A writer is a reader first...by Sheila Claydon

Find my books here

A writer is first and foremost a reader. Reading is what inspires us. In my book Empty Hearts the heroine  is a TV presenter turned writer. 

My daughter-in-law was complimented the other day when she and her daughter (my ten year old  granddaughter) were staying in a hotel together and the waitress who was serving them saw my granddaughter reading a book. She wanted to know how this was possible when every other child sitting at a table waiting to be served was on an iPhone or a tablet. My daughter-in-law didn't have an answer other than 'she likes to read.'

How did this happen? Is it because we are a book loving family so it's in the genes? Or is it due to the fact that every night before bed she had a story until the day she dismissed her parents, saying she was now old enough to read to herself? Is it because she is surrounded by books? She has a whole bookcase full in her bedroom, another shelf here when she visits me, and a library ticket for whatever country she is in. Currently the family live in Singapore. Previously it was Hong Kong. Before that Australia. All interspersed with long stints in the UK. 

In the UK our local library is good but small. There are reading pods for the children who start a book the moment they arrive, and a garden to play in for the ones needing to let off steam. It offers lots of storytelling activities and every child can take home 20 books at a time. It is not, however, a patch on the libraries she used in Australia and Hong Kong. Nor the Singaporean one she uses now. They are all truly amazing with what seems like miles of shelving and lots of child sized seating areas as well as roomier ones for parents to join in. There are school libraries too, so she's never short of books. 

None of this means she doesn't use the iPad however. It's still one of her favourite things alongside her Nintendo Switch (which means nothing to me!) but she always finds time for her books. 

Now all this sounds as if she has been conditioned to love books and of course it has helped but it can't be the only answer. My other two older granddaughters were treated in exactly the same way as they grew up (apart from living in multiple countries!) and yet one of them never reads while the other one always has a book on the go. So loving books has to come from somewhere inside us. Is it imagination, curiosity, an ability to visualise what the words on the page are saying, or something else entirely? 

My non-reading granddaughter is bright, academically able and can read and spell perfectly well. She passed all her English exams with good marks, then gave up reading. Yet she is much better than the rest of the family at interpreting diagrams, building flatpack furniture from the pictures, ditto Lego and other constructions. She has an amazing memory and can map read like a pro, whereas I can get lost in a carpark! 

So what is it? I only have a sample of three to go by, but loving reading and valuing books really does seem to be something inbuilt. A child who reads is an adult who reads, and who, maybe, one day, become a writer. 

Mind Over Weather by Helen Henderson

 

 

Windmaster  by Helen Henderson
Click the title for purchase information

 

Author's Note: This post was written with a triple-digit temperature and high humidity. The air is cloying.

Escaping the heat has taken various forms. During my youth, a hose or small splash pool provided a cool-down after working in the fields. The basement's concrete helped block out high temperatures making it easier to sleep. In later years, the porch swing at sunset at Grandma's mountain home helped beat back the temperatures. 

As a married couple, my husband and my first home did not have any air conditioning. The loud, bulky fans used to pull heat from the building were replaced by window air conditioners. However, they had their own side effects. Only one upstairs room and half the downstairs was really habitable. Despite the four steps between the bathroom and bedroom, you felt wetter after a shower than before. 

Daytime respite came from slow walks around the grocery store and hanging out at the library. Evenings were filled with sunset walks on the boardwalk hoping to catch some breeze off the bay. The spectacle of people loading their boats onto trailers provided entertainment as did swatting mosquitoes large enough to saddle and ride. (The unofficial state bird was the mosquito.)

Which brings to contemporary summer in the more southern. Surprising, temperatures in our former town are hotter than in the new state. Despite the luxury of central air conditioning and a sunroom to watch the birds flitter from tree to tree, the library is still a favored hangout.

A word of explanation about the post's title. To prepare for an outing into the sauna provided by nature or when a storm knocks out the power, there is still one final way of staying cool -- mind over weather. If you believe the temperatures are colder than they are, then the body reacts accordingly. The following snippit from Windmaster is one of the readings to tell my body, it is not hot outside. It is cold.

 

Ellspeth’s world reduced to the shifting gray shadow that was Tairneach. Her eyes hurt from straining to see through the curtain of snow and rain that almost obscured the stallion. She rode with one foot scraping the rocks on the side of the narrow trail while her other hung over a thousand-foot precipice. One misstep and both rider and mount would plummet to the valley floor. The driving rain stung every spot of unprotected skin like a thousand cuts. Icy rivulets ran off her wide-brimmed hat. They sneaked beneath the collar of the lake seal cloak and ran down her neck. Waterlogged, her clothes sucked every ounce of heat from her body. Only where her legs lay against Cadno’s coat did she have vague feeling. Hours of riding in the howling maelstrom of cold and wet had dulled her mind to anything beyond the need to stay in the saddle...

Cadno’s pace quickened. Ellspeth peered through ice-crusted eyelashes to see what had excited the animal. The brown headed toward a shadow where the rock wall curved back from the ledge. A cave, Ellspeth’s cold-numbed mind supplied after Tairneach disappeared into what appeared to be a pile of boulders. She bounced in the saddle as Cadno trotted into the black maw. The narrow slit opened into a small chamber, then the colt walked into a larger room where the storm didn’t reach. Ellspeth’s sigh of relief at the sudden release from the bruising winds frosted the air.

 ~ I hope you enjoyed the thoughts and cooling pictures. Until next month, stay safe (and cool) and read.   Helen

To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL

Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who have adopted her as one the pack. Find out more about her and her novels on her BWL author page.

Learning to Live Without You by Nancy M Bell

 

To find more of Nancy's books click on the cover

Emily, Shady, Max

Emily

Guapo

Spook, Colleen, Phil, Sunny, Emily in the east pasture

As we age there are transitions in our lives.  The biggest, and latest one, in  mine is that I no longer own a horse. That's not entirely a true statement, I never 'owned' a horse, they more aptly owned me. My earliest memory is of riding a pony and being led around under a shady tree at the Bowmanville Zoo in Ontario. My childhood is filled with wishing for horses, it was a part of me was missing until I started working  at Rouge Hill Stables (Highway 2 and Shepherd Ave). While I didn't own those school horses, I loved them and took care of them I spent every moment I could at the barn. Most weekends I led trail rides from 8 in the morning until 8 or 9 at night. I went to school for a break LOL. 

I got my first horse when I was 17. I loved that horse, still do. He was the horse of my youth, probably the only reason I made it through my teens. Tags was the horse of my middle age and Emily was the horse of my old age. There are countless other horses who have touched my life, and I adore all of them. I remember all of them.  If I work at it I can recall the order of the stalls in the school barn at the Rouge, even though the horses sometimes changed. 

I spent my highschool years on  horseback in the magical Rouge Valley which is now a park. The first gallop on the sandy trail beside the river, crossing at the Durnford Crossing, then down the tree shadowed Mosquito Alley past the Fairy Pool at the end. Then the rest area, then either over the river again and through the apple orchard and up the steep Spy Glass Hill where you could look out over the valley and see the Glen Eagles Hotel perched on the edge of cliff to the west. The hotel is long gone now, but it lingers in my memory. If you went the other way you went up and then along the top of ridge where trilliums and lady's slippers bloomed. 

And through everything there were horses. Always Horses. 

Now, I'm learning to live without them. A part of my heart is missing. I suppose as we grow older we lose things. People, animals, beloved locations become paved over or plowed under. And yet, as long as we remember them, they are never really lost. But the place they occupy in my heart is bit less shiny and new.

I suppose everyone of us has things from our youth and lives that we leave behind as we move forward. For me, it is the privilege of caring for horses. But life moves on and we must therefore move with it. The alternative is to stop living and be engulfed by the past. Tempting as that is at times, I'm not ready to do that yet. There are still windmills I need to go tilting after. And books yet to write. 

Until next month, be well , be happy. 

   

My first horse show. Chum (Cherokee's Luck) I was 16

Guapo

Max

Miley

Gibbie

Emily, Phil, Big Bird

     

The Age of Eighty-eight Keys by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Mysteries #romance #Paranomal #Fantasy

 

Another year has passed and though i am only a day older than yesterday, I have also reached the age of piano keys. My son who sings is the one who pointed this out. Makes for some interesting thoughts. Does it mean I must write faster and try to write as many books as I have years. Would be nice but as a typist I am slow.

I have two books on the drawing board. One is the Horror Writer's Demise. A start of a mystery series. The heroine does research for college professors. She has a five- year old son and no man in sight. The hero is a police detective. He also has a five year old son. His wife died two years ago. His sister takes care of his son. The heroine's mother does this for her grandson.

The second is a Regency historical. Actually book two of a three book series about three sisters who have spent part of their life in India. This is the beautiful sister. he loves cloth and designing clothes. Her beauty makes her rather stuck on herself. She marries the son of an earl but he is not the heir. In a carriage accident, her face is cut and she becomes a recluse. Her husband returns to his playboy's life. Then he receives a blow to his ego and h sees what has become of his wife. He must change and bring her into society again.

My Places

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bid=113639528680724

 http://bookswelove.net/

 http://wwweclecticwriter.blogspot.com

https://www.pinterest.com/shadyl717/

 

Buy Mark

https://bookswelove.net/walters-janet-lane/

 

 

When time flies away, by J.C. Kavanagh

The award-winning Twisted Climb series

Order yours here:

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

The past 12 months have been filled with highs and lows. Mostly lows. For over nine months, I watched while my mom weakened and withered away in her battle with lung and bone cancer. Time seemed to stand still. It was agonizing. I was one of her caregivers as it was her wish to pass at home. Three or four days a week I would be at her side, night and day. In March of last year, the doctor predicted two to four months. He underestimated her will to live. 

Mom, circa 1958

My mom, the stubborn Irish woman that she is (was), outlasted his prognosis by an additional five months. She passed in December, at home, and now rests with the angels.

Though grieving, time seemed to pick up speed. In March of this year, we finally found a home. We had sold our home the summer before, but my caregiving duties prevented any thorough searches for a new place. So, for a few months last year, we lived on our sailboat; then, before the winter snow arrived, we found a condo to rent, one in the same city where my mom lived. Was this a high or a low? Well, the high points were exploring the city, attending a Canadian football game (go ARGOS), cheering on the Toronto Blue Jays, and experiencing the incredible vibe at the Scotiabank arena when the Maple LEAFS played. The low? The ever-present helplessness as mom deteriorated. 

But back to this year. Time is flying as fast as the wings of a hummingbird. The days, weeks, months pass like single frames in an old-fashioned movie carousel. Maybe it's true - the older you get, the faster time 'flies.'

Last week, I visited my daughter and her wee family. Except they're not so wee anymore. Where has the time gone?

This is how I want to remember them - little enough to love a
Teddy Bear picnic with me, Nana J.

While I was visiting, we spent time remembering my mom - their 'Nannie.' I hope she felt the love we were sharing in her memory... before time flies away.

If you're looking for a great way to spend time reading an action-packed book this summer, check out my award-winning Twisted Climb series. You'll love them!

Remember to tell the ones you love, that you love them :)  

J.C. Kavanagh, author of
The Twisted Climb - A Bright Darkness (Book 3) Best YA Book FINALIST at Critters Readers Poll 2022
and
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
Voted Best Local Author, Simcoe County, Ontario, 2021
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)
Instagram @authorjckavanagh