVID-19 prompted my husband Will and me to buy e-bikes. Our thinking was that with most of our usual activities likely to be gone or restricted this summer, it would be good to expand the ones we'd be able to do. This included cycling. We'd always enjoyed getting out on our twenty-five-year-old bikes and hoped electric bicycles would let us ride longer and farther and handle steeper hills.
I didn't quite know what an e-bike was before I bought one. Since then, I've learned they have motors that provide pedal-assist. You still pedal the same as with a regular bike, but get more for your effort. E-bikes can go up to 32 kilometres per hour (20 mph) to be classified as bicycles, not mopeds. After each use, you plug them in to recharge the battery.
The motor makes e-bikes heavier than regular bicycles. Usually the battery is attached to the frame. We chose models with built-in batteries. They aren't much heavier than our old regular bikes. This will make them easier to load in our car for outings and easier to ride if the battery ever runs out. I'm especially glad we got the lighter bikes after hearing about a friend's holiday in Paris. During her first day of renting a heavy e-bike, it toppled onto her and broke her leg.
I chose an upright cruiser style, with a comfortable seat and handy front basket. |
Will chose a racier model. We'll enjoy the lunch box on the back for picnics. On a ride to downtown, we had our first look at Calgary's kayak course on the Bow River. |
Calgary enjoyed a couple of weeks of fine weather after we bought our bikes. Will and I took them out every day or two. We conquered numerous hills we'd have struggled with or walked up before. I could still feel the cardio exercise as I pedalled to the crest. We could also do longer rides, to parts of the city we hadn't previously biked to from our home. I returned feeling less tired than I used to from my regular bike rides, although my sore muscles suggested I'd had a workout.
I'm still cautious about riding a more powerful bike. Wind from the higher speed makes me cooler when I ride. I've had to wear more layers of clothing this spring, but this might make biking on hot summer days more comfortable. My e-bike has nine gears, which are easy to change with the paddles on the handle. The power level button on the frame is trickier to use. I still haven't got the knack of pressing the button 1,2 or 3 times to shift the power up or down while riding.
Colourful, layered clothing in the cool wind. |
E-bikes aren't cheap. Ours were in the lower price range and each one cost more than Will's first car. But with this spring, summer and probably fall of non travel, e-bikes turn staying at home into a vacation. When Calgary's weather warms up again, we plan to load our e-bikes into the van and ride in the rolling countryside, tackling hills with ease. Not much beats coasting to the top, leaving those twenty-somethings in our dust.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
How a Pandemic Inspired my Writing
2009 H1N1 (Swine flu) Pandemic - laboratory confirmed cases and deaths |
Aside from occasional sightings of surgical masks, I forgot about the swine flu while absorbing Italy's museums, eating pizza and drinking wine in cafes, exploring ancient sites and warrens of medieval streets. After our trip, The World Health Organization declared H1N1/09 a Pandemic. It was tragic for the people who died. They were far fewer in number than those who die annually from a seasonal flu, and this is expected to be the case with COVID-19.
At home, I returned to my novel-in-progress, but Tony's story kept churning through my mind. Eventually, I sat down and wrote "Pandemic," my first work of fiction set in another country. Aided by my photos and journal notes, I found setting descriptions easier to write than ones in my stories set in Canada. Tony's encounter with two sisters while climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa felt fresher than scenes of people meeting in ordinary, North American restaurants. I've sometimes thought of "Pandemic" as part story, part travelogue.
In "Pandemic," Tony and the sisters take comical photos of each other 'holding up' the Leaning Tower of Pisa |
I find it interesting to work on a story that aligns with the zeitgeist. Today's constant news and worry about a pandemic infuses Tony's actions and the story descriptions. I'd have thought that immersing myself in the fictional world of a crisis similar to COVID-19 might make me anxious about our present situation. Instead, it's a release from concerns of impending disaster, and this is one reason writers write.
In Venice, Tony embarks on an ill-fated adventure with two young women and a pair of gondoliers |
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