Weds: Getting Ready to Pack

 Wednesday morning, almost our last day here on Vancouver Island. I'm sitting out on the verandah, enjoying the quiet view of golfing green and forest as I enjoy breakfast waffles. Across the way, a dog barks, then another. A chain of different dogs take up the chorus, ending with a deep, baying howl. Something's wrong. Silence, as if we all wait to see what's next. The absolute quiet continues. No deer breaks from cover. A car starts up. Construction ratatatat echoes from a distant jackhammer. And the forest breathes again.

We leave Friday morning for the 2.5 hour Ferry ride and will cross back into the U.S. at Blaine, then down the coast cutting east just below Everett, home to Spokane. Yes, I'm eager to be home, but I will remember the quiet peace of the mornings and the beauty of this island, our trip south to Victoria (and Butchart Gardens, the Royal British Columbia Museum).

Butchart Gardens (September 2023)

Update on writing. Not much to report. I'm working on two projects at once, so slow but steady going on both. My 'doggone mystery' has new scenes, and the collection of short stories for subscribers to my newsletter is taking shape. Allen said that it sounds like some of my stories come from dreams. Perhaps. And perhaps they start when I sit on the verandah on that red swing and listen to the morning.

At the Swan's Pond (September 2023)

What's next? Football season? Settling into that time of year when the leaves change and we're reminded that winter's on its way? What one thing would you like to accomplish this winter? in the coming year?

IWSG September 5: From the Beginning!

This month's Challenge Question from the Insecure Writer's Support Group took me back in time. All the way back to July 2015, just 8 years ago, and I'm already at 46 (out of 118). Go HERE to read that original entry! 

What I've appreciated most . . . is how effectively this vibrant online community connects writers who care about other writers and writing, regardless of genre or level. Each month, I appreciate not only those words from those who visit me. Visiting others who post for IWSG has introduced me to others who very quickly become mentors and friends. I feel like cheering at each success, each new book released, each challenge faced down, and I learn from each IWSG member I visit.

Writing, for me, is essentially a solitary act, even when I'm doing research. Being a part of IWSG is an important way to stay connected to others who care about writing. IWSG also creates a certain discipline for looking within, to asssess where my goals and commitment to writing are taking me. This process of reflection opens up new understandings of what is possible, what I might like to do next.

And one more resource I've become addicted to: that connection IWSG has to Write ... Edit ... Publish, an every-other-month writing challenge for flash fiction. October's prompt is inspired by the appropriately ghoulish Phantom of the Opera. Just a little different way to keep those writing wings moving.

Thank you to generous IWSG members who volunteer as hosts each month. And thank you for those who work somewhat behind the scenes to create anthologies that celebrate our work. 

I hope we all will celebrate this wonderful resource!

More words next time!

May your own writing go well.

Nanaimo Cove, Vancouver Island (Sept 2023)

Our temporary home.

About the Insecure Writer's Support Group: Our goal is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Each month, an optional question is posted. You can post your response on your own blog OR talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the September 6 posting of the IWSG are:

 Sonia Dogra, J Lenni Dorner, 

Pat Garcia, Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen, 

and Meka James!

Why not grab a cup of coffee, visit our co-hosts AND maybe 12 others to see what they've posted?

Walk in the woods . . . and a psychological thriller . . .

Yesterday we spent nearly an hour, strolling through the Milner Gardens, just about a 30 minute drive away from where we're staying on Vancouver Island. Billed as "an ancient forest and garden oasis by the sea," I can agree. Even royalty has sipped tea here. 

We took in the views and admired the hidden fountains and rhododendron shrubs so large, their gnarled branches looked like trees.

Old growth Douglas firs stretched hundreds of feet to the sky as we followed forest trails down to the beach, overlooking the Strait of Georgia. 

Feet tired, on the way home, we stopped at the Mykong River Restaurant to feast on a seafood hot pot (shrimp and scallops in a delicious oyster sauce). Nearly a perfect day. OK, it was truly a perfect day.

Update on the writing. Just for this month, I'm working on a side project, final edits on a psychological thriller, not my usual genre. In fact, most of the people I know don't read dark stories, and I'm really not sure what my next step is. 

I began writing Mothers Don't Die when I first retired. Excited to begin serious editing, I took a writing class. On the very first day of class, our teacher warmly welcomed us and said, "Work on any project you wish. Any stage -- prewriting, drafting, or editing. But, please, no violent stories." I set my story aside and said to myself, "I might as well write about mermaids!"

That led to my first book, The Mermaid Quilt and Other Tales. One of those short stories morphed into Standing Stones, and thus began a series of historical fiction set in the 1840s in Scotland, Canada, and Australia. 

Inspired by the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, I then switched genres to write The Seventh Tapestry, an art crimes mystery.

Mothers Don't Die is now ready for your reading pleasure, if you like dark, psychological thrillers. I'd love to hear what you think. Click HERE.

Meanwhile, I'm back to drafting that doggone mystery, Unleashed Pursuit and hope to have a workable first draft by the New Year! 

Happy September and happy reading!

A Writer's Drought?

 

We are staying the month on Vancouver Island, near Nanoose Bay. This picture shows the cove just a 6-minute walk down the hill. Despite daily news of wildfires all through Canada, and the aftermath of the devastating fires in Hawaii, here, the air is clear blue and the temperatures are averaging about 70F. So, of course, I feel a mix of guilty and gratefulness as I watch the deer come down out of the forest to graze on the golf course just outside our patio.

And we did escape the high temperatures and smoky air back home in Spokane. At least for this month. I still remember those drought restrictions in San Francisco so long ago. The water shortage was so bad, we could only flush the toilet once a day. Ewww! Somehow, we all survived. Yet, it's hard to watch those firemen and those voracious fires that are increasingly so difficult to stop.

I also thought of a writer's drought. When do we simply stop writing and cannot seem to start again?

Actually, we could see a writer's drought as somewhat of an ebb and flow, for we do persevere. Sometimes the story itself carries us on. Sometimes a morning's reflection brings new ideas, new images, or new words.

Sometimes writing a poem, even a haiku, short and disciplined, nurtures our creativity. That's one reason I do like writing challenges -- such as NaNoWriMo (the challenge to write 50,000 words in one month), or WEP's Flash Fiction challenge every other month (that's Write...Edit...Publish...).

Sometimes belonging to a writing group or having a writing partner to share new words with brings helpful feedback and new understandings. Either can be a rare gift.

If you have ever encountered a writer's drought, what strategies or events brought you back to writing?

Meanwhile, I will return to the patio, to sit in the swinging chair, to watch the deer, and simply reflect on this complex and still beautiful gift of life.

Image from Ignited Moth

Write...Edit...Publish: A Summer Taste of Chocolate . . .

 Just in time, here is my flash fiction post for the August prompt from Write...Edit...Publish:

Chocolat

I sat on the somewhat lumpy swinging chair on the veranda, hoping no one would find me. Ever since Wanda Jane began the tradition of afternoon tea, I wanted to hide. If you didn’t want to drink any of the teas she provided, from mint to ginger to green, she did offer hot cocoa. But that was nothing like the chocolat chaud we tasted in Paris. Allen wasn’t here with me now, to tease me about the lumps in the cocoa or even Wanda Jane’s officiousness, as she moved around the tables, offering hot water to dilute the chocolate.

So long ago, yet that had been our first time in Paris. We walked to the top of the Eiffel Tower, entranced by the fireworks at the end of the day, the flashes of color every bit as bright as the city lights arrayed below us. We rented a small pension, five flights up a circular stone stairway with no elevator. I smiled. No way could I walk up those stairs now. How many museums we wandered then, even that small Picasso Museum, a little out of the way in the Marais District with its rows of 17^th Century houses.

We found Van Gogh’s last self-portrait at the Musée d'Orsay. A tour guide set a fast pace as she led a crowd of some forty tourists past us, pointing to the left and the right. We simply stood in one place, drinking in every moment as if we had nowhere else to be. What a joy it was to be an independent traveler.

Ah, I wouldn’t go on that long flight without him. Better to sip the hot cocoa and remember. If I close my eyes, I can still see him before me, holding out that steaming cup of rich, hot chocolate, embellished with crème, and beside it, an unforgettable crusty, warm croissant, and saying, “One day, we’ll return to Paris, my love. Even if only in our memories.”

Word Count: 437 (FCA)

About Write...Edit...Publish...  Every other month, writers are encouraged to post a flash fiction and read what others have written. You can go HERE to see more about the guidelines. 

As you may have guessed, this month's prompt was inspired by that deliciously romantic movie, Chocolat! NOTE: For this August prompt, the deadline is August 16-18. 

I barely made this deadline between problems with internet access and problems accessing files saved by that useful but sometimes frustrating iCloud! But you can still participate. A lovely prize awaits you. See DETAILS HERE.

And if writing flash fiction is new to you, Denise Covey has written a stunning and helpful 'how to' that features her take on the prompt, chocolat. Read it HERE.

HERE'S ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY FOR WRITERS: You may want to submit to WEP's upcoming 2024 FLASH FICTION ANTHOLOGY (release approximately May, 2024). Submissions are due by December 31, 2023, with DETAILS HERE.

NOTE: That inspirational picture of chocolat seen just above my flash fiction came from BarTalks.net with their fascinating and detailed discussion of how to make the best cappuccino! This might be fun to try once we're back home. 

May you enjoy every day of these last days of summer.

Vacation . . .

 

Here's the view from our temporary apartment at The Swan's Pond on Vancouver Island. I don't think I've ever simply sat on a swinging settee to simply enjoy the view without a round of tasks prompting me to work. The morning quiet was marred only by the trickle of water at a nearby pond and an occasional passing flock of Canada geese. So far this morning, I've seen three young deer scampering along a woodland trail across the way. This is our home for the next month, and barring a limited kitchen (hot plate?), I think we'll do just fine.

Yesterday, we walked about 5 minutes over to a nearby cove to discover a winding path through a sunlit forest of pine, cedar, and eucalyptus. Once at the cove, we discovered giant granite rocks to climb on and a series of little beaches overlooking Nanoose Bay. We should not have climbed on those rocks! We are too old. But the view of the cove before us, once again, was simply beautiful.

Overhead, another small flock of Canada geese just flew low over the patio. I guess they're headed north, and we'll need to think of winter some day soon. For now, it's enough to simply sit here on the patio, and, I guess more true than any other time, to be in the moment.

IWSG August 2: Conflicted over Writing?

This month's Challenge Question from the Insecure Writer's Support Group had me thinking about where my stories come from. August 2 question: Have you ever written something that afterwards you felt conflicted about? If so, did you let it stay how it was, take it out, or rewrite it?

This month, I'm co-presenting at our local author's group on how cultural diversity (our own and that of others) may influence our writing. At times, this issue can be controversial, so I'm digging pretty deep into what cultural diversity is and what issues it raises for writers. I was surprised to learn that what I write about comes directly from very early childhood experiences. Probably not a surprise to some of you writers out there!

I grew up in a pretty gritty blue-collar family. My mother was a Hollywood starlet and an alcoholic. One of my stepfathers was a steelworker. We moved so often I don't know how many high schools I attended, but my dream was to go to college, and one day I did.

The very first book I wrote is still in a drawer. Mothers Don't Die is about a serial murderer who terrorizes young women.

I didn't like the subject, but I loved to write, so shifted to historical fiction, inspired by that great economic disruption known as the Industrial Revolution, where rich landowners ousted sharecropper farmers from their land and replaced them with sheep. Standing Stones began a family saga set in 1840s Scotland and led me to write four books. Much of my fiction is about that struggle to create something good, despsite formidable odds. Fun to write. Happy endings. Mostly.

Fascinated by art and culture, I began a new series about art crime, starting with The Seventh Tapestry. I was about 50% into a second art crime story set in Egypt, when a dream about a dog and a runaway woman led me to a new series, organized around the working subtitle: A Doggone Mystery. Maybe I could write a cozy mystery, I thought. Here are my two working covers.

Which one do you think pulled me right in?

What I learned pretty darn quickly, despite excellent advice from Paul Tomlinson's Mystery: How to Write Traditional & Cozy Whodunits, is that the cozy mystery genre is a shoe that doesn't fit. Right now, I don't care. The words are coming. I love my story, and have not quite resolved if my heroine will achieve that happy ending.

So, my answer to IWSG's question: Have you ever written something that afterwards you felt conflicted about? If so, did you let it stay how it was, take it out, or rewrite it? Maybe I left that first story in the drawer (and maybe one day, it will come out), but now I know those themes that I have struggled with and have felt conflicted about stay with me. They influence what I write today.

James Baldwin said, "“Every writer has only one story to tell, and he has to find a way of telling it until the meaning becomes clearer and clearer, until the story becomes at once more narrow and larger, more and more precise, more and more reverberating.”

Thank you, IWSG, for a question that challenges us to rethink the issue of conflicts -- both at the story and the personal level, perhaps leading us to understand anew what and why we write.

I'm looking forward to seeing what others have written this month, and you can too. As Rick Bylina says, "Write on!" And, check out the links below.

About the Insecure Writer's Support Group: Our goal is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Each month, an optional question is posted. You can post your response on your own blog OR talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the August 2 posting of the IWSG are

Kate Larkindale, Diane Burton, Janet Alcorn, and Shannon Lawrence!

Why not visit them to see what they've posted?

Marketing for Indie Writers? Take a Leap of Faith . . .

Today has certainly been exciting! And you can take advantage of some 150 writers offering (with no strings at all) their cozy mystery books for free in three categories: Contemporary, paranormal, and historical -- including my own art crime mystery, The Seventh Tapestry.

What are you waiting for? You can go to Amazon direct for The Seventh Tapestry OR jump onto the Cozy Mystery Book Club Book Blast page to snag some freebies until midnight tonight.
 

You may already know how challenging marketing can be for a self-published indie writer (that's me). So when I found out about this opportunity from the Sisters in Crime Puget Sound (a regional group linked to the national SinC group that supports and encourages those who love mysteries), to list my cozy art crime mystery, I jumped right in. By the way, my personal Kindle freebie will run through July 29.

What did I anticipate from this Cozy Mystery free book blast that runs once a quarter? Maybe some downloads. Maybe some trickle through purchases or an increase in numbers of pages read. Perhaps a review or two. But most importantly, I'm hoping for new readers who will like my stories.

What did I do to support this Cozy Mystery blast? I set my book, The Seventh Tapestry, free for four days. Sent out a ton of e-mails, posted to Twitter and Facebook, and sent out a newsletter.

So how did I do? Truly, I wasn't sure what would happen. By this afternoon, I heard back from a few e-mails, which was so nice, and I sold maybe 4 books. But the exciting results? Some 1,191 people downloaded their free copy. Even if only a few people go on to read another book of mine on Kindle Unlimited or actually buy a copy, this is the biggest response I've ever gotten on any promotion. So, playing the numbers, if even 5% read any of my other books, that's an increase of 60 people. Perhaps some will go on to write a review, and maybe some will even sign up for my newsletter! 

So, what do you think? The ability to reach new readers is an amazing opportunity -- at least for cozy mystery writers. Perhaps this opportunity will motivate me to write the second art crime mystery sooner!

Happy reading, happy writing, and happy summer! We have a few days of respite here in Spokane, but the sun will be back out with temps in the 90s next week.  Stay cool!

Source: Jenna Sauber, "10 Things You’ll Understand If You Prefer to Stay Inside and Read."