Suzanne Craig-Whytock's Blog, page 9

Reactine Well

Reactine Well

The virtual book launch for my new novel Charybdis just finished and it was lovely, so huge thanks to everyone who came, to my special guests Susan Richardson, Lawrence Moore, and Paul Brookes, and an especially big thank you to my amazing publisher Jane Cornwell of JC Studio Press for organizing it!

Aside from that, it’s been a lovely week because I’m currently kitty sitting my grand-kitty. Kate and her boyfriend are on the West Coast visiting his family, so we’ve been left in charge of the delightful Ilana. The delightful and furry Ilana. Did I mention that I’m very allergic to cats? So while I’m loving taking care of this tiny monster of joy, I’m also stuffed up to the gills, which is being compounded by all the pollen in the air now that spring is finally and definitely here, because if you know anything at all about Canada, you’ll know we actually have something like 13 seasons here, and I take this from the several many memes about Canadian seasons that one can find on the internet:

Winter
Fool’s Spring
2nd Winter
Spring of Deception
Third Winter
Pollen Spring (this is where we are now)
Construction
Summer
False Fall
Second Summer
Fall
Winter Is Coming
Hello darkness my old friend

So you can only imagine how difficult breathing is for me right now, but I can’t help it. Ilana is adorable and sweet and a total little goblin who likes to wake me up in the middle of the night by punching the back of my head and then rubbing her face against my nose until I wake up:

Me: What the hell?
Ilana: There may be a mouse…
Me: Well, go get it. That’s your job.
Ilana: But I want you to know about it. If I catch one, I will bring it to you.
Me: Please do NOT do that.

There is a mouse down here, I’m certain

Like most cats, she’s also very fickle about how and when she receives attention:

Ilana: I present to you my tummy. Please rub it.
Me: Awwww. Such a cute—ouch! Why did you attack my hand?!
Ilana: Changed my mind. Wait. Rub my tummy.
Me: Will you attack my hand again?
Ilana: No, I promise.
Me: Okay. You’re so sweet—ouch!! Damn it!!
Ilana: One more time?
Me: Sigh. Alright.

Of course, she’s still not comfortable around Atlas but she’s getting more used to him, and he still regards her as a wild woodland creature:

Atlas: That skunk is back.
Me: Not a skunk. But don’t bother her regardless. You think a skunk is an issue? Wait until you try to rub her tummy.
Atlas: Fair enough. Will you rub MY tummy?
Me: Will you attack my hand and bite me?
Atlas: What do I look like—a psychopath?

At any rate, we have her for over another week, and I’m thoroughly enjoying everything about her, because, as you can see by the pictures, she is the most precious little kitty in the world—no matter how much of a psychopath she is, and I’m single-handedly keeping the allergy medication people in business.

Feeling Bubbly But Not Expensive

This will be a quick one because the book launch for my new novel Charybdis is this afternoon and I’ve been planning like crazy, buying meats and cheeses, and assorted drinks and other things so that people will be busy eating and not notice how nervous I am. I also bought 2 bottles of bubbly but because we forgot to get some in the city, I was forced to buy it at the local gas station and all they had was Spumante Bambino and it was $10.95 a bottle in case anyone is thinking that champagne is a luxury. I’d normally do something a little fancier like a nice prosecco but gas station liquor store beggars can’t be choosers.

Otherwise, it’s been a quiet week. Here are the highlights:

On Tuesday, I presented a workshop on creative writing to a class at a school that seemed to be near Niagara Falls and I was so excited because I was planning on hitting some wineries on the way back. The kids were amazing and when I was done, I put “wineries near me” into my gps and THERE WAS NOTHING. I was on the wrong side of the escarpment apparently, and came home empty-handed, having also not made the finals for that literary prize I was longlisted for. Well, not really empty-handed—I got a nice mug and a lanyard from the school.

I ordered some gluten-free licorice for Kate because she was recently diagnosed with celiac disease. It came on Wednesday and I was so excited because licorice is her favourite. I tried it. It tasted like cardboard.

Thursday: That bug is back.

Say hello to my little friend!

Friday: I had been booked for AGES to do a reading at this one particular reading series on Saturday which meant I couldn’t do a book festival that came up on the same day that I really wanted to do. Then the reading series cancelled at the last minute, so I asked the book festival people if I could be put on a waiting list. It would have been cool to do either, kind of like a Charybdis weekend with the launch being on Sunday and all. Then the book festival got cancelled because of rain and the rain date was TODAY. And on Friday night, I got an email offering me a spot at the book festival for today but I couldn’t take it because I’M LAUNCHING MY BOOK. Could my timing be any worse?!

But then on Saturday, with big junk pickup on Monday, I made Ken take me driving around the back concessions and there wasn’t much but I got, AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD FOR FREE, a stained glass lampshade in perfect condition. So the week turned out okay after all. I’m pretty easy to please, as you can tell by both the lampshade and the Spumante Bambino.

Here’s a picture of the aurora borealis that I took from our upper deck because it’s beautiful and even if things don’t always go my way, life is still very beautiful too. Wish me luck this afternoon, and by wish me luck, I mean let’s hope that at least a few people show up and drink my cheap champagne.

Also, if you can’t attend my in-person launch and you’d still like to celebrate with me, my wonderful publisher JC Studio Press is doing an online Eventbrite launch for Charybdis on Saturday, June 1. You can register for that here!

Taking The Fall

First the good news: After the shuttering of Potters’ Grove Press and their decision to unpublish all their titles, I was left with 2 short story collections that were no longer available. I’m happy to announce that my first short story collection, Feasting Upon The Bones, has been republished by Baxter House Editions and I even had the chance to correct a couple of minor typos that had always bothered me. So if you’d like a copy of the new and improved Feasting Upon The Bones, you can buy it here!

http://a-fwd.com/asin=B0D3YBHJ5R

And in other news…

As I write this, much of my body is aching thanks to an incident earlier in the week, which was terrible at the time but which, because you know me and you know I can laugh at just about anything, seems funny in retrospect:

I woke up early on Thursday morning because I had an online meeting. OK, the meeting started at 9 am but I’m retired and I spent the majority of my career getting up at 5:45 so 9 am IS EARLY AND I WILL NOT BE JUDGED. I got ready, but because it was an online meeting, I did what any normal person would do and I put on a nice sweater and also some pajama pants and my old woolly slippers because my bottom half wouldn’t be visible. The other person logged on right at 9 and we began to chat. Then she wanted to share something on her screen. At the same moment, my phone, which I’d left upstairs, began to ring. It was taking her a minute to get the file up and I was worried about the phone because Ken had gone out with Atlas and I’d heard sirens just a little while before the phone started ringing and again, if you know me at all, you know that I’m the Queen of Worst Case Scenarios. So I said to the other person, “While you’re getting that ready, I’m just going to grab my phone” and then I ran upstairs.

I was in a bit of a panic, thinking that someone was calling to tell me that poor Ken had been hit by a car chasing after Atlas, who had broken his collar AGAIN, or more ludicrously that he had been attacked by an angry swarm of bees and I was picturing Atlas snapping at them all and praying he didn’t get stung (which has happened in the past and I’ve tried to soothe him while simultaneously trying not to laugh at his chubby cheeks), when I hit the third step from the top.

That was when my slippers, being old and woolly and having no tread, went completely out from under me and I landed hard, left-side down, on the stairs. But that wasn’t the end of it. Thanks to my super-comfy yet non-grippy pajama pants and sweater, I began sliding DOWN THE STAIRS AT BREAKNECK SPEED. It sound like this: Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunkthunk and I could go on for another 7 thunks but I think you get the point. About halfway down, I screamed at the top of my lungs—why, I don’t know, because there was nothing and no one who could save me, and I wondered if it was true that if a woman who’s falling down the stairs screams and there’s no one there to hear her, does she make a sound? And the answer is yes. Yes, she does. A very loud and terrifying sound. I hit the bottom of the stairs and lay there for a second, trying to figure out if I had broken anything, and then I suddenly remembered that I was IN A MEETING. So I had to limp over to my office chair and sit down very carefully.

“I’m back. Are you ready to get started?” I asked between clenched teeth. And the meeting continued like nothing had happened, except that I was in agony.

But the best part is that, even though I didn’t break anything, I have some huge bruises, and while that might not seem like an upside, it’s certainly getting me lots of sympathy and maybe even a nice get well present KEN (hint hint—I like wine). Speaking of wine, the only other time I’ve fallen down a set of stairs was when I fell down our attic stairs almost 20 years ago. I was at the bottom trying not to cry and Kate, who was about 8 at the time, immediately ran and got me a glass of wine. Because she’s the best daughter, aren’t you KATE? (hint hint—I like wine).

Worst slip and slide EVER

Zoology 101

It’s been a zoo around here this past week. I’m serious—a veritable zoo. First, I’ve been having issues with a squirrel in my attic, and that’s not a euphemism for how my brain, like literally ALL the time. No, there’s an actual squirrel who took up residence in our attic over a week ago by chewing a hole in our fascia. I noticed one day when I was putting laundry away that it sounded like a herd of elephants cavorting around the heating vent in the ceiling above me, and that’s when we discovered the hole. Ken got out the really long extension ladder (because our house is very old—the main floor is 14 feet high and the second floor is 8 feet high, plus the attic space, carry the 1, divide by the nominator, and draw a Venn diagram where I’m in the middle, terrified that he’s going to fall OFF the ladder—in fact, I came up with a very cunning Worst Case Scenario plan whereby if the ladder tipped over, he was to grab the eavestrough and then swing to the window ledge, leap towards the largest branch of the nearest spruce tree, and then fall into the springy bushes underneath. Ken’s reaction to this, while he was swaying back and forth on the ladder, was “Don’t be ridiculous—I’m not going to fall off.” Thankfully, he did not, but I was PREPARED.) Where was I? Oh, right. So we waited until the next morning when it seemed like the squirrel had gone out for the day, and then Ken repaired the hole. But later that night, it still sounded like there was something in the attic, so we got out the live trap. Ken baited it with peanut butter, and the following became the conversation for the next four mornings:

Day One

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Two

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Three

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

Day Four

Me: Did you catch the squirrel?
Ken: No, but the trap was sprung and the peanut butter was gone.

So now, not only do we still have a squirrel in our attic, he’s the most well-fed and happy squirrel on the block.

And then, I woke up on Wednesday morning, and there was a notification on my phone that our outdoor camera had detected motion around 3 am. What now? Had that bug decided to go on a walkabout? But no—I checked the feed and it was a GIANT RACCOON!! It galumphed from our side porch over to one of our outbuildings like it was having the time of its life and I was so excited, because the other day I saw a video clip about a man who had raised a raccoon and it followed him everywhere like a puppy. Atlas rarely follows me ANYWHERE unless I have food, so a raccoon would be awesome. I decided I would put out a big bowl of food and see if I could gradually tame it to hang out with me, but then Ken reminded me that raccoons are nocturnal so I’d have to be awake in the middle of the night to ‘hang out with it’, and that was kind of a dealbreaker for someone like me who’s asleep by 10 o’clock. Still, I really want more raccoon films so I’ll keep you posted on the results of my labours.

Finally, the strangest thing happened this week as Ken and I were travelling up North so I could do writing presentations to a high school in Cochrane. We went through this small town just as school had finished and we got stuck behind a school bus. It stopped, lights flashing, so we waited patiently while it unloaded. Then it drove off. But there was no child on the sidewalk—there was only a CROW. Just standing there like it was waiting to cross the street. And then from the other side of the street, another crow came hopping along very quickly, like it was coming to meet the first crow who had gotten off the school bus. And I’ve been thinking about that for days.

And finally finally, on a non-animal-related note—my Leacock Longlist stickers came on Friday! If you order my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do (which you can do by clicking here), it comes with the image of the sticker on the front cover, but the copies I ordered for myself are getting plastered with those bad boys!

Making A List

No, I’m not making a list, like a grocery list, or a checklist of tiny furniture I need to buy at the Miniatures Fair I’m going to later, or an excel spreadsheet of all my clocks—the list I’m talking about is a very prestigious longlist. The longlist for a humour competition I recently wrote about where my entry was number 69 on THAT list, which I found hilarious but everyone else was too mature to snicker at. Yes, to my absolute shock and delight, my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do was selected for the Leacock Memorial Medal For Humour longlist! That book, based on this little blog, was found worthy of being long-listed beside well-known Canadian funny people like Rick Mercer! (If you’re not Canadian, you might not know who that is, but trust me, he’s hilarious).

I knew that the longlist was being announced last Tuesday, and I hadn’t heard anything at all. I wasn’t sure if they let people know ahead of time, so I messaged a friend who had been longlisted twice in the past and he assured me that people only found out when the announcement was made. I don’t know if that was REALLY an assurance because then I was like, great, another week before I find out I didn’t make the cut. Then on Tuesday morning, I was getting ready to go shopping, and my email alert went off. The subject line said “2024 Leacock Medal Long List Announced”. I reluctantly opened it, wondering which big names in Canadian humour had gotten this accolade, and I squinted at it because I couldn’t find the several many pairs of reading glasses that I have scattered around the house but can never seem to find in a pinch. Then my squinty eyes widened as I saw what looked like my name. And I say, “looked like my name” because it WAS my name but it was spelled incorrectly—instead of Craig-Whytock, it said “Craig-Whytack”. But the name of my book was alongside it, and with sudden jawdropping surprise, I realized that I was actually ON the longlist. I felt faint. So I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken:

Me: Oh my god oh my god!
Ken: What? Are you okay? What happened?!
Me: I made the longlist for the Leacock!!
Ken: What?! That’s amazing!
Me: I think I’m going to cry!

But it was real. And then my daughter sent me a CBC article where my name was mentioned (spelled correctly, thanks, national broadcaster) and it started to sink in. And when it did, I was faced with another horrifying realization: people were going to read my book, and what if no one else thought it was funny, and everybody was like “Why the hell did they pick this piece of crap?” and “Wow, this lady is superweird” and “She has way too many clocks” and “She used the word f*ck 39 times in one book!” As Yoda would say, “The imposter syndrome is strong with this one.”

But the best part of all this is that I got an email from their director of communications yesterday (and yes, my name was still spelled incorrectly even though I’d told them, and even though they’d apologized, but I said ‘Don’t worry, it’s just an honour to be on the longlist’) offering me STICKERS to put on my book covers. GOLD STICKERS (well, they call them bronze but they look gold to me). Is there anything better than stickers? Even the word is the best: sticker sticker sticker sticker. The finalists, who are announced on May 21, get even nicer stickers and while I know I won’t make the finals, it would be cool if I did because the grand prize is $25 000 and the two runners-up get five grand each, and you can only imagine what I would spend some of that money on (hint: tick tock).

‘Excellence in Canadian humour’–find it here, folks. Sticker sticker sticker sticker…

It’s The Little Things Part 2; Online Launch Party for Charybdis!

The link to the online launch party for Charybdis is at the end of this post, so if you don’t want any humorous content first, you can skip right down to the end, but trust me, you’ll be missing some hilarious sh*t.

Anyway, it’s been another quiet week with a couple of notable exceptions. First…THAT BUG IS BACK. Yes, I woke up on Tuesday morning to another notification that there had been movement detected on my kitchen camera at 2 o’clock in the morning, and yes, it was that same bug. How long do house centipedes LIVE? Is this guy the Methuselah of insects?! And what the hell is he eating?! I looked it up and according to the google, house centipedes eat OTHER ANTHROPODS, which is so cannibalistic and creepy but then again, I’m not surprised that something that looks like the alien in ALIEN eats insect flesh. But then the article I read went on to say that if you have frequent sightings of house centipedes, “this indicates that some prey arthropod is in abundance, and may signify a greater problem than the presence of the centipedes” and OH MY GOD DOES THIS MEAN THERE ARE MORE FREAKY INSECTS IN MY HOUSE?!!  Then again, the sighting hasn’t been “frequent”—it’s only the one leggy dude waving at us like “Hey, just haunting your kitchen AND your dreams” so hopefully he’ll run out of food soon.

But the other thing is that I’ve definitely gone down the rabbit hole of miniatures, because a couple of weeks ago, I was at the antique market and I found a bag of vintage dollhouse furniture and a tiny voice in my head whispered, “Buy it. You know you want it. You can do something cool with it.” So I DID buy it and then it sat on the breakfast room table for 2 weeks until Ken whispered, “I can build you a box to put this doll furniture in” which he did. And suddenly, I became a fanatical miniaturist, and I created an entire “Antique Store Office Sanctuary” which now I want to live in and if I could only shrink myself down to 1/12” size, I would totally do it, just to live in my tiny room. Here it is, and I adore it so much:

The Persian rug is actually a mouse pad and I got all the tiny books from Amazon. I already had the Antique storefront from some wall art that I cut apart, and the wallpaper came from a book that I had bought years ago full of William Morris style wrapping paper that I podged on, and I had the trim and created the ‘paintings’ and HOLY SH*T I’m becoming obsessed and I really want to make more miniature rooms, but we all know what happened with the clock fixation, am I right?

In other news, I’m over 8 chapters into my new book “Nomads of the Modern Wasteland”, which centres on a group of people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic future, woven together by the poetry of TS Eliot. It’s actually going to be a novella, which is a mini book, so that tracks.

Also, the book launch for Charybdis is on May 26th in person, but if you’re a friend of mine who’d like to celebrate with me but you have NO WAY of coming to Ontario, Canada, my publisher has very graciously set up an online celebration for June 1 and you can register here–it’s FREE!: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/charybdis-by-suzanne-craig-whytock-launch-party-tickets-884105522417?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=1

Adventure Time Throwback

(This week has been a little too tame for an interesting blog post–edit, write, review submissions, repeat–so here’s a throwback to 2017 where I go to a live Adventure Room for the first time–I hope you enjoy it!)

A few years ago, I went to an Adventure Room at Casa Loma. For those of you to whom either of those things is a mystery, let me explain. An Adventure Room is a live-action game where a group of people work together to solve puzzles and escape from a room that they are trapped in. Casa Loma is a stunningly beautiful, ACTUAL castle in Toronto. It was built by a wealthy financier at the turn of the last century, and it rivals anything you might see in Europe. Or Disney. I went with a group from work, and I was really excited to go—the week before. On the actual day, true to introverted form, I was overwhelmed with the usual dread of social interaction. But I’d played it smart—it was $48 and I had no intention of forfeiting that much money just to go home and watch reruns of Brooklyn 99 all tucked up in my cozy bed with a nice glass of wine…which would have been a lovely option too. But I worked with really nice people, and I’d known most of them for a while, so off we went on our adventure.

First, we were ushered into a movie theatre, where we were to watch a film that would explain our upcoming adventure, described thusly: “The war is over, the fascists in Europe have lost, and it’s time for celebration in Toronto; or so it would seem. Deep beneath the gothic exterior of Casa Loma, there lies a secret. You and your closest friends stumble upon the soon to be decommissioned Station M. Within the hidden workshop of failed projects and confidential experiments, you find one last mission. Be careful who you trust, and make sure you have an escape plan.” Sounds cool, am I right? We would also be accompanied by a character who was part of the scenario, and we would meet him after the film. “But,” warned the young man who was explaining this to us, “you can’t touch him. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES CAN YOU TOUCH HIM. Do not EVER touch him. Are there any questions?” And all I could do was whisper, “So many…” because then we were ushered into a hallway and I couldn’t ask them, but here they are:

1) Why can’t I touch him?
2) What do you mean by “touch”? Does it count if I accidentally brush against him? Is it OK to poke him to see if he’s real, and not animatronic or whatnot?
3) Can I touch him if he touches me first, like in retaliation?
4) You said, “Under no circumstances”. But what if there’s a fire? Can I grab his arm and pull him to safety or do I just leave him to fend for himself? What if he falls down? Can I help him get up or do I just stand there staring at him?
5) Is this a rule you created because someone in the past slapped him for not giving them enough help with the puzzles? Is he really that unhelpful, or is he just a smartass?
6) What happens if I DO touch him, like he’s being funny and I lightly punch him in the shoulder, like one of those “Oh you!” kind of gestures? Will he taser me?
7) Is this part of the game? Is this a clue? Like when someone says, ‘Don’t think about elephants’, and then you absolutely do? Because now all I can think about is poking this guy, and I haven’t even met him yet.

And then I did meet him. He was in his early twenties and dressed in an old-fashioned suit. His name was ‘Steven Rutledge’. He claimed to be a spy or a secret agent or something, but I’m not really sure because I was trying not to touch him. We were in a room that was full of really cool antiques and things, but it was hard to concentrate because everyone else was running around looking for clues. I wasn’t sure for what, since I hadn’t really been paying attention, but suddenly someone yelled in triumph, a door opened, and we were all in ANOTHER room. Apparently the first room was like the launch pad for the actual adventure in ‘Station M’, which was to save a scientist from his Russian kidnappers. We had to get a radio to work, so I said to Steven, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” in an attempt to lighten the mood, but he gave me a weird, kind of dirty look. I wasn’t sure if he was just ACTING like he didn’t get it, or whether he really didn’t get it, so I said, “R.E.M.? It’s a pop culture reference,” to which he replied, “Pop Culture?!” and rolled his eyes. Then I knew why we weren’t allowed to touch him, because with THAT attitude, he would get slapped a lot as per question #5 above.

Anyway, we solved a lot of puzzles, and Steven was eventually pretty helpful, dropping cryptic hints and whatnot, until finally we were at the last puzzle. The timer was counting down, people were running around, it was madness, there was an air raid siren going off, lights were flashing, Steven was trying to avoid being touched, and then—we ran out of time. It wasn’t really a letdown, except that the scientist was still at the mercy of his Russian kidnappers, but it was a lot of fun. Casa Loma has two other adventure rooms, and I would totally do it again, because it finished early enough that I still had time to watch Brooklyn 99 in my own cozy bed afterwards. With a nice glass of wine.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Well, I guess the most exciting thing that happened last week was the eclipse. And it WAS truly exciting, I have to say. Ken and I drove to my aunt’s boyfriend’s place (it’s always so weird to say ‘boyfriend’ when people are in their late 60s, isn’t it, like he’s not A BOY, he’s a grown-ass man with grandkids, but I digress) and the whole fam had gathered to witness the event. I’d ordered those special glasses from Amazon, and I checked very carefully to make sure that they were legit and not going to render us all blind (as a side note, one of the larger towns near here ordered eclipse glasses also off Amazon and then had to recall them when they found out that they were knock-offs and not approved by NASA or whatnot but mine WERE and it’s been almost a week and I still haven’t gone blind). When we woke up on Monday morning, it was quite cloudy and Ken was being his typical gloom and doom self, going on about ‘cloud cover’ and wind speed and ‘chance of precipitation’ like the Weather Channel was paying him to give me his opinion, but I would not be dissuaded. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said, with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who has never give a sh*t whether or not she was wrong about anything.

We left shortly after lunch to drive down to the lake, and on the way, there was blue sky on the horizon. “See,” I said. “It will be FINE.” I said this with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who recently ran outside and across her front lawn in the pouring rain in her stocking feet and screamed “Get the f*ck of my street!” to an asshole in a pick-up truck who was trying to deface our Pride crosswalk by doing a burn-out on it. I got photographs of the truck AND his license plate—the jury is still out on whether or not the cops will do anything about it. Also, we had to leave Atlas behind, and a friend was going to give him lunch and let him out, but I had to message her and remind her not to let him out between 2:30 and 3:30 because he’s such a dope that he’d probably stare at it barking until his retinas burned out. She responded by sending us this picture of him on the couch, safely relaxing in the house:

At any rate, the closer we got to the lake, the more sporadic the cloud cover was, which filled me with incredible optimism. We arrived and hugged the family—Mom and Dad were there, along with my other aunt, and a couple of friends. We had snacks and wine, because what the hell is the point of watching a phenomenon of nature without ‘nature’s more fun grape juice’, and then sat on the deck. Waiting. It was still cloudy. The eclipse was supposed to start around 2:30 pm and right around then, the wind picked up and the clouds began to move. By 3 pm, the skies were blue and clear. We all had our glasses on, breathless with anticipation and freaking out that the clouds would return—but THEY DIDN’T, KEN, JUST LIKE I SAID.

It was an awe-inspiring moment. I’ve never in my lifetime seen a total solar eclipse and holy sh*t, let me tell you, it was worth the wait. And the best part was that Ken had his really good camera, and he got some amazing shots:

Don’t Blink Or You’ll Miss It

Last weekend, the local Lions Club had a charity auction. It was pretty good as auctions go, especially since a lot of area businesses donated brand new items. I bid on a few things, like some Lego for Kate and a bunch of old spindles that I told Ken he could use for outdoor woodcrafts. Then the auctioneer put up a new Blink home security system. We already have a Blink camera in the kitchen that I use when Ken’s away overnight. It’s hidden inside something (I refuse to be more specific, but I promise we never use it when we’re home with other people and I can assure you that I have never forgotten to turn it off and then been mortified at a notification featuring a clip of me dancing around the kitchen island while I cook), and unless the lights are on at night, it won’t pick up any movement that triggers the camera.

Anyway, I bid on the security system and got it for a really good price. So on Thursday night, after researching and reading the instructions and getting the exterior cameras set up, Ken mounted them outside the house on either side of our porch. That’s when I realized that when I armed them, it would also turn on the kitchen camera. But that’s okay, I thought, since there’s nothing in our kitchen at night. And then I woke up on Friday morning to TWO notifications that the kitchen camera had been triggered around 3 am and there were video clips and OH MY GOD, YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT I SAW WHEN I REPLAYED THEM.

And if you know me at all, you’re most likely thinking that it was a ghost. And you would be wrong. IF ONLY it was a ghost, because it was not.

Take a second and try to guess what it could have possibly been. I’ll wait...

Here is what I saw on the screen of my phone, and I really hope you can watch it:

sheer-terrorDownload

H. R. Giger has nothing on this thing and all I know is that it’s still in my kitchen somewhere and I will never be able to dance there again…

In other news, my new novel Charybdis is getting excellent reviews–here’s one by the Founding Editor of a prominent Canadian review site, The Miramichi Reader. Being compared to Edgar Allen Poe made me scream almost as much as when I saw what was on my kitchen camera:

Charybdis Getting Featured!

Smorgasbord New Book Spotlight – #Mystery #Historical Charybdis by Suzanne Craig-Whytock

Thank you so much to the lovely Sally Cronin of Smorgasbord Blog Magazine for featuring my new novel Charybdis in her Smorgasbord New Book Spotlight–you can read it by clicking on the link above. I really appreciate her kindness and that she took the time to craft such a wonderful promotion.

And if that wasn’t awesome enough, the amazing Susan Richardson of Stories From The Edge of Blindness featured Charybdis today on her phenomenal literary podcast A Thousand Shades of Green. Listening to her beautiful voice reading my work is always an incredible treat and you can hear her by clicking on the podcast link.

And of course, you can buy Charybdis in paperback and Kindle version worldwide by clicking here!