Goodbye, My Brother… A Death with Dignity — Wandering through Time and Place

I was moved by this touching tribute by Curt Mekemson to Mitch, his much loved brother.  A dignified death is all we can ask for when our time comes…

 

I was with Marsh when he died on June 2, gently holding his shoulder. His hospice nurse, C, was holding his hand and quietly taking him through a beautiful meditation. She included the deer herd that had come down off the hill and stood around the RV. Coincidence? Probably. We normally have three or four […]

via Goodbye, My Brother… A Death with Dignity — Wandering through Time and Place

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#Bookreview – The Daughter-in-law Syndrome by Stevie Turner

Thanks to Robbie Cheadle for this brilliant review of ‘The Daughter-in-law Syndrome’.

Robbie's inspiration

What Amazon says

The Daughter-in-law Syndrome investigates the complicated relationship causing much friction between Grandmother Edna Deane and her daughter-in-law Arla. In addition it focuses on the sometimes tumultuous partnership between Arla and her husband Ric.

Arla Deane sometimes likens her marriage to undergoing daily psychological warfare. Husband Ric will never voice an opinion, and puts his mother Edna up high on a pedestal. Arla is sick of always feeling that she comes in at only second best to her mother-in-law, who much to Arla’s fury is never told anything by Ric or his sisters that she would not want to hear.

This novel explores the husband/wife, mother/son, and mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships. After twenty eight years of marriage, Arla, the daughter-in-law, is at the end of her tether and persuades a reluctant Ric to accompany her for marriage guidance. As they look back over their lives with Counsellor Toni Beecher, Arla…

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Bermondsey summers

Ah, reading this I recall my favourite thing to do whilst walking home from school – going into our local sweet shop and buying a ‘Jubbly’. Oh, the pleasure of it – walking along and biting the sweet tasting ice! Jubblys are long gone now and so is my childhood, but reading Pete’s blog brought it all back for a few lovely moments. Thanks Pete.

beetleypete

What is it about memory, that makes us remember summers as being better in our youth? Ask most people about the weather, and they will almost always agree that the summer was better when they were young.

Six weeks of unbroken sun, school holidays spent outside, with perhaps the occasional thundery shower, that helped to clear the air. Given that this might span a time period from 1958, to 1998, it cannot really have any basis in fact. Although I do not have the real statistics to hand, (and cannot be bothered to look them up) I am sure that we didn’t always have fabulous summers, with weeks of Mediterranean heat, and unbroken blue skies. So why is it that this is how I remember them?

Before we moved to Kent, when I was fifteen years old, I spent my summers on the streets of Bermondsey, a South London district…

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Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – Author Update – #Reviews – Frank Prem, C. S. Boyack, Stevie Turner and Judith Barrow.

Thanks to Sally Cronin at Smorgasbord for my shout-out today.

Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

Welcome to the first of the Cafe and Bookstore Updates this week with more reviews for authors on the shelves.

The first author is Frank Prem whose latest collection Devil in the Wind: Voices from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires is receiving wonderful reviews.

About Devil in the Wind

Devil In The Wind is an account of catastrophic fire and its immediate aftermath.

In this 21st century, the whole world seems to be on fire. America burns. Europe burns. Greece is reeling after its own tragedy of fire.

And Australia burns, as it has always done, but now so much more fiercely.

In February 2009, wildfires burnt through entire communities, taking 173 lives and injuring hundreds, while destroying thousands of houses and other buildings. Up to 400 fires destroyed 450,000 hectares of forest, native fauna and habitat, livestock and farmland.

In the aftermath of the fires, the voices of people…

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Good Luck With That

Luck… that elusive ingredient. Great blog from Nicholas C. Rossis.

Nicholas C. Rossis

I remember having a dialogue with a writer friend a few years ago. She was chastising me for stressing the importance of luck in publishing. Her argument was that, if you work hard enough, you’re bound to succeed.

At the time, I was wondering if she was right and hard work was all it took.

After a decade in this game, I changed my mind. have now added prayers to luck as the most important factors helping with your career.

Now, it looks like I’m not the only one to think so. J.A. Konrath, one of the best-known Indies in the world, recently shared a sobering post called, Your Book Marketing Plan Won’t Work.

Even though you may think he methodically destroys all of your dreams, what he really does is debunk the myth of writing being some sort of get-rich-quick scam. Konrath himself used to make 800K a…

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Male Mystique

This is a wonderfully accurate description of men by Aurorawatcherak. Also don’t forget the male map reading skills and the female preference to have the map facing the direction she’s going in…

aurorawatcherak

What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?

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What an interesting question to ask and answer, especially from an Alaska woman’s perspective.

I essentially grew up in a foreign country. Alaska in my childhood was a rugged frontier world that got limited television. The male-female ratio was four to one. Even today, Alaska has a fairly male-oriented culture. Women certainly participate fully in the society…

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Ambulance stories (18)

Yes this is a depressing post, but it shows just what ambulance staff have to deal with. We tend to be shielded from death in our everyday lives, but we must thank people like Pete who did a job that few would want to do.

beetleypete

Living with the dead

This is not an anecdote about a specific job, like the other posts in this series. It is rather a reflection on death, and on dealing with it in the role of an ambulanceman. It is not meant to be depressing, though it may read that way. It is part of my reflection on those years, as I get older.

Before I joined the London Ambulance Service, I had seen one dead body. When I was young, my maternal grandfather died. He was only 65, and died suddenly. I was taken to see him in his coffin, which was in my grandparents’ front room, for a vigil before the funeral. My enduring memory of that night, was not of my first dead body, but of my uncle crying. My grand-dad just looked as if he was asleep, and I did not find it distressing.

Decades later…

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Thursday Book Feature: Understanding

Thanks to Abbie Johnson Taylor for this review of our anthology ‘Understanding’.

My Corner

Understanding: An Anthology of Significant and True Life Events

by Stevie Turner et al.

Copyright 2019

In this anthology, edited by fellow blogger Stevie Turner, contributors, me included, share stories of life-altering events such as sexual abuse, traumatic accidents, and teen pregnancy. My story is about my years of caring for my late husband as outlined in My Ideal Partner- How I Met, Married, and Cared for the Man I Loved Despite Debilitating Odds Stevie also includes her story of how she survived thyroid cancer.

Most stories are in the form of an interview. Stevie sent us each twenty questions about our experiences, which most of us answered. One author, though, chose to provide her answers in the form of an essay. At the beginning of each story is the author’s biographical information.

I enjoyed reading many of these uplifting stories of courage and determination in the face of…

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Be True to Yourself

Simple thoughts from Michele, living a simple life. However, it’s very true that you’ll always sleep better at night if you live true to yourself. It took me a long time to learn this and even longer to actually do it, but it’s the best thing that you can do for yourself!

Living a Simple Life

Taking selfies in the garden again. At least it’s not on Naked Gardening Day……YW! 😜

A quote I read a long time ago…..

“As you get older you will understand more and more that it’s not about what you look like or what you own, it’s all about the person you’ve become.”

I have always tried to teach all 6 of my kids this. And I found the best way to do that is by example. This wasn’t easy because I wasn’t raised by this. Without going into detail & running my family in the ground (because I do love & respect them), when it came to public eye, I had to look & act a certain way. I’m sure it was because they thought it would reflect on them. Which to a degree that’s true. But when it overshadows the person you are, to the point of caring what…

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Authors Beware! (part two) – The Secret Vanity Publishers Operating as Independents

I’ve been bitten a couple of times by unscrupulous publishers. The Strawberry Post gives good advice here, which is never to pay any money to Indie publishers. If they’ve published your book then they should be the ones paying you!

The Strawberry Post

Last week I spoke about what to do if you were thinking about getting your book published by an independent publisher.  I covered the positives and negatives of both the smaller and bigger indie publisers and gave tips on how to research a publisher before submitting your manuscript to them.

While explaining all this I touched on the indie publishers who aren’t so good.  As a book blogger alone, I’ve encountered a few indie publishers who really weren’t very good and speaking to some of the authors who signed on with them, the list of problems these publishers have range from the minor to the terrible.  For a start some don’t edit books very well at all, while others have poor ways of communicating with bloggers and authors.  One publisher I agreed to review for wouldn’t stop harassing me every other day for an update on whether I’d read…

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