If I Die, Please Delete My Google Search History by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

 Vanessa Hawkins Author Page

      So summer has sprung and I have been up to my eyeballs in projects. As I said last month, I won second place in a long fiction competition, and was invited to read aloud at a local University. It was fun. Many eyerolls were had when I finished, because thanks to liquid courage, I attempted to read a smexy passage with all the ardour that the piece required. 

hur hur!

But I wasn't fazed! In fact, I have been told on multiple occassions that I am pretty good when it comes to reading aloud? Why? Well, because frankly I don't give a *$5^%. There! I said it--kinda--I just don't care. Now my husband, who sat in the front row to listen to me read? Well, he might have cared a little, but all in all it was fun to stand in front of everyone, get an award and a cheque, then read a bunch of *pron* to a crowd of people I don't know.   

I honestly gotta give it to the judges though. They had good taste! And no, of course I'm not biased.

In other news--and before I get in trouble with the moderators for being too risque--I have finally finished penning another novel! Whoot. Together, my co-author and I have finally finished the first draft of Ballroom Riot 2--title pending. It feels good to finish a work in progress...

I should have used this gif earlier...

Now I am on to editing, and then after that, I shall be working on a new project with several other writers at Books We Love Publishing. I won't say too much about it right now, just because I haven't had a whole ton of time to think on it, but it's a mystery that takes place in PEI.

And also, I am going to PEI this summer! Whoot! How fortuitous. I shall spend all my time at libraries and in the fields sniffing the potatoes, and buried beneath the red, sandy beaches getting a feel for my island neighbours! 

and also paying to leave :/

 It will be exciting. Though my timeline to finish is a few years time, and I have a few other projects I hope to conclude before then, I will make sure I stick to a plan and deliever before HBO comes out with any shows based on my books. 

Get it? Because it will never happen... *cries* T_T

But then again... neither will Winds of Winter, right George?

Lies. All lies...

Loving Summer

Imagine finding a hidden room, complete with furniture, a trunk, diary and shadows. Author, Anna Hughes couldn't wait to finish her attic room. Did the shadows hold the secret to why the room was sealed?

I've always loved summer. Well not the hot 90 degree days or the high humidity days that make it feel like summer. Those days I tend to stay inside. But I do enjoy the cooler mornings.

Hubby and I take our coffee out and sit on the patio in the early morning and watch the birds at the feeder. He often takes pictures of them. Also among the birds are squirrels and one chipmunk. I've had to block off the feeder from those two varmints or there wouldn't be any seed left for the birds. Especially the chipmunk. He gets right up there inside the feeder. 

We also enjoy watching the Humming Birds and Baltimore Orioles. We have

several orioles.  They've always had to share their food with purple finches, which was no problem although there are a lot of them. 

Suddenly, one robin has taken a liking to the grape jelly. Yes, it's only one. The others patrol the ground, looking for worms or insects, but this one particular robin keeps coming back to the oriole feeder. 

I have a round, flat, shallow humming bird feeder that the humming birds didn't seem to like, and the sugar water spoiled almost overnight, so I took the top off and put grape jelly in there.  The orioles don't go by it, but the finches and the robin love it. 

Apparently, so do the deer. In fact the deer love the humming bird food. Yes, not only am I feeding the birds, but now the deer are imbibing - well at least one deer. And he's very brave about coming up to it. It's right outside my kitchen window and he has no problem in broad daylight to drink from it.  Now I know

it's not because he's thirsty because there's a freshly filled bird bath right next to it, and it'd be a lot easier to drink from that  than the humming bird feeder. I don't mind that he's drinking from the feeder, but now the humming birds have stopped coming and that makes me sad. I love watching them. They're so pretty and delicate. Tiny little things. I decided to take the feeder down. In the heat, I was having to replace the food too often or it spoiled. Besides, she also ate my tomato plants. I only had four and she devoured the cherry tomato plant and the beef-stake plant right down to the ground. I was able to salvage the two sauce plants and they're now enclosed in screen.  And now she's eating my Rose of Sharon that are only a couple feet high.  They're never going to grow and get flowers if she doesn't leave them alone.  Just a couple doors down and across the street there's full grown ones with flowers and she doesn't bother them. Must be the young tender leaves. 

But I'm still enjoying summer and not looking forward to Fall and Winter. Not that I mind the cooler weather and snow. I just hate putting heavy clothes on, especially to go out. I dislike the bulky winter coats and I'm not too keen on driving in the snow. I'm not keen on driving to begin with, but it's a necessity sometimes. Usually, I make hubby take me places. It's the only way he gets out of the house. He's a homebody and has COPD (which he uses as an excuse for a lot of things, but that's a story for another day). 

Here's an excerpt from Shadows in the Attic  

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I hurried to my room, freshened my lipstick and ran a comb through my hair. I loved my new short hairstyle, even if Ben didn't like it. It didn't take hours to blow dry and style even after a shower. Chad Edwards, the contractor Connie recommended, would be here any minute. I liked the sound of his voice over the phone, all deep and masculine. Besides, he sounded as excited about the restoration as I was.

I hurried downstairs when the doorbell rang, opened the door, and my mouth darn near dropped open. The sexiest, hunk of a man I ever saw stood in front of me. His dark hair, mussed from the wind, fell over his forehead. Bushy eyebrows topped the bluest eyes I'd ever seen, and he towered over my five foot six height. A complete contrast to Ben's dark, brooding looks.

Something jolted inside me, and I swear electricity seared the air between us. Even my arms tingled. Never had a man affected me this way. What was wrong with me? I'm engaged for heaven sake. But I couldn't help it. This man stirred something inside of me. Something Ben never stirred.

"Hi, I'm Chad Edwards. Are you Anna Hughes?"

Heat burned my cheeks at my thoughts, and I held out my hand toward him, hoping my face wasn't too red. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Edwards."

"Chad, please. Nice to meet you too, Anna. You don't mind if I call you Anna do

you?" He took my hand, and my heart did a strange flip. A trembling all the way down to my toes scared me. I liked the feel of his rough hand, calloused from hard work, and was disappointed when he let mine go.

"Hi, Chad. No, I don't mind." His name flowed easily from my lips, like I'd been

saying it forever. And I especially liked the way he said my name, placing the emphasis on the first syllable—Ann-a, unlike the quick way Ben said it, more like On-na, with the emphasis on the last syllable. Kind of hoity-toity.

Chad's smile reached his eyes. Something about it made me think he was fun-loving, spontaneous and adventurous, unlike serious minded Ben. Not that there was anything wrong with Ben being serious. I just wished sometimes he'd let go a little. Darn it, why was I comparing Chad to Ben?

"Please, come in." I swung the door to let him in, and closed it behind him. He stood in the foyer and looked around, letting out a low whistle as he stared up the curved oak staircase. A picture of him, standing there years ago, waiting for the daughter of the house to join him, flitted through my mind. He seemed to fit.

I smiled at the image. "I've heard good things about you, Chad. I'm glad you agreed to look at this job."

"I couldn't resist. When I heard it was a Queen Anne style Vicky, well let's just say that's my weakness."

"Mine too. When this house came on the market I had to see it. Once I saw it, I was sold." I led the way to the attic. "Come on, I can't wait to get your opinion."

I turned the corner to the landing and looked back at him. Darn, he was good looking.

"This is the first room I want done. We'll look at the rest of the house later."

As we rounded the corner of the attic, Ben joined us. "We want this wall knocked

down for starters,” he said. “Anna thinks there's a room behind it. At least, there's a window that shows from the outside of the house."

Ben's tone irritated me. Okay, so he didn't agree with me about the renovations, that didn't give him the right to intrude on my conversation.

Chad knocked on the wall in several different places and looked at the floor space between the walls and took some measurements. "She could well be right," he said. "This room should be much larger." He turned his attention to me. "What exactly do you want?"

"I want to make a home office up here for my writing."

"You're a writer?"

Ben didn't give me a chance to answer. He came and stood next to me and put his arm around me possessively. I tried to shrug him off. This wasn't like Ben. He never touched me in public. Never even held my hand. "So, what will you charge to knock the wall down and finish this space? I mean is it even worth it?" He pulled me tighter against him and almost knocked me over.

"Just to knock the wall down and haul the material away, fifteen hundred dollars. It depends what else Ms Hughes wants as to the rest of it." Chad turned his attention back to me . "I can't give you a price on that until the wall is gone, and we see what's behind it. I'll need to know exactly what you want, wiring, lights, that kind of thing. You can knock the wall down yourself and save the money. There's no wiring or heating ducts to worry about."

"Okay, we'll be in touch," Ben said. "Thank you for coming. He guided me to the top of the stairway and waited for Chad to go ahead of us. I tried to pull away, but he held me tight against him.

"Anything else?" Chad turned toward me again.

"We'll talk about it and get back to you," Ben said, not giving me a chance to answer.

I bit my tongue. Oh, we were going to talk about it. No doubt about that. I'd say

something now, but didn't want to start anything in front of Chad. What made Ben think he could take over like that? Like I was a moron who couldn't think or talk for myself.

"Okay, then." Chad turned and went downstairs ahead of us.

Ben finally dropped his arm from around me and followed Chad to the door before I made it to the bottom step. "We'll be in touch," he said and almost pushed Chad out the door and looked at me. "I think we should knock the wall down ourselves. Then you can see what's behind it and not waste the money."

"You're willing to help knock down the wall?" Would wonders never cease? I couldn't believe my ears. I let the matter of Ben's rudeness drop. If Ben was willing to work on the attic, I wasn't about to start an argument. Not yet, anyway. But you can bet I wouldn't forget it, either. He'd hear about it eventually. I'd have my say. Oh, no, he wasn't getting off that easy.

"Sure, we can start tomorrow. Once you see there's no room up there, you can forget this nonsense of renovation."

Housewives, Traditional Sex Roles & Mopping the Floor

Alexander Hamilton & Elizabeth, A Master Passion

Amazing how much time housewives spend pondering their floors. You may think that such a preoccupation is a sign of not much going on in that life, but from a "housemaid" view, the state of the floor is a re-occuring issue. Worn board floors, where cat fur accumulates in powdery drifts after a mere 3 days, or the kitchen linoleum which desperately needs waxing, they all cry out to me. I might fancy myself in an observatory, pondering the gravitational fields of Trans-Neptunian objects, but math always evaded me. --Or maybe I was just a typist at heart.

Gravitational studies do have a small place in the field of housecleaning.  A bit of cat fluff falls at the same speed as the toast crumbs my husband sweeps absently from the table onto the floor. This practice of his used to make me see red. Sometimes he'd do it even while I, rag in hand, was on my way to tidy that exact surface. These days, however, I pick my battles. He doesn't seem to realize that things on the floor immediately become my problem. Or--more darkly--maybe he does.

Most likely, he doesn't think and then multiplies this by doesn't care, because really scratch the surface and most men don't think much about women's work, especially if they have a "proper" housewife in residence. 

This blog is from an elder's POV, one from the "baby bust" cohort. As a female of that era, I was trained to domesticity in the traditional mode by a mother who wasn't much for housework herself and maybe figured such a virtue would eventually help me out in the marriage market. Back then, the deal between the sexes was: The Man performs the work he does in field or office, factory or machine shop and in return, Woman cooked, cleaned and helped to tend the green square surrounding the house, as well as being MOM to the kids. If you were a farmer's wife, you had an extra task in the form of poultry. 

Prehistorical Digression:

Imagine a Cro-Magnon a.k.a. EEMH "European Early Modern Human" woman (perhaps an Aurignacian, the ones with the great wall "posters") cleaning out the clan cave. Gotta take out the garbage you know, or you'll attract all kinds of unwanted guests, like the cave bear who used to live here, the local wild dog pack or the saber toothed tiger, the old one who can't chase faster prey anymore.

This old tiger may be a bit lame, but he's fast enough the dine on you, monkey.

Better to get the tell-tale odors away from your front door. You could simply heave the gnawed bones over the edge of the cliff. If you weren't lucky enough to have such a handy disposal area, you had to laboriously dig a hole with an antler pick and bury the stuff. And just about the time you'd get the place cleaned out, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the men would be back with a new carcass and all jazzed on fermenting grapes or something vegetative and disorienting they'd eaten in the woods. They'll just want to barbecue and party. If that's the case, tomorrow will just be same another day of taking out the trash.

Thank heaven EEMH men did "bring home the bacon," because women were incredibly busy. Either pregnant or nursing, chewing great swathes of hide to soften it sufficiently to sew, or gathering firewood and water and scrounging about for roots, nuts and berries, while trying to keep the older children from falling over the edge of that room with a spectacular view.

Years ago, post climbing the ladders to the dwellings at Mesa Verde, my first question was  how did they raise any kids up there? Or did they tie up toddlers  like backyard dogs until they'd acquired complete balance skills and some judgment?

So now, considering what housecleaning used to be like, I don't consider my modern housework all that hard. When I wrote Mozart's Wife I imagined Constanze's trials when the money ran out--which it often did--and how often she'd find herself doing the chores. Hand-scrubbing those lace cuffs and cravats and undies in a world in which there was no decent hand-cream for winter cracked skin! Soothing ointments? Another item for which you'd have to track down the ingredients and then concoct a cure yourself. Worse would be dishes in a world with no indoor plumbing. The Mozart's, like many today, ate a lot of take-out when they could no longer afford an apartment with a kitchen and/or the requisite cook and scullery maid to staff it.

Mozart's Wife

Personally, mopping floors has become a creative driver. Versions of this housewife's trance work often appear in my stories. The Cinderella-like tale of Genesee, where a Metis girl is demoted from beloved daughter to servant, or Elizabeth Hamilton's strategy in A Master Passion to "encourage" her husband to accept the gift of a housemaid from his in-laws, or  Angelica in Angel's Flight, attempting to settle her nerves by scrubbing the steps at her Uncle's Hudson Valley house on the eve of a British terror campaign .

Genesee

~Juliet Waldron

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(From the Hymn to Aton by Akhenaton "the Heretic")

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Taking Time to Be Mindful by J.Q. Rose

Deadly Undertaking by J.Q. Rose
Romantic suspense available in eBook or Paperback

Taking Time to Be Mindful by J.Q. Rose

Grandsons on the shores of Lake Huron--a moment captured with my camera

Time is flying by too quickly. When the sand in an hour glass slips through to the bottom, we can just turn it over and start again. But time doesn't stop for us. We ride it like a rocket ship through the ages and stages of life. At times we need to slam on the brakes of that rocket ship (if they have them?) and take time to be present in the moments of our lives.

I'm slamming my foot down on those brakes this week to be mindful of the moments in my life. I came to this realization because school begins next week for one set of grandkids and the week after Labor Day for our other kids. The summer flew by. Each child is growing up too quickly. This summer I have two grandsons who have their drivers licenses! How did that happen?

Can you see these children all grown up? As they grow, their time with us shrinks. Friends, sports, activities in school will fill up their lives.  Time spent with the grandparents is squeezed into little moments when they are free, instead of the entire long, luxurious days of summer.
 

Appreciate every moment

I decided this week I'll take the time to appreciate the present. I will be mindful of every moment and imprint it on my mind to keep in my heart forever. I want the experiences and to capture each one so one day I can pull them from my memory box and I will savor the memories.

How many of these summer days and evenings do we take for granted? What gorgeous sunsets have we missed this year?  And what delicious food have we just scarfed down and not even tasted?

I hope you have the opportunity to take time to be in the present and appreciate those moments by immersing yourself in the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of each one. 

Click here to connect online with JQ at the J.Q. Rose Blog

Taking the Art of Writing Outdoors

Summer is here and the weather is great - for the most part!
Do you use those lazy days to do things you love to do or are you busy running kids from activity to activity to keep them busy the entire summer? Whatever your plans, be sure to bring a book.

Personally, I love summer. I love the lazy mornings (my "real" job doesn't start until afternoons) and try to spend that time either writing or reading. BWL has so many great authors with so many books I'm still working my way through the list! Both my reading and writing habits have changed over the years, and sometimes they change from season to season. Summer screams for lighter, fluffier books. Books that my brain doesn't have to work hard to read. Brain candy.

Writing in the summer has its advantages as well. It's much easier to grab a pen and pad of paper and go to the park, or the beach. Sometimes a change in venue can give you a fresh perspective and some new ideas.

Writing less in isolation and more around other people, can give you new character ideas and situations. I had the pleasure of hanging around a teenage girl yesterday I would love to use as a base for a new character. Spunky and outspoken, she started off a little abrasive, but we quickly connected and discovered commonality despite the age difference. I've had the same experience at a writing retreat near a river in a little house that resembles a lighthouse.

Writing in new settings can give you more detail into your own stories. The grit of the beach beneath your body, the hot sun on your skin, the irritating buzz of a mosquito, the squawk of a seagull who really wants your bag of potato chips... At your writing desk, you need to delve into your imagination for those minute details. Out in the real world, they attack you from all sides and you have a veritable buffet of stimuli to choose from.

An author's work takes on a different tone when they are relaxed and "in the flow." Words flow from the pen (or keyboard) at an amazing rate and seem to magically create scenes we normally couldn't write if we were forced. The mind tends to wander more and bring back many more "what if's" for us to use.

Writer or reader, take the time to bring a book outside.
Read in nature.
Write in nature.
Enjoy all the opportunities summer brings and find the time to enjoy a good book!

By Diane Bator

http://bookswelove.net/authors/bator-diane/

You Had to be There - A Summer Memory by Roseanne Dowell

Summer is a magical time in the life of a child and it was no less for me. I’ve always loved summer, especially in the fifties when I was young and carefree. It was a time of happiness and

contentment.  Secure in the love of my family, I enjoyed the summer days and nights.  We spent the days riding bikes, playing kick the can, hide and seek, baseball, and tag.  It’s so clear in my mind, it could have been yesterday instead of fifty plus years ago. 

My memories go back to warm summer days in Cleveland, Ohio.  Days spent waiting anxiously for my father to come home from work.  At the first sign of nice weather, my mother brought out the picnic basket. Every day in the nice weather, she packed it and had it ready to go.

While Dad washed up, we packed the car and before you knew it, we were on our way to our special place, Lagoon, named for the small lake nearby, Actually more like a pond.. The name sounded spooky, probably because in 1954 the movie Creature From the Black Lagoon was so popular. Not that I ever saw it, I didn't and still don’t care to. Spooky movies and I don’t get along.

We jumped out of the car and immediately begin gathering kindling while Mom and Dad brought the picnic basket and cooler to the table. No charcoal for us, wood was free and plentiful. After picking up the smaller twigs, we ran towards the woods looking for larger branches to use for firewood and. long skinny sticks for roasting marshmallows after dinner. Mom crumpled up old newspaper and started the fire and let Dad relax. She added the larger wood as the fire started smoldering.

My brothers, sisters, and I bickered and competed to see who could break the larger dead branches we had gathered. Holding the branch with one hand, we  jumped on it. Naturally, my brothers, being older and bigger, won. My sisters and I broke the smaller ones.  We held each end and cracked them across our knees. Even now I can hear the snap as the brittle branches splintered. Mom and Dad laughed at our antics unless we got too rough. Once the fire settled down to hot coals, my parents cooked, and we played.

Not far from our table and near the bridle path stood an old tree  with a crooked branch big enough to sit on . We called it our horse tree.  My sisters and I climbed the tree and watched the world while my brothers played baseball.  Sometimes we made up stories about the people who drove by. Riders often came down the path next to us, and we jumped down from our loft, talked to them, and petted the horses. That was before my fear of horses.

 Three or four of us could fit on that thick old limb, and we thought we were so high up that no one could see us At least we thought they couldn't. Far up to a child is a lot different than to an adult. . We often sat up there until dinnertime.  After dinner, we usually went for a walk by the lake with our parents or our brothers. We weren't allowed to go alone until we got older

On Wednesdays and weekends,my aunt, uncle, and cousins came on the picnic with us. We had some great baseball games  with ten kids and four adults. We played out in the dusty old field, screaming “go to third, or run home” and shouting “catch it, throw it home” jumping up and down as our team scored a run or someone in the field caught the ball.  Being the second youngest of six kids I didn't hit the ball very far, but the adults made allowances for us younger kids. They let the ball roll past them if we managed to hit it. But there was fierce competition between us kids and even my brothers didn't give us a break. After the game, our parents relaxed or played horseshoes.

While they visited with each other, we were allowed to go almost anywhere as long as the older boys were with us.  One of my favorite memories is going for walks up a long hill. At the end of the road, an old house stood surrounded by trees and covered in ivy. Dirty windows stared at us from their ivy-covered facade. An overgrown yard hid the sidewalk. The house looked spooky, probably abandoned, but we didn't know that then.

My brothers told us a witch lived there so we couldn't get too close. We slowed down the closer we got to the house. A little more than halfway up, one of my brothers yelled, "she's coming" or "there she is." We raced back down the hill like our lives depended on it. At the bottom, we stopped out of breath and laughed, thinking we outran her.

No matter how scared we were, we  begged to go back. I think we hoped to see her one day. Of course, neither my sisters or I ever saw her. Thinking back, I'm sure no one lived there, but even as a child I had a wild imaginatIon. Not that I was the only one, my sisters and cousin imagined the same thing. 

When we got a little older, my sisters, our cousin, and I were allowed to wander by off by ourselves. We even conjured up enough courage to go up the hill alone. Not that we ever made it all the way up. It never failed one or the other of us  thought we saw someone moving in the window or our brothers sneaked up out of the woods and scared the daylights out of us. As usual we ran like the devil was chasing us. After we caught our breaths, we took after the boys, never quite quick enough to catch them. 

I miss those days.  Many of the people are gone now, but the memory remains of that simpler time. A time when all we had to worry about was doing our chores, picnics, gathering sticks for kindling, playing and pretending. It was a time when fun, imaginations, and love abounded, and summer days were magical.

We went back to Lagoon several years ago for a family reunion. The tree still stands, but the witch's house, alas, was gone. We told our children and grandchildren these tales. They listened politely, smiling and nodding, but they didn't find the humor or magic in the story as we did. 

I guess you had to be there

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Taking over the police chief’s job in her hometown should have been easy for Callie Johnson. At least that's what she thought. After working in a big city, small town crime would be a breeze. What a surprise when she arrives to find her grandmother, the judge, accused of murder. As if that wasn't enough she’s attacked while walking to her car. Between criminal investigations, her nutty family’s antics and her Aunt Beatrice Lulu's matchmaking, Callie definitely has her work cut out for her. Will her grandmother be exonerated? Can Callie ward off her aunt’s unsuitable suitors? What other surprises were in store for her? More importantly, can she find the person who attacked her?