Bon Voyage To Meee by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

 

 Vanessa Hawkins Author Page

    So curretly I am en route to Toronto Ontario, so I fear there will be but a small blog post this month. I flew via Flair Airlines without a hitch, and am typing this up as I sit in the very front of the Robert Q bus. What a flight, I must say! I was glad to have a bit of liquid courage on the plane because the landing was rocky at best. The wildfires in Canada mean the skies are clouded in smog, which I suppose corresponds to mega turbulance. However, I am lucky to find myself here and on the way to plan and map out another book!

It was a lovely view in New Brunswick today at least. Though, if you have ever flown flair you may know how cheap it is. This comes at a price however, as every little thing has an extra charge. For example, carry on baggage. Now... I am but a humble writer. I'm no Stephen King nor Dean Koontz. I can't afford all the extras can I?

Well... not on a novelists salary! So, I planned ahead! I wore all my clothes on the plane, packed a fanny pack, and made sure even my boots had pockets!

I wasn't kidding! Good for one pair of underpants! 

Now that means as soon as I arrived I had to change. Holy heck its hot here! New Brunswick was crisp 10 degrees maybe, but by the time I arrived at TO I was due for a wardrobe change. I'm only here a few short days, but I am hoping to take in some sights while I'm here. I'm also going to be meeting up with my co-author for the Ballroom Riot series, Tara Woodworth! 

I'll have more to report next month when I return from my first trip since the pandemic! So stayed tuned then and keep writing! 

                

Before Flight and after flight... I felt much cooler after changing! 

Bon Voyage to Meeeeeeeeee

Here We Go Again--Tricia McGill

Find this and all my other books on my Books We Love author page

Just when we think life is getting back to some sort of normalcy, the gates on our life slam shut, and once more we are in lockdown here in Victoria as well as some other states, as the virus spreads its ugly wings. When I get down in the dumps, which is not very often, I think of the fantastic years when my husband and I would pack our caravan and head off to parts unseen. Thank heaven I kept a pictorial copy of all our journeys. Usually about July when the weather is at its cold and dullest here in Victoria, we would go north or west in search of the sunshine. I still dream of those carefree days, lolling about in some tropical haven, or walking miles along a beach that seemed to go on forever, where it seemed that no pair of feet had trodden before. Being close up to a dolphin at Monkey Mia WA, or face to face with a Cassowary in a Queensland rain forest are memories to cherish.

Most people have heard of Sydney Harbour and its bridge and the Opera House, and perhaps a few have seen the movie Red Dog, featuring the dog who roamed from one end of Western Australia (and that is a very long way) to the other end in search of his long lost master (or so the story goes). I have sat beneath the statue erected in his honour in Dampier WA. As you can see, our dogs always accompanied us on our travels.   

Many a time we took a wrong route after being advised which road to take, which often resulted in getting lost, but thus seeing some of the most remarkable places in the country. Once we were advised to be wary of the roadworks being carried out on a pass over a mountain in New South Wales. Halfway up we were faced with rocks the size of melons on a barely made pass. Often it was just a matter of keep right on, as there simply was no alternative because it would have been impossible to backtrack.

Often the locals had great fun advising travellers of the perils to be faced when on the road. Old-
time Aussies have a great (and at times weird) sense of humour. There really is a dunny tree not far from Broken Hill—just one of the many strange sights we encountered along the way. Mind you, the advice to keep our dogs well away from water frequented by crocodiles was well noted and obeyed.

I guess my love of this country is what inspired me to write my Settlers Series, for it is easy to imagine how hard it was for the early explorers and settlers when they set out on epic journeys without knowing what the road ahead held for them. Whether it was carving a road across the Blue Mountains, setting a trail across land from east to west that must have taken months, or tackling trails where the only means of transport was by horse, oxen and even camel, it sparks the imagination.
I have never fancied myself as a pioneer and always preferred the comfort my road home gave me, and admit there were times in our early travelling days when I became slightly panicky knowing my family were not within a day’s trip away. My husband would have been happy to spend our whole lives on the road (as many people did and still would if not for the restrictions of Covid) but much as I loved travelling, I was always happy to return to my home state and always will be.

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Priscilla Brown considers picture postcards

 

Will ambitious lawyer Olivia listen to her heart or her head before it's too late?

(She does send picture postcards.)

Find more about Hot Ticket and my other contemporary romances at

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Recently I visited the exhibition Carte-o-Mania at the Australian National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. It shows 'cartes-de-visit', pocket-size portrait photographs which were taken and collected in Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century. This concept began in 1860 when Queen Victoria and her family sat for a photographer, and then made the photos available for sale to the public. After this, people also in Australia began to acquire their own photos to hand or send to friends, a kind of 'remember me', and collecting these became popular. Incidentally, around the time Queen Victoria initiated this fashion, picture postcards started to appear in Europe and USA, and collecting them began as a hobby.

This exhibition stirred my interest in today's picture postcards. I love them! When on holiday, I enjoy choosing cards to send, and receiving cards give me pleasure.  I pin these cards onto a corkboard where they stay until the board is so full that they start to fall off, when I remove the oldest one or two that I can part with. Some have been there years, and I still enjoy looking at them. But are picture postcards a dying tradition?  

Sending these postcards does take effort. First, to find them. In a tourist spot, this may not be difficult, though I've found that sometimes it's necessary to unearth them from the back of some shop selling assorted tourist merchandise as if the shop doesn't consider them worthy of better display. If there is adequate amount of choice, I want to match the card to the intended recipient, a picture which may appeal to an interest, for example historical, specifically scenic, mode of transport or related to a hobby.Then time spent at a cafe with a drink of choice is perfect for the writing. I believe a hand-written card brings a human touch to communication, makes the recipient feel important knowing you're thinking of them.

Finding a post office can be a challenge; sometimes it's easier to take the cards home and post there. It Italy, using my elementary Italian, I bought and wrote the cards, got lost on my way to the post office, bought the stamps and posted the cards. Back home, I discovered no one had received them. Did they ever leave Italy? Perhaps in my hurry to catch a ferry, had I dropped them into the litter bin which I recalled was next to the post box on the wharf? Ouch!

I have three friends each living in a different country, who are all travellers and wonderful at sending postcards. Each always tries to find a card which they know I will enjoy; recently I received a card from Brazil depicting a bird called a Pantanal, one from Sarawak (Malaysia) of a baby orang utan, and from France of a dignified chateau. These senders hand-write personalised messages which I appreciate. I do the same for them.

But are we in the minority?

My home is in a part of regional New South Wales which attracts tourists for its history and varied natural environment. The Visitor Centre holds a good selection of postcards depicting local scenes; I asked staff about the sales of these. "Noticeably declining" was the comment. "People aren't much interested anymore."

I took a straw poll of colleagues who travel frequently. "Always send cards to my grandparents who can't travel now and they love getting them"..."Postcards? Do people still send them? Why don't they use their phones?"..."Never sent one, I take videos"..."I like to send to close family and friends and most send to me"..."Couldn't be bothered, would take too long."

I know it's quicker and easier to take phone photos and share straightaway, or use a digital postcard  app. It may be tempting to send several photos of your travel companion or a selfie at for example the Eiffel Tower; if this is the main method of communication, for me it feels uninspired. Rather than any number of phone photos, I would prefer to receive one hand-written postcard with a little local information, indicating that the sender has spent time and thought on it. However, I do understand that not everyone is as comfortable as I am putting experiences into words (nor is addicted to spending time in cafes!) And I admit I am a technophobe. 

Enjoy your reading, Priscilla

Paragraph 1, reference:  National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia

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Culture or is it just thinking differently? by Sheila Claydon

I have just returned from a trip to Australia via Hong Kong. During my visit I met with people born and raised in Australia and Hong Kong of course, but I also met people from Canada, Tasmania, Holland, Thailand, China, the Philippines, Greece, Indonesia, America, the Shetland Isles and various parts of the UK. Sometimes it was a one to one conversation but often there were 3 or 4 nationalities in one room, all using English as a common language. As a poor linguist but a UK born native English speaker, I consider myself very lucky to be able to use my own language to communicate with so many people from different places and cultures. It is the gift that allows an insight into worlds that would otherwise be hidden from me.

Did you know for example that in China a pregnant woman is treated like a fragile flower. Her pregnancy is considered a “hot” condition, so to balance the scale between “hot and cold” or “ying and yang”, she must eat so called “cold foods” throughout her pregnancy. From a Western perspective it gets worse. Eating food that is not properly cut or mashed will result in the child having a careless disposition. Eating chocolate will result in your baby having dark skin whereas eating light coloured foods will result in the baby having fair skin, something which is considered a big positive in China. Drinking coconut milk will ensure that the baby has good skin while eating pineapple may cause miscarriage. 

A pregnant woman is not allowed to exert herself by carrying heavy things or doing physical work. Even old people will offer their seats on a bus. She is discouraged from attending weddings or funerals to prevent her emotions being affected in ways which will adversely harm the baby. Nor should she handle any household detergents or chemicals during pregnancy without the protection of rubber gloves.

After the birth this careful approach continues with the female family members maintaining a 24 hour support service in the early months to ensure that the mother gets enough sleep. The father is often relegated to the spare room or even the couch, and once the mother is deemed strong enough she will co-sleep with the baby, often until it is 5 years old.

I could go on and on with the 'do and don't rules' for Chinese pregnancy, each one seemingly more bizarre than the last to Western eyes, but are they really? Many relate to nutrition, a wish to avoid miscarriage, the benefits of enough rest and sleep, and the joy a new baby brings to the whole family in a country that still conducts a mainly one child policy. 

Of course many of the modern Chinese mothers eschew these rules, laughing at centuries of superstition, working up until the last minute and refusing to conform to the old tradition of being confined to their room for a month after the baby is born. They do, however, still rely on their extended family for care and nurture but for a very different reason. Not because they feel fragile but because they want to get back to work, and to do this they need the help that has so willingly been given by the older generation for centuries. 

Then there's Australia where the people are almost all informal and friendly, and this is despite the fact that more than 25% of all Australians were born in another country. What is is about Australia that has persuaded all these different nationalities to adopt the same laid back attitude? Is it the weather, or the culture? Also, before my trip I didn't know that the largest Greek population in the world beside Athens in Greece can be found in Melbourne Australia, which accounts for the fact that I met so many Greek people while I was there.

Then take Holland. There adults put chocolate sprinkles on their toast, as well as eating an average of 2 kilograms of salty-sweet liquorice a year from a choice of over 80 different kinds of liquorice. Also, despite the rainy weather, they use raincoats and rain "suits" instead of umbrellas because the wind is too strong, and anyway it is almost impossible to hold an umbrella and cycle at the same time, and with more than 18 million bicycles in the country that's an awful lot of cycling.

I could carry on and talk about the things I learned about the other countries if there was the time and space but nowadays many of these facts are available at the click of a mouse. How much more interesting they are when they are part of a conversation, however, sometimes to be wondered at, but more often part of an interested and animated discussion. And of course we British are far from exempt when it comes to strange habits. Is there another country in the world where the population's accent changes noticeably every 40 kilometres? Living where I do, in the northwest of England, I can easily recognise at least half a dozen different accents from places less than an hour's journey away. And why do we enjoy meeting up in English pubs to watch a football game, play pool or just drink a beer.

The more I meet people from other countries and other cultures, the more I learn and the more I understand. How much more sensible it would be for us British, in our often rain-sodden country, to adopt the rain 'suits' of the Dutch instead of constantly fighting the wind with our umbrellas, and is chocolate on toast really less healthy than our sugar coated breakfast cereals? And maybe we would benefit from being just a little more laid back like the Australians.

No country or culture is right, everyone is just different, but it takes time to realise that, and to see that in the end it's the differences that make every single one of us interesting, not the similarities.

It's also one of the reasons that I write about the places I've visited in many of my books. Miss Locatelli is set in London and Florence, and every blade of grass and delicious mouthful of food is authentic thanks to the wonderful times I've had with Italian friends. Travel truly does free the mind to consider other ways of living.

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Around Europe with Randall Sawka

Rough Business by Randall Sawka


March brought Nancy and Me to other parts of Europe. For two weeks we hiked
around Malta. The weather was just OK thanks primarily to the heavy winds.
It limited excursions for a few days but did allow me to get a great deal of
writing done. My favourite place was the Starbucks knockoff. Here are Nancy
and me in front of the Lion sign.

The third week of March brought us to Budapest. This is now officially our favourite city in the world. Amazing food, amazing architecture, and very, very walkable. Thought I would show you our luggage for the trip. Actually, Nancy is lugging the luggage. Plenty of time doing laundry, but were able to take 6-7 discount airlines with just carry on bags and saved a lot of money.

Our final overseas stop in Paris (Not Ontario). I call it writing intimidation time. We revisited the Latin quarter where we had coffee at the "Les Duex Magots" the Paris cafe famous as a gathering place of James Joyce, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, among others. I sip espresso while Nancy sits Beneath the Magots (mandarins, Magicians, alchemists)-your choice.

This morning we took a short walk past the Moulin Rouge and in to Montmartre
Cemetery. Here I am beside the resting place of another great, Alexandre Dumas.


The rain is now moving in for a couple days. Please see the sky in the above image. The flight back to Canada leaves in five days. The trip has been wonderful. I recommend it for anybody.

Hiking Trails and a Short Stroll to Wales by Randall Sawka

The heat and humidity of Taiwan restricted outside writing to a minimum. As I prefer to write in the AM, the heat was already building. This drove me literally (literaturally??) in to air conditioned coffee shops. Those four and a half months were interesting but typical highs in the mid 30's C that felt like 42 were a bit much.

What a difference roughly 9704.66 Km makes!

Here we are in a tranquil setting north of the Cotswalds in England. The scene is quite similar to Vancouver Island.

Here we have returned to drinking the coffee hot.

Lush green hills and valleys and dozens of walking and hiking trails-and a short stroll to Wales. (I couldn't resist the rhyme.)  Of course, we will be moved indoors once the cooler weather hits in about 4 weeks. In the meantime, off we go to pick some plums and apples for a pie. I know, I know, not healthy, but so tasty.

Find Randall Sawka's latest release at Books We Love:

and find all his titles here:

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No phone, no wifi...will travel. By Sheila Claydon

In my last post I told you I was going to cruise through the Mediterranean in March. What I didn't know at the time was that I would also experience an almost total communication blackout. Unlike the US, few of the countries I visited had a tariff agreement with my telecommunications supplier so mobile roaming fees were exorbitant. On board ship the wifi was even more expensive as well as being so slow it was a waste of time. All of this meant that I was without email, phone or any social media for almost 3 weeks. Consequently I left my phone behind whenever I went ashore, which meant a complete photo blackout as well. There are no pictures of the trip, just memories, and how colorful they are.

I listened avidly to the guides instead of looking for things to photograph when we were ashore; I watched the people who walked by while I ate at pavement cafes; I noticed the birds pecking at crumbs under the table; I smelled the flowers. I learned more about Greek and Roman architecture than I ever would have if I'd had my camera with me because, instead of taking shots of the ancient sites I visited, I sat and listened to the guide without any interruption. It was the same when I had a gondola ride in Venice, and when I saw the monkeys on the rock in Gibraltar. No photos. Instead a memory of narrow waterways snaking between lofty, crumbling buildings, and then a traffic jam of black gondolas. I have a mind's eye view of a monkey stealing a tourist's hat in Gibraltar too, and the tricks the guardian of the rock used to get it back, something I might not have noticed if I'd been busy with my phone/camera.

On a coach journey I noticed the strange tipped over buildings in Albania, made uninhabitable by the government because they had been built without permission, and I heard the unnecessary but embarrassed apologies of the guide as she explained the poverty of her country. Then there was the bullet embedded in a wall right next to my head when I visited Dubrovnik. I'd have missed it if I'd been taking a picture of the scenic street instead and I might have missed what the guide was saying too. He was a young soldier during the 1990s who fought in the Serb/Croat war, so naturally he wanted to talk about it and show us exactly where the Serbian soldiers had taken up position and destroyed eighty per cent of his city in bombardments that sometimes lasted for 24 hours. It really brought home to me the horrors of what we had only seen on TV. That bullet said it all.

Listening and watching without being distracted by the ping of a phone or the need to take a photograph, I learned a whole lot more, and now that I'm home again the memories remain vivid.

The same happened on board ship. With no email or wifi to distract me, I watched the other passengers instead, making friends and listening to a lot of personal stories. There were a quite a few elderly British people on the cruise, mainly because the ship set sail from a home port so no flights were involved, and by the end of the trip I had gained a great deal of respect for so many of them.  Despite suffering significant disabilities or, in several cases, life threatening illnesses, their stoicism and enjoyment of life was amazing. I am lucky enough to still be reasonably fit but I hope when this is no longer the case that I will be as brave.

I was especially affected by the woman who, less than a year ago, jogged every day and regularly looked after and played with her young grandchildren. That was before she was suddenly struck down with such a devastating illness that she is now confined to a wheelchair, her body bent and disfigured in a horrible way, and in constant pain...yet she smiled and talked and was interested in other people, and when the ship berthed in foreign ports she insisted her husband take her wheelchair onto local trains and other transport so she could pretend she was still 'normal.'

People and places are truly amazing when we take the time to really look at and listen to them. My phone will be taking a back seat on future holidays too.

Cabin Fever, which is about life on a cruise ship, and which I wrote after cruising through New Zealand to Australia, is available from Books We Love and on Amazon, as are all my other books. They can be found at http://bookswelove.net/authors/claydon-sheila/ or on Amazon at amazon.com/author/sheilaclaydon

A drink, a dance, or something else?

The Red Onion Saloon

This month I'm going to take you on another journey - one of the most entertaining I've experienced during my travels.

This took place in Alaska which is wild and wonderful, and one of our stops was Skagway. In the 2010 census its population was 920 people. During the height of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898, however, it was the largest city in Alaska, with a population of around 8,000 and with an additional 1,000 miners passing through each week. 

Nowadays, of course, the numbers of visitors are much larger. 900,000 annually, mainly from cruise ships, and each and every one of them enjoying an existence far removed from the tough lives of the gold prospectors. The memories haven't gone away though. The cries of “gold in the Yukon” still echo from steep canyon walls, as do the sounds of bar room pianos and boomtown crowds. It's a place where the romance and excitement of yesteryear lingers around every street corner, every bend in the trail.

Like all historic towns, Skagway boasts buildings full of artefacts and tells stories of hardships endured. People had to be tough to survive the gold rush. The prospectors' journey included climbing the mountains over the White Pass above Skagway in often terrible weather. Then on across the Canadian border to build a barge on one of its lakes so that they could float down the Yukon River to the gold fields around Dawson City. Soon, overwhelmed by the number of prospectors, officials began to insist that everyone entering Canada had to bring their own supplies to ensure that they didn't starve during the winter. This placed a huge burden on the prospectors as well as the pack animals who had to climb the steep pass.

It wasn't all bad though because it also offered a lot of opportunity to the people who decided to stay behind. Pretty soon there were stores, saloons and offices lining the muddy streets of Skagway. The Red Onion Saloon, was one of these.

A portrait of one of the original girls

 In 1898 it was one of the classiest dance halls and saloons in town. Was that because it also provided something extra? Maybe. You see the upstairs was a bordello which comprised 10 small rooms, known as cribs. Each crib was very small but elaborately decorated by the women who used them. A weary miner could wander into the Red Onion Saloon for a bottle of liquid courage and a dance or two with a beautiful lady. Then, ready to order something a little more personal, he would choose his girl in a very unique way. Behind the bar were 10 dolls that represented the 10 girls upstairs. As soon as the customer chose a doll, the bartender would lay the doll on her back, indicating that that girl was 'busy'. Once the personal services were complete and the customer had returned to the bar, the doll sat upright again, waiting for her next customer.

So what, you say? Interesting, but that was life in the gold rush. Well yes it was, but this was different. The Red Onion Saloon, having gone through a long history of thriving success and then dwindling to nothing as bigger dance halls and casinos were built in Dawson, is now operating again. Not as a bordello I hasten to add, but as a saloon full of beautiful, laughing girls who all dress in the style of the madams of the gold rush era.

So nowadays, after years of being used variously as an army barracks, a laundry, a bakery, a union hall, a television station and even a gift shop, it is open for business again. This time, however, the girls are merely guides and historians when they lead a group of visitors up the stairs to look at the 10 small cribs. And in their revealing red and black dresses with a black top hat perched on their piled up hair, they add a touch of glamour to the simple business of buying a drink. So do the barmen and the musicians who also dress the part. Stepping inside The Red Onion Saloon and hearing the tinny sound of the piano and the strum of a banjo, both overlaid with the the buzz of voices and the clatter of glasses, it is possible to see a shadow of the history of the gold rush right in front of you.

Modern day 'Madams'

But why did I find it especially entertaining? Well that's because our particular 'Madam', a beautiful young lady with the pretty and unusual name of Tamar, was born and educated in England in a place not very far from where I grew up. So there I was, approximately 4,250 miles from home, being served beer and tortilla chips by an attractive girl dressed as a gold rush Madam even though her origins were very far removed from the history of Alaska.

 Why was she there? Well in the manner of a true Madam, she winked and told me it was because of a man! " Isn't it always," she said.

Of course, as a writer of romances I had to agree. However, in her case, I should also hasten to add that she married the man well before she started to work at the Red Onion saloon. She told us that she had been working there for 10 years and it was one of the best jobs in the world. Five months of hard work during the cruise ship season and then seven months of relaxation with friends and family, not just in Skagway, but in warmer places during the cold Alaskan winter.

She made our day as we watched her dispense jokes and witty repartee with every sign of enjoyment. She tucked dollar bills into her cleavage while she collected empty glasses, smiled, laughed, posed for photo after photo. Thanks to the history of the gold rush, I suspect than the Red Onion Saloon has given the beautiful Tamar far more than it ever gave to those poor souls who lived and worked there at the end of the nineteenth century.

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