Libby Broadbent's Blog, page 7

Saying goodbye to Grace

“It was a miracle, you know, what happened with you kids.                                                                       We watched it all, and it was just a miracle,  what happened at Grace’s barn.                                               It doesn’t happen every day, you know, that kind of thing.  It was a beautiful thing, you kids.”                        -Brian, the neighbor.

Grace lived to be 103.

Grace was my surrogate mother, grandmother, guardian angel, and friend all rolled into one sturdy no-nonsense package dressed in rubber boots and gardening gloves. She came into our lives when my sister and I were children, or rather, we stumbled into hers and she let us stay. Her love and care sustained us through the dark days of our childhood as my family home disintegrated under the strain of mental illness and conflict. She was our neighbor. She embraced us without fuss, without indulgence, she simply said “Yes”, and then held us to expectations of care and diligence and responsibility that have formed my work ethic ever since. We said goodbye to Grace yesterday, and I was honored with the opportunity to speak at her service.

Funerals for people who have seen a century pass are peculiar social events, fraught with emotion yet strangely…fun. I think Grace would be delighted to know that I had fun at her funeral. This is a woman who recently said: “Life? Oh, the first hundred years are hard, but after that you don’t give a darn!” Grace would smile to think that her loved ones had a good time as we said our goodbyes to her.

I left home almost thirty years ago, and I’ve only been back a handful of times, usually to visit Grace. But Sackville, New Brunswick, is my home and the people at Grace’s service were the friends and neighbors who watched me grow up, no doubt shaking their heads and raising eyebrows at my antics and wondering if I would ever “make good”. I walked into the funeral home and was swamped with faces, ghosts and memories. I felt like I was twelve years old again.

I kept looking at people and thinking “I know you”, but names eluded me. Thirty years changes a face. Thirty years dims a memory. (Grace would slap me to hear me imply that my memory is failing at 48. Grace has 55 years on me and she remembered everything!) And everyone wanted to play what must be the fun new Funeral Home trivia game… “Who am I?”

“I lived behind the house on the hill with the tree and I married the guy with the nose and the ugly car… who am I?”

“Do you remember me?”

“What’s my name?”

“Try to guess who I am!”

I failed, every time.

But then, they would take pity on me blinking like a lost fawn and they would reveal their hidden identity and the years would melt away. The person I knew would magically appear in their eyes and I would remember.

“Libby, I’m Bruce.”

“Bruce. Bruce. BruceBruceBruce…” and then suddenly there he was, under the beard and the man’s rugged face, young Bruce. The hot grandson with the motorcycle. “Oh my god! You are! You are Bruce!” I shrieked. As if I needed to confirm his identity for him, in case he’d forgotten.

“Oh, hello, Libby. It’s Kirk.”

“OHMYGODIT’SKIRK!” I wailed, like he was the prize behind Door Number Three. How I wish I had stopped and calmed down and spoken to him like a real person, instead of a figment of my imagination. How has your life been, Kirk? Remember high school? Who are you now? But I’m afraid I whirled away, losing the moment, terrified of mis-guessing the next person I would have to remember as my heart swelled with memory and surprise.

I don’t do well with crowds when they aren’t all my childhood flashbacks.

A lovely woman saved me when her husband tried to play the game with me. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Um… I… you…?”

“It’s Brian and Mary, dear. The neighbors?”

“OH MY GOD OF COURSE IT IS!” I think I wanted to marry Brian when I was a kid. He was probably forty at the time, but he had nice eyes and those eyes were still there, twinkling as he laughed at me.

An old teacher. The sister of an old boyfriend. The daughter of a woman named Eva. The beautiful lady who married Danny. The handsome massive grandson with tears in his eyes who was probably twelve the last time I saw him. I think I told him he was cute. Not when he was twelve, but yesterday, when he was thanking me for speaking at his grandmother’s funeral and my words evaporated. The man was a mountain, and I told him he was cute.

I am a master of social intercourse.

Two of my daughters were with me, being lovely and supportive and charming, and there were mutters of disbelief that they were mine because “I didn’t think you were that old.”

I didn’t feel old. I felt like a babe in the woods of her own childhood and I wish I could rewind the moments and redo them in slow motion. I was teary, and nervous, and overwhelmed, and each conversation was interrupted by the next and I fear I left people with their only experience of me as an adult being my squawking howl, “OH, it’s YOU! It really is! It’s YOU!”

It’s good that I could remind them, in case they forgot. Because we’re all really old.

When I got home, I folded into my Love’s arms and wailed, “I AM A GIANT PUFFBALL OF EMOTION!” He poured me a glass of wine, and we talked about Grace.

Grace is laughing at me, wherever she is right now. I bet she’s working in a garden, mud on her boots, chuckling: “Child, you don’t know old.”

Grace lived to be 103. And I am blessed to have been able to speak at her funeral, to remember the past, and to see so many memories smiling at me like maybe everything is ok.

Love you, Grace. Always.

Grace Cunningham Estabrooks, 1912 – 2015

Resolutions, yoga and cream cheese.

My thoughts for you, gentle reader, as you approach a New Year rife  with resolutions based on the inherent belief that you are somehow failing, that you are insufficient, imperfect, faulted, deficient, pock-marked and jiggling your way to ruination…            what if you’re actually pretty ok?

I am sore.

Because of yoga.

This seems like a cruel ironic twist, a mis-alignment of the universe. Yoga isn’t supposed to make you sore. It’s supposed to make you all zen, and shit. Like, ohmm, and “relax into the earth”, and “lift your heart” and feel the radiant bliss of the universe…

Ok, so maybe my heart weighs a tad too much. Or maybe it’s my boobs. Whatever part of me it is, it’s sore because it’s too big to heave off the earth and I’ve been doing yoga for the past week, and… oddly… loving it! I say oddly, because I am not an ohmm kinda gal. I’m a cream cheese on toast, kinda gal. Hence the boobs. Hence the yoga.

It’s a funny story, my descent into the yogic realm. It’s a story of self-perception and desperate measures. It’s a story of Almost-Fifty-and-Sagging-Dramatically-Southward. Are you Almost-Fifty? Are you Sagging-Dramatically? This story is for you.

Over the past few years… since I met the Man of Dreams… I’ve been gaining weight. With Love and Bliss comes cream cheese and gravy and wine and delicious moments of caloric carnage… which, when coupled with an Almost-Fifty body that cranked out four babies in its youth and which has developed an over-enthusiastic appreciation of all things gastronomic since it discovered mayonnaise and hot sauce… equals an unprecedented enlarging of various body parts that never enlarged prior to the Almost-Fifty status. I used to be able to lose ten pounds by watching Richard Simmon’s videos. No longer.

And, as I gained poundage, I kept telling myself that I would lose it… that I would start working out… after the winter, after March break, after school ended, after summer cooled down, after September was over… and it never happened. For several years, the appointed time to begin losing weight just never arrived. Like all good ‘Round Tuits, like my own self roly-poly-ing down a steep slope, it just kept lumbering away from me.

I knew I had to do something desperate.

Eat less? No. I hate less.

Personal trainer? No. I hate personal.

Gym membership? No. I hate gym.

Weight Watchers meetings? No. I hate meetings… but wait.

You can do Weight Watcher’s online. You don’t have to talk to a single soul. You can take your introverted chubby middle-aged spread and waddle it to the scale in the glow of your very own secluded private, personal computer screen. Score!

The funny part is that I was convinced I weighed 190lbs. Convinced. I’m six feet tall, and at my Skinny McSkinniest I was 155lbs, and I have emptied the grocery store of every package of cream cheese on the shelves on several occasions, so 190lbs didn’t seem out of the question. I did not own a set of scales, but when I judged the pudge, I was certain that I was topping out at the nether reaches of two tons. I weighed myself on my daughter’s scales and scoffed… scoffed… when they tipped at … about twenty pounds less than my estimate.

“THESE SCALES ARE WRONG,” I roared, like woman scorned. I was determined to be enormously overweight and no lying scales would prove me wrong, dammit!

“No, Mom, I’m pretty sure they’re right.” My daughter calmly assured me, unfazed by the waggling of my belly that I did in her general direction as proof of the scale’s trickery.

“THEY ARE WRONG,” I howled. “WRONG, I TELL YOU!”

“Mum, please stop chasing me with your belly. The scales are right. Want some chocolate?”

“YES I DO! GIVE IT TO ME NOW!”

Determined to prove my obesity, I bought my own scales. Brand new. Digital. These things tell you how much you weigh, how long your colon is, what color your great-grandchild’s eyes are going to be and the exact degree of sag in your left breast compared to the right. Fantastic. Infallible. Incontrovertible.

169lbs.

The ingenuous Digital scales laughed at me when I slapped them and weighed myself again.

169lbs.

The irrefutable Digital scales chuckled when I waggled my belly at them and weighed myself again.

169lbs.

Not 190.

Ahem.

I apologized to my daughter. I apologized to the scales.

And then, I apologized to myself.

My thoughts for you, gentle readers, as we approach a New Year rife with resolutions based on an inherent belief that we are somehow failing, that we are insufficient, imperfect, faulted, deficient, pock-marked and jiggling our way to ruination… what if we’re actually pretty ok? What if the image you hold of yourself is twenty pounds off the mark? And I don’t just mean weight, although it seems that January is the holy sanctum of Hate Thyself where body image is concerned… I mean what if you are misjudging your self, your kindness, your worth, your integrity, your value to the world and to those you love? I wish there were a Weight Watcher’s for the pounds of self-loathing we carry around with us. Shed it, rid it, assign a point value to every kindness, every moment of joy and good work that you do, and melt away the burden of thinking that you aren’t good enough, that you aren’t meeting some standard that only you can see.

It’s hard to change your self-perception. But that’s the beauty of “middle-age”, you’re only half-way there. You have time.

Believe the nice things good people say about you.

Say thank you to them, when they say nice things about you.

Allow nice things to feed your soul.

Eat cream cheese.

And then do yoga.

That’s why I’m sore, because I signed up for on-line Weight Watchers with a much healthier attitude about my realistic weight and I’ve lost about 10lbs over the last four months. It feels good. And now I’m doing yoga to build strength and chill out with the ohmm. And that feels good (although I’m not convinced that Almost-Fifty is as bendy as it should be.)

And I am trying very hard to revise my image of myself. In all ways.

Thank you for reading. Follow your Bliss, friends… Happy New Year!

When you lose a good dog…

We lost Gabe this week. My Love breeds and trains Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, and in the last week his oldest dog, Gabe, became sick and failed so much in the space of seven days that the decision had to be made to help him gracefully and peacefully make his exit.

Which is not the way he lived his life.

Gabe… Donnett’s Gabriel MH… was not a quiet, docile, mellow kind-of-dog. At thirteen years of age he would still try to hump anything on four legs, including his daughters, his grand-daughters and me, when I tried to get him back in his kennel. He still would shuffle around the yard in what we’re sure he thought was a powerful manner, and refuse to come to anyone’s call but Philip’s. He was still  the master of his domain, still wanting nothing more than to ride in the back of the truck to go hunting, right to the end.

My Love tells stories of Gabe as a young dog…

“We took this young fella hunting with us… I mean, this was when Gabe was young and I was young and that young fella was younger than young… and this fella thought he saw a flock of geese down around the shore from where were set up, so we said ‘Go… go and try to get a couple.’”

There’s that weird male-bonding thing where boys-with-guns give the nod to other boys-with-guns and there’s the expectation that if you’re a Real Man, and worthy to have a dog and a gun and to go home with fresh kill to impress your woman, well, you have to wander off down the shore on a stormy day with a gallant dog and see what you’re made of.

My Love sent this young man off … to see what he was made of.

It was stormy. For people who aren’t familiar with the East Coast on a stormy January day, let me assure you, it is impressive. Crashing surf rising six feet or more; debris, seaweed, storm surge, violently pounding waves against the shore in sub-zero temperatures. This is what Real Hunters revel in. Perfect weather. Even better if it’s snowing, sleeting, blowing a gale. The kind of weather that sees normal dogs curled up by the fire. Gabe was not a normal dog.

My Love said they were huddled in their blind when they heard… and I quote…

“KA-SLAM, KA-SLAM, KA-SLAM!”

Gabe heard it too.

Off he went.

My Love said, “Gabe took off like a bolt, and we let ‘im. He went toward the gunshots, and he knew what to do.”

After about 30 minutes, the young fella came back to the blind, eyes wide, ducks in hand, Gabe smiling at his heels. The young fella… in the way of all Young Fellas who have yet to train a dog, raise a dog, trust a dog in the roughest of conditions… the young fella said:

“Holy Jumpin’ Dyin’… I shot…” he gasped, his eyes wide. “And your dog… YOUR DOG appeared outta nowhere and leapt… I meant he FUCKIN’ BARRELLED into the waves like it was NUTHIN’! There was fuckin’ logs and trees and seaweed and all kinds of shit in those waves…and those waves were OVER my fuckin’ HEAD… and that dog just jumped right into that surge and disappeared!”

My Love glanced down at Gabe, a duck in his mouth, looking pleased-as-shit.

“Yeah,” gasped the Young Fella, eyes bugging out. “He fuckin’ DISAPPEARED in the waves… and I thought… Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’ve killed Philip’s fuckin’ dog… and then…”

My Love said the Young Fella’s eyes were like cue balls. On crack.

“Then that fuckin’ dog came back out through those breakers with a fuckin’ duck in its mouth! I couldn’t fuckin’ BELIEVE it!”

My Love grinned. Of course Gabe came out of the storm, retrieving. It was what Gabe was born to do, it’s all he ever wanted to do… well, besides humping anything that moved.

Gabe left us today. But we have his two of his daughters, and his grand-daughter, and his genetics are the foundation of Dockcove Retrievers. There’s a special thing between a man and his dog. They seem to mirror each other in drive, determination and…well… all things manly… and after almost thirteen years of being a crazed retrieving machine; trained to Master Hunter, drive and determination incarnate… he will be missed.

 

 Donnett’s Gabriel MH, 2002 – 2014

 

Click image to visit Dockcove Retrievers website.

 

U can’t control me 4 ever

My children were visiting for Christmas, and now they have all gone back to their own homes. I have four kids, aged twenty-one to twenty-eight, and now that they are grown they only come to visit. None of them live with me. I am an empty nest.

I adore them.

I want them to be twelve again… even though, at twelve, they weren’t all exactly the easiest people to get along with… but I want them to be home, here, with me still making their lunches and yelling at them to do their homework and grounding them for sneaking out at night with the most disreputable boy in the neighborhood, and driving them to hockey at obscenely early hours… I start missing them as soon as they get in their cars and toot the horn.

They all have their own cars.

I never saw that coming… back in the day when all they wanted was the five Spice Girl dolls, or Conquer’s Bad Fur Day, I never saw them driving away from me in vehicles they paid for themselves.

With speeding tickets they paid for themselves.

And tattoos I never gave my approval for.

When one of my daughters was twelve (-ish… their childhood blurs in my mind to a foggy smear of memory induced by lack of sleep and fear that they would get un-approved-of tattoos)… she had a boyfriend.

This is the point where I must state, emphatically, that it is wrong to allow your daughter to have a boyfriend at the age of twelve.

As if. Good luck, you parents of pre-teens.

She had a boyfriend and she was determined… as in all things in her life, determined… that their love was eternal and ethereal and everlasting. One day, when she was grounded for some long forgotten indiscretion, she left a note on her body-shaped pillows when she snuck out of the house to be with him at the movies. The note told us where she had gone, and that she was willing to accept the consequences when she returned because “I just love him 2 much”. She ended this epistle of emancipation with the epic line: “U can’t control me 4 ever.”

She has spent the years between now and then proving that statement, repeatedly. Needless to say, she spent many weeks of her youth grounded. To no avail.

I can’t control them forever, and they can’t live with me forever… and I probably don’t actually want them to. They eat an awful lot. They are very loud. They want to have Dance Parties at ridiculously late hours. My 220lb son crawls on my lap and impedes my breathing. They leave clothes everywhere.

So really… bye kids! Thanks for visiting!

Please come back… tomorrow!

I hope you, gentle reader, had a wonderful holiday with your own wayward children, who you also can’t control 4 ever. Don’t worry, they’ll come back for the next big feast!

Here is my favorite blog about all things family, including the food you need to make when they come to empty your cupboards:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/

Dark Night of the Writerly Soul

My fourth novel is almost finished, but I have been wandering through a Dark Night of the Writerly Soul for quite a while now and I despair of actually Getting It Done. What is it about creativity? The elusive muse? The self-negating ego from which pours the brain-numbing poison that freezes your pen, your soul, your literary libido and your ability to write a decent blog post? Even my grocery lists suck lately.

I have three novels to my name, with very kind reviews and positive reactions from both friends and Absolute Strangers. (Thank you, darling Strangers! I know no one is supposed to talk to you, but your reviews are even better than the candy I’m not supposed to take from you. It is a curiously magical thing when someone you’ve never met says something nice about your work. It makes me want to revise my cautions about Strangers.)

…I have lovely people who stop me in the grocery store asking when I’m publishing another novel. (Thank you Grocery Store Groupies, stalking me in the cracker aisle. You get my next book for FREE! If I can finish it. Which is what this whining drivel is getting to. And no, that character in my second book, who you KNOW is your neighbor… it isn’t.)

… And, I have people who buy my books… actually BUY them… as gifts for their loved ones. (Seriously. People BUY my books. With their hard-earned cash. It’s terrifying bearing that much responsibility!)

…And yet, despite these darlings and lovelies, my woobly ego wails in my ear that           I SUCK!

YOU CAN’T WRITE WORTH SHIT.

That’s what it says, every time I write a grocery list.

I believe I am not alone in this dilemma. I think anyone who flays themselves on the altar of Art, we poor sods who are driven to create work that we tear from our souls like a screeching child, digging its filthy nails into our boggy womb and wailing “I’m not ready! Don’t let me go!”… I believe we must all fear that those feral children we have created will come back to vomit in our shoes. Publicly.

“I told you I wasn’t ready for polite company, but what did you do? You went right ahead and pushed the “publish” button, didn’t ya?”

And, even worse, that the unmannered little brats we’ve created may be our last, because we Suck Too Badly to ever get back in the sack and pound out another one!

Wow. See? Anthropomorphising my books. With weak metaphor, misplaced ellipses and random sexual inappropriateness.

Suckage.

Anyone who makes art must doubt themselves. Mustn’t they?

Anyways… all this whining to say that my fourth book is almost done. It’s epic. It has sex, violence, car chases and zombies.

Metaphorical zombies. And naked Grandparents.

It’s called “Naked, at the End of the World” and I hope to have it ready for publication in the spring of 2015. I hope to be wildly proud of it, and I hope to have its hands washed and hair neatly plaited and teeth brushed so that I can send it out into the world without fearing that I forgot to make it wear clean underwear.

Gulp.

In an effort to ignite my creative womb with a writerly inferno, I am going to try to blog about my efforts to finish the novel. You do not have to read these posts. They will definitely be rife with self-pitying pustulence and gore. There will be profanity. There will be inappropriate innuendo.

But I think I need to do this.

I need to write myself through the process of writing through the process of finishing my novel. That’s not a typo. That’s real authoristic wordsmanshipment. And yes, those are real words.

T’is the season of Resolutions and Goal Setting and Blind Hope in the Future, right? So… I hope to revive my blog, write about my ridiculous whinging, (also a real word, rhymes with cringing) and hopefully give birth to a book baby this spring.

It could be messy.

Feel free to avert your eyes, leave the room, go have a stiff drink… I’ll be here, writing shit.

Thanks! xx

Inspirational places that make me push harder…

I love this blog… Carrie Snyder, author of “Girl Runner”… for writing, child raising, living, breathing… she’s a real person and her posts are brilliant:  http://carriesnyder.com/

If you’re an artist or a creative soul or a human being, you have to read this book. The Art of Asking, by Amanda Palmer. Love her or hate her, her words resonate: http://amandapalmer.net/

Five Things teaching has taught me about public speaking…

…and when I say public speaking, I mean Author Readings.

I am an introvert. I am! I hate crowds, I am agora-phobic, I suck at small talk… but I spend eight hours of every weekday with teenagers. Half of my life is spent begging the thirty people in front of me to… listen! Pay attention! Take your hat off! Stop texting! Listen, for fuck’s sake, you little…

But I digress.

I teach.

And I write books.

And I try to get people to read my books.

And even to… gasp… BUY my books!

This weekend I was privileged to join roughly 30 authors at the Halifax Author Event where we all attempted to peddle our wares to a crowd of readers and fans.

I have two fans… besides my spawn, who don’t technically qualify as fans because they are wearing my genes and are therefore exempt from the Perks of Fandom. What, you may ask, may these much-coveted perks be? Oh, no-big-dee… just a spotlight on TELEVISION. Like SUPERSTARS. (advance to 9:25 on the Global News clip)

Kathy and George. I love them. Kathy even bought a copy of Lily’s Valley, even though I offered it for free, and I offered to let her ogle the cover of Indefinitely Idled, because it is just so fucking sexy, but George was there and so she demurred.

George is fucking sexy, too. We are blessed in our men, Kath and I.

I realized, after I read an excerpt from That Thing That Happened, that I have to thank my decade as a high school teacher for my limited and sketchy understanding of how to attempt to grab the attention of a crowd. I do it every day. With varying degrees of success.

Here is my questionable advice to self-published authors, nervously trying to share our work with the world when doing a public reading:

#1: Grab your audience:

Sing. Tell a joke. Do an interpretive dance. Tell the entire audience to wave to your helpers, who may just happen to be your lovely spawn sitting at your display table at the back of the room. Just do something that says “Hey! Hello! Do I have your attention?”

In school, I use sarcasm, verbal abuse, antiquated vernacular with which they are unfamiliar… “It behooves you to listen to me at this very moment, you scurrilous curmudgeons, you pustulent oozing keloids of vacuous inaninity… yes, yes YOU! Thank you, now let us begin…” Whatever you choose, it has to be MORE powerful than “Hello, today-I-will-read-from-page-32-of-this-book-I-wrote, all-by-myself, with-my-weiner-tucked-under-my-shirt-over-many-shivering-cold-winter-nights…” Even though your audience may flinch momentarily in your general direction at the word “weiner”, you have to dig just a little deeper and make sure they are all with you before you begin. I love the word pustulent. I use it as often as I can.

#2: Say something dirty.

Obviously, this is wildly inappropriate in a high school classroom, and no self-respecting teacher would EVER say: “I can’t wait for today to be over, so I can go home and stroke my weiner.” Even if that teacher is the proud owner of a weiner dog, and all her students know just how much she loves her weiner, it would be totally inappropriate to EVER make weiner jokes in a classroom of high school students.



I, obviously, NEVER do that. But at a book reading, surrounded by demanding and critical readers who are innundated with descriptions of “the dappled light” and “the grassy knoll” and the unexpected tilt of the protagonist’s head when he says “I am overwhelmed with passion for you”, it’s sometimes necessary to stir things up a little. I suggest throwing out such words as “dildo”, and “gyrating”, and “self-gratification”, just for fun.

Just… trust me. The grassy knoll will be ever-so-much-more-interesting with a little phallic symbolism thrown in. Your novel isn’t dirty, you say? You don’t write smut, you say? Of course you don’t… but at some point in your novel you must have two people touch each other. Or two vampires. Or two historically accurate personas. We want to hear about intercourse… I mean, oops, inter-ACTION! Choose the most dynamic part where two people meet and rub against each other. Symbolism, man. Get those folks naked and sweaty… emotionally, symbolically, relation-ship-aly. Your audience wants a little word porn, and you have to deliver or they’re going to wander off to the “Fifty Shades of Metaphor” table and leave you gasping and lonely.

#3: Put someone on the spot

I’m afraid I must confess to doing this in my classroom. I usually pick the most hardy and resilient kid in the class. The one who I know is still listening and absorbing even though they are drooling slightly and their head keeps wobbling like they are mostly dead.

“And so, what do you think Iago meant when he said ‘From this time forth I never will speak word’… little… Johnny?”

Little Johnny leaps to wakefulness and the rest of the class follows, afraid they will be next. At an author reading, pick someone in the crowd… hell, plant someone in the crowd (which can be difficult if, like me, you only have two fans, and you definitely can’t borrow my Kathy and George. Get your own damn fans, people!)… and talk to them in the middle of the reading. Apologize to them for #2, the dirty thing you just said… shame on you! Or thank them for laughing just when you really needed someone to laugh. Or just ask them if they would like to come up and take over… anything so that the rest of the audience perks up in fear that you may pick on them next. Fear is nearly as good as saying “dildo” in a crowded room. Use it.

(I apologize to the lovely lady on my right who laughed at just the right moment and forced me to acknowledge her by saying “If it’s in the book, I have to read it, right?” Best audience member, ever.)

#4: Say something dirty, again.

Well… why not? By now you should have their attention and you are probably either so nervous because you know you’re going to Hell for the dildo comment, or so euphoric that you haven’t puked on the microphone that you might as well throw out a fuck or two. They’ll be expecting it at this point.

If you’ve just read the part where two people have gotten down and dirty and started trimming their toenails together, you might as well throw in the mud bath and bikini-waxing to sustain the tension. This doesn’t mean giving away the climax… God knows the Reader wants to enjoy that in private… it just means you want to build that tension a wee bit. You’ve read that bit from Chapter 2 where they met, and that crazy moment happened… now leap to Chapter 5 when OMG! another layer has been peeled away and you can practically read the labels on their Froot of the Looms.

But not quite.

There is no rule that says you have to read all of Chapter 2. Slice and dice, friends. If there’s a good bit of dirt in Chapter 5, go for it. You want your audience to be more intrigued five minutes into the reading than they were when you began with the interpretive dance and the creative use of the word “pustulent”, so it’s time to pull down the big girl panties and get sweaty.

(Disclaimer: Never swear in school. In a classroom, this is the point where you threaten them with assignments and projects and tests, and it’s the audience who say something dirty. Then you give them detention. Teachers never swear. Swearing is wrong… you hear me? Do as I say, not as I do.)

#5: And always… ALWAYS… leave them wanting more.

At a book reading, this means leaving your reading at the most exciting point. This doesn’t necessarily mean at the end of the chapter, or at the end of the plot point… this means leaving them utterly curious about the character you’ve just painted for them. You want to leave the stage amidst muttered questions from the audience: “Why is the heroine so obsessed with dildos?” This will make people want to read your book! Don’t give away the dildo secret! In a high school classroom this means promising chocolate cupcakes for the next class, or watching twenty minutes of “The Crucible” instead of dissecting Freytaq’s Pyramid.

(Disclaimer: NEVER swear, or talk about sex toys, or use the word “gyrate” in a high school classroom. Only do those things in the crowded room of an Author event when you are surrounded by strangers and your children, whom you have birthed from your loins only a few short years previous, who are waving and smiling and taking pictures of you at the podium. That is the ONLY time when you are allowed to talk dirty in public.)

I doubt this advice will help you, eager self-published author seeking advice on How To Be Successful, so I will leave you with the only comment that really matters.

Follow your Bliss.

Just do your thing and have as much fun as possible while you’re doing it. I have fun saying “dildo” in crowded rooms. Don’t judge me. If you infuse what you do with joy, you won’t fail.

Happy reading, happy writing, and remember: there’s no shame to self-gratification!

But I’m a carnivore!

My Love and I have gained weight over the winter. A comfortable layer of blubber which fortified us against the rigors of a Nova Scotia winter… bitter cold, howling winds, snow piling up against the windows… these are elements that can only be overcome with copious amounts of sour cream, cheese, gravy, cream cheese, whipped cream, and deep fried crispy onions.

Duh. Who needs an extra sweater when you eat like gluttons all winter?

In our efforts to protect ourselves from the ravages of winter we have expanded… like dough rising in front of the fire. Like puff pastry glistening in the oven. Like whipped cream frothing atop a cheesecake. And when I say we… I mean me. I am a middle-aged mother of four. He is a swarthy middle-aged hunk of man-flesh.

Not-the-same.

I have expanded in concentric rings around my entire body. If you could take a core sample of me, you could read every butter-slathered slice of bread and every Thai-Chili-Sauce coated scallop I’ve inhaled since last summer. A core sample of my Love would read: Male. With fur. Unfortunately, I am simply too bulky for him to be able to drag by the hair into his man cave. I am forced to sit outside the man cave on my ample haunches and stir the gravy. I have no shame in wanting to be dragged by the hair into the man cave, because fun things happen there. But I gotta stir this damn gravy…

Mmmmm… gravy….

And we are carnivores. Oh baby, are we ever! Deer, moose, goose, duck… every possible piece, starting with the heart. Wrapped in bacon. With peppercorn gravy.

But spring is coming. Spring means shorts, and t-shirts, and kayaking, and biking… and none of that is possible with the winter layer of blubber. The blubber just ain’t gonna fit in the kayak. “I don’t think you ready for this jelly”. Name that song.

Which brings us to 22 Days Vegan.

If Beyoncé did it, so can I. My darling eldest spawn, a lithe and supple 27 year old who looks like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, told me about this crazy, ridiculous, you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me idea of a 22 day diet that contains NO MEAT.

No eggs. No cheese. No dairy. No SOUR CREAM!

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said.

“Beyoncé did it,” she said.

“My lovely lady lumps, my lumps, my lovely lady lumps,” I sang, oozing cool.

“That’s Fergie, Mom,” she said.

“I…. know.” Then I twerked for a few minutes, just to make a point.

So, my Love and I are going Vegan for 22 Days. Um… a MODIFIED vegan. Seriously, we live in rural Nova Scotia. How am I gonna find hemp seeds, for goodness sake?

Oh. Ok. I can probably find those. But not legally!

And coconut oil? And Kwee-No-Ah?

That was my first educational moment in my quest for post-winter weight loss. Ask the pimply-cheeked clerk at the bulk food store for Kwee-No-Ah and you might be lucky enough to be led out back to the secret location of hemp seeds, but you definitely won’t be finding what is oddly and incorrectly pronounced Keen-Wah.

Quinoa.

It looks like Cream Of Wheat, and I hated that shit when I was a kid. Now, I’m supposed to eat it in a salad? At least you can put brown sugar on Cream of Wheat.

Quinoa?

Kale.

Put Kale on Quinoa and don’t touch a deer heart for 22 days. What kind of madness is this?

I bought Almond Milk. Almonds don’t even have nipples, people! And I made a cheese sauce with Butternut Squash instead of cheese. Sacrilege.

I’m still alive, after Day One, so I guess there’s hope. I don’t believe anything has happened to the concentric rings of my decadence, though. I still felt myself jiggle when I went for my walk, which is Part Two of the Recovery-From-Winter Self-Flagellation-Program. My youngest spawn, an adorable and petite 20 year old who looks like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Pink, told me about an app called Seven.

The 7 minute workout.

This could be a match made in heaven. Me, and 7 minutes of exercise.

And a lot of Quinoa.

Today, I’m sore from 7 minutes of exertion… Wall Sits… the twisted mind that thought up Wall Sits probably is responsible for all the Saw movies… and rectal thermometers… and menstruation… but I’ve eaten a mango and several cashews so I feel ready to take on the world!

I’ll keep you posted… 22 days is a long time, and I’ve got a freezer full of Bambi calling my name…

Halifax Author Event

I am thrilled to participate in the Halifax Author Event on April 5th at the Lord Nelson in Halifax. My name’s even on the poster! With other AUTHORS! This is totally cool!

FREE book for you , friends!

“That Thing That Happened”, my first novel which placed 3rd in the 34th WFNS Atlantic Writing Competition, is available FREE until MARCH 8th during “Read An Ebook Week” at Smashwords. Just follow the link below, and use the promo code indicated on the book’s page to download a free copy. Enjoy!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339214

Here’s a clip from a reading at the Astor:

In defence of Snow Days

There’s been some murmurs of unrest recently over the topic of Snow Days …you’ll notice that I capitalized the term, like it is Something Meaningful, probably because I am a high school teacher and Snow Days have a particular resonance in my life.

Ahhh, Snow Days. How we love them.

I know… I know, not everyone is fortunate enough to have their work day transformed by the whimsy of Mother Nature. There are many dauntless and intrepid individuals who must go forth into the storm to their place of work despite the weather, and I feel for them. I do. It sucks.

Do you know what I do on Snow Days? I don’t get dressed in order to be at school at 7am. I don’t go near a photocopier to prepare information for my 85 students. I don’t argue with a seventeen year old about the reasoning behind the “no hats in school” rule. I don’t tell anyone not to swear, or tape the desks together, or stop-making-that-farting-sound-didn’t-I-already-tell-you-to-stop-making-that-farting-sound? I have a coffee. I read for an hour. I do the laundry.

I celebrate my Snow Day, because anyone who has a job would be insane not to celebrate a day when you don’t have to show up.

And then I do school work.

I mark. I prep. I worry about how we’re going to ever cope with Shakespeare when we’re still having trouble with the thesis statement. I grieve over the misuse of there, their, they’re.

I bake cookies.

I eat half the batch of cookies.

I pretend I baked the cookies for my English 11 class, but ten cookies aren’t enough for a class of 25… so I eat the rest of the batch.

I am thrilled that the responses to AlexJ’s editorial (The Pulse of Queen’s County) were in support of the safety of kids, and the school bus drivers, who are Super Heroes in my eyes. We really only have a few Snow Days a year… some years more, some years less… but our school bus drivers have to drive those wee devils to school and back every day, and that is a triumph of will and an indication of nerves of steel when the roads are dry, never mind when they are ice covered skating rinks.

Sometimes, people are bitter about Snow Days. Sometimes, they see the closure of school for a day to be an indication of the pervasive failure of our education system. Some people ponder the unfairness that allows teachers to have a day off, when people who have made other career choices have to flounder through the drifts. I’ll not argue.

Teachers get storm days.

Teachers eat too many cookies on storm days.

And, dammit, they lounge about in their underwear cackling maniacally into their third cup of coffee about all the poor slobs who aren’t teachers. Not really. My Love isn’t a teacher, neither are my children who all have jobs and have to slip-and-slide to work. I fret and worry about them and wish that they were all teachers too. (But that’s a double edged sword… there are days when wishing teaching on anyone would be a cruel curse.) And our children? Ruination. A missed school day due to treacherous roads is surely more damaging to their moral development than video games, Miley Cyrus, food additives and cyber-bullying combined… right AlexJ? But I have a theory.

Children need Snow Days. That delicious exemption from duty. That unexpected release from schedule and demand. That magical opportunity to flounder in the storm, to embrace the unexpected, to cheer with the radio-guy at 6am because suddenly their day is transformed as surely as if Harry Potter just sent them an owl telling them to stay in their jammies and watch cartoons. Our kids’ lives are filled with obligation… school, sports, clubs, chores, part time jobs, homework… isn’t it marvellous that they can experience that sense of holiday that comes with a Snow Day? Because once they’re grown up, once they have careers and obligations and bosses, those moments of magic become fewer and farther between.

Unless they become teachers.

In Canada.

Where it snows.

(I’m sorry. I’m a teacher. I get Snow Days.)

I defend the Snow Day as a bastion of a healthy childhood. I leap to the defence of happy children everywhere, when the radio announces “stay home today, kids” because I think the joy that follows that statement does them good. I don’t need to expound on the value of safety for our drivers, pedestrians, children waiting in waist high drifts for the bus… that’s a no-brainer. I defend Snow Days because they’re Good For Kids.

And I get caught up on my marking on Snow Days.

And that is Something Meaningful too.