Jane Spavold Tims's Blog, page 16

starting a new book

I love working on multiple writing projects at once. So it is no surprise to me that I have books and projects at all stages in development:

The next book in my Kaye Eliot Mysteries is in final draft (‘ Land Between the Furrows ,’ release date March 2021)The next of my poetry books (‘ niche ‘) is in proof stage (release December 2020)I have just released the next book in the Meniscus Science Fiction Series ( Meniscus: The Knife ) and the next is in final Draft (‘ Meniscus: Meeting of Minds ,’ release date May 2021).

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So, this week, in the narrow crack between revisions, I have started to draft another in the Meniscus Series. Tentatively entitled ‘Meniscus: Resistance,‘ this will be the last in the Meniscus Series (she says).

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It has been so long since I started a new book, I have forgotten how the process unfolds.

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1. A long time thinking, while doing other things, about the theme … how this book will connect with the last, who the characters will be, where the action will occur and so on.

2. A few sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling, thinking about opening scenes, how my characters are feeling and precipitating events.

3. Eventually I am ready to start the first drafting. For this, I need a relaxing, familiar space. I like to sit on the sofa in my living room, so most of the drafting will be on my iPad in the Word app. At some points, I may shift my focus and do some writing in longhand.

4. Even during drafting, I start revising. I go back and forth, moving details around, gleaning from earlier books to avoid inconsistencies, refining ideas. Some days I turn to the main computer to do a read-through and correct spelling and syntax, and to start to refine the poetry of the story-telling.

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Of all the parts of the writing process, the early drafting is my favourite. It is also (for me) the quickest. By starting a new project, I have resolved to follow through with later revision work, illustration (including the cover art), formatting and marketing.

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So, here I am in happy land, pushing my characters around, and sometimes trying to catch up to them …

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All my best,

Jane

Meniscus: The Knife … now in paperback and e-book

If you have been reading my Meniscus Series (science fiction adventure), you will be wondering what happened to Tagret and Rist after they said goodbye in Meniscus: Encounter with the Emenpod.

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The sequel is now available! Meniscus: The Knife tells the story of Tagret’s quest to find Rist before he is captured and killed by the Brotherhood.

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The book is available at Amazon (click here) as both paperback and e-book. If you live in the Fredericton area, I will have author copies in a week, so contact me to arrange delivery!

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Every story in the Meniscus Series takes the reader to new places and introduces new characters. The books also take the Humans of Themble Hill a little further in their journey. Every book has a glossary, a dictionary of Gel-Speak words, a description of characters, maps to follow the characters in their adventures and my original illustrations.

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Here is a map showing Tagret’s journey to The Knife and the city of Nebul-nan:

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And a view of the strange, half-inundated city of Nebul-nan:

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Hope you enjoy my book!

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All my best,

stay safe!

Alexandra Tims (a.k.a. Jane)

lily-of-the-valley

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lily-of-the-valley

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Convallaria majalis L.

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where they came from

I do not know, perhaps

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from my mother’s old home

in a shovel-full of lilac

a sheet of white writing paper

in a green box crammed with letters

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perhaps from my grandfather’s farm

tucked in beside the creeping Jenny

a green and white plate printed

with a saying about home

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perhaps from a seed in the gravel

spread on the paths or the road

a line of red pebbles

in a spill of quartz

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every summer the colony spreads

green flames lick at gravel

white bells, delicate perfume

scarlet berries

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a letter not written

a plate hung on the wall

a pathway leading home

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All my best!

Stay safe!

Jane

scraps of paper

Occasionally I tackle a stack of stray papers. These are usually bits saved years ago, once thought important. Sometimes I find a scrap of poetry among receipts and old letters. Poetry scribbled when an idea occurs, on any scrap within reach.

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This week I found a draft poem about following rules and the evidence left behind by bad behavior. I have always loved picking blackberries, so it is no surprise to me that picking blackberries was used as a metaphor in the poem.

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defiance

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no denying

the evidence —

pulled threads

and stained fingers

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one drupe

with all its packets

could never mark

so well, each finger

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rolled across the page

indigo tongue

and purple lips, words

blackberry-spoken

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the rule — never take

the path through woods

stick to the road, resist

blueberries, blackberries

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avoid the risk

of bears and brambles

hints of danger

in faerie tales

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Last spring I spent time pulling together some of my many poems into three upcoming books of poetry. This poem will fit well into my manuscript titled ‘niche,’ poems about the spaces plants, animals and people occupy.

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All my best!

Follow the rules of social distancing!

Stay safe!

Jane

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ghosts are lonely here ….. new poetry collection

This spring, I began to gather together the various poems I have written over the years. One of my recurring interests has been abandoned buildings and other discarded human-built structures. And now, here is my book of poems about abandoned humanscape … ghosts are lonely here.

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My book is available in paperback and includes 45 poems and 14 of my original pencil drawings. Most of the poems are about abandoned structures in New Brunswick, Canada.

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We live in a time when built landscape is often in a state of abandonment: old churches, old bridges, old schools, old buildings. Add to this abandoned vehicles, abandoned boats and deteriorating stone walls, over-grown roads and decommissioned rail lines, and we exist  in a landfill of nineteenth and twentieth century projects, abandoned to time.  These poems listen to the histories and stories of the abandoned. The poems are sometimes sad, sometimes resentful, always wise.

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To order ghosts are lonely here, click here.

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Have a great day.

Jane

harvesting herbs

The colder nights have arrived and I have decided it is time to harvest my herbs.

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I have a lot of parsley in my deck garden. All summer, I have snacked every day on the leaves, loving the taste, the fresh air feeling that is the result.

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I enjoyed the harvest as well. With scissors, I cut the parsley leaves just below the branching of stems.

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I checked each set of leaves for bugs but the parsley is remarkably bug-free.

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I harvested into my colander, washed the leaves and set them to air-dry. Once the leaves are dry, I will load them into my drier, a Salton VitaPro. In a drying time of about three hours, I will have enough parsley for winter cooking.

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I have followed a similar process with my basil. Everything around me smells really good!!

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Hope you are enjoying your own produce if you are lucky enough to have a garden.

Enjoy your day.

Stay safe.

Do. Not. Get. Covid. Fatigue!

All my best,

Jane

the wisdom of faerie tales

As I write and revise the poetry for my ‘garden escapes‘ project, I search for references to enrich my poems. One category of these is the faerie tale. Many faerie tales include gardens in their tale-telling. Some include wisdom to be applied to my experience of the abandoned garden.

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I have chosen three faerie tales to include in my poems:

Rapunzel: the beautiful girl with the long, long hair is imprisoned in the tower because her father makes a bargain with a witch. In one version of the tale, the father steals rampion bellflower from the witch’s garden and gives his daughter as compensation.

Beauty and the Beast: a beautiful girl falls in love with an ugly beast. The tale tells us that you must sometimes look beneath the exterior to find inner beauty. This is another tale where a father is caught stealing a flower (a rose) from a garden and gives his daughter as compensation. Hmmmm.

Sleeping Beauty: when the princess is put to sleep, a thorny vine grows around the castle to hide her away.

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I have included these faerie tales in three of the poems I have written. Below is my poem incorporating the tale of Sleeping Beauty.

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wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata)

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I think the story of Sleeping Beauty requires a little retelling, to make the princess less compliant. The three vines in the poem are:

Clematis (Clematis virginiana): names include virgin’s bower and devil’s darning needle. This climbing vine has delicate white flowers and fluffy seeds
Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia): an aggressive climber with leaves palmately divided into five lobes
Wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata): a prickly annual vine and a climber with tall columns of white flowers

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Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)

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Sleeping Beauty

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“… round about the castle there began to grow a hedge of thorns, which every year became higher, and at last grew close up round the castle and all over it, so that there was nothing of it to be seen … ” –The Tale of Sleeping Beauty, the Brothers Grimm

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three vines whisper—

Clematis virginiana

Virginia creeper

wild cucumber, reshape

the hawthorn, the rose

with frail flowers

and five fingers

tendrils like springs

disguise the thorns

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keep curiosity seekers away

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dampen noises from

beyond the barrier

where wakeful Beauty

taps her nails

on foundation granite

wonders if anyone

will dare to tear

at tendrils, breach wall

of thorn and vine

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the need for rescue always in doubt

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only decades ago

a home chuckled

behind the hedgerow

mowed lawn and a dyer’s garden

tansy at the cellar door

flax in the meadow

Beauty dibbling seeds

deadheading flowers

tying up sweet pea

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only the cellar remains

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perhaps she will slash

her way through hawthorn

rip out wild cucumber

scrape away suckers of creeper

tame the hawthorn, the briar

renovate house and barn

encourage the scent of sweet pea and petunia

transparency of hollyhock and mallow

whisper of yellow rattle, rustle of grasses

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no more virgin’s bower

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Clematis virginiana

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All my best.

Are you getting COVID-fatigue?

Stay alert!

Jane

identifying an unknown plant

This is NOT a how to identify a plant post. If anything, it is a how not to identify a plant post.

It started with a plant I saw on one of our ‘field trips.’ In my own defense, I had never seen this plant before.

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I thought it looked like a sumac, a plant very common in our province. It had pinnately compound leaves and a terminal inflorescence. The flower didn’t look right; it was too diffuse, too brown and ragged. The leaves had a very wrinkled look, unlike the leaves of sumac. But I took lots of photos, enough to show me stem hairiness, a characteristic I know is important to the identification of sumac.

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tight, red flower cluster of staghorn sumac

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Back at the house with my photos, the computer and my plant identification books, I proceeded with my detective work. Humph. Didn’t seem quite right. I even asked a biologist friend and consulted an excellent How to know the sumac species video. I now know the three local sumac species: Rhus typhina (hairy twigs), Rhus glabra (smooth twigs) and Rhus copallina (winged twigs).

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None were quite right. Rhus typhina or staghorn sumac was closest, but the flowers were not right at all. Since plants of staghorn sumac are either male or female and no one shows photos of the male flowers, I decided it must be a male staghorn sumac.

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staghorn sumac near our cabin

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Fast forward a week and I went to see the beautiful flower garden of my biologist friend. Saw something that looked like my mystery plant and proudly said, “Your sumac is a male.” Bzzzz! Not a sumac but an Astilbe. Ahah! My mom had Astilbe in her garden. That must be it. I sang all the way home. Back to the computer. Hmmmmm. None of the leaves were quite right.

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I gave up, but feeling closer than ever, I went to a group I belong to on Facebook. ‘Plant Identification‘ is a no-nonsense, no chit-chat group. I posted my photos and my whereabouts and, within a couple of comments, I had the answer. Sorbaria sorbifolia. False astilbe. False spirea. False goat’s beard. I looked at some reference photos. The leaves are right! The flowers are right (past flowering and brown). The description is right! Yayyyyy!

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Sorbaria sorbifolia. Source: Hydro-Quebec

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Now, after a little more research, I can write my poem!

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Now for all the comments that say you recognized the mystery plant right away!

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All my best!

Jane

revising poetry

After a full month of working on my artsnb project ‘garden escapes,’ I am conscious of the passage of time. My deadline is November 1, 2020, and meeting this deadline requires completing the poems and other deliverables.

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At this point (I began on July 1, 2020), I have completed my field work (visits to various abandoned communities), done drafts of 70 poems, placed these poems in seven tentative subject groups, and considered how I will approach revisions. I know I will also write a few more poems based on material collected.

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The subject groups (not in order) are:

all that remains
my mother’s garden
invaders and volunteers
the gardener
whispered stories
a glimpse of history
the shape of a garden

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I meet regularly with a writing group known as Wolf Tree Writers. I have read a few of the poems at these meetings and received lots of suggestions. I think the most important suggestion has been: ‘ask yourself, where is the metaphor in this poem?‘ I have taken this idea seriously. I do want these to be poems about communities and garden plants. But each poem has to work harder – it has to comment on some social truth addressed (the metaphor).

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When I began this work, I spent a full day on metaphor, considering how garden escapes would relate to issues or problems we face as humans.  The fundamental requirement for a garden to escape is – it must be left alone to decide its own fate. In our lives this could be a metaphor for:

accomplishment – you can write a song, but you have to let it go to see if it will flourish. This applies to the results of various endeavors: paintings, quilts, stories. Collections are a particular type of accomplishment; people often belittle ‘stuff,’ but I think particularly of things passed on from one generation to another (jewellery, books, souvenirs). Like the plants in a garden, accomplishments must make it into the right hands, the right conditions of soil and sun.
influence – you can talk to people and try to nurture them, but only time will tell if influences take hold. Some of our influence is directed and purposeful; you can try to be a good teacher to your children but eventually they must leave home and only then will lessons take hold or wither. Gardeners will plant a scarlet runner bean and end up with a lupin; parents can plant a ‘carpenter’ and end up with a ‘financier.’ So much of influence is accidental, transferred by chance. Think of influencers like ‘kindnesses,’ ‘chance encounter,’ ‘place’ and ‘accident.’  Also, ‘influence’ must be abandoned for a while and then re-discovered and the value found.
abandonment – the abandonment of children/family can occur in so many ways: adult children lose their parents, children are orphaned or abandoned, parents are left to fend for themselves as they age. Each of these situations can be examined using the metaphor of the abandoned garden.

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So my first duty in revision will be to examine each poem for the embedding of metaphor. Sometimes the metaphor will already be there. Sometimes I will need to add a phrase or line for clarity. Sometimes the whole poem will have to be reconfigured to include a clear idea of metaphor.

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When more substantive revisions are done, I have a revision checklist aimed at detailed revision.

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revision checklist

take out ‘which’ and ‘that’
remove weak verbs (‘to be’)
consider removing small words (‘the,’ ‘a,’ ‘so,’ ‘etc.’)
try alternative words – words to contribute more
exchange words used more than once with synonyms
remove adverbs (many are ‘ly’ words) and gerunds (‘ing’ words)
read aloud – watch for phrases or ideas that ring bells – may make it better/worse
be truthful – when it isn’t right, return to truth
check if singular or plural is correct
consider passive voice – does it drag it down?
check voice (child, scientist); don’t switch within poem
consider end and embedded rhyme – select better words
consider rhythm; count beats/syllables and read aloud to identify cadence errors
for poems written in a particular form, check conformity to form

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All of this is a continuing process. Even when I submit those ‘final’ poems with all their revisions, I may continue to work at poems for years!!!!

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This work is accomplished as part of an artsnb Creations Grant.

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All my best.

Stay Safe.

Don’t get COVID fatigue.

Jane

a book launch with a twist

Anyone in the Fredericton, New Brunswick area, mark your calendars! On next Sunday, August 23, from 1:00 to 4:00, Chuck Bowie and I will launch two new mystery books at Westminster Books.

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This will be a launch with a few differences. No cake, no refreshments. No readings. No hugs. Just Chuck and Jane, probably at different ends of the bookstore. With masks. Only a few fans at a time.  But we will talk to you and answer all questions you have about writing mysteries (no spoilers, sorry). I will bring the two cover paintings for ‘How Her Garden Grew‘ and ‘Something the Sundial Said‘ and I will bring a sundial and a Grinning Tun seashell, key symbols from my mysteries. Be sure to ask Chuck how the hops vine figures into his mystery ‘Death Between the Walls.’ And ask me what creepy Marion (in ‘Something the Sundial Said‘) keeps on her coffee table as a paper-weight!

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Wish you were all close enough to come to the launch!

All my best!

Jane