Contentment

Contentment

My birthday yesterday and another year older. Things are going wonky, bits falling off, midsection growing exponentially, print is getting way smaller and is it me or did someone add ten feet to the top of that hill last week. Yeah, I hate getting older.

Also heard that I’m going to be a grandad for the first time. Grandad!!! I’m too young to be a granddad. That only happens to elderly people.

Okay, once the shock wore off I realized, with a sly smile, this is where I can finally get my own back. Spoil the kid rotten, get him wired on six ice cream triple smoothies all topped with lots and lots of chocolate sprinkles, and say there you go, he’s all yours.

            Or of course I could give him some wild night time stories like I did my son. I remember reading storybooks to my son at night and saying this book sucks I can do better.

            I tossed the book aside and said, “Okay give me three things.” Like I learned from one of my creative writing classes. He’d give three crazy things, Donald Duck, Lego and the Incredible Hulk.

I’d come up with some wild storyline and usually instead of putting him to sleep he’d be laughing his head off.

It’s funny how over time one forgets about small things like that. The important things. Okay, age comes with some great memories.

It reminds me of the poster I have hanging up in my writing room with a picture of a man playing with his young boy beside a puddle of water by a curb.

Contentment

Just think how happy you’d be of you lost everything you have right now.

And then got it back again.

By Anonymous

I think that Anonymous was one smart dude.

Below is the link to my radio show I did for KKNW’s House of Mystery Radio Show.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqnvksaqcxQ

And for those of you not tired of me yet, I've done another video, Link below. What can I say, I'm bored, there's no hockey.

https://www.facebook.com/FrankTalaber/videos/1387747971293098/

Buy my novel from Amazon

And if you really, really like me. Like my Authors Page on Facebook. 

Oh come on, some of my posts are so funny you'll pee your pants. 

(PS. This advertisement was paid for by Depends) 

https://www.facebook.com/Frank-Talaber-805296946204873/

A World Without Alzheimer's Disease by J.Q. Rose

Cozy mystery author by J.Q. Rose

Dangerous Sanctuary available at the Books We Love bookstore

📚 📚 📚 📚

A World Without Alzheimer's Disease by J.Q. Rose

Can you envision our world without Alzheimer's in it? The Alzheimer's Association can. They are researching and supporting families and caregivers, not in the hope of stamping out Alzheimer's but in their belief it can be eradicated so no one will ever have to deal with the devastation of this disease.

June is Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness month. Alzheimer's is a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. 

Wear purple on June 21, the Longest Day of the Year,
for Alzheimer's Disease Awareness.

I bet Alzheimer's has invaded your life because you know someone whom you care about has disappeared into the darkness of this disease. We have not experienced it in our family, but I have friends who have. 

When my friend and mentor, Bernie, discovered she had it, she told me one afternoon after inviting me for dessert and coffee. I will never forget the sadness in her eyes as we talked about the diagnosis. Knowing this awful disease is lurking in the future shadows a person every day, waiting for the next degree of losing a piece of oneself.

I dedicated my book, Deadly Undertaking to Bernie, and I included a character suffering with Alzheimer's in the story. This was my way of trying to bring awareness to readers about this debilitating disease.

Today, I am using facts from the Alzheimer's Association site to help spread the word and marshal an army to fight against Alzheimer's.  If we don't take steps to fight and win the battle against AD, the result will be a world-wide epidemic by 2050.

• The number of Americans living with Alzheimer's disease is growing — and growing fast. An estimated 5.5 million Americans of all ages have Alzheimer's disease. Currently, there are 44 million people suffering from dementia globally. That number is up 22% over the past three years when there were 35.6 million people suffering from the disease.
• Alzheimer's disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States. It is the fifth-leading cause of death among those age 65 and older and a leading cause of disability and poor health. 
• As the population of the United States ages, Alzheimer's is becoming a more common cause of death. It is the only top 10 cause of death that cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed.
• Although deaths from other major causes have decreased significantly, official records indicate that deaths from Alzheimer's disease have increased significantly. Between 2000 and 2014, deaths from Alzheimer's disease as recorded on death certificates increased 89 percent, while deaths from the number one cause of death (heart disease) decreased 14 percent.
• It kills more than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.
• The costs of health care and long-term care for individuals with Alzheimer's or other dementias are substantial. Dementia is one of the costliest conditions to society.

Alzheimers.net suggests these 7 Things You Can Do to Stop Alzheimer’s by 2025

1. Join a clinical trial
2. Get genetic testing
3. Email, call, and tweet your Congressmen
4. Get educated about Alzheimer’s & Dementia
5. Speak up if you see symptoms
6. Sign the Alzheimer’s petition
7. Volunteer or donate to an Alzheimer’s research or awareness organization

To learn more about AD, visit the following articles.
Alzheimer's Association
Alzheimers.net

The Pitfalls of Period Writing by Stuart R. West

To read the book that made the rest of my hair fall out, click here!

My first book with Books We Love, Ghosts of Gannaway, was a sprawling pseudo-historical thriller, romance, and ghost story set during the depression in a small Kansas mining town. Never before had I tackled such an undertaking. I spent two months alone researching. Whew.

I swore I’d never do it again.

Yet here I am currently tackling another period piece for Books We Love. This time when I jumped into the Stuart R. West time machine, I only ventured as far back as 1965. It wasn’t nearly as tough to research as Ghosts, but this book, too, had its pitfalls and traps.

Again (repeat after me): Never again!

Why’d I set my current book in 1965? The story’s a nostalgic, small town mystery and ghost story. (I ain’t nothing’ if not ambitious). By definition, nostalgia always takes place in the past or is at least a remembrance of days gone by. And, personally, my favorite ghost stories always take place in the past. Much more resonance than, say, a haunted Smart Phone.

But there I go again, breaking my vow to myself by going all old timey.

Here are the biggest problems I have while writing period pieces:

Getting the lingo right is tough. In my 1965 set book, I have a character--a real hep cat--spouting such slang as, “Whoa, daddy-o, you’re out of your tree! Your old man’s squaresville, absolutely nowhere. Let’s percolate, beat feet, get to the nitty-gritty!” I know, right? It’s really easy to overkill once I dig into the slang of the time. Granted, the character in question is a mop-topped, dangerous, cool kid, but sometimes I need to rein it in. Just a smidge, daddy-o!

Speaking of overkill, sometimes research threatens to eat my tales alive. While investigating all kinds of topics for Ghosts of Gannaway, I learned more than I could ever possibly need to know about the depression, the way men and women spoke in the ‘30’s, what happened to the Midwest Native American tribes, what folks ate, ore mining, and lots more. Anyone wanna know about the hazards of brass carbide mining lamps? No? Me neither. (But I do.)

You should’ve seen the first draft of Ghosts of Gannaway. Be thankful you didn’t. I tried to shoehorn every bit of research (and I had pages and pages of teeny-tiny, hand-written notes) into the book. There was a twelve page dissertation in the middle of the narrative about how the white colonialists drove the Native-Americans out of their lands (thank God I came to my senses, and pretty much chucked the entire sequence).

I suppose my thoughts at the time were, “Hey, we’re talking history! And I spent a heckuva long time researching this stuff to the point of having mining nightmares, so everyone’s gonna enjoy the fruits of my labors!” But I saved you a dull history lesson.

Another blockade I’ve banged my head into is racial and sexual issues. Face it, our world’s attitudes have changed a lot regarding racial equality and sexual activity. We’ve all heard the derogatory and racist terms. Yet in these sensitive and politically correct times, you’re still gonna find a reader who’ll take umbrage over the racist epithets, even if they’re historically accurate.  In Ghosts of Gannaway, I constantly questioned whether I should use accurate, yet highly insensitive name calling.  I steered away from the Big No-No Word, but everything else was game. And even though I live in Kansas, no one’s been by to lynch me yet.

Finally…sex! The big taboo! Back in the day, of course, sex between consenting, loving adults only happened between spouses. But you know what? Hollywood would have us believe differently, so what’s good enough for Hollywood is good enough for me! Let the sex begin!

There you have it, daddy-o, my bag of hang-ups regarding gone, baby, gone period writing. (I need to put this hep 60’s lingo to use somewhere.)