Have you ever imagined yourself a character in a mystery?
One of our misterio press authors is about to make that possible for one lucky winner. Enter now and maybe you will star in a paranormal mystery!! (Okay, that sounded a little gameshow host-y, but seriously, this is a cool giveaway.)
Kirsten Weiss will name a character in an exclusive, paranormal mystery short story after the winner of her giveaway, running through this Saturday, December 7th. The winner will also receive a hand-bound, original copy of the story, limited edition of 1! (They’ll even get to choose the color of the stitching in the spine… as long as it’s orange, purple, or black, because those are the colors she’s got).
But everyone’s a winner in this contest, because ALL
entrants will receive a PDF copy of the finished story.
Next Week: How to manage stress during the holiday season!
Kirsten Weiss has never met a dessert she didn’t like, and her guilty pleasures are watching Ghost Whisperer re-runs and drinking red wine. The latter gives her heartburn, but she drinks it anyway.
Now based in Colorado Springs, CO, she writes genre-blending cozy mystery, supernatural and steampunk suspense, mixing her experiences and imagination to create vivid worlds of fun and enchantment. If you like funny cozy mysteries, check out her Pie Town, Tea and Tarot, Paranormal Museum and Wits’ End books. If you’re looking for some magic with your mystery, give the Witches of Doyle, Riga Hayworth and Rocky Bridges books a try. And if you like steampunk, the Sensibility Grey series might be for you. To connect with Kirsten, see her author page here on misterio for social media links.
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
As a follow-up to a recent post, When Your Garden Tries to Kill You, I had promised to tell the rest of the story of how my garden tried to kill (or at least maim) me and why I’m thankful I’m a clumsy gardener.
This month marks the 9-year anniversary of the beginning of my writing career. And it got started, for real, because of my poor gardening skills.
I’d been futzing around for decades, rewriting the same first five chapters of my Great American Novel, and telling myself that someday, when I was retired and had more time, I would get serious about my writing.
Well, five years of semi-retirement came and went, and I still wasn’t getting serious.
Then one day, I was gardening.
The only section of garden still separate from the lawn. As you can see, I don’t keep it very neat anymore.
Not my fave thing to do and definitely not my best skill set.
But we’d inherited all these areas of plants and flowers, installed by the previous owner of our house, and I was valiantly trying to maintain them. (I’ve since pulled up most of the railroad ties that divided them from the lawn and told our lawn guy to mow right to the fence!)
That day, I had bought several bags of mulch, dragged them around to the backyard, and I was pulling weeds and then spreading fresh mulch around the plants.
When the pile of mulch bags was down to one bag, I looked at it and thought, Gotta be careful. I might trip over that.
Sure enough, not more than five minutes later, I stepped back to admire my now weed-free garden and tripped over the blinkety-blank bag of mulch. My body twisted and so did my foot, right under me.
The good news was, I didn’t break it.
A re-enactment. I didn’t think to take a pic of my swollen foot at the time.
The bad news was, I might have been better off if I had. I sprained my ankle, badly, and the foot itself…suffice it to say that multiple things tore loose that are supposed to be attached to one’s skeletal system.
A visit to the ER resulted in my obtaining a new possession—a lovely pair of crutches. I was told to put minimal weight on it, elevating it as much as possible for the next several weeks.
No longer able to walk all that well, much less garden, I found myself with time on my hands. And one day I got an idea for yet another change to the opening of my novel.
I sat down at my computer, thinking it might take me maybe 15 minutes to capture this new idea for the first chapter.
Well, with not much else to distract me other than hobbling to the bathroom on my crutches, the first draft of Multiple Motives was done six weeks later.
And this is why I’m thankful I’m a clumsy gardener.
Now, the month of November reminds me of both the worst injury I’ve ever had (I know, I’m counting that as a blessing too!), but also of the best thing ever. My dream of being an author finally happened!
Have you ever had a bad thing happen that ended up being the catalyst for a good thing?
P.S. I’m also extremely grateful for the many friendships that have evolved from my writing career, including the one with Barb Taub, whose fun post inspired both this post and the previous one.
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
I’m over at Jami Gold’s cyber-home today, shooting the breeze with her subscribers about the Do’s and Don’ts of writing a series, whether it be a mystery or romance series. Come on over and join the discussion.
And this seems like a good time to tell you all that I have the first 5 Books in the Kate Huntington mystery series all bundled up in a sweet little package for you. Five books for just $9.99. Half what you would pay for them individually!
Now here’s a preview of my post on writing a series…
7 Do’s and Don’ts When Writing a Series
After ten years of writing, I’m beginning to get the hang of it. 😀 I’ve completed one 10-book mystery series and am writing Book 9 of another, plus two romantic suspense series (under the pen name of Jessica Dale).
When I started out, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew how to tell a story, but I was oblivious to the many pitfalls when writing a series.
I’ve learned a thing or two since then, by trial and error mostly—I’m hardheaded that way—and I’d like to share with you all what I’ve discovered. Here are some do’s and don’ts when writing a series.
#1 ~ Do make your main character flawed, interesting and likeable.
You’re going to be living with this protagonist for quite some time, so give him/her some careful thought. I did not do this starting out.
When I began my first series, I thought “flawed” meant things like she’s a lousy cook (go ahead and laugh; I do every time I think about it).
I made my protagonist, Kate Huntington, way too put together. Okay, she’s a psychotherapist so we’d kind of expect her to be better put together than most, but… I had no clue that “flawed” meant emotional wounds!
Fortunately, her vocation was intriguing and caught readers’ interest. And since these were murder mysteries, I could make bad things happen to give poor Kate some fresh wounds to deal with.
I did manage to make her likeable. Only a few readers have complained that they didn’t like her, usually because she was “too perfect.”
With my second series, I gave my main character a failed first marriage, commitment phobia, childhood taunting, and a bit of an impulsive streak. I couldn’t do really heavy wounds, since this is a cozy mystery series.
But now, as I’m planning my next series—a police procedural—I’m contemplating some darker emotional wounds for my MC. *rubbing hands together in glee*
#2 ~ DO have your main character grow and change over the course of the series.
I have grown and changed as a writer also, over the process of writing this series.
This is one of the most common complaints I hear about some series (not mine, of course), that the MC never seems to learn or develop as a person. They keep doing the same things in their daily lives, and they keep going into the dark attics, ignoring law enforcement officers’ warnings, etc. Their personalities never seem to develop beyond where they started.
Also, make sure their important relationships grow and change, as in real life. One of my fave authors has an MC with a particularly passionate marriage, which makes for an interesting series subplot. But after so many books, that subplot stalled. Every story, it’s the same routine—she overworks herself on a new case; he makes her stop to sleep and eat; they make passionate love; she goes back to crime-fighting.
Rinse and repeat… Even the sex scenes got boring after a while.
#3 ~ In later books, DON’T give away the outcome of earlier stories, but DO drop hints.
Readers don’t always read a series in order. They may first discover your series when you’re releasing Book 4. Or they may accidentally skip a book, or get mixed up about the exact order.
If you give away the conclusion of earlier books, they have no motivation to go back and read them. But if you just hint at those earlier storylines, hopefully they will be intrigued and read the entire series.
These hints should occur when a character would naturally think about an earlier experience… This is not as hard as it sounds. READ MORE
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
I recently released my first audio book. And I’m wishing I’d done this a lot sooner.
There are so many cool things about audio books, for readers and authors.
So K.B. Owen and I put our heads together and came up with 6 reasons why audio books rock!
1 – Boredom-buster!
K.B. here — There are so many boring things we do every day that can now be much less so. In one survey, 73% of those who listen to audio books do so while commuting, 33% while doing housework, and 25% while exercising. That treadmill is boring no longer!
2 – Road trip stimulant
Kass again — I take a lot of road trips, and normally I love to drive. But on a long trip, it can get boring, and even dangerous if that boredom starts to lull me to sleep. A stimulating audio book keeps me awake and makes the time really fly by. (Just keep your eye on the gas gauge; I almost ran out of gas one time when I was engrossed in an audio book.)
3 – Convenience
K.B. again — I love the convenience of audio books. They are easy to load and listen to on your tablet or smartphone. According to the Wall Street Journal, audio books are now a $1.2 billion industry, which means more of our fave books are being made into audio than ever before. Audio book companies are even developing original stories, that have never been in print or digital form before.
4 – No reading involved
Our author, Vinnie Hansen, has a story in this anthology. Check out it out HERE
Kass — Audio books can open up the world of the written word to people who have difficulty reading. This may be because of vision problems, dyslexia, or other issues that have impaired the person’s ability to become comfortable with reading (or to continue reading in old age).
But now, that doesn’t mean such folks can’t enjoy fiction stories and learn cool stuff from non-fiction books.
Now they can listen instead!
5 – Versatile
K.B. — With Amazon’s WhisperSync technology (and hopefully other vendors will be developing something similar soon), it’s easy to switch between reading an ebook on your Kindle, tablet or phone, then continuing to listen to the story on audio as you jump in the car to run errands or have to wash the dishes.
6 – Stories come to life
Both of us — Great voice talent brings a book to life in a way that you may not have imagined. For us, just the experience of reviewing the audio chapters of our own books gave us a fun new perspective on our characters!
It’s hard to describe how much difference it makes hearing a story versus reading it. It’s so much easier to become immersed in the story, for one thing, and you feel like you have actually met the characters.
For example, here’s a sample of my new audio book. My narrator, Amy Deuchler, did such a great job. She really nailed the character of my protagonist, Marcia Banks.
Here are the links for To Kill A Labrador audio book!
And here’s K.B.’s latest audio book, Beloved and Unseemly, A Concordia Wells Mystery #6:
A stolen blueprint, a dead body, and wedding bells….
Change is in the air at Hartford Women’s College in the fall of 1898. Renowned inventor Peter Sanbourne—working on Project Blue Arrow for the Navy—heads the school’s new engineering program, and literature professor Concordia Wells prepares to leave to marry David Bradley.
The new routine soon goes awry when a bludgeoned body—clutching a torn scrap of the only blueprint for Blue Arrow—is discovered on the property Concordia and David were planning to call home.
To unravel the mystery that stands between them and their new life together, Concordia must navigate deadly pranks, dark secrets, and long-simmering grudges that threaten to tear apart her beloved school and leave behind an unseemly trail of bodies.
K.B. Owen has taught college English for nearly two decades at universities in Connecticut and Washington, DC, and holds a doctorate in 19th century British literature. A mystery lover ever since she can remember, she drew upon her teaching experiences in creating her amateur sleuth, Professor Concordia Wells…and from that series came lady Pinkerton Penelope Hamilton. There are now seven books in the Concordia Wells mystery series thus far, and three novellas in the Penelope Hamilton series.
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 😉
We’re celebrating Halloween this year with some autumn recipes and a bunch of sales on our books!! See below for the bargains, but first browse our recipes for some stick-to-your-ribs dishes and some lip-smacking sweet treats. We hope you enjoy these Halloween goodies from our authors.
First up is K.B. Owen with one of those sweet treats ~ Because life is short; eat dessert first!
K.B. here. In our household, nothing says autumn and Halloween quite like pumpkin fudge. The spice combination, the creaminess, not to mention real pumpkin being in it…yum! I make it at least once in the season.
It’s a particular favorite of our youngest son, Corey. In fact, I’m about to make a batch to bring up to Rochester when we visit him next week (he’s a freshman at RIT…7 hours away! sniff). Enjoy!
Pumpkin Fudge (makes 3 lbs)
Corey has always loved pumpkin. Here’s a pic of him (from a few years ago) taking a bite out of one.
Ingredients: 3 cups sugar ¾ cup butter 5-oz can evaporated milk ½ cup canned pumpkin 1 tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp ground ginger ¼ tsp ground cloves 10-oz pkg butterscotch flavor pieces 7-oz jar marshmallow crème 1 tsp vanilla Optional – ½ cup toasted chopped pecans
Directions: Line a 13x9x2 baking pan w/foil, extending over edges of pan. Butter foil; set aside.
In a heavy 2-qt saucepan combine ingredients down through the cloves. Cook and stir over medium-high heat until mixture boils. (Clip candy thermometer, if you have one, to side of the saucepan.)
Reduce heat to medium-low; continue to boil at a moderate, steady rate, stirring constantly, until reaches 234 degrees Fahrenheit OR mixture reaches soft-ball stage (20-25 min).
K.B.’s pumpkin fudge
Remove pan from heat. Stir in butterscotch pieces until melted. Stir in marshmallow crème and vanilla until well combined. Pour mixture into prepared pan, spreading evenly. Sprinkle with pecans, if desired. Score into 1-inch pieces while warm.
When fudge is firm, use foil to lift it out of pan. Cut fudge into pieces. Store in fridge up to 1 week.
Gilian Baker asked the main character of her Digital Detective series, Jade Blackwell, to share one of her slow cooker recipes. Yum!
Jade Blackwell, Gilian Baker’s protagonist here. As the weather turns each autumn, we get a hankering for homemade soup. If you are anything like me, you want to keep your time in the kitchen to the barest minimum. Enter the slow cooker! Here’s one of my favorite fall soups. It’s a family favorite too, and you can’t go wrong with it.
The best time to make it is when you have veggies in the fridge that are looking kind of sad, and/or when you need to free up space in the freezer or the pantry. If you plan it just right, you can make up a big batch and won’t have to cook for a few nights! We like to eat it with a hunk of sharp cheddar and a crusty baguette from Tea & Sympathy, the tea shop/bakery in our small (fictional) town of Aspen Falls.
Jade’s Slow Cooker Clean-Out-The-Fridge Soup
Ingredients: A couple of squash and/or zucchini A couple of small potatoes Some carrots Some celery Some cabbage Some onion Some tomatoes ( From the garden, if we have any left, especially if they are a bit overripe.) Any other veg in the fridge that is looking a little like now-or-never Homemade chicken stock (or store-bought) 2 or 3 cans of beans (or dry) — Whatever you have in the pantry will work. Dust off the cans that have been hogging up space and plop them in the slow cooker.
If dry beans are what you have, soak them overnight with half a potato. (The potato will absorb all the gas-causing enzymes from the beans as they soak. This little tip makes bean soup much more enjoyable for everyone. DON’T eat the potato; pitch it!)
Directions: Cut up all the vegetables. Dump the chicken stock, crunchy veggies, and beans in the slow cooker. Wait to add the softer veggies that don’t take as long to cook—zucchini, squash, and celery—so they don’t get mushy. Once the crunchy veggies are soft, it’s safe to add them. If you want some chicken in your soup, shred some and toss it in.
Cook on low for 6 hrs. or so, depending on what vegetables you used and when you added the quick-cook ones.
And here’s another stick-to-your-ribs recipe from Vinnie Hansen that actually makes me want to eat vegetables (not usually my fave foods).
Vinnie here. To me, autumn means eating more root veggies, so one thing I make as the weather gets cooler are roasted roots. That includes potatoes and yams for sure, definitely onion, carrots probably, but also possibly turnips, beets, and parsnips.
(Photo by Beatrice Murch CC-BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
I slice them up, put them in a large cake pan coated with olive oil, sprinkle them with the spices that call to me–salt and pepper for sure, but then maybe thyme, or if it’s closer to Thanksgiving, maybe rosemary and sage (this is never a measured thing).
Then I roast them at 400 degrees, for about 45 minutes or until soft, flipping the veggies around once or twice during the process.
We need to wash that all down, so how about some mulled wine, from Shannon Esposito…
photo by element5-digital on Unsplash
Ingredients: 1 bottle red wine (I like cabernet sauvignon) 1 cup apple cider 1 cup cranberry juice 1/3 cup sugar (or your preferred sweetener) 1 cup fresh cranberries 2 oranges (zested and juiced) 12-14 whole cloves 2 whole cinnamon sticks 1 Tbsp star anise
Directions: Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker and stir. Cook on high until warm (about 30 minutes).
Garnish with leftover orange peel or cranberries and serve warm.
And yet another sweet treat from Kirsten Weiss — Autumn spice cookies.
(Um, after posting all these recipes, I need a snack! Bad!!!)
Kirsten here. These cookies are easy to make and lots of fun. Use Halloween-themed cookie cutters for the season!
Vampire Bat Cookie (photo by Ralph Daily CC-BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Ingredients: Dough — 2 cups all-purpose flour ¼ tsp salt 1 tsp ground allspice ¼ tsp ground nutmeg 10 Tbsp softened, unsalted butter 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract Icing — 2 egg whites 2 ½ cup powdered sugar 1 Tbsp lemon juice Food coloring (Halloween-themed colors of your choice)
Directions: Whisk the flour and spices for the dough in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside. In a larger bowl, beat together the butter and sugar (electric mixer on high) until the mixture is fluffy. Add the 1 whole egg and the vanilla extract. Mix well.
Reducing the speed to low (so you don’t end up breathing in a flour cloud), gradually add the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Beat until the dough is thoroughly blended.
Lightly flour a cutting board or other smooth surface. Turn out the dough and knead lightly. Divide the dough in half and flatten halves into two disks. Wrap them individually in plastic wrap and chill until firm, about 1 hour.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 F and grease two baking sheets.
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is about 1/8” thick. Cut into Halloween shapes using cookie cutters that are roughly the same size (so the baking times will be the same). Re-roll the scraps and repeat. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned.
For the icing, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer on high until soft peaks form. Add the powdered sugar and lemon juice. Keep beating until the mixture is thick and shiny. Separate into small bowls and add food coloring. Ice the cookies when they have cooled. Enjoy!
And now, more Halloween goodies from our authors~Book Bargains for You!
Also, if you click on each author’s name above, you might find more free stories available. Most of us offer free ebooks to folks who sign up for our newsletters.
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
We brought you all an interview awhile back with Joanne (Jo) MacGregor, author of The First Time I Died, and I told you how much I loved that first book in this new series.
Well, Book 2 is here, and what a treat. My review is below, and to celebrate the new book’s release, Jo is having a little contest, just for us.
Garnet McGee is back in her Vermont hometown, and she’s once again stumbling over bodies and communing with the dead. With her psychic abilities improving and her completion of graduate school looming, she must decide what to do with her life. Her kooky mother suggests she become a psychic detective and drags her unwillingly into the investigation of the body Garnet found in the local quarry.
Local law enforcement, led by Garnet’s former classmate turned police chief, Ryan Jackson, are assuming the woman’s death was a suicide. But Garnet’s “visions” suggest otherwise, and Ryan is not as skeptical of her insights as Garnet assumed he would be.
From there, the clues unfold, leading Garnet back and forth along a twisted trail. The mystery would be solid and intriguing even without the psychic twist, but I particularly liked how Garnet struggles with and finally manages to integrate traditional investigating (interviewing potential suspects) with her psychic glimpses of what happened.
I also like the development of Garnet’s character, as she struggles to let go of the “ghost” of her old love, her dead high school sweetheart, and begins to let herself experience her attraction to Chief Jackson.
I’m looking forward to more Garnet McGee stories and to seeing how she grows and changes over time.
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
Did you know that there are over 130 random holidays in October?
When we think of this month, the first holiday that comes to mind is on its very last day, Halloween. But if you go to the website https://nationaltoday.com you’ll discover all kinds of interesting special days this month.
photo by element5-digital-unsplash
There are the more serious holidays and “awareness” days of course, such as Yom Kippur (Oct. 8th this year), World Mental Health Day (Oct. 10th), and World Teachers’ Day (Oct. 3).
But we also just missed No Bra Day (it’s actually serious, meant to raise breast cancer awareness) and National Transfer Money to Your Son Day (the check is in the mail, Jonathan).
Yesterday, Oct. 14th, was Columbus Day, but it was also National Dessert Day and National Kick Butt Day.
photo by curology-unsplash
And today, the 15th, is—among other days of acknowledgment—National I Love Lucy Day, National Cheese Curd Day, and Global Handwashing Day.
We may laugh at that last one, but did you know that as recently as the mid 1800s, even doctors did not routinely wash their hands.
In 1847, Dr. Ignatz Semmelweis, considered the Father of Hand Hygiene, demonstrated to his fellow doctors that “childbed fever” is contagious and could be reduced by doctors washing their hands. And plagues in ancient times could have been prevented if people had known to wash their hands more often.
Let’s see… coming up tomorrow, we have Global Cat Day and National Boss’s Day.
created on https://imgflip.com
And if your boss is your cat (as is the case for many of us writers), you can roll these celebrations in together.
Friday is National Chocolate Cupcake Day (Yum!) and Saturday, the 19th, is National New Friends Day.
Hmm, I wonder if that’s a hint that I should stop procrastinating about starting my next book.
a Costa Rican sloth (photo by Javier Mazzeo–Unsplash)
Next week is going to be hard on our poor waistlines.
We have National Nut Day on Tuesday, the 22nd. The following day is National Boston Cream Pie Day. Then Thursday, the 24th, is National Bologna Day, followed immediately by National Breadstick Day, National Greasy Foods Day and World Pasta Day (all on Friday, the 25th).
And my all-time favorites of the month are National Grouch Day (started in honor of Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street) and Slap Your Annoying Coworker Day (Oct. 23rd).
Fortunately, I don’t have any coworkers at the moment, but I still think that is an absolutely awesome holiday!
How about you? What’s your favorite of the random holidays in October, besides Halloween?
And speaking of Halloween, in honor thereof, Kirsten Weiss has her book, Alchemical Detective, free all this month!
Plus, watch for our post on 10/29, when we’ll be bringing you some fun Halloween recipes and lots more bargains on our books!!
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
One of my houseplants, doing it’s darnedest to escape from my kitchen window sill.
by Kassandra Lamb
Gardening has never really been my thing. I don’t have a black thumb per se, more of a brown one. I unintentionally torture plants for a while, before they finally expire.
So I laughed out loud for several minutes when I read this delightful blog post by Barb Taub. I had to share it with you all.
I had a college roommate who talked to her plants. Her side of our
dorm room was filled with overachieving explosions of green. My side had
an ever-revolving range of plants in my two little pots, doomed
visitors who would linger bravely for a week or two before wanly
accepting their fate.
This wasn’t really a problem over the next four decades. With jobs, kids, and a husband who likes to mow large swaths of lawn, my black thumb couldn’t do too much damage. Then I blew it. I moved to the UK, where gardening is a sacred passion.*
(*I’m totally not imagining this. Recent UK census and surveys show that almost 60% of people spent time gardening within the previous month, but only 12% attended religious services.)
When we bought our house on a wee isle in Scotland, it came with an
absolutely wonderful gardener who kept the jungle from closing in.
Sadly, he told us he was retiring and the garden was all down to us now.
This wouldn’t be a particular issue, except for our neighbors. Downhill
below us is one of the most spectacular gardens I’ve ever seen, kept
immaculately and with such a flair for color and casual design that you
could charge admission. Uphill above us is a cottage with a hedge so
flawlessly straight I’m completely convinced our neighbor Peter
manicures it with a surgically-sharp but very tiny pair of scissors.
And between these two lovely gardens, there’s… us. After two years
without anyone who knows what they’re doing, our garden would be an
excellent understudy for the next Tarzan film. When guests go for a
stroll, I feel the odd machete would not be amiss.
So the Hub bought me a scary pair of enormous loppers, and I told the dog I was going in. At first it was almost fun. Without a clue what I was doing, I started to hack a path from the greenhouse. Then somehow I was holding my jaw and listening to a peculiar whining noise. Oh, wait… it was me moaning, and my cupped hand was filling with blood from my nose and split lip. When things stopped spinning, I slowly pieced together that the branch I was lopping had released the other branch it had been holding back, sending it on a flying assault to my face.
(The real attempt on Barb’s life is yet to happen. Read about it HERE. I’ll give you a hint: below is the alleged murder weapon.)
(photo copyright by Barb Taub)
My garden’s attempt to do me in was perpetrated by a bag of mulch. More on that in a later blog post. But I do have to admit that something good came out of it.
While I was laid up recuperating from my garden’s assault, I finally finished the first draft of Multiple Motives, which would become my first published book!
How about you? Are you a green thumb, or a brown or black one? Has your garden ever tried to retaliate and kill you?
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please sign up via email (upper right sidebar) to follow us, so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
Remember those essays we had to write in school…What I Did on My Summer Vacation?
Well, I went to Europe on mine.
It’s a trip that hubs and I had begun to plan multiple times (starting in 2015), and something always happened to derail the plan. So this year, we were determined.
The trip was all about seeing some sights we’d been wanting to see for years—which we did—but I also picked up a few life lessons along the way.
Lesson #1 — People can be family even if they don’t speak the same language.
Our friend Nathalie, with the baguette for dinner, in the town nearest her home.
The first week of our trip was spent in Brittany, France, visiting a friend of twenty some years now. My husband, the linguist, speaks fluent French, but me, not so much. He sees this friend and her family every couple of years, when he’s overseas doing what linguists do (after 43 years of marriage, I’m still trying to figure out what that is). I’ve been over there four or five times now.
Dessert our second evening in France.
The French are fairly reserved with strangers, but once they get to know you—and if they decide they like you—then you’re family. We were welcomed with open arms, bised (kissed on the cheeks) by every man, woman and child in the extended family, and then fed until we almost exploded!
And every meal was accompanied by lively conversation (most of which washed right over my head) and lots of laughter.
It was a wonderful, joyful time and a great way to start our adventure!
Lesson #2 — Our lives today would be radically changed, if a few things had happened a bit differently in the past.
Our second stop was Brest, France, the city where our friend’s eldest daughter lives and works.
View of Brest from our Airbnb’s window.
Brest is a major French naval port. During a visit to the naval museum there, we discovered that the French Navy, and this port in particular, played a pivotal role in our War of Independence.
Four-hundred and fifty ships of the Royal Navy were dispatched from Brest to intercept and blockade the British Navy near Yorktown in 1781. They kept supplies and reinforcements from reaching land, a turning point in the war that eventually led to the signing of the peace treaty.
The tip of the iceberg. Underground are several stories of the German installation, now a museum.
On a more somber note, a visit to a World War II museum, in a former Nazi artillery bunker on the coastline near Brest, poignantly reminded us of how much France and Europe had suffered during that war.
The artifacts of the war included possessions, drawings and photos of specific, real people—military from both sides and French civilians—accompanied by audio recordings of actors playing those people and telling us about their experiences (based on diaries, journals and letters). The hair stood up on the back of my neck a few times.
A profound sight: the juxtaposition of these remnants of a devastating war against the tranquil countryside and the sea beyond.
Brest was a very strategic port for the Germans, and therefore it was bombed regularly by the Allied Forces. Most of the city was destroyed and had to be rebuilt.
It was quite an experience, looking out over the cityscape of modern buildings from our Airbnb’s window, and suddenly having one’s eye stopped by a surviving church spire, a castle tower or an ancient house—the only reminders left that this city was founded before the Middle Ages.
Can you spot the castle? (No, it’s not the tall tower slightly to the left; look a bit to the right instead.)
Lesson #3 — Online friends can be just as wonderful as IRL friends.
Next up was a visit with a friend in Glasgow, Scotland, and a trip to her “wee cottage” on the Isle of Arran.
The side wall of my friend’s “wee” cottage and the view from her front window.
I discovered when I got home that I hadn’t taken any pics of my friend. 🙁 But I did get this one of her wee dog, and my friend’s shoes.
This friend is someone I’ve “known” online for several years now, and I was so excited to finally meet her in person.
She showed us a delightful time!
And I am now proud to call her an in-real-life friend.
Lesson #4 — Some things resist being checked off the bucket list.
No, it’s not Hogwarts, it’s the University of Glasgow on a typical Scottish cloudy day.
We felt like we “did” Glasgow sufficiently (plus a day trip to Edinburgh).
But the Isle of Arran gave us a taste of the beauty of the highlands that left us wanting more. So we’re hoping we can spend some time again on the island, soaking up that beauty at a more leisurely pace.
Maybe we’ll rent one of the lovely holiday cottages that are so plentiful on the island.
Lesson #5 — Sacred spaces come in all shapes and sizes.
High on my bucket list was Stonehenge, and hubs and I are also cathedral junkies. So a trip to Salisbury was the centerpiece of our week in England. After a stop-over in Stratford-upon-Avon for a Shakespeare fix, our train chugged into Salisbury on one of the few sunny afternoons during this leg of the journey.
We dumped our bags in our room and walked the few blocks to get a look at the outside of the cathedral. And stood with our mouths hanging open for a while.
Salisbury Cathedral, built between 1220 and 1238, is one of the biggest and most magnificent cathedrals we’ve ever seen (and that’s saying something).
The next morning we attended the 10:30 mass before shifting into our tourist roles. It was a lovely service, especially in such an awe-inspiring space.
And we visited with the local parishioners for a while afterwards, during the “coffee hour” that is part of almost every Episcopalian/Anglican service in the world (I’m Episcopalian).
Then we wandered around the cathedral’s interior for quite some time (with more mouth-hanging-open moments), before having tea and scones for lunch in the refectory.
The next day, we went to Stonehenge, and we weren’t nearly so lucky with the weather there. It was rainy and dreary the whole time.
We kept asking ourselves why we were walking around in the rain just to look at a bunch of rocks. And yet, we kept walking, and staring.
And stopping to take “one last photo” of those stones that were obviously intentionally placed in that field, in some particular arrangement for some sacred reason, many centuries ago.
Indeed, some of the stones have a blue cast to them that identifies them as a type of rock NOT naturally found in that area. The constructors of Stonehenge had dragged those huge rocks on sledges across many miles to that spot.
Archeologists are still piecing together the whys and wherefores of the phenomenon that is Stonehenge.
Lesson #6 — The justice we take for granted in the West is not universal.
Salisbury Cathedral houses one of the few remaining original copies of the Magna Carta. I hadn’t given much thought to that part of the visit beforehand, assuming that this would just be another historical memento I would glance at and think, “That’s interesting.”
But the Cathedral folks have done a really good job of pointing out the significance of this document, signed begrudgingly by King John of England in 1215.
With various displays around the room, they remind visitors that rights we take for granted in “Western” countries—such as the right to not be arrested without due process and being considered innocent until proven guilty—all stemmed from this incident in British history.
And these concepts are not universal in other countries.
Lesson #7 — Nobody’s getting any younger, so go where you really want to go sooner instead of later.
We were really sorry we’d waited so long to make this trip, especially since we found the lugging of suitcases, the climbing of steps and the many miles of walking much more challenging then in the past.
So our next big adventure will be happening a lot sooner. Before our old bodies give out on us completely.
How about you? What did you do on your summer vacation? And what’s still on your bucket list?
We blog here at misterio press about twice a month, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
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Traditionally, beaches are jammed full on the last big weekend of summer. (photo by John Murphy, CC-BY-SA 2.0 Wikimedia Commons)
Another Labor Day has rolled around. For many of us this is just another three-day weekend, an excuse to have a cookout or make a trip to the department stores to grab some bargains.
Or we may look upon this holiday as the bittersweet end of summer.
But the day was originally set aside to honor people who worked for a living (which is almost all of us). Back when this holiday was a new thing, in the late 1800s, many more people did actual physical labor in their jobs than we see today.
Indeed, the word “labor” implies hard physical effort. We talk about a woman laboring to give birth.
But what about if our work is something we are passionate about. Then we may call it a “labor of love.”
Here are 6 things I’ve learned about labor during my lifetime:
1. Find work that you enjoy, and preferably work that you can feel passionate about.
There are lots of different vocations available today. Don’t settle for one that you can barely tolerate, if you can help it.
2. Accept the bad with the good.
Not all of the tasks involved in that work will be ones you like. I try to deal with the less pleasant tasks first thing, so I can enjoy the rest of my day without them hanging over my head.
3. Take time to experience a sense of accomplishment.
The next time you finish a task, stop and notice what that sense of accomplishment feels like for you.
For me, it’s a light feeling in my chest and I find myself smiling even if no one else is around. I experience this feeling, to varying degrees, every time I accomplish something, no matter how small. Even something mundane like changing the sheets on the bed comes with a small sense of satisfaction.
(image by Camdiluv ♥ from Concepción, CHILE CC-BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
When the accomplishment is a major one, there may be bubbles of joy in my chest and the urge to jump up and down. I get that more intense feeling when I finish a first draft, and when I hit Publish for a new release.
Once you’ve discovered what “accomplishment” feels like for you, stop to let yourself experience that feeling every time you finish a task. Take the time to savor it; it’s your reward!
4. Realize that passion can burn out eventually.
We have much more permission to change careers today than previous generations did. Don’t hesitate to at least explore other options when what was once pleasant is now burdensome. I’m now working on my 4th career.
5. Don’t make what has come before wrong because it is no longer right.
Things we once felt passionate about can become mundane. Tasks that we once tolerated can become excruciating. But that doesn’t mean that particular passion wasn’t right for us back in the day. Things change; cherish the memories and move on.
My first career was as an administrative assistant in Human Resources (we called it Personnel back then). The tasks I did in that job would bore me to tears today, but I was excited to be part of the business world and to use my interest in psychology to help my employer hire good people.
The first Labor Day parade, in New York in 1882. (public domain)
When I hit the glass ceiling (which was a lot lower in those days), I went back to school and then became a therapist. I loved that work.
For two decades, I loved it, until I didn’t anymore. But that didn’t make what I had accomplished any less meaningful to me or my clients, nor did it change the fact that I had indeed loved that career for a very long time.
And then I loved to teach, until the other aspects of the job (like grading papers) got to be more trouble than it was worth. (I miss the students though.)
And now I’m writing fiction. I’m still passionate about it, but not as much so as I once was. It feels a bit more like “work” these days. Nonetheless, I suspect I’ll be at this until I’m old enough to finally be content with full retirement.
Each of my careers was fulfilling in its own season, and I cherish all the memories.
6. Balance work with play.
There is much truth in the old adage: All work and no play makes one a dull girl/boy. If work is nonstop—no matter how passionate we are about it—we can become dull shadows of our fully alive selves.
I learned this one the hard way. It’s easy for the business of writing, polishing, publishing and marketing books to become all consuming. I let this happen for several years until a vague sense of discontent had grown into a low-grade depression.
Now, twice a week, I make myself take time off from my business and writing tasks and go to the senior center to play cards or mah jongg. I call them my “old lady days” but really they are my mental health days.
Any thoughts about “labor” you all would like to add?
We blog here at misterio press once (sometimes twice) a week, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.
Please follow us so you don’t miss out on any of the interesting stuff, or the fun! (We do not lend, sell nor otherwise bend, spindle or mutilate followers’ e-mail addresses. 🙂 )
