August Days by Victoria Chatham

 AVAILABLE HERE

August is a month of long, hot days when the cats stretch out lazily in the sun. Raspberries ripen seemingly by the hour, Saskatoon berries hang heavy and black on the bushes, and the day bleeds into balmy evenings. How idyllic is that?

It is a month that means many things to different people. It might be baseball played on community diamonds, boating on lakes, soaking up the sun on the dock or a beach, or leaning on a farm gate inhaling the scent of freshly mown hay.

Image courtesy Claire E Henderson

My most memorable August was the summer of 1960, the month between leaving school and starting work. The August when I told my mother I would enjoy four weeks of doing exactly what I wanted to do before beginning job-hunting the first week in September. I hung out with friends in the daytime, feeding jukeboxes in coffee shops to hear ‘Cathy’s Clown’ by the Everly Brothers or ‘Shakin’ All Over’ with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. We crowded into jazz clubs in the evenings to listen to Acker Bilk or Chris Barber.

According to Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, “The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled.” How vivid a description is that? It makes me wish I had written it. Hers is not the only quote from literature about August. Here are some more:

“Leaving any bookstore is hard, especially on a day in August, when the street outside burns and glares, and the books inside are cool and crisp to the touch.” – Jane Smiley, author of One Thousand Acres.

But my favourite August quote is this from Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.”

And yes, this year, it has been and still is hot. We open all the windows at night to let in the cool air, close them in the morning, and pull the blinds to keep the heat out. Fans keep the temperature bearable. All too soon, August will become September, and the fall will be upon us. Oh, and that job hunt my mother was so insistent about? In the first week of September 1960, I had seven job interviews and five offers and finally entered the workforce as a hospital records manager.

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Is true crime unbelievable as fiction?

 While using some version of reality in a story adds relevancy and urgency, there are some real crime scenarios that are far too crazy to be credible. In Fatal Business, I used a possible deer hunting accident as the hook. For much of the US, that fall deer hunt is an annual occurrence, and accidental shootings are totally plausible. 

While perusing the news, others pop out that are just too crazy to put into a fictional mystery:

A few years ago, there was an article about an abused woman who'd killed her husband during a domestic dispute. Her abuse was well documented, and the neighbors reported frequent loud and apparently violent arguments coming from her residence. The district attorney said he was inclined to accept the defense's contention that the woman was acting in self-defense...if not for the fact that she'd killed two previous husbands under nearly the same circumstances. It sounds like a great fiction plot, but who'd believe that?

While doing research (I do A LOT of research, the topic of an earlier blog) I read an article about "Burking" as a murder technique. The term was coined when a pair of 1800s Scottish miscreants developed a business of supplying bodies to a medical school for dissection. The school, being upstanding and ethical, wouldn't accept the body of an obvious murder victim. So, our miscreants, Mr. Burke and his partner Mr. Hare, resorted to grave robbing. When the demand for cadavers outstripped the rate of "natural deaths", the partners devised a plan to procure more cadavers. They identified homeless people and drunks; people who wouldn't be readily missed. After Mr. Hare knocked them down, Mr. Burke, who was apparently a very large man, sat on their chests until they suffocated. The medical school apparently accepted these victims as natural deaths, providing Burke and Hare with a good business until their landlady found one of their victims stored under a bed. She alerted the police who arrested the pair. The official cause of the victim's death was traumatic asphyxia caused by pressure on the chest, but the verb "Burking" is now applied to deaths caused by manual asphyxiation.

As with the woman who had killed off three husbands, I balk at using Burking as a cause of death in my books. Who would believe a modern victim had been killed by a very large person sitting on the victim's chest? I mean really, does that even seem plausible?

Hmm? Maybe if the killers were parked outside a secluded bar at closing time....

Excuse me. I have a book outline to write.

Check out my books at:

Hovey, Dean - BWL Publishing Inc. (bookswelove.net)

 

The Long, Extremely Hot Summer by Diane Scott Lewis

 

Last year I welcomed into my repertoire of published novels, my oyster war story, based on true events, Ghost Point. A love triangle complicates my characters' lives as they battle through history in 1956 Virginia.

Someone told me this scenario would never happen, people shooting each other over oysters. But truth is stranger than fiction.

"The reader is thrust into what happens to both Yelena and Luke with emotional tension. The plot moves at a good pace. If you're a fan of sagas and dramatic fiction, you'll enjoy Ghost Point. Highly recommend!"    ~ N. N. Lights

Purchase here, ON SALE! on Amazon

Climate change is scorching us, the summer heat index up to 110, or is that just because we went camping.

Fires everywhere, burning up California, my home state. Friends evacuated. My oldest friend has had to leave her home, twice.

We drove to Nashville, TN, for a reunion of ex-sailors stationed in Nea Makri, Greece. Three years ago, we traveled to Greece after a forty year absence. We loved it.

In June we camped outside of Nashville in torrid heat. You couldn't breath in the thick humidity. An outside plug on our RV melted in the high temperature.

Runways in England were melting, that's how bad it got. 

It sounds like a dystopian novel, or for us older folk: The Twilight Zone.

Here is the Greek reunion in the air-conditioned hotel. My hubby and I are in the back row. I'm sixth from the left. Story of my life, (the back row) for being tall.

In July we traveled to Gettysburg to visit with his niece and sister. His niece has a camp and a beautiful outside set-up. But again, the weather turned scorching, the humidity impossible.

I sat in front of the fan and let it blow through my blouse. There's me on the far right. My husband is enjoying his home-made pina coladas, something he learned to make in Puerto Rico.

The earth seems to be melting, but the winters in Pennsylvania can still be harsh. Too many believe climate change isn't happening. But something is pushing nature to extremes.

Fires are everywhere in summer, in Greece as well. Now there's flooding in Kentucky. Lives were lost. Yosemite National Park is threatened by fire. Last year, Yellowstone was flooded. 

I rarely drive anymore, so I'm doing my part in cutting down on emissions. But the United States is so vast, it's difficult to function without a car. Are electric cars the way to go? But fossil fuels generate electricity.

Now our stream is running dry, the one that we get our house water from. My son's well is almost dry, too. We desperately need rain.

The weather has gone berserk.

Of course, all this would make a great novel: the future is now, upon us, not a millennia away.

Diane lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and one naughty dachshund.

To find out more about her and her books:  DianeScottLewis

The Offcuts of History...by Sheila Claydon

Find my books here

Many a Moon, the third and final book in my Mapleby Memories series, having recently been published, I am saturated by history because the protagonists move between the present day and the thirteenth century, which took a lot of research. So when, last month, I read my fellow author's blog Orangeman's Day in Northern Ireland by Susan Calder it gave me pause for thought. Why do some historical events develop a long and legendary life while others are reduced to a footnote in the history books, only remembered by those who actually took part and forgotten when they die? 

The Battle of the Boyne that Susan wrote about has not died. It is, instead, a history that has lived on in legend and in fact and one I see enacted every year. I didn't have a thought of blogging about it until I read her piece, however, and it prompted memories of when the Orange Order comes to town! 

Possibly unusually, I have Catholic and Protestant Irish ancestry on both sides of my family history. A Catholic great-grandfather from Southern Ireland who joined the British army, a Protestant great-grandmother, also born in Southern Ireland, but into another branch of the family.  And then there's the grandmother whose parents came from opposite sides of the religious divide and who, unable to agree on her religious upbringing, took her and her siblings to their respective churches on alternate Sundays! The result of these various oddities is a family that has dispensed with any sort of religious conformity whatsoever, so this is not about the religious divide, it is about the history that lingers.

I live in a village 11 miles north of Liverpool in the UK, and Liverpool, which is just 'across the water' from Ireland, is sometimes jokingly referred to as Ireland's capital city because up to 70% of its population claims Irish ancestry. Consequently it is a place where traces of the Irish accent are commonplace. It also has a lot of Irish pubs! It is also the home of the Liverpool Provincial Grand Lodge, the place where Orange Lodges from all around the UK gather on 12 July each year to march through the city. They then travel 16 miles to Southport for another parade. Southport is a town a few miles on the other side of my village. And this has been going on for more than 200 years! 

As Susan said in her very interesting blog about her recent visit to Ireland, the aim of the march is to celebrate King William's victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when he vanquished James II. Although King Billy, as he is known in Ireland, didn't entirely achieve his aim, the superior force of his army, both in numbers and strategy, meant that James II (who was actually William's father-in-law - how is that for a family squabble!) fled to France. Many of his supporters, however, held siege in the county of Limerick in the west of Ireland until the Treaty of Limerick brought it to an end the following year. Despite this, James II remained alive and well in France under the protection of Louis XIV, which meant that the unrest continued until the end of the century. 

Like many happenings in history, however, the Battle of the Boyne was about far, far more than the divide between Catholicism and Protestantism. It was about the rising power of France, about the divine right of kings, about growing tensions between France and the Dutch Republic, it was even about the birth of James' only son and heir. As with most of the stories of history, there is always more than meets the eye. Even more strangely in this case, the Catholic Pope Innocent XI actually supported the Protestant King William.  This was because the Papacy had fallen out with King Louis XIV of France, who was an ally of King James, so again, nothing to do with religion. Even more unbelievably, a Mass of deliverance was celebrated in Rome by the Catholics for Protestant King William's victory. The stories behind the pieces of history that become legendary are often very strange indeed.

Yet despite its mixed and multi-layered past, The Battle of the Boyne has been adopted as something to celebrate by the fraternity of the Orange Order.  Even stranger, the order, which was founded by the Ulster Protestants during one of the many periods of Irish sectarian conflict, was not created until 1795, more than 100  years after the battle,  Its purported aim was to defend Protestant civil and religious liberties and in its heyday it had approximately 90,000 members. Now it's a third of that.  It still makes its mark though, not least in Southport where, despite the parades bringing thousands of visitors to the town centre every year, they are heartily disliked by many of the residents. 

Not only are the roads closed twice on the parade route to the irritation of drivers, once for the incoming parade and once for the home-going one, but many of the shopkeepers board up their windows, offices lock their doors, and locals keep away. When I worked in Southport, Orange Day was the only day my public office kept its doors locked. And when the parade is over the streets are full of litter, streamers and broken bottles. The Irish pubs do a roaring trade though!

At their best the parades can be great fun. On a sunny day the rousing music and the pride of the marchers in their bowler hats and orange sashes can lift the spirits. It just depends who is watching. Many consider them a provocation that pours flames on the troubles that have never left Ireland, while The Orange Order itself sees them variously  as a celebration of civil liberties, a time-time-honored tradition, and a confirmation of the sovereignty of the British parliament. 

Me, I'm just glad that my small village is ignored. While it might be right in the middle of the parade routes between the city and the town, it isn't considered important enough to be part of either. When the parades began it was little more than a hamlet, and now, 200 years later, although much bigger, it is protected by a busy ByPass. So although it has two small train stations, not a single marcher disembarks en route from Liverpool to Southport. Whether this is because the village is still of no importance, or whether it is a left over from the early days of railway when the Station Master refused to let the trains stop on Orange Day, I have no idea. His decision is lost in the annals of history. All that remains is a story. 

From Memory to Action Helen Henderson

 

Windmaster Legacy by Helen Henderson
Click the cover for purchase information

Organizing old photographs, cleaning out family papers, or sorting boxes of ephemera all can bring on reminiscing. To me the word "reminisce," means to think, talk, or write about remembered events or experiences. A favorite cartoon I used to carry with me to book signings of my local histories dealt with memories and reminiscing. An author researching a book interviews all the old-timers in town. All said nothing exciting happened in the area. Until the book is published and at the signing, the same old-timers change their story. Now each one had a legend or story that should have, and would have been included, if the old-timers had only told the author. Fiction writers can have this same problem of "Why didn't you?" But, it may result more from an ending or why a character acted a certain way than a missing piece of history.

Although at least one dictionary uses the word "pleasant" to describe a reminiscence, In the 1990s, psychologists Lisa Watt and Paul Wong classified reminiscing into six types. Sometime reminiscing can be pleasant, some negative, or used to transmit history, values, or culture from one generation to another. In fiction, when a character reminisces, it can be a way to introduce their backstory, evince an emotion or to show the true personality of the character. If a memory has become obsessive, the character will act using that memory or emotion as a filter. But, for the reader to understand he needs to know the background. 

The snippit below is an example of how a memory impacts a character's action. Which is fortunate as the unnamed youth of this battle in Windmaster, returns in Windmaster Golem. This time as an experienced, skilled fighter, and friend to the man who saved his life.

Dal closed the distance to Ruaridh’s fragile protection. He lunged forward and knocked the sword from the soldier’s hand. Beneath the askewed helmet, Dal saw frightened eyes within a pale face.

He could not be more than sixteen turns, Dal realized. “Unless you want to join him, I suggest you leave.” The hope that flickered across the youth’s face brought a memory of another boy who stood disarmed before a superior warrior. He heard Telarim the Red’s words again, as if for the first time. I might as well use Telarim’s technique. “Return to your home,” Dal ordered the youth. “If in two turns you still want to soldier, find Telarim the Red. Tell him Lieutenant Dal sent you. Telarim will teach you well if you’re willing to learn.”

To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL

Now that you have the result of a character's youthful memory, next month a few of my own triggered by the season. As a teaser, an image from that time.

 ~Until next month, stay safe and read.  

Find out more about me and my novels at Journey to Worlds of Imagination.
Follow me online at Facebook, Goodreads or 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 have adopted her as one the pack. 

Field of Ghosts by Nancy M Bell

 

To find more of Nancy's work please click on the cover.

After many many years of caring for horses I find that I am in possession of a field of ghosts. Emily aka Pikkasso Premiere crossed the Rainbow Bridge on Tuesday August 9, 2022. She was 22 years old and was born here. Today, in a field that once housed 6 horses and four cows, there is only Shady aka Shades of Ice, a TB mare who came to live her as Emily's companion after Max crossed the Rainbow Bridge. 

    When I look across the empty acres I feel the ghosts of those who lived here and have passed. I see them in the shimmer of heat over the grass, hear their voices in the whisper of the wind, in the laughter of the poplar leaves. Shady is doing well on her own which is a relief. Perhaps, she too, feels their presence and knows she is not alone. 

    Usually when a loved animal passes they are absent for a time before returning, but Emily hasn't left me. I feel her at my side as I'm walking, just as she always did in life. We took her last walk together and as always weak and crappy feeling as she was, she walked at my shoulder and trusted me to the last to do what was best.

    She contacted Potomac Horse Fever and declined very quickly.  Her kidneys failed and while the values did improve overnight while she was on high amount of fluids running IV and with her legs encased in ice boots to hopefully stop the possibility of laminitis (founder), she was in a huge amount of pain. She couldn't have pain meds as they would affect her kidneys which were only marginally beginning to work. Emily was mare who was full of piss and vinegar always, when we first got her to the vet she was literally leaning on me to stay on her feet, swaying and leaning on the wall. She stayed on her feet through sheer will. 

    Tuesday morning she stood with her head down, nose on the ground or leaning on my chest, eyes glazed over. The only times she would stir was when the spasms in her gut spiked. I stayed with her for an hour finalizing a decision I knew I had to make, but needed to be sure. Emily's actions and her body language told me without a doubt that she was ready to let go. Sometimes when you love something or someone so much, you have to make the choice to let them go. 

    We could have continued to treat her, but kidney injury is a long long road to recovery and in most likely hood that would not be anywhere near 100% recovery which could lead to other complications, even in the event she pulled through which was in no way a given.

    How could I ask her to go through that long corridor of pain when I couldn't promise her it would get better. The reality is we could have carried on for another few days, weeks or months and after all that the end result had a high probability of being the same. How could I ask her to endure that when she was telling me in the only ways she could that it was time to let go?

    And so we took our last walk together in this realm and I let her go, staying with her until her spirit left her body. 

    And now I look out over a field of ghosts. Tags (Tag n Passum), Laura (Laura's Miracle), Sue, the cow, Sunny (Pug's Escourt) (the mare) Emily's mom, Phil (Philosopher's Stone) her brother, Flash (MS Flashdance), Sam, Spook, Patches the pony, Sleeping Beauty the pony, Goat-the goat, Big Bird (Condor), Chance, Max, King, and now Emily.  

Until next month, be well, be  happy.

Emily, Phil and Big Bird photo by Michelle Kannenberg

Aging Days and Lost in Thought by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #Mfrw Author Thought #Lost Aging

 

I am usually upto date on when I post my blogs. Having a broken foot and moving slowly makes one feel lost. Thank heavens the huge boot is gone and I am able to move around. I'm busily working on my next book and it's moving slower than I'd hoped. That has been on my mind for weeks. Moving around using a walker isn't my idea of fun. Nor the huge shoe thing used instead of a shoe didn't help. But I'm finally back znd promise next month I'll be on time.

The cover shwon is of a book that's free almost everywhere except one place as far as I know. Temple of Fyre is a sensous fantasy that was fun to write, especially thinking of the fyrestones of many colors that had magical uses. The four books in the series were great to write. Dragons of Fyre is probably my favorite but than I have a great fixation with dragons having many kind from a small jade dragon to what is a light that's about fifteen inches wide and two feet long. This was once a decoration in a restaurant in town. Out of business now but my granddaughter bought the light as a birthday present. She didn't buy the four foot lego dragon, I'm glad.

Friends and Lovers, by J.C. Kavanagh

 

The Twisted Climb

Book 1 of the award-winning Twisted Climb series

Ah, friends and lovers. So many friends. So many good friends.

Wait now. I meant friends and lover. Just the one. He's all I need.

Back to friends. Life has been topsy-turvy lately dealing with family health issues. It's said 'you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends.' Whoever made that statement is absolutely correct.

My friends have been so supportive of me while I deal with family health issues. Some of these issues have, quite frankly, left me traumatized. That's where my good friends have come to the rescue. Wow, I didn't know I was loved so much and by so many. I am truly blessed. Their care and concern has propped me up in ways I can't quite describe. And I'm a writer!

But back to the title of this blog: Friends and lovers. Lover, actually, as I said before. He's my lover, my partner, my best friend of 18 years. He's been my rock, my adviser, my listener, my I'll-love-you-no-matter-what, kind of man. Again I say, I am blessed.

I've learned now, more than ever, to take each day as it comes. To love and keep on loving. To be truly grateful that I have another day and my family members have another day, and, God-willing, there will be another day after that. 

After the storm:
Hog Island, the North Channel

A Bright Darkness

That's the tentative title of Book 3 of The Twisted Climb series and it's the final chapter of the dream world/Un-World adventures. You're probably wondering - the Un-World? Where the heck is that? And - oh dear - why are Jayden, Connor and Max summoned there? More details to follow in upcoming blogs.

Until then, stay safe and keep on loving.

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
Voted Best Local Author, Simcoe County, Ontario, 2022
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)
Instagram @authorjckavanagh

Introducing John Robichaud by Paul Doucette

 

Click this link for details and purchase links

The latest John Robichaud release - July 2022

Hello again,

 I would like to take this opportunity to introduce a very good friend to all of you. His name is John Robichaud, Robie to his friends and colleagues. Born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he grew up with limited possibilities for his future outside of fishing or mining. Then came WW I and he saw his chance for something else and maybe a bit of adventure, so he enlisted.

He was one of the lucky ones and survived the horrors of the trenches and bad leadership. Upon his discharge he and an American soldier he befriended returned home; he accepted his friend’s invitation to come with him to Boston. Shortly after arriving there, they decided to join the police force where he served and made a favourable impression with his superiors. It was not an easy time to be a cop since it was Prohibition and the city was rife with hoodlums, hustlers, hookers and every other form of criminal looking to ‘cash in’.

In time, he decided he was ready to return home to Nova Scotia but soon learned that he had seen too much, lived through too much to settle in his old life. He headed for the city – Halifax – in search of something to do. That’s when he saw an opportunity with the local constabulary and once again took to the badge. It wasn’t long before he came to the realization that this was his true calling and made the commitment to stay on to the ‘golden handshake’. The job proved to be easier and decidedly safer than his stint in Boston.

World War Two would change all that. For the six years he and his partner, Pete Duncan, would find themselves breaking up gin mills, illegal booze parlours, theft rings and running down the occasional German agent for Naval Intelligence, in some cases with tragic endings.

You can follow Robie and Pete’s exploits in the stories I have written and which are available through BWL.

Keeping Magical Secrets by BC Deeks, Paranormal Mystery Fiction Author

 

When I’m immersed in a new story as an author, the characters become quite real to me. In WITCH UNBOUND, Book 1 of my Beyond the Magic series, my main characters, and even the dog, are not what they seem. Hiding your identity can be tricky, even for a supernatural being. Marcus Egan is a powerful Guardian Warlock sent undercover as a visiting veterinarian to the mortal realm. His mission is to investigate the murder of two escaped witches from the supernatural realm of The Otherland.

I thought it might be fun to see what would happen if the local newspaper reporter suddenly confronted Marcus with prying questions. How would he respond? He’s not supposed to use magic on humans, but—

Main Street, Robbers Canyon (Montana)

Reporter: (racing up to Marcus) I’m Suzie from the Robbers Canyon Gazette. We’re doing a column on ‘Meet the People of Robbers Canyon’. Can you spare me five minutes to answer a few questions, Dr. Egan?

Marcus: (glancing from side to side looking for an escape route but finding none) Well, okay, I guess. But I’m just a visitor. I’m filling in for the regular vet. You should probably wait to do your interview with him, shouldn’t you?

Reporter: (Smiling coyly and batting her eyes) Oh no. Everyone in town is wondering about you right now, Dr. Egan. Where did you come from?

Marcus: (Gritting his teeth) It’s not somewhere you would know.

Reporter: (Still smiling) How long are you staying in our fair town?

Marcus: Ah, just until I complete this assignment, then I move on again.

Reporter: (feeling a little frustrated) Sounds like you travel a lot with your job. That can’t be easy. Do you have family waiting for you back home? Are you close-knit?

Marcus: I have a brother and sister. We are very close, but they understand my work. We’re a long-time family business.

Reporter: Oh, so they’re also vets?

Marcus: (Fidgeting) Ahhhh, not exactly. But they support the family in a manner of speaking—Listen, it’s getting late, and you have a deadline to meet.

Reporter: Right, I’d better run.

LATER, Office of the Gazette

Gazette Editor: Who did you interview for the column today?

Reporter: The visiting vet, Dr. Egan. He’s a strange one.

Editor: What do you mean?

Reporter: I thought he’d be a brilliant choice because all the women in town are salivating over him, but it was like pulling teeth.

Editor: Lots of people freeze up in front of a reporter. It’s your job to draw him out.

Reporter: (Feeling vaguely uneasy) I tried, but it was like my mind didn’t work.

Editor: (Chuckling) So when you said ‘all the women’ you were including yourself?

Reporter: Maybe…. but it was more like I kept losing my train of thought. You know I can ask the tough questions when I need to. I meant to ask him what he thought about the Gwynn murders, but every time I opened my mouth some inane question came out. It was like I wasn’t in control of my own tongue…. (Shakes her head) ….it was weird.

Two more primary characters in WITCH UNBOUND are Avalon Gwynn, who doesn’t know she’s an extraordinary, hereditary witch living in the mortal world, and a canine familiar who appears out of the unknown to protect her. These hidden identities, as well as more of the many mysteries of the magical realm, will be revealed in WITCH UNBOUND.

You’ll meet Marcus’s brother, Theo Egan, in MORTAL MAGIC (Book 2) and sister, Elowyn Egan, in REBEL SPELL (Book 3) as the Beyond the Magic series continues.

I write heartwarming stories of mystery and magic. To learn more about this series or my author life, please find me on my website at www.bcdeeks.com or on Facebook.

Thanksgiving in August

 

find my books here!

August is a month that cultures bring in the first harvest and give thanks. For the Celtic people it's Lughnasadh...

For many Native Americans, it's the Green Corn Thanksgiving...

What do you do in August?  Here in Vermont  (where summer equals our 90 days of blessed frost-free living!) we bring in the harvest of our own summer garden. We visit local orchards and help them bring in their harvests of peaches and blueberries. We head for our state parks with our families.

And this August, I'm celebrating many years of being married to this guy:

 Do you relax by a pool, lake or creek? Head for the ocean? I hope you're enjoying the last of summer with your friends, family and of course... a good book!

My Literary Tour of Ireland

 

Please click this link for author and book information

Irish writers were hot in in the 1960s and 70s. My university friends and I read Joyce, Yeats, and Beckett. My Fair Lady, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, was a hit musical movie. Oscar Wilde was and still is remembered as a larger-than-life character even though he died in 1900. 

I encountered these authors and more during my visit to Ireland in June.   

On our first day in Dublin, my husband Will and I wandered by the colourful statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square. 

Monuments near the rock depict Wilde's numerous witticisms. "Always forgive your enemies: nothing annoys them so much." 

A few blocks away, in St. Stephen's Green, we met James Joyce. 

Jonathan Swift, author of the satire Gulliver's Travels, was our third Dublin writer that day. Swift served as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral and was known for his controversial opinions. He's buried in the cathedral along with a woman, Esther Johnson, with whom he shared a mysterious relationship. 

 Swift in St. Patrick's Cathedral

The next day, we boarded our tour bus and drove around the island. Our guide mentioned several times that Ireland has four Nobel Prize Winners for Literature, a lot for a small country. They are William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett, "who wrote the most boring play ever written," she said about Waiting for Godot. We met Yeats in his home County Sligo on the northwest coast.  

I find Yeats' 1919 poem, The Second Coming, written during the aftermath of WWI, sadly relevant today.  

                                           "The best lack all conviction, while the worst

                                            Are full of passionate intensity."

At the end of our trip, we returned to Dublin. Will and I went to MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland), housed in the city's former Catholic College, which James Joyce attended. Inside there's a photo of Joyce and his fellow students sitting under this tree that still stands in the back garden. 

The museum includes past and present Irish writers, but the focus is James Joyce. A movie and wall panels portray the author's life.  

 

A 3-d map of Dublin marks locations in Joyce's short stories and novels. 

The first draft of Joyce's most famous novel, Ulysses, is displayed, showing the author's colour coding method.

And here's the first copy of the first edition of Ulysses. 

  

In my youth, I enjoyed Joyce's first two books, but didn't tackle Ulysses because everyone said it was inaccessible.  After my trip, I skimmed the first fifty pages and can boast that I sometimes understood what was going on. I see on the MoLI website they offer an online book club this summer called Ulysses - for the rest of us! The fortnightly sessions promise to demystify the novel. I'm not quite up to the challenge this summer, but maybe next year.  

  

  

    

Fun With Fonts by Karla Stover

 

                                              A book about high-class prostitution in 1900.

Allow me, please, to quote fontspace.com:  "Comic Sans is arguably the best font ever!"  A very arguable statement. However, love it or hate it, (and there's a huge list of people and places who and which hate it)  Comic Sans is included in the "Dyslexia friendly style guide."

I had to send my nephew a thank you note a few weeks ago and, because my handwriting is bad, I typed the note but chose a cute font. Sadly, I don't remember what I used, only that it had something to do with Superman.

Not so much anymore but in the not-too-distant past my library book would have a page giving the origins of the font used. I generally gave the article a brief look - see but didn't pay much attention. However, after finding a fun font for my nephew's letter, I started looking at fonts (or typefaces) and their history.

I love ITC Blackadder because of its history. British designer Bob Anderton created it from British insurrectionist Guy Fawkes' signature after he was tortured. It's described as being elegant but menacing. There are actually a bunch of creepy fonts: Bloodstain, Gravedigger, Darkmode, for example but I'm guessing they're mostly used for covers and not the actual narrative.

A handwritten menu at a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts inspired Kristen (ITC) . It's supposed to be reminiscent of a child's handwriting. ITC, by the way, stands for International Typeface Corporation. It's a company that "was founded to design, license and market typefaces for filmsetting and computer set types internationally." 

An Austrian commercial artist created Forte Font. He had trained as a compositor and taught typography and drawing in Vienna. He must have also liked nature because Forte came from his studying plants, particularly the long stems and furry heads of reeds. 

BWL folks might be interested in Gabriola, named after British Columbia's Gabriola Island. A man named John Hudson was said to have been inspired by music and the idea that the same melody can be played in more than one mode. Each had its own expressive characteristics therefore each adds different elegance and grace.

The Georgia font was named after a tabloid headline which read, "Alien heads found in Georgia."

The Baskerville font has been around since the 1700s and one has to wonder if that's where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got the name for his Hound of the Baskervilles. John Baskerville created it and the Baskervilles were an old British family. I did a cursory google search but couldn't find out of the family is still around.

Of course various social media sites have their own fonts. Twitter uses Chirp. Instagram has a list of suggested fonts, my favorite being Leah Gaviota because it's upbeat-looking. According to typoscan, Youtube uses Roboto, Arial, San Serif and YT Sans.

Here's a scary quote from https://arturth.com: "For sighted people, there are a lot of hidden meanings behind each font, which is why social media platforms work tirelessly to come up with the right type of font to refer to a certain part of their website." 

Yikes! Google is watching me and fonts are trying to manipulate me. My neighbors are complaining about drones hovering over the yards. Is it time to stockpile food and water, build a shelter in the woods and become a prepper?

I Wrote a Book - The End / by Barbara Baker

 

Whoa. Not so fast.

It feels fabulous to write The End but there’s more work to do. So much more work. First, I read the novel from start to finish. When I feel the plot is solid, the dialogue is smooth and shit happens in every chapter, I send the document to an editor and a few writing buddies who have great critique skills. Then I close the file and wait. 

Almost the longest wait ever.

Responses trickle in. I sift through suggestions, rejig sections I agree with, swear at not having caught my own errors and then, because I fiddle fart around with the text, I recheck the story threads to make sure the sequence of events still work.

Once that’s done, I check for excess use of ‘ly’ endings in adverbs and adjectives and move on to search for those bad words. You know the ones: was, felt, very, had, thought, saw, very suddenly (never use), that, only, and for some reason (also, never use). I've collected these words from speakers at writing conferences so don’t blame me for the list.

Next, a quick review of exclamation marks. Did you know some agents will search the manuscript for them and if there are too many, they won’t read a single word? Again, not my experience. I learned that tidbit from a panel of agents who were discussing their editing process. And personally, I probably used up my quota of exclamation marks by grade 10.

Then it’s on to spell, grammar and punctuation check with the Word edit tool. Yup, tedious but necessary. It still surprises me how my favourite words aren’t in their dictionary yet.

Nearly done.

One. More. Final. Read. I am a firm believer of reading aloud to find errors my eyes skim over when I read to myself. I like to do it in two consecutive days, so everything is fresh, but I procrastinate. By the end of day one my house is spotless, and I’ve done 10,000 steps. Not a single page turned.

Day two, I plunk down in my office chair. My screen is dust free. The light is perfect. I change Word’s Read Aloud program voice to a male, speed it up a notch and increase the screen viewing size.

As the unsexy voice tells my story, I follow on the screen to spot errors. Thirty-seven pages in, I find a typo. How’d I miss that? How’d my readers miss it?

Two days later, a huge sigh of relief. The End. Again.

And off my baby goes to the publisher.

Fingers, toes and eyes crossed, I walk, I bike, I invite grandchildren over to play. Days take longer than 24 hours and I’m grumpy.

Longest wait ever – but only for me.

The publisher’s edit returns. I open the document and check the comments. One, two, three pages in without edits, a few notes, more pages without…I breathe when I get to The End for the last time.

When the manuscript returns and the book cover pops into my email, my heart melts.

It’s perfect.

What About Me? Release date September 1, 2022. 

How do you know when you’ve finally reached The End? What’s your process?

Summer of Lies: Baker, Barbara:9780228615774: Books - Amazon.ca

Summer of Lies - YouTube

Smashwords – About Barbara Baker, author of 'Summer of Lies'

Barbara Wackerle Baker | Facebook

Barbara Wackerle Baker (@bbaker.write)