Moving Closer to Deadline

One of the good things about buying a house before you sell your current home is that you can take your time sorting, recycling, and packing. I’m pretty much done with the many items that were contained my big, old cedar chest. The school years, ballet years, college years, traveling years, working years, and family memorabilia have been sorted. The packing has begun and we’ve been moving boxes to the new place.

We’ve now met with the realtor and are listing our current home in three weeks. This means that we have to declutter every surface and have every room camera ready by the 14^th of April. We’ve also contacted a moving company who’ll also help with packing, dismantling, and reassembling. Moving day is April 26th. So, I now have a deadline to work with, which is good. Thanks to years of writing and submitting work to editors and publishers, I work well with deadlines.

The area of the Lower Mainland that we’re moving to (a 50-minute drive away) has more sunshine than we do in Port Moody. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve driven from here on a cloudy, drizzly day only to find dry roads and the sun peeking out in South Delta. South Delta is flat and subject to much more wind than we have in hilly, Port Moody, which has mountains on its north side. As you’ll see in the photos, the weather and land in South Delta means that plants flourish. This photo was taken last week in our new front yard. Meanwhile, our Port Moody home still has a patch of snow on the ground.

Needless to say, I’m not writing much these days, which is fine. I finally sent the urban fantasy to beta readers a few days ago and am currently dabbling with another project. Writing is my happy place, and it’s how I like to start my day. I’m also taking part in one monthly BookFunnel discount promotion, and this month it’s $.99 #sale for my 3rd Casey Holland mystery, Beneath the Bleak New Moon.

So, these days, the routine is basically writing and writing-related tasks in the morning, packing in the afternoon, and relaxing in the evening. We drive out to the new place at least once a week and visit the grandkids. Things will look quite different in the latter half of April, but it’s exciting to think that by Mother’s Day we will be in our new place. We’ll probably still be living among lots of boxes, but at least I’ll be able to step out my front door, pull up a chair and admire the all the beautiful flowers coming our way.

Moving Along

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks since my last blog. Now that we have keys to our new house, we’re slowly moving items in and hiring contractors to update some of the plumbing and wiring. I’m happy that we have the time to take care of these things. The house we’re moving into is older and there are always issues.

Meanwhile, I finished sorting through my office and have now tackled the large cedar chest just outside my office. I’ve had it since my early twenties and don’t even remember where I purchased it. The chest was packed with childhood and college memorabilia and final print versions of my short stories, essays, articles, and novels. Since nearly all the pieces have been published and the published works are on my bookshelves and/or stored digitally, I’m recycling the paper.

Many years ago, my mother gave me a box of mementoes which I’d forgotten about over the years. Needless to say, I found myself surrounded by more nostalgic memories of the past including my eight years of ballet study. To my surprise, she’d kept the old programs from concerts I performed in, competitions I entered, including the adjudicator’s comments, as well as scores and assessments after each year’s examination.

The ballet years, which evolved into an intense, seven-day a week commitment, weren’t the happiest in my life. There was physical pain, lots of stress, strict instructors, and more than a few demoralizing moments, but the experience taught me three important lessons.

One is the importance of keeping fit through activity and exercise. Number two is that discipline and hard work do get results, and three is to face one’s fears. When you’re twelve years old and told to improvise a solo dance in front of an audience and judges, you just get on with it and try your best. Of course, I wasn’t alone in this ordeal. Each competitor had only two minutes to hear a piece of music before performing to it on stage. Misery does love company, as it happens.

All three lessons have served me well over the years, especially as a writer. I taught my kids those values and will do the same for my granddaughters. And I still move well to any type of music thrown at me, a skill I hope to use to great advantage when I reach my 80s.

A Book-Sorting Dilemma

I have a special bookcase in my office that contains four shelves and glass doors. It’s where I keep old editions of books purchased when I lived in England in 1979. I also keep signed copies of books from authors I’ve met over the years. Some I know fairly well. Others I meet briefly at mystery conferences ages ago and now don’t remember their faces.

This week, I decided to tackle that special collection. It’s been a perplexing challenge at times. I’ve found myself placing some of the books on the pile that won’t be moving with me. A few hours later, I put a handful back into the bookcase. There are books I didn’t think I’d part with a couple of days ago, but I’ve now changed my mind.

I’m looking at two criteria for discarding all of my books, signed or not. First, do these stories still resonate with me in some way and, second, is the print still readable for my aging eyes? Some of the older paperbacks have an incredibly small font size.

As you’ll see from the photo, I’m giving away my set of Crime and Punishment: A Pictorial Encyclopedia on Aberrant Behavior. The content isn’t extensive and was purchased about the time I enrolled in the criminology program at college. There are lots of gruesome photographs in it, though, including the Lizzie Borden crime scene, among others.

This bookcase contains books that will not be moving with me. The top shelf contains signed copies of mysteries/thrillers and half of the shelf below contain signed copies of other genres and nonfiction.

Among my unsigned collection, I’m keeping The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico, Rebecca, Brideshead Revisited, three of Maya Angelou’s books, all of Sue Grafton’s, and P.D. James’ books, a short story collection by Raymond Carver, and several others. It’s comforting to know that I still have many great books on hand 😊

On the promotion front, I was thrilled to be interviewed by the wonderful mystery author and artist, Joanna Van Der Flugt. We caught up after sixteen months, and the theme of our talk was transition. Joanna also went through a major move last year and she too is a mystery author who’s delving into other genres. If you’re interested in this hour-long broadcast you can find it HERE.

Out With the Old, In With the New

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the nostalgic experience of tossing out old papers and magazine clippings on a variety of topics. Since then, I’ve started purging my writing-related files which has also been a nostalgic exercise. I found folders containing pamphlets and notes, and old itineraries from conferences going back to 1997. I found a folder containing news clippings about famous Canadian authors including Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Carol Shields, and many others. I brought to the students of the Saturday morning writing workshops I facilitate.

I found five different folders containing story ideas, partially completed first drafts and the occasional completed draft. Some of the ideas I did use, others I’ve now discarded, and a few I kept because they still resonate with me. Thankfully, it’s all in one file now 😊 The purging will continue over the next couple of weeks, but I see an end in sight, thank goodness.

As mentioned last week, I’m resuming book promotions for 2023. The first is a BookFunnel $.99 sales promo for my second Casey Holland mystery, Deadly Accusations. This group promotion features over 140 discounted crime fiction titles to choose from, which you find HERE:

The second event is a newsletter signup promo, offering an even more varied selection of books including free mystery, humor and romances, which is available HERE:

Since many of you, including me, are still experiencing freezing winter temperatures, this is a perfect time to try new authors and curl up with some great ebooks.

Starting 2023 with Nostalgic Recycling

I certainly can’t complain about 2023 so far. It’s gone smoothly and Vancouver is back to its normal rainy but mild weather pattern. To prepare for our move later this year, I’ve been going through file folders and recycling papers I no longer want to keep. It’s turned into an interesting and nostalgic exercise.

Before my mother’s dementia took over her life, she was an avid reader of newspapers, mystery novels, and Maclean’s Magazine. For my American friends, Maclean’s was, and perhaps still is, one of the most well-known news magazines in our country. For years, she would bring me all kinds of articles clipped from her weekly reading material. While I read and discarded most, some things I kept in a “General” file folder. Many of these articles are no longer relevant, however, there’s one special edition (not a Maclean’s) magazine I couldn’t part with.

It’s called ‘Heroes of the Heartland’ about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The photo of an emergency responder holding a baby girl in his arms is still heart wrenching. I think of all the acts of terrorism since then and the children who’ve been killed, and somehow I can’t let this one go.

On the upside, I had no trouble recycling expired warrantees, old newsletters and correspondence. To my delight, I’d forgotten that I’d already cleared out most of the bottom drawer in the 4-drawer filing cabinet you see in the photo, back in the summer. Those files included all the submissions, rejection letters, and other correspondence from 1980 to 2000.

Now I have the next decade to recycle. After these four drawers are completed, I have three more 2-drawer cabinets to go through. I was surprised that I still had handwritten performance reviews, not to mention numerous course certificates when I worked in retail twenty years ago. Do I need reminding that after a good review, my salary was bumped up to whopping $9.83 an hour? I think not.

Then there was the ten-year-long breast cancer study I took part in during my forties. After my sister’s bout with breast cancer 20+ years ago, I was invited to take part in a ten-year study to determine if the fat intake in the average North American diet increased the likelihood of contracting breast cancer when compared to women on a low-fat diet. I was placed in the low-fat group. If you’re curious, the study found no significant increase in the rates of breast cancer diagnosis compared to the low-fat group. Anyhow, I wound up with a thick folder containing newsletters, recipes, meeting notices, and so forth. It’s all in the recycling bin now.

You might wonder why I wouldn’t want to keep at least some of these memories? The answer is that I have in my journals, where there are detailed accounts about the study and many other events in my life. I also have my submissions and rejections recorded on an Excel sheet, along with detailed records of publications, books read, courses taken, and so forth on the computer.

Going through all this sorting might sound like a lot of work, but it’s not arduous yet. My approach is to do a little for about 30 minutes after dinner, four or five days a week. Writing still takes up most of my day and I have much more to say about what’s happening with that next week.