"If wishes were fishes we'd all swim in riches"

Happy 2016!

I started the year with an old idiom I used to hear a lot because I have several wishes that have been rolling through my head as we neared the end of 2015. Here are just a few:

First and foremost, I have a soul-deep wish that all who read this line will have a happy and prosperous new year. In short, I hope that all my readers swim in riches in 2016 and beyond. No matter where you live, you deserve a safe place to live where rain, snow, heat and snow are kept at bay. You deserve enough food to eat and perhaps a bit more to share with others who are not as lucky. And above all, you deserve to be respected and loved.

My other wishes mostly revolve around the other names that I'm seeking after finding that a good friend passed away a couple of years ago. The discovery that a seemingly healthy man who encouraged me to try new, healthy foods and led me to find many new "favorite foods" over the years had passed from the same health issue that is currently plaguing my husband has made me recall other names from my past - and I'm listing the people I'm seeking here on the off chance that one of my blog readers may know this person and can instigate a reconnection in the coming year...

So, here is the list of people (including the last place I saw them):

Donald T. Wyman, Jr. - my sister's first husband - who was called "Tommy" by his family to avoid confusion when he was in ther presence of his father, who was usually called "Don". When my sister divorced him, the man she called "Donnie" was living in Bangor, but his parents were living in Kissimee, Florida. I would love to reach him to find out if he ever got a photo of him and my husband (who was still my fiance at the time of the divorce) fake kissing under the mistletoe at my mom's house in what I believe was a Christmas 1982 prank. Our camera malfunctioned and my sister destroyed all photos of him after their divorce, so it's one of those "fond memories" I'd love to have in a photo album for my kids.

Kimball Blake, who was living in St. Cloud, Florida in an apartment with my sister and the above man in 1979 when I attempted to begin my college years in Orlando. I've always wanted to tell Kim "Thank you" for trying to help out a total stranger when I was struggling to break away from my sister's influence and find myself. Some things, like the description of a love bug smashing against his motorcycle helmet (which won him extra fried chicken when he grossed out my sis) and a joke about me being "the White Tornado" when he'd step into the shower and step out to a clean apartment, have followed me into other situations....

Blair Colyer, a truck driver whom I "dated" off and on at Bangor Community College in 1980 and 1981, He inadvertently became part of my first published novel's lead character, as he was a truck driver with long hair and a beard, he smoked, and he introduced me to Bloody Marys. I'd love to be able to send him a book and see if he still likes the blues, as he used to gather up a group of people to go to a blues bar in downtown Bangor, driving us there and safely home in his van.

David M. Faunce, whom I met at a religious retreat called "Antioch" and who became a pen pal for many years afterward. The last time I knew where he was, I had sent a letter that I was breaking up with Bill and was thinking about where to go and what to do next, thinking that I might go back to Orlando and apply for a job at DisneyWorld (which was one of the places that I wanted to work while living in the apartment with Don and Kim in St. Cloud, but which my sister absolutely refused to let me apply for because she'd heard "bad things"). Dave offered to let me stay in his apartment in New York along the way, but when I sent a follow up letter that we'd reconciled, the second letter came back. I've often wondered what happened between the break up letter and the reconciliation letter.

The list may grow in future posts, but those are some of the names that are coming right to the forefront this morning, as I eat my cereal and drink my coffee to prepare for a 10 hour shift at Staples. My body, as always, is complaining that I'm getting too old to be doing this to myself, so I'm going to close on one last wish:

I wish that either my books would sell or that I can find a job that is gentler on my aging bones. This weekly "pallet workout" thing is really getting old.....

Blessed be, and may your New Year be truly happy.


Addendum January 2:

On another drive with my husband, we were discussing this blog post and who we've found over the years among our friends and family we'd lost track of. Some of the ones we've searched for over the years have been found in the obituary pages. Heart attacks, car accidents, some "after a long illness" and others simply listed as "died suddenly". Others have been located, most on Facebook, or through others who know them and pass on messages or get us snail mail addresses....

We came up with one more person to add to the above list:

Barbara Johnson, a beautiful singer from Oakland, Maine whom I met at B.C.C. - and who introduced me to a friend of hers. He was dating another girl at the time, but then they broke up and we started dating....and then we stopped for a while....and then we started again....and then we lived together ....and then we got married....and it might be fun to let Barb know that her innocent introduction has resulted in almost 35 years of my hubby and I being together.

While we both express the hope that this post doesn't result in an attentive reader sending us another obituary, we've come to understand that nor everyone gets to grow old and complain about their bodies falling apart. As the hubby likes to say "It's always a good day when you're above ground."

Reconnecting

I was trying to think of a good title for this morning's post, but with my mind whirling, it's hard to think straight, so I opted for simple....and here's why it's "Reconnecting":

On Saturday, my hubby and I made a drive to Vermont, where his dad and step-mom live, to deliver Christmas presents in a surprise visit. It's normally a little over 4 hours for the trip without any stops along the way, and with the weather reports all saying "Sunny, but cold", we thought it would be a "no problem" trip.

Obviously, no one gave that weather report to the mountain passes that shorten the trip, however, so we found ourselves on a two lane highway that goes over the mountains in the middle of a white out, unable to see more than 5 feet ahead and on very slippery roads. (I'm glad the hubster insisted that the chair we were bringing as a present wouldn't fit in my car, as his truck has 4 wheel drive capability, and we needed that a couple of times.) Needless to say, we took the longer route home, staying in the valleys as much as possible for the return trip, relying less on the 4 wheel drive and relaxing a bit more, only hitting some snow flurries on the one section that didn't give us an option of a valley passage over the White Mountains.

The long drive and the hairy period when going through a total white out situation allowed us a long time to talk, and on arriving home, I set out to locate some of the people we spoke of during that trip whom we've lost touch with at one point or another. That's what my title refers to: that we were intending on reconnecting with some long lost friends and relatives. Of course, it helps that, in the years since a friend gave me my first internet-capable computer with the understanding that I would do research for him, I've become something of an expert at internet searches, coming up with fewer and fewer pages that I dubbed "pink bunny slippers" in my early days (because the results had as much to do with what I was searching for as a pair of pink bunny slippers) and actually finding what I'm looking for 99% of the time these days.

Sometimes, however, this isn't as good a thing as I'd like, as the search for one of our missing friends brought me to this:

http://www.derrynews.com/obituaries/george-dubois/article_bb102791-cc1e-521e-881a-1652d80f4c0b.html

George and my hubby used to work together at The North Conway Racketball Club back when playing racketball was a big thing. The club also had a gym, a sauna and a jacuzzi, and since I was related to one of the employees, I got to use the facilities for free. George (or, as we called him with heavy fake Mexican accents, "Hor-hey") was always a blast to hang around, and Buck the Wonder Dog, who wore a hat and sunglasses while riding in his master's canoe, was one of the sweetest animals you'd ever meet.

Of course, there's a bit of a Twilight Zone feel about this find, as my husband was diagnosed in August with Deep Vein Thrombosis and is currently on Xarelto to thin his blood and hopefully dissolve a clot in his thigh. It really brings a bit of fear to roost to know that someone who was always eating healthy, always on the go, has passed away from this very thing....and two years ago, at the same age my husband is right now....

Do I need to express why, in addition to trying to figure out what to get for our siblings, parents, and grandchildren, I have a little niggling voice that keeps telling me I need to worry about next year and what it may bring my way? (I try to shut that voice down, but it's like a rat in the sewers. I block up one exit and it just goes through the pipes to come back up somewhere else.)

In the meantime, one of the ones whom I was going to search must have been thinking of us a few days ago, as my hubby's only remaining sibling, whom we hadn't heard from in a couple of years, sent us a Christmas card that arrived yesterday. Even as we mourn George, we're very grateful that Dottie is still with us, as her ex-husband passed away in 2009 from Parkinson's and she had been seeming more and more depressed since then. With my hubby looking mortality in the eye, it's always good to hear from an older sibling who is still hanging on.

So my advice to all who read my blog is simply this: Use the holiday season for something more than just buying gifts and dreaming about what you'd really love to find under the tree. Reconnect with family and friends before they're gone from your sight forever. Tell everyone how much you love them in little ways, whether it be a simple hug and a kiss or by doing something extra special for them that tells them how much they mean to you.

You never know when that place at your table will be vacated, so don't waste another day.

I hope that all who read this have a truly magical holiday season and that you all know how much I appreciate you coming to visit me here.

Blessed be, in 2016 and beyond.

P.S. Having visited my mom last week and being given the chance to reconnect with a former neighbor who was as much of a mom to me as my own mother, I'm even more determined to locate my great-grandfather's family. Going over my findings with my mom while delivering some paperwork about her siblings who died in Canada as babies, I'm determined to leave the legacy of our family tree for others to use as a "jumping off point" in finding their branch of my family tree. At the rate I'm going, I may find that I'm just 6 degrees of separation from many of you....and we may well be related not too many generations back......

"Holy Hope Diamond, Batman!"

I've been getting rates for shipping three books, weighing in at a little less than 5 pounds, to places around the world for anyone who wishes to order the unofficially "boxed" set of the current trilogy - especially those who live in other countries. I don't know about my faithful readers, but I'm currently suffering from sticker shock, as I took the advice of my local Post Office Manager and used the furthest possible point on the globe (and therefore, the most expensive place) to use as the "international ship" destination.

To send three books, valued at apx. $60, to Sydney, Australia via Fedex at the "International Economy" rate would cost (big drum roll here): $163.00!

I'm not sure if it would make any kind of a difference to lower the "estimated replacement cost" should the package get lost along the way, but Holy Hannah! That price tag may well suggest why many of my friends outside the US will go for the $2.99 Kindle before they cough up the kind of cash they'd need to get the paperback sent to them!

In the meantime, I'm trying to re-do the buttons on the web page (which is also doing some shaking and shifting to a possibly shorter web address) to reflect that we at Northern Bard Publications are willing to mail you the books - but you need to be willing to absorb the shipping fee, as we aren't made of money (yet).......

So if you don't see any blog entries for a little bit, imagine me with little patches of hair gone as I further investigate shipping options and get the web page redone.....

It might be a bald New Year at this rate.....

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

My rose is ready to show to the world....again. "Night of the Tiger" is as corrected as it's going to ever be, the proof arrived today and is as perfect as I was hoping it would look. The cover is as fine in print as it was in Dee Jae's files on the computer (and to be honest, I think it looks even more awesome in the print form, better than I ever expected it to look).

So, the proper approvals have been accomplished. Amazon has been properly notified and is finalizing the entry onto their site. The Kindle, I'm told, will be up for sale within the next 48 hours, and the book should appear, with the title "Night of the Tiger: The Author's Cut", within the next week. We're still trying to work out the details for the listing, but Northern Bard Publications wants to do a "Buy Two, Get One Free" sale through January 1st on the Northern Bard editions....

And, even as we complete this book, my mind is already turning back to the historical romance. All the advances I've made recently in the search for my ancestors has me looking back, and it seems time for this one to come next.....

It is, after all, already over 600 pages strong.....

*sighing as I settle in to begin editing first, as I suspect there is a lot more history than most will want to read in their historical romance......*

So, my "rose" becomes a fireblossom....

Maybe I'll explain what that means before the next book is published...

Maybe not....

*evil grin rising*

UPDATE: November 28 - After a couple of minor issues (I love - note the sarcastm - how advance emails don't always prevent minor issues from happening, no matter how many t's I cross and how many i's I dot), we have the newest edition on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Night-Tiger-Authors-Cut-Book/dp/0578172690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448717933&sr=8-1&keywords=debi+emmons ), but we've hit a little snag on the "buy two, get one free" until January 1st deal...

Amazon tells me they don't offer that deal any more, so if you're interested in that one, and you don't mind a little "one on one" interaction between yourself and an author, I have a Pay Pal account attached to my web site that will allow you to purchase the books direct through me. If you live outside of the United States and don't mind paying the shipping charges, I'll even discuss that option with the printer, allowing you to get the delivery hot off the presses.....

Unless you would like me to sign the book(s) and send the package from the local post office, in which case, you can drop me a line at debi.emmons.author@gmail.com....

And since I'm in sales person mode, how about a nice piece of swamp land in Northern Maine, just off the snowmobile trails, with great hunting options......

Yeah....

As necessary as it is to play the salesperson from time to time in these blogs, I really hate to be "pushing the brand" that hard...

Thank you for reading my blogs, even when I have my salesperson hat on.

A December release for the third Northern Bard offering and finding Kunta Kinte

We're in the last stages of the publishing process for the Northern Bard Publications editions of all three of the books (so far) in The Tiger Series - and will be offering a special "if you buy all three you save [an undecided amount]". I'd like to see it be along the lines of "third one free", but the finance director would like to see more money come in toward expenses and our cover artist is working on the next projects....talking to me excitely about cover ideas when we haven't decided which book is up next.....

I'm still reeling from the fact that our first "Northern Bard Publication" was just last year - this month in fact - and we've already managed to re-edit, re-cover, and re-release two more books already.

I wonder if my compadres at Northern Bard will get upset if I start calling them both slave drivers....

In the meantime, while waiting for my daughter to see a lawyer about a divorce, I had an "aha" moment in the special room for Maine genealogical research in the city. There was a statement written out by a lawyer from Somerville, Maine that another researcher had spoken of that mentioned my great-grandfather's name. (I've been trying to find my great-grandfather's parents for 35 years, but a lot of records were destroyed by fires before there was a central place for them to be kept....) I had read it once, but didn't fully recall the entire piece, so I looked it up again, as the first time, I was answering a question from the other researcher as to whether I might have information about this woman, as she and her husband had spent six weeks with the James and Susan I was seeking information on....

The second reading proved I had overlooked a few important things that coincided with what I was seeing in census reports.

As Kurt Vonnegut says  "Listen"

The only time I see James and Susan together in census reports is in 1870 in Albion, Maine. Per that record (as well as in the family bible recording such things), they were wed in April of that year, and he is listed as 19/her as 17. (Census reports used to be done when someone showed up at your house and started asking questions. A lot of times, in my experience, incorrect ages were given, but when my own father had to carry our birthdays in his wallet and do the math when asked ages.......)

Earlier this week, deciding to try to find more about the mysterious Mary Dow Evans who spent time with James and Susan in Albion for the six weeks prior to the birth of their second child (one of those things that I keep thinking would be more of a "family" type thing to do rather than a :"kind neighbor to Susan's parents" type thing), I started looking at the census reports for Palermo. Elisha and Mary are right next to Susan's parents in 1870. Mary, whose husband is listed by the other researcher as having died in October 1880, is listed as alone in the June census of Palermo - right next door to the now widowed Susan Dow and her three children. Susan's parents, James and Fannie, live on the other side of her.

An earlier foray into the census reports on a hunch, as several family members insist that James Parker Dow was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts and was adopted had been done. There is a city in Maine, incorporated in 1851 as Chelsea, as well - and there is a small family in the 1860 census that has a father, William, mother, Mary, a married daughter, Eliza, her husba -nd, and two children under the age of 5. Going back to the 1850 census, there are William, Mary, Eliza - and an older son named Llewellyn (my father's middle name, which we never figured out where it came from, since his mother named all her children after related people). In 1860, William was listed as 70 and Mary as 54. In the 1870 census, Mary is listed as 65. In 1880, she is listed as 75.

I suspect that I have my great-great-grandmother in my sights at the moment, so I decided to re-read the paper that the other researcher recommended....

And I heard the theme from The Twilight Zone as I read through the entire paper the second time.....

Written April 10, 1878, (and from the sound of the piece, to explain that Elisha and Mary hadn't abandoned their farm in Palermo, but had spent some time elsewhere), A. B. Bowler notes that, after marrying in 1864, Mary and Elisha moved to Palermo in 1867 - and into a farm right next door to James and Fannie Belden, per the 1870 census, which, in my mind, gives James, who would have been about 16 at the time of the move, three years to fall in love with his neighbor, Susan, and properly court her. They note that they moved some of their things to Albion for "temporary purposes" in the spring of 1873, returning to Palermo on June 10 (my grandfather's brother was born on June 14) after "five weeks and six days" in the home of Susan and James Dow (whom it is noted in this piece was "now deceased", as family records show James passed away in February of 1876). They moved back into their house in Palermo and had been there for almost two years at the time of the disposition by the lawyer, which was listed as having been marked by an "x" from both Mary and Elisha, neither of whom, it seems, could read or write.

Going back into Ancestry.com when I arrive home, I look back at Llewellyn Dow, whom a couple of relatives are trying to claim couldn't possibly be related because he was in northern Maine and the rest of the family I'm investigating live close to Augusta in the southern part of the state. Once again, the theme from The Twilight Zone again begins to play when I find Llewellyn's death certificate, listing his father as William Dow, no mother listed at all (perhaps one of the "family feuds" that make it impossible for me to share such information without hiding everyone's emails, as there are certain family members who don't speak to other certain family members?) - and his "place of birth is" (drum roll please): Somerville, Maine.

My little inner Sherlock Holmes is jumping for joy, as all of these little "connections" are making me feel that, after all this time, I've found the right leads to try to locate my great-grandfather's line.

Now I just have to have a couple of days to travel to places like Enfield, Maine, whose records on this era appear not to have been shared with Ancestry.com and also don't appear in the Portland Room (where the Maine records for the area), so I have to go to the source - the town office, local library, or perhaps even the cemetery - to get the confirmations on William, Eliza and the two children who seem to have died there.

Hopefully, Enfield didn't have a fire that destroyed their records.

And thus, the cobbler's children have no shoes.....

My mother used to say what I used as the title A LOT when we were growing up in reference to the fact that, even though my dad worked as an oil delivery person for the store next door, he would often forget to deliver to his own house until the tank was so dry that he had to clear sludge out of the lines before the furnace would run. She still says it in reference to my own husband, especially when I share with her what I'm about to share with you....

You see, my husband is what they call an HVAC Tech. HVAC stands for "Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning". He's been doing this for 30 years, so he's highly respected at his work site as the "go to" man for any answers to difficult problems that they may be having.

Unfortunately, in our own home, we have a furnace that has seen better days. When we moved in 17 years ago, it was soon discovered that the automatic water feed for the steam heat boiler no longer worked, so when the heat doesn't kick on when expected, it means that there isn't enough water in the boiler for it to work, so it shuts itself off rather than burn out any parts.

The current rate of having to fill the boiler should be about once a day, but it's usually accomplished by yours truly when I, the first one out of bed every day because I was raised in a farm-like situation in which my eyes open between 4 and 5 a.m. and I just can't stay in bed once I'm fully awake, will discover that the house is much colder than it should be. I then have to go out to the bulkhead in the garage - totally unheated and generally cold enough to see one's breath, even sometimes during the summer - or risk life and limb to go down the interior staircase, which has been slowly rotting since well before we bought the house and may well just collapse one of these mornings. Once in the basement, dodging the hanging spiders and spider webs, I make my way to the furnace and slowly add cold water until the level reaches a certain spot in the "sight glass" that indicates how full the water is, usually getting deafened in the process when the furnace hits the point that it has enough water to run and starts itself up...

Many discussions have gone on about this boiler, starting with my husband stating shortly after we first moved in that he would fix the auto-fill before he decided that, even with the proper auto-fill, the furnace (which at that time also provided the hot water for the house) wouldn't be able to keep up. Instead of the auto-fill, we bought a water heater to allow us to shut the furnace off during the summer months, saving heating oil. There has been talk of replacing the old furnace with something newer and more efficient, but we can't just replace the old piece of junk in the basement, because steam heat isn't as efficient as forced hot water heat, which would involve somewhere around 130 hours of work to re-pipe the whole house. There is also an argument about the cost.

In short, the work that he gladly does for other people on weekends to put money into his private savings account for the fishing trips he likes to do all summer can't possibly happen in his own house because it would take away his "free time"....even though the end result would be more money in the family budget at the end of it all because of the savings on the oil we have to use each winter to heat this poorly insulated farmhouse.

And thus, the cobbler's children have no shoes, because the thing that he does every day (and therefore is well paid for) can't possibly happen for free for his own family.....

Which is why, even though all my Christian friends keep telling me that "money is the root of all evil", I keep playing the lottery, praying to win the kind of money that would allow me to either hire someone else to come in to replace the furnace or, if I got REALLY lucky, would allow me to have this house torn down and a better, more efficient building put up with brand new electric wires (as this place has the old fabric-wrapped electric wires from the early days of electricity and may well cause a fire at any time) and the furnace my husband thinks of as the best possible solution for heating the house equally.

If course, if we were still young chickens with healthy bodies, I could take a page from my first novel and go work at a local strip club to earn extra cash for such a venture, but who wants to pay to see an almost 55-year-old woman with belly fat and saggy boobs dance around naked?

*le sigh*

Ah well, at least we have the new cover for the Northern Bard Publications version of "Night of the Tiger" (to be marketed as "Night of the Tiger: The Author's Cut" because we made some corrections to the tale). Hopefully I'll have the PDF of the interior ready for the printer tonight and we can release this one - with the option of doing all three books of The Tiger Series as a special priced set for Christmas 2015.

For those interested in seeing the new cover, here it is, with many thanks to Dee Jae Dow for all her hard work:

Thank you for letting me rant.

Now, for my next trick, I need to find the source of the "rodentia carcass" smell that is permeating my office space because my daughter's cat obviously mauled something enough to kill it, but didn't manage to keep his teeth on it long enough to produce it for us to praise him over it. Considering that the 9 bodies he's managed to show us over the past two months included mice, moles, and even a chipmunk (he's an indoor cat, so how that happens is beyond me), I'm almost scared to find the final resting place for whatever is stinking up the joint, but it has to happen before my nose hairs catch fire....

Laterz.....

Addendum 11/12/15: I think I might be in shock!

After the "freak out" I did on Monday (mostly because the rickety stairwell has started shuffling around when I go down it, which scared me half to death) and letting him see me go back down on Tuesday to refill (at which point he tried to pass off that I hadn't added much water, so I told him he was in charge of Wednesday, while he had a day off and I had to work), he came back from fixing a friend's heat with an automatic water feeder for our furnace!! He put it in this morning before going to work! Apart from going down now and then to check on the amount of oil in the tank, I don't have to go visit the spiders in the cellar any more!!!

Maybe it's just going to be a good day, as I also went into my email to find the message that the new version of "Night of the Tiger" meets the printing tests, so I've ordered the proof copy to make sure it prints to my specs...(and the digital file for the Kindle looks awesome, I must say!)

Thank you if you prayed for a fast resolution to this issue! I'm seriously in shock, and it may take a few days before it sinks in that I won this little battle!  *BIG grin as I go off to see what other mischief I can get into with the dog and cat today*

Addendum # 2 - 1/14/16:  Thinking of how much my legs love the auto-feeder....

My husband asked me last night if I had noticed anything about the automatic water feeder he put onto the furnace. I've only been downstairs since the original post to check the oil in the oil tank, so I had to admit that I barely looked at the nifty box with the glowing red light...

He told me that the box recorded how many times it's added water since he attached it, and in curiosity, I finally went downstairs just a few moments ago to look....

281

That's how many "add ins" the auto feeder has recorded in just two days over two full months.

281

And he didn't understand why I didn't want to be going down over those rickety stairs, possibly waking the raptor who lives in a dark corner under said stairs and making it opt to collapse the stairs with me on them, in order to enjoy the warmth from the furnace so far this winter.

281....

In 63 days...

Shall I make my hubby something special for dinner on my next day off for saving my legs all those trips?

I suspect I might.....

And now, a word from our sponsor....

I always loved that line in the old cartoons....

I've been re-editing "Night of the Tiger" and plan on calling it "Night of the Tiger: the Author's Cut". I finished a couple of days ago. Of course, we're also working on the covers at Northern Bard Publications, and the cover isn't quite ready yet due to a little miscommunication between myself and the photoshop artist...

Or so I thought, until she grudgingly showed me what she has so far (although the paint part isn't working quite as she wants), and we're doing well on it. Looking very nice so far, with the barn house against one of my photos of a mountain pass in autumn....

I think the Northern Bard Publications edition is going to be very nice indeed, and will be finished as soon as Dee Jae gets a run down street at dusk and gets the sign for BoxCars photoshopped in....

I really love working with creative types...