It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

From the Google Public Alert Page this evening:

"The first significant snowstorm of the season will arrive tonight and continue Sunday morning."

TECHNICALLY, the weather men in my area will remind you, it's not OFFICIALLY WINTER until December 21st.  It's only the 14th, so it's still AUTUMN!  But we're still having a prediction of 12 - 15 inches of the fluffy white stuff.....

And I find this amusing.....

Why, you might ask?

This is Maine.  As a child living here, our Halloween costumes had to be able to be worn over warm clothing.  Shoes were frequently snow boots.  Hats and mittens came off long enough to knock, speak and collect the goods, then were put back on for the "stroll" to the next house.  (I grew up in a town with about 15 to 20 houses grouped together in the small section where I lived, next to the general store.  A couple of the houses were a bit of a hike from the store, so we walked roughly a mile.)

Maine used to be "nine months of winter and three months of hard sledding" per my elders.  (Of course, they say it so that "winter" becomes "wintah", "hard" becomes "hahd", and sledding loses the "g".)  Considering that we've had only a couple of really light snow storms since Halloween - and remembering how many years we were trick or treating in warm clothes and snow boots - I suspect we're actually due this "first significant storm". 

Some will hunker down and stay cozy.  I'll be at work. 

I grew up here.  I've always managed to get safely from Point A to Point B no matter what the weather, and worry more about the inexperienced drivers out there who didn't grow up in a small town where, even in the "center of town", as we were, one could be literally snowed in a couple of times each winter.  When you grow up driving on crappy roads, you can handle these nice, well kept roads in the area where I now live.  Unfortunately, there are those times each winter when I'm driving along, minding my own business - and see another car coming at me sideways.......

So far, no accidents (knocking on the wooden top of my desk), and that is the only concern about tomorrow.  Otherwise, this storm will give us some beautiful white, fresh snow to make all the Christmas lights stand out nicely against the crisp, clean background.  It means it's almost Christmas.  I have to finish everything and get my gifts sent.  I don't want to repeat the one time that I spent Christmas in the south of the country.....

Nothing against all y'all south of the Mason - Dixon line, but I need snow at Christmas to get me in the right mood.  I couldn't get into the Christmas spirit.  My presents, what few ever got finished, were late.  I just couldn't get myself into the idea that October was passing without having to rake up a single fallen leaf.  There was no dramatic color change followed by all the trees shaking off their leaves like a dog shaking off water droplets.  There was no chill in the air and no need to change out of my skirts and short sleeved shirts.  My Halloween costume could be as skimpy and sexy as I wanted it to be.  Our turkey dinner took place on a breezy screened porch because it was too hot inside the house from the cooking to eat in there.  I discovered that I couldn't make our traditional dipped chocolates because they kept melting, and the lack of snow on Christmas Eve made me feel bereft.....

So, if you're in the Northeast, please be careful driving tomorrow, especially if you aren't used to it.  If at all possible, stay in, stay cozy, and enjoy a nice, family Sunday with your loved ones.  If you, like me, must work, be safe.

I want to see you for the New Year celebration.  I have a special hat and everything......

Cats rule, dogs drool - at least, that's how it works in my house.....

I've always had a "mixed pet" household.  In the home where I grew up, there was generally at least one cat, and from first grade on, generally also a dog.  I always heard the old adage about "fighting like cats and dogs", but in my house, there were often times when the dog and the cat were sound asleep cuddled together on the couch.....

The trend of having at least one pet in the home continued when I rented my first off-campus place in college.  My boyfriend and I had rented a small trailer, but we had both left our cats with our parents, as they had never been away from the old homesteads and we both were sensible enough to not take them away from their familiar surroundings.  One very hot August day, when I had opened all the windows trying to get it to cool off, then opened both doors, figuring letting in bugs was better than roasting in my own skin.  Part-way through the afternoon, I came out of the bedroom to find a strange kitten asleep on my couch.

Asking around to all the neighbors when he kept returning, we discovered he had just shown up one day and no one "owned" him.  We named him "Quat" (because he was a "Quazy Cat") and started feeding him, thinking the adoption was finalized when he started returning to sleep in the house each night.  After moving to another apartment, however, Quat proved to us that not all cats have a good sense of direction.  He got lost several times when I would let him out, and when I was walking around the neighborhood, people kept saying "Oh, thank goodness!  I thought we'd been adopted by a stray!"  When there came a point that I DIDN"T find him, one of our neighbors who had adopted a little kitten who was driving him nuts gave us his kitten, whom we named Avatar (after the good wizard in the movie "Wizards", one of my boyfriend's favorite movies at the time).  Avatar was with us until we had to have him euthanized for kidney failure at the ripe old age of 17.

Throughout the years, as my boyfriend became my husband and then we added two children to the family, we were also continuing to add pets.  When Avatar was "cat-napped" when we were moving to Florida and my mother-in-law was insisting that a black cat would die in the Florida heat, I adopted a young black cat whom I named "Talon" after the good guy in the movie "The Sword and the Sorcerer".  Then came a husky/german shepherd mix dog we named "Buck" after the main character in "Call of the Wild".  Then there was a bunny (our son named him "Bugs Bunny"), several fish (mostly unnamed except for the plecostomus, whom the kids called "Mr. P"), several other cats - some of whom didn't survive their first trips into the outside, as my husband never liked having cat pans around - etc.  As we ran into lay offs from jobs, causing us to have to move more frequently, we slowly let the number of pets in the house decrease as they died or disappeared, allowing us to cut back to a single dog and a single cat at about the time that we moved into the house we have been in since 1998.  Throughout our years with the animals, we had noticed a bit of a phenomenon when it came to the pecking order in the animal kingdom:  All of our dogs, whether coming to us from a shelter, a home without other pets, or from a farm full of animals, all deferred to the cats when hissed at and slapped across the face the first time.  If the dog was eating and the cat walked over to see what was in the dish, the dog would always step aside, going back to the food when the cat had sniffed and moved on.  Even though the dogs were all large enough that the cat could have been a snack, the cat ruled and the dog drooled......

A few years ago, it was decided that our current pets would be the last we would have.  The reasons were many. 

First off, the children were graduating high school and moving out, so there was really no need to have a dog to protect them when they got home from school any more.  Then there was the fact that we love to go camping, and it was getting harder as well as more expensive to find pet sitters to come in and care for the cat when we were away.  There was also the fact that we had a husky/collie at the time, so a long ride to a camp site always resulted in me being unable to move once we arrived because my legs had been put to sleep by 85 pounds of dog leaning on me for the whole ride so that he sniff out the window.  When the dog, Bear, and the Maine Coon cat, Tiger, both developed cancers, eventually leading us to having to euthanize them both within two months of each other, we were heartbroken, but stuck by the idea that it was better to not have any pets than have a pet who was staying home alone all the time while we worked.  The only pet still living in the house technically belonged to our daughter, who had brought a little Shih Tzu/Pomeranian mix back with her when she moved back home from New York City.

But then our daughter moved to an apartment where she couldn't have a dog.  Pookah, who had moved in with us shortly before the loss of Tiger and Bear, needed a temporary place until his mama could get settled into an apartment where he could live.  She soon discovered that was harder said than done, and since my husband, who has never liked small dogs, had decided that Pookah wasn't half bad for an ankle-biter, we offered to keep him with us on a more permanent basis.  Small enough to not cause the same problems as Bear when we went camping, Pookah has adapted to spending a lot of time alone.....

until recently......

Once again, our daughter has moved into a situation that won't allow her to take along the cat she now has  - at least for a couple of months.  Her roommate, who has two cats, also needed a temporary place for her animals.  Rather than make them bring the cats to a shelter to hope the boys would still be there when they could take them back, we've opened our home - and noticed that phenomenon of pecking order again.

Meeko, the youngest of the cats and the most mischievous, noticed that, whenever I've brought Pookah to visit his "mama", Pookah got very nervous about the cat (mostly because of Tiger, who was 18 pounds and much bigger than the tiny puppy who first moved in with us.  Tiger terrorized the poor puppy).  Meeko has been using this to his advantage over the past few days that they've all been in the same house.  Pookah, even though he growls to try to keep some control, will defer to the cat 99.9% of the time.  Moses, who looks just like Meeko, has been starting to discover that Pookah will back down despite the growling.  The only one who hasn't figured out yet that the noises the dog makes are mostly bluff is Thomas, who is blind on one side and a little more skittish because of it.  I give Thomas about another week or so before he comes to the conclusion that the cats rule this house........

So, I don't know about other people's homes, but in this house, cats rule, dogs drool, and the humans just need to make sure everyone is well fed and petted when desired....

I wonder how I can use this in a book???
 

HUZZAH!

This just in:  WE HAVE A NOOK VERSION OF "THE TIGER'S CUB" IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!! http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tigers-cub-debi-emmons/1117635676?ean=2940148864547

That is all...

(Original link posted on 12/7 was corrected at the B&N end of things, so this link - posted 12/10, is the corrected one.  Heaven help me if it gets corrected after this.....*grin*)

Thinking of doing my own casting call.......

Yes, like a lot of people out there, I tuned into the Live "The Sound of Music" last night to see if all the hype I'd been hearing was worth it.  As they used to announce after editorials that ran on the "big three" stations when I was a kid, this is my opinion.  I welcome yours......

I had a music teacher growing up who thought that the 1965 movie with Julie Andrews in the lead role was the BEST MUSICAL EVER!!!!  (And yes, I did that all in caps for a reason.)  Mrs. Clark ALWAYS had at least one tune in the chorus recitals from the time I first met her in 1st grade right through graduation.  I'm not sure if she continued in this tradition after I left the school, as I didn't make it back for any of the recitals after my graduation and before her death in a car accident, but I have a suspicion she probably did include at least one of the songs.  She was that enamored with the show.

I kept hearing Mrs. Clark's voice during the short time I watched the production last night.  Carrie Underwood is one of my favorite country singers, but last night wasn't her best performance, and Mrs. Clark would have been yelling at her about "bellowing the songs" instead of "singing them with sensitivity".  I was left with the impression that someone - the director?  One of the people who had acted on Broadway, maybe? - had told her that she had to belt out the songs so that the person sitting in the very last row of the theater would hear every syllable.  That was one of the things we were told during the stage productions in high school and college, because it was before the advent of wireless microphones.  They obviously had good sound pick-ups on the production last night, and I think that Carrie would have been better served if she had been singing with the normal emotions that come through in her regular songs - and she seemed to be the one I noticed that with the most.

At about the time when the Captain returns for the first time after leaving his children in the care of the new governess and is mobbed by a bunch of hooligans in clothing made of curtains, my husband came in and changed the channel.  I can't blame him.  I had abandoned actively watching the show and was here at my laptop, working on a scene or two.  Once sports were on the screen and I zoned out into my own little world, I started hearing some of the compliments I've been getting from the local fans who have read my books and been following my Facebook fan pages.....

In talking to a co-worker last week about Chase - and the fact that the character came in much more clearly after I found photos of model Dylan Griner to represent him - I started thinking about my current characters.  Yes, I have a Facebook fan page up for "Rhawneth".  Yes, I have a model to represent some of the characters, most of whom aren't named on the pages where I found their photos during a general Google search for certain attributes.  But they aren't coming in as strongly as Chase, so I'm having a much harder time with the editing and writing process.....

So, did I choose the wrong models for the characters?  Might I be getting a stronger vibe with a different face to represent my "cast"?  Did I do as poorly as NBC's casting agent in picking someone who isn't an actor/actress to "play" my parts on Facebook?

Here's the deal.  If you know of anyone who, like Dylan Griner, is an actor as well as a model, who might meet my descriptions, please feel free to suggest them.  Here are the characters and the descriptions:

Rhawneth Kenna, the main character:  blonde, brown eyed, with the body of a warrior and powers that are well beyond any Healer that her planet has ever known...

Roth Garret, Commander of the Guard at Dahmehn/personal bodyguard for Prince Nicholas Kenna:
brown hair, blue eyes (which he hides with brown contacts), an experienced warrior who is a Sensitive, meaning that he psychically links to Healers.

Matthew Rossi, Commander of the King's Guard at Beni:  brown hair, brown eyes, the epitome of a Benite warrior.  He has a haunted look resulting from marrying the love of his life at an early age, and then watching her die of an incurable disease.

Loralie Kenna, Crown Princess when Rhawneth is disavowed:  brown hair, brown eyes, the epitome of Benite beauty.  She seems very malleable while the King lives, but proves to have a spine of steel when she takes over as the Queen.

Nicholas Kenna, Prince, second in line for the throne:  brown hair, brown eyes, a bit of a mischief maker in order to draw the fire away from his sisters - especially Rhawneth.  If there's something that is against the rules for him to do, he'll do it just to make sure that he catches the fire of his father's anger and give his sisters a free pass.

Eondach Roema, Captain of the Guard for Tario Venides:  blonde hair, blue eyes, a true giant of a man.  He is a Sensitive serving a warped Healer, but more because his grandmother has convinced him that he's needed to make sure that a prophesy is allowed to come to pass...

Tario Venides, a rogue Tarist who is also borderline insane:  blonde hair, blue eyes, very handsome, but the most evil being one could ever imagine.  He needs to see blood to get sexually excited, and he wants to be sexually excited several times a day.  Needless to say, he has a LOT of victims...

Any actors/models you know of who you would suggest will be graciously considered.  I would truly love that face that stirs the characters in my head to speak louder so I can get this story completed.

 

*knock knock knock* Housekeeping!

It's a word, after having a web site up and running since 1998, that is both necessary and the bane of my existence.  I'm finding it's the same for the pages I've created on Facebook. 

Why is housekeeping so important?

Well, Grasshopper, the links that one puts into a web site sometimes disappear from the internet, whether it be because of an internet glitch, a third party removing their internet existence, or simply updates to other people's web pages.  Photos that were creatively borrowed are taken down or moved to other photo albums.  On Facebook, accounts are hacked and the owner opts to simply delete the account and start another.  Sometimes, the third party involved becomes annoyed with the web traffic and decides they hate me.

Ok, so on that last one, it's probably nothing personal against yours truly, but suffice to say that every once in a while (in my case, generally once a year), the links should be checked and any non-working links repaired or taken down.

Such is the case with my female model for "The Tiger's Cub".  Knowing her on a personal as well as a professional level, the young lady who posed for Aloriah Starbird has some fan issues.  She keeps changing her "stage name" because some people from her past keep getting a little too strange and stalker-ish, so while she was calling herself "Elizza-Rayn Belle Louve" when I posted photos of her over the summer, she's had to change that name - again - and hasn't reposted the album that I was borrowing photos from.  Makes my life as a web designer a little more interesting, as I'm trying to help her professional life along, but have to keep changing the links.....

In the meantime, Dylan Griner, my model for Chase Benton, has updated some of his sites so that the photos I "creatively borrowed" no longer appear there, but at least it's the right web site....

So, if you're visiting The Northern Bard, or the Facebook pages for Night of the Tiger or The Tiger's Cub and you follow a link that sends you off onto a strange internet page instead of the web site I was hoping to direct you to, please let me know so I can correct the link between trips in to clean house.

In the meantime, PLEASE visit the pages for Dylan Griner, Liz Belle Louve, Joshua M. Shelton, and Sean Armenta, Theo Theodoridis, Jarah Mariano, and the others whom I've linked to.  I very much appreciate the work all of these fine people have done, I appreciate that none of them have given me grief for associating them with my characters, and I'd love to see the newest models (Dylan and Liz) as well as the photographers (Joshua and Sean) benefit from my use of their fine work.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some beds to make and some pillows to fluff........

One foot in the past, one foot in the present, and my eyes on the future....

The Holiday Season.

Funny how the separate holidays that I remember celebrating individually as a child have all become one giant retail mess these days.  It starts with the Back To School sales, which clear the merchandise off the aisles for Halloween, which clears the same aisles for the Thanksgiving/Christmas merchandise...

I liked it better before all the hoopla of Black Friday became such a huge thing.  Yes, I know that it technically started in the 1960's, but as a small child, I never HEARD of stores opening at midnight, or shoppers getting punched by other shoppers because someone wanted something that they didn't get into their own cart in time...

But since I could go on for a huge rant about the world going to Hell in a hand basket and the related bad behavior we see on days like Black Friday - and that isn't what I came here to talk about - I'll just end that there and take a step back.

I came to talk about family, and the celebrations that we used to have with them when I was young.  Thanksgiving was a huge gathering at Memere and Pepere's farm, with everyone contributing something toward the feast.  The adults ate at the big table in the kitchen.  Due to a space issue, the children all ate at smaller tables in the living room.  The food was served up buffet style with as many trips back to refill one's plate as could be accomplished without technically exploding from eating too much.  (I reference Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" - specifically the "Mr. Creosote" scene: http://youtu.be/lhbHTjMLN5c to show what we always thought would happen.)

Christmas was also held at Memere and Pepere's farm, with those who had the second set of grandparents generally visiting them on Christmas Eve so that we would all be at the farm for Christmas Day.  (My grandparents on my dad's side were both deceased by the time I was celebrating my 6th Christmas, so I only remember the celebration with my mom's side.)  There was, once again, a huge feast with every family contributing something, then the opening of the presents once the ladies had done up the dishes and were able to join us.  My Uncle Dick, not much of a singer himself, but very enthusiastic about singing, would lead the children in song while we waited - and sometimes, what he called for wasn't necessarily what we sang.  There was one year that is fondly remembered when Three Dog Night had put out a song called "Joy to the World", and when he asked for "Joy to the World", we all looked at each other and broke out with the first line: "Jeremiah was a bullfrog.  Was a good friend of mine."  (The look on his face was priceless......)

Tomorrow, I'll be continuing with what has become our current tradition.  My husband will probably go out and take a walk through the woods under the premise of hunting for one of the last days that deer hunting is allowed.  (He's never shot anything, so I think of it as his fall hiking trips with a gun under his arm....*grin*)  I'll be up early, preparing enough food for a small army.  Our children, who are now out of the house, will probably stop in at some point to either join in the feast or get some yummy leftovers to take home and devour at their leisure.  Even in my own house, the "family holiday" has mutated into something that doesn't involve much "family" because of work schedules that don't mesh well.

As I stated in an earlier post, my hope for the future is that I'll eventually have a piece of property with a large lodge house and a bunch of guest cabins for friends and family.  My wish for the future of my Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition is that I can, someday, have a place where people can come and stay comfortably for a few days, to visit and have a huge feast like the ones we had when I was young.  If my books begin to sell nicely, it would be very nice to be able to offer food and sanctuary to those who need to get away from the world, ignore the fact that the retail industry is forcing Christmas shopping to start earlier each year, and come to a place in the Maine woods where a relaxing time can be had by all.

By the way, I have never gone to a Black Friday sale and never wish to.  (My husband and daughter went for a special gift for me a couple of years back and it's a wonder I didn't have to bail them out of jail, it was so violent.)  Truth be told, my Christmas shopping never stops, as I find things that I think people will like, purchase them, and put them in a special hidey spot all year round.  I was a little shorter on funds this year than in years past, but there are things in the hidey spot just waiting for "wrapping day".  For the past two years in retail, I simply have tried to help out the customers, clear them through my check out line as fast as possible, and avoid getting hit, as I'm one of those people who won't recall doing so, but will injure anyone stupid enough to hit me.  (The old quote from television's The Hulk could be modified to fit me:  "Don't make [her] angry.  You wouldn't like [her] when [she's] angry.")

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it....or Happy Hanukkah....or whatever you celebrate during this holiday-heavy time of year. 

Just give me a chance to prove I won't be a spoiled rich kid......

The title is a comment that has gone through my head more than once over my lifetime - especially this morning, while watching a "Behind the Music" segment on Leif Garrett.  He was a teen idol back when I was a teen.  (To be brutally honest, we're the same age, as I was born in May and he was born in November of the same year.)  Watching the details of the life he and other teen stars led, it's no wonder so many turned to drugs after having every minute of every day planned out for them, then suddenly getting dropped like a hot potato when the next big thing came along.....

I used to think that kind of life would be so much fun, so easy with all the money you wanted at your disposal, and all you had to do was hop up on stage, sing a few songs, and try to avoid the grasping fingers of frenzied fans on the way to your get-away vehicle.  Instead, to quote a line from "Some Like It Hot", the common sentiment from teen idols is: "I'm tired of getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop."

My husband and I joke about the fact that I play the lottery from time to time, especially the big Powerball jackpots, and we discuss what we would do if we won that much money.  Friends talk about fancy houses, swimming pools, traveling to every place they've ever wanted to see, and nice cars to drive.  Us?  We want a chunk of property with a lake or a pond, preferably one of the many we see for sale in the northern part of our state that sell as over 400 acres for less than one million dollars.  We want to have a central lodge house where friends and family can gather for group meals and fun times.  We want to be able to have small, rustic cabins tucked around the property, far enough apart that you can feel like you're secluded from all civilization while visiting with us, with solar energy as the primary source of power.  The cabins would be close enough to the water to be an easy trot to be able to put in canoes or kayaks to paddle around and get close to nature, but not so close that there would be any danger of polluting it.

The cabins wouldn't be for rent, but on a first come first serve basis providing that our guests can follow the simple rules we follow when we go out camping ourselves:
If you carry it in, carry it out.
Keep your cabin clean and, if possible, leave it better than you found it for the next person.
You break it, you replace it.

For our guests, it would allow a chance to unplug from their normal lives and reconnect to nature.  For us, it would be the kind of peaceful place we always seek out when we go on vacations.  The sounds we want to go to sleep to at night are the cry of the loon and the croak of the bullfrog.  The peace and quiet would allow for me to be able to concentrate my energy on the current work in progress.  For my husband, it would allow him to tie flies and fish until he's so sick of fishing that he'll beg to go into town to just do something different for a change.

And, should my career as a writer build while we live there, it would be so far off the grid that any fans wouldn't be able to locate me.....

Of course, I've never had the chance to prove that I would survive this way, but I keep saying that title line to the Powers That Be, hoping to prove to them that I wouldn't become a drug addicted lunatic should I be given a lot of money......

*singing* Trad-i-tion tradition......

I've recently posted a status on Facebook about Christmas Candy, family traditions - and my feelings about making the traditional candy and cookies to send out in the packages my husband and I have been jokingly calling "Care Packages" for years now.  Since I had such an interesting reaction to that post, I thought I'd share my feelings here in greater detail:

Let me start by saying that I was raised in a family that managed to keep the bills paid, but there was never an excess of cash.  My maternal grandmother, of French Canadian descent, and therefore called "Memere" (grandmother in the French Canadian slang), would make mittens all year round.  Raised in a family of 16 children in which the males went out into the fields all day while the women cooked, cleaned, and made all the clothing for the family, it was traditional to have new mittens each year, even if the old mittens from last year were still serviceable.  At my house, when sent outside to play, we would stay outside until our mittens were soaked with melted snow, then go inside, warm up for a bit, get a dry pair of mittens after putting the wet ones on a drying rack, and go back out to play until that pair of mittens was soaked.

When I moved out of the old homestead and spent my first Christmas with my then-boyfriend's family, there was a bit of culture shock, as his family believed in spending TONS of money on Christmas presents (and brand names had a special place in his mother's heart), but they also had some traditions involving food items.  Top of that traditional list was hand made candy and fudge, so I spent several days assisting the woman who would eventually be my sister-in-law, learning how to make the traditional candies.  Since my boyfriend and I didn't have much money to be able to go out to the stores to buy presents, I did as I had always done: I made gifts for everyone on our list.

That first Christmas was a bit tense when his mother didn't seem thrilled by the gifts we gave her, but his dad, a native Vermonter who had been raised similar to my Memere, understood the amount of love that went into the handmade gifts.  When my boyfriend and I got married and, still short of funds at Christmas, revived some other traditional gifts that had been allowed to fall by the wayside when his mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, such as the Princess Pine wreath.  (For those who've never seen Princess Pine, it's a variety of club moss that grows in shady areas of the woods.  If harvested gently, it will propagate, providing free material for a truly beautiful Christmas wreath that lasts for a long time after the holiday.)  And I continued to give my mother-in-law special presents that I made myself, like an embroidered piece of cross-stitched flowers in the shape of a heart that reads "Bless This Home" in the center.  (THAT piece, presented in a picture frame so she could hang it on her wall, was something that actually brought tears to her eyes, as it was a talent she had never possessed and seemed to finally make her realize that, in order to give her such a thing, I had been working on it for the best part of a year.  Perhaps it helped for her to see me sitting there, keeping her company while her husband and mine were both working, stitching on the angel tree topper I was making for my own mother.  She purchased a craft book for me to give me more ideas on what to make after that Christmas.)

So here I am, 32 years after that first Christmas when I learned to make candy, and although the "Care Packages" still contain the same traditional treats, I've modified a couple of things.  There will still be peppermint patties, spearmint patties and wintergreen patties dipped in chocolate, but after several years in which the boiled fondant centers failed to come out properly, I've changed the recipe for the centers to a never-fail method that is less time consuming, but just as tasty.  Peanut butter roll ups that had a tendency to fall apart during the dipping process have been changed to what I call "form candies" - meaning that I have little plastic forms that I bought at a craft store.  The chocolate gets "painted" into the form, allowed to harden a bit, then are filled with a creamier peanut butter center and topped with a little drizzle of chocolate.  (The result looks a lot like the miniature Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, but they don't taste the same as Reeses.)  Brand new cookie cutters I found last year will result in the addition of mini gingerbread cookies, the finding of a long-lost recipe will mean the revival of bite-sized almond cookies, and my husband has charged me with reviving a cookie that his grandmother, who'd had a stroke at the point I joined the family, used to make when he was a child.

The reason for my Facebook status mentioning the candies was simply this:  Some of the people who got leftover candies from last year's traditional candy fest kept asking for more, giving excuses that the recipient hadn't been able to taste the candies before they were gone.  The excuses were valid enough, I suppose.  One batch of candies, being taken home on a city bus, were stolen by another rider.  Another batch was set on the table and other family members ate them all, leaving just an empty box for the recipient. 

The problem on my end is simply this:  The candy making supplies have gone steadily up in cost since I first learned to do this.  Wilton Candy Melts, which were about $1 per bag when I first started doing this and were a great, easy alternative to melting chocolate blocks or chocolate chips with edible paraffin wax, allowing better control over the consistency of the dipping chocolate, are now between $3.50 to $6 per bag depending on where I shop and how many others happen to be making candy at the same time as I am.  Confectioners Sugar and Sweetened Condensed Milk have doubled in price.  The flavoring, most notably the Wintergreen Oil, has become nearly impossible to find on a grocery store shelf, so I have to go to a cooking specialty store and pay an arm and a leg for a bottle smaller than my thumb that makes about two batches of candy before it's gone.  In short, the "Care Packages" that used to cost less for me to make than it cost to buy the premade candies and cookies are now easily double what I would cost me to just walk into the grocery store and buy the same items to separate between the packages we send out.

There's also a time issue.  The dipped chocolates are mixed in my mixer, then dropped by the half-teaspoon onto waxed paper, flattened out, and then have to sit for one hour on each side to dry enough to make them solid enough to survive the dipping process.  With a special melter that keeps the chocolate at a steadier temperature than the old double-boiler method I used to use makes the dipping go very fast, but it's still an easy 4 hour process for each flavor of dipped candy with a yield of about 48 candies per batch.  In order to make enough for all the people who we send them to, it's an easy 2 batches in each flavor - or a solid 24 hours of work just on dipped chocolates.

The peanut butter cups, as mentioned above, involve melting the chocolate in a squeeze bottle, squeezing the chocolate into the forms and using small paint brushes to make sure the form is properly coated - especially the sides, as a thin chocolate side will result in a crushed candy when one tries to move it.  Then there's a short "dry time" so that the chocolate doesn't make the filling melt.  Then the tops need to be solidly filled with chocolate, which is brushed out to the sides to make sure that no leaks are left around the top of the candy and that the peanut butter filling isn't going to leak out as the packages travel to spots in Maine, Vermont, Colorado, Florida and other such points on the map.  A recent timing from start to finish was that it took 3 full hours to produce batch of 36 peanut butter cups.  I usually make about 5 to 6 batches, so that's another 15 5o 18 hours of candy making.

And that doesn't include the fudge my husband makes or the cookies, and each year, I've started the process a little earlier to allow for us to get the "Care Packages" mailed out so that they all arrive at their destinations by Christmas.  By the time the last package to family and friends leaves my hands and I'm distributing any leftover goodies to our work places, the words "candy", "chocolate" and "Christmas" have become cuss words that I don't want to hear for a while.

So what did I post publically to Facebook?

I noted in short form what I've just related to you:  The candy making is expensive, time consuming, and done only for the sake of Tradition, NOT because I enjoy doing so.  I only intend on making candy for the months of November and December, so if the "Care Package" is left on a bus, eaten by family, or allowed to rot, I WON'T be continuing to make candy to order this year.  I have two books that I need to work on, a public appearance to prepare for, my "regular" job and regular house duties to attend to......

And it's time for me to stop letting former co-workers bully me into spending my "free" time on things that they were already given, but didn't take care of.  The time that I have that isn't already spoken for needs to start being directed toward my children and grandchildren, making them gifts that come from the heart instead of from a store shelf.  I don't want the family traditions to die with me.

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Soren Kierkegaard made the statement that I've used for today's title, but his comment isn't the only inspiration for today's post.  I've been talking with many friends and relatives about their troubles of late, encouraging them to have faith that life is going to work out for them eventually, and encouraging them to have patience.  It's a sentiment I've heard many times in my own life, and as I've been going about the business of being me today, I'm looking back at my own past and seeing how the times that were most trying in my life were the times that have put me where I am today....

I've spoken in a past blog about cancer and my father.  At the time that I was living through it, it was Hell on Earth.  When I returned to college after my loss, I was taking a Creative Writing class that encouraged me to tear the scabs off my still healing emotions, poke the wound and cause the feelings to bleed out, then describe them in meter and rhyme so that others could feel what I was feeling.

Without that class, I wouldn't have started writing poetry.

Years later, a friend's daughter saw my poems while she was babysitting, was moved to tears by some of the more pain-filled poems, and encouraged me to send a couple of them in to a new local paper's seasonal poetry contest.  The publisher of the local paper loved my work and encouraged me to do more.

Without that young woman's suggestion, I wouldn't have become a local celebrity known as "The Poet Lady".

My mother-in-law, who was quite put out that I had gained a status in town that made people forget that the only reason that I had moved there in the first place was because of HER son, made several snide remarks.  Her remarks, rather than discouraging me from continuing to write (which I would have done prior to losing my dad), made me write a short story and send it to a national magazine to try to prove her wrong.

Without her rude remark, I would have never had the courage to write such a steamy short story and send it in for publication - nor would I have been encouraged to continue writing.

At the time that I was writing poems and that short story, I was using an electric typewriter - which meant that any editing that I was doing on my finished work.  I had been reading about word processors and how much easier it was to edit things with their use, but we were poor and unable to even think about owning such a thing.  Then my husband picked up a side job that involved cleaning a furnace for a woman who complained that she needed something bigger than her little Datsun pickup to get her, her children and all their possessions to her home state, over 1,000 miles away, but she couldn't afford to rent a UHaul.  Since we were driving a full sized pickup in better repair than her truck, my husband did "a little horse trading", swapping our truck for her truck and her Tandy HX 1000 computer.  It wasn't internet capable and all documents had to be saved on floppy discs, since it only had 256 mb of memory, but it would suffice for what I wanted it for.

Without that chance meeting, I wouldn't have begun work on "Night of the Tiger".

Several years later, when the Tandy died and a friend gave us a Compac computer he'd put in his closet when he decided to upgrade to a newer computer, I had just been introduced to the internet.  I would come home from my job as a janitor, and if my husband was working late, I would feed the children and then go into a chat room to "play" with some new friends I had made.  I was also staying in touch with another friend via email and still working on "Night of the Tiger", but progress was slow and I still had several chapters to go in order to finish.

Then came November 11, 1997.  Veteran's Day.  A day that I still had to work, but was doing some chores for my janitorial job that weren't on the normal roster.  It would also be the last day of my pain-free existence.  When I awoke on November 12th and tried to get out of bed to start my day, I literally went to my knees, screaming in agony.  All the bending, heavy lifting and twisting involved in my job had caused a bulge in the disc between L5 and S1, and the bulge caused my vertebrae to move, which caused a pinch to my sciatic nerve, sending shooting pains from my back down to the tips of my toes.  I ended up being heavily drugged with pain killers and put under the strictest order to do "NO bending, NO lifting, NO twisting".  Always a very busy person, I was going nuts when a friend from the chat room suggested that I spend my time learning to program web pages.  To practice, I started publishing my poems online, and as I published the poems and started looking for more things to practice with, I turned again to my almost finished story - and completed it.

Sending the finished manuscript to publishing houses, I was disappointed to get rejection slips - or sometimes, just the unopened envelope with the words "We do not accept unagented material" even though their listing in the Writer's Market said they did.  A complaint to my friend via email produced a lead to a new company that was forming with a new way of publishing books:  Electronic books!

So, without the unexpected back injury and resultant restrictions, I would never have finished my first novel, nor would I have had it published.

I could go on about other things that have happened and the changes in direction that they caused in my life, but I suspect you see the point of this post now.  When I left high school, my dream was to become either an actress or to become a high school English teacher who could also encourage young actors by running the Drama Club.  Here I am, almost 35 years post graduation, doing neither, but with a new vocation that seems to suit me much better.  Each of the things I've chronicled above changed me, and the huge blocks that were the bane of my existence at the time that they were happening in my life became the building blocks for a new dream.  If someone had told me way back in 1979 that I would be a published writer, I would have laughed at them, yet here I am.....

Life is going to throw monkey wrenches at you.  Learn how to juggle with them.

Life is going to put blocks in your chosen path that you won't be able to just climb over.  Learn to do as a river does, changing the flow so that the block just becomes a place where you can take a rest while going back over your memories of your life and see how it changed you.

Life is going to give you bruises and painful scars that you will carry with you for either the short term or for the rest of your life.  Don't let you pain sideline you.  Get up, dust yourself off, and know that others have lived through this.  So will you.

And on the anniversary of such things as your last pain-free Veteran's Day, take a moment to thank the men and women who have pains that make yours look like paper cuts in comparison and reflect on where your life might have gone had such a thing never happened to you.....

Thank you, Veterans, for your service.  Without you, I wouldn't have the freedom to write this blog and post it on the internet........

When does a hobby become an obsession? I'll have to get back to you.....

Some of my friends have been asking me how it feels to be making money from what used to be a hobby: writing.  If I ever make a LOT of money at my hobby, I'll have to come up with an answer for that, but at the moment, I still consider writing to be a hobby - and not my only hobby.

Another of my hobbies started when I was in college, after overhearing an uncle comment about a genealogy book that had the wrong information about my great-grandfather.  Per my Uncle Herb, there was a book that he had looked at called "The Book of Dow" by Robert Piercy Dow, which chronicled three men with the last name of Dow who were immigrants to America during Colonial times.  He stated that this book, having traced the descendants of these three men until 1927, as it was published just one year before my dad was born, was incorrect when it came to our ancestor, one James Parker Dow.  It stated that he was the son of Alexander Dow of China, Maine "by conjecture", but Uncle Herb had always heard that James was the son of Samuel Dow and Roxanne Lamont.

This comment got my curiosity up, and since the library at the college I was attending had a copy in their special records area, I spent a lot of time in the library, as the special records are not allowed to circulate.  This hobby started in the fall of 1980, when I had just lost my dad to cancer and felt very lost and vulnerable, as a way of getting closer to a part of my family tree.  In the years since, I've discovered that there are little feuds going on between some of the family members, so although they are all willing to speak with me about their own research results, I'm not allowed to freely share things among these members without using the BCC function in my email.

I've learned a lot about genealogical tracing over the years.  Among the things I've learned is this:

1) Ancestry.com is a marvelous tool, but the information found there should always be taken with a grain of salt - ESPECIALLY when looking at the family trees posted by other people.  Some actually have researched the facts, but others, like Robert Piercy Dow, have depended on conjectures that they have then posted as fact.  It's always worthwhile to consider the other family trees as "good leads", but then research the information like a detective working a cold case, going to town and state vital records before accepting the lead as a fact.

2) One's relatives don't take it well when it is pointed out that an ancestor, during a time when such things as mental illness and disease were considered God-given punishments for wrong-doings, may well have lied about when, where or how a family member may have met his or her end.  Family rumor is preferred over direct fact for these people, and they would rather perpetrate the lie than allow the truth to come out into the open.

3) Posting a question in an open forum can bring about wonderful new information - and make a connection with a descendant of another family member that can blossom from two researchers sharing information to a very wonderful friendship.

4) NEVER blow off someone who contacts you with a question about something they saw in YOUR family tree!  One of my best leads to date came through someone who was researching her own family tree and wanted to know if the James P. Dow I've been searching for might have been related to someone who would have been her great-grandfather's step-mother.  She provided me with information that I had never seen before from a town I would have never considered searching, and had I blown off her question, I would have still been on a dead end road with my tracing of that one family member.

5) Don't even joke to some relatives about the family being "New England Rednecks" - even if you can prove that it's true!  On a couple of lines of ancestors who settled in Massachusetts, there is some obvious inbreeding action, with several instances of common ancestors in the family tree.  It appears that there was no one closer than second or third cousins, but still.....inbreeding happened in the colonies due to a lack of population.

My sister, when doing a project in 6th grade, had asked my dad where our ancestors came from.  We all knew that my mother's ancestors were from Canada, but what about his?  Dad, always a bit of a jokester, told her that we were "Heinz 57s" - meaning of extremely mixed blood, but he didn't know exactly what.  She was so angry with him for that comment that he placated her by sending her over to speak with one of his older sisters.  My sister cam back to announce that she had been told the following list of countries that made up the Dow clan:  Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Native American - and one other that slips my mind at the moment, because it took her seven fingers to list them all off when she included Canadian. 

Over the years, I've proven ties to all the countries involved except for the Native American line - mostly because the natives didn't have a written language, and therefore, no written records of who was marrying whom.  In reading lots of history books, it has been stated many times that natives who wanted to marry into the white man's society had to have a last name - which the natives also didn't have.  Some of the people would use an animal (bear, wolf, etc.), their location (Conway, Ossipee, etc.)  or a color (black, white, etc.) as their last name in the church records, but since the clergy made no effort to record much more than that, records tend to be a little sketchy.  I'll keep pushing, but it's like finding a needle in a haystack.  One surprise was finding that we had an ancestor from the Netherlands, whom we had never been told about.

On the fun side of things, I've discovered that my father's mother, whose family name was "Burrill", was a descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullin, whose courtship was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  It seems John and Priscilla's granddaughter, Mercy, married a John Burrill....and the rest, as they say, is history.

Needless to say, when the writing of works of fiction isn't going well, I take a trip to a library or historical society and start digging to see if I can prove my current list of "leads".  I've been into the Maine Room at the Portland Public Library so often that the regular librarian in charge of that room now greets me by saying "Back again?" or "I hadn't seen you in so long, I thought you gave up!"

So, when does a hobby become an obsession?  I think my genealogical hobby is getting awfully close......

It's the most wonderful time of the year.....

Yes, I know.  All of my more Christian friends are going to be giving me grief over THAT title, but didn't I already do a post about being wired differently than most people?

I've often wondered whether my love of Halloween came from some inner wiring that has always loved the idea of being someone - or something - else for a time or whether, perhaps, it's because my grandmother passed away on Halloween in 1967 and I just have grasped it as a kind of memorial thing for her.  After all, one of the few recollections I have of Grammy Dow is going in to see her, all dressed up for Halloween, while she was in her bed, too sick to get up but too stubborn to not see her grandchildren and personally give them a treat.  Then again, when I was in high school, I decided I wanted to be an actress as my post-graduation career because I loved to get into a costume and let another character take over my life for a brief time.

Today, I'll be going into my job at Staples as a gypsy.  Because I have to climb ladders to get the stock to put out on the shelves, my gypsy skirt will have a set of leggings and thigh-high boots under it so that anyone on the floor will only see pant legs instead of my panties should they try to look up my skirt.  Because there is a rule against wearing anything risqué, I went and visited former co-workers at Macy's yesterday and got a gypsy-looking shirt that is higher cut on the neckline than the originally planned low cut shirt and corset look (which I'll still be wearing to a friend's party on Saturday, but not to work).

Here are a few of my favorite costumes of the past years with a little explanation of what the thought was behind them:

 

The aliens are attacking - my hair!!!  (The alien bug-eyes are a head band I picked up at a costume shop, and the purple wig made me think of Marge Simpson.  Inside the wig, there was also a voice changing gadget, and when I wanted the alien to "talk", there was a little microphone next to my left ear.  I would pull down the microphone and let the alien "speak" from time to time....)

 

 

When doing some renovations, my husband found a truly HUGE pair of coveralls under a bathroom floor.  After a thorough cleaning, I used them as my costume that year, with a pillow stuffed down my front and a pillow stuffed down my back to make me look twice as large around as I really was.  Pigtails, a blacked-out tooth, and freckles completed the "Fryeburg's Beauty Queen" look.  (I won a prize from my work place for most original costume that year.....)

 

And then there's this one, which is my absolute favorite of all the costumes over the years:  The punk band that was formed by myself (in the middle), my husband (the guitar player) and my brother.  It was the early 80's.  Wendy O. Williams, Devo, and other such bands were big.  We probably caused a hole in the ozone ourselves with the use of hair spray and spray-in hair color that year - and the name of the band is STILL rude enough that I don't want to spell it out for you here.  (Ask me to message you in private if you REALLY must know....*grin*)

 

Of course, my yard also gets totally decked out, although I've toned it down a little with the grandkids having to come in.  (There were several years that we had NO trick or treaters on the dark road we live on, so I had started to go a bit over-the-top.)  Give the youngest "injun" a couple more years to get used to her Yamma's strange sense of humor and I can start putting out things like zombie gnomes eating a flamingo yard ornament, the Crypt Keeper and Freddie Krueger (jump suits filled with leaves and old masks from former costumes put into play) romping together, etc......

 

So even though I've opted to let the characters take me over when I'm writing, I still like getting into a costume and becoming someone else for one day out of every year....

 

And since I borrowed a line from a Christmas tune, I guess I'll have to do another blog about my feelings about an overly commercialized holiday that makes normally sane people go out at midnight on the day after Thanksgiving and beat each other to a pulp over television sets, cameras and game stations.....

 

Or is that last paragraph more than enough to convey my feelings?

 

Happy Halloween - or Samhain, if you prefer the Wiccan name for it - everyone!!

What I Did With My Summer Vacation....

I hate having to write something structured, something demanded, not by me, but by someone I have to deal with.  It doesn't matter what that structured page is.  I equally abhor the resume and the press release, the thesis and the creative writing assignment.  I particularly hated the first thing a lot of English teachers did, year after year, expecting great writing from a bunch of grade school kids forced to tell about a summer in which a lot of fun was had - but nothing that should be related to an adult.....

I am much more comfortable on those days when I can sit down, do a little stretch to get comfortable, and open a blank screen.  A deep breath or two, and a character steps forward.  I listen for a short time as they tell me their story, showing me pieces in my mind's eye - and then I begin.

Not so with the press release I'm currently trying to find the words for.

It's been a couple of years since the last press release.  It's not something I write on a regular basis, so I always have to do some reading before I begin.  What is the current trend for the information needed?  Does one include social media mentions on where fans can locate "the merchandise" (in this case, the author as the "product")? 

I have a list.  I have some ideas on how to present the information.  I go over the list again.  I sit down, I stretch, I open the blank page......and NOTHING.  Not a single word comes to me.

"Just the facts, ma'am." says a voice from the old show, Dragnet, in the back of my head.

I write the facts.  It's a couple of paragraphs.  It's as dry as a piece of cold toast.  The only ones who will be inspired by this are probably accountants, staring at numbers all day in a back room with no human contact all day....

"Sell it, girl!" I mutter to myself, and the only other thing that comes to mind is the old Snake Oil Salesman:  "Step right up!  Get your chance to buy this miracle elixir for all that ails ya!"

I am is SO much trouble right now!!

A four-letter word with six letters: CANCER

October here in the United States is now National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  In stores, along with the Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas items to prepare us all for "The Holiday Season", one sees a lot of pink.

But for someone with MY family history, October is also a month when the ancient belief when the thinning of the veil between this world and the next also allows me to see the members of my family that have gone before, many of whom passed with some form of cancer.  I don't just think of breast cancer, but also of these:

Lymphoma - cancer of the lymph nodes, which was diagnosed in my father, his sister, and her eldest son (my cousin), and possibly was the same cancer that took my Grammy Dow on Halloween in 1967.  (Gram was never officially diagnosed as to which type she had, since she didn't have insurance nor the money to afford the treatments of the time, so she was just kept as painless as possible....)

Melanoma - skin cancer, which has marked many family members over the years.

Myeloma - a cancer that starts in the plasma cells in bone marrow.  An aunt is fighting this as we speak.

Lung cancer - self explanatory, and another one that has taken a lot of aunts, uncles and cousins.

And that's just the ones that come to me as I sit here finishing my second cup of coffee of the morning. 

I'm not writing this because I'm looking for your pity, but rather, as an introduction to a heart-rending message I received this week from one of the readers of my blog.  Her message touched on my own personal loss, but also brings with it a message of hope.  Here is the link to Heather's story about mesothelioma that I ask you to watch:  http://www.mesothelioma.com/heather/#.UmfA3x3D-01

So, why am I writing this blog this morning?  It's really very simple.

If you can afford to make monetary donations to cancer research - or, if other diseases such as Cerebral Palsy (I had a friend with that), or Cystic Fibrosis (a brother-in-law had that), or Diabetes (a LOT of my friends have that) are closer to your heart - DONATE!  With enough funding for research, we may eventually see cures being found for some of the nastier things that can happen to a human.

If you can't donate, PRAY.  Pray for those who have diseases that are taking over their lives, and pray for those who are forced to watch a loved one suffer.

Above all, pass on messages from people like Heather so that more people will become aware of the signs to watch for and will go visit their doctor before the disease progresses to the point that there is no hope for them.

Thank you for reading my very serious message, and for putting me to the point of having 600 visits to my blog in just 4 months.

Blessed be!

The pause that refreshes

The first order has been made and filled.
The first autographed books have been delivered to the post office.
It was a day to pause, clear my mind, and prepare for my step back in time to a story I know like the back of my hand, but have never finished writing....

So naturally, I went and checked out a few blogs of writers whom I admire......

Stephen King has a new book out called "Doctor Sleep".  Having read everything else he's ever written since I pulled "Carrie" off the library shelf in high school, I'll probably read that.  I move on.

A couple of blogs down from Mr. King are a couple of entries from another favorite writer who lives in Maine:  William Kotzwinkle.  (Yes, I hear a lot of voices from past mentions of that name in my head.  The voices ask in unison: "Who??")

William Kotzwinkle, author of "ET, The Extraterrestrial", "Walter, The Farting Dog" and "The Fan Man".

A lot of people recognize the first book.  It was made into a pretty popular movie.

A lot of parents who encourage reading recognize the second one.  Either they love it because their children read it and giggle a lot, or they hate it because their children read it and giggle a lot. 

The third book gets me a lot of head tilts and confused looks.  Very few people, man, have heard of "The Fan Man", a marvelous tale about Horse Badorties, man, and his adventures in New York, man.  For those who've met Horse, man, this will be a great revisiting with an old friend.  For those who haven't met him, this will be a fun introduction to a great character, man.

http://kotzwinkle.com/blog/the-fan-man-smoothie/

Off again to the real world.  Peace, out!

Cheaper than going to a gym

I had a little epiphany about a week ago when I neglected to do all my laundry and had to wear a pair of my elastic-waist pants to my job at Staples.  Without the belt that is a required part of the uniform for any pair of dress pants that has belt loops, I was constantly pulling my pants back up to where they're supposed to sit.

Now, I'm not someone who never gets on a scale, but, like Aloriah in "The Tiger's Cub", I didn't equate the lowering numbers on the scale and the slowly changing dimensions of my body to the need to check my clothing size.  Over the past several years that I was working as a veterinary receptionist, I had been watching my weight slowly climb, and when my clothing would get too tight for me to continue to work comfortably, I would grudgingly go up to the next size scrub.  When I got up into a size 14 and was heading toward a size 16, I started policing every bite that went into my mouth, started doing things like Yoga and walking for extra exercise, but didn't seem to be able to stop gaining.

Then I quit my job at the veterinary office a year ago, finally figuring out how much the stress I was under was hurting my health, both mentally and physically.  When I got a "holiday" job at the local Macy's, I went to my local Goodwill (because I HATE buying clothing at full price) and picked up a couple of pairs of black dress pants, two with belt loops and one with an elastic waist.  The size 14 pants fit skin tight, involved me holding my breath to get the zipper up and the buttons at the top hooked, but I also had purchased a black suit jacket to go with them to hide the little bit of a muffin top look I was sporting.  My thought at the time was that, because the retail job was more physically active than what I had been doing for the past 10 years, I would start to lose weight.  Of course, because they also allowed skirts to be worn, I used my supply of black skirts for those days when I felt particularly bloated, as they were loose over the area that I was most self-conscious about.

My theories about why I wasn't losing weight at the veterinary office have obviously been proven correct. 

The easing of the stress was an almost immediately noticeable change.  Between quitting one job and being hired for the next one, I spent a lot of time walking my daughter's dog while she was in her college classes, and each day, I felt a little more of the mental weight I had been living under ease.  By the time Christmas rolled around, I was getting up each morning willing to face the day instead of wanting to crawl under a rock and never see the light of day again.  As time has gone on, I find myself more apt to roll my eyes and grumble "Seriously?" when something upsets me at home instead of wanting to go out and shoot something over the same minor issue.  As an old toothpaste commercial's tagline used to say, "It's a great feeling."

Then there's the physical aspect of the retail jobs.  At Macy's, I was primarily putting clothing back out onto the racks from the fitting rooms.  When I first started there, I would wake up every morning "feeling the burn" - mostly in my arms and lower back.  I had started to notice a slow reduction in belly fat in my mirror when I got out of the shower, and each time I put on my dress pants, it was less of a struggle to get them zipped and buttoned.  By the time I saw an opening at Staples - which is closer to my house, therefore cutting out 30 miles of travel each day one way - my business suit was fitting in the way that it should fit.

Staples has proven to be more active than Macy's was.  Each week, they get a shipment of plastic totes filled with products that need to be brought from the back room out to the racks.  Some of the totes are light, others can weigh up to 50 pounds.  A recent change from my only working the front end (cash registers and taking care of the food and ink that came in) to being cross trained to work in office supplies (basically taking care of all the products on one half of the store) means that I'm getting a more "all over the body" workout while at work - so after an 8 hour shift unloading a pallet and sorting product according to which aisle it needed to go to, I'm "feeling the burn" over my entire body, but it's a good kind of a burn....

Which brings me back to the elastic waist pants that I had to keep pulling up last week.

The two pairs of dress pants that I own, both size 14, have a belt that keeps them where I need them to be, but I started stressing a little about not being able to wear the elastic waist pants on the days that I'm doing office supply and my dress pants are both dirty.  I took a little trip into the local Goodwill and pulled a bunch of black dress pants off the rack to try on, some in a size 14 and some, just for the jollies, in a size 12.  Like a scene I describe between Chase and Aloriah, I was expecting to not be disgusted.  Instead, I found myself in shock.

The size 14 pants, when tugged gently, slid down to an indecent level on my hips - even the pair that had a waist that I would have sworn would have stayed at my waist level.  Then I tried the size 12 pants.  Wonder of wonders, I didn't have to hold my breath to zip and button them, the waistband didn't feel like it was trying to cut off my breathing, and when I tugged gently, they stayed right where they should.

Convinced that I had somehow managed to find a size 12 that was cut to be closer to a size 14, I put the 14's back onto the rack to be returned and grabbed a few more pairs of size 12's - not really finding more than the one pair that would be "work suitable", but just trying to prove a point to myself.  Every pair of size 12 pants fit around my waist the same way, and as I walked out to make my purchase, I was in awe.  It really WAS my work situation that was making me keep getting fatter despite the healthy diet and exercise!!

By the time I got home, excitement had taken hold.  Since the size 12 pants already fit like the size 14 pants did when I first started working at Staples in June, I'm hoping that I can continue to improve my body and get down to a size 10 in a reasonable amount of time (which is where I was when I first started working in the veterinary field).

My advice to those who, like me, find themselves on a diet and exercising, but unable to lose weight?  Consider the mental aspect of your life.  What might be causing stress in your world?  Is it something absolutely necessary for you to live, or can you eliminate it and do something else, as I did when I quit a stressful job and got into something that has me almost stress free?

I'm hoping next year to be able to post some bathing suit photos to my Facebook account along with a new pic of the wet suit I wear when I go out in my kayak, which I've been calling my "sausage suit" because it has always felt like I'm stuffing a sausage when I try to zip into it.  Maybe by next year, to paraphrase a Plasmatics tune called "Monkey Suit", in my sausage suit I won't feel like a sausage...... 

The light at the end of the tunnel isn't ALWAYS a train....

Just got a GREAT email!

For those who live in the Portland, Maine area, I've been granted an hour in the Portland Public Library's Local Artist series.  Come visit me from noon to 1 p.m. in Meeting Room #5 on Friday, February 28th......

A quick update for those who are waiting.....

I'm still waiting for confirmation that the corrected file of "The Tiger's Cub" has been "found" by the printer and that the books I order for those who want "signed author" copies will be the best version available.  I also haven't had confirmation of the date that the ebook version will be available, so as far as I know, that's still a November 1st release.

In the meantime, I've been chatting with another author friend about doing the sci-fi/fantasy book as an Indie release, as he's done that with his books.  Considering the numerous gaffs on "Cub" that have kept me from moving on to the next Great American Novel, I've only been adding model pictures to the new Facebook page, having chosen to just name the new book after the main character instead of continuing to try to come up with another title for it that hasn't already been used.

If you're interested, you can check out the "character images" for the book I've titled "Rhawneth" here: https://www.facebook.com/Rhawneth

OR you can get a little taste of the story line (and possibly give me alternate ideas for the character images) by visiting my page at The Northern Bard here:  http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/Rhawneth.html

For those who have been waiting patiently for the release of "The Tiger's Cub", I thank you for your patience, and will hopefully be able to post my link to my PayPal account soon.  Please feel free to drop me a private message at any time at debi_emmons@yahoo.com


{ADDENDUM 10/3:  Seems that publically announcing this was the catalyst for my publisher to send the printers the "corrected file" again, so I've been assured that, in just a few days, they should be able to start producing the version that has Chase "Lying on his bed" instead of improperly "Laying on his bed" (among other such stupid things that got missed in the first couple of edits).  I've attached a PayPal link to the web page that has the first three chapters of "The Tiger's Cub" to introduce the two main characters, so please feel free to place an order for a signed author's copy through http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/tigercub.html.

Thank you, as always, for reading and/or commenting on my blog posts.  I'm going to apologize in advance for the fact that I'm about to start the next phase of training at my "day job" at Staples and will be able to start concentrating more on Rhawneth, so the blog entries may be less frequent.  )However, if you have a pressing subject you would like a post written about, I'm all ears......]

Hoosier Daddy

Taking a little break from the writing world to touch base on one of the many other things that I consider to be a "hobby"....genealogical research.

Yes, I know, there are people out there who are giving their screens that look that several of my friends and family give me when I mention that one of my favorite ways to spend a day when I have nothing else pressing is to go to the Maine Room at the Portland Public Library to search for records that might indicate who my great-great-grandparents might be.  Before any of you suggest one of the online libraries, like Ancestry.com, I already have a subscription there.  I've traced other branches of my family back to "the old country", and have confirmed or disproved a lot of the rumors involving my family.  The one exception is the one who started this whole search back in 1980, when I started using this search as a means of dealing with my grief over the loss of my father to lymphoma.

My great-grandfather, who appears in a census in Maine in 1870 with the young bride he had just wed that spring, is James Parker Dow.  According to the family bible, he died in February 1876, so his widow and their three children appear in the 1880 census of Maine.  I've located that widow, Susan, both in later census reports until her death in 1925, and in earlier census reports with her family.  I've traced most of her family tree back to England, where most of them boarded ships to the "New World" in the 1600's.

James is something of an enigma, as the only known record that would have named his parents would have been his marriage license.  A fire in the town where he and Susan got married destroyed that record.  Census records from 1860 have three boys by that name, but two out of the three can be traced to other families.  The third's family is as much of an enigma as James, as they appear only in that one census, then disappear from the town where they were living.  Like the record of the license for James and Susan, the records that may have given further details appear to either have been destroyed by either a series of fires that burned thousands of acres across the state in 1947 or by fires that occurred in the towns I'm searching.  The records that weren't destroyed by fire seem to have, at some point, been considered "unimportant" and have disappeared into vaults to collect dust.

Unlike a lot of other states in early United States history, Maine seems to have been a little behind the times in beginning a systematic means of keeping records of births, deaths, etc., on a statewide basis, as they began to keep all of these records in 1892.  Going to the towns and pulling up records that should indicate some of this information prior to 1892 has proven that there weren't necessarily sensible thoughts when it came time to vote in clerks to keep such records even on a town level, as I've sat staring at what was supposed to be a record of the happenings at a town meeting, trying to decipher what was written by an adult, but looks like the scribbles of a first grader who is in a rush to get to recess.  In other towns, I've read through pages of notes about how much Farmer Brown got for his prized bull and how many offspring said bull produced on which cows, but there is no indication of how many children Farmer Brown had or who he married said children off to....

In my own little way, I'm playing at being a detective.  It's probably a good thing that I didn't have to solve a crime this way, as the bad guy would have probably been long gone after 33 years of searching with as little result as I've had.  In the meantime, I can probably trace Farmer Brown's prized bull to his pedigreed great-grandbull who came over from Spain.....

Yes, my precioussss.....we're talking about accents.....

I've been reading a lot of debates among writers lately, trying to learn how to be a better writer - and how to sell the books once I write them.  Among one of the most heated discussions is the question of whether or not one should try to write the way a character speaks.  Some believe it should NEVER be done, because it's distracting.  Others insist that not showing the accent means that the character is never fully developed.  Using one of my favorite pieces, let's experiment, shall we?

How would you hear this line if you read it this way?

"What is he, my precious?"

And now the way "The Master" wrote it?

"What iss he, my preciouss?"

So, did Tolkien distract by indicating Gollum's soft hiss?  I always found it easier to "hear" Gollum because of this indication of the way he spoke.

I, personally, find it more interesting to have the characters speak in dialects and accents - as long as the writing is done well.  Phonetic spelling isn't really necessary to indicate a dialect.  Sometimes all one has to do is spell things the way the character would pronounce them.

Of course, sometimes one also needs to indicate what the dialect or accent is when writing a line.  Take, for instance, this line from a letter I once received while I was living in Florida and most of my family was living in Maine....

"I won't write you a long letter because I have a sore tum."

If your reaction is the same way as mine was when I first read that sentence, you're probably scratching your head and wondering what in the world.......

But what if you learn that the person who wrote that sentence had a heavy French accent?  Does reading it aloud with a French accent make you realize that the "tum" is that other digit on your hand in addition to fingers?  (This letter was sent by my Memere, who also spoke of what "the mens" were up to that week.)

So what do you think?  If a writer has a firm grasp on an accent or local dialect, should the wording reflect the way the character would talk?

I've been waiting so long to be where I'm going.......

The waiting game for "The Tiger's Cub" continues....

So far, the printer has sent me two advance copies to confirm that all is well - and I'm sincerely hoping that no one has purchased any copies yet, because all is NOT well....

Here's the deal:

I was of the opinion that my publisher wasn't going to send anything on to the print shop until we were done with all the corrections to the book.  Obviously, even at 52, I'm still VERY naïve about this, as the printer has a copy of "The Tiger's Cub" file from BEFORE the final corrections were approved on August 24th.  The publisher keeps insisting that they weren't supposed to be using that copy to print any books, but the question remains in my mind:  WHY would she have uploaded the file to their site if they weren't supposed to have it?

She insists that she was VERY clear that the file from August 24th was the one that was to be used for doing printing, but as I have witnessed myself - TWICE - that is NOT what the print shop is doing.....

Suffice to say that I'm very underwhelmed at this point with the professionalism I'm seeing.  Admittedly, I was the source of a couple of the issues early on, as I was speaking to a nice young man in California about having him as my cover model, but didn't realize that he has an agent and I needed to make any arrangements with that person instead of the model himself.  (I have several model friends here in Maine who are freelance, so the thought never occurred to ask about an agent.)  But there have been several issues that I've had no control over - and I can't even express what that does to my OCD level......

There have been corrections I sent through that didn't get done - and that I had to keep emailing over and over before they were finally fixed.  There have been "wrong file uploads" more than once when my approval was sought to insure that the corrections were finally made.  There were "blips" added to the cover art when the title and author name were added that were explained away as "hairpins" when my model wasn't wearing any hairpins, then the "correction" to mask the initial mistake was very sloppy and I had to get belligerent to get the error corrected.  There was a color change made when putting the cover into PDF format for the printer that I also had to fight to have corrected.  And now another file issue when the book got posted up for sale two full months earlier than the release date I had been given.......

Suffice to say that, without the emotional help of my friends, I would be in a corner this morning, banging my head against the wall, as that would be just as productive as anything else I can do at my end of things right now....

In short, I'm seriously looking at what it would take to build my own publishing company before the science fiction is ready to go onto the market.  I already have a "storefront" (so to speak) in the form of a "web design company" that I put up online when several local companies were offering rewards cards to businesses to get coupons that I could use for supplies that I use a lot - and would use more of as a publisher - even though the company has never had a single client, and therefore has never made a profit.  Instead of just blogging about the highs and lows of writing, I could actually be offering my services to help others to get published and get their books offered on places like Amazon, IBooks, Barnes and Noble, etc........

Or maybe I'll just test drive that theory with "Rhawneth" and see where it takes me, as the Fates have a way of blasting my ship out of the water just when I can see it starting to come in.....

Captain's log, stardate 1980........

The next tale I'm working on was started that summer, 1980, while I was babysitting for my neighbor at their camp in Newport and spending the weekends going home to help my mom take care of my dad, who was dying of cancer - lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes, to be exact.  I was mostly in charge of the care of the smallest child of the family, but while she napped, I told parts of my story to entertain her older brother.

In some ways, editing the story draws me back to those days of sitting out in the sun and telling the "clean" version of the tale, as it's quite violent in places, but in other ways, I see how much I - and the story - have grown since those days.....

My writing space is starting to change, as well, as if my spirit needs a more mature space in which to write now.  My original notebooks, complete with notes on napkins, scraps of paper, even a few pieces of cardboard that I wrote on during breaks at a job where I was building cabinets for a while sit on my new work space in a corner of our living room, sorted and waiting for the editing to finish and the real work to begin.  The new work space has several reasons for existing. 

First and foremost is the fact that my desktop is dying a slow, lingering death on the desk in my "office" just outside my bedroom, partially due to the fact that the desktop was put together from parts of other computers for me by my son while he was in college, rather like the Frankenstein's monster.  It was a step up from the over-the-counter HP Pavilion I was using at the time, as the HP had about 4 gigs of hard drive, and the new computer had about 40 gigs of hard drive.  Only problem is that now, some 6 years since it was originally built for me, all the drivers are starting to have issues, so although it's attached to the printer, making it very convenient for me to pay my bills and get the confirmations of payment as print-outs, it takes FOREVER to load each page and is prone to crashing at the most inopportune times.  And of course, there's the fact that it still has Windows XP as it's base platform and it would cost me more to upgrade than the machine is worth.  So, naturally, I prefer to use my laptop...

The second reason I needed a new workspace revolves around the laptop, which my husband bought me a few Christmases ago in response to my expressed wish to be able to write in something other than a notebook when we went on vacation.  The laptop's "workspace" prior to now has been a TV tray in front of the futon, where my husband could watch television while I wrote, or checked Facebook, or surfed the 'net, or whatever struck my fancy while he watched his sports or fishing shows.  It was on the futon that I let out the reins on Chase Benton - and almost came out of that 22 day marathon with a hunch back, as I had to lean forward to reach the keys......

So, enter the huge metal desk that was left behind by the former owners of our house, which our children hauled up to the second floor to use as a school desk.  When they moved out, the desk stayed in the former bedroom that we repainted and turned into our living room, and the desk was, at first, taken over by my husband as his fly tying bench.  When the children finally removed all of their various pieces of furniture about a year ago, he moved his fly tying bench Into the other, smaller bedroom, which had a built-in desk (also from the prior owners of our house). 

I've tried to use the big metal desk as a writing desk a few times, but there was a slight problem:  I didn't have a desk chair unless I wanted to constantly be hauling the desk chair from my office on the third floor down to the living room on the second floor.  Since the desk chair is quite heavy - and I'm quite clumsy - I had tried substituting in a massage chair that we bought eons ago, but it's in a permanently reclined position, so it was even harder on my back than the futon.  I tried using an old rocking chair, but when I leaned back to stretch for any reason, it would rock back - and because it no longer has rockers that sit quite even, I would find myself having to constantly get up and reset where I wanted the chair, which is VERY distracting when you're trying to concentrate on a story line.

So, this past week, when my current workplace had a sale on desk chairs, I got a really nice one....and I can't express how truly liberating it is to sit in a comfortable work space, close enough to my husband that he doesn't feel the need to come up over the stairs to tell me what's going on in whatever show he's watching, yet far enough away to be able to put in my ear buds and ignore the television, and concentrate on working on the old/new tale.  Roth Garrett and Rhawneth Kenna are speaking to me about what happens after the part that I had already transcribed onto the computer, and all the bits in between the scenes I have on the various notes are finally coming in.

If you don't see me here for a month or so, that means that the writing is going well, so while I'm working on the next tale, feel free to visit the brand-spanking-new Facebook page I've made for it.  Instead of continuing to struggle with a clever title that someone else hasn't already come up with, I've decided to name the book after the lead character: Rhawneth.  During insomnia periods, when I didn't want to ruin the work by reading and trying to edit when my brain wasn't functioning 100%, I've found several models to represent the many characters who inhabit the world Rhawneth lives in, and they appear on the "fan page".  I would appreciate any feedback or alternate suggestions for the characters here:  https://www.facebook.com/Rhawneth

Thank you, Constant Reader, for coming to visit my blog yet again and wading through another long dissertation.  Let me know if you have anything you would like me to address in future blogs.

Preparing to switch gears

As the last few gaffs in the publication of "The Tiger's Cub" are taken care of, I'm preparing everyone for the sale of the advance copies that I'm ordering so that I can sign them for those who are wanting signed copies.  I'm in touch with a couple of venues in Maine, where I hope to be able to meet and greet the friends and family who want to make the trip in order to save shipping costs.  I've checked with the post office about the shipping costs, and have the following comprehensive cost guide for any of the blog readers who are interested in ordering.  (Just contact me privately if you want to either get my snail mail to send me a check or money order or if you want to connect to my PayPal account to prepay.)

Here's the info:
The book itself = $15
In USA media mail = $3.50 (arrives 7 - 14 days)
In USA First Class = $5.75 (arrives 5 - 7 days)
In USA Priority Mail = $6.95 (arrives 1 - 2 days)
International = $18.00 (Only checked first class - no apx. delivery date available)
All prices include packaging and tracking - so I can hunt the package down if it doesn't come when expected.

I'm hoping to have the books all sold by Christmas, but will gladly place more orders or travel outside of Maine if a book signing is set up after that.  In the meantime, I've managed to find most of my notes for the science fiction and will be starting to edit the written pages.  The characters are starting to talk to me again, so I suspect there'll be another book that will be getting shopped around in a year or so.

I'm just thinking that I need to get it to a company that does the publicity stuff for me, as I'm exhausted from doing all of this.....

A link for anyone interested in reviewing "The Tiger's Cub"

My publisher has been saying, every time I mention the "official release date" in any of my posts on any of the sites I belong to, that "advance copies will be available before then".  When she told me that the official first book sent through the printer was on it's way for my final approval (and I posted the previous blog post about advertising, which she insisted needed to be started as she seems to forget that I've been already spreading the word), I tested what would happen if anyone followed my suggestion to search "The Tiger's Cub" to see what I meant about the results......

and this came up at my publisher's web site, two full months before the "official release date" that she gave me:  http://www.writewordsinc.com/tigerscubp.html

So......

If you want a copy to review for Goodreads, Amazon, your local newspaper, etc., contact Write Words Inc. for your copy.  Or you can just contact me, as I plan on ordering my own set of advance copies for friends, family and fans who have requested a book signing as soon as I can set up a venue in Maine.  (Those who live too far away to meet and greet are getting theirs via snail mail - and, if the book arrives as it's supposed to today, I'll be confirming mailing costs, so I should be able to give a very accurate cost by this weekend.....)

Thank you to the constant readers who come and read these blogs.  Soon you'll be reading about my adventures with the next project:  the as-yet-unnamed science fiction/fantasy tale....

And going into the home stretch......

Too tired to think straight this morning, I'm going to share these hints on how to advertise so that those who actually got decent sleep last night can add any suggestions that I missed (as I covered babysitting for my granddaughter so my son could work a double shift):

1. Authors can join Group forums at sites like Yahoo and Google. Don't just join author's groups, either, but readers' groups and any kind of group interested in your subject. If your book features a bowling detective, hit bowling groups. (Done. I have a lot of truckers thinking I'm weird, but....)

2. Use social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Linked-In to set up profiles about yourself and mention your book, with links to purchase sites. Update those messages whenever there is news about the book and "SHARE" the information. (Done - ad nauseum, per some.)

3. Google "Internet Radio" and your book's subject together, for a list of Internet Radio Stations, LISTEN to some of the shows, then contact that show's moderator, listed on the web site (giving positive feedback on something you have heard), and offer to be a guest on talk radio. (Done, but no major responses in the positive yet because they want to be able to read the book first. Some have been sent "Night of the Tiger" as a prep for this next book.)

4. FAX or e-mail press releases to your local paper, TV, and local Radio stations, and all nearby media outlets and those wherever your book is set, and to organizations that might be interested in the subject with contact information and saying you are available as a guest speaker (keep this local as most of them will not kick in for travel expenses). (Ongoing. No real positive responses yet - unless I pay for advertising - and a lot of Maine towns won't run a press release "if you don't have direct ties to the town". Not only is Maine a little snobby about those "from away", they're even snobby about those who were born and raised in the state.)

5. If you can afford it, hire a publicist to arrange an Internet tour where you can be a guest on other people's blogs and so on. (No cash = unable to do this one.)

6. Start a blog of your own, if you have time to keep it up. Post often. (Done. It's called "Living In A Writer's Head", should anyone wish to check it out, and I've posted the link in my profile. in Facebook.)

7. Get the book reviewed as often as you can. If people tell you they have read it, ask them to please post a review on amazon.com. Save the reviews as they will be useful advertising to put into the print edition. (Ongoing for "Night of the Tiger" and had some select peeps do so for "The Tiger's Cub". Once it's up on Amazon, I'd love to have some of y'all go on and review it there and on Goodreads for me.)

8. Once the book shows up on there, set up your free author's page at amazon.com. (Have done so for "Night of the Tiger" and will be adding "The Tiger's Cub" ASAP)

9. Read books on advertising, promoting and marketing your book. (I've read a BUNCH of these - and they all have this same list in one form or another.)

10. Tell your mother, brother, co-workers, and all the biggest gossips you know. (An age-old joke in my husband's family from before the internet: "The major forms of communication are telephone, telegraph, teleneighbor ["tell-a-neighbor", technically]....lol)

For anyone thinking I've been sitting on this while waiting for the final piece to fall into place, try Googling "The Tiger's Cub" (complete with the quote marks so you can narrow it down to things NOT related to raising tiger cubs or Tiger Cub Scouts). The basic idea, per one of the marketing books I've been reading, is to have most of the hits on the first page be about you.......

Any other suggestions I've missed?