Something Shiny

Natasha's Legacy - The conclusion to the Natasha Saga

Check out Heather Greenis' page on the Books We Love website

Listening to the news a short time ago, I heard a rather interesting statistic. Interesting may be the wrong word. I’ll leave that up to you. The statistic was on the average human attention span. My first thought was, seriously? Someone or a group of people are actually paid to monitor and record attention spans? 
It gets worse. 
Last year, the average attention span was 12 seconds. Yes, you read that correctly. So unless you’re a speed reader, I’ve already lost you. 
I’ll give my readers the benefit of the doubt. Readers are an intelligent bunch.
So, are you curious? Would you like to hear that we’ve improved? 
Drum roll please. 
I’m listening for the tap of your fingers to prove you’re still paying attention.
No-o-o, we’re flunking, and badly.The average attention span had actually decreased. It now sits at a dismal 8.5 seconds.
As if it can’t get any worse, a goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds.

Yes, that is correct. We have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. 

Aren’t we proud!

Now the big question. How the heck do they measure what’s going on in the mind of a goldfish. Do they put the little orange critter on a plastic bed and give it a PET (brain) scan? 

I admit, I’m impatient, but to prove my attention span is longer than a goldfish, I will put my cell phone down and allow my computer to have a nap. I will play with the dog. Afterwards  I will initiate a conversation with my husband. Just like the good old days before cell phones invades our lives.

I guarantee, my dog has a longer attention span than a goldfish. She will sit and stare at me while I make my breakfast. Two big brown eyes with this, 'I haven’t been fed in forever' look while waiting for a piece of toast in the morning.

My husband's attention span is above average as well. But then again, oh, look, something shiny. 

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Oh good. I'm thrilled to announce I have a new book coming out. A stand-alone mystery. You can be the first to see my new cover. Thanks to my cover artist, Michelle. I love it.

DONE  - coming soon

Constrained by the justice system, the judge voiced her regret as she pronounced sentence on the accused. Though relieved by the ‘guilty’ verdict, the prosecution was not in a mood to celebrate. Neither was the arresting officer. 

Corvin served his time, was released, and the legal system rubbed the slate clean. But knowing this abuser doesn’t feel remorse for his actions leaves Jenn furious. She has seen her fair share of criminals. She prosecutes them. 

Still, Jenn can’t accept that this sad excuse for a human walks the streets of her town. And she is not alone.

Will a desire for real justice create a vigilante?

Any Canadians out there - The Saga is on sale at Kobo. Check it out.

Life’s Little Inspirations: by June Gadsby

 Check out June Gadsby's books by 

visiting her Books We Love author page

There’s no getting away from it. As we get older we slow down, physically if not mentally. It’s worse when one has had a long dry period, whatever that is due to. Writing has been put on hold while you struggle with other more important life events. The ideas keep coming, pouring into your brain like the glistening veils of a waterfall in full flood. You take copious notes and hope you will have sufficient years in which to turn them into novels, though you know that there are far too many storylines, even if you live to be a hundred and are still capable of sitting at a laptop with your fingers flying over the keys – hopefully writing stuff that makes sense.

Then there are the important ‘obligations’ – the stories you said [not promised – I don’t do ‘promise’] you would write for people who you had loved and admired and who would like their stories to be known. I have two of them. A surprise request from a fellow-writer and good friend of some thirty years, who sent me a beautiful short love story he had written and asked me to write it up as a novel. He wasn’t normally a fiction writer – wrote articles on naval subjects and historic places. He had been a marine during the war, serving his time in a submarine. The story was about a marine falling in love with a young woman while serving abroad. The couple lost touch when the war came to an end and he married someone else, but he never forgot his one great love. Then one day, attending a wedding, he recognised her across the church aisle…

Another wartime story I was told and asked to write came from an old French lady whose cousin had been a prisoner of war and escaped. He married and spent many years caring for his mentally sick wife. When she eventually died, he moved away from the family down to the south-west of France and asked his cousin, my friend, to visit him with his sister. Until then my friend had only memories of him as something of a mother’s boy. The visit was a happy success and the cousins fell in love, much to the horror of the family back in Normandy and a cold war was then declared between them….

These two stories have been at the top of my inspiration list for years, and I hope to write them up one day, but I have so many of my own inspired stories that are difficult to ignore. And it’s very often the new storylines that get written. It’s too easy to push the old storylines to the back of the filing cabinet in your brain and go with the flow of new material which is fresh and exciting. Now, I’m working on the edits of an old unpublished saga and hoping, soon, to get back to the thriller I had started before joining BWL. I’m trying to ignore the inspiration elves that are working overtime in my head, doing their best to distract me with new ideas that will take me sideways rather than onward. I can tell you, it’s not easy. Gone are the days when I could write creatively for 10 – 12 hours 7/7. My writing time now is a couple or three hours in the afternoon, but even in that short time I can get a lot done – if I don’t get distracted by my elderly husband and my even more elderly Yorkshire Terrier and her much younger brother who is missing his walks since I fractured my spine a few months ago.

I hope I will never lose my inspiration, my enthusiasm and my love of writing. It has seen me through so many dark passages in my life, allowing me to lose myself and my problems in the pages of my novels and the characters I create like true friends. And going back to those dark passages in my life – now there’s a story that my friends who know me well enough tell me that it’s so incredible nobody would believe it to be true. I’ve made a start on it, so maybe one day…one never knows.

Canadian Historical Brides Northwest Territories and Nunavut revealed

Nits’it’ah Golika Xah (Fly Away Snow Goose)

Visit the Canadian Historical Brides blog for more about this exciting new series of Canadian historical fiction novels

http://bwlcanadianhistoricalbrides.blogspot.ca/

Our newest cover Fly Away Snow Goose will be released in December 2017. The cover was revealed by authors Juliet Waldron and John Wisdomkeeper on March 4.

About the Canadian Historical Brides - Northwest Territories and Nunavut

Yaotl and Sascho splashed along the shores of behchà, spears hefted, watching for the flash of fin to rise to the surface and sparkle in the sunlight. Tender feelings flushed their faces, so they laughed and teased one another with sprays of icy water. In the distance, the warning about the kwet'ı̨ı̨̀ (white Indian agents) sounds, but is unheard. 

Transport to the Fort Providence residential school is only the beginning of their trial, for the teachers intend “to kill the Indian" inside their pupils. Attempts to escape end mostly in failure and punishment, but Yaotl and Sascho, along with two others, will try. 

Wild geese, brave hearts together, it is do or die--homeward bound.