Sunday, March 6, 2016

Spring Forward? They're Kidding, Right? by Gail Roughton

It's almost that time again.  Next Sunday, you'll awake to that time when man, in his infinite wisdom, exercises the power to stroke his ego by imposing Daylight Savings Time on a helpless populace, thus supporting his ILLUSION that humans, as the superior of the species, can even control time by manufacturing more hours in the day.  I don't know what genius came up with the idea of manipulating time. One of the big Eastern Syndicates, I suspect.  Because what, exactly, does Daylight Savings Time do? Other than upset most folks' internal circadian clock, I mean?

Think about it.  Does setting your clock ahead one hour REALLY give you more hours in a day?  No, it does not.  In  the early weeks of the change, it makes you get up in pitch black and it adds a little bit of pre-sunset time to the end of the day.  By the middle of summer, you're getting up in the light again, unless you're someone whose job requires you to get up at 5:00 a.m., and if you like to go to bed early -- like that someone I just mentioned who has to get up at 5:00 a.m. -- then you're going to bed in the light.  'Cause it won't actually get dark till close to 9:30 p.m. down here in the Deep South.  Think about it for a minute. Here's this poor mother with three small kids.  Let's say, seven, five, and three years in age.  Since they're not teenagers, they've probably been up since at least 7:00 or 8:00 a.m.  And even if the three year old still takes a nap, you can bet your booty the seven and five year old don't, or if they do, it's under so much protest it's hardly worth the effort.  So this poor mother, who has absolutely NO time that she can call her own till the kids are asleep, can't even THINK about suggesting bedtime till close to 10:00 p.m. because what kid alive is going to go to sleep in the daylight?  It's got to have been dark at least thirty minutes before a young child is going to unwind enough to actually go to sleep.  There's that Circadian Rhythm thing again.  You know, the built-in internal clock in most lifeforms that respond to LIGHT and DARK?  That thing that Daylight Savings Time so arrogantly attempts to manipulate to his whim?  (Needless to say, I'd never survive in Alaska.)

I get particularly upset at this time change because when I was a child, back in the Dark Ages, THIS was the original time.  The time we're in right now.  We didn't "Fall Back" because we didn't have to "Spring Forward".  They left time alone.  The sun rose around 6:00 a.m. and it got dark around 8:30 p.m. Nobody expected it not to.  Nobody wanted it not to.  Ah, life was simpler then. Then some genius had to come up with this revolutionary idea to increase "energy efficiency".  I especially remember this line being chanted back in the winter of 1974-1975 when the first oil crisis hit.  The country stayed on Daylight Savings Time for the entire winter.  Because it "saved power".  I was in college that year, and I had an eight o'clock class.  I didn't live at college, I commuted, which meant I was up at 6:00 and on the road by 6:45.  I went to class in the dark, and it was only just beginning to get light when I walked out of my 8:00 o'clock class at 9:00 o'clock.  The floodlights were still on, all over campus.  So PLEASE explain to me how that saved any energy? It's quite simple.  If it's dark in the morning, folks turn on the lights.  If it's dark in the evening, folks turn on the light.  And really.  Be honest.  Is there a house or an office building so flooded with natural light that nobody turns on the lights during the day?  No, there is not.

So America, I implore you.  Stand up as one and send forth your message when you are told it's time to spring forward!  Tell them your spring has sprung!  As for me, I'll be manipulating things that I CAN manipulate.  Like the worlds I create in my books.  Where the characters do as I tell them -- Oh, dear Lord!  Now I've gone over the deep end myself.  My characters NEVER do what I tell them!


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Saturday, March 5, 2016

March Releases from Books We Love

Paranormal Liaisons: Rising from the Civil War's Ashes
by Troy Seate 

On a sloping hill overlooking the poetically named little town of Sugar Creek, Tennessee rests an old cemetery where, in the 19th century, people buried their dead. The old timers call the strip of land The Resting Place, but local legend suggests it is anything but restful. To the east in Washington D.C., a family deals with life amidst a nation still recovering and rebuilding from the Civil War’s debacle. Into a mother’s life befalls the tragedy of losing a daughter. It is but one of many unsettling events that occur, but it proves to be the linchpin for paranormal events to follow.
These are tales of fear and confusion; horror and tragedy. It’s also about loss and betrayal, and how life’s fabric can unravel in the most shocking and tragic of ways. Two towns, one north and the other south of the Mason-Dixon Line, deal with supernatural speculation in the American Civil War’s aftermath. 




Seducing the Chef (At First Sight Book 1)
by Janet Lane-Walters 

Seducing the Chef - Allie Blakefield, editor of Good Eatin' wants to do a feature on Five Cuisines a restaurant across the river from NY City. Her father forbids the feature and won't say why. She's not one to sit back and be ruled by someone. She borrows a friend's apartment. While leaning over the balcony she sees a handsome dark haired man doing a Yoga routine. He looks up and she is struck by the Blakefield curse. Love at first sight.
The pair start a hot and heavy romantic interlude. She visits the restaurant and is recognized by Greg, the chef's mother. The woman goes ballistic and the affair is broken. Can Allie learn what's going on and rescue her love?




Someone Like Him
by Ann Herrick 

City girl, country guy. Will opposites attract--or clash?

When New-York-City girl Emily visits her cousin Janelle in Oregon, Emily wonders how she'll survive the wilderness. Janelle wonders if the wilderness will survive Emily's visit--and if she can convince her cousin to help save part of an old-growth forest.
Meanwhile, Emily also wonders if a big-city girl can get along with a county guy--named Bret. Under forest canopies and by crystal-clear waters she struggles with her growing attraction to him. But they're so different. Whoever thought she'd fall for someone like him?


http://bookswelove.net/
 

Friday, March 4, 2016

Books We Love Insider Blog: More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by...

Books We Love Insider Blog: More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by...: 17th Century Physicians Dissecting a Body  My era is 17 th century London when medical doctors used hanged convicts to study anatomy...

More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by Katherine Pym



17th Century Physicians Dissecting a Body 
My era is 17th century London when medical doctors used hanged convicts to study anatomy. They would cut up the dead to see how men and women’s organs worked. Plague victims were also dissected. Opening the body, physicians who survived the pestilence found evidence of the buboes on lungs and other innards, or so they wrote.

The Royal Society used live animals to experiment on, like transferring blood from one dog to another then documented the results. Generally, one dog lived (the one receiving the gift of blood) and the other (who gave the blood) died. Unfortunate.
Body Snatcher at Work

Into the 18th century the laws changed. There were fewer hangings and more deportations to penal colonies. This caused slim pickings in the London cadaver field.

Medical men faltered a bit, then someone came up with an idea. Why not snatch bodies from the grave? I mean, no one will know. The dead person won’t care. For the fellas digging up the bodies, they can take rings and gewgaws left on the body as an added incentive. Everyone’s a winner.

Well, not really. Families of the dead and gone got wind of these ‘body snatchers’ and protected their loved ones with a mortsafe (dictionary.com says a mortsafe is a heavy iron cage or grille placed over the grave of a newly deceased person in order to deter body snatchers.). These would be used until everyone felt certain the poor dead person wouldn’t be ‘fresh’ enough for dissection. 

Mortsafe
During the early 19th century if you were caught digging up a body you could be heavily fined or deported. Not fun, but hey, the reward was worth the danger. Men in the medical field took the bodies no questions asked. Everyone was happy—or so one would think. Unfortunately, greed got in the way of a good thing. 

A man in Edinburgh owned an inn for pensioners. One fellow died owing Mister Hare £4 which annoyed him. Along with another fellow (Burke), Hare removed the pensioner’s body from the coffin, filled the said box with something equivalent in weight; then hid the cadaver in an empty room down the hall. The parish authorities took the coffin away, blissfully unaware there was no body in the box.

Hare and Burke sold the body to a physician for £7, 10s, making a tidy profit. The process was relatively safe. No middle of the night dig in a cemetery. No worries of getting caught, being fined or deported. The men did not suffer driving rain or snow down their collars while at a dig, nor did they have to fret over sharp winds that could easily blow off their caps. Their new boots and carpets remained clean from graveyard dirt. (After all, the men had to spend their newfound wealth somewhere.) Hare and Burke had found a sweet deal at the pensioners’ inn.

Hare loved this new, lucrative end of the business. When another pensioner dropped off the twig, he and his partner repeated the process, but when another pensioner took too long to pop off, they smothered him with a pillow. It was worth the effort, for they received £10.

After a while, the inn ran dry of almost dead persons so Hare and Burke lured vagrants, drunks and prostitutes into their fine abode. They plied them with drink then smothered them after passing out. If they wouldn’t obey by slipping into a drunken sleep, “Burke would pin him down while Hare smothered him, holding his hands over the victim’s nose and mouth.”

As you would expect, Hare and Burke became reckless. “First, they killed Mary Paterson, a voluptuous 18 year old—so free with her body that it was recognized by the physician’s medical students. When they “murdered ‘Daft Jamie’, a familiar, good natured imbecile who made his living running errands on the streets of Edinburgh”, suspicion raised its dark brow.

The men were eventually arrested. Burke hanged before a large crowd some say that numbered in the 30,000s. His body was dissected on the physician’s table he and Hare had sold so many bodies to.

But Hare escaped this wicked end by giving state’s evidence, which meant he pointed his finger at the physician and his assistants. While in the school, the physician was stormed by a mob but police intervention saved his life. Even though he protested his innocence, he lost his profession and was hounded out of town.

And so goes a sad, woeful tale of murder and other horrible deeds.

~~~~~~
The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York 1975
All pictures come from Wikicommons, Public Domain

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Thursday, March 3, 2016

If something works, it works. By Diane Bator

Writers love words.
We love them so much, in fact, that we cram as many of them into one sentence, sometimes without really saying anything or being extraordinarily superfluous with our vocabulary to the point no one understands what we just said.
That's where a great editor comes in.
No matter how experienced the writer, everyone needs a second or even a third set of eyes to read through their work and clean up the extra words, the flow of the timelines, and even the typos spell check doesn't pick up. Sorry, writers, spell check isn't perfect either.
Many publishing houses have their own editors and a traditionally published author may go through several different edits before their work is published. Even Stephen King and J.K. Rowling have editors.
For a lot of beginning writers, especially those of us who do not have an English degree, and people who self-publish, editing is just as daunting and can create anxiety in our stomachs. Where do we start when there is no editor who will not cost us a mortgage on a small house?
Critique groups are a great place to start. Find an online forum. Find a Facebook group. Make connections. Before you trust anyone with your baby, aka your novel, be sure to read a sample of their work. Even if you're not a great editor, you should be able to read and understand their work as well as pick up on errors, grammatical and otherwise.
Writing groups can be local or online as well. Many of these groups offer critiques from group members. Just remember to take their input with the proverbial grain of salt. Not all the advice people give will be helpful, some will be more than willing to help hone your piece, some will be happy to simply tear it apart until you want to give up and crawl into a cave with something stronger than sugar in your coffee.
If you let several people read your work and several people make similar suggestions, be open to re-reading and editing. On the other hand, if only one or two people point something out, it may just be their own personal preference and making changes will be up to you and not vital.
Unless they're family.
Word of advice, don't give copies of your work to your entire family and expect a positive, good critique. Not unless Uncle Bill is an editor for a major daily or works for a publishing house. Expect kind words and to hear how great it is. That doesn't mean it is. A neutral third party is always best.
Good editors and critique providers abound on the internet. Just keep in mind, you not only get what you pay for, but you still have the final say about what you end up publishing.
Writing guru Natalie Goldberg gives the best advice on editing your work:  "Be willing to look at your work honestly. If something works, it works. If it doesn't, quit beating an old horse. Go on writing. Something else will come up."
Just never give up!

Diane


You can find my Wild Blue Mystery series on Amazon and through Books We Love. My books can also be ordered into any bookstore in Canada.


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