Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Hello Dear Readers,
Today I am announcing the release of my novel Behind His Mask.  Here's the synopsis:

Sarah thinks she knows everything about Evander.  He hardly speaks to her, but she doesn't need him to explain his snotty upbringing.  She still likes him.

Things change when she is given a book he authored, and is unexpectedly drawn into the story.  Suddenly, she's wearing ball gowns and playing hostess to princes.  The pretend world of his book seems like the adventure of a lifetime, until the world Evander created becomes dangerous in ways that spill over into real life.  There are bloodthirsty capricorns to contend with, ironclad knights who keep threatening to light her on fire, and a doomed mansion with howling ghosts.  Perhaps even a demon.

She'll have to read the whole book to find out who Evander really is.

Paperback and ebook versions are on sale on amazon.com and an ebook version is on sale on amazon.ca.

Next week, I'll post an excerpt.

Happy reading!







Saturday, July 14, 2018

Wild Animals are Everywhere!


It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that there are wild animals here and they are everywhere. My property backs onto 15 km of wild forest. I don't own it, but the government doesn't charge me for looking at it.

Yesterday, I was sitting on my back deck and a saw part of a little green body between the boards and I thought to myself, “I'm about to see the biggest grasshopper I've ever seen.” I was pretty into it and waited excitedly for the little friend to show himself. To my delight, he was not a grasshopper but a pacific tree frog. I didn't even know we had tree frogs in Canada.

We had rabbits in Edmonton, great big jack rabbits that were honestly big enough that the whole concept of 'rabbit stew' made sense. Here we have little brown bunnies that look like something off a Disney cartoon. They're small and fat with... wait for it... floppy ears.

We went to a rocky beach to hang out and my sons caught a truck load of crabs. Not tiny crabs. big crabs. I didn't take them home and cook them because I had absolutely no idea how to do that or even if you're allowed to just walk to up to the beach and start treating it like a grocery store. But I like crabs and was very entertained by the event.

Whoever planted the flowering bushes around my house had hummingbirds in mind and more than one variety comes to drink out of the different trumpets, but when I try to identify them according to the internet, they aren't on the list of hummingbirds that are supposed to live on Vancouver island.

Owls live in the woods too. Of course you can't see them because it's night and they seem to be quite a distance from the house, but you can figure out woo they are by their hoot. I think we mostly get great horned owls.

There are lots of different birds of prey who circle around the skies during the day. The bald eagles are easy to spot and when they come by the shoreline to catch things, you can get a real sense of how big they are. Ya know, because they're really close.

Another surprising flying thing are the pale swallowtail butterflies. When I first saw one this spring, I ducked because it was super enormous and heading right for me. I didn't get a good look at it, and it looked like a tiny flying cathedral with long dark bars like the iron work of a stained glass window, except that there is no colour, only pale light gleaming through the bars. As the season progressed, you could see one swoop by nearly every time you went outside, and every time I'd stop and gaze in amazement that butterflies could grow that big.

The squirrels here have enormous fluffy tails. They are mostly black or grey. There are racoons that cross the street here. I mean I hit my breaks for one crossing the street. I also hit the breaks for a mama duck and her line of ducklings. One time I drove alongside a buck with beautiful antlers. I didn't do that until it seemed very certain that he had no intention to cross the road. The deer around here seem like they know a lot about crossing the road. There's lots of roadkill here, but I've only ever seen one deer. Mostly, they're dead racoons.

So, there are snakes here, and humongous slugs, and dragonflies, and damselflies, and big black beetles with shiny shells, and quail who run hilariously, and noisy cicadas, and more birds than you can shake a stick at who like to sing at four in the morning, so no one will ever know what they look like.

But then... I think I heard a cougar kill a deer in the forest outside my window recently. People around here talk about cougars like they're around and I roll my eyes and go, “Yes, please don't talk to my kids about them. They'll refuse to walk home from school.” But this was in the dead of night. The cougar hissed and the deer screamed and then the deer let out a cry that was totally guttural, and then there was silence. And I looked out into the black woods and saw nothing.

Monday, July 2, 2018

That's a Paddling


Since I live in a village that surrounds a lake, I decided that I needed to take up some kind of water sport. Years ago, I was flutter-boarding in Hawaii and I saw this woman paddle-boarding to shore. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I wondered exactly what I would need to do to be that cool. I immediately decided that it was completely impossible. I mean, I lived in Alberta, which is landlocked and my last experience with dipping my toes in Albertan water was in Waterton. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but no one should do a water sport in Waterton that involves touching water. It's so cold, its best purpose is to treat BBQ burns.

So I put paddle-boarding out of my mind.

But then I moved here and decided that I was going to buy a paddle board and get busy.

There were a lot of naysayers.

I heard all kinds of things. Things like, “It takes a lot of stamina to paddle board.” Honestly, I have zero stamina and that scared me. “Isn't it hard to balance?” My brain finishes that thought with, “And doesn't every human being start losing their balance after their tenth birthday... or soon after?” “Are you sure you want to buy one when you've never done it before and you're from a province that's land locked?”

There were a lot of doubts.

Okay, so I bought one and I've done this and this is my report.

It does require a lot of stamina. Firstly, mine weighs fifty pounds. I have to drag it out of my garage, heave it onto the roof of my vehicle, strap it to the roof, drive to the lake, find a place to unload it, unstrap it, pull it down, lock up and look cool while carrying a fifty pound board that is heavier on one end to the water. It's not easy, but I have always had T-Rex arms, so maybe a little harder for me than the currently disembodied you.

When it's time to go, I have to heave it out of the water, carry it back to my van, heave it onto the top, strap it down, drive home, open my garage door (which is not automatic my arms have suddenly noticed), unstrap it, get it down, and haul it into the garage. It should also be noted the last time I did this, when I was about to pull my paddle board down from my van, my neighbour yelled over the fence, “You got it up there, so you can get it down again.” I bit my lip on, “Who asked you!?”

So, yes, paddling-boarding takes a lot of stamina. Balance? Yes. It's heavy and sort of wants to crush you. Was it extra hard because I hadn't done it before? I may be from Alberta, but that's where heavy things come from, so no.

With all that said, it's a good thing that once you get your board on the water, it is essentially effortless. And the best way to get a view of my lake is to get in the middle of it. It is really tree lined. What? This is still Canada.

Cut Like Glass

One of the things I really enjoy writing is novelettes.  I wish I had discovered them sooner.  They are SO MUCH FUN! 'Cut Like Glass'...