Introducing John Robichaud by Paul Doucette

 

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The latest John Robichaud release - July 2022

Hello again,

 I would like to take this opportunity to introduce a very good friend to all of you. His name is John Robichaud, Robie to his friends and colleagues. Born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he grew up with limited possibilities for his future outside of fishing or mining. Then came WW I and he saw his chance for something else and maybe a bit of adventure, so he enlisted.

He was one of the lucky ones and survived the horrors of the trenches and bad leadership. Upon his discharge he and an American soldier he befriended returned home; he accepted his friend’s invitation to come with him to Boston. Shortly after arriving there, they decided to join the police force where he served and made a favourable impression with his superiors. It was not an easy time to be a cop since it was Prohibition and the city was rife with hoodlums, hustlers, hookers and every other form of criminal looking to ‘cash in’.

In time, he decided he was ready to return home to Nova Scotia but soon learned that he had seen too much, lived through too much to settle in his old life. He headed for the city – Halifax – in search of something to do. That’s when he saw an opportunity with the local constabulary and once again took to the badge. It wasn’t long before he came to the realization that this was his true calling and made the commitment to stay on to the ‘golden handshake’. The job proved to be easier and decidedly safer than his stint in Boston.

World War Two would change all that. For the six years he and his partner, Pete Duncan, would find themselves breaking up gin mills, illegal booze parlours, theft rings and running down the occasional German agent for Naval Intelligence, in some cases with tragic endings.

You can follow Robie and Pete’s exploits in the stories I have written and which are available through BWL.

Keeping Magical Secrets by BC Deeks, Paranormal Mystery Fiction Author

 

When I’m immersed in a new story as an author, the characters become quite real to me. In WITCH UNBOUND, Book 1 of my Beyond the Magic series, my main characters, and even the dog, are not what they seem. Hiding your identity can be tricky, even for a supernatural being. Marcus Egan is a powerful Guardian Warlock sent undercover as a visiting veterinarian to the mortal realm. His mission is to investigate the murder of two escaped witches from the supernatural realm of The Otherland.

I thought it might be fun to see what would happen if the local newspaper reporter suddenly confronted Marcus with prying questions. How would he respond? He’s not supposed to use magic on humans, but—

Main Street, Robbers Canyon (Montana)

Reporter: (racing up to Marcus) I’m Suzie from the Robbers Canyon Gazette. We’re doing a column on ‘Meet the People of Robbers Canyon’. Can you spare me five minutes to answer a few questions, Dr. Egan?

Marcus: (glancing from side to side looking for an escape route but finding none) Well, okay, I guess. But I’m just a visitor. I’m filling in for the regular vet. You should probably wait to do your interview with him, shouldn’t you?

Reporter: (Smiling coyly and batting her eyes) Oh no. Everyone in town is wondering about you right now, Dr. Egan. Where did you come from?

Marcus: (Gritting his teeth) It’s not somewhere you would know.

Reporter: (Still smiling) How long are you staying in our fair town?

Marcus: Ah, just until I complete this assignment, then I move on again.

Reporter: (feeling a little frustrated) Sounds like you travel a lot with your job. That can’t be easy. Do you have family waiting for you back home? Are you close-knit?

Marcus: I have a brother and sister. We are very close, but they understand my work. We’re a long-time family business.

Reporter: Oh, so they’re also vets?

Marcus: (Fidgeting) Ahhhh, not exactly. But they support the family in a manner of speaking—Listen, it’s getting late, and you have a deadline to meet.

Reporter: Right, I’d better run.

LATER, Office of the Gazette

Gazette Editor: Who did you interview for the column today?

Reporter: The visiting vet, Dr. Egan. He’s a strange one.

Editor: What do you mean?

Reporter: I thought he’d be a brilliant choice because all the women in town are salivating over him, but it was like pulling teeth.

Editor: Lots of people freeze up in front of a reporter. It’s your job to draw him out.

Reporter: (Feeling vaguely uneasy) I tried, but it was like my mind didn’t work.

Editor: (Chuckling) So when you said ‘all the women’ you were including yourself?

Reporter: Maybe…. but it was more like I kept losing my train of thought. You know I can ask the tough questions when I need to. I meant to ask him what he thought about the Gwynn murders, but every time I opened my mouth some inane question came out. It was like I wasn’t in control of my own tongue…. (Shakes her head) ….it was weird.

Two more primary characters in WITCH UNBOUND are Avalon Gwynn, who doesn’t know she’s an extraordinary, hereditary witch living in the mortal world, and a canine familiar who appears out of the unknown to protect her. These hidden identities, as well as more of the many mysteries of the magical realm, will be revealed in WITCH UNBOUND.

You’ll meet Marcus’s brother, Theo Egan, in MORTAL MAGIC (Book 2) and sister, Elowyn Egan, in REBEL SPELL (Book 3) as the Beyond the Magic series continues.

I write heartwarming stories of mystery and magic. To learn more about this series or my author life, please find me on my website at www.bcdeeks.com or on Facebook.

Thanksgiving in August

 

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August is a month that cultures bring in the first harvest and give thanks. For the Celtic people it's Lughnasadh...

For many Native Americans, it's the Green Corn Thanksgiving...

What do you do in August?  Here in Vermont  (where summer equals our 90 days of blessed frost-free living!) we bring in the harvest of our own summer garden. We visit local orchards and help them bring in their harvests of peaches and blueberries. We head for our state parks with our families.

And this August, I'm celebrating many years of being married to this guy:

 Do you relax by a pool, lake or creek? Head for the ocean? I hope you're enjoying the last of summer with your friends, family and of course... a good book!

My Literary Tour of Ireland

 

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Irish writers were hot in in the 1960s and 70s. My university friends and I read Joyce, Yeats, and Beckett. My Fair Lady, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, was a hit musical movie. Oscar Wilde was and still is remembered as a larger-than-life character even though he died in 1900. 

I encountered these authors and more during my visit to Ireland in June.   

On our first day in Dublin, my husband Will and I wandered by the colourful statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square. 

Monuments near the rock depict Wilde's numerous witticisms. "Always forgive your enemies: nothing annoys them so much." 

A few blocks away, in St. Stephen's Green, we met James Joyce. 

Jonathan Swift, author of the satire Gulliver's Travels, was our third Dublin writer that day. Swift served as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral and was known for his controversial opinions. He's buried in the cathedral along with a woman, Esther Johnson, with whom he shared a mysterious relationship. 

 Swift in St. Patrick's Cathedral

The next day, we boarded our tour bus and drove around the island. Our guide mentioned several times that Ireland has four Nobel Prize Winners for Literature, a lot for a small country. They are William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett, "who wrote the most boring play ever written," she said about Waiting for Godot. We met Yeats in his home County Sligo on the northwest coast.  

I find Yeats' 1919 poem, The Second Coming, written during the aftermath of WWI, sadly relevant today.  

                                           "The best lack all conviction, while the worst

                                            Are full of passionate intensity."

At the end of our trip, we returned to Dublin. Will and I went to MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland), housed in the city's former Catholic College, which James Joyce attended. Inside there's a photo of Joyce and his fellow students sitting under this tree that still stands in the back garden. 

The museum includes past and present Irish writers, but the focus is James Joyce. A movie and wall panels portray the author's life.  

 

A 3-d map of Dublin marks locations in Joyce's short stories and novels. 

The first draft of Joyce's most famous novel, Ulysses, is displayed, showing the author's colour coding method.

And here's the first copy of the first edition of Ulysses. 

  

In my youth, I enjoyed Joyce's first two books, but didn't tackle Ulysses because everyone said it was inaccessible.  After my trip, I skimmed the first fifty pages and can boast that I sometimes understood what was going on. I see on the MoLI website they offer an online book club this summer called Ulysses - for the rest of us! The fortnightly sessions promise to demystify the novel. I'm not quite up to the challenge this summer, but maybe next year.  

  

  

    

Fun With Fonts by Karla Stover

 

                                              A book about high-class prostitution in 1900.

Allow me, please, to quote fontspace.com:  "Comic Sans is arguably the best font ever!"  A very arguable statement. However, love it or hate it, (and there's a huge list of people and places who and which hate it)  Comic Sans is included in the "Dyslexia friendly style guide."

I had to send my nephew a thank you note a few weeks ago and, because my handwriting is bad, I typed the note but chose a cute font. Sadly, I don't remember what I used, only that it had something to do with Superman.

Not so much anymore but in the not-too-distant past my library book would have a page giving the origins of the font used. I generally gave the article a brief look - see but didn't pay much attention. However, after finding a fun font for my nephew's letter, I started looking at fonts (or typefaces) and their history.

I love ITC Blackadder because of its history. British designer Bob Anderton created it from British insurrectionist Guy Fawkes' signature after he was tortured. It's described as being elegant but menacing. There are actually a bunch of creepy fonts: Bloodstain, Gravedigger, Darkmode, for example but I'm guessing they're mostly used for covers and not the actual narrative.

A handwritten menu at a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts inspired Kristen (ITC) . It's supposed to be reminiscent of a child's handwriting. ITC, by the way, stands for International Typeface Corporation. It's a company that "was founded to design, license and market typefaces for filmsetting and computer set types internationally." 

An Austrian commercial artist created Forte Font. He had trained as a compositor and taught typography and drawing in Vienna. He must have also liked nature because Forte came from his studying plants, particularly the long stems and furry heads of reeds. 

BWL folks might be interested in Gabriola, named after British Columbia's Gabriola Island. A man named John Hudson was said to have been inspired by music and the idea that the same melody can be played in more than one mode. Each had its own expressive characteristics therefore each adds different elegance and grace.

The Georgia font was named after a tabloid headline which read, "Alien heads found in Georgia."

The Baskerville font has been around since the 1700s and one has to wonder if that's where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got the name for his Hound of the Baskervilles. John Baskerville created it and the Baskervilles were an old British family. I did a cursory google search but couldn't find out of the family is still around.

Of course various social media sites have their own fonts. Twitter uses Chirp. Instagram has a list of suggested fonts, my favorite being Leah Gaviota because it's upbeat-looking. According to typoscan, Youtube uses Roboto, Arial, San Serif and YT Sans.

Here's a scary quote from https://arturth.com: "For sighted people, there are a lot of hidden meanings behind each font, which is why social media platforms work tirelessly to come up with the right type of font to refer to a certain part of their website." 

Yikes! Google is watching me and fonts are trying to manipulate me. My neighbors are complaining about drones hovering over the yards. Is it time to stockpile food and water, build a shelter in the woods and become a prepper?