Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Statistically I don't exist by Sheila Claydon
I received a letter from the Office for National Statistics. It said I had been selected from the UK's Royal Mail's list of addresses to form part of a sample that represents the entire country. What it really means is that it's a mini census about a specific issue and the information given helps government departments, local authorities and charities make decisions about how they will spend their money.The European Union also uses the results as do schools and universities.
I know it works because a number of years ago a much needed local traffic system was approved as a result of a similar survey. This one, however, was not about transport and roads, it was about employment.
A man wearing a identification card on a cord around his neck duly arrived and, once he'd got his computer to work, started asking the questions. The first ones were easy. Name, age, household, health, da-di-da-di-da. So were the next ones about qualifications, past employment, retirement, tax benefits etc. Things started to get tricky when we started talking about the present though.
It didn't seem like a difficult question. Are you still in any form of paid employment? But it was.
Yes, I'm a self-employed writer.
A fair bit of hemming and hawing and then 'There isn't a writer category on the list."
Try author.
Ah yes there is one for author. I can slot you in there. Do you work full time or part time?
Part time.
Would that be mornings or afternoons, or part of a week?
All of those...sometimes.
Could you be more specific?
No because there's no pattern. I work flexibly. I might write almost full time for a week and then, because of other commitments, not work at all for two weeks.
By full time do you mean Monday to Friday?
No. It could be Monday to Sunday or, in another week, just the Wednesday.
Do you work in the evenings?
Yes.
How many evenings do you work?
It's impossible to quantify because it depends on what else is going on in my life.
Do you work at night?
If you mean right through the night then no but I sometimes work really late.
Would you say you write every day?
No. As I said it's flexible but I do look at my work related emails every day.
So would you say that's two hours a day or is it more than that?
Far less than that usually but occasionally I have to follow something up immediately and that might take a bit longer.
So can I put two hours a day?
I was feeling sorry for the guy by then so I almost nodded because I really, really wanted him to be able to tick a box. I didn't though because it wouldn't have been true.
So fellow writers (or authors if you prefer) how would you fare if the very nice man from the Office of National Statistics visited you? Would you fit into his nice orderly boxes or are you like me, an 'if and when' writer who has to take her chances when she can?
I'm not sure what the government and all those other worthy bodies are going to make of my answers. I guess they won't even see them, they'll just see a minor blip in the employment statistics that will eventually be published. In the meantime maybe I should try to work in a more orderly fashion. After all it would be nice to be able to tick one of those boxes.
One of my heroines had to tick boxes. That was Claire in my book Reluctant Date. She was ticking boxes on an Internet Dating site though, and that's a whole other story.
All my books are available on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1nTIbfS and at http://bookswelove.net/#
Monday, July 13, 2015
A Writing Challenge by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey
PURCHASE FROM AMAZON |
I was at a meeting with some fellow writers and, as writers do, we were talking about writing. One of them gave us a writing challenge. We had to write five beginning sentences for five stories. We had ten minutes to do it.
Here were my five:
My mother told me a joke on my wedding night saying. "The difference between rape and rapture is co-operation."
The day that my brother blew his hand off is the day that my father started drinking.
Whatever the past, the future is spotless.
I don't give a dang, for I have seen the elephant.
The only time I like water is when it is cold and the day is hot.
As each one read hers, we discussed them trying to figure out how the story would go. At the end of the meeting we decided that we should take one of our sentences and build it into a short story, or the beginning of a novel for our next meeting.
I took my second sentence and here is the beginning of the novel I wrote around it.
The day that my younger brother, Ralph, blew his left hand off, was the day that my father began drinking. Not that he hadn’t drank before. He'd have a beer on Saturdays with the neighbours or a drink at family gatherings but it was that day that he began drinking every day as soon as he got home from work.
And the change was immediate. When he and mom came home from the hospital after leaving Ralph, Dad went to the cupboard and pulled out a half empty bottle of whiskey. He got a glass and poured it almost full. He drank it down. I was watching him as mom told me and my younger brother, Jimmy, that Ralph had lost his hand and would be in the hospital for a few days. Dad took time off work and he and Mom went to see Ralph every day. But every evening Dad drank himself into a stupor.
When they brought Ralph home from the hospital the only change in Dad's routine was that in the morning instead of going to the hospital he went to work. He got up sober, left the house at his usual time and was sober up until the moment he entered our door after work. It was once that door was closed on the outside world that he'd sit in his chair in the living room and pour his first glass of whiskey or vodka or rum whichever he had on hand at the time. Mom would serve him his supper there while the rest of us ate at the table in the dining room. His evenings varied little. Sometimes he'd stare at the television set, sometimes he'd stare into the corner of the living room. And he continued drinking all evening until he passed out, usually in his chair, sometimes on the couch, occasionally he made it to bed.
He became, and remained for the rest of his life, a functioning alcoholic.
West To The Bay
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WDV1300/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PEOSJR8
The Travelling
Detective Series boxed set:
Illegally Dead
The Only Shadow In The House
Whistler's Murder
I was born in New Westminster B.C. and raised in Edmonton.I have worked as a bartender, cashier, bank teller, bookkkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, house renovator, and nursing attendant. I have had numerous travel and historical articles published and wrote seven travel books on Alberta, B.C. and the Yukon and Alaska that were published through Lone Pine Publishing in Edmonton.
One of my favourite pasttimes is reading especially mystery novels and I have now turned my writing skills to fiction. However, I have not ventured far from my writing roots. The main character in my Travelling Detective Series is a travel writer who somehow manages to get drawn into solving mysteries while she is researching her articles for travel magazines. This way, the reader is able to take the book on holidays and solve a mystery at the same time.
Illegally Dead is the first novel of the series and The Only Shadow In The House is the second. The third Whistler's Murder came out in August 2011 as an e-book through Books We Love. It can be purchased as an e-book and a paperback through Amazon.
i live on a small acreage in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
thinking about THE BIG BANG THEORY by Karla Stover
Page 19
of a book called The Wrecking Crew
talks about the beginnings of rock-n-roll. Extrapolating from two paragraphs,
it says, “Unlike the small companies, (indies) the behemoths such as Columbia
and Mercury opted to stick with traditional pop offerings: the New Christy
Minstrels, Johnny Mathis, and Tennessee Ernie Ford—those they knew would sell.
They waited years before grudgingly signing a rock-n-roll group: Paul Revere
& the Raiders.”
Translation: businesses don’t like to take chances.
But
someone did with the Big Bang Theory.
I started
watching the Big Bang from day one—that
is, in 2004. Hard to believe it’s been on 11 years. In 2004, Friends was winding up and so was Fraser. NCIS, L&O Special Victim’s Unit,
CSI Miami and any number of other
shows featuring pretty people were new and fresh. But none was as fresh as the Big Bang. With the exception of Penny,
the characters were kids we knew, but not well, in school; they were usually
found in Science Club. I wish I had known them better, because thanks to the Big Bang guys, I am now able to answer some of our newspaper’s quiz questions
when they pertain to science. But I digress. I think part of the show’s initial
popularity is that it was different from everything else. CBS took a chance.
The
behemoth publishers don’t want to take a chance on anything new, either. Stephen
King’s Carrie was rejected 30 times
because, as one letter said, “We are not
interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not
sell,” but how did the publishers know?
Maybe because the year before Carrie came out (1974) the best sellers
included Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
Evening in Byzantium, and The Billion
Dollar Sure Thing. Then, a publisher took a chance and created a genre
industry.
To
my way of thinking, the last big chance that a TV network took before the Big Bang was The Waltons and the last monumental chance taken in publishing was
the Harry Potter books.
Right
now, I’m working on three books, one is non-fiction, two are historical
fiction, and one of the historical fictions is YA. The YA historical fiction is
taking a chance. The other two are playing it safe. I don’t know if that’s good
or bad. As I sit here, typing, the only neglected genre I can think of is
battlefield fiction. All the others, mine included, are out there jockeying for
readers with all the others of its type
The Big Bang may have been new and
different but, I write what I know, what I love, and what I like to read. Guess
I didn’t learn the lesson.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Party Girls - by Cheryl Wright
CLICK TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON |
I love the Art Impressions "Girlfriends" range, and this particular stamp is called Party Girls.
For me, coloring is a lot of fun. I find it very relaxing as well. Before I start coloring a project, I determine whether or not I am going to use patterned paper as well.
If I am, then I choose the paper I'm using, so I can then match up the colors I'll use to color the image. This card only has a small portion of the patterned paper showing, but it still all needs to match.
If you would like to see more A1 Girlfriends cards, stop by A1's Pinterest board for a good selection of ideas. (You'll see some of my past cards on their as well.)
I hope you've enjoyed this card. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!
Links:
My website: www.cheryl-wright.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cherylwrightauthor
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/writercheryl
BWL website: http://bookswelove.net/authors/wright-cheryl/
Multi-published author, Cheryl Wright, former secretary, debt collector, account manager, writing instructor, and shopping tour hostess, loves reading. She writes romantic suspense, contemporary romance, and the occasional comedy.
She lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is married with two adult children and has six grandchildren. When she’s not writing, she can be found in her craft room making greeting cards.
Monday, July 6, 2015
I'll Always Remember the Alamo by Gail Roughton
During the months between May,
2013 and December, 2013, I traveled more miles than in the past twenty years
combined. Granted, I’m a homebody who
doesn’t really enjoy traveling, but 2013 was a special year. The year my
youngest son Lee began his military journey, the year he completed Naval Basic
Training at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois (Waukegan, Illinois
right above Chicago), followed by Hospital Corpsman training at Fort Sam
Houston, San Antonio, Texas (for those who might not be familiar with the term “Corpsman”
read “medic”), and finished up with FMSS East, Field Medical Service School at Camp
Jackson (for all practical purposes, an off-shoot of Camp LeJeune), North
Carolina, the training that turns Navy Corpsmen into Field Medics for the
Marines. And no parent wants to miss any of those graduation ceremonies. Certainly, I wasn’t about to.
Every single one of those
graduations was—special. That seems such an inadequate word to
describe the depth of emotion, so palpable it became a breathing, living entity
birthed by the audience’s indescribable pride in the young men and women who’d
started this journey so many years before as their little boys and girls,
someone’s brother or sister, someone’s niece or nephew or cousin, now standing
so tall and proud before them as they take their oaths.
Our little nuclear family of
parents, children, and grandchildren is extremely tight-knit and close. We
share the good times and the bad, and while every member of the family wanted
to attend all three graduations, that just wasn’t practical or possible. My daughter and son-in-law had a new baby
that summer, adding our granddaughter Kinsley to the family roster, so long
trips were pretty much out for them for the year. My husband and I, with our then six year old
grandson, his Uncle Lee’s best buddy ever,
made the almost 1,700 mile round trip from central Georgia to Waukegan, Illinois
for Naval Basic Graduation, leaving our oldest son Patrick at home in charge of
our family’s three fur-members. Two of
those three fur-babies are getting on up there in years, they’re used to their
own home, going in and out on a schedule of their own making, and have never been boarded. They’d probably
have heart-attacks if they ever were boarded and we’d worry about them
constantly the entire time we were gone. Bottom line, someone has to be home with them at night. Anyone who’s a pet person understands and
anyone who’s not a pet person never will, and so it was decided that my husband
would forego the San Antonio trip and take the final graduation trip, so Patrick
could go and see at least one of his brother’s graduations. I’m the mother, I
claimed rights to attend all three.
So began the 2,024 miles round
trip that will always live on as “my most special trip ever”. I love my husband,
don’t get me wrong, but this trip? The 1,012 miles with just my oldest son and
me? And, since Lee was on leave for the next month until his report date at
Camp LeJeune, the 1,012 mile trip back home with both my sons? Both my grown sons? Priceless. I mean, how many mothers get a chance at
something like that? So if I never told
you, Randy Branan, thank you for selflessly staying home and giving me those
memories.
We hit the road to the strains
of that summer’s top country hits, our traveling companions Jason Aldean, Luke
Bryan, Blake Sheldon, Little Big Town, The Band Perry: “…hop
up on my diamond gate tail plate…” “rollin’ on 45s, country girl by my side…” “redredredredredneck...”
“…them ol’ dirt roads is what y’all missin’…”, “…take me down to the little white church…”, “…mama always said that I
should play nice, she didn’t know you when she gave me that advice…”. When I hear those songs even now, I’m
immediately transported back to the front seat of Patrick’s Rouge, both of us
belting out the lyrics and having the time of our lives. When we tired of belting out songs, Patrick
played a few of the “Redneck Comedy Tour”
discs and we laughed till we cried. We
stopped to stretch frequently, grabbed a combo late lunch/early dinner at a
Mexican restaurant that caught our eye right before crossing into Mississippi,
laughed and talked and reminisced and re-lived family history. Finally, just
before midnight, and well into Texas, we gave it up for the night and admitted
we weren’t going to make it all the way into San Antonio.
We were back on the road by nine the next
morning, though, and made it in around five o’clock, just about the time Lee completed
his day, so after checking into our hotel, we headed for Fort Sam Houston. We were going to take Lee off base to eat,
but nobody’d sufficiently warned us about San Antonio traffic and it took us a
lot longer than we’d thought to successfully navigate onto the Base and
actually find Lee, so we ate on Base
that night and that was just fine, because the three of us were together and
that was all that mattered.
Lee was on liberty most of the
next day, so we picked him up and “did” the San Antonio River Walk. We ate at
Casa Rio, walked around a bit, and took the Boat Tour (which I heartily
recommend as the best way to tour River Walk—I mean, it involves no
walking). Getting back to Base was an
adventure, though. Did I mention San
Antonio traffic? And the fact that San
Antonio is big and I’m pretty sure
even the natives don’t know how to navigate in it outside their own spheres of
reference.
The next day—graduation. For which I have no words, so I’ll let the
pictures do the talking. Especially the picture of the Corpsman’s Oath. It was probably twelve or one o’clock before
Lee cleared the dorms and all his bags were packed (and I do mean packed) with ours in the back of the
Rogue. Of course, we’d been in constant
contact throughout the entire trip with home, no way I wasn’t keeping “Daddy”
updated on all activities, and we called to advise we were about to hit the
road home.
“But you didn’t go to the Alamo.”
“I know but we’re all ready to
come home.”
“You’ll probably never be back in San Antonio, you need
to go to the Alamo.”
“But we’re ready to come home.”
“And if you don't go, you'll look back later and wish you had. Put Patrick on the phone!”
I passed
the phone on over, knowing in my heart
that when Patrick hung up, we were headed to the Alamo. I was right.
“Daddy’s
right. We’re here, we need to go. We can’t go home without going to the Alamo 'cause we will look back later and go 'Why didn't we go to the Alamo when we had the chance'!”
“But I’m
not dressed right! I can’t go dressed like this!” (No, that wasn’t me, that was
Lee, who’d changed out of his dress whites into gym shorts and tee that looked
pretty much like every other young man you see out in public in the summer not
engaged in formal activity).
“You’re
fine! C’mon, it’ll be fun. We can’t not
go. You can pull out some other clothes
when we get there and change in the car if you’re that worried about it.”
“Whatever.” (Lee’s classic phrase for “okay”. Some things
never change.)
Back to
the River Walk we went. We located the parking lot nearest the Alamo and Lee
dug in his duffel bag and pulled out clothes he deemed suitable for public
appearance (which looked to me to be exactly what he had on in the first place,
only in different colors) and changed in the back seat. Patrick got our parking
sticker from the automated money-taking, sticker dispensing machine. That wasn’t as easy as it sounds, since there
were lots of other folks in front of us going to the Alamo doing the same thing
and that wasn’t the most user-friendly automated machine I’d ever run
across. But at last we were walking
toward the Alamo. And Randy Branan was
right again. No one should ever leave San Antonio without touring the
Alamo. It’s just not American not to tour the Alamo when in
San Antonio. Besides, that tour got me
the picture you see at the top of this blog. From left to right, Patrick in the red and blue, me,
and Lee in the gray and white. Lee runs from cameras. To actually have this photo is a miracle only
made possible by the fact that they take pictures of all Alamo visitors before they enter the actual Church, you know,
the ones available for purchase inside the gift shop. The only thing Lee hates
worse than having his picture taken is the thought of making a scene by
refusing to have his picture taken. He was trapped. He issued his order in a hiss as we walked
into the Church. “Do. Not. Buy. That.
Picture.”
“We won’t,”
Patrick assured him. Then he whispered
to me at his first opportunity, “We are buying
that picture!”
“Damn
straight we are,” I whispered back. I
took a picture of that picture on my phone as soon as it was in my hot little
hands and texted it to a few friends. “Me
and my boys.” The general consensus of the replies I got
back? “Fabulous! I hope you know those
men you call boys make you look like a midget!” (No, I'm not what you call short. I'm 5'6". They're just tall.) Well, yeah. I guess they do. But they’re still my boys.
It was
four or so before we hit the road back home.
The boys were determined to drive straight back through, and since there
were two of them to drive (I’m out for night-driving, I don’t have much depth
perception), I couldn’t talk them out of it and settled into the back seat. Movie lines flew back and forth—in our
family, we have a movie quote for almost every situation. I could almost believe they were teenagers
again, especially when I was advised to “Shut up back there!” which is not the disrespectful command you think
it is, but a line from “Black Sheep”.
We
watched a moonrise beautiful beyond belief, one of those low-hanging orange orbs
that seem so close you could almost touch it, we re-played the “The Redneck Comedy Tour” discs because
it’d been a long time since Lee’d heard them, we talked to home base frequently
and Daddy tried to convince the two stubborn mules to stop for the night—whoever
thinks Daddies don’t worry as much as Mamas must not know many Daddies—but he
didn’t have any luck. The boys smelled
home. I couldn’t change their minds either but what I could do was make them
stop often by lying a lot. Through Mississippi and Alabama, I made them stop at
every Rest Station by dint of that dreaded line “I have to go.” I didn’t really, not every time, but I wanted
them to stretch their legs. I wanted to
stretch mine, too, because no I
wouldn’t let myself fall asleep even if they were the ones swapping out the
driving. I mean, I’m their mother, I was on guard duty. Suppose they both fell asleep and there was
no one to wake them up?
Besides,
one of those pit stops at one of the Rest Areas had attendants on duty which, coupled
with that beautiful moon we’d seen earlier, dropped the seed for a potential what if? I’m sure the attendant in the
Ladies was a very nice person, and certainly she was very polite but a writer’s
mind just takes off in such a situation.
I wasn’t nervous personally, mind you, I might have been in the Ladies
by myself with only the attendant, but you can see the size of the two guys I
was with. But a woman traveling alone at night, stopping at one of those rest
areas? I mean, she’d be at the mercy of
any attendant, wouldn’t she? And who’s
to say that person’s an actual attendant?
Suppose that person’s a serial killer triggered by those rare, beautiful
moonrises like the one we’d just seen? Oh,
yeah. That’s got possibilities….
Labels:
Alamo,
books we love,
Corpsman,
Country Justice,
Gail Roughton,
humor,
Navy,
San Antonio
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