Dead Dogs Talk New Release from Nancy M Bell

For more information on Nancy's books click the cover above.

I'm excited to share with you the latest installment in The Alberta Adventures. The Coal and his band of wild horses are still safe, but now Laurel finds herself embroiled with a dog fighting ring after she and Carly come across an injured dog while out riding. Of course, bad boy Chance, Carly's brother is in it up to his neck trying to prove to his ringleader dad that he's tough enough to earn Daddy's approval.

As in Wild Horse Rescue, there is an underlying message in the book. Dog fighting rings and puppy mills are a real evil and they exist world wide. It is a horrible and reprehensible activity. The animals involved have no voice, other than their unheard cries for help and comfort. We must be their voice and we must speak loudly. Don't by cute puppies from pet stores that aren't supporting local rescues by featuring only rescue animals for adoption, don't buy off local see pages on the internet.

The inspiration for Dead Dogs Talk came from a very real event that a friend relayed to me. She was out riding her horse with a friend along a grassy pathway and they came across a very skinny dead dog tied to a tree by a ratty rope. The dog was obviously ill treated, with scars and wounds and the nails on the paws so long they curled under. Clearly the dog had been caged and not allowed to move normally as the condition of the paws made that painfully evident. She was most likely a used up victim of a puppy mill. No way to identify her or an owner, of course. And frankly, the authorities weren't interested and washed their hands of it. Sadly, even if there had been a way to trace the person or persons who dumped this girl, chances are the charges would have been thrown out of court, if things even got that far. At best, the perpetrator would have gotten a slap on the wrist a small fine. Even if they had been court ordered to not be in possession of any animals, there is no organization that monitors that. Many of those who are under similar court orders just move provinces or totally ignore the order and carry on. There is little or no follow up.
I give my injured dog a happy ending and the discovery of a microchip in another dog leads to the group responsible. In effect, the dead dog with the microchip manages to speak out via the chip.

Please hold your furbabies close and love them. Don't let them roam, keep them safe.

The story isn't all gloom and doom, so don't despair. Laurel ends up volunteering at an animal rescue and she gets to ride her barrel horse Sam at the Canadian Finals Rodeo in Red Deer Alberta. Carly's brother Chance is maturing and starting to realize that his father isn't always the best role model. The last book in this series will be out next year and it will feature Chance and his struggles to find his way in the world. As always, the events play out against the rolling Alberta prairies under the wide Alberta blue sky. Working title is Finding the Way or maybe Second Chance. No clear winner yet.

Until next time, stay well, stay safe. These are my rescue dogs below. Miley, Gibbie, and George.

Crossword Puzzles and Writing

 

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https://bookswelove.net/walters-janet-lane/ 

I’m addicted to doing crossword puzzles. Since I often eat alone, I do the puzzles during lunch and dinner. The crossword puzzles do many things and often force me to think outside the box. This has carried over into writing. I also learn new words and the meanings for other words than what we consider as usual. Several of my books have been aided by finding a word in a puzzle.

 

I found the name for the villain in the Affinities series from a crossword puzzle. I cam across a word I didn’t know and saw the definition meant a kind of weasel. That fit the character of the villain so handily.

 

The crossword puzzle gave me a word to use for what people call a reverse harem. This word came with the definition about a group of male horses. Harras was the word and I thought it suited.

 

So put your brain to work and find a crossword puzzle or two. Who knows what new word or idea you might find.

The Big Cheese, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

Darkness Descends
Book 2 of the Award-winning Twisted Climb series

Regular BWL blog readers will know that I have a great love of nature, in all its forms. I also have a particular fondness for the moon, in all its eerie glory. I have binoculars that are strong enough for celestial viewing and I take full advantage of clear, night-time skies. Did you know that the moon was formed four and a half billion years ago, about 60 million years after the solar system? Yeah, me neither. 

Scientists hypothesize that the moon was formed when a Mars-sized object hit the earth and the impact was such that a chunk of both the object and the earth ricocheted back into space and began to orbit the earth. Supporting this theory is the fact that the 'dark' side of the moon is 50 km (31 miles) thicker than the 'bright' side, allegedly because the projectile objects fused together. 

Rising full moon from my backyard, winter 2019

I also learned, courtesy of Wikipedia, that approximately five tons of comet particles crash into the moon every 24 hours. Back in 1651, an astronomer named Giovanni Battista Riccioli believed that the flat plains between the moon's craters were water-filled seas. In Latin, they were called 'maria.' Some believed that the cratered surface meant the moon might be composed of a cheesy substance. Today, we know the moon is composed of mainly iron, no dairy. Clear observations of the craters and 'maria' can be seen with the naked eye, and in greater detail courtesy of a good set of binoculars.

Quick view of the moon phases

Astronomers have determined that there are millions of craters on the bright side of the moon, and of those, 300,000 have a diameter greater than 1 km (0.6 mile).

My fascination with the full moon is found in my Twisted Climb books. The three main characters, Jayden, Connor and Max, meet in a moon-lit dream world and embark on many action-filled adventures. Here's a few 'moon' excerpts from The Twisted Climb and Darkness Descends:

Jayden Nanjee looked up. The full moon shone like a ghostly yellow torch against the midnight black of the night sky. The pale, low-lying clouds seemed to hug the earth as the moon peeked in and out of their embrace. 

And...

Creamy puffs of clouds filled the sky, circling the moon in a slow dance. His gaze followed the milky orb as it appeared to slide behind a cloud, throwing the field into murky gloom. 

And...

The moon slid behind a gathering of heavy, bloated clouds, leaving only shadowy blackness. 

And...

The moon was unfolding itself through the parting clouds, creating shadowy figures behind every tree.

And one more...

A yellowish full moon shone brightly from the heavens, ghoulishly displaying its pock-marked face. 

So yes, the moon played a pivotal role in the spooky setting of The Twisted Climb's dream world. If you're looking for a book series that will take you on one crazy adventure after another, then you have to read The Twisted Climb series. Moon-gazing will never be the same.

J.C. Kavanagh, author of
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
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
Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)

The terrible luck of the three sisters, the Titanic, the Olympic, the Britannic, and the incredible luck of one woman

 

Violet Jessup

The White Star Line, a British steamship company, faced a challenge in the 1900’s. Its rival, the Cunard Line, had built smaller but faster steamships, and threatened the White Line’s traditional routes to America.  Bruce Ismay, the Director of the White Line, decided that to counter the threat by constructing larger and more opulent vessels. From this decision came the ‘Olympic’ class of ships, which set the standard for large passenger cruisers of the era.

The Olympic

The first, eponymously named Olympic, set sail on her maiden voyage in 1911. With nine
decks, a length of 883 feet and a height of 175 feet, and designed by the notable naval architect Thomas Andrews, its size eclipsed anything seen on the seas so far. Unfortunately, within a year of its launch, it collided with the HMS Hawke, a warship designed to sink others by ramming them with its reinforced bow. The Olympic’s hull was breached, but somehow it made its way back to port.

The Titanic

The White Star Line next launched the Titanic on the tenth of April, 1912. It sank five days later. Its first class quarters were the epitome of luxury, with a gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, fine china, several restaurants and well-appointed cabins. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers, over 1,500 died, making it the deadliest peacetime marine disaster.

The Britannic

Being gluttons for punishment, the White Star Line launched the Britannic in 1914, with the same unfortunate result. When the First World War started, it was leased by the Royal Navy and served as a hospital ship. On the 21^st of November, 1916, it struck a German mine while sailing in the Aegean Sea. The explosion ripped open her hull and she sunk in less than an hour. Fortunately, having learned its lessons, the company had installed sufficient lifeboats and, of the 1,605 persons on board, only thirty died.

As incredible as it may seem, there was one person on board of all three ships when they sank, though she barely survived the disasters. Her name was Violet Jessup and she worked as a stewardess for the While Line Company. She inherited the love of the sea from her mother, who worked as a ship stewardess until she became too ill to continue. Jessop was twenty-one years of age but she kept getting rejected at job interviews. The employers found her “too pretty,” fearing problems with crew and passengers. Indeed, over the course of her career, she received three marriage proposals, including one from an extremely wealthy first-class passenger.

When she appeared for a job with the White Line Company, she wore old clothes and made herself look haggard. She got the job. Her first appointment was with the Olympic, then the Titanic and then, the Britannic. While she was unhurt from the Olympic disaster and was ordered into a lifeboat (as she was carrying a baby in her arms) aboard the Titanic, she almost lost her life during the sinking of the Britannic.

She jumped into the waters as the ship went underwater. The sea sucked her under, towards the ship’s propellers. Her head struck the keel, arresting her momentum and she was able to surface. Years later, when she went to a doctor complaining of persistent headaches, it was discovered that she had suffered a fracture of her skull. Displaying enormous fortitude, she continued working on large ships for another thirty-four years, until her retirement at age sixty-three.

The White Star Line did not survive its disasters. It was bought by the Royal Mail Packet Company in 1927, and in 1933 merged with its old rival, the Cunard Line.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of 'The Yoga Zapper', a fantasy, and 'Karma Nation', a literary romance (www.mohanashtakala.com). He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com).

 

Sheila Claydon

Click here to find my books at Books We Love

I've just discovered a wonderful new word - librocubicularist! It refers to a person who reads in bed, and was invented by an American novelist, Christopher Morley, in the early 1900s. As someone who regularly reads in bed, I have adopted this word. It makes my late night and early morning reading sound like an important, even essential activity.

I have friends who also read in bed, while others do something I can never do, pull up the covers, switch off the light and go straight to sleep. One friend, however, is such a bad sleeper that when she wakes in the middle of the night and is unable to get back to sleep, she will read for an hour or two. Does this give her librocubicularist points? How much bedtime reading constitutes a seasoned librocubicularist - 30 minutes, an hour, daily, weekly. Does a five minute chapter count?
 

Discovering a new word is like finding treasure for a writer, even though I can't begin to imagine where librocubicularist could feature in my romantic fiction books. Having found one, however, I went looking for more and discovered aestivation. This is the summer equivalent of hibernation. It is lolling around in the heat of a hot summer day, so another word I can adopt for myself. Aestivating is definitely something I enjoy, preferably with a cold drink to hand, and an interesting book.


And lastly here is a very new one. Haiflu! Invented, as far as I can tell, by the poet Liv Torc, and promoted on National Poetry Day, it is half-sibling to the Japanese Haiku. The Haiku is a poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, that traditionally evokes images of the natural world whereas the flippantly named Haiflu is the response of a poet to the Coronavirus pandemic. This one, which I love, is credited to Demi Anter, and is illustrated by a photo of a dog looking out a window:

Porridge for the twelfth

damn day in a row; I am

now made of porridge

I don't think any of the characters in my books are poets, or even prolific readers, and maybe I should think about that when I write my next one. Of them all, Holly Williams in my Retro Romance Empty Hearts is the closest. As an ex journalist whose visit to Moscow includes acting as a nanny to a five year old boy while researching for a book, she is probably a librocubicularist. Whether she would like Haiflu is a moot point, but while I think I might try to write one myself, I have just discovered that another BWL author, Susan Calder, is the winner of a traditional Haiku competition! Check out her post of 12 September. The words and images are lovely.





www.sheilaclaydonwriter.com

Haiku, Gardens & Pandemic

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Last month, a friend coaxed me to enter the 2020 Lougheed House Haiku Contest. A seventeen syllable poem struck me as an amount of writing I could manage during a busy summer. 

I checked the contest guidelines. No entry fee. They allowed three haiku submissions per person. Themes suggested were gardens, nature, Calgary community, and life during the pandemic.  

Gardens made me instantly think of my next-door neighbour, who spends four hours a day tending her beautiful outdoor plants. One of her flower beds borders my front lawn. I started to think of this burst of colour as a connector between her and me during our pandemic isolation.

I knew haiku had lines, but needed the internet to remind me the traditional pattern is 5,7,5 syllables per line. My high school English teacher taught that haiku should refer to a season, although I gather that's no longer necessary. 

My thinking and research led to this haiku:

my neighbour's garden

bursts colour beside my yard

links us through summer

The contest required entrants to include a video of us reading or reciting our poems. I nabbed my husband Will for a cell phone recording. I stood behind the front yard flower bed and had to speak loudly to be heard, while resisting the urge to check that no one was passing by and watching me strangely. 

    

After I drafted this first haiku, Will and I set off on a bike ride to downtown Calgary. While pedaling by the Bow River, I mentally composed a haiku about how the pandemic closure of cafes, bars and gyms inspired people to go for walks along the river; a healthy, easy and free activity. We made a recording at our lunch spot beside the Bow River. Then we biked through a park and passed a group of women sitting in a circle of lawn chairs placed two metres (6.5 feet) apart, Canada's social distancing recommendation.  

I realized the phrase 'two metres apart' is five syllables - the ideal haiku first line length! 

To suit the contest themes, I placed the ladies in a garden. I liked the slightly archaic word 'ladies' for a contest sponsored by Calgary's historic Lougheed home. Drinking tea also evokes the past to me and what do ladies discuss at a garden tea? Their gardens. Present and past blended into my next haiku: 

two metres apart

ladies sit in the garden

drink tea, talk flowers

Will and I recorded this haiku in my neighbour's back yard. Since the video was too large to save to my computer, we uploaded it to dropbox. I sent my three haiku to the contest.   

A week later, I got the word that my poem 'two metres apart' placed first in the Lougheed House Haiku Contest and 'my neighbour's garden' received an honorable mention. The contest judges commented that they appreciated the garden imagery, since the Lougheed home is known for its splendid Beaulieu Gardens. 

The Lougheed House is posting the winning haiku recordings on its social media. You can find them on Facebook and Twitter.

Writing the haikus was fun and an opportunity to reflect on the links between gardens, people and the pandemic. 

I thank my good friend 

& historic Lougheed House

for inspiration 

 

     

                              Fore-edge, Folding and Other Uses for Old Books by Karla Stover

Yes, there is a town in Wales devoted to second hand books; it's Hay-on-Wye. But I just checked and the number of book stores is starting to decline. What to do with all the unloved books?   . 

One idea is to turn them into art. There are "How to" tutorials all over YouTube, but for something completely unique there is Fore-edge painting which is a scene painted on the edges of the pages of a book. Fore-edge has two options:  paintings on the edges of the pages and which can only be seen when the pages are fanned. The painting should be invisible when the book is closed; or painting is on the closed edge itself and thus should not be fanned. The following comes from Wikipedia:

"In order to view the painting, the leaves of the book must be fanned, exposing the edges of the pages and thereby the painting. Another basic difference is that a painting on the closed edge is painted directly on the surface of the book edge (the fore-edge being the opposite of the spine side). For the fanned painting the watercolor is applied to the top or bottom margin (recto or verso) of the page/leaf and not to the actual "fore"-edge itself."

The art form has been around for a long time but there is one amusing story about its use. Among Charles II of England's many "lady friends" was a duchess, who often borrowed his books, sometimes forgetting to return them.(I'm guessing it was Barbara Castlemaine, Duchess of Cleveland). To remedy the situation, the king "commissioned the court painter, Sir Peter Lely and the court bookbinder, Samuel Mearne, to devise a secret method in which his books could be identified. Between the two they came up with something unique. It went into effect a few weeks later when the king was visiting the duchess and spotted a familiar looking book on a shelf. "Taking it down he said, “I’ll just take my book along with me.” “But sire,” the lady protested, “that book is mine.” “Oh?" The king raised his brows. Then, with a sly smile, he fanned out the book and revealed what had been painted on the inner edges--the royal coat of arms. The gilding on the outer edges had completely hidden the identification. Acknowledging that Charles had outwitted her, the duchess sank in a deep curtsy before her king." (Since most of the king's lady friends were also his mistresses, she probably did more than that.)

I once wrote a short story where my protagonist, Miss Agnes Grey, solved the mystery with a clue on a book which had been painted using the technique. I may have tried to get "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine" to accept the story but I forget. It currently lies fallow on a thumb-drive somewhere,

I've attempted to attach a picture courtesy of Pinterest but they don't always transfer. If not, Google Fore-edge and look at all the samples on "images."