The Horror Writer's Demise by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Mystery #Small town

 

This book took me the longest ever to write. There in lies a story. I began the story just before I had a medical scare. The book was written in pieces and I really wasn't sure it would ever be finished. More than a year after the beginning, I wrote the end. The writing was interrupted by several visits to the hospital. Fortunately I bounced back and kept trying to write the story. This was to be the start of another mystery series. I still have the idea brewing for a second Book and possibly a third. The second will be the History Writer's Snuff boxes. The plot is slowly starting to unfold as I use developing the story as a bedtime exercise.

The house in the story isn't the one it's based on. Years ago where I live, there was a house where writers and artists could rent a room to use as a writer's haven where thy could go to create. It may still exist but I'm not sure.

Writing is going much smoother these days. No more trips to the hospital. Hopefully, the next story in the series will be started before the end of the year. At present I'm working on A Voice from Her past, possibly partof a series named Phone Calls. 

Never-have-I-ever, by J.C. Kavanagh

To order your copy of the award-winning Twisted Climb series, click on the link below!
Note the new cover of Book 3, A Bright Darkness 

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

Earlier this year, I wrote a blog about some of the unique experiences I've had in the last 21 years with my adventurous partner, Ian.

Today, I'd like to share a few more of these experiences from our latest sailing adventure - we've been underway since mid-July from Georgian Bay, Ontario, and the final destination is the Bahamas. I refer to these experiences as my "never-have-I-ever" done/seen/felt this before.

Never-have-I-ever... (until now)

- travelled through lock systems (The Welland Canal, Canada, and the Erie Canal, New York State)

Welland Canal, Ontario, Canada. My sailboat is on the right.

- walked through Times Square, New York City

- sailed past the Statue of Liberty

- celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland 

- attended a U.S. football game - Navy Midshipmen vs the Air Force Falcons

- had to evict a rat from my boat (see last month's blog)

- planned on outrunning hurricanes (three and counting)

- paid $135 U.S. for washing/drying/folding 20 lbs of laundry 

- had to pump out the waste (poop) tanks on our sailboat (it's a crappy job). (In Canada, marina staff have the honour of performing this task)

- had the ability to connect to the Internet while sailing/anchoring (satellite service!)

- eaten The Crab Chip, "made with Chesapeake Bay Crab seasoning"

- sailed overnight in the Atlantic Ocean, from New York City to Cape May, New Jersey, dodging multiple freighters and massive swells

- 'run' from a severe nor'easter (remnants of tropical storm Jerry) and 'hide' in a wee bay while the storm passes

Winds gusting 60+ mph. Our sailboat is the white dot.

That's plenty of 'never-have-I-ever,' at least for now. If you like the sound of these adventures, then you'll love  the award-winning Twisted Climb series. There are dozens of 'never-have-I-ever' experiences for Jayden, Connor and Max. And Dick. Can't forget him. Check them out!

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

When Life Mimic's Art by Debra Loughead

 

                                                                        Happenstance

It was way back in the 20th century that I originally wrote this short story. On a whim, I decided to submit it to a contest sponsored by the Valley Writers’ Guild in the Ottawa Valley in the year 2000. A few months later a phone call (on a land line!) came from out of the blue. The gentleman on the line told me that I had won first place in the contest ($500! As much as my first book advance!) out of approximately 100 submissions. 

I was so gobsmacked I could barely even speak. I hung up in shock and dismay, then promptly called him back to make certain that he had called the right person. Me? And yes, me! I had actually won. The story is about an elderly woman named Alice who lives with her son and daughter-in-law, and can’t give up her lifetime smoking vice. 

Fast forward a little over twenty years. My mother, who lives in a retirement home, sneaks out onto the balcony one winter afternoon for a quick smoke, which is prohibited. She’s already been warned twice, but she’s a stubborn old broad. Well doesn’t she slip and fall on the ice on her balcony, banging her noggin. She isn’t wearing her call button around her neck the way she’s supposed to all the time. It takes her an hour to drag herself back inside. 

My mom turned 95 this year. She still has a couple of smokes a day. But she makes sure she always goes outside, like a good girl. She’s one tough cookie! Please keep reading and you’ll understand why I’ve included this little anecdote. Thanks!

Like Smoke

By Deb Loughead

Alice wants a cigarette. But her daughter-in-law’s voice hovers in the air as she stands staring out the window at the winter morning, makes her hesitate for an instant. Frigid gusts of wind stir up sparkling snow cyclones on the frozen parking lot below the apartment building. Sunlight glints on the icicles that jut like yeti teeth from the balcony above. The temperature has dropped from the freezing point to minus 22 degrees overnight.

Alice’s hands tremble when she lights the cigarette. She’s thought twice about smoking it inside, but today is far too cold to stand out there. Winter has finally swept in over the weekend, put a strangle-hold on January and doesn’t plan on letting go until spring, by the looks of it. Up until now Alice has been able to step out onto the balcony clad only in a sweater because of the unseasonable mildness, has been able to indulge her vice without the worry of stinking up the apartment.  

The smell always lingers whenever she smokes inside, even if she sits in the bathroom, shuts the door and turns on the fan. Isabel still catches the scent when she gets home from school. Because she’s unaccustomed to cigarette smoke, because her pristine lungs have never been exposed to it, even second-hand. Alice thinks the woman might have grown up in a plastic bubble, protected from the hazards of the real world. Isabel says that she smells it on her clothes, on her furniture, in her drapes, then reprimands Alice like she would a child, in her grating teacher’s voice.

“I asked you not to smoke inside, Mrs. Best. It’s disgusting. It gets all over the furniture, in my hair and my clothes. My students smell it on me at school and think it’s me who smokes. Why don’t you quit. It just might kill you someday, you know.”

Alice opens the door just a little to let fresh air sweep through the apartment. She pushes her mouth up to the crack to exhale, and watches the smoke quickly dissipate in the winter wind. She stands there, leaning on her cane, to smoke the entire cigarette. A scarf is wrapped for protection around her thin neck and she wears a toque pulled low over her ears to protect from the draft. Back when she was a child, a draft had killed her baby sister. Little Mary, fresh out of the bath, and caught in a draft from an open window.  Died two days later, because of the draft, everyone said. In the middle of summer yet.  Alice avoids drafts.  

She stubs the butt in an ashtray, then hobbles to the bathroom to flush away the evidence. She will repeat this routine every half hour. She would like to do it every fifteen minutes, but gets tired standing so much. The arthritis that ravages her body has played havoc with the tiny bones in her feet. It’s impossible to stand for too long. And she hasn’t the strength to drag a chair over to sit on. Besides, Isabel would notice the tracks on the carpet, and reprimand her again. Every evening before bed, she vacuums up the footprints that their slippers have pressed into the pile so the carpet will always look brand new, untrod upon, show-room perfect. Isabel likes everything in the right place, nothing disturbed, always neat and tidy. Alice is sure that Isabel catches the dust before it falls on the furniture, too. She would like to call her daughter-in-law anal-retentive, but doesn’t dare.

Alice wishes that she didn’t have to live here, to complicate the woman’s orderly life just because her body is breaking down on her, because she’s become a hostage to her pain. She doesn’t ever feel welcome. Isabel seems to have a hard time disguising her impatience behind a twisted smile. She’s always wiping up, sweeping up, picking up behind her, disposing of any trail that attests to her existence, as though she’d like to do the same thing to Alice. But she can’t, because of her husband.  

Alice’s son David is doting. He tolerates her imposition on his life, had insisted on it, in fact, when he’d realized how serious her condition had become during her Christmas visit, how she could barely lower herself into a chair and needed a cane now.

“You can’t go home again, Mom,” he’d told her in a gentle way. “You’ll have to stay with us until we can find a place for you. You’re not safe in your own home in that condition.”  

He’d sprung it on her just like that, sitting by the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and from the corner of her eye she’d seen Isabel’s whole body stiffen. Now she’s always whispering to David, nudging him when Alice does something Isabel disapproves of, which is often, imploring with her eyes for David to fix things. For Alice, the last three weeks already feel like three years. And probably, she figures, for Isabel, too.

David’s smiles are real. He hugs her every morning, kisses her cheek, tries to help her whenever she needs it, is gentle and understanding. He even supplies her with cigarettes, a couple of packs a week. He knows what it’s like, because he used to smoke himself, until Isabel got her hands on him. And Alice has seen the expression on Isabel’s face when he brings them home. If looks could kill.

Mid-morning, Alice is thirsty and struggles with the bottle of grape juice. Her hands don’t work so well. They’re stiff and uncooperative, like trying to control a set of unfamiliar tools. Alice has heard that grape juice can be beneficial to arthritics, so she drinks some every day. She’s heard Isabel complain about the price, and David quickly stifle her comments with a tight grimace.

Today her hands are particularly bad, probably because of the sudden cold weather. She tries wrapping a dishcloth around the lid, to no avail. Isabel keeps reminding her about the smoking, how it’s linked to arthritis, how if she quit her symptoms would probably improve and her hands would work again. But Alice likes smoking and has no intention of quitting. Ever. It’s the only thing left that she can do now. She can’t even knit anymore, her fingers are so rigid and gnarled. Just trying to hold a book is a cumbersome and uncomfortable procedure, turning the pages an exercise in futility. The television and smoking are her only salvation.

Alice lowers herself onto a kitchen chair and tries to hold the bottle between her thighs as she twists the cap. She watches in disbelief as the bottle slips through her legs and smashes on the ceramic floor. Glass and grape juice spray in every direction. Her knitted slippers are saturated, and some has splattered the ivory dining room carpet like droplets of blood.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Alice whispers.

She struggles to pick up the glass, first. There are shards everywhere, glinting like broken bits of ice on the ceramic. She drops the pieces carefully into a paper bag that she’s placed inside a plastic one. The chink of each piece is satisfying, because she knows she’s making progress. But it’s the last piece, a jagged one that slices into her thumb like a honed blade. She drops the bag of glass. The first dribbles of blood spatter on the floor and blend in with the grape juice.

“Shit,” she murmurs. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She wraps the dishcloth around the cut, and watches the blood seep through.

Alice removes her sodden slippers in the kitchen and hobbles to the bathroom, leaking blood. Her socks have soaked up some grape juice; she leaves a faint red and purple trail on the carpet all the way down the hall.

“I’ll pay for the cleaning bill. I’ll pay for it myself.”

In the bathroom, she fumbles with the roll of gauze and the tape in the medicine cabinet as her blood drips into the sink. She tightly wraps her thumb with layer upon layer of the gauze and then secures it with white tape until it begins to resemble a crooked cast. Shaking, she sits down on the toilet. White dots burst across her line of vision like shooting stars and she closes her eyes, breathes deeply until the dizzy sensation ebbs. She fetches a thick sponge, then the galvanized bucket from under the sink. She fills it with cold water in the bathtub.

Just lifting the bucket out of the tub is a challenge, even though it’s only half full.  She hooks it over her trembling arm then shuffles down the hall leaning on her cane for support, careful not to let water slosh over the sides because of her uneven gait. So careful that she doesn’t notice the footstool and stumbles over it, crashing to the floor as awkward as a felled tree. She lands on the bucket then rolls over onto the carpet and groans. The puddle of water slowly seeps into the thirsty ivory fibres.

It’s nearly ten minutes before Alice can struggle to her feet. Her ribs ache from the fall and she is sure they are bruised, if not broken. Her thumb has begun to throb and the bandage turned crimson. But all she can think of right now is how good a cigarette would feel.

“Maybe I should call David at work,” she murmurs. “He could come and help me before Isabel gets home. Rent a carpet cleaner, maybe. She wouldn’t even have to know what happened. It’s only 10:30. Might even be enough time for the carpet to dry up. I’ll call. After my cigarette.”

Alice tugs on her sweater that’s draped over a chair by the door, careful not to smear any blood on the sleeve. She’s thought twice about smoking inside and decided against it this time. She’s done enough damage for one day, made enough mistakes. She lights the cigarette,  tucks the packet and lighter into her pocket, then steps out onto the balcony, leaving the door open just a crack. The wind pushes a handful of icy air down her throat as she takes her first satisfying puff. She exhales and watches the smoke diffuse in a quick swirl of wind.

Alice’s hair dances in the gusts and she realizes that she’s forgotten her hat indoors. Her scarf, too, and her exposed neck is wrapped in a frigid grip. But she barely feels the cold. The hot throb of her thumb, the ache of her ribs, seem to have dispersed through the rest of her body, spread their tortuous warmth to her extremities so she can scarcely feel that other pain. She feels almost liberated by this pain, this discernable pain caused by her own clumsiness, not enigmatic like the tenacious arthritis that came from nowhere and grew. This pain is real and temporary and she revels in it, puffing on her cigarette out there on the balcony, flicking ashes into the wind, blowing the ephemeral smoke towards the tattered clouds that scud across a frosty sky.

When the balcony door slams shut in a severe gust, Alice’s reverie bursts like a frozen pipe. Because she knows the door is locked. She’s forgotten to release the little button on the handle before stepping outside. Overcome by a sudden weariness, she sinks into one of the cold plastic balcony chairs.

“I wonder what Isabel will think of all this when she gets home,” Alice murmurs into the wind. With fumbling fingers she lights another cigarette, cupping her bare hand around the lighter’s wavering flame.

*   *   *

John Spencer Hill Award for Fiction, 2000, First Place, Valley Writers’ Guild

Published in ‘Storyteller—Canada’s Short Story Magazine’, Winter 2003

Plaid Blanket Cover Story

      

                                                       My Facebook Page

I'm excited to announce that I have a new book coming out next month! It's the third of my Navajo Code Talker series that began with I'll Be Seeing You and continued with Watch Over Me. Keeping up with the title theme of songs that were popular in the 1940's, Book #3 is a song that my mom once told me was her and my dad's favorite: All of Me.

All of Me is set in the summer of 1943, just after the first class of Navajo Code Talkers has been sent overseas to the Pacific. Our hero Luke Kayenta is still stateside in Arizona, training and recruiting more possible candidates for this important work that helped the United States win the war.

It's now New Yorker Kitty Charente's turn to be a fish out of water as she comes to join Luke and meet his family.  But Nazi agent Helmut Adler has arrived too, to try to throw the Code Talker program into chaos.

The threesome....

Book 1: Spain 1942

Book 2: New York City 1942

Book 3: Arizona 1943

Do you like the cover of All of Me? It's another wonderful design of our Art Director, Michelle Lee. There's a story that goes with that blanket that Luke and Kitty are snug under, concerning a long-ago real life Scottish trader named Big Jock....

Big Jock McCluskey

Big Jock McCluskey

The story Luke's grandmother Anaba Bowman tells is about the Hudson’s Bay Scottish trader lost in a storm. It's based on the life of Big Jock McCluskey, who traded machine loom blankets and shirts woven in the colors of Rob Roy tartan of the Clan MacGregor. McCluskey family stories claim that the Native Americans loved the red-black cloth and called it Buffalo Plaid. It became a quintessential symbol of the American West. I had fun thinking of Big Jock losing his way in a Northern Arizona winter and finding the Navajo, who had been weaving their own wool for centuries! Luke’s long-ago grandmother politely traded one of her textiles for his, and so it became a family heirloom. It appears in All of Me’s story as well as its wonderful cover.

Next month I'll include a sneak peek at my new novel. Thank you for being readers of the series!

My Wild Welcome to Portugal

Please click this link for author and book information and this link for BWL's spooky Hallowe'en design

During our trip to Europe last month, my husband Will and I flew from Naples to Portugal. At Lisbon airport, we got a taxi. Naively, we didn't think to ask in advance what the fare would be or to question the absence of a meter in the cab. Friends who have been to Portugal a few times had told us taxis in Lisbon were inexpensive. 

Our taxi driver drove quickly to downtown, which isn't far from Lisbon airport, and arrived at our Airbnb apartment. He told us the fare was 35 Euro (about $57 CAD). This wasn't cheap, perhaps a little more than we'd pay for a similar ride in Calgary, where I live. We gave him cash, since he didn't take credit cards, and didn't add a tip to his inflated price. The taxi took off and we found the phone number for Pedro, who was was to meet us at the apartment to let us in.  

Before we could phone, a police car drove up and parked. The officer strode toward us. 

"How much did you pay for that taxi?" he asked.   

"Thirty-five euro."

"It should only be fifteen euro from the airport," he said. "I want to take the driver to court. Can you show me your passport?"

We looked down the street and noticed the taxi and another police car were stopped. Presumably, the first police car had followed us from the airport and notified the second car to block the taxi from leaving the narrow street.

  

Pedro heard the commotion from our balcony and came down to see what was going on. He and the police officer spoke for a while in Portuguese. We guessed the officer was explaining the situation. With Pedro there, I felt assured the officer's request to see our passports was legitimate. 

The officer photographed Will's passport and told us that we wouldn't have to go to court, but he needed the information for the case. He asked for our phone number and Canadian address. 

"Did you pay cash?" he asked. "What bills did you give him?"

"A fifty-euro bill."

 "Did you get change?"

"Yes."

"What denominations?

"Five and ten-euro bills."

Details make the story convincing for a court case. 

Still holding onto Will's passport, the officer jogged to the taxi and other police car. He returned and handed Will his passport along with a twenty-euro bill for our overpayment.

After the officer and all the vehicles left, Pedro led us into the apartment building and said, "I hope this is only bad thing that happens to you in Portugal."  

"Oh no," I said. "It was interesting."

Evidently, Portugal appreciates the economic value of tourism and wants visitors to feel welcome in the country. Authorities are using police and legal resources to discourage locals from taking advantage of foreigners. Certain matters, like taxi fares, are less regulated than they are in some other countries and tourists should be alert to this. 

At the same time, locals need to earn a living. Was fifteen euro too cheap for that airport taxi ride, given the cost of gasoline and car maintenance? If our driver had charged us a fair rate, I hope we'd have tipped him generously.        

  

Looking down to the spot where the second police car cut off the taxi driver at the pass