Tudor Robins's Blog, page 7

Out with the old …

There is nothing so constant as change. I know that. Still, some changes are more welcome than others. Some are easier to accept.

Yesterday, this house across the street from us was torn down.

Our neighbourhood is under lots of pressure from change. Maybe yours is too? I know it’s happening in communities all over the world, in cities all over the world.

These days many houses on streets like mine are bought and sold, not for the buildings, but for the lots. People are paying $600,000 and $700,000 (and more) to get a lot, tear down the house on it, and build what I guess must be their dream home.

The thing that gets to me is that one day these houses are homes – families live in them and are safe, warm, secure, and happy – and the next day these houses are tear-downs. Supposedly not worth keeping. More trouble than they’re worth to renovate.

When I spoke to the contractor working on this particular job he said, “Oh, well if you could see inside this house, you’d know it needed a lot of work.”

I cleared my throat and said, “Of course, I have been inside this house many times.” This was my neighbours’ home. Neighbours visit each other – or, on our street, many neighbours visit each other. Although, not so much the brand new ones who tore down the old houses.

When we moved into our house, back in 2000, this house belonged to one of the “founding families” of the street. He was the head of emergency medicine at the Civic Hospital – for many years in Ottawa holding a position like that was a big deal.

It was a big house for its time, with a huge yard by today’s standards. She was kept busy looking after it.

This house first became important to me when I was up every two hours, every single night with my first son. He slept little, ate often, and completely exhausted me.

Wandering around a dark house in the chill of the night holding a baby who won’t settle can make you feel like the only person in the world. You can begin to pity yourself because nobody else on earth is out of their warm bed … except you.

When I would feel that way, I would look out the window of our spare bedroom which faced this big red brick house and I would see lights on in their bedroom windows. I knew it was for a sad reason – I knew the wife was ill – but it provided me comfort and companionship. I wasn’t alone.

Eventually the wife died. I went to her funeral, took food to her widowed husband, and we became friends – I think it’s fair to call us friends.

Before he moved out of the big red brick house he called me over and invited me into the big, traditional dining room. There were items spread all over the table and he asked me to choose something I would like as he couldn’t take everything to his new apartment.

I’ll never forget that moment. I still have the beautiful woven tray, and silver platter I selected. He told me his wife had great taste and loved having beautiful things for the house and he wanted to make sure they went to good homes.

Later, after he moved out, a family moved in. They were diplomats from Germany and their kids were the same age as ours. The house wasn’t perfect, but it adapted well to housing an active family of four. The children on the street had always had free rein of the huge gardens around the big house, and that continued with the German family who moved in – with the addition of a trampoline – the first one on the block.

The wife of that family also had a flair for decorating, and she did wonders with the big rooms of the old house. We were invited over for drinks at Christmas and the old house looked worthy of entertaining foreign diplomats.

When that family moved out, the people on the street were scared. The house sat on a double lot, and it didn’t have a en-suite bathroom, or granite countertops – in other words, the land was amazing, and the building had issues.

We were afraid its teardown was inevitable.

We were right.

And, I know, things have to change. And I know people have a right to do what they want with their property. But the sad thing is there seems never to be an acknowledgement of what was good, and special, and lovely about the old houses.

It would have been nice to have had a second inviting of neighbours into that house. To say “you’ve all lived with this house on your street for a long time – is there something you would like to take from it?” or “Is there something you can tell me about it?”

Instead there was an excavator and in just a few hours, a pile of rubble.

Due to some neighbourly concern, and some intervention by our city councillor, these (the trees) are still there. We’re not sure for now long, though. We’re afraid it’s only a matter of time.

It’s amazing how trees can grow for a hundred years, and houses can be homes for a hundred years, and we can get rid of them in a few hours and soon there’s nobody left who remembers.

I guess, by writing this, I’m at least trying to do my part to remember.

Water, water, everywhere …

 

Some readers will live close enough to Ottawa to be aware of what’s going on here. Others, no doubt, will be near to (I hope not in the middle of) their own floods.

It is wet here. Really, really wet.

We have had so much rain.

Our city, like many, is bounded – even defined – by our rivers. We have three large and powerful rivers around us – the Ottawa, the Gatineau, and the Rideau, and they’re all higher than I ever remember seeing them. Which makes sense because everybody’s saying this is the worst flooding since the early 70s and I certainly wouldn’t be able to remember that!

I guess this makes me think of many things:

1) It, of course, makes me think of, and worry about, how we’re changing the earth and the climate. These (formerly) rogue rainfall events are getting more and more frequent. We had another one just a month ago. In some ways that one was worse because the ground was still frozen meaning the rain had literally nowhere to go. On the other hand, this one’s gone on so long that the ground is completely saturated, so the effect is pretty much the same …

2) It makes me think how all the things we worry about on a daily basis can always be pushed aside by a new, more immediate worry. If you have flooding, you have to drop everything and deal with the flooding. It’s a powerful argument for not spending too much time sweating the small stuff.

3) It, of course, makes me feel for people who will be truly, deeply affected by this flooding. It’s unbelievable what water can do to a home. I’m sorry for all the memories and belongings that will be destroyed.

 

As you can see from our forecast, there really is no quick end in sight.

For me, personally, I will say I have much to be thankful for. Our nearly hundred-year-old house has seen a lot of all kinds of weather events and it mostly does will with water. We helped it by installing a sump pump a few years ago, and that has saved our butts many, many times (as we drift off to sleep with the sound of the sump whooshing water away from our basement).

We’ve learned 50mm of rain in one day is about the breaking point of our water defences. At that point, even with the sump going full tilt, all the ground around our house is literally full and there are a couple of points where water will start seeping in. The forecast keeps changing – at one point there was about 50mm of rain forecast for today, but that’s backed off slightly. If we’re lucky the rate will stay just under control enough that our sump can do all the work we need it to.

So, at the moment I’m dry and warm in a dry and warm house. What more could I want?

And, as though to remind me how lucky I am, while my usual training run along the Ottawa River is impossible to do right now – there are literally no paths left for much of the route – this is my back-up route:

 

It’s not exactly a hardship to run along the Rideau Canal – a Unesco World Heritage site.

Counting my blessings, hoping not to be mopping up my basement this weekend, and feeling pretty sure next week will bring a whole new crisis / topic of conversation (just, please, let it not be North Korea).

Wales #3 – Southerndown

OK! Back to my posts about our trip to Wales. It’s been a busy month since we finished our holiday, but I’m determined to get these posts up.

Unlike the places we visited in West Wales, and our drive to Tintern Abbey (post still to come), Southerndown was completely unplanned.

I left Canada with an ear infection, which I thought was under control, but it flared up again in Wales. As a result, we spent a big chunk of time chasing down medical treatment, visiting a clinic, etc. We had been planning to go on an all-day hike in the Brecon Beacons, but we didn’t get home from the clinic and the pharmacy until late morning, so we made new plans, packed a picnic, and headed to the really-quite-close-to-Cardiff Southerndown beach.

We took a friend.

This is Lottie – my in-laws’ super-energetic Jack Russell terrier, and she LOVES the beach.

As we drove, the roads got quite narrow, and there were warnings about sheep free-ranging across them, and then we got to the beach.

As you can see, this is dream territory for a curious Jack Russell.

The beach was definitely pretty, and we enjoyed eating our lunch, and throwing balls for Lottie, but if we hadn’t left the beach for a short walk, we would have missed the best part of the day.

This is a picture of Southerndown beach as it would have been decades ago, when Dunraven Castle was perched on the cliffs above it. My husband had been to Southerndown as a child and a teenager, but he didn’t know anything about Dunraven Castle, so it was just by chance that we walked far enough to discover its walled gardens.

I felt like I was walking into the Secret Garden.

 

From the beach, it’s impossible to know this is just about a 200 metre walk away.

 

You can just glimpse the ocean in the background of this photo.

 

There was something truly enchanting about these gardens.

As we walked along the paths, we met an elderly lady who told us we simply must continue walking – that there was a little path at the end of the garden with a very easy walk up to the most beautiful view.

It was sunny, and we’d already been surprised by the gardens, so we kept walking and she was right, it was such a short walk – probably not much more than 100 metres, and we came out at this:

Seriously, this was right in front of our eyes …

Apparently this stretch of coast is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest – it’s also very well hidden – even my Welsh in-laws, when we returned, didn’t realize this was right behind the main beach.

The fence-to-nowhere – part of the low-key surroundings.

When we had finally taken enough photos, we walked back through what we later learned were the remains of Dunraven Castle. They would have had some pretty amazing views from the house, but also have been very exposed:

The little white speck with the boys is Lottie – still enjoying her outing.

And that was our unplanned, unexpected trip to Southerndown beach in the Vale of Glamorgan!

Reader Connection

I’ve said it so many times I’m afraid I’ll sound like a broken record. Then again, it’s probably not possible to overstate how nice it is when readers reach out and tell me a bit about themselves and their lives.

A while ago, I got an email from a fifteen-year-old reader in Luxembourg! I never dreamed I had a readership in Luxembourg, so hearing from Pauline was fantastic.

Pauline told me she lives in Luxembourg City. Her parents are French, and she speaks four languages – French, German, English, and Luxembourgish. She was careful to tell me her English isn’t fluent, but all our correspondence was in English, and her English is much better than my French, which is only my second language!

Not surprisingly, Pauline is a rider. She first sat on a horse when she was six, rode in her first show at age 11, and now half-leases a horse named Ravel with another rider. As you can see from the pictures Pauline sent me, Ravel is a complete doll:

Doesn’t he have the nicest face?

 

And here’s one of him sporting a rather spiffy cooler.

Pauline and Ravel like doing dressage. They ride at a stable called Kandel Freres, and Pauline can ride her bike there in good weather. It looks like such a nice stable!

The reason Pauline reached out is that she wanted to do a presentation on me and Appaloosa Summer for her English class. So cool …

After we exchanged information, Pauline sent me the presentation she put together and gave me permission to share it on my blog.

I was really impressed. Please feel free to view it using the link below.

Appaloosa Summer pdf

Here’s a screen shot of the first page of Pauline’s presentation – I even love the font she used:

It’s so much fun to see how different people live, and read, and ride all over the world. I really want to thank Pauline for giving me a glimpse into her life, and I wish her and Ravel all the best in their upcoming dressage competitions.

I’d love to hear from any other readers who’d like to share their stories!

Update! – Puppies! #twoweeksonwolfeisland

Today’s blog post started with this picture.

As a writer, every now and then you get a reward for writing. I’m not talking about book sales (which are good and necessary rewards)! I’m talking about a reader reaching out and giving you a glimpse into their life, and to how your writing affected them.

As I write and release more books, this happens more frequently with readers of my novels. I love every story. They’re surprising, and touching, and inspiring.

Recently, though, I got an unexpected email from a blog reader and it provided a neat update to a blog post I did the summer before last.

Here’s the original, if you want to catch up – http://tudorrobins.ca/2015/08/puppies-twoweeksonwolfeisland/

Oh my – I still can’t believe I didn’t buy one of those puppies.

Here’s the cool thing, though – now I know somebody who did! A lovely woman named Brenda reached out to me a while back and, well, I’m going to let her tell her own story:

This might be a bit strange but please bear with me. I was googling Wolfe Island last night and I came across your blog PUPPIES! TWOWEEKSONWOLFE ISLAND and I was literally dumbfounded. We lost our dog to cancer in April of 2015 and come the summer our three teens wanted another puppy.

My husband and I were not quite ready. So, to put them off we told them we were not getting another dog until the three of them came up with a name. What I thought would take days took five minutes. Wolfe was the name unanimously decided on.

A couple of months went by and on a Sunday in August my son ran into my room and said, “Mom look what is for sale.” There they were – not just any lab / retriever (my preferred choice) – but a boy selling them on no other than Wolfe Island.

We arranged for the man to hold a girl for us and we drove the four hours to get there. We took the ferry across because of the traffic and the man and boy met us. The little boy said her name was Stella. He was a bit upset when I told him she was going to be named Wolfe.

Here is Stella, since renamed Wolfe.

 We never got to see the boy selling his puppies so I wanted to thank you so much for the pictures. We think by your pictures that Wolfe is the one on the left of the two girls. We wanted you to know you made our family’s day. I have enclosed a few pictures of our Wolfe. She is the absolute joy of our family. She entertains us every minute. Believe me there is no dog loved like Wolfe. Thank you again.

Here’s that picture – showing Wolfe before she went to her new home.

“There is no dog loved like Wolfe” – are those heartwarming words, or what?

Wales #2 – St David’s

As I mentioned in my first post, this is kind of cheating. We went to St David’s first, but the Abereiddy pictures were really cool, so I wanted to post them first. However, St David’s deserves a post, and here it is!

St David’s is Britain’s smallest city (size and population) and it’s known for being cute, quaint, small, and having a great, big, massive cathedral.

 

The wall was our first hint we were coming upon the cathedral.

 

Then – boom! – there it was … it’s a big cathedral for a small city.

 

The walled grounds are extensive and contain much more than just the cathedral. There are many other buildings and scenic spots like this one.

 

I feel like this paddock is just begging for a horse … or two.

It was while we were wandering about the cathedral grounds that my husband started telling me he was going to take a picture that would be published on the BBC weekly photo round-up.* Accordingly, we started a bit of a throw-down, trying to take artistically arranged photos which, at this time of year, in Wales, include lots of daffodils.

Behold the daffodils and other artistic shots (some more successful than others!):

Daffodils and ruins – so Welsh!

 

Heavy on the daffodils, light on the ruins.

 

I thought this one was quite pretty.

 

No daffodils, but kind of an atmospheric view of the cathedral.

Exhausted, and artistically drained from our photo shoot, we went to Pebbles for lunch where either we were very hungry, or the paninis really were the best, ooey-gooey, cheese-and-hammy things ever created by a human being. It was a good lunch!

OK, it wasn’t sunny or blue-skied, but the food was great! (© Copyright Robin Drayton and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence)

And that was St David’s. More Wales to come …

*Stay tuned to hear about how my husband’s quest for BBC photo publication turned out

Wales #1 – Abereiddy

Yes, I was in Wales.

And now that I’m back I thought I’d write some posts so a) you can see what Wales is like, in case you’ve never been there, and b) it will force me to organize my photos

Objects in Mirror

I thought of so many possible titles for this post, probably because there are so many angles to how I feel about this story.

Bottom line: Objects in Mirror is back home.

Most of you know this, but for new readers, Objects is my first book. It was published by a traditional publisher in the spring of 2013.

While many writers think a traditional publishing contract is the be-all-end-all, their heart’s desire, all you need to launch you to writing success … let me just say, not for everybody. And definitely not for me.

I realized very quickly all the reasons traditional publishing wasn’t for me, and by Christmas 2013, I had decided my second book would be self-published.

That book is Appaloosa Summer, and for many people, it feels like my first book. For many of my readers, APS was the first book of mine readily available on Kindle. It was affordable, at $2.99. They tried it, liked it, and have become loyal followers.

I was always sad that many of those people hadn’t read Objects, but I didn’t blame them. I would never urge them to pay the $12.99 list price my publisher wanted for the eBook. I would never have paid that much.

So, sales and reviews for APS and the other Island books mounted, and Objects languished. It was inappropriately priced. It had a nice-enough cover, but not one that really captured the spirit of my writing or the story. The basic attention-getting elements weren’t there, and nobody was promoting it – not even me because of the much-too-high price.

I felt like Objects was a kid who fell between the cracks when a marriage broke up. I moved on, I had my own new roster of books to deal with, and with me gone and no more books coming from me under their imprint, the publisher no longer had any drive to sell Objects.

I always wondered about getting the rights back to Objects, but I didn’t know how. Maybe, as more and more authors want to undo their publishing contracts, there will be more support and advice about how to do so, but right now it’s not that “Googleable.” When The Writers’ Union of Canada asked if I was going to renew my membership, I asked if they’d help me get the rights back from my publisher. Not so much. I didn’t renew.

I asked lawyers, I read all I could find, I thought about it. I finally wrote a registered letter to my publisher asking if we could please work this out and – sparing you all the twists and bumps along the way – I finally have Objects back with me where I’ve commissioned a new cover for it, and lowered the price, and now I’m promoting it to all of you.

Oh, and I’ll be writing a book to follow Objects, called After Lucas, and I hope to publish it before the end of 2017.

It’s been a long journey – I’ve learned a great deal. I’ve been warned off, questioned, and accused of being “unprofessional” and “misinformed.” But my little book is back and even before I told anybody – any of you, my great supporters – about it, it started selling copies. In just a few days, with no promotion, it’s already sold about a quarter of the eBook copies it sold in its entire time under the imprint of the old publisher.

I hope you’ll give it a chance. I think you’ll like it. I’d love to hear what you think!

If you want to read Objects, here’s a link that will let you choose the retailer you’d prefer to buy it from.

P.S. As an extra thank-you for all your support, and to celebrate Objects’ return home, I’m offering the entire Island Series free on Kindle for one day only – February 28th – so fill in any holes in your collection, or tell a friend to start getting their copies!

AudioBook – a How-To

The audiobook cover of APS – it’s square!

If you’ve ever wondered how all those audiobooks on Audible, and iTunes, and your local library, get made … well I can’t tell you exactly how they got made, but I can tell you how mine did.

Write, re-write, get edits, re-write, get proofreading done, make corrections, source image, commission cover, code eBook, create paperback, put book up for sale, grow readership … etc. Basically, publish the book!
So, a few people like the book? Why not make an audiobook?
Think about it for a long time. Put it on your to-get-around-to list. Read every blog post you see on audiobooks. Visit some audiobook sites.
Finally get off your butt and ask your American friend and colleague (and great writer – seriously, read her stuff) Mara Dabrishus if she’ll be your audiobook publisher since ACX won’t let Canadians publish with them.
Mara says yes. Oh. Wow. Guess it’s time to do this thing.
Listen to a bunch of narrators. Search by age, accent, style, etc. Listen some more.
Find Cody Schreger. Go to her website. Listen to her commercial voiceovers. Think “this woman could never be my narrator … could she?” Email Cody. Freak out when she says Yes.
Mess around with an online contract, while Cody records five minutes of the book. Decide you’re both happy with the contract, and you’re happy (ecstatic) with Cody’s recording.
Go! Cody is in Brooklyn, New York recording your book (so weird).
Cody sends all the files back to you, and you listen in a bizarre, surreal way to your book being read by a professional narrator, and sometimes you forget it’s your own book …
Still – stay alert, notice errors (hardly any), note them down.
Send corrections to Cody, Cody does corrections, Cody resends files …
… files go to Mara (who has already, brilliantly, turned your book cover into a square as required by ACX.
Mara uploads, presses publish, and now, today …

Appaloosa Summer is published as an audiobook.

(Here’s a sample!)

http://tudorrobins.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Appaloosa-Summer-Retail-Sample.mp3

 

Now comes the selling part.

If you’re already an Audible user, I would love it if you could download Appaloosa Summer.

If you’re not, but have been thinking about trying Audible – even better (in a way) – if you sign up for a free thirty-day trial, and Appaloosa Summer is the first book you choose, I get a “bounty” (their term) payment of $50US. Which would be very useful in helping me get Wednesday Riders recorded … just sayin’

I’d love to hear from you – do you like audiobooks? If so, when do you listen to them? If not, why haven’t you tried them yet? Send me any of your audiobook thoughts!

#NotAChoice – Objects #2

It’s Eating Disorder Awareness Week (#EDAW2017, in case you want to spread the word) and this seems like as good a time as any to write my next post about Objects in Mirror coming home to me, because as some of you will know, the main character in Objects is anorexic.

Her anorexia has affected her past. It is a reality in her present. It will impact her future.

It has impacts for everybody around her, and everybody who loves her.

Because Objects is mine now – because it’s home now – I can give copies away whenever I like and, so, for #EDAW2017 I’d love to send a couple of copies to readers who email me

There are no rules for this giveaway – maybe you know about eating disorders. Maybe you have one, or love somebody who has one. Maybe you’d just like to learn more.

If you have a story you’d care to share with me privately, or to have me post for others to read, feel free to let me know.

The main thing I need is an email from you and your mailing address.

Let’s say, for now, I’ll send copies to readers who email me during Eating Disorder Awareness Week (ending February 7). If the demand gets out of hand (!) I reserve the right to throw up my hands and yell “Pause!” but I’m prepared to give away quite a few copies, as long as you’re prepared to be a little bit patient about me getting them in the mail (I promise I’ll do it as quickly as I can!).

The one thing I think it’s really important to know about eating disorders is this: it’s definitely #NotAChoice.

If you’d like to know more about what I think, then reading Objects in Mirror is a great place to start!

And if you’re looking for help, please reach out. NEDIC is a great place to start.