Sarah Ettritch's Blog, page 23
August 26, 2011
Thanks, Jack!
What a heartbreaking week for Canada! First the crash in Resolute Bay, then Jack Layton's passing. Since she knows that I write in the mornings without the TV or radio on, my partner called me as soon as she heard about Jack. That shot the rest of my day.
Not only is his death a tremendous loss for Canada, but also for the LGBT community. Jack took on LGBT issues, such as same-sex marriage, when it wasn't popular to do so. His last public appearance was at Toronto's gay pride parade. Not long after that was the press conference that had us all gasping in shock. We hoped, we prayed, we wanted to see him back in the House of Commons. But it wasn't to be.
There's really nothing I can add to the tributes and tears, so I'll leave you with Jack's final letter to Canadians and its powerful closing words. Tomorrow we'll bid him good-bye with a state funeral, and hope that his optimism and vision will live on.
Thanks, Jack.
Jack's final letter, read by Andrew Nichols of the CBC:
August 19, 2011
Writing Roundup
I mentioned last week that I was expecting a new computer, and it's here! I'm writing this blog post on it. So far, I like it, but there will be an adjustment period while I get used to Windows 7 and Office 2010, and slowly reinstall all the applications I regularly use.
As far as Windows 7 goes, I kept thinking, as I squinted at the screen, "Why the hell is everything so small?" Then I remembered that I always update the display setting that changes the text and icon sizes everywhere. Yeah, I'm getting old. We're back to big icons, large print, and happier eyes now.
Since I have a long afternoon ahead of me shuttling stuff from one machine to another, I'll keep this short. It was a milestone writing week in that every item on the WIP page moved significantly forward:
I sent Convergence, the September Rymellan story, to my editor
I finished the first draft of Threaded Through Time, Book Two, read through it once, and passed it along to my beta reader
I received the Sapphic Signs Scorpio story back from the editor at Torquere Press, and there's not much for me to do, which is great. The story, called Like Water and Water, is tentatively scheduled for release on October 19th
The new computer arrived at a good time, since I wasn't in the middle of anything.
Okay, I lied about spending a long afternoon dealing with the computers. I'm going to indulge myself by firing up a favourite game (already installed!), cranking up all the settings to "as high as they can go, baby!" and putting this spanking new gaming machine through its paces. I have to test it, you know. Yep, gotta test it. ;)
Enjoy your weekend!
August 12, 2011
Guest Blog at The Henderson Files
Today I'm guest blogging over at The Henderson Files, Patty Henderson's indie publishing blog. Patty designed the covers for Rymellan 2, The Salbine Sisters, and Threaded Through Time, Book One. I talk about why I decided to release Threaded Through Time, Book One as an eBook only (at least initially). You can read my guest post here.
On another note, I've ordered a new computer, and it looks like it'll arrive sometime next week. This computer is getting a little long in the tooth for gaming, so I'm looking forward to the new computer's arrival—and dreading it. I'll have to transfer a lot of files over to the new system, including email. On the bright side, it'll be a fresh start. The new computer won't be cluttered with stuff I haven't used for a while, and I'll finally be on Windows 7.
Next week I'll send the September Rymellan story, called Convergence, to my editor. I'll also finish the first draft of Threaded Through Time, Book Two. Then it'll be good-bye, or rather, "See you in the basement," to this computer, which has served me well.
I used this computer to write all the Rymellan stories except the first three, The Salbine Sisters, Threaded Through Time, the Sapphic Signs story, and a couple of other projects I've never talked about and haven't published. I've also published four books, responded to countless emails, written every post for this blog, and spent thousands of hours in my favourite game worlds.
It was gaming that drove me to buy a new system, mainly so I'll be able to enjoy The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim in all its glory when it's released this November. If I only cared about email, Word, and surfing the web, I wouldn't need to replace my current computer just yet.
Maybe I'll write next week's blog post on the new computer; maybe not. It'll depend on when the courier shows up at my door.
Have a great weekend!
July 29, 2011
Interview at The Genre Traveler
Carma Spence over at The Genre Traveler was kind enough to interview me on her podcast. You can listen to me ramble on about my writing. I also talk about Broad Universe, an organization that promotes women who write science fiction, fantasy, and horror:
Interview with Sarah Ettritch at The Genre Traveler
On another note, on Tuesday I experienced the sort of excitement one doesn't want. Part of a tree in our backyard decided to come down. I was eating lunch in the living room when a loud groaning sound from the back of the house had me running into the kitchen, wondering if someone was trying to break in. Nope. I discovered later that it was the sound of an upstairs window frame bending out of shape.
The tree took out our phone line, damaged the window frame to which the phone line was attached, and leaned precariously on the main cable and phone lines for two streets until it was cleared away (to the tune of hundreds of dollars). Unfortunately that's not the end of it. One of the remaining trunks (this tree had four) will now have to be cut down. But at least it'll come down in a controlled manner.
It could have been worse. Nobody was hurt, and the car wasn't in the driveway, where the tree landed.
Have a great weekend, especially if you're one of those who has Monday off! 
July 22, 2011
Random Video Day #3
Toronto is sweltering under a heat wave. Even though we have central air, it still feels warm in the house. Not a day for long blog posts.
Here's a not quite so random video for a Friday. Stuff like this gets me every time:
Enjoy your weekend!
July 7, 2011
1911 Journal: Cemetery Visit
I said in my last 1911 Journal post that my partner and I would be visiting Ottawa in July. What I couldn't say was, "As a matter of fact, we'll be leaving for Ottawa in a few hours." Unlike Facebook, where I can restrict postings to friends, anyone can surf in here, so I don't announce when we'll be away.
Anyway, when we heard that William and Kate would be visiting Ottawa for Canada Day, we decided to go. At the time, I didn't know that Kate (the 1911 Kate!) and her family were buried at Beechwood Cemetery. As soon as I found that out, we added the cemetery to our Ottawa to-do list.
So, what did we see at the cemetery? Well, from the digital records, I had the section and lot numbers for Kate, C., their daughter, Kate's parents, and her siblings (all 9 of them). Our first stop was the cemetery office, where we got maps of exactly where the plots were located. With those in hand, we headed to Kate's location and saw this:
Yep, nothing. See that grassy area? That's C. and Kate's family plot. No markers. Nothing.
Two possibilities:
There were never any markers
The markers were flat stones and the grass has overtaken them
It was disappointing—and sad. Kate, C., and their daughter are all buried there, but there's nothing. It's as if they never existed.
We suspect that there were never any markers, only because the cemetery is well maintained and there are flat stones from the 1800's in the same area. But we could be wrong.
Next we went to the main family plot, and that was quite the experience. When I first read Kate's journal, I didn't know who all the people were. She'd mention visiting this person and writing to that person, and so-and-so meeting her at the train station, but she never said who they were. Why would she? When you're writing a journal, you're not going to write, "Today I went shopping with my third-from-oldest sister Sue and my best friend Jill." You don't expect some stranger to read your journal one hundred years later.
I discovered who some of the people were when I was combing through the cemetery records. I'd think, "Oh, so Sue was her sister!" I glimpsed these people's lives through Kate's journal, so coming upon a tombstone with all their names was surreal. They existed!
Her mother died first, and that's when the tombstone was placed. I learned that one of Kate's brothers died in battle during World War I, sadly just six weeks before the armistice. He's buried in France, but his name was added to the tombstone.
Kate lost one of her closest sisters in 1920, when the sister was only 42. That I already knew. It was poignant to see the sister's name.
Two of Kate's sisters lived into their eighties. One was on the tombstone. The other is also buried there, but her name was absent. She was the last sibling to die, and I guess nobody added her. She never married, and she was a registered nurse. I know this because I found her application to go overseas to serve during the First World War. She was also the sister who went on holiday with Kate in England. So again, someone who's now dead without a trace, unless you know that she's there.
Two of Kate's brothers were buried not far away with their wives (and in one case, the children). Kate's plot was the only one with no marker whatsoever. There's probably a story there—but then, the writer in me sees stories everywhere.
I could tell you more about Kate and her family, but I'll spare you the details. As the years march on, I'll occasionally check to see if more records have become available, in the hope that I'll learn more about her. For now, I think I've done all I can. I'd hoped to perhaps find other children when we visited the cemetery, but with no markers, the gravesite was silent.
We had a great time in Ottawa. We did see Will and Kate, when they arrived at the War Memorial, and as they travelled in the open carriage to Parliament Hill on Canada Day.
I posted a few photos from our visit on Facebook. If you're already a friend, you may have seen them. If not and you want to friend me, feel free, but please tell me who you are in your friend request. You don't have to give me specifics, just something like, "I read your blog," so I know what the connection is.
Later.
July 6, 2011
Released: Threaded Through Time, Book One
Threaded Through Time, Book One is now available at Smashwords and the Kindle Store. It's been available at Smashwords since late Monday night, but I figured I'd wait for the Kindle Store before posting.
The Kindle Store (US)
Smashwords
You can read the description and chapter one here.
Through Smashwords, the book will eventually make its way to Barnes & Noble, the iBookstore, Kobo, and a few other places. The Kindle Stores in the UK and Germany will also pick it up (it may already be there; I haven't checked).
I hope you enjoy it! I'm hard at work on Book Two and having a lot of fun writing it!
June 29, 2011
1911 Journal: What Happened to Kate?
Since Friday is a holiday (Canada Day) and I'll be busy with my partner, I thought I'd post a couple of days early. If all goes to plan, Threaded Through Time, Book One will be available next week, so it's time for the last post about Kate's 1911 journal.
What happened to Kate?
Canada has strict privacy laws, so finding out about Kate's life after 1911 was a challenge. Despite that, I can tell you about a few significant events in her life, thanks mainly to death certificates and cemetery records. If those weren't available, I'd know squat.
Here's the last entry in Kate's journal:
A blizzard on but anyway Mother & I went to church. The sherriff walked home with us after. C. & I sat around fire place after dinner. In evening we went over to Edgar's. Home about 11. "Heard" New Year come in. — Sunday December 31, 1911
Kate was close to her mother. She frequently mentioned her mother in her journal and always spent time with her when she was home in Ottawa. Mother often accompanied Kate and C. when they went out.
Seventeen days after Kate wrote that last journal entry, her mother was dead.
It was sudden and unexpected. None of the entries in Kate's journal even hinted at her mother being in bad health. According to the death certificate, the cause of death was apoplexy and the length of illness was half an hour. From that, I'm guessing that she had a stroke. What a terrible shock for Kate.
I next found trace of Kate in the passenger list for a ship that docked from Liverpool, England in September of 1912. One of Kate's sisters was also on the passenger list, so they apparently went over for a holiday together. Kate must have given up her teaching job, but I don't know if she finished out the 1911-1912 school year, or resigned when her mother died.
Next, a happy event! She married C. in October of 1912, so she returned from England just in time for her wedding (a couple of weeks beforehand, in fact).
After that, it's a black hole until the sad news…
Kate died in 1932, at the young age of 45. The death certificate lists chronic interstitial nephritis as the cause of death, and the duration of illness as 10 months. Her kidneys failed, and there weren't many options for treatment back then—no dialysis, no kidney transplants. It was quite sad to see C.'s name in the cemetery record as the one who reported her death.
Apart from teaching for that one year, Kate apparently didn't use her degree, which wasn't unusual. Most married women didn't work. The death certificate lists her occupation as "Housewife."
C. survived another 7 years until his death in 1939. He fell down a flight of stairs and died of shock. When I read his cemetery record, I discovered that Kate and C. had a daughter! Since pre-1910 birth certificates aren't available to the public, I couldn't find any children by searching births. If their daughter hadn't reported C.'s death, I wouldn't know of her existence.
I found their daughter's cemetery record, and from that I can tell you that she was born in 1914. She was only seventeen when Kate passed away, and twenty-five when she buried C. She did marry and have a son (who reported her death). I'll get back to this in a moment.
As part of my quest to find out what happened to Kate, I signed up for a free 2-week trial at ancestry.ca. Through the site, I was able to find birth and death certificates. I discovered where Kate and C. are buried through a search engine for cemetery records (yes, they exist!), but the search results didn't tell me anything beyond that. I jotted down that both of them are buried in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa and figured that I'd found out all I could.
About a week into my free trial with ancestry.ca, I downloaded my email and had a bit of a turn when I saw an email with "Beechwood Cemetery" as part of its subject line. To be honest, even though it's the National Cemetery of Canada, I'd never heard of it until a few days earlier when I'd done the cemetery search. The email was from ancestry.ca, saying that after much planning, etc., it was pleased to announce that the cemetery records for Beechwood Cemetery had all been digitized and were now online and available. I almost fell out of my chair! Talk about coincidence.
I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering cemetery records for Kate's family. I have to say, it's one of the more morbid, poignant, and thought-provoking afternoons I've spent in recent memory. Seeing members of her family fall one by one by one brought me face to face with my own mortality. It was an overcast, somewhat rainy day, and I remember gazing out the window and thinking about the cycle of life and death.
As I read through the records, I felt for one of Kate's nephews. There was a period of 3-4 years during which he reported his aunt's death, his father's death, his mother's death, his grandfather's death…and then the kicker: I reached his cemetery record. I had to take a breather at that point and play with my cats for a while, just to be among the living for a bit.
The experience reminded me of a story that a childhood friend's mother used to tell. She said, "The good Lord has a giant book that contains the name of everyone who's alive today. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, what you do, or how much money you have, you're in that book. The names are in random order, not in the order everyone was born. The good Lord sits in front of that book and runs His finger down the pages. When His finger passes over your name, you die."
As I "turned" the pages of the Beechwood Cemetery record books, I remembered that story.
Getting back to Kate's daughter, her son reported her death, and she's buried with her parents. That made me wonder…was she separated or divorced, or had her husband predeceased her? If the latter, why weren't they buried together? I couldn't find a cemetery record for him, but I don't know his first name.
Her son might still be alive. He has an unusual name, and I located someone of the right age in Canada. Was he the one who ended up with Kate's journal and gave it to the second-hand bookstore? Or was the daughter's husband still alive, ended up with her belongings when she died, and decided he didn't want his mother-in-law's journal? Probably none of the above, and we'll never know. All I can say for sure is that I have the journal now.
A little bit of Kate will live on in the character of Margaret in Threaded Through Time. Margaret has a different personality, but some of the words she uses and the pastimes she describes are based on Kate's journal.
Kate, C., their daughter (and perhaps other children), Kate's parents, one of her sisters, and some of her other relatives are all buried in Beechwood Cemetery in the same general area. My partner and I will be in Ottawa in July, and we'll visit their graves to pay our respects.
One day, the good Lord will run His finger over your name. So enjoy today, and don't sweat the small stuff. Life really is too short.
June 22, 2011
Rymellan Fiction: Crossroads
I've just posted the latest story to Rymellan Fiction, called Crossroads. If you haven't been following along, I'd recommend starting with The Dance.
Enjoy!
June 17, 2011
Threaded Through Time: Chapter One
If all goes to plan, Threaded Through Time: Book One will be available in early July. But you can read Chapter One right now! If you like it, I'd love it if you'd share it using the handy Share/Save button at the bottom of the book's page. Word of mouth is tremendously helpful.
Well, that was short and sweet. Back to formatting the June Rymellan story and the Threaded Through Time eBook, and writing!
Enjoy your weekend!
(Sorry to Hickory and Henrietta, two of my cats who'll have a lousy weekend. I hate annual physicals too, but at least I understand what's going on!)
