They say a picture is worth 1000 words. In this case, they’re worth about 10 million. I love Canada!
- A very wet, very contented beagle.
The Maple Leaf Forever!
Happy Canada Day!
My Canada
Category: The Non-Writing Life
A Little Torrential Downpour
From BORROWING ALEX, which is set in Seattle and fictional Lake Eden on the Olympic Peninsula and which I’m currently editing and updating for re-issue:
“‘Hardly Noah’s-Ark stuff, Alex.'”
My heroine, Nikki, says this when her, um, companion (at this point in the novel) mentions the rain.
Later:
Nikki had been born and bred in damp Seattle. Normally she could handle a little torrential downpour.
I’ve always liked this line, but, being Canadian, haven’t experienced it to the extent that someone in Washington state or Oregon might. Or someone in Vancouver, where I have lived before. Or Victoria, where I have lived as well. However, nothing matches what I call the “shower curtains of rain” that fell one night as my family was driving through Oregon years ago.
My area is experiencing a little torrential downpour right now, though not to the extent that was predicted. But it’s enough to really affect us, to make us go running for the gutters to ensure they aren’t clogged and everything is draining properly. Once or twice a spring, we’ll get a huge downpour where it feels like an entire week’s worth of rain is arriving within an hour. This current deluge was predicted by Environment Canada as a severe storm warning, but we haven’t, in my area, had the thunder and lightning and hailstorms that might have hit other areas. So we are pretty lucky. We like to say, we don’t tan, we rust, because it’s either raining or it’s roasting hot. The temperate, pleasant temperatures…that’s what September is for. 🙂
As I’m typing, the wind is picking up, which reminds me of being at the NINC conference in October, in White Plains, New York, right before Hurricane Sandy hit. My plane was one of the last leaving the White Plains airport. At the time, I didn’t realize how lucky I was…because Hurricane Sandy was, as we now realize, a total disaster. Earlier this week, Hurricane Sandy was featured on The Bachelorette. Yes, I watch. Don’t judge! I met my husband at 18 and didn’t do a lot of dating, so watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette is research for my characters. Yes, it is!
Seeing the devastation that still exists as a result of Hurricane Sandy again made me realize how lucky I was to get out in time. And how lucky I am not to live in an area that experiences a lot of severe weather. We have forest fires every summer in B.C., but while there is damage that obviously will exist for decades (it takes a long time to rebuild a forest), we usually do not experience the lengths of devastation and the loss of life and a huge number of lost homes. Every once in a while the number of homes lost is truly devastating, but because most forest fires are created by human stupidity (throwing a cigarette out a car window, not putting out a campfire correctly, or lighting a fire during the height of fire season when you’re not supposed to and then wondering why it jumps all over the nearest neighborhood, picking houses at random to burn to the ground), it somehow doesn’t seem the same as Mother Nature creating the havoc totally on her own.
I would rather live in an area that has forest fires than an area that gets tornadoes or hurricanes. But maybe that’s just because forest fires are the norm here. Tornadoes and hurricanes are not, so they seem a lot scarier to me.
What form of severe weather is common in your neck of the woods? Have you or someone you know been personally affected?
When something goes wrong in my life, I always think, “It could be worse.” And right now, as the wind blows and the rain pours down, yes, it could be worse. A lot worse. It could really be a monstrous torrential downpour.
Excuses…and an Idea
The nice thing about not blogging often is that I don’t have 60 spam comments waiting for me to wade through when I log in. The bad thing is it looks like I’m getting lazy.
I’m not getting lazy; I’m just super busy with non-writing stuff and am just getting back into writing again after a trip to China with my husband, during which a family member had a nasty fall that eventually led to her demise. We made it back home in time to see her—thank God—but I have needed time to grieve as well as support other family members in their grief, and now, thank God again, we are gearing up to a happy time. Youngest Son is getting married this summer! Also, a niece is having a baby. Yay.
As for writing, I am working on revising and updating BORROWING ALEX for Indie re-issue, and it’s going very well when I have time to work on it. I’m looking at a July or August release, but I can’t get any more exact for awhile. I also have two other manuscripts in various stages of needing-to-revise or needing-to-polish, and I also plan to Indie publish those. Maybe one in 2013 and the other in 2014. Plus, I have my short story series to finish.
So, there’s lots going on, but behind the scenes.
Once June is here and a host of family obligations are behind me, I will try (note emphasis) to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. I would ideally like to blog twice a week, and I am considering making one of those days, or a third day, a post devoted to other self-published authors and their books. Nothing too fancy. I found when I hosted guest-bloggers that I spent precious writing hours working up posts and then trying to get people to comment so I could give away books from those talented authors. I can no longer afford the time to host guest bloggers, but I am thinking of doing a Monday Deals type of thing, where every Monday I would post covers, blurbs and links to a few Indie-published books that are either new or on promotion. I need to put some more thought into it and then get a lead-time going so I don’t feel inundated. Other authors do this type of thing on their blogs. For instance, author Lauren Royal featured one of my books on her Friday Freebies day not long ago. That is the type of feature I am thinking of implementing. It would still allow me to get the word out about authors and their books while also pointing my readers to some great ebook deals—other than mine!
What do you think?
Gone, Gone, Gone, I Been Gone So Long
My last three posts about the Galapagos appeared while I was in China. I know, I’m tricky, scheduling them in advance like that. I couldn’t in all conscience jet off to China to explore smog and history and visit my son without finishing my Galapagos posts, could I?
We returned from China early, last weekend. A personal situation at home developed soon after we landed in Beijing, and the situation pretty much followed us around the country. We had a good time and met some great people, but if I did not have a full camera card to remind me of the trip I would almost think I hadn’t left home at all. In that regard, it was the most surreal vacation I’ve ever taken.
I’m glad we returned early. It was necessary and cathartic. And, in some ways, continuing. But such is life.
I have a lot on my plate right now before I can get back to editing BORROWING ALEX for reissue. In another week, I expect to feel more settled. Eventually, I’ll blog about China. Of course, I said in 2011 that I would blog about Newfoundland, too, and look how that turned out…. (Ahem.)
Authors Are People Too Interview
The fabulous Lauren Royal recently interviewed me for her blog, and the post is live now. Her series of author interviews is called Authors Are People, Too, and I was allowed to talk about anything other than writing. Lauren asks great questions, so pop over and see my answers!
Here are the questions I answered:
– What are your interests outside of writing? (Pop over to see my answer!)
– If you could do something dangerous just once with no risk, what would you do? (Pop over to see my answer).
– If you had to give up chocolate or alcohol, which would you choose or why? This one was a no-brainer for me. See if you can guess which it is before you pop over (to see my answer).
– What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever collected? Oh, boy, that’s asking a lot! I’m pretty weird. Which you’ll find out (way more than you ever wanted to) if you pop over…
– What’s the worse job you’ve ever had? Hint: No, it wasn’t when I worked in a prison. You won’t find out unless you…
– What’s your guilty pleasure? Poppity-pop!
– Would you rather meet your great-great-grandparents or your great-great-grandchildren? Which would you choose? I know what I said…Pop!
– You just won $100,000, and you have to spend it all on yourself today. No saving, no gifts, no charity allowed. What are you going to buy? (You try answering that) —> Pop on over! Here’s the link.
Thank you, Lauren, for asking such great questions.
Explaining My Absence
I have been away from the blog so long because (1) of my recovery from the PRK touch-up in my right eye, which, again, has resulted in my desktop computer drying out my eye; (2) I accompanied my husband on a business trip to Quebec for a week; and (3) well, how can you tell that I’m under the weather, because I can’t remember three!
Addressing (2) – I’ll post a few piccies of the Quebec trip in a few days. I’ve ordered a pair of Gunnars computer glasses and hope that when I receive them I’ll able to spend more time at the desktop, which is where I update the blog. For now, I’m editing a manuscript on Daisy, my netbook.
If you’ve never heard of Gunnars, I sort of found about them by accident. A friend aware of my difficulty with dry eyes following surgery told me she had seen “computer glasses” with yellow lenses that cut down on blue glare in a major department store. So I went looking. And I found some Foster Grants, but they’re reading glasses. And I don’t need reading glasses. I just need something to cut down the glare. Some Internet searching took me to the Gunnars website, and now I am awaiting my pair. I’ll let you know what I think.
It’s been six weeks since I had the right eye (my distance eye) corrected for the second time. This time I had PRK surgery, which has a much longer recovery period than the SBK surgery I had fourteen months ago. About ten days post-surgery, I could see 20/30 in the eye doctor’s office, whereas before the surgery I had fallen from near 20/20 vision down to 20/50 over a period of six months. I’ve been told that 20/30 for 10 days post-PRK is good.
At the four week post-PRK surgery, I was seeing at around 20/25 and 20/30, so not much improvement. That was two weeks ago. My vision was much clearer than at the 10 day appointment, but I had developed a sort of double vision which especially affects me when reading something in the distance and making me very glad I still have driving glasses to allow the left eye to take over for driving.
The double vision is a bit disconcerting, although it’s getting better as the weeks progress. I am now at 6 weeks post-surgery and I won’t see the eye doctor again until the 3 month point, where the goal is that I’ll be seeing 20/20. In about the last ten days, I have begun noticing an improvement in the double vision, which is a weird sort of experience in that I CAN see, for example, the name of an elementary school nearby as I’m walking the dog, but I also see a ghost image of the name right above the real name. However, now I’m noticing that if I lower my head and look out the top of my eye, the ghost image goes away. At first it was if I lifted my head and looked out the bottom of my eye, the ghost image would go away. Now it’s the top. My fervent hope is that over the next several weeks I will be able to look through the MIDDLE of my eye and not see the ghost images. Cross your fingers!
Before the PRK touch-up, the eye doctor could not get me to see 20/20 out of my right eye even with corrective lenses. I do have great hope, considering the clarity of what I can see out of the top of my eye 🙂 that even if I will eventually still require driving glasses, that I will be able to see distance clearly enough for everyday activities that don’t involve getting behind the wheel.
The last time I posted, WHERE SHE BELONGS was on the Paid Bestseller lists for Amazon Kindle following a very successful free run in which I gave away over 96,000 copies of the book worldwide! I have some other commentary and stats I’d like to share with you, hopefully later this week. Now that WHERE SHE BELONGS is back on paid status, however, the book continues to sell very well. I should surpass having sold 1000 copies either today or tomorrow. Sales are also up for HEAD OVER HEELS, Deceiving Derek, and Catching Claire. More about all of that soon!