A Pie For All Seasons by Helen Henderson

 

Windmaster Legacy by Helen Henderson
Click the cover for purchase information

 

Cold and gray skies that look like it will dump snow at any moment calls for comfort food. Although it is not a politically declared holiday, January 23rd is National Pie Day, which is as good a way as any to brighten a winter's meal. Although pies can trace its roots all the way back to the Greeks who are credited with creating the first pastry shell by mixing together water and flour, they and their Roman and Middle Age descendants bear little resemblance to the modern dishes called "pie." Fillings have ranged from honey and fruits or nuts to meats, fish, and mussels. The pumpkin, apple, and quince fillings once popular have expanded. Today, the top ten pie fillings include: 1) Apple, 2) Pumpkin, 3) Chocolate Creme, 4) Cherry, 5) Apple Crumb, 6) Pecan, 7) Lemon Meringue, 8) Blueberry, 9) Key Lime Pie and 10) Peach. And in recognition of my southern neighbors, don't forget sweet potato pie.

The smell of warm, fresh from the oven, pies pushes back the winter doldrums. The taste raises memories of holidays past and watching the elder members of the family make the crusts while us younger ones peel and slice what seemed like bushels of apples. Eventually, us "youngsters" progressed to making the crust under the watchful eye of our grandmother.

A family favorite that doesn't make the top ten list, but is very popular in the land of my kin is shoofly pie. For those who aren't familiar with this Pennsylvania Dutch dish from the 1800s, shoofly pie has been referred to as a molasses crumb cake baked in a pie crust. As to the name, flies had to be shooed away from the cooling treat. Or maybe because for some us us that was easier to say than Melassich Riwwelboi or Melassichriwwelkuche. For Valentine's Day (which is a short few weeks away). I may try something different, a "French Kiss" pie. It's described as a decadent French Silk pie, topped with strawberries dipped in Belgian chocolate, and kissed with fresh raspberries.

I like pie, but how about my characters?  One answer comes while shopping at the market when Lady Pelra helps a woman who tripped and fell.

“Why don’t you join me in a cup of chilled cider,” Pelra said. “I think we both can use a breather.” A signal to Cyfaill and Urith to maintain their distance and follow, she led Saibh to a booth farther down the street to a vendor who sold pieces of fruit pie and mugs of chilled cider. Four coppers later, she balanced plates of pie atop two mugs of cider and led Saibh to a bench in the trees behind the booth. (From Windmaster Legend)

On the trail, a hungry apprentice hopes for a meal. But his search raised a question.

Light wood smoke mingled with the enticing smell of fruit pies. Nobyn sucked in the fragrant air. Just the scent of the food was enough to start his mouth watering. Beyond the last of the large trees lining the trail, tall fruit vines covered neat rows of fences. Twisted branches laden with ripe green fruit showed the source of the pie fillings. But who was baking out here? (From Windmaster Legacy)

Whether you are a baker or an afficionado of the pie, here's to a happy pie day.

~Until next month, stay safe and read. Preferably with a big slice of your favorite pie and a cup of hot coffee to chase away the chill.  Helen

To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL

 
Find out more about me and my novels at Journey to Worlds of Imagination.
Follow me online at Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter.

Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who has adopted her as one of the pack. 

Living With A Rough Draft - Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #writing #Rough Draft #twists and Surprises

 

 

Living With A Rough Draft

 

Starting a new story is always an adventure. While I generally have a rough idea of where the story will go, things occur during the writing. I begin with a rough draft and look at what I’ve planned to have happen. Sometimes the story moves flawlessly through the roughing in of the scenes and some times there are little twists and turns that pop up unexpectedly.

 

My latest book has taken a few of these turns and I write them in as they occur. Soon the rough draft will be finished. Then comes the fun. This time several twists happened and I must when I go back to the beginning find a way to accept or reject them. For this story, I will probably accept most of them. Yes, it’s a romance but it’s also a story of the dreams haunting not only my hero and heroine but at least one of his children. Though I’ve a few more chapters to finish the rough draft, hopefully all the twists have been found.

 

How about you, do you plan your stories and then sit down and let the words flow and embrace all those strange and new twists never thought of when the idea for the story arose?

 

https://twitter.com/JanetL717

 https://www.facebook.com/janet.l.walters.3?v=wall&story_f

bid=113639528680724

 http://bookswelove.net/

 http://wwweclecticwriter.blogspot.com

https://www.pinterest.com/shadyl717/

 

Buy Mark

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

 

 

Tapping the unknown, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

The Twisted Climb
Book 1 of the award-winning series

There's a deep well. The stone wall around the top is waist-high, tall enough for you to lean over and peer down. The bottom is not in sight. What looms in that deep, dark cavern? Is it just water, a welcome, wet oasis for the parched? Or are there unknown, unseen creatures scurrying about, waiting for the unsuspecting human to drop a bucket and haul up... a blood-thirsty beast...

Yah, that would definitely be 'tapping' the unknown. But I made up that paragraph, just now as I gazed into the playground of my mind... ah yes, there they are. I see them - creatures in a deep, dark well. I tend to do that as an author. Look for the scare; an unexpected tingle of fear; a foreshadowing of something spooky to come. My dreams are twisted too - which is how The Twisted Climb story began. But that's another blog.

So when it came to tapping a non-writing skill, I was at a bit of a loss. Creativity has no bounds, as every reader and writer knows. But how about a craft? A Christmas craft? Hmmm. There's a challenge. I live on a rural property in southern Ontario, Canada, with thousands of trees. Trees of all kinds: pine, spruce, oak, maple, elm, birch, beech, chestnut, tamarack, apple and more. Because I have so many pines and spruces, I have hundreds, maybe thousands of cones. And because I have so many oaks, I have hundreds, maybe thousands, of acorns. What to do with them?

How about Christmas wreaths? I've never undertaken such a project but I knew I had the materials at hand. My neighbour Patricia, who is affectionately known as the 'bird lady' due to the geese, chickens, turkeys and peacocks that she lovingly cares for, is one of the most multi-talented women I have ever met. How to grow a vegetable garden? Ask Patricia. How to crochet a baby blanket? Ask Patricia. How to make a floral arrangement for any season, any event? Ask Patricia. So I knew when I asked her 'How do you make a Christmas wreath?' - well, I knew she'd have the answer. 

And so I began my untapped journey into the making of a Christmas wreath. Little did I know that it would take me five weeks, from start to finish, to make six wreaths. Yup, only six. Ha! Patricia taught me that a) you have to select similar-sized cones, b) you must soak them in a bowl of water till they close shut, and c) only then do you insert them through the metal frame while they're wet. Next step is to heat them by the wood stove so they dry and open again. This heating step ensures the cones are completely ensconced and tight in the metal frame.

Then the fun begins. Building layers of cones, acorns and chestnuts - all symmetrically pleasing - while hiding the metal frame. More than once I learned the peril of holding a glue gun too close to the fingers. With Patricia's guidance and her incredible knack of making bows, and using a variety of craft materials and ribbon, my foray into the building of unique Christmas wreaths was, I daresay, successful. 

Christmas morning: Ian's lovely daughter, Veroniqua, with her wreath.

As you can see from the photo above, I decided that such a gift required a 'keepsake box.' So that meant designing and building/staining storage boxes. With my multi-talented partner's help (Ian), we built the boxes from plywood, cut out a 'Christmas 2020' stencil, spray painted it and then signed each box. 

Tapping into the unknown - that's what my Christmas wreath project felt like. I've never done anything like it before and my fear was that the wreaths would not be worthy enough to give away as presents. But I think I did okay. What say you? I'll tell you one thing: I definitely have a renewed respect for all things 'hand made.'

If you're curious about the trappings of the fantastical dream world found in the playground of my mind and put to paper in The Twisted Climb series of award-winning books, please check them out at your favourite book store or through the online link found below. You'll be glad you did!

https://bookswelove.net/kavanagh-j-c/

Stay safe everyone!

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)

Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life

 

In 1913, after having founded a hospital in Gabon, the religious philosopher and polymath Albert Schweitzer took a boat ride on the Ogooue River, to contemplate ethics and civilization. He spent two days in deep thought and, on the third, had a moment of enlightenment, which he called “Reverence for Life.”

In short, “Reverence for Life” is the idea that all life must be respected and loved and that humans should enter into a personal, spiritual relationship with the universe and all its creations. For humans such an outlook would naturally lead to a life of service to others.

Schweitzer was born into a well-educated family in Alsace, which was part of Germany in 1875, the year of his birth. His father was a Lutheran pastor and Schweitzer followed his footsteps and studied theology and philosophy. He also became an accomplished organist, but found his lasting passion in medicine.

With a degree in Medicine, Schweitzer and his wife Helene Bresslau, a nurse, he moved to Gabon, Africa, where he lived for most of his days, to start a hospital.

He had always had a kind heart towards animals. He wrote “One thing that especially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery…when my mother had prayed with me and kissed me good-night, I used to silently add a prayer that I composed myself for all living beings: ‘Oh heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath, guard them from evil, and let them sleep in peace.’”

He carried this understanding throughout his life. In Africa, when planting a seed on a farm he had started, he was noticed gently scooping out a spider that had fallen in the hole. His reverence for life, while self-manifested, was developed and refined by Schweitzer’s reading of Indian philosophy. In his book, Indian Thought and Its Development, he wrote the following: “The laying down of the commandment to not kill and not to damage is one of the greatest events in spiritual history. Starting from this principle..ancient Indian thought..reached the tremendous discovery that ethics know no bounds.”

Ahimsa, the principle he referred to, appears in both yoga philosophy and in the religion of Jainism. In yoga, it is the first of the Yamas, one of the eight limbs of yoga. The five Yamas (standards of behavior) are Ahimsa (non-violence); Satya (truthfulness); Asteya, non-stealing; Brahmacharya (continence) and Aparigraha (non-covetousness.) The Jain religion brought Ahimsa into daily practice.

Schweitzer’s writings had a tremendous impact in a world that had suffered violence during the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1952, and he used the money to start a leprosarium in Gabon, Africa. Until his death in 1965, he worked tirelessly for peace, speaking out against nuclear weapons and for the humane treatment of animals.

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

The story behind the photo...by Sheila Claydon

 Click here for my BWL page

Remembering Rose is very special to me because it is my take on a family history. Not my family (although I might get to that eventually) but that of another family. 

It all started when I found a sepia photo in a box of jumbled mementos. The young woman at the centre  was mesmerising, not because of her looks, although they were striking, but because of her vivacity. And it was obvious from the faces of those around her, that they were equally entranced. Of course I will never know what she was saying any more than I will ever know why she was standing while the people around her were sitting on the ground watching her. Were they playing a game like charades? Had she just jumped up and suggested they all stop lolling around and go for a walk? Was she reacting to something the blonde curly-haired child next to her had done? The only thing I do know is that it was taken in the summer because some of the men were wearing striped blazers and straw boater hats, and the women's dresses seemed to be styled from light, summery materials. 

Like all photos taken in the days before the ubiquitous cell phone camera, there had to be a story behind it. In the late 1800s it wouldn't have been taken on a whim, so maybe the group had been posing and the photographer had grabbed a final photo just as the woman jumped up ready to do something else. I was intrigued enough to store the image in my head but not quite intrigued enough to write about it until, many years later, I was shown a photo of the same woman as an old lady. The contrast was both shocking and heartbreaking. What was it that had changed that vibrant young woman into somebody so thin and melancholy.  What had life done to her? And her husband too. In the sepia photo he had been handsome and dashing with luxuriant whiskers and his straw hat tilted at a jocular angle. Now he looked old and tired and his hands were swollen with arthritis.

The writer in me kicked in and I began to ask questions. The result is Remembering Rose. A fiction of course, but with enough of their real story woven into it to ensure they are never forgotten. Because their's is a story of love...real love, not the fleeting kind that runs as soon as it encounters problems...and consequently the love experienced by all the other people in the book is the same. The blurb on the back sums it up:

Rachel has a husband who adores her, a beautiful baby daughter, and an extended family she can rely on, so why isn't she happy? She doesn't know and nor do the people who love her. Only Rose understands but she is trapped in another century. To help Rachel she has to breach the boundaries of time itself as well as risk exposing the truth of her own past. When echoes from that past begin to affect other people in the village of Mapleby, things suddenly become a lot more complicated. Can Rachel put things right without giving away Rose's secret?

Because I needed a background for Rose's story I invented the village of Mapleby and the cottage where she lived as a child, and when I did that, Mapleby itself pulled back the curtain that separates us from the past and the future and told me Rose's story. And because it told me the story of so many of the others who live there too I soon found myself embarking upon a Mapleby Memories series. Remembering Rose is Book 1 and Book 2: Loving Ellen will be published in February. Although it's part of a series, it is still a stand alone book, but to really understand the village and the people who live there, you need to listen to Rose.

And if you do read Remembering Rose you might be able to guess who the heroine of the next story is going to be. A clue. It's not Ellen because there isn't an Ellen in Book 1. Have I intrigued you enough?

Even better is the fact that BWL has just updated the cover for Remembering Rose, ready for a relaunch alongside Loving Ellen, and the new image really does look like Rachel, who is the other heroine of the story. The cover for Loving Ellen is even better and I'll be showcasing that next month.

Angels in the Architecture

 

Find Eileen's books here...

Happy New Year, dear readers.

I love New York City. Since I was a child, it has always been a place of mystery and wonder. On our way to visit my grandparents’ apartment, I would stare in wonder at the tall buildings, vast avenues, steam coming out of worksites. My parents would point out the West Side tenements where each had been born. My father would give us a nickel so we could ride the Staten Island Ferry and get a close look at the waters around and Miss Liberty shining her light from the harbor. Free Shakespeare performances in Central Park and my first Broadway show made me a lifelong lover of theater.

Angel in the architecture, New York City

The last time I was there was Valentine’s Day, 2020.  My husband and I traveled down by train from our home in Vermont to see our son performing in an off-Broadway play. The play was about love in all its forms and complexity and was the perfect date. Afterward, we walked to Greenwich Village and had a lovely late night meal together. We should do this more often, I thought.

Back in out tiny hotel, I looked across the street from our 8th floor window and noticed a building had been converted from its previous incarnation as a church. Some of the details remained intact, including a beautiful concrete angel, recently sand blasted clean. There are wonderful surprises like that, even in this city that is forever re-inventing itself.

I’ve thought about that angel often over this year that’s followed, here in our quarantined Vermont. That angel has looked over a city crippled by a deadly virus (which our son suffered with and survived) a shut down, and political mayhem. 

I hope she will guide us all to follow the better angels of our nature.

Where do you get your ideas?

 

                                                                                                                                                                          Please click this link for author, book and purchase information

"Where do you get your ideas?" This might be the number one question readers ask authors.

My quick answer is that ideas pop into my head all the time and they come from everywhere. My personal experience, conversations with other people, places I've lived in and visited, the news, books I've read, TV, movies, perhaps a painting or line of music. 

This winter, I'm editing a novel-in-progress, book # 3 of my Paula Savard mystery series, while mulling ideas for book # 4. With a series, many of the basic ideas are already there. I start with my sleuth, Paula, a fifty-five year old insurance adjuster, and her cast of supporting characters, who impact her personal life and, in some cases, her sleuthing. Paula and most of her family, colleagues and friends live in my home city, Calgary Alberta. I could send Paula to another location for all or part of the next book, but I see her as grounded in Calgary. Unlike me, Paula isn't drawn to travel, although book # 3 presents her with a future travel opportunity. For now, I think her adventures in book # 4 will continue in Calgary. 

 

    An often deserted pathway behind Calgary's Saddledome arena inspired my idea for the murder in the first Paula Savard novel, A Deadly Fall. 

My current novel-in-progress, Winter's Rage, ends in January 2020, with Paula at a crossroads in her life. Book # 4 will begin with her dealing with that situation. I've decided it will take place in spring, since Paula's first three mysteries happened in fall, summer and winter. But which spring will this be? January 2020 was right before COVID-19 changed the world. Will we next meet Paula in spring 2020, as she grapples with the start of the pandemic both personally and at work? Or will it be spring 2021, when the the pandemic is (we hope) nearing its end? I could jump over the virus and set the novel in spring 2022. This would make the time frame more contemporary to my publication date, although I find it hard to envision the post COVID-19 world. What things will return to the old normal and what will be the long term changes? The year I choose for this fourth novel will affect my ideas for it. Thoughts to mull during the winter.

 

Calgary's annual Stampede parade prompted ideas for a major character and an inciting incident in my second novel, Ten Days in Summer. 

  

While Paula got into solving mysteries as an amateur sleuth, I decided her subsequent ventures would come from her insurance adjusting work. Ten Days in Summer starts with a suspicious death resulting from a building fire. Paula naturally becomes involved in the course of investigating the property fire insurance claim. In Winter's Rage, she adjusts a hit and run collision and gradually suspects the fatality was no accident. 

This quiet, suburban Calgary street plays a large role in Winter's Rage.

For book # 4, I'm thinking that burglary could make a good cover up for murder. Last spring, my husband and I bought e-bikes at a local bicycle shop. I was intrigued by the store's booming business. With most of their usual activities shut down for the pandemic, Calgarians sought outdoor activities and many of us updated our old bicycles. That store and the two guys operating it are giving me ideas for the crime that will launch Paula's next mystery.            

I also want to include a ghost in book # 4, because ghosts both interest and frighten me. At the end of Ten Days in Summer, Paula's office moved to Inglewood, Calgary's oldest neighbourhood. Many ghosts lurk in Inglewood, a location for Calgary's haunted walking tours. The ghost rumoured to haunt her historic office building will challenge rational Paula, who doesn't believe in other worldly happenings. 

A ghost walking tour of Inglewood inspired my choice of  this "haunted" building for Paula's office.

All of these bits and pieces, swirling in my mind, will converge into the start of a story, when I eventually sit down and write the novel. As the story moves along, it will pluck more ideas from my usual sources. That's the plan, anyway, and it's how I get my ideas.    

  

E-biking last spring triggered ideas for my next novel 

 

Little Boxes by Karla Stover

Every morning my husband and I drive out to the woods and walk our dog. There is always so much interesting stuff to see. Like right now, mushrooms are everywhere. And all summer long wild flowers bloom, my favorites being a shrub called ocean spray and madrone, a tree native to the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Northern California. Right now it has clusters of red berries which many birds love. However, all waxing nostalgic aside, to get to the forest, we have to drive past new housing developments. (Hear me heave a heavy sigh).

It’s not that I don’t want people to have homes; it’s just that they all look alike; right down to the colors they are painted.  They make me harken back to a song called “Little Boxes” that my mother used to sing. A woman named Malvina Reynolds wrote it in 1962 for her friend Pete Seeger and when in 1963 he released his cover version, “Little Boxes” became a hit.

The song was written as a “political satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It mocks suburban tract housing as ‘little boxes’ of different colors ‘all made out of ticky-tacky’, and which ‘all look just the same.’” “Ticky-tacky" was “a reference to the shoddy material supposedly used in the construction of the houses.” I’m not saying the ones we pass were built of shoddy material, it’s just that they’re boring to look at and don’t have yards where children can play.

An interesting bit of trivia. In addition to being an adjective for 'poor quality,' shoddy is also a noun for "an inferior quality yarn or fabric made from the shredded fiber of waste woolen cloth or clippings.  Mattresses used to be filled with shoddy. 

Write a cozy? Me?

 

Sometimes the universe converges and the stars align.

I’d been writing hard-boiled mysteries and I thought any lesser character than say, Mike Hammer, just wasn’t going to cut it in the mystery marketplace. That’s when my wife caught me off guard.

“Honey, you’re through with your latest blood-spattered thriller. Why don’t you write one of those British-style mysteries, the ones where someone dies, maybe by poison, but the author doesn’t dwell on the murder. The book is devoted to solving the mystery through shrewd policework, rather than following bloody footprints until the shootout in the end.”

I seized up. A British-style mystery? A cozy? Me?

Still pondering the prospect of writing a cozy, I ate lunch the next day with a group of friends. Brian, a jovial fellow, enjoyed joking with me about becoming the next Arthur Conan Doyle. He cornered me after lunch and asked a simple question, “Have you ever considered setting a mystery in my hometown, Two Harbors, Minnesota? There are lots of colorful people and I’d be happy to help you with settings and background.” I laughed, thanked him, and moved on. I’d never been to Two Harbors and knew little about the town except it was nearly tied with Frostbite Falls as the coldest spot in Minnesota.

My wife and I were dealing with another non-urgent emergency related to the custodial care of her mother, her aunt, my father, and my uncle. We’d run the gamut of issues and had gone from groans and eye rolls, to chuckles as the situations became inane. The latest was a call from my father. “You’ve got to move me. Someone ate my dinner brownie while I was in the bathroom and I can’t stay in a place where people don’t respect your right to have your brownie left alone until you return from the toilet.”

That night was my convergence. I sat down and wrote a chapter of a cozy, set in a Two Harbors senior residence. I brought it to lunch the next day and handed it to Brian. He munched on his sandwich as he read, his eyes twinkling. He pushed it back to me and said, “Nice start. I’ll bring you more fodder tomorrow.” The next day he arrived at the lunch table with a one-inch stack of recipe cards. He split them into two piles: characters and locations.

Months later I had a draft of a cozy. I’d incorporated what I thought was tasteful humor, but I had no idea if “it worked.” A dear retired friend, Nancy, has read all my books and is an avid reader of anything hinting of mystery. I emailed the computer file to her and asked for her opinion. There was an email in my inbox the next evening with the subject line, “WHEN’S THE SEQUEL?” I called and asked if any of the humor had resonated with her. Her response, “I spent the whole night mopping my tears of laughter. Yes! I love the humor!”

The protagonist is Peter Rogers, the recreation director of the Whistling Pines Senior Residence. The supporting characters include an understated police chief, an elderly neighbor who shoots at “vermin” in her urban yard with antique guns, and a host of senior citizens who, through their everyday lives, cause Peter no end of grief.

My most recent cozy, published this past October by BWL Publishing, is Whistling up a Ghost. (Spoiler alert) Peter is now married to his long-time girlfriend Jenny, and they’re moving into an old mansion given to them as a wedding gift. Eerie footfalls in the attic drive Jenny’s eight-year-old son to their bed the first night in the new house. The ghostly encounters continue to vex the newlyweds, who are convinced there is a worldly answer to the seemingly otherworldly events.

Meanwhile, the town finds a time capsule during the demolition of the bandshell. When it’s opened on live television, a gun, a poem, and a newspaper clipping spill out, providing hints about a 1950’s murder, an event that every Whistling Pines resident recalls. Not surprisingly, each resident also has an opinion about the murder and murderer. Peter is asked to sort the swirling Whistling Pines rumors from the facts, sucking him into the middle of a mystery as he and Jenny try to prepare their haunted house for their first Christmas as a married couple. Between the ghost, the antics of the city band, the Whistling Pines residents, and Jenny’s usually reserved parents, Peter and Jenny work through the ghost and time capsule mysteries. Just when they think all the mysteries have been solved, the ghost makes one more appearance on Christmas Eve.

Although I readily admit to skepticism about writing a cozy, I now know they’re fun for both the reader and the writer. In some ways, writing a cozy more challenging than a darker mystery, having to dance around the issue of death while still writing a murder mystery. Creating the senior citizen characters is a riot and my friend, Brian, has a never-ending stack of note cards with more characters, plot ideas, and locations. When I finished Whistling up a Ghost, I thought it would be the last of the series. It isn’t. BWL is publishing Whistling up a Pirate later this year.

Please offer you thoughts and comments about Whistling up a Ghost, the Whistling Pines series, or cozies in general. I’d love to see your responses.

A Legacy

 

https://books2read.com/Her-Scottish-Legacy

 As defined in the dictionary, a legacy is a gift, by will, especially of money or other personal property; something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.

I’m not sure that today’s generation feels the same way about legacies as those of generations past. Our lives today seem more filled with disposable things and things not meant to last. As I look around my house, it’s certainly not filled with antique furniture from my grandparents or pictures that once hung in the parlor. I do have a small packet of letters that my dad wrote my mom back in 1946 when he left for Germany a month after they were married. When my parents died, they left the grandkids money, which according to definition is a legacy, but it’s not the same as something lasting such as jewelry, a pocket knife or a small memento from a life well lived.

Our history is also being lost because of technology. We don’t write letters; we send emails which are read then deleted to make room for more. We don’t have to write diaries or journals for those who come later to know our history. Everything you ever wanted to know is posted on multiple sites on the internet. While information is readily available, it has lost the personal element of the writer who took the journey. If you are one of the few who journal, you have a legacy for your children and grandchildren. You don’t have to have done something incredible like bicycle across the country or climb the highest mountain and then write about it to leave a legacy.

While the definition I found tends to make one think of tangible things, a legacy can certainly be intangible. I was brought up in a strict household where you said “yes, sir” and were expected to do your best – in school or at a job. I tried to instill those same attributes in my children. I can remember once when my high school daughter not so jokingly said “damn your work ethic” because her friends were playing hokey from work and she couldn’t make herself call in sick to her work place.

My love of writing a good story is another legacy I hope to pass down, although it has apparently skipped my children and gone directly to my grandchildren. At age “almost 13”, my granddaughter has been writing stories for several years, some with quite involved characters and plot lines. My 10 year old grandson prefers his stories full of monsters and explosive action, accompanied with original drawings of said exploding universes. That same grandson has my father’s surname as his middle name…another legacy from the past.

Do you have legacies – things passed down to you? Are they from more than one generation in the past? More important, do you know the stories behind them?

Writing “Her Scottish Legacy” led to quite a bit of mystery in the process of Heather and Hunter discovering her legacy, left undetected for over twenty-five years. Available as an ebook at any of your favorite online retailers https://books2read.com/Her-Scottish-Legacy and in print through Amazon. Her Scottish Legacy: Baldwin, Barbara: 9780228616153: AmazonSmile: Books  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did while writing-- especially all the Scottish history and learning about the textile industry of the time.

Wishing you a creative and healthy New Year,

Barb Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/

 

 

 

 

Margaret Hanna Guest Author - Finding Mary’s Voice

Visit Margaret's BWL Author Page for book and purchase information

In case you hadn’t notice, I write. At least, I try to write. It isn’t easy, not for me, anyway. Questions abound – What do I write about? Will it make sense? Is what I’ve written what I really want to say? Will anyone read it? Will anyone care?

The pundits say, Write for yourself and the readers will come. Perhaps they’re right.

As of now, I am writing (trying to write) an historical novel, except it isn’t really a novel. Like many movies, it is “inspired by . . .” because it is more or less the life of my maternal grandmother after she immigrated to Canada from England in 1912.

The facts are no problem. Creating the scenes around the facts is not too much of a problem. Finding Mary’s voice is the problem.

Unlike my maternal grandmother, who died when I was eight, I knew my paternal grandmother, Addie Hanna, very well. I had no problem finding her voice when I wrote "Our Bull's Loose in Town!" Tales from the Homestead. Check it out, but be prepared to meet an opinionated woman who doesn't hesitate to tell it like she sees it.

The story is presented through Mary’s diary so finding her voice is essential. I have several letters that my grandmother wrote so you would think that finding her voice would be a snap – just copy her style.

It isn’t that easy. I struggled but what appeared on my computer screen just didn’t sound like her or at least how I imagined she would write. Then someone suggested I uncap my good old fountain pen from my high school days (no ball point pens back in 1912) and write something by hand. With ink. On paper. As Mary would have done.

I couldn’t believe it – Mary’s voice appeared like magic. It’s almost, but not quite, a stream-of-consciousness voice and why not? This is a diary, after all, and a diary is where you pour out your heart and soul.

I wrote the first several diary entries by hand with fountain pen and then transcribed them to computer. Her voice is now ensconced in my head so I can write most diary entries directly on the computer but whenever I run into trouble, when her voice eludes me, I go back to fountain pen and paper and, lo and behold, she is back with me.

This isn’t the first time I discovered the mind-hand connection can be messed up by technology. Back in university days, I wrote my term paper drafts by hand and then typed them (anyone remember typewriters?) before handing them in. One day, I had a Eureka moment – why don’t I “write” the drafts directly on the typewriter before doing cut-and-paste the old-fashioned scissors-and-tape way. I inserted the first sheet of paper into the typewriter, rolled it through the platen and poised my fingers over the keyboard.

Nothing! That piece of paper stared back at me and dared me to put a single letter, never mind a word or sentence or paragraph, on it. It was as if the neural circuit connecting the words in my mind to my fingers above the keyboard had suddenly been disconnected. That first draft was a struggle to put on paper but eventually the new mind-hand circuit grew and it was no longer so difficult.

Then came the computer era. I acquired my first computer in 1982 – two floppy disk drives, 64K memory, 84-character green screen and a word processing program that required embedded dot-commands to format the text. Transitioning from typewriter to computer would be a piece of cake, or so I thought.

Ha! The first time I tried to write, that dratted green cursor blinked back at me, daring me to put a (virtual) word on that (virtual) paper. I could hear it laughing at me. Once again, it seemed as if the mind-hand circuit had been disconnected and, once again, I had to build a new one.

Now, it is normal for me to sit at my computer and type away. The words flow with little effort (okay, not always, but mostly) from what’s in my mind to what appears on the (virtual) paper.

Which brings me back to my recent discovery, that the technology I use has helped me find Mary’s voice. Why is that?

 If there’s a neuroscientist out there reading this, perhaps she can explain.

 I certainly can’t.

How do you say Snow? by J. S. Marlo

 

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I have often heard that Inuit people have more than 50 words for snow. It's not quite true, but they do have many words for snow.

Back in November, I was checking the weather, and one day I saw a term I'd never heard before: light snow grains. The grains threw me for a loop. I was taking a long walk that morning, and the white stuff resembled prickly snow, so once I got back, I googled snow grains. From there, since I like for my stories to take place in the winter, I looked at how many different kind of snow term I could find in English.

Snow: Frozen precipitation in the form of white or translucent ice crystals in complex branched hexagonal form. It most often falls from stratiform clouds, but can fall as snow showers from cumuliform ones. At temperatures > than -5 °C, the crystals generally cluster to form snowflakes.

Wet snow: Snow with a high moisture content.

Dry snow: Snow with a low moisture content.

Snow grains: Frozen precipitation in the form of very small, white opaque grains of ice. The solid equivalent of drizzle. Their diameter is generally < 1 mm. When grains hit hard ground, they do not bounce or shatter. They usually fall in very small quantities, mostly from Status clouds or fog and never in the form of a shower.

Snow pellets: Frozen precipitation of particles of either spherical or conical ice; their diameter is about 2 to 5 mm. They are brittle, easily crushed, and unlike hail, when they fall on hard ground, they bounce and often break up. Snow pellets always occur in showers and are often accompanied by snowflakes or raindrops when the surface temperature is around 0 °C.

Blowing snow: Snow particles violently stirred up by wind to sufficient heights above the ground to reduce visibility to 10 km or less.

Snow squall: A heavy snow shower accompanied by sudden strong winds.

Frost: Frost is the condition that exists when the temperature of the air near the earth or earth-bound objects falls to freezing or lower (0 °C). Alternately, frost or hoar frost describes a deposition of ice crystals on objects by direct sublimation of water vapour from the air.

Hail: Precipitation of small balls or pieces of ice with a diameter ranging from 5 to 50 mm or more. Hail is generally observed during heavy thunderstorms.

Ice: The solid form of water. It can be found in the atmosphere in the form of ice crystals, snow, ice pellets, and hail for example.

Ice crystals: Precipitation in the form of slowly falling, singular or unbranched ice needles, columns, or plates. They make up cirriform clouds, frost, and ice fog. Also, they produce optical phenomena such as halos, coronas, and sun pillars. May be called "diamond dust." Precipitation of ice crystals in the form of needles, columns or plates sometimes so tiny, they seem suspended in air. They are mainly visible when they glitter in sunshine and occur only at very low temperatures and stable air masses.

Ice pellets: Precipitation of transparent or translucent pellets of ice, which are spherical or irregular shaped, having a diameter of 5 mm or less. They are classified into two types: hard grains of ice consisting of frozen rain drops or largely melted and refrozen snowflakes; pellets of snow encased in a thin layer of ice which have formed from the freezing of droplets intercepted by pellets or water resulting from the partial melting of pellets. Ice pellets usually bounce when hitting hard ground and make a sound on impact. They can fall as continuous precipitation or in showers.

Freezing rain: Rain, the drops of which freeze on impact with the ground or with objects at or near the ground.

Freezing drizzle: Drizzle, the drops of which freeze on impact with the ground or with objects at or near the ground.

Can I tell the difference between  all of them when I'm outside? Most of the time, but I oblivious didn't know about snow grains LOLOL

One thing I can say, it's how cold it gets in my northern corner of the world.  

It's so cold...we had to chop up the piano for firewood.  Ya, we only got two chords.

It's so cold...grandpa's teeth were chattering.  In the glass!

It's so cold...eating ice cream was knocked down to #4 in the "Top Five Ways to get a Brain Freeze".

It is so cold...we can toss a cup of hot water in the air and hear it shatter into ice crystals.

Happy reading! Stay Warm & Safe!

Many hugs!

JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

Sleigh Ride! by Eileen O'Finlan

 

Click here for purchase information

Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

I can't believe I've lived in New England all my life and I've never been on a sleigh ride. Well, it will have to go on my bucket list. Especially after the fun my characters, Meg, Kathleen, and Nuala had when they indulged in a sleigh ride. Meg, Kathleen, and Nuala are domestic servants in Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1850s. Irish immigrants, they all came from the horrible starvation of An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger. They were lucky to survive. But now they have new lives in America. It's not all fun. They work hard sun-up to sun-down and then some. But unlike their lives in Ireland, they are able to earn good enough livings to send money back to their families, save for their futures, and partake of an occasional indulgence. Usually it involves clothing that mimics that of their employers. But on a day in February they decide to find out why the children of their employers are so fond of sleigh rides and pool their money to hire a sleigh and driver for themselves. Here's a peek at what happens:

Blankets and foot warmers in hand, the three bounded out the door. Two large chestnut horses trotted up the street, stopping in front of the house. The sleigh driver was the same Irishman who had taken the Claprood girls and their cousins for a ride.

“Where to?” he asked, jumping down to assist them into the sleigh.

“Anywhere you like,” Nuala told him. “We're out for enjoyment. It doesn't matter where we go.”

A flicker of recognition showed on his face as Nuala spoke, her brogue giving her away. “You lasses are the helps?”

“Aye,” said Nuala, “but today we're your passengers.”

Looking at Meg, he furrowed his brow. “Didn't I see you at the Claproods'?”

“You did. I work for them.”

A broad grin spread across his face. “This is a grand thing indeed!”

“What do you mean?” Kathleen asked.

“'Tis the first time I've driven Irish lasses. It's always Yanks that hire me. We're every bit as good as they are even if they don't know it, aye? One day we'll be as successful as them. Then you'll ride in sleighs and carriages anytime you want.”

They all giggled at the thought. Meg wondered if it could really be possible.

“What's your name?” Nuala asked.

“Seamus O'Herilhy, at your service, m'ladies,” he said, with a sweeping bow that from most people would have seemed mocking, but from their countryman held an air of genuine respect.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Seamus O'Herilhy,” Nuala responded. “I'm Nuala O'Flaherty, and these are my friends, Meg and Kathleen O'Connor.”

“A pleasure it is,” he said with a smile before climbing onto the driver's box. With a snap of the whip, the horses were in motion.

For the next two hours they traversed the hills and valleys of Worcester. It was obvious that Seamus knew the city well. They headed northwest to the Tatnuck section. Filled with meadows, pastures, and farmland, Tatnuck appeared like a fairyland. Last night's snowfall covered the landscape like a pristine white cape with a million glistening diamonds. Only where farmers had gone about their chores was the seamless white garment rent by plodding footprints.

Wind whipped their faces as the sleigh sped along, the horses picking up speed in the open fields. Meg gazed wide-eyed at the world of white domed by a clear blue sky. The easy glide of the runners with their accompanying whoosh made her grin so hard it hurt. She'd never before felt such exhilaration.

Nuala nudged her. “Aye, but this is exciting!” she exclaimed.

Meg nodded, the bracing air stealing her breath. She glanced at Kathleen. She, too, was grinning as she peered first one direction then another. The big draft horses kicked up sprays of snow as they ad-vanced, their bells resounding in the brisk air. The sleigh slowed as they crested a hill, then sped up again as it raced down the other side. The friends screamed with delight, falling into a fit of laughter upon reaching the bottom.

Public Domain picture