To learn more about my work please click on the cover 

What a crazy year this has been. Way too full of Covid and bad news. However, the sun is returning and we are turning our faces to the spring. Even while the Alberta prairies are still locked in cold and snow the flowers of spring are stirring in my heart.

I am working on the last book in The Alberta Adventures. Any of you who have followed Laurel and her friends through the three Cornwall Adventures series and then the first two of The Alberta Adventures will be familiar with Chance Cullen and his struggles. The first two books in this last series are about rescuing something, horses and dogs respectively. The third book is Chance's journey and his struggle to rescue his life from the downward spiral and bad choices he has made recently. I'm not sure where it's going quite yet as the story is still evolving. It begins right after Laurel, Carly and Chance graduate from high school. Chance and Carly's dad is in prison for his role in the events in Dead Dogs Talk and Chance is slowly coming to terms with the fact he needs to find his own way and that isn't following the example his father has set. I hope you'll watch for Chance's Way when it releases and see how things play out. I'll keep you updated on how things are going with the plot in my blog posts on the 18th of each month.

Until next month, stay well, stay happy, stay strong.

Nancy

www.nancymbell.ca

https://www.facebook.com/NancyMBell 

 

All the Little Chores - Janet Lane Walters @BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Affinities Series #series blurbs

 

All the Little Chores

 

Sometimes I forget when I’m writing about all those little chores that seem to creep in. I’m not talking about housework since long ago I relegated that to the status of hobby. A hobby is something you do when you have time. That’s my take.

 

The little chores that appeared these weeks seem not so much but they had me raking my mind for ideas. Writing blurbs for series. Unfortunately I have a lot some venues seem to consider series. There are eight listed as series. So I began. The first four were fairly easy. It’s the last four I’m struggling with but I will conquer them soon. The covers are for books in the series I’ve done.

 

Then came another little chore that was to me rather massive. Four of my books are going into a second edition with new covers and under my name rather than J. L. Walters. Sincethese books have been edited before, I thought this would be easy. And it was, sort of. I seemed to have had a questionmark problem. I lost count of the number of question marks omitted in the four books. I’m sure the numbers hit the hundreds. This seems to be a recurring problem with me and one I really must learn to remember how to end a question.

 

The chores haven’t finished yet but one day, I’ll have them all put aside and will be able to focus on the new story. Hopefully by the time this goes live I’ll be finished.

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Schmegma face, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends
Book 2 of the Award-winning Twisted Climb series

We've all been through this scenario: You're chatting with someone, face to face, and you notice they have salad-schmegma lodged between their two front teeth... do you tell them right away? Or do you overtly begin to slide your tongue over your own front teeth in the hope they mirror your actions? 

Of course, the proper thing to do is to tell them, right?

How about when your partner is cutting porcelain tile with a wet saw and over the course of the afternoon, begins to look like a cement monster - a man with cement-schmegma on his face. (How do you like my new word - schmegma (pronounced shmeg-ma). Definition: detritus of any variety, usually found on the human anatomy.) So, do I tell him right away? Well, I didn't.

Ian (my partner) and I have been renovating our basement. We're good at designing and we're never allergic to learning a new skill. So we've cut out walls, built support structures, installed windows, a new exterior door (that was a hard one), and bifold closet door. The new exterior door required a foyer-type of entrance so we decided to lay some porcelain tile. Have we ever done it? No. Can we do it? Yes. Isn't that what YouTube and Google are for? 

Ian goofing off after cutting drywall for the soon-to-be coat closet.

Me goofing around.

So, we spend time doing our Internet research and holy cow, everyone has an opinion and every do-it-yourselfer has a different variation than the one before. Who to believe? We start with reading the instructions accompanying the materials. Usually a good start and yup, details are on the box of tiles and on the bag of cement mortar.

Cement floor prepped and tiles dry-fitted and cut.

Like many jobs done for the first time, it's HARD! Each tile has to be squared, level and perfectly straight. If your first row is crooked - even a little bit crooked - your last row will look awful. So we spent a total of four days, that's right, FOUR days prepping the floor, dry-fitting the tiles, cutting them and then carefully laying them on the thick coat of mortar cement. I completed four thousand squats in four days. Seriously. 

But watching Ian cut the tiles with the wet-saw and seeing the resulting cement schmegma on his face... well, that just made my weekend. I didn't tell him what he looked like until after I took these pictures. Oh, did we laugh!

Ian is such a character - great cement face :)

Tile laid and cleaned up (Ian, that is).
Grout saved for another day...

Laying tile is like writing a story. It's one piece at a time, one episode at a time, one character at a time. You bring them all together and if you've done a good job, the story, like the tile, is a perfect fit. It took me almost a year to write The Twisted Climb and about nine months to write the sequel, Darkness Descends. The characters, the plot and their adventures combined to make an award-winning series. If you haven't checked them out, you really should. You can find them here: 

https://bookswelove.net/kavanagh-j-c/

And I have to be honest. I'd really rather write than lay tile. True story.

Be safe everyone!

J.C. Kavanagh, author of 
The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2)
voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll and Best YA Book FINALIST at The Word Guild, Canada
AND
The Twisted Climb,
voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll
Novels for teens, young adults and adults young at heart
Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh
www.amazon.com/author/jckavanagh
Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)

Reading to Toddlers

 

 

An interesting thing happened recently. We celebrated a toddler’s third birthday a few days back and, among the gifts the young one received, besides the usual counting blocks and plastic toys, were a Kidscreen—a computer-of-sorts containing games and videos—and a couple of books.

The mother plugged in the Kidscreen and went through the various electronic offerings. After a few minutes, however, the child lost interest in the gadget and started his usual running around. I picked up the little one, gathered the books, and started to read. Needless to say, the child, whose senses had become overly-excited by the birthday celebration (and a bit too much sugar) sat down quietly, intensely absorbed by the story-telling. When both books were read, the request came “Again!”

In a way, it is not surprising. Children are not impressed by expensive gifts, but value the personal connection that the simple ones provide. The American Academy of Pediatricians recommend no screen time for babies younger than eighteen months and not more than one hour a day for children up to five. Of course, educational programs help toddlers learn the alphabet, for example, but at that age, toddlers’ needs extend far beyond what a screen can provide.

Of greater benefit to a child is the reading of a book by an adult. Children feel secure when read to, and the act solidifies the child-parent relationship. It develops listening skills which are of paramount importance in the process of learning.

Research has shown that cognitive skills developed by this practice, extend well into the teenage years, and lead to higher scores in language and problem-solving proficiencies. Toddlers usually have very short attention spans but develop concentration and self-discipline when read to.

The greatest benefit, however, is the development of creativity and imagination. When read to, my little friend’s pupils enlarged and by his hands, mouth and eyes, he displayed the corresponding emotions and wonder of the story being read.

When to commence reading to babies? Start today! Even if they can’t follow the plot, babies, being emotionally observant, can easily discern follow their parent’s feelings. This, in itself, is a great first step in helping them in understanding the world around them. Happy Reading!

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanauthor.com) is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love, (www.bookswelove.com.)

The changing style of romantic fiction...by Sheila Claydon

Click here for my BWL page

When I first started writing romance (a very long time ago) publishers wanted stories about powerful and wealthy men! Or very macho men! The heroines still had to be the main focus of the story but their attitudes were very different. It wasn't unusual for them to be an ingenue, or at the very least someone who had very little life experience. This type of romance wasn't something I aspired to and because of this I received a pile of rejection letters. They were mostly positive with regard to my actual writing but said that my stories had too much plot! That the reader just wanted to know about the relationship between the protagonists. I could never get my head around that. How could the hero and heroine get to know one another without a decent plot? Needless to say, at the beginning I wasn't very successful.

I kept going though, and slowly things improved. As more publishers began to concentrate on romantic fiction the genre expanded and by the time I was first published, in the early eighties, heroines had more spark. Nevertheless my first book 'Golden Girl,' (now republished as a Vintage Romance by Books We Love) still had a flavour of those original heroines because the main character was a 1960's secretary looking after her man! I held true to my beliefs though. There was a plot with several twists and turns, and although at the beginning of the story she was somewhat innocent, she wasn't needy and she was a fast learner.

Since those days, needless to say, things have changed. Contemporary Romance can be about anyone and anything, and although the 'happy ever after' aspect of the books is still there, the main characters are much more equal, and rightly so. Also, the settings are often far less exotic. Once upon a time in romance, luxury was a bit of a byword. As were the clothes the heroines wore. Now it is all very casual. In fact clothes and appearance are barely touched upon. It is much more about the plot and how this plays out in inner thoughts of the characters, their emotional connections, and even the mundane aspects of their lives. In fact you could say it is all more real life...except in the case of my Mapleby Memories series, it isn't quite!

Although the romantic genre eventually caught up with me and what I wanted to write, it has of course influenced my writing style over the years. Now, although I still sometimes write a stand alone romance, I prefer to follow a character who I find particularly interesting through several books rather than just end with a happy ever after. This is why I have written 'Loving Ellen' which was published by Books We Love on 1 February. It is also why I have introduced what I call my Mapleby Magic. This is the time travel aspect of each story. Time travel allows me to introduce a whole lot of back story in a much more interesting way than just have one of the characters recount it and I find it a really interesting thing to do. I also did something else when I started to write the Mapleby Memories series. I wrote in the first person. And I've found it fascinating because although I have always followed my heroine (yes they do take over!) I've discovered that I get to know them a whole lot better writing in first person. Maybe they are jogging my fingers as I write...or taking over my computer. Who knows!

In the first book of the Mapleby Memories series, 'Remembering Rose', the heroine, Rachel, was able to step into the past events that happened in and around the village of Mapleby as she followed the twists and turns of Rose's life and tried to make sense of it. In 'Loving Ellen,' this time travel continues but in a different way when the spirit of one of Mapleby's past residents returns on a personal quest to solve a very human problem. And who better to help her than Millie Carter? 

If you have read Book 1 you will know that after many twists and turns Millie became Rachel's best friend. You will know too that she has survived some of the worst things that life could throw at her and come up smiling, determined, hardworking and kind. Don't get me wrong though. She is far from your sweet do-gooder. Millie is gutsy and resilient and prepared to say her piece. And most important of all, she isn't traumatised by ghosts!

If you want to see who she is then go to the book snippets page on my website at www.sheilaclaydonwriter.com where you can read the opening pages of "Loving Ellen.' In the meantime I'm moving forward with Book 3. It'll be a while yet but there will still be time travel, and Rachel, and Millie, and of course Ellen too.