I have decided to live for 129 years to the year 2100. Precisely to Nov 7th, 2100. It might seem strange to pick your death date but it has given me a great deal of comfort. I now have lots of time to finish my novel.
How did I get here? It all started with poor planning and a small airport.
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It’s summer! Officially time for vacations of many variety: family reunions, sunny days at cottages, long weekends, camping adventures, dinners on a patio with friends, and there’s no time to write! Or is there…?
Maybe it’s the best time. One the great characteristics of June is that it provides extra long days. Sunrise today is at 5:40 am and sunset at 9:10 pm. That’s 10 and 1/2 hours of daylight. If you travel further north, you get even longer days. I love this month. Put those extra daylights hours to good use.
Read moreA new novel has the thrill of discovering new characters and the fun of anticipating and being surprised by plot twists. Re-reading a favourite book has a different kind of joy. It can feel like sitting down with old friends, catching up with the characters again and sinking back into a familiar and comfortable place. During stressful times in my life, I find myself more likely to return to a previously loved book rather than tackling something new. Perhaps it is because there is comfort in this; no surprises as I know the outcome. It is a steading force in a time of turmoil. Perhaps also the reading will help trigger remembering a good time in my life. Nostalgia has been shown to enhance mental wellbeing and improve feeling socially connected so re-reading could have the same effect. Or maybe even just the re-reading a good book is like enjoying the same delicious meal again: it was so good the first time, why not repeat it?
Read moreI recently travelled to the historical town of Frederick, Maryland. This was not a planned trip but one that came un-expectantly. For those who are not acquainted with Frederick, it has deep historical roots, being located at crossroads between routes east to the Chesapeake Bay and west to Baltimore and Washington DC, only 24 miles away, and along a prominent north-south trail used by Indigenous populations before colonization. The town was founded in 1745 by German settlers and it’s possible that it was named after Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.
My travels to this town started with a death. I will call this person Derek because it is an good old German name. Derek worked for 41 years for the US government before taking a retirement and settling into a blue painted row house in the historic district of Frederick. None of us were exactly sure what he did for the government because he was rather vague about it. He talked about going into work at the Pentagon but he only appeared to work about 1 to 2 days a week, at best. It is possible that he made this up but there’s proof that he was getting a pay check from the government. For these reasons, I assume he might have been a spy.
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Or Why I Cannot Complete My Novel.
My latest excuse.
I recently heard about the third quarter phenomenon in relation to running. It is said to the hardest part of a race. The beginning is when you are fresh, your muscles and body ready; the second quarter is when you are still feeling good: you have found your pace; a rhythm. The last quarter, you can see the end and can make that final push. But the third quarter: that is when it can feel like hard work. No end in the site and the freshness of the start is long gone. The interesting thing about the third quarter is that it doesn’t matter how long or short a race is, the third quarter can feel to be the hardest.
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It’s that time of year again. I recently told someone that as I get older, the more I wish we could cancel Christmas. On my more optimistic days, I wish we could go back to a time when Christmas was about getting together with family to eat a decadent meal finished off with some concoction of traditional cake with dry fruit preserved in alcohol. But let’s take away all the presents, the tree, the tinsel, the endless Christmas music, fake snow decorations, the wood-stick deer with bows around their necks, the blow-up plastic oversized lawn ornaments and most importantly the fat man in the red suit. I’m ready to fire him not because he doesn’t do a great job but because he represents everything that has commercialized Christmas into some too long-standing season of what used to be a great holiday. Maybe its time to hire the aliens for an invasion to finally kill off the show. Yes, somehow I have moved from Team Cindy-Lou to Team Grinch.
Read moreHallowe’en’s origins date back over 2000 years to the Celts when they celebrated the end of the summer, the completion of the harvest and the start of the winter season. Have you realized that this ancient holiday is the mid-point between the fall’s equinox and the winter solstice? It is a time when you begin to truly feel the change of light and shorter days.
Samhain, the name of the Celtic festival, was celebrated for three days around the end of October. It was believed to be a time when the boundary between the living and dead was thin and ghosts from the dead could cross over for a short time. Celtic priests used the night to make predictions about the future and had huge bonfires as part of the celebrations. The Celts would dress in costumes to ward off the evil ghosts who might kidnap them.
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I previously wrote about reading 3 classic horror books: one about a haunted house and ghosts (The Haunting of Hill House), one about a monster created (Frankenstein) and the classic vampire story (Dracula). I decided it would be fun to find contemporary horror novels in similar subplots. What better way to celebrate the start of autumn? I also looked for stories written outside of the English speaking counties. I wanted to find stories with different voices and perspectives. I found it interesting to look for contemporary stories from classic novels and how writing styles and the choices that authors make have changed or in some cases, stayed the same, over time.
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