Don't miss this great opportunity to win an Alcatel 30 Tablet and six of your favorite Books We Love Holiday novels.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Under the Northern Lights by J. S. Marlo
Hello, everyone!
I’m JS
Marlo, but my hubby calls me Marlo, which is why I chose that pen name. “Voted Out”, my first novel with BWL, was released two
weeks ago, and it’s my
first time on this blog, so I’m not too sure what I’m doing. I can’t believe my publisher
gave me access to all those buttons in the blog. Trust me, it doesn’t matter if it’s
supposed to be fool proof, I could manage to derail a train, any trains, even one that is
docked at a railway station. My publisher is brave…
I was born
in Quebec, but I've lived all across Canada. Two words: military wife. Nowadays,
when someone asks me “Where do you live?”, I answer “Northern Alberta”. Quite
often that person will say “Oh, Edmonton”, and I will reply “No, no. Keep driving
from Edmonton, keep driving north for another five hours, and don’t forget to
fill up on gas. That are no gas stations in the last 200 kms. Then you’ll find
me—under
the Northern Lights.”
Someone
asks me once to describe the northern lights, but I couldn’t. The first time I
saw them, I just stood there in the cold, staring in awe at the night sky. It’s
almost like looking at the ocean and seeing waves roll in at twilight, but not
quite. One moment the sky is dark, then seconds later, an invisible hand
streaks the heaven with colorful waves, and then the waves waltz for a few
seconds, a few minutes, a few hours. Most of the northern lights I’ve seen
were light blue, green or turquoise, but I recall two magical instances when I
was transfixed by the sky’s ethereal beauty.
Many years
ago, hubby and I were driving back from visiting our daughter in university at
the end of September. We were on that long stretch of road in the middle of the
forest (the 200 kms without gas station, or any other structures) around 2am,
when suddenly the sky lit up. Waves upon waves of bright turquoise, rich
purple, and striking red dance above our heads. We were driving straight north,
but the northern lights played havoc with the compass on our SUV. The compass
twirled around. N, NW, SW, S, SE, N, SW… We stopped alongside the road. And
watched. I can’t remember how long we stayed there, but I remember the beauty
of it.
The second
instance was a few weeks back. When I checked to make sure my back door was
locked, I looked outside. When you can see the northern lights through the
window, you know they are bright, so I stepped onto the deck. Despite the
streetlamps, I saw pink and purple peeking at the edge of the turquoise. We’ve
been spoiled this fall as Mother Nature has given us many amazing nightly shows. Maybe
it’ll continue throughout the winter.
Many of my friends want to come visit me so they can see them, but I can’t promise that the sky will light up any more than I can promise a cloudless night will await them weeks ahead of time.
Many of my friends want to come visit me so they can see them, but I can’t promise that the sky will light up any more than I can promise a cloudless night will await them weeks ahead of time.
Some say
in the silence of the night, you can hear the northern lights sing. Maybe one day I will hear them.
Location:
Fort McMurray, AB, Canada
I grew up in Shawinigan, a small French Canadian town, attended military college, married a young officer, and raised three spirited children. Over the years, I enjoyed many wonderful postings in many different regions of Canada.
After my children left the nest, I began writing. Three years later, I captured my dream of becoming a published author with my underwater novel “Salvaged”.
Many of my romantic suspense novels are set in Canada or feature Canadian characters. One of my latest series also involves time travel.
I'm not sure where time flew, but decades later, I ended up writing under the Northern Lights in Alberta while spoiling a gorgeous little granddaughter.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Priscilla Brown ponders the stages of an author's writing life
This contemporary romance, set in the Caribbean, sees the two main characters struggling with different lifestyles and ambitions. The story got stuck in the second stage described below, went into hiding for a few years, then emerged to undergo a major re-write in Stage Three.
Find it on Amazon at B01FA8JSY
How did I get to be a fiction writer? Every author will have a different set of 'stages', but perhaps for most the first stage is when we decide to write a book. The type of book -- fiction, non-fiction--may be unknown, but the mind-picture arrives of 'self as author'. We've been to school, presumably we can spell, have a working knowledge of grammar, have acquired a vocabulary, and can put a decent sentence together. Millions of people have written books, so how hard can this be? Such confidence!
I think I decided I wanted to be a writer while in primary school. I came top in spelling tests, and received good marks for what was called composition which included creative and non-creative writing. Then, at age about 11, I won a short story competition. (The prize was Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows which I still have.) Therefore, I could write! This early success indicated to my child's mind that I was going to be an author.
In what I consider to be the second stage of my writing life, a stage which was difficult and lasted years, I discovered that what I thought I'd learnt in the first was hopelessly inadequate. I knew nothing about creative writing. This period is a kind of apprenticeship, trying to grasp the technical skills--characterisation, plot, dialogue, pacing, tension, conflict, and a hundred other things essential to a well-crafted story. Lots of work to be done, reading widely in the chosen genre, joining relevant groups and finding similar writers, studying how-to books, attending workshops and conferences...and writing, re-writing, scrapping it all and tackling the ironing instead, deciding training as an astronaut must be easier than becoming a published writer. And yet the compulsion to write, to develop those ideas scribbled into a notebook, remains significant. Plus, and this is important, I started to enjoy this preparation, and still do.
Sales success launches Stage Four, when I can honestly describe myself as a writer. However, Stages Two and Three remain present in my writing, as there's always more to learn and to apply.
If you are not a writer and would like to be, I encourage you to go for it! Good luck! Priscilla
For those of you celebrating ghosty and witchy happenings this 31st of October, have fun!
www.bwlpublishing.ca
www.bwlpublishing.ca/authors/brown-priscilla-romance-australia
https:priscillabrownauthor.com
Monday, October 30, 2017
Ghostly and Supernatural Tales from Quebec Province
I do not enjoy scary
books, ghost tales, or frightening movies. Maybe it’s the creepy music in the
flick added to augment the buildup to a blood-curdling moment that sends my
heart thumping to near lethal levels and my blood pressure rising. My husband
and daughter love them. Even coming through a closed door, that sinister music
has its desired effect on me.
Not to say I don’t believe in the unexplainable.
Two days after our beloved springer spaniel Casey crossed over the Rainbow
Bridge at the age of 14, I was watching TV. Something in the periphery of my
vision caused me turn away from the Yankees game. Not trusting what I thought I
saw, I did a double-take. To my astonishment, there was Casey standing in the
open doorway, her head hanging, ears forward, attention focused on me—a
familiar posture in life when she wanted something. We made eye contact for a
long moment. And then she dissipated like smoke in the wind. Some have told me
that Casey probably just wanted to say goodbye.
Years ago, when I was still living in my parents’
home during summer breaks from college, I was having trouble falling asleep one
night. Maybe I was suspended on that fragile boundary between dreams and
consciousness when something tangible brushed my cheek and rustled the hair
falling over my ear. And then a woman’s whispered voice announced (to whom or
what?), “She’s asleep now.” Shortly after, a deep, sonorous baritone from
beyond my open window began intoning what sounded like “Pil…grim’s…Pri-i-ide.”
If I wasn’t 20-something at the time, I probably would have high-tailed it into
my parent’s room and begged to let me sleep with them.
OK. This is supposed to be about ghosts, ghoulies,
and other bump-in-the-night stuff from
Quebec Province. As a Connecticut
Yankee, no one deserves a mention here more than Mark Twain. This is from a
piece by Mark Abley in the Montreal Gazette (October 17, 2014)
Mark Twain |
In
December 1881, one of the most celebrated writers in North America came to Montreal on a lecture tour. Mark Twain … was
then near the height of his fame. …
“That afternoon, a reception had been held for
him in a long drawing room of the Windsor Hotel on Peel — recently built, and
at the time the most palatial hotel in Canada. There, Twain noticed a
woman whom he had known more than 20 years earlier, in Carson City, Nevada. She
had been a friend, but they had fallen out of touch. … She seemed to be
approaching him at the reception, and he had ‘a full front view of her face’
but they didn’t meet.
“Before he gave his evening
speech in a lecture hall, Twain noticed Mrs. R. again, wearing the same dress
as in the afternoon. This time they were able to speak, and he told her that
he’d seen her earlier in the day. She was astonished. ‘I was not at the
reception,’ she told him. ‘I have just arrived from Quebec, and have not been
in town an hour.’”
Baron Baumgarten |
All right. I agree. This is kind of “woo-woo,” but
hardly the stuff that inspires goose bumps. But both Quebec and Montreal, with
their long and illustrious histories, are rife with tales of the mysterious and
macabre. There are so many such stories that I’ll limit them both by time and
necessity.
As a writer of historical
fiction, I’m drawn to some of these older stories. For example, McGill
University is Montreal’s oldest (founded in 1821) and also one of the most
haunted in a city of multiple haunted places. Its Faculty Club was once the
opulent mansion of the German-born sugar magnate, Baron Alfred Moritz Friedrich
Baumgarten.
At the turn of the 19th century, the
Baumgarten house was a center of social activity, so much so that it became the
favorite stopping place of Canada’s governor-general when in Montreal. The
start of World War I ended all that when anti-German hysteria forced him to
sell off his assets and lose his standing in society. He died in 1919, a broken
man. In 1926, McGill University bought the mansion to house the school’s high
chancellor, General Sir Arthur Currie. After Currie’s death in 1933, the
building was repurposed for use as a faculty club.
The death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West |
On the Plains of Abraham in Quebec on September 13,
1759, the battle between France and England for supremacy in the New World
ended with the death of the charismatic British General James Wolfe and took
his opponent, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, who died of his injuries the following
day. Here some 258 years later, ghosts of the dead from both sides can be seen
drifting across the battlefield, particularly one lone soldier at the entrance
to Tunnel 1, accompanied by the acrid smell of sulfur smoke and the sound of
cannons.
From Montmorency Falls in Quebec comes a sad story
and one that seems to have many similarities to other tales of such nature.
That of a beautiful young woman whose fiancé was called off to war and died in
1759 during the French and Indian War. Legend has it that the grief stricken
maiden donned her wedding dress and went out in the evenings calling his name
in hopes that he would return. The Lady in White has often been seen in the
mist of the falls, tumbling to her death.
Of course there are more such stories, many more,
but for now that’s all folks.
Wishing you all a ghoulishly Happy Halloween...but
please keep the music down.
~*~
25% off At Smashwords |
Kathy
Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire,
"The Serpent’s Tooth" trilogy: Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting
the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife, and The Return of
Tachlanad, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers.
Check out her BWLAuthor page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are
available in e-book and in paperback from a host of online and brick and mortar
retailers. Look for Where the River Narrows, the 12th and
final novel in BWL’s Canadian Historical Brides series, coming in July 2018.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Magic in Deline, NWT
Our author posts this month, both for the Books We Love Canadian Historical Brides’ blog
and for this, are supposed to have a Halloween theme. I dug around and found ghost stories here and there in the NWT, but didn’t find them particularly interesting.
I’ve had a few encounters with strangeness over the years myself, but thought that
for this blog, too, I’d take a pass on the ghosts.
The 1st Nation’s people of NWT/Nunavut have their own burial customs--from air burial to various strategies devised to handle permafrost—as well as tales of restless, unhappy dead. However, for me, the religious aspect of the old holiday is more interesting. Now, in the NWT, the spirits of nature still manifest powerfully in the minds and hearts of the inhabitants, so here I’ll retell a pair of stories which are more spiritual rather than “ghostly.”
The 1st Nation’s people of NWT/Nunavut have their own burial customs--from air burial to various strategies devised to handle permafrost—as well as tales of restless, unhappy dead. However, for me, the religious aspect of the old holiday is more interesting. Now, in the NWT, the spirits of nature still manifest powerfully in the minds and hearts of the inhabitants, so here I’ll retell a pair of stories which are more spiritual rather than “ghostly.”
Some of the most inspirational and deeply moving stories I've encountered are told in Deline. Near a town of
about 600 souls, is Great Bear Lake, a body of water still so pure that you can drink straight from it. (That, to me, is MAGIC on our ever-more polluted planet!)
Deline has occasional UFOs, which were said to be buzzing around during the mid-1990’s, but I'd rather talk about a local hero/prophet. This man
Tsá Tué Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO biosphere Reserve.
According
to the New York Times writer, PETER KUJAWINSK's
“It is the first time that an aboriginal government in Canada will represent everyone in the community, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike. Taken together, the UNESCO and self-government announcements reinforce Deline’s ability to control what happens to Great Bear Lake.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/travel/great-bear-lake-arctic-unesco-biosphere-canada.html
Deline has occasional UFOs, which were said to be buzzing around during the mid-1990’s, but I'd rather talk about a local hero/prophet. This man
Tsá Tué Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO biosphere Reserve.
“It is the first time that an aboriginal government in Canada will represent everyone in the community, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike. Taken together, the UNESCO and self-government announcements reinforce Deline’s ability to control what happens to Great Bear Lake.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/travel/great-bear-lake-arctic-unesco-biosphere-canada.html
Okay—but where’s the "magic" in conservation? Stay with me! The people of Deline are Sahtuto’ine, meaning Bear Lake People, or, commonly, North Slavey. They have a sacred story from the days long before Eht’se Ayah, told by the Sahtuto'ine forever, and one which the Prophet surely would have heard as a child.
Once, very long ago, there was a fisherman who was also a shaman. One day, a fish bit a hook from his line but then broke free. In those days, each hook was very valuable, so he wanted to retrieve it. Because of his shamanic connection to the prey animal upon which his life depended, he was able to transform himself into a Burbot and swim down deep into the lake in order to search for the missing hook.
When he arrived at the bottom, he discovered a miraculous secret: a huge beating heart lay at the bottom of Great Bear Lake! Around the heart, a throng of fish of every kind--the Inconnu, Pike, Walleye, Lake Trout and Grayling--were gathered. The fish rejoiced and thanked this unsuspected, holy presence.
This enormous heart, the fisherman realized, was the living source of all the freshwater in the world. And to this day, upon the continued beating of this heart, all life, everywhere on our planet, depends.
Once, very long ago, there was a fisherman who was also a shaman. One day, a fish bit a hook from his line but then broke free. In those days, each hook was very valuable, so he wanted to retrieve it. Because of his shamanic connection to the prey animal upon which his life depended, he was able to transform himself into a Burbot and swim down deep into the lake in order to search for the missing hook.
When he arrived at the bottom, he discovered a miraculous secret: a huge beating heart lay at the bottom of Great Bear Lake! Around the heart, a throng of fish of every kind--the Inconnu, Pike, Walleye, Lake Trout and Grayling--were gathered. The fish rejoiced and thanked this unsuspected, holy presence.
This enormous heart, the fisherman realized, was the living source of all the freshwater in the world. And to this day, upon the continued beating of this heart, all life, everywhere on our planet, depends.
~~Juliet Waldron
http://www.julietwaldron.com
http://www.julietwaldron.com
See all my historical
novels @
https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel
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I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.
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