Gardens in Bloom by Nancy M Bell

 

What is it about a garden? Sometimes it's like hockey and farming - There's always next year- but then sometimes it all comes together so wonderfully. Gardening and getting dirt under my fingernails goes back to when I was a kid and my grandfather would spend hours in the huge garden behind our house. I tagged along behind him and by osmosis learned so much with him having to speak a word. 

To this day I think of Grampa when I have my hands full of earth or my arms full of the autumn harvest. Just last night I spent an hour or so with my head and arms buried in a red current bushes and came home with stained hands, more than a few mosquito bites and an ice cream pail full of juicy currents. Today's job it to turn those currents into jelly.

Fruit and vegetables are always a joy but my real passion is flowers. Annuals, perennials, it's all good. Although I do have to say I have a secret love of the perennials, they show up every year like old friends come to stay for the summer. While I'm pulling out the never ending weeds I talk to the plants and I do believe it does make for more blooms and vigorous foliage. My husband thinks I'm just a bit wacky. Okay, more than a bit, but hey...life is too short to worry about what others think. Even one's husband LOL. 

This is my second spring and summer in the new house and it is taking a bit to get the gardens looking the way I would like, but one step at a time. It is coming along and there is a quiet satisfaction in starting from scratch again and then seeing the yard bloom with colour and hear the soft hum of bees in the hollyhocks and  other flowers.

I'm starting work on a new book set in an abandoned restaurant in my small town. It's going to be a time travel/romance/kinda historical. How's that for a confused genre? However, I do believe it will be fun to write. The working title it Jessie's Cafe and yes there really was a Jessie way back in the day. Stay tuned for more info as the work progresses.

I thought I would share some garden pictures to close. Happy gardening. Stay well, stay happy. Until next month...

Lavatera

Sweet Peas

Sweet William

Potato blossoms 

Another Year - Slow Writing #BWLAuthor #MFRWHooks #Another year #Slow Writing #Future Projects

 

Another year has passed. I'm now working on 89. Though my writing has slowed a bit, I released a series of short stories including an Mrs. Miller novella. I also set off the first book in a new murder series The Horror Writer's Demise due out I believe in October. At present I'm working on a romance story that involves a Phone Call and A voice From Her past. I have a second idea for another book concerning a phone call. I also plan to finally write the second book in a Regency series that began with Gemstones, This one called Silks. There will eventually be a third in this grouping. There will also be a second mystery. 

The past year plus was a slow one because of some health silliness. All better now. Having ideas is great but finding all the time is sometimes not all. The writing for me goes smoothly but the typing is slow. All my books are had-written for the first and often the second draft. Looking forward to the new stories to tell.

Too old for an adventure? NOT ME, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

To purchase this award-winning series, click on the link below:

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

Well, another adventure has begun. An adventure that will take us about 3,000 nautical miles from home, and - get this - we're getting there on our sailboat!

Yes, I know - crazy - but to me, it's a "WOW, that's crazy awesome!"

For years, me and my partner, Ian, have been dreaming of taking our sailboat to the Bahamas. Finally, this is the year we're making it come true. Ian retired last year and me, I've been writing from home for 10 years. We're doing everything we can to keep our bodies and minds fit for this rigorous undertaking. 

Outfitting our 43' sailboat has been it's own 'adventure.' We installed four 220 watt solar panels; a custom davit to keep our dingy out of the water; four 314 amp lithium batteries; a new Genoa (head sail); stereo and amp to keep the other boats at bay (insert winky face here :)); internet capability, and a watermaker to 'make' potable water from sea water. It's been a long and expensive 'to do' list but hey, making a dream come true will always make you B O A T (Bring Out Another Thousand) (insert another winky face, only this one with empty pockets ;)

Me applying Cetol to the teak cap rails

Wax on / Wax off. Big job for a big boat!

Part of this adventure, for me, is writing my next novel, The Deepest Divide. The plot has been outlined, months of research completed, and the characters have become 'real' in the playground of my mind. So, while we're sailing through the Great Lakes, down the Hudson River and the Intercoastal Waterway,  then across to the Bahamas, I will be having an adventure within another adventure. What new scenes will I add to the plot, which already has lakes and waterways as the main backdrop? 

Oh, the excitement!

Yeah, old-fashioned I am. I like 'real' books!

Research materials in two binders

Copies of The Twisted Climb trilogy on board? Yes!

 

Captain Ian and I 

If you want to read about adventures in the water, be sure to check out The Twisted Climb trilogy. The main characters, Jayden, Connor and Max, have multiple 'wet' adventures that could only take place in a dream world (or unWorld). Summer reading at its finest :)

Stay safe and don't forget 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
Instagram @authorjckavanagh

The Scents of Summer

 

                                                             Frind me among our authors

Summer has finally arrived here in beautiful Vermont! 

My garden is producing snow peas, tomatoes, raspberries, corn, beans, squash, herbs, peaches and flowers I can trim and set in a vase on my dining room table. Oh, the joy!

I recently joined our daughter Abby on the coast of central California where I assisted her classes at an acoustic music camp. It was right on the Pacific Ocean. Sage and wildflowers were growing among the sand dunes. Each morning we awoke to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and sage! Those scents will forever remind me of our mother/daughter time together.

What are the scents of summer like where you live? Is it the smell of vinegary barbeque sauce? The pine of a cabin's surrounding trees? The fresh and briny scent of the ocean?

Hope you and yours are enjoying our precious summer season, dear readers, and that it includes a hammock and the scent of a fresh cracked open book!

Do The Happy Hollisters Stand the Test of Time?

 Please click this link to learn about A Killer Whisky - BWL Canadian Historical Mystery Series

When I was a child, I devoured novels about children and teenagers who solved mysteries and crimes. The Bobbsey Twins, The Happy Hollisters, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden. I loved them all and passed the books down to my two sons who enjoyed reading them. Since my granddaughter loved Robert Quackenbush's series of Sherlock Chick mystery picture books that I got from the library, I wondered if she'd like these classics for older readers now that she is almost eight.   

The Bobbsey Twins were my gateway mysteries, but I could only find one Bobbsey book in my house. My granddaughter liked reading it with her dad, so I thought of trying her on a mystery series for the next reading level: The Happy Hollisters. 

The Hollisters are a family of five children aged four to twelve. People they meet in the stories always comment on their happiness. The siblings never quarrel or pick on each other or complain about doing household chores. Their parents are equally happy. They don't yell or punish their kids who constantly get into dangerous situations.  

Since the novels were published between 1953 and 1970, I decided to read the first book in the series to check that it wasn't too dated for modern children. 

Naturally, the story reflects the times. The Hollisters live in a "white" middle class world. The two boys play Cowboys and Indians. Only the girls (cheerfully) help their mother make sandwiches for a family picnic, and all three love playing with dolls, even "tomboy" Holly. The boys tend to be more rambunctious and daring than their sisters and take on the leadership roles. 

But Pam Hollister beats all the neighbourhood boys in a mini-car race, and the girls get into scrapes and contribute to solving the mystery.  

As a modern reader, what startled me most about the book was the children's freedom. Mrs. Hollister lets four-year old Sue follow her older siblings everywhere. The Hollisters live on a lake, and Sue almost drowns. (Their intrepid family dog rescues her). When the older children build a campfire, Sue's dress catches fire. Her brother Ricky burns his hands while saving her. Mrs. Hollister takes all of this in stride. 

The other adults are equally unprotective. When the children find the final clue to the mysterious thefts, they prudently take their information to Officer Cal. He invites them to hop in his patrol car and help capture the thief.  Children of the 1950s might have believed Cal would do this, but would today's more protected kids find it plausible? But if they don't, would believability matter if they're engaged in the Hollisters' adventures?  

In the end, my son felt the books were a bit too long for his almost-eight-year-old. We'll wait another year to try them on her. 

The Happy Hollister series was out of print from 1983 until 2010, when the publisher started to reissue the novels in paperback, hardcover, digital, and audio formats. You can buy the complete 33-paperback book set for $285.  The reissued books are described as faithful to the originals. I think for modern children, the stories could use some updating. For starters, I'd made the children, their parents, and their dog a little less than totally happy.