Priscilla Brown goes walking

 We  know walking is excellent exercise, and I find it so not only for the body but for my contemporary romance writer's mind. I've found the senses come alive during a walk: sight, small, touch, hearing, taste, offer inspiration and suggest ideas. Several years ago when I lived by the sea in New South Wales, I loved strolling along the beach. Underfoot there's the tactile sensation of sand hard and damp where the tide has just receded, and soft close to the dunes where the water seldom reaches. The breeze carries the aroma of the ocean - lick lips and taste salt. Since this is a bay, there's no surf and the waves are not usually high. Paddling on the edge, cool wavelets wash over feet. During my excursions on the beach, I started to write in my head the novel which became Where the Heart Is. However, the final story is set not in temperate Australia but on an exquisite sub-tropical Caribbean island. https://books2read.com/Where-the-Heart-is

 

Moving inland to a rural area, I became an alpaca owner, and as I walked around the farm my senses received whole different influences: the scents of grass and
of warm animals, handling their smooth fleece, the dog barking to get them to move to another paddock, the breeze rustling through the windbreak eucalypt trees.Enjoying the curiosity and intelligence of these handsome friendly creatures meant that I had to put them in a novel, and Sealing the Deal took shape. https://books2read.com/Sealing-the-Deal

 

In my current semi-urban area, the senses are still present during my exercise walking around the tree-lined streets close to a railway line.There's the light wind hissing thought the foliage of the huge trees bordering the rail line, and the rattle of trains and hooting as they approach the station. The area has mostly quiet road traffic, and a lot of cockatoos screaming at each other. Right now in late spring blossom trees are shedding their white and pink flowers, and the scent of wattle pervades the air. My local walking has not yet brought forth a complete new story, but bits and pieces of characters, description, setting are gradually coming together. I have been known to sit on someone's garden wall to jot down in my ever-present notebook a particularly interesting and potentially important idea or thought or observation.

Enjoy your walking and your reading, best wishes, Priscilla 

 

https://bwlpublishing.ca 

https://bookswelove.net/brown-priscilla

https://priscillabrownauthor.com 

 

New Year, New Beginnings by Diane Bator

I am one of those busy people who manages 3 teenagers (one at University), 2 part-time jobs, a fledgling writing career and a new editing business as well as a husband. Yes, I am my own special kind of crazy and can cause myself all sorts of stress. I also make sure to create all kinds of joy in my life to keep some semblance of balance.

During a really busy, extremely stressful, time in my life recently, I took the time to make a list of the things that relaxed me and gave me joy. This list is in no particular order, but simply as they popped into my head.

1.       Baking Cookies

~ I don't do this enough because of the inevitable side effect - I eat them!

2.       Laughing

~ the light-hearted, silly moments are the ones that inspire me the most and open the creative portal.

3.       Snuggling with my cat

~ our furry baby was a rescue animal 9 years ago as a newborn kitten. He's funny, chatty, and always seems to know when anyone needs a hug.

4.       My kids

~ good, bad, or ugly, the kids are always entertaining to some degree and a constant source of laughter, hugs and inspiration in my life.

5.       My friends

~ coffee dates and lunches aren't as common as they used to be so I savor every one. My friends all know I write (as to many of them!), they all know I use the best lines they toss out at me, and they all know I treasure every one of them!

6.       Yoga

~ I love yoga to restore my body and spirit - my mind I'm still working on. Mind tends to be a wild horse that does NOT want to be reined in and constantly needs the gentle reminder to be still. I seek the calming effect, which helps me focus on my writing later.

7.       Christmas Movies

~ Okay, I admit it. I'm a Christmas movie junkie, especially those made-for-TV movies. Have you ever noticed about 95% of them feature writers?

8.       Walking

~ A great moving meditation, I love as how my feet move, my brain sweeps out the bad thoughts and lets my creativity flow - just when I have no pen or paper within reach!

9.       Martial Arts

~ my hubby and kids did karate for 6 years before I started nearly 3 years ago. Another form of moving meditation, students are trained to empty their minds, yet be aware of everything around them.

10.   Writing

~ My Happy Place! When the rest of the world is getting me down, or life gets out of control, I find escaping to write is one of the best ways to regain my joy, calm my spirit, and find my focus.

As the New Year begins and the glitter and busy-ness of the Holiday Season fades, we all need to find take a deep breath and return to being the creative souls we are. This year, make Joy your constant companion. Find the awe and wonder in the little things and make your own list of the things that make you happy for those days you'd rather tear the world - imaginary or otherwise - apart.

My wish for all of you in 2015 is to learn how to stop once and a while and just breathe.

Happy New Year!

Diane Bator

Author of the Wild Blue Mysteries Series

~ The Bookstore Lady

~ The Mystery Lady

~ The Bakery Lady

....more coming soon!

How I found my hero by Sheila Claydon

http://youtu.be/nKSOFuQL5e0

There I was, off to visit friends in the Yorkshire Dales for a weekend of over-eating and dog walking, with absolutely no idea that I was going to meet the hero of my next book!

Visiting the glorious Yorkshire Dales when the weather is good is, indeed, like visiting 'God's own country.' Ask any Yorkshireman.  Visiting, as we did, when a blanket of grey mist hung like a pall over the whole landscape, was another story altogether. Walking left us damp and cold with our walking boots inches deep in mud, our trousers spattered with it from ankle to thigh and our hair lank and wet from the moisture swirling in the air around us. And when we climbed to the top of Middleham Low Moor we could have been at the end of the world. The gallops where race horses train most mornings were deserted. There was not a single  sound, not a jingle of harness or a creak of leather, not the snorting effort of the horses or the sharp calls of the jockeys, not even the sound of a curlew or the harsh shriek of a pheasant, just that strange cotton-wool silence as the world closed in on us. Think <em>Never-ending Story </em>if you've seen the film, and you'll be close. It was like Fantasia once it had been destroyed by <em>The</em> <em>Nothing</em>, except that in Yorkshire on that day, there wasn't even colour. Just a bleached white-out that hid the wonderful views that we knew lay below us.

Of course the local beer, the pubs that welcome dripping walkers, muddy dogs and wet boots in no particular order, the excellent and abundant yorkshire food, all made up for it, as did the log fires and the hospitality.  A delicious lunch of pork belly and apple washed down with beer soon had us putting the world to rights again. And then, right in the middle of everything, serendipity came to call.

I had only just decided that I wanted a musical background in my next book.  I hadn't even got as far as deciding what sort of music, and I was still in a dilemma about the hero when...there he was playing jazz piano at a jazz evening that we were taken to later that day, and where we swayed and clapped and drank wine with the best of Yorkshire.

So thank you Yorkshire, thank you Red Stripe Band, and thank you jazz piano player.  Don't worry.  You won't recognise yourself in the book because it isn't you, so please don't fret and please don't sue!  I just needed someone to point me in the right direction and you did it, with your music, your band, and your wonderful enthusiasm...so let's hear it for The Red Stripe Band.

sheilaclaydon.com

amazon.com/author/sheilaclaydon

facebook.com/SheilaClaydon.author

twitter.com/SheilaClaydon