Tag Archives: research

Make it Stop!

25 Tuesday Jun 2019

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Does anyone want to take my pain away?  Just for a while?

Today was basically a repeat of yesterday… I spent most of the day trying to fight off a headache while my neck pain worsened.  I wore my heels today to ease the back pain, at least while I was wearing them.  The canker on the underside of my tongue and the ear pain are something else though!

Today was one of those days I was pretty fed up with being holed up at work especially when the sun is shining outside.  The great thing was, the sun stayed out.  I ended up coming home and just trying to take it easy before I finally went over for a swim!  I’m glad I did that… it was heavenly! I then came home, filled the tub with the hottest water I could stand and let the heat seep into my sore muscles.

I think things are starting to settle down and I’m hoping to go to bed early and get a good sleep.  Last night was a good sleep but I had to wake up.  Tomorrow morning I don’t have to wake up.  My alarm is off for the next two days!

Tomorrow evening there is a free salsa dance event at our city square… I’d love to go but I want to see how I feel first.  I was hoping to not go alone and I think people I know are going… I should go on Facebook and find out.  At 6:30 the lesson starts.  I would probably go for that and a bit more but then come back home.

I could call it research because I would love to learn to dance… ballroom over salsa but, hey, salsa could be fun too!  It would be amazing to add a little something to my repertoire for a new novel… a title like The Dance Class!

Never think that something out there can’t be used for what you write!  It’s always possible to use what you’ve learned and bring it to life so that a character brings that experience to someone else.

I’m excited that I got this posted!  It’s definitely late enough but it’s up!

How to kill in the 1940s…

10 Sunday Jul 2016

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With TV carrying shows about investigating crime, and mostly murder, we realize (or should) how difficult it would be to kill someone and not be found out.  Forensics has changed that landscape in the last several decades and can now detect anything in a toxicity screen (blood sample), and, of course, identify just about any weapon, and let’s not forget about DNA left behind with even a hair falling out.

So, what happens though when you want to kill someone in the 1940s?  Well, there are ways!

I ended up doing my research for The Writing on the Wall because of where the book was leading as I was writing it.  The idea of the novel have an old murder (actually murders, plural) was not on my mind when I started writing it.  Hadn’t crossed my mind.  Only thing I knew was that there was going to be writing on the wall found under wallpaper in an old house during a renovation.  I wanted the novel to be my first mystery but that’s tough when you’ve written women’s fiction all along.  Of course there had to be some romance in it!

So how do you begin a search like that?  Lucky for me, I actually work in the medical field so I know a great deal of side effects of even more medications.  BUT… what would have been detected and not detected in 1947?

We are so accustomed to what technology gives us today that we forget that much didn’t exist a hundred years ago, and less.

The Writing on the Wall is the first in a romance/mystery series that I’m writing.  I’m in the middle of edits on the second book, Confessions in the Mural, and hope to have it out by the end of this year.

It is not my intention to wait another five years before I bring out the next book in this series.  I just have to come up with a good working title!  I had a whole page covered in them back in 2011 but I can’t find that notebook so I’m back to square one.

It is also my intention to re-release The Writing on the Wall with updated information and release it for the first time for Kindle.  I will post that information here and on my website as I work on those projects.

As I have said before, it has been fifteen years since I started writing add I’ve come a long way.  Confessions will be my tenth novel plus I’ve been teaching for the last five.  It’s time to regroup, reevaluate and move forward with whatever my decisions are.

Ultimately, I would love to share my work with the region by renting the upstairs of The Button Factory and have an opening of sorts with a reading or two and, of course, a signing.

Now I just have to figure out everything else!

 

What do we want?

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

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I’ve given more thought to the meeting on Saturday and the outcomes… well, there were no actual outcomes. They didn’t even collect the notes. I was lucky enough to talk to the director of the Button Factory on Monday and she was similar in opinion.  For starters the question “what are you committed to doing for the arts in the next four years?” morphed into “what would you like to see done for the arts in the next four years?” because many of the responses were more around that. It was nice to know that the feeling was shared.

So why? Why the change?

I have a college education and have always been information oriented. I do very few big things without researching them. In 1996 when I wanted to start a wedding business, I visited the library, the local business development office and I spent hours sending out letters by mail to introduce myself and spread the word. So it was a natural progression when I started writing, and more so when I began teaching that I follow the same paths.

But many artists don’t think that way. They think that they make pretty things and it should be automatic that everything falls into place. That things are done for them. So Saturday’s meeting makes some sense. Those of us who have the drive to go out and do things for ourselves answered accordingly. Those who want someone else to do everything for them except make the art, were the ones with the big ideas that cost even more money!

It’s very difficult for me to try and put myself in the mind frame of those individuals who want everything done for them.

So do some research! With the internet today, it’s simple! It takes very little effort. Get the newspaper, follow your city and region on Facebook and Twitter and keep up-to-date. Just because you create doesn’t mean that you can’t take charge of it! It’s as much a part of you as your arms and legs. Treat it as such!

I am, by no means, trying to criticize, though I’m sure part of this comes across as just that. I’m trying to educate more. Take charge of your life! Take charge of what happens in it! Yes, it’s incredibly frustrating! I’m there too! Sure I want something to happen that brings all artists in the region together as one and sure I want money to subsidize some advertising just to expand my reach. I’m willing to take on helping with the development of a network. If I had the money to advertise, I wouldn’t be asking!

Let’s join forces! Let’s make the reach possible. Around our cities, our regions, our countries and our continents!

Research…

20 Sunday Dec 2015

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Something I read the other day, at work when I was bored, led me to this blog post.  It had to do with writing what you know and professions.

In my nine novels, okay, eight, one was a YA so they weren’t into professions yet, I have had nurses, reflecting my own, and I’ve had lawyers, and police people, and professors, library staff, want-to-be-actress, legal assistant, banker, and some of these people wanted to be something else, but mostly writers and photographers and I think that those desires spill from me.  Why not make someone else successful at those even if I can’t be?

Do your research.  Draw on your experiences.  Yeah, some things might be over exaggerated thanks to TV and what they believe is real but does it really matter in those minor details?  Not really.  Pay attention next time you go to the doctor.  Maybe you know someone who is in a profession you’re interested in giving your protagonist.  Most of us have seen a lawyer at some point whether it’s for custody and divorce, buying a home or drawing up a will.

So don’t be afraid to use a profession because you don’t know anything about it.  The internet is a wealth of information.  Just make sure you look in the right places.  Residencies to become a family doctor are three years in Canada, two years in the US… I learned that this week because of a patient.  I work with a doctor and I know lawyers and police officers, not that I have used them for research, yet!

Sure, write what you know, but that’s so restrictive!  Reach out! Explore! Maybe you’ll even take on a new profession!

Gloomy & Depressed…

13 Sunday Dec 2015

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We pulled off my dad’s surprise 65th birthday party last week which was great but it all went downhill from there.  It came to a surprising, and upsetting head on Thursday when the family dog had to be put down.  We knew it was coming because of his arthritis but when mom found him bleeding from the mouth and the vet found a stomach tumour, we knew it was time.  No wonder he was a dog skeleton with fur.  We were merely feeding the tumour (to borrow my aunt’s words).  The focus was so on his pain and his hips that nobody even clued in.  Of all people, I should have.

So we all battle the grief that comes with losing anyone near and dear to our hearts.  We go through the regular motions of life and it feels like we’re in a bubble… only we know how we feel.  To take those emotions outside the bubble is when you get funny looks.  It’s just a dog most would say.  No, it’s not just a dog, this guy has been with us for almost thirteen years.  He is the dog my daughter grew up with! He would never have hurt a fly.  He loved going to the trailer and on walks, my daughter walked him while (for the last six years anyway) my dad walked their pug-cross.  She is having the hardest time with it, as she should.  Give her space and time… like all of us, she will start to recall all the memories the human brain is capable of storing and she’ll once more be happy.

But life likes to throw us those curves.  For us writers, sometimes it’s what our writing is based on.  If we don’t write about that specifically, we find a way to insert our grief into our stories by giving our protagonist a similar situation to deal with.  This makes write what you know valuable.  We can’t lock ourselves into that because we have to grow but there’s no reason why we can’t use our own life experiences as the base.

Reach out, research and develop whatever you need to, but don’t forget some reality!  Like J.K. Rowling took Sirius and then Hedwig from Harry.  She created a reality most of us can relate to despite creating this magnificent world that doesn’t actually exist.

I know that think outside the box has become such a cliche but when it comes to writing, it is still an incredible piece of advice.

Think outside the box and write!

So far, so good

08 Sunday Mar 2015

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Well, so far this month has been shaping up… I’m on track to put in my resignation near the end of this week and many things are formulating in my mind.  Of course I won’t actually have the free time I’m looking for until April but if I can fit some writing in here and there, things should still look up.  I also managed to… gulp… schedule a summer camp.  Okay, so last year was awful… IF this year’s camp doesn’t fly, well, then I’ll throw in the towel.

It’s a glorious day where we will be hitting close to the 0 (Celsius) mark.  The sun is shining and things are melting–always what we look for!  AND today will be the first chance I have at watching a pre-season baseball game!!  I’m very excited!!

I did also manage to get more editing done and I’m now close to the end!  I’ve reached the “ceremony” to try to get James out of his fog and into the real world–a real world almost a century beyond where he left things… oh how things have changed!!  Cars were in the conception phase, now everyone (ok, almost everyone) has one; people fly around the world, we can talk and be reached from everywhere via cell phone, we can contact someone without a stamp because of email.  When you write about all the things that have changed in a hundred years it’s truly amazing.  To write about someone from the first world war who has never seen any of it, not only do I wonder how they managed but I am grateful for all that we have and that I was born in a time to watch a lot of it come to reality.

One of the many joys of writing.  Last Monday for class I wrote on the board: There must be more truth in fiction than in non-fiction.  My two little girls were stumped as was one of the parents.  I explained that when someone opens a non-fiction book they expect it to be true.  In fiction, you must research everything because if someone reads your words and thinks something is cool they will research it so it better be true! They thought this was fantastic and I’m sure their friends at school heard about it the next day!

Those are my words of wisdom this week!

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