A Gift From A Book by Eileen O'Finlan

             

 

                                     

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I grew up hearing lots of family stories from my mom about her youth in Bennington, Vermont. She often spoke fondly of a neighbor named Carleton Carpenter. She was very close friends with him when they were kids in the 1930s and '40s. After high school they went their separate ways - she to college, then a teaching career, marriage and family and he to New York and later Hollywood to act on Broadway and in movies. If you don't recognize his name, you will certainly remember his famous co-star Debbie Reynolds with whom he appeared in several movies.

About seven or eight years ago, I found out that Carleton Carpenter had written a memoir called The Absolute Joy of Work: From Vermont to Broadway, Hollywood, and Damn Near 'Round the World so I purchased a copy for my mom knowing that she would be interested in reading about the life and career of her old friend.

I got to thinking how great it would be if I could reconnect these two childhood friends now both in their nineties. It took some doing, but I finally managed to track down an address for Mr. Carpenter and wrote to him explaining who I was and why I was writing. I didn't tell my mom that I was doing this. I didn't want to disappoint her if it didn't work out.

Before long, I got a letter back. Well, two letters actually. He wrote one to me thanking me for contacting him and another letter to my mom. I'll never forget how surprised and delighted she was when I explained what I'd done and gave his letter to her. He also included his phone number. So began the renewal of an old friendship through letters and phone calls in which they caught each other up on all that had happened in each of their lives during the decades since they'd last seen each other.

Carleton Carpenter passed away on January 1, 2022. By then my mom was in a nursing home due to Alzheimer's Disease. I chose not to tell her since she spent most of her time living in her childhood and to her, he was once again her neighbor and playmate. Mom passed away in December of 2023.

Recently, while looking through my book collection, I came across the copy of The Absolute Joy of Work that I'd bought for my mom and decided to read it. The first part of the book is about his childhood in Bennington, Vermont. Mom had underlined the names of people and places that, obviously, she remembered from her own childhood there. 

Reading this part of the book was not only interesting in and of itself, but it also gave me an added connection to my mom. I love the stories she told of growing up in Vermont. I've been trying to keep them alive in my memory. My mom had a fascinating life and I would like to fictionalize her reminiscences for a future novel. She was the last of her siblings to pass so there is no one left to ask about that time and place. I must rely on only what I remember her telling me. 

Seeing the places in the book that my mom had marked have added to my cache of knowledge about the time and place of their childhoods. It was an unexpected gift as I felt as though Mom was speaking to me again, telling me more about her stories, sharing more details of her past, and letting me know that she's never truly gone from my life.

I consider books among the greatest gifts in life. Sometimes, they bestow their treasures in the most unexpected ways.

 

The Long and Short of it- by Debra Loughead

Not so very long ago, about six years or so, I had a notion to give up my writing career temporarily if not altogether. After four fulfilling decades of creating stories for young people as well as short stories and poetry for a wider audience, I felt as if I were aging out. As if I should step back and make room for newer, younger voices who, perhaps, had more to say than I did and could tell it better. (I’ve always been plagued by self-doubt, as so many writers are.)

I did so reluctantly, but also because my brain was tired and I thought I at least deserved a vacation from living inside a protagonist’s head twenty-four seven. Because it’s not just the sitting down and writing part. You have to live with your characters nonstop, waiting for them to make a move that you never expected as you travel along on their journey; they often wake you at night, and you scribble some notes about them, bleary-eyed by the light of your cell phone.

It’s a huge commitment to complete a novel, and a mix of elation and exhaustion.

So I did it. I took a five year hiatus from writing. During that time I had enough going on to keep me preoccupied. For one, I started a ‘vintage’ journey, since ‘old things’ have been my passion for almost as long as writing has. One of my very first published pieces appeared in the Toronto Star back in 1992 and it was, in fact, entitled ‘Old Things’. The essay was about the value of vintage, and how we should try to respect and cherish venerable pieces from the past that have led rich and functional preloved lives. I’ve always been a collector and conserver of ‘old things’, and wanted to take a step it further.

I started my new life chapter by collecting vintage bits and pieces, enjoyed scouring thrift and antique shops buying cool stuff, until ultimately I was drowning in a surplus of old things. That’s when it was time to pursue another dream of mine. I started an Etsy shop called Happy Old Glass. And I opened a vintage booth at a place called Arts Market in Toronto. I set up shop in a frigid January 2020…and well, who can ever forget what happened in March of that year. Everything was shut down and luckily the landlord ceased requiring rent payments for the many months of closing, reopening and closing again. But it all came back eventually and I continued on my vending adventure.

At first I revelled in the relief. It felt so liberating to be freed from that persistent and unabating surge of words and sentences pummeling your brain while you walk around in a constant daze having conversations with all the characters that have usurped your thoughts. 

But it wasn’t long before my resolve began to falter. Something was missing from my life, something deep and innate and, well, actually restorative. As much as I was able to feel good about my little shop’s motto of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, a backlog of unwritten stories and burgeoning words was building up in my brain, practically begging to be unleashed. Although it was less of a burden without the ‘encumbrance’ of a story weighing on my mind and following me everywhere, I was missing the relationships I’d once committed to with the creation of a fictional someone who kept my imagination company all day.

A writer’s got to write, there’s no doubt about it. The pressing urge to commit words to a page is ever present. No matter what you’re doing to distract yourself, there’s always a niggling little voice in your head that keeps trying to lure you back to that chair in front of your computer screen. One that keeps whispering story ideas to your subconscious mind. One that keeps on prodding you, goading you, admonishing you for not even trying. The writing muse is like having a personal trainer living in your brain, constantly badgering you to do better.

So I finally gave in to that mercurial muse of mine because she just would not quit! I’ve closed up my Arts Market booth, but I’m hanging onto my Etsy shop for the time being because I have to try and sell some of the plethora of vintage merch I’ve accumulated over the past five years. Somewhere there’s a story in all this. I’m sure of it, and maybe someday I’ll get to it, since novels about antique hunters are all the rage. Yes, I’m back at my desk again, reviewing novel manuscripts both in progress and completed. And it’s such a relief to unburden myself of all those excess words that were beginning to clog up my brain. It’s almost given me a modicum of hope, as if my well-deserved brain vacation has helped to rekindle that flame.

I’ve always believed that writers never retire. It’s almost impossible, since our buzzing brains just won’t ever allow it. The muse seldom takes a holiday, even when we do!

https://bwlpublishing.ca/loughead-debra/

 

 

A Contest of Wills by Byron Fry

 

Fry, Byron - BWL Publishing Inc.

“No worries m’Love, I got this.” I said to Roni with studied nonchalance, standing in our front yard on a beautiful spring day and looking forward to doing something with my hands, namely the assembly of the shiny new metal two-wheel carriage for her shiny new poop bucket.

A familiar contrivance to those of an equestrian bent whose daily efforts hope to slow a stable’s inevitable descent into an animal waste collection facility, the design of these things has progressed over the centuries from a wonderfully functional large wicker basket with no moving parts to today’s unlikely design: An impressively unnecessary array of powder-coated metal struts and braces, two wheels wobbling on their axles against their cotter pins, an ergonomically-angled dolly-style handle padded with foam rubber to absorb and help spread microorganisms, automatic climate control and gold-plated license plate frames. The actual bucket, for its part, is a large removable heavy-duty plastic affair which will be getting assimilated into the planet’s oceanic life or geologic substrate for millennia after humanity is dead and gone.

Most males know the urge to prove their worth by doing something for their beloved for which the male psyche is naturally wired (as opposed to, say, communication). And those of us who work excessive hours in the digital world understand the human need of returning to analog endeavors once in awhile. It’s hard to name a more analog area of human endeavor than anything that might concern a poop bucket.

Standing in the front yard with the parts heaped at my feet like so much pot-metal spaghetti, I looked down at a badly wrinkled and blurred sheet of instructions in my hand: A single image of the final thing, drawn so poorly it had to be an act of sarcasm, rendered all the more indecipherable by the manufacturer’s having either printed a faxed image, or somehow gotten their hands on a cold war-era mimeograph machine to print the thing. Looking at the picture, it was impossible to tell what tubes were on top of or under, or in front of or behind other tubes, although through a careful codebreaking process of the verbal printed instructions, one could more or less arrive at the most likely concept.

“Are you sure?” Roni asked, no doubt just an innocent offer to handle a task that she thought might burden my day, but a question that nonetheless registered to my ears as “Are you sure you’re competent enough?”

“Yes m’Love, please let me handle it.”

Having been involved for a year in the mid-to-late nineties with the assembly, and very occasionally the designs, of things like computerized impact-testing gear, explosive squib testing apparatuses, electromagnetic levitation devices and laser interferometer sending / receiving modules–most of which was created at the level of things built by NASA and way over my head, but in the service of whose creation I nonetheless learned how things go together at the hands of mechanical geniuses–I’ve since been imbued with an appreciation of designs that are well-conceived and drawn, and not one bit more involved than absolutely necessary.

By the same token, I have an abiding and healthy contempt for the type of tragic comedy I now encountered. To my credit, I welcomed the entertainment value of what surely lay ahead.

“Game on”, I thought. “Joo VEEL be made to BEHAFE!” I said aloud.

My darling Roni was still hovering, so I added “Seriously m’Love, you said you need to get some rest, so go inside and get some rest. Lemme do this.” She proceeded to pull weeds nearby. My wife is no fool.

In the world of competent mechanical design, things are commonly done with fabrication tolerances of plus or minus one thousandth of an inch. More comfortably relaxed designs, for parts where things don’t really matter, might widen tolerances to plus or minus ten thousandths. In aerospace, sometimes things have to be within one micron.

The mechanical design of this thing, such as it was, employed very thin-walled tubing. This was a good thing, because it allowed for quality control specs of plus or minus a quarter mile, the components having been bent to vague angles and crimped to arbitrary degrees at the bore for each screw. It was hard not to visualize the process as having taken place behind a thatch hut with a pair of pliers held by someone dressed in a loincloth and assisted by his dog, a large wicker basket looking on from nearby and chuckling.

Still, I was unfazed and resolute. “Pity the poor thing”, I thought. “‘Tis no match for my codebreaking and puzzle-solving skills, nor my dogged stubbornness. It shall be assembled in short order, and in good form.”

I’ve dealt with this level of design and manufacture before: One gets the holes into the same area code then pulls things together, bending the frame pieces into their intended shape by carefully tightening the chinesium screws while internally chanting the universal assembler’s mantra: “Please don’t strip please don’t strip please don’t strip”.

Amidst a progressively growing assortment of tools and much creative profanity, engaging all of my limbs in what can only be described as a prolonged game of Twister with metal frame pieces, I was able to achieve the capture of those various unwieldy shapes at their various unlikely angles, then somehow maintain them while installing the fasteners.

At long last, while starting to slowly straighten up to stand majestically erect on the battlefield, knee-deep in a chaos of detritus and tools, not even bleeding and having triumphantly bent physics to my will in the name of all that is right in the universe, I was beholding the fruits of my labor and anticipating the presentation to the world of the completed conveyance, when Roni wandered up.

She took the thing in at a glance, immediately pointed and said, “Hey, that piece is on backwards!”

Damn.

A Sister Chicks Story for You

 

In addition to having fun getting reacquainted with Paisley Noon and all the characters from Nokota Voices as I continue to work on the second Forever Fields book... 

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It's time for another...

Sister Chicks Adventure!

I am trying to raise my own chickens again this spring. With the price of eggs so high, and my flock dwindling a bit after the weird winter, I figured it was time. So out came the big and clunky Fleet Farm incubator and the various Rubbermaid totes full of all things CHICKS.

I had a rather dismal outcome this first time around. Only two out of ten eggs hatched. Several were not fertilized in the first place. That's not on me. That's on Sherriff Andy, my rooster. Spring has not completely sprung for him, perhaps. Then a few eggs just up and quit by the second candling on day 14 (of 21). The super technical term for these is "Quitters". So I had high hopes for the remaining four. Two dark chocolate brown eggs, and two lovely pale blue ones. 

After much fretting over whether I had the humidity right, and the temperature right, and the candling right, "labor day" came and went. No chicks. Where did I go wrong? Immediately, I believed they all perished at my hand! I could just cry.

My husband said, "You can't take it so hard. It's just nature."

I said to him, "This," and I waved my over-emphatic, over-emotional hands at the Styrofoam box with wires and heat elements and water channels, "is not nature." I drew in a quivering breath. "This is me pretending I'm nature." I let out said breath and finished with, "I don't know if I'm cut out for this. How does a mother hen do it?!"

But he talked me into not giving up just yet. So I re-read EVERYTHING I'd already read and studied several times over! I woke up in the middle of the night to Google questions I hadn't yet thought of. I must have missed something, right? As you can imagine, the internet is littered with a thousand different opinions and a plethora of advice, and of course, most of them contradict each other.

In the end, all I could do was wait.  On day 23 (not day 21 like the books say), the two dark ones hatched! The first one cheered the second one on as she worked her special hatching muscles to break free of her shell. I guess they didn't read the books. Now, these little sister chicks have each other. They are so stinkin' cute, I can hardly stand it. I can't wait to see what funny, sweet, or oddball personalities they develop as they grow and become part of the flock. Their adventure has just begun! 

I'm sad to say the two light blue ones didn't make it, so I think I will try again in a few weeks. I counted it out on the calendar and found that if I start a new batch on Easter weekend, they should hatch on Mother's Day. Wouldn't that be neat!?

Enjoy Sister Chicks To The Rescue!, inspired by my own lil sister chicks. 

Click on the book cover below to go to StoryJumper.com.

Everything that happens in a yoga studio is not Zen.

 

Last month a shared a scene from Bind, my new book featuring three yogis, two police detectives and one damn cute dog. This month I thought I’d give you some background about the plot and the characters. Would love to hear your feedback.

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Everything that happens in a yoga studio is not Zen. 

Shondra (Woo Woo) Aeron, Lexie Hill, and Charlene Kurtz meet five mornings a week at the Asana Yoga Studio for a downward dog or two, one serene savasana, and a steaming cup of coffee afterwards. They’re not friends, but the theft of a very expensive watch from the gym where their studio is located draws them together – and into a bind of another type. 

To support Kristi Yee, their yoga instructor and co-owner of the gym, the three women offer to help her retrieve (some might call it stealing) financial information from her business partner. Mission successful (albeit with a few hiccups). It doesn’t take Charlene, an auditor, long to determine the balance sheet is not all it appears. Certainly, fencing a very expensive watch would help.

The partner isn’t the only suspect. The watch owner could use some money. He is having a relationship with at least two women, neither his wife. One of those women, who made the affair loudly public early one morning in the gym, has managed to cash in on her relationship. The other woman is unknown, at least initially.

The watch owner’s son, a diehard romantic, is also a suspect. His father and his girlfriend certainly think so. He doesn’t need or want the money, but his girlfriend does. At least he thinks so. He thinks wrong.

The girlfriend is also a suspect. She could, apparently, use money and she does not like her boyfriend’s father. That’s not fair, she detests him. Gym staff are also under police scrutiny as well as Kristi herself.

One conundrum for Halifax Police Detective Michael Terrell: how could someone remove the watch from a busy changeroom locker? Admittedly, the owner lost his key, which he usually does at least once a week, but you’d have to know what locker the key opened or try each locker in the change room. Warriors three to the rescue. Their task, at the request of Terrell (who seems to have a thing for Woo Woo, a reflexologist) is to try and penetrate the inner gym sanctum.

They fail, hilariously. But in their failure comes one undeniable conclusion: whoever stole the watch knew exactly what locker to open and what they would find inside.

Throughout the investigation, professional and posers, a number of other more personal issues arise. Lexie clearly has a thing for a gym employee. (It’s not what you think.) Someone is repeatedly trying to connect with Charlene. She resists. (It’s not what you think.) Every once in a while, Woo Woo gets a message from another world. (It is what you think.)