We All Are Growing Older by joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

https://books2read.com/The-Art-of-Growing-Older

https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

A centenarian is a person who has lived to be 100 years-of-age or more.

       A super centenarian is someone who has lived for 110 years or longer and 90% of the super centenarians are women. One in one thousand centenarians reach the super status but only 2% of them attain the age of 115 years or more.

       According to studies most of the centenarians have many character traits in common. They have been strong, resilient, and optimistic people all their lives and still are. They have a sense of control, are more relaxed, adapt to changes, seldom get angry, and are emotionally stable. They don’t indulge in self-pity.

       Throughout their lives they have dealt with emergencies better than most people and they have coped quickly without much hostility or aggression. Getting their emotions back to normal and accepting everything as part of life have been two survival techniques they have used. They get their life on track again before physical and mental damage can be done, because that is one of the essentials to successful aging.

       Women have a different personality than men and this could be why 80% of all centenarians are women and 75% of those are widowed. Most are living on their own, either alone or with the help of a family member or home care.

       The Guinness Book of World Records has had a category for the oldest person in the world since 1955, which was usually filled by women. It began the separate classification of oldest man in the year 2000.

     Jeanne Louise Calment was the oldest recorded person to have lived. She was born on February 21, 1875 in Arles, France. She died on August 4, 1997 at age 122 years and 164 days. She claimed it was port wine, olive oil, exercise, and a sense of humour that made the difference. She had a brother and sister who died before she was born. Her other brother lived to ninety-seven years. Jeanne’s only child, a daughter died at age thirty-six, and Jeanne’s grandson also only lived to thirty-six.

       *Kane Tanaka of Japan was born on February 21^st 1875 and died April 19^th 2022. She lived for 119 years and 107 days and is the second oldest person ever next to Jeanne Calment. She is the oldest Japanese ever.

       *Sarah Knauss of the United States was born on September 24, 1880 and died December 30, 1999 at the age of 119 years and 97 days. When she celebrated her 119^th birthday her daughter was ninety-five-years-old, her grandson seventy-years-old, great-granddaughter almost fifty, great-great-granddaughter in her late twenties, and her great-great-great-grandson was four.

       One of the reasons for Sarah’s longevity could be explained by one of the staff at the home where she lived. “Sarah has an attitude of live and let go. She has a real serenity. She's also very kind. She's very grateful.”

       *Lucile Randon of France ranks as the fourth longest living person at 118 years and 340 days. She was born on February 11^th, 1904 and died on January 17^th, 2023. She was known as Sister Andre and also has the honour of being the oldest survivor of the Covid pandemic. She tested positive a month before turning 117.

       *Lucy Hannah lived from July 16, 1875 to March 21, 1993. She was 117 years, 248 days old when she passed away. Lucy was the second oldest verified person to have ever lived in the United States and the world’s fifth oldest person to have ever lived. She was never the world's oldest living person because Jeanne Calment was five months old when Lucy was born and Jeanne was still alive when Lucy died.

       *Canadian Marie-Louise Meilleur was born on August 29, 1880, thirteen years after the confederation of Canada on July 1, 1867. She was 117 years, 230 days of age when she died on April 16, 1998. Marie-Louise had ten children and at the time of her death had eighty-five grandchildren, eighty great-grandchildren, fifty-seven great-great-grandchildren and four great-great-great-grandchildren.

       Marie-Louise cited hard work as the reason for her longevity and she did enjoy a glass of wine. She also quit smoking at the age of 90.

       The average time that a person has served as the oldest living person in the world is 525.5 days.

       If these people can live to be over 115 years or even 120 years, why can’t everyone? They prove how long our bodies should work. In my book, The Art of Growing Older: It’s Not Age, It’s Attitude and Ability, I talk about my quest to live as long as possible and what I have done right and what I have done wrong in my journey. The book also points out that everyone should be able to live long and healthy lives.

Two for the Price of One by Victoria Chatham

 

AVAILABLE HERE

A reader asked me, "Why have two amateur sleuths when you could have had one?" That was a good question, but apart from the flip response of "Why not?" I admit my characters came about because I so enjoyed Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles stories. OK, so that dates me, but I don't mind. Hammett is probably best known for The Maltese Falcon but wrote many detective novels and short stories, some of them no doubt prompted by his years working for the Pinkerton Agency.

Nick and Nora first appeared in the novel The Thin Man, published in 1934. Nick is a retired private eye, and Nora is a wealthy socialite. They both like to drink and have a good deal of flirtatious banter between them. They also had a dog, Asta, who was a Miniature Schnauzer in the novels but was played by Skippy, a Wire-Haired Fox Terrier, on screen. The Nick and Nora characters, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy, appeared in films from 1934 to 1947, had a radio show from 1941 to 1950, and a TV series from 1957 to 1959. 

Later, another couple created by Sydney Sheldon caught my attention. The TV show Hart to Hart starred Robert Wagner as Jonathan Hart and Stephanie Powers as his wife, Jennifer. They also had a dog, a Lowchen named Freeway. The series began in 1979 and ran for five seasons until 1984, followed by eight made-for-TV movies.

Apart from Nick and Nora and the Harts, Agatha Christie penned the Tommy and Tuppence novels, the first of which was released in 1922. Tommy and Tuppence were childhood friends who later married. Tommy is known for his common sense, while Tuppence has a daring streak. His cautiousness is matched by her curiosity. There were five Tommy and Tuppence books, the last published in 1973, so we see Tommy and Tuppence grow from childhood friends to an elderly couple. 

My characters, Lord Randolph Buxton and his wife Lady Serena, grew out of these stories, but I set them firmly in the Edwardian era for no reason other than liking the fashions. The first book was published as Always A Lady, but after a couple of questions from readers, I decided to rework it as Cold Gold and add more to their story. Cold Gold is set in 1907. The next book, On Borrowed Time, is set in 1913 and answers a reader's question about what happened to the Pinkerton agent character from Cold Gold. Shell Shocked is set at the end of WWI in 1918 and, as all three were novellas, were published in one volume as The Buxton Chronicles.

So, not only two for one but also three for one. Enjoy.

Victoria Chatham

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A writing workshop

 I was invited to teach a writing workshop by a local art gallery. They're calling it "the art of writing."

Having 36 books in print, you'd think that teaching a writing workshop would be a no-brainer. Or so it seemed when I agreed to the project. The coordinator asked me for a course outline. It was at that point I realized how unprepared I was!

I drafted an outline of the basics: Plot. Character. Setting. With each of those headings, I spent a few hours listing the essentials, like making your protagonist slightly flawed so he/she is more real. Setting can be a character on its own. 

With those in hand, I reflected on the other parts of creating a mystery: Start with an outline. Create backstories for your characters. Put a hook in the first few pages to engage the readers. Use foreboding to build engagement. Using subplots to add depth to your characters and to provide false leads. Showing vs. telling information. Engaging the readers senses when creating settings (What are your characters hearing, seeing, and smelling?) And research - oh the hours of research.

I pulled quotes from famous writers. Stephen King wrote that a book's plot is only a device to tell a story about the characters. i.e. Your readers enjoy the book because they've engaged with the characters. If you don't have an interesting, relatable character, the reader isn't going to enjoy, or even finish reading the book.

I sent my outline to some trusted beta readers and associates who critiqued my work. (What in hell are you thinking, Dean?) Then, I rewrote and corrected some minor issues. (That's better, but it that really what you want to tell people about writing?) The outline rewrites became an iterative process, with me tweaking it each time I opened the document, or when one of my trusted associates provided input. (Are you going to mention the need find a publisher once the manuscript is complete?)

When my outline was done...or darned close, I stepped back and tried to determine what I was actually going to say with each outline point. Then, I read it aloud, to see how long it would take. (If I had two hours' worth of information to convey). After all that, I made my wife listen to what I was going to present. 

Her response was surprising. "So, those are the things you've got in mind as you write a new book?" 

"It's all become subconscious now. But yes, those are the elements of my writing process."

Armed with that information, I sent the outline to a friend who's a retired magazine editor. She called the next day and said, "Do you really think you can get through all of this in a one semester class?" When I replied that it was going to be a two-hour workshop she responded, "Talk fast."

With the workshop now history, and feedback in from the students, I'll add a few items. Give your readers enough description so they have a mental image of the characters, without describing the number of pores on their nose (That was from a class member). We laughed and discussed how our mental images conflict with the actors Hollywood has chosen for the roles of our favorite characters. The best "disappointment" story was the casting of Tom Cruise, who's not a big guy, as Jack Reacher who Lee Child describes as a muscular giant.

I think the class's favorite suggestion was from Nevada Barr who I quoted, "Write three pages a day. After a year, you'll have a book!" It's great advice about the volume of output you need, but also about discipline and the need to be consistent.

If you want a window into what I've done, I suggest you check out the books I've written on my publisher's website. 

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

Oh, the Horror..... By JD Shipton.

 As we shamble through the rustling leaves toward another Halloween (Samhain, for our Celts and traditionalists), we might bear in mind that genre Horror has not always been among us. 

We have to read at our pleasure a veritable cornucopia of gruesome tales, nay, whole sections of bookstores devoted to the uncanny and the unsavory.  Some authors have reached a sort of literary super-stardom on the backs of this genre- obviously King springs to everyone's mind, but also folks like Thomas Harris and Anne Rice have unquestionably done very well for themselves.  In some of the titles of the past 10 years, the subject matter as a general topic of conversation alone would make me have to slap an R rating on the title of this blog post, as authors really stretch to find the limits of the dark corners of human imagination.  

But before we had Dracula or Frankenstein, Poe's myriad works or Porphyria's Lover, there must have been some work that lit the fuse on the whole thing?  I mean, we've got monsters and myth and unsettling human acts in any double handful of period fiction going back, say, 500 years, but the essence of the whole shebang really seems to stem from The Castle of Otranto- Walpole's thumbed-nose to the flood of romanticism of the time.  It really has it all and really sets the tone:  dark settings, towering architecture, ghosts and specters, and the purposeful evocation of human terror.  

So maybe this spooky season, before reaching for the remote and watching all the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies in a row (again), maybe take a look back in time to the granddaddy of em all, and try to see Walpole's influence in the genre today.  

The Hardest Goodbye...by Sheila Claydon

 

Find my books here

I'm finally culling my books. Years and years of books. Books stacked and sometimes double stacked in bookcases and on shelves in the sitting room, the study, two of the bedrooms, even the utility. It's not that I haven't sorted through them before. Over the years I've culled them several times, but to little avail because those empty shelves  act like a magnet, filling up with more books in the blink of an eye. 

They are not all my books either. Some have been left behind by long dead parents, some by adult children, some by friends. Then there are the ones kept for visiting children, from baby's first board books to books for young teens and every age in between. But what to do with them?  Once upon a time local charity shops welcomed books. Now, since the advent of the electronic reading device and online books, not so much. I'm as much a culprit as any because I regularly download audio books from the local library to make house chores more interesting, as well as ebooks for when I'm relaxing. I still read paper books though, which is why those shelves keep filling up despite my best intentions. 

Now, however, I have found a solution. A community library. 

 

Across the UK many of our public libraries have closed because of lack of funds. Fortunately my village escaped the cut but a neighbouring one didn't and now houses have been built on the site of what was once a much used facility. Something wonderful has arisen out of its destruction, however. A determined community group that has raised funding, found affordable premises, and set up a community library run by volunteers. It has become so successful that it has now spread across two venues with something for everyone. Storytime for children, creative writing classes, IT classes, coffee mornings, quiz nights, a home service for people who cannot travel to the library themselves...it has become a real community hub and just the sort of place that needs my books. 

Now incentivised, I am beginning to pack them up. The children's books are easy as all the children in the family are far too old for them, so after removing a handful of favourites to pass on to my daughter for any future great-grandchildren, they are packed into two large boxes ready for collection. 

Sorting the adult books is not so easy. Oh there are some that we know we'll never read again...crime novels, science fiction, some romances, although none of the Jane Austen. There are the books that we thought we would enjoy until we started reading them, the pocket dictionaries in a variety of languages, autobiographies where the writer thought they were more interesting than they actually were. It doesn't take long to pack these away. But what about the others? The titles that remind me that I've been intending to read them again for years, the few that I haven't ever gotten around to reading, the ones that I probably won't ever read again but which gave me such pleasure when I did that saying goodbye to them would be like saying goodbye to an old friend.

Then there are the travel books, and the books on art. Books on writing too. And books that were presents. How could I possibly give those away? And what about the cookery books, and the gardening books? There's a book about herbs too, and another one about spices and how to use them. Then there are the classics...Dickens, Shakespeare, Twain, Austen...I can't get rid of those either. Sorting out a single shelf takes a whole morning. Shall I pass on the Steinbecks, what about Salinger, and what about those whole rows of Joanne Harris and Joanna Trollop. Will I really want to read them again when there are so many other books out there to choose from? Decisions have to be made, but it's far from easy because so many of these books are warm memories. And to my mind, a house is not a house without books, so I will have to keep some on my shelves. All I need to do is decide which ones I cherish as old friends, and which ones I can wave fondly on their way.

As I tackle yet another shelf, the community library keeps me going though because it really does need my books more than I do. And I might even add some of my BWL books to the boxes too! What a wonderful place to find new readers.