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Quotes for the uninspired

Posted on May 11, 2015

Maybe it’s the rain or the fact the last four days have been chock full of activities (all fun, all different), but my brain is tired. I’ve been trying to get back in the groove of blogging regularly but I’m more fixated on my long fiction, sewing a new wardrobe and listening to Regency romances as a change of pace. I’d forgotten that I went for several years immersed in froth from Georgette Heyer and George Macdonald Fraser novels that could be consumed mindlessly like snacks. I dug around in my multi-gigabytes of saved documents and came up with these words of wisdom, since I don’t have anything original or pithy or wise to share right now. Plus, my keyboard is acting weird. Then there’s…

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Categories: Modern life

Sad/Happy

Posted on May 8, 2015

Mother’s Day is still difficult for me – I’m flooded with memories of my dear mother, snatched away on July 4, 1998. It took me about five years before I was able to stand in front of a card display and not break down weeping. I’d make my daughter-in-law cards on my computer so I didn’t have to face the public wall of happy greetings. I occasionally get caught in the grip of grief again (it never goes away, just morphs into a dull ache) and have to fake a smile when the kids have me over for brunch – Mother’s Day is for the living, after all. Sometimes I’ll sift through the bins of photos I’ve stored for decades. There were more happy…

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Categories: Family, Modern life

Copyright, Copy-wronged…

Posted on May 4, 2015

You know, spending time surfing the Internet isn’t always a waste of time. On the weekend, I decided to search for the non-de-plume I used way back when I started submitting short stories that were not, shall we say, regular Family rated fare. We’re talking 1999-2001 when I was still living in Booneyville and had a lot of time on my hands when I wasn’t gardening like I was being paid to do it or decorating my house. Lo and behold, the name did pop up on a couple of websites. Back then, the first erotic short story I submitted was accepted for publication. They paid me what seemed like a great deal of money back then – $240USD for the right to print.…

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Categories: What I'm Doing, writing

What’s old is new again

Posted on May 1, 2015

It’s hard to believe that two weeks have passed since I attended the Spring intensive Writers’ Workshop with Barbara Kyle and Bobby Rotenberg. Aside from the terrific learning and networking (I’ll tell you more about the Clown and the ‘Cat Scan’ later) and the luxurious accommodation at the London House in Guelph, we were treated to two days of gourmet meals, wine and fresh-baked snacks. I ask you, how hard is it to concentrate on plot and pace when the scent of gingerbread cookies fresh from the oven wafts into the dining room/classroom? It’s challenging. One of the new/old discoveries was that a dairy is producing cow’s milk in glass bottles. It’s pasteurized, bright white, without stabilizing chemicals or other unwanted add-ins. I tried…

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Categories: Modern life

April 17-19 – Spring Writers’ Retreat

Posted on April 20, 2015

London House B&B, Guelph. Acclaimed writers Barbara Kyle and Robert Rotenberg hosted eight aspiring novelists for a weekend of networking, food and wine and exciting conversations about writing powerful and sale-able work. On Friday evening we began with introductions and refreshments, cautiously, as a newly-formed group of strangers always does. Fueled by amazing food and wine our reticence disappeared as the layers of high-volume conversation piled up around the dinner table and our personal stories got told – funny, sad, similar, awe-inspiring. We began to meld as a team and over the weekend, it just kept getting better. Sounds hokey, but that ‘clan effect’ is what happens when skilled facilitators – and Bobby and Barbara were amazing – convene like-minded writers for intensive discussions…

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Categories: writing

Tagged: Barbara Kyle, London House B&B, Robert Rotenberg, Spring Writers' Retreat