I spent time with New Zealand authors who have killed a lot of people this year. Here is my quick review of four books by three writers. Check it out at https://heyijustread.wordpress.com/2024/09/30/death-with-kiwis/
Between the pages
Category: creativity
Ah, summer
Sweltering, according to a dictionary, is “uncomfortably hot.” And that’s all the description we needed to describe days when all you had to do to work up a sweat was sit still.
In my experience, the worst days of summer arrive when the corn is high and the earth’s respiration goes straight from the fields to the clouds.
I’m grateful the month started out below average in my part of the Midwest. My sisters gathered for our “weekend” together, visiting each other and relatives from both our parents’ families.
Cool temperatures prevailed in the weeks that followed. I, for one, enjoyed the respite from typical summer temperatures.
My mind gets sluggish in heat. I’m much happier in winter when I can pile on blankets and sweaters and sip hot cocoa and lots of tea. In summer, I try to drink lots of cool water, but even in AC, ice melts pretty fast at my house.
My three sisters are much more outdoorsy than I am — to their credit and their health. They all kayak and hike and pickleball. They never lost the art of play. I guess I was always the serious kid. I liked some sports, including swimming, but one after another, they slipped from my routine after my jobs grew more distant and my commute locked me in my car from forty to one hundred twenty miles daily. The girl who loved to ride her bike to a park with a book, find a shady spot and read easily switched her loyalty to audio books.
Today, I just hope to keep my electrical use to a minimum until sunset. Then I may walk out to check the mail and run the washer. And I need to put “new clothesline” on my shopping list. No reason to run the dryer if I don’t have to.
I find the idea of understanding meterological terms and measures much more fascinating than living through them. I’m still grappling with dew points versus humidity as a way to measure relative air comfort, but I keep trying.
And I understand sweltering just fine.
À bientôt!
A month at home
For the first time in several years, I spent the entire month of June at home. And what do I have to show for it?
My biggest thrill since May is that I learned a short story I wrote was selected for the Sisters in Crime Guppy Chapter anthology, Gone Fishing: Crime Takes a Holiday. I have comments from the editor and I’ll be making changes before the book comes out next February. That alone makes this a great month to be home.
But I also have a bit more than 13,000 words in my novel rewrite. And I spent some time with visiting family and friends.
I also took a few more random drives than I normally do this month because I was itching to get out of the house and see places. There’s something about being on the road that always sparks my imagination.
Compared to last year, when I spent days doing research in the Driftless Region of the Upper Mississippi and visiting museums in Wisconsin and Iowa, all after meeting people and learning things at Cop Camp and Writer’s Police Academy, this June seemed pretty tame.
I still have to master the discipline of working on the road. Award-winning journalist and author, Hank Phillippi Ryan, told me last year that she retreats to her hotel room at conferences so she can maintain her daily writing schedule. No wonder she wins awards!
Still, travel is a way to widen one’s experience in a way that sitting with books or travel shows on TV just can’t do.
I feel the need for a short, research trip. Maybe — if I can get to 50,000 words on my novel revision — I should plan a short jaunt to another spot in the Midwest that I want to write about.
In the meantime, I should put my words toward that effort.
À bientôt!
Short stuff
March has blown by, hasn’t it?
But as it winds down, it the perfect time to offer kudos to my friends who are on the lists for short story awards this spring.
At Malice Domestic 36 — which begins with pre-conference activities April 25 and opens officially April 26 — there are five nominees in the Best Short Story category. There are links on the website’s Agatha Awards page if you want to read the short stories. There are also links at malicedomestic.net for general information (include late registration).
The Derringer Awards (could there be a better name for a mystery short story award?) came out on the last day of the month. Check them out on The Short Mystery Fiction Society Blog. The categories there are Flash, Short Story, Long Story and Novelette.
And in my own short news, I submitted a short story to an anthology. Fingers crossed, it gets picked. I’ll let you know.
À bientôt!
Happy New Year!
Today marks the Lunar New Year — the first day of the Year of the Dragon — a year I find personally auspicious. It’s my year, after all.
I was born in the Year of the Dragon — I’m old enough not to go into details — and I always look forward to my own year in the Asian zodiac. You might say, I’m “fired up” about the New Year. (Don’t groan too loudly.)
This year, especially, since I effectively took January off for an extended visit with family and friends, I really feel like now is the right time to start a new year.
I’m ready to set some goals. Outline some projects. Block out time on my calendar. Start fresh.
Since Feb. 10 is also the feast day of Blessed Alojzije (Aloysius) Stepinac of Croatia (learn about him here), it seems fated that I should talk about some New Year’s traditions from my Croatian side.
Yes, the dragon represents the Asian year. But the pigs with their gold coins represent an old Croatian tradition.
First, though, you should know that in Croatia (a country known for its potent plum brandy), people believed that the way you behaved on New Year’s Day would set the tone for your entire year. Ideally, you should have a neat house and everyone in it should be quiet and well behaved all day. That may have been due to overindulgence in plum brandy the night before, but I can’t say for sure.
The main course, if possible, was pork on New Year’s Day.
They didn’t eat chicken, because chickens move their feet backward as they scratch the soil. Having chicken on your table could bury all the year’s good fortune.
They didn’t eat rabbit because the timid creatures run away, carrying good fortune with them.
They didn’t eat fish because they swim away from you, prosperity slipping away in their wake.
They did eat pork because pigs, when they root around for food, dig forward. As they uncover treasures to munch, they also uncover heaps of good fortune for the new year.
So put some pork on your table tonight and enjoy the fortune of fresh, new year!
À bientôt!
sharon p. lynn 