Posts by Hyacinthe

When Words Collide – Day 1

Posted on August 14, 2015

The First Five Pages My first exposure to When Words Collide in Calgary was the all-day workshop facilitated by Faith Hunter, an award-winning author of urban fantasy series. She opened with several startling statements about the world of publishing. In her experience, the Market is changing so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up with – mergers in NY, smaller, mid-size companies going out of business, Amazon advertising their own imprint – the incredible deluge of self-published books. Almost everyone has a Kindle of e-reader on a device. The balance of purchases has shifted to about 80% for ebooks. Penguin Random House will be doing mainly trade paperback (print on demand), ebooks and hardcover (the top 200 authors) mass market imprints. Predictions are there…

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Categories: What I'm Doing, writing

Multi-task juggling

Posted on August 10, 2015

Who says life slows down when you’re retired? Now that our security system is working, there was a bucket-load of unfinished yard work to do. The storm whipped all the weak branches off the willow trees in the yard and of course they were just large enough that if Hub runs over them with the lawnmower, they might get caught, so my task (and I grumbled about accepting it) was to sweep them up and deposit them on the growing pile of leaf compost. Done. I’m in Calgary this week visiting with my eighty-seven year old Aunty, because I said when we attended her weighty-fifth birthday bash, that I’d come out every year. That’s not a hardship. Plus, I get to spend time with…

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Categories: Modern life

Episode 2 – Before/During/After the Storm

Posted on August 6, 2015

As if the ticking-bomb glass breakage sensor wasn’t enough, in mid-afternoon the smoke alarm outside my office began shrieking. We ran around sniffing the air, opening doors, checking the furnace and water heater and the clothes dryer. No smoke, no fumes. Not again! We called the alarm monitoring company and luckily we got Larry again. My first words were, “Don’t send a fire truck.” He chuckled (somewhat paternally, I thought) and said no, because of the previous malfunction, they’d take our word for it that we weren’t crazed arsonists with the homeowners secret user name and passwords. Unfortunately, Larry couldn’t see an alert for the smoke alarm but he could see location #5 which was the device I’d deactivated earlier. Curiouser and curiouser. From…

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Categories: Modern life

Tumultuous Tuesday

Posted on August 4, 2015

I’m not sure what day it is. All I know is that the fun and games that made this Simcoe Day weekend memorable, began on Saturday morning. Our lovely cleaning lady was ‘refreshing’ the kitchen. We both hear a ticking sound that we thought was water dripping through the pipes leading from the master ensuite bathroom. We bopped upstairs and did a sweep of all the bathroom fixtures. Nothing was on. After some muttering and searching, I stood beside the origin of the sound and looked up at the glass breakage sensor that’s attached to our security system. Wouldn’t you know it? The damn thing was ticking. Fast. Like someone had tripped a detonator wire on a package of explosives. And there I…

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Categories: What I'm Doing

Ramblings

Posted on July 31, 2015

Why doesn’t this Simcoe Day weekend feel like an extended holiday? I think it needs another name – few people remember a bewigged old British guy in a frock coat. Costco was insanely busy yesterday, with about a dozen people lined up to fill their propane tanks. Tons of burgers, sausages and buns flying off the shelves. The price of three thick rib-eye and strip loin steaks is twice what we paid for our Christmas turkey. Maybe it’s time to forget mowing the back lawn and buy some cattle to fatten up. I went for my annual boob-squeeze this morning at 8 a.m. and the place was surprisingly busy. I joked with the technician that I wanted to get done early because we’re not…

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Categories: What I'm Doing