The Book Shuffle

Bernice Connell 1 Comment

I’ve had to cull my collection of books. It is a cringe-worthy task for book lovers but it has been ten years since the last round.

Maybe my age and thoughts of downsizing spurred me to get this done. Or it may have been the COVID 19 virus invasion. My sisters and I have been known to clean house when stressed or anxious.

Teetering between feeling vulnerable one moment and invincible the next is my experience of these worrying times. What was barely imaginable a couple of months ago is embraced as routine today. What a gift social media is right now. It’s beautiful to see the inspiring, loving and joyful ways folks are supporting each other. Not to mention the miracle of virtual get-togethers taking place. A couple of friends and I created a three-woman book club for ourselves.

Read more

Everything is Cancelled… Almost!

Lori Twining 5 Comments

Everything is cancelled… ALMOST!

I know! I know! 

We all had some major plans and a detailed vision of how 2020 was going to go for us, but then everything we had planned exploded into tiny pixels and all we can see in the near future is the everlasting smoke clouds circling around us. We are impatiently waiting for the sunshine to break through.

Several of my plans for writing retreats and writing conferences have been cancelled for this entire year, as I isolate myself at home. This sounds like devastating news, however, there is a silver lining to all of this…

Read more

Look- I don’t know what the answers are- it’s my first pandemic

Andrée Levie-Warrilow Leave a comment

Yelled at a woman in the grocery store two days ago. I’d been standing in line with my cart at the demarcated line behind the cart ahead of me. For some reason, a woman at the next checkout decided to back out and head toward me. I politely directed her attention to the marks on the floor. She kept rolling closer; I pointed to the marks again. She kept coming toward my right side. Finally, I held my hand up like a traffic cop and boomed out: “Stop! You are getting too close to me! Back away!” Yes, I actually used those words. She gave me this surprised look, and murmured, “Oh! Sorry!” and then backed up. Would I have done that Before? Hell no. Was there another way I could have handled it? Maybe, maybe not. She was not practicing social distancing when she should have. I freaked out. 
I don’t know what the answers are – it’s my first pandemic.   Read more

Our Dystopian Future

Joan McAndrew Leave a comment

Wait a minute—what just happened? I was living this very active busy life going to the gym 3 times a week, seeing my massage therapist, my chiropractor, writing, working part time, knitting and watching whatever appealed to me on TV. I spent my free time travelling, visiting my friends and having a grand old time. Then someone “hacked” into my world and took over, telling me where I can go, when I can go, and how I will behave when I am there. My last place of refuge currently is my home and my own property. 

I have always admired writers who create fantastical worlds and populate them with weird and wonderful things. Harry Potter and all of his adventures, the Hunger Games trilogy being two of my favourite series. My imagination never takes me to such places in my mind. Instead I am fascinated with “true” stories, the stuff of everyday people living their everyday lives. I want to figure out what makes people behave as they do. In my world everything makes sense and there are always underlying reasons waiting to be discovered to answer, “why would she do that?”

Read more

Preparing for the End

Seana Moorhead Leave a comment

Is anyone else secretly enjoying end of the world planning? To clarify, I mean this only in the context that we know that it isn’t actually the end of the world. Let’s stick with the story version where we think it could be the End but in the final moments of the story, we’re saved. Hopefully by some greeky scientist–and what the hell, a female scientist — a woman, her colleagues have previously belittled. Our plucky heroine creates a cure with the help of a sidekick who never passed grade 10. Because if I was writing this story, that’s what would happen. 

So while we wait for Alice–yes, let’s call her Alice–to save us, we can prepare for the end of the world. In complete safety. 

Read more

Information Overload

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

I like history; I like to understand why the world is as it is. I like to make sense of things. I like to learn. I like to read. These times feel unprecedented and I’ve found myself caught up in the 24 hour news cycle. Before the internet and social media, I always read the letters to the editor, hoping it would shine a light on what my fellow Canadians were really thinking. Now this has exploded with facebook and twitter, where I can read what hordes of people think. Some of it scares me and some of it brings me comfort, but all of it is way too much distraction. I have to limit myself.

I’ve worked from home for a long time, so this new paradigm of social-isolating is not so strange to me. Saying that, I had a busy life with skating lessons, hockey, choir, writers group, book group—which are all things that feed my soul and exercise my body. In other words, necessary.

Read more

Romance novels — peoples’ favourite punching bag

Tracey Richardson 1 Comment

Do you roll your eyes when someone says they read or write romance novels? Do you find yourself thinking or saying that romance novels are second rate? That they’re nothing but fantasy, that they have nothing to do with the “real world”, that writers who write them are second rate and readers who read them have boring, unimaginative lives?

Unfortunately, those thoughts/judgments are all too common. And they’re rife with ignorance.

As a writer of lesbian romance novels, it bugs me when people don’t take my genre seriously. Insults me, to be specific. Because you know what? I’m not a second rate writer. I can and do write fiction other than lesbian romance. Nor do I have a boring, unimaginative life. And hey, why would a romance novel be any more unrealistic or predictable than a mystery or suspense novel, never mind fantasy or sci-fi? Read more