Today we are getting ready to leave for a visit to Utah to see my son and his family. An ordinary but busy day. I sit down at my desk to finish up some paperwork and notice my computer was off. I’d left it on sleep mode the night before. No matter. I push the button on the top, expecting it to light up. No joy. Press it again. Still no joy. Check all the plugs and notice that the surge protector strip into which it was plugged is off. That’s the ticket! I turn the strip on and push the computer button. Nothing. At that point, I started to sweat. Called to the Hubs. He came in and checked it over. Took out various plugs and reinstalled them. Pushed a button on the back and the fan motor came on, but only as long as he held the button. I’m toast. I’m ruined. The last revision of my book is on the computer and not backed up. I’m an IDIOT. I call my son-in-law, the computer whiz, who is out of town and tells me, “Why don’t you just leave it until you get back?” ARG! I’d have one hundred more worry wrinkles by that time. What to do? I pick up the computer, earning myself bad twinges in my back, and take it across the room and plug it into an outlet all on its own. HEAVEN SPEAKS! It comes on. More back twinges and I get it back to the surge protector strip, which is still working for plugs from my printers. I plug the computer into a different outlet. IT WORKS! Now I am trying to get my external drive recognized by the computer so I can back up my book. No joy. And the day has just started. 0 0
I’ve been absent from this site for a while. Editing my latest book is taking a LOT of time and is draining. Has that ever happened to you? Anyway, we took a trip to Maine las month, a 2260-mile car ride that we won’t repeat! Here are some highlights! Every year we travel to Maine to eat lobster and to sell books. My Rhe Brewster Mystery Series is set on the Maine coast, and I have faithful readers in the state, so I do signings at the Sherman’s store in Damariscotta and have my books at all the other Sherman’s in the state. This year we drove to Maine in order to bring back lobsters. On the way there this year, I had a chance to visit with a blogger I met online, the much-awarded children’s author, Janice Spina. My grandson has several of her books, which he has pronounced ‘good.’ He’s not much of a reviewer yet. Janice jumped the gun and wrote about our visit on her blog, which you can find here: https://jemsbooks.blog/2023/08/29/a-visit-from-a-fellow-author-noelle-a-granger/ Janice writes wonderful children’s books and has flexed her writing muscles by writing for teens and adults. Her books always have a message and are clearly written with love. Here are the covers of just three of her many books. And here we are sharing our books on her lovely back deck, where she hosts hummingbirds in great number. For us, she made a scrumptious deep-dish apple pie. I think my husband had a second serving! Over several hours, we chatted about writing, publishing, characters, and her upcoming annual trip to Aruba. I am SO envious. We stayed at our favorite place, Brown’s Wharf, which was Charles Keralt’s favorite place to stay, too. Our room faced the harbor and we had a 180 degree view from the deck. It’s lovely to wake up to the sound of seagulls in the morning, and to watch the lobster boats going in and out, along with some impressive yachts. While we were there, we dined on lobsters several times, along with fresh oysters, which we were supposed to shuck ourselves. I proved I was a zero in that regard and my daughter shucked mine for me. They were harvested earlier that day and were so delicious! We normally only eat steamed oysters but these, being fresh, we could eat without cooking. We feasted on scallops and also stopped for lunch one day at a local shack that sells only two things – a fish sandwich or a fish bowl. The fish is brought early in the morning and the lady who runs the shack fries up huge portions for the sandwiches and also puts big slabs of the fish in the fish bowl. She told us that despite the sign that spells out the limited menu, she can’t count the time tourists have asked her if she has hamburgers! One day we spent at the Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. What a great time we had – the flowers were stunning, and the place is huge. Many places to walk and admire the abundance of Maine flora, much of it in bloom. They even have a children’s garden with a little house for story-telling time, an enormous sand box with toys, and a recreation of Farmer McGregor’s garden, for Peter Rabbit enthusiasts. My husband was writing down names of plants and taking pictures the whole time. Another day we went to the Train Museum, which has a narrow gauge train that runs around the property. There is a real, honest-to-gosh train station and a number of other historic houses that have been brought there to make a village. While everyone was clambering over the old train cars, I spent my time in a huge warehouse of lovingly restored and polished antique cars. They even had the antique car I had had in high school: a 1930 Model A phaeton (and no, I am not that old myself!). On Saturday, I sold books at Sherman’s in Damariscotta. My mysteries did a good business, but I sold all of their copies of The Last Pilgrim within the first hour. Luckily I had brought a box of twenty more with us, and I sold all but four of those before closing up shop at 5PM. On our next to last day, we collected 12 lobsters, ready steamed and packed them on ice for the trip home the next day. Unfortunately, just as we were getting to bed for an early morning start, I started to experience intense pain in my back, which my husband diagnosed as a kidney stone. The pain grew worse, so at 3 AM he drove me the 23 miles from Boothbay Harbor to an emergency room in Damariscotta. Worst ride ever. There I was given morphine and something for the awful nausea and once I’d improved, was sent back to Brown’s Wharf. By that time it was about 5AM, and I slept most of the next day, while Gene kept the lobsters chilled. We finally left a day late, making it home in two days. Our total mileage for the trip was 2,260 miles, and in the end, we decided long car trips are just not as much fun as when we were younger! 0 0
I suppose it was inevitable. My two-legged got me to the vet. Admittedly I didn’t make it easy for her, but she outsmarted me. She put that box on wheels in the bathroom and carried me in there and shut the door. I managed to get away the first time she tried to put me in – after all, I am Garfield the Magnificent – but the second time she wrapped me in a towel and pushed me in with it. Naturally I complained all the way to the vet – a long ride, I might add. Eventually she put me in an examination room, but I would not come out for the young lady who came to get me, so she took the box and me with it. I don’t remember a whole lot except that I howled and yowled and hissed and spit. My two legged told me there was quite a rumpus. Then something stuck me. After that, I had a nice sleep. I woke up on the way home. My two-legged told me I had gotten my shots, had my rapier like claws clipped and my butt shaved so they could get a stool sample – what’s that? It’s rather cool back there now. And apparently my teeth are in bad shape. I heard her telling a neighbor that I’m to go back in early October for a tooth cleaning and possible removal (?) if it’s bad. One of my fangs has broken off, so maybe it is? They were plotting how to get me into the carrier and sleepy for the next trip. I’m onto them! And I have time to plan…. In the meantime I have recovered and am back to my old tricks. This is my favorite toy – a feather on a stick. Don’t know why but I want to GET IT! Yours, Garfield 0 0
Remarkably Bright Creatures was a book chosen by my book club a few months past. The Chicago Tribune named it one of the best books of summer. While I haven’t found that books recommended by various newspapers are generally good reads, this one is so charming, so well-conceived and written, and so deceptively sensitive that I fell in love with it. One of its main characters is Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus. Octopus? you might ask. Yes, a cantankerous creature who lives at the Sowell Bay Aquarium and considers it his prison. He knows his days are numbered, according to his countdown from the day he was captured and brought there. As you can infer, Marcellus is a very intelligent octopus. Marcellus allows himself to become acquainted with the elderly Tova Sullivan, who works the night shift at the aquarium, mopping floors and emptying trash since her husband died. She has wonderful friends but has always stayed busy as a coping mechanism, something she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old-son vanished from a sailboat in Puget Sound thirty years prior. Alone among employees, she always greets Marcellus and talks to him. You might find it difficult to accept an octopus as a main character, one who has the ability to think and narrate in English and make humorous and heartbreaking observations of his world. But octopi are intelligent creatures (I’ve refused to eat them for years) so it’s only a little stretch of the imagination. His nightly escapades getting out of his tank to find food (he deplores his diet and is always hungry) and explore the aquarium are very entertaining, and he and Tova bond when she saves him when he stays out of water longer than his 18 minute limit. Cameron, the third major character, has a bad breakup with his girlfriend and loses his job. He camps on a friend’s couch and appears at first to be a lovable loser – that is, until he finds a high school ring among his long-lost mother’s belongings. This takes him Sowell Bay in search of the man he thinks is his father. He finds employment substituting for Tova when she hurts her leg and meets Marcellus. Marcellus knows a great deal of what goes on around him and ultimately deduces what happened to Tova’s son. But how can a mere octopus reveal the truth to her? There are a lot of human issues interwoven in the book’s narrative – child abandonment, aging, teen pregnancy, the loss of loved ones – but the story is told with such love, hope, and joy that despite the angst of each character’s troubles, you cannot but remain engaged with the story and the world the author has created. I loved this book and especially Marcellus. I will leave it to the reader to discover how all of the story lines intertwine and resolve. And I did shed a few tears at the end. This is the author’s debut novel and what an exceptional job she has done. The characters, the descriptions of the Washington coast, and the mystery embedded in it make this an unforgettable book. I rate this book a 5 out of 5, and higher if I could. About the author (from Amazon): When Shelby Van Pelt isn’t feeding her flash-fiction addiction, she’s juggling cats while wrangling children. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she’s currently missing the mountains in the suburbs of Chicago. Find her On her website, www.shelbyvanpelt.com On Twitter @shelbyvanpelt and on Instagram @shelbyvanpeltwrites. 0 0
Hi, Garfield blogging today. My two legged is put out with me and deserted her computer. She’s been trying to get me to the vet to get some things called shots, my beautiful teeth checked, and my rapier-like claws clipped. For three years. I WILL NOT go in that box-like thing she calls a crate. Mind you, I grew up in a box-like thing with a grill at the end when I lived in the place before she brought me home. I won’t go back in one. This time it was a gigantic box-like crate. She said it was for a dog and I heard her saying that the opening was big enough to get me in. Well, she tried, but I wasn’t having any of that. I managed to force my way out just as she was shutting the door. I ran and hid under a day bed, where she couldn’t get me. But I forgave her and came out after an hour or so, so she could brush me and give me some cuddles. I wonder when she will try that again. In the meantime, I am have a grand nap on her unmade bed. I am Garfield the superb escape artist! 0 0
I was very intrigued by the title of this book and didn’t hesitate to purchase it because the author is a great writer. It begins, “If you haven’t heard of a liberty bodice, believe that a half crown is something to do with impoverished royalty and never had the experience of slapping a television to stop the grainy black and white picture from polling, then this series might not be for you.” I didn’t know what a liberty bodice was but the other two items were familiar, so I knew I would enjoy this book. And quite frankly, I think it should be required reading for Gen X and the Millennials. There’s a lot of history, some amusing and some deadly serious, packed in. The title refers to the fact that the Baby Boomers created a statistical bulge post World War II in the normally steady measure of population. And I am part of that bulge! Even though I am not a British citizen, many similar household products, home décor, and appliances described by the author resonate with what I experienced. Linoleum floors, Formica countertops, TVs with grainy pictures that could only be sharpened by beating on it or spending a half hour moving the antennae around or adding tin foil to the ‘ears,’ – all these things I recalled with a smile. My mother’s washing machine jiggled across the floor on the spin cycle and had a mangle attached to one side to squeeze the water out of the clothes before they were hung outside to dry. We had indoor plumbing, but my grandmother’s house had a coal chute for the load of coal delivered to fire the coal furnace in the basement. I recall the overwhelming odor of paint and the petticoats on dressing tables, power puffs, the icy chill of rooms upstairs and leaky hot water bottles. The author treats all of these things with clarity and a wonderful sense of humor. She also deals with tougher topics – the long duration of rationing in the UK after the war, the abysmal lack of housing due to the bombing and short-sightedness of the government, overcrowding, squalor, and cheap construction. Those of you watching Call the Midwife from its first season on PBS have been introduced to this. I enjoyed reading this book and I learned a lot, too, even as a Baby Boomer. I highly recommend it to others of our generation but to everyone else as well. About the Author: Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power. She has lived for many years in a peaceful village between Pembroke and Tenby in southwest Wales, with a wonderful family all living locally. She was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back. When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved. Trish has had several other books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller, and suspense against a backdrop of social issues psychological thriller. You can find Alex Craigie Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012230628350 The Rat in the Python and the author’s other books can be found on Amazon. 0 0
As a result of my interest in Tudor history, I’ve read many of Tony Riches’ books – among them his Tudor Trilogy, about the founding and growth of the Tudor family, Drake — Tudor Corsair, and Essex — Tudor rebel. The author then began to explore the era from a woman’s point of view with Mary – Tudor Princess, and Katherine – Tudor Duchess, both of which I have reviewed. With this book, he introduces us to Penelope, Baroness Rich, a force in the court of Queen Elizabeth. Penelope begins her life as Lady Penelope Devereux with serious ties to Elizabeth’s court. Her great-grandmother is Queen Elizabeth I’s aunt, Mary Boleyn, Queen Ann Boleyn’s sister. Her father is Sir Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, whose son would become a favorite of Elizabeth, and her mother is Lady Lettice Knollys. Lady Lettice has been banished from court for her secret marriage to the queen’s great favorite at the time, Sir Robert Dudley. Lady Penelope is a beautiful, headstrong, and much sought-after by men. She is well educated, an accomplished dancer and musician and fluent in Italian, French and Spanish. Despite her mother’s disgrace, she is appointed a Maid-of-Honor to the Queen until Sir Robert Dudley arranges her marriage with Baron Richard Rich, a loveless marriage to a staunch Protestant who rapes her as his husbandly duty. She becomes the muse of Sir Philip Sidney, who may have fallen passionately in love between her arrival at court in 1581 and his own marriage in 1583 to her sister. In this telling, she bears him a child who is seamlessly incorporated into her family of four with Baron Rich. Her scandalous love life continues, with Penelope embarking on an affair with Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy, which produces at least three children, all of whom Lord Rich accepted as his own. You might wonder how that situation ends. Penelope also becomes in involved in political intrigue. She makes herself known to James I of Scotland, whom she sees as Elizabeth’s successor. During the period when her brother Lord Essex organizes a rebellion against Queen Elizabeth, Penelope is with him frequently at Essex house. Did she help to foment the rebellion? What happens to her as a result, and how does she manipulate her relationship with Elizabeth and later James I and V of Scotland and England to her advantage? This woman is astounding for her warmth, daring, passion, and forthrightness – hardly what one might consider a ‘normal’ member of the Tudor court and confidant of Queens. She lived her life on her own terms, for which she is to be admired. As usual, the author provides a rich backdrop of life in Elizabethan England and especially life at court -the food, the dress, and the courtly manners. His detail and depth of knowledge of the intrigue of the English court is superb and richly satisfying to anyone with an interest in this era. Mr. Riches has chosen a compelling figure for his latest book – I would have liked to meet her! I highly recommend yet another well-written and colorfully detailed book by Tony Riches. About the author Tony Riches was born in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, UK, and spent part of his childhood in Kenya. He earned a BA degree in Psychology and an MBA from Cardiff University. After careers in the Roayl Air Force, the NHS and local governement, he is now a full-tiome author of historical fiction. His Tudor Trilogy has become an international best-seller and he is in regular demand as a guest speaker about the lives of the early Tudors. His blog, The Writing Desk, has over 1.3 million visitors and his popular podcast, Stories of the Tudors, has had over 239,000 downloads. He has returned to live in Pembrokeshire, an area full of inspiration for his writing. In hais spare time, he enjoys sailing and sea kayaking. Visit him online at www.tonyriches.co.uk On Facebook at Tony Riches Author And on Twitter at @tonyriches All of his books are available on Amazon. l 0 0
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!! My best wishes to everyone for a safe and enjoyable holiday, as we celebrate our nation’s birthday. Special thanks today to our military, our police, our firemen, our first responders and all the medical personnel who are still working hard to get us through the pandemic and keep us safe. 0 0
But not a challenge, like Professor Higgins’ but a pleasure from start to finish. I read all five books of the Rose Shield series in three weeks, beginning during my week at the beach, and they took my breath away with the gorgeous descriptions, the beautifully detailed world, and the amazing characters, with all their flaws. Diana Peach is no slouch when it comes to creating ‘other worlds’. She just won The Next Generation Indie Book Award for Fantasy, the largest international awards program for indie authors and independent publishers, for The Necromancer’s Daughter. If you haven’t read this book, you should. You can see my interview with Diana and a review of the book here: https://saylingaway.com/2022/11/07/an-interview-with-d-wallace-peach-and-a-review-of-her-new-book-the-necromancers-daughter/ The world of the Rose Shield is the country of Elegeance, created by beings called the Founders millennia before. It is bounded on the south by the Cull Sea and is divided into areas defined by rivers which ultimately run to the Sea. The largest is the Slipsilver, at the mouth of which is Elan-sea, the biggest city. In the sea and rivers live beautiful winged and finned water dragons, which pull ships against the tides and currents. On land, a part of the population are Farlanders, tall with white hair, green spotted skin and three fingers on each hand Elegeance is brightened by three moons, a sentient land, and rivers of luminescent water. The cities are rules by Lords with the help of members of an Influencer Guild, who are capable of manipulating emotions. They can make people feel the extremes of love and fear, pleasure and pain, but blending these emotions subtly allows them to control the population under the city’s rules. Catling, the central character, is introduced in the first book, Catling’s Bane, as a young girl living in the city of Mur-Vallis, whose cruel City Lord kills Farlanders and city folk with impunity. Catling has a birth mark – a rose around her right eye, the rose eye granting her the ability to shield herself or others, but not both, from the influencers. This makes her a threat to The Guild, but more importantly to the City Lords whose influence she could nullify. In this first book, she is taken by a member of the Guild, Vianne-Ava, who reasons the Guild could use her more profitably than killing her, as a mean of counteracting those influencers who would seek power for themselves. She is taught by the Guild to be an influencer, assassin, and a healer. In the second book, Oathbreaker’s Guild, Catling learns to wield her powers, and Vianne-Ava places her into the position of advisor to the Queen of Elegeance who rules from the city of Elan-Sea, where powerful forces, including influencers, maneuver for control of the throne. Catling’s ability to shield is of crucial importance if the Queen is not to be influenced. In the meantime, the country is in turmoil, Elegeans moving onto land owned by the Farlanders, a young man named Gannon stirring up the warrens of the cities against the City Lords, and Catling’s childhood friend and love, Whitt, joins the Guardian, Elegeance’s army. Catling returns to Mur-Vallis to assassinate the City Lord who killed her family. In Farlander’s Law, the Cull Tar, the people who inhabit the Cull Sea in vast armada of boats and who threaten Elegeance from the sea, infiltrate the cities and their leader, the Shiplord, forces the queen into bonding with him. This will cede her realm to his rule. Catling’s daughter Rose becomes a pawn in the tug of war between the Queen and the various other factions: the Cull Tar, the Guild of Influencers, and powerful ruling Elegeans. Catling rebels against all these factions as her power becomes greater and more deadly. Treaties between the Elegeans and the Farlanders collapse in the Far Wolds. Whitt betrays his oath to the Guardian, takes Rose to protect her, and travels to the Farlander rebels’ camp in the Far Wolds. In Kari’s Shield – the kari being the sentient spirits of this world – all of the warring factions face each other with spiraling intrigue and betrayal, to determine the fate of Elegance. Influencers, with their power in jeopardy, break their oaths, choose sides, and resume their search for Rose. With the Queen dead, the Shiplord seeks to solidify his power and take over the cities, Elegeance and the Far Wolds. All of these forces collide in a final battle for the realm. Catling and Whitt, each gifted with singular skills, seek to sway the course of the conflict. But another, more powerful player emerges, the kari. As spirits of the planet, they command the air, water, and land and are willing to manipulate events to save the planet and care not who survives. This series deserves to be savored with all its intricate detail and amazing creations. You don’t need to read it one after another – you can stop and take a breath – and enjoy this world. Diana’s world building is equaled by her power of description, so beautiful and evocative that I had to stop here and there to reread it. She immerses you in the story with the power of her words and the strength and development of her characters. Diana said in her earlier interview with me: I believe that when we create characters, we create real energetic entities who are capable of living beyond our pages and having an impact on the world. They’re the characters we fall in love with and learn from, the ones who change us. Once created, they can’t be uncreated. We set them free to live their lives independently of us, and we never forget them. In a way, they’re just like “real” people we’ve interacted with but never met. For someone looking to immerse themselves in another world and enjoy a true saga, this series is for you! This is fantasy at its best. I would love to see this made into a movie, along
We packed off to a beach house on Holden Beach, North Carolina, about ten days ago, with the threat of a week of rain. I was suffering from a back injury when I fell attempting to play pickleball and found it hard to even walk down to the beach, let alone get in the water. But I soldiered on, getting to sit in the sand and watch my kids swim and even did some short walks looking for shells. The weather people were wrong – we had a lovely day of mild temps and sun! My son– in–law even caught fish. We found lovely olive shells, some scallops shells and moon snail shells, along with something called Hardouinia mortonis (I looked it up!) This is a fossilized sea biscuit from the Cretaceous era, and there were many along the shore, dredged up when the sand off the beach was dredged for beach renewal. So we now have something 80-100,000 years old. They are echinoderms, related to modern starfish and sea biscuits. One morning I looked out the window and saw a few of people gathered around a spot on the beach and wondered what the tide had brought in. A little later the group got bigger with the addition of people in red jackets. Soon I saw some digging and then some raking. The red jackets were the turtle patrol. Each spring, turtles, mainly loggerheads but also Green, Kemps Ridley, Leatherback and Hawksbill, nest on NC shores. The Turtle Patrol had uncovered the eggs, determined the type, counted them, and then covered them again. Shortly thereafter a cordon was places around the site. The eggs will hatching in 77+ days and they need protection. I came home relaxed, my back a bit better, but bringing with me a chest cold that is just now starting to let up, which is why this post got delayed! We’ve reserved the house for next year and I hope to be able to enjoy the beach and water and do more shell hunting, I’ve done some research and found a place close to Holden Beach that might be the right spot. And we can return to a restaurant called the Purple Onion, where we had Belle Burgers – a hamburger with homemade pimento cheese and a purple onion jam, tangy and sweet! 0 0
