K. Velk's Blog, page 5
August 14, 2015
Calling All Transatlantic Bargain Hunters
It's summer sale time at Up, Back, and Away Headquarters!
Get the ebook for 99 p if you're an Amazon.uk customer and 99 cents if you're a plain old American.
The UK price drop has begun (click the link above) and the US drop should start at midnight tonight (Aug. 14). I
t all ends on August 21 so don't dither and tell your friends.
August 13, 2015
The Short-Winded Lady
I went walking yesterday after Jeopardy ended. That means not only that I am incipient old fart but also that it was 7:30 pm before I got out the door. This time of year here in Vermont that means the light is going fast.
I almost didn't go because darkness was falling and because I'm lazy. As usual, however, my minimal exertion was richly repaid. It was such a fine experience I thought about it again today, while I was out on another walk which was also nice but not so crowded with unexpected pleasures. I thought I should go home and write about my nice walk last night for the record.
It's not much really so feel free to leave now if you are easily bored.
More on this is a minute...
Still here? Here's how it went.
I walked down my driveway to the dirt road on which we live and from there onto the paved road which is only three houses away. The paved road is not heavily traveled so it is pleasant for walking.
The houses in our neighborhood are all different, having been added piecemeal over about the last 150 years. A derelict apple orchard was repurposed as building lots for several of them and the apple trees are still here, though not tended. I grabbed a small sour apple as I passed the first house on the paved road and took two bites. It was good but I didn't want to risk bowel trouble so I stopped there. I then remembered a pledge I made to myself earlier this summer to pick some wild flowers and August tis the season for wildflowers. I wanted to pick them because this summer I bought (for one dollar at Goodwill) a little flower press.
Wildflowers, of course, grow in profusion on the roadside. I grabbed a few as a I passed, aiming for varied colors and shapes. I don't know the names of the things I picked. There were some little daisy-like things, a purplish number that I believe might be a cornflower, buttercups (I think, they were smaller than the buttercups I remember from childhood), and those orange bell-shaped flowers that grow on something like a small bush... People of New England, you know what I mean.
I carried these as I walked toward the red barn that was my turn-around point. When I got to the barn (actually just short of there as night was getting more serious), I turned and faced the mountains - well, significant hills - that make a wall at the end of this particular road, about two miles distant.
It had rained during the day and as dusk gathered there were pools and tatters of mist in half a dozen places on the dark green hillsides. Mists also swirled around the hilltops. I hadn't noticed the mists til just that moment. They were very beautiful and a lovely surprise.
The Japanese have a word for this - my kids give me grief about the fact that I say this, "The Japanese have a word..." every time I see such mists. I can't remember their word. I will look it up later.
I listen to music while I walk. I can't remember what was on, Squeeze, I think, when a jogger and her giant white dog came up behind me. I was picking another apple at that moment, thinking fine thoughts of our misty hills and trying to remember the Japanese word, when the dog woofed. Having been caught picking an apple (they are wild, but still) I started. I took a bite and, finding it corrupted, threw it out and had no courage to pick another with a witness.
The jogger was a fellow fattie, though much younger than me. She gave me a kind, rather embarrassed smile as she wobbled by. The dog - who hadn't scared me a bit really, he was clearly a gentle giant - was on a leash. As they passed, the dog kept looking back at me, slowing his owner.
After the jogger had gotten about twenty yards ahead of me, the dog just sat down in the middle of the road as if to say. "I've had enough of this nonsense. Why aren't we on the couch where we belong? I want to stay with that apple picking broad." The jogger, embarrassed, patted the dog's head. She then gave him a stiff pull on the leash and started jogging again. He was defeated and trotted along behind her like a furry ball and chain.
To her credit, the runner kept at it til she was out of sight. It was uphill so I was impressed. No doubt she waited to go jogging until the road was likely clear of observers and, then, damn, there I was.
I walked past the old barn that comes up just before our dirt road. It is weathered and brown but has a shiny new tin roof. It is a barn for a Vermont Life photo shoot. I felt I cut a romantic figure, walking past it with my bunch of wild flowers in my hand.
I put the flowers in the press as soon as I got back into our dining room. I felt sort of bad about pressing them - something so 'pit and the pendulum' about tightening the screws. I'll take a picture when they're done in two weeks. I will want to remember this.
I almost didn't go because darkness was falling and because I'm lazy. As usual, however, my minimal exertion was richly repaid. It was such a fine experience I thought about it again today, while I was out on another walk which was also nice but not so crowded with unexpected pleasures. I thought I should go home and write about my nice walk last night for the record.
It's not much really so feel free to leave now if you are easily bored.
More on this is a minute...Still here? Here's how it went.
I walked down my driveway to the dirt road on which we live and from there onto the paved road which is only three houses away. The paved road is not heavily traveled so it is pleasant for walking.
The houses in our neighborhood are all different, having been added piecemeal over about the last 150 years. A derelict apple orchard was repurposed as building lots for several of them and the apple trees are still here, though not tended. I grabbed a small sour apple as I passed the first house on the paved road and took two bites. It was good but I didn't want to risk bowel trouble so I stopped there. I then remembered a pledge I made to myself earlier this summer to pick some wild flowers and August tis the season for wildflowers. I wanted to pick them because this summer I bought (for one dollar at Goodwill) a little flower press.
Wildflowers, of course, grow in profusion on the roadside. I grabbed a few as a I passed, aiming for varied colors and shapes. I don't know the names of the things I picked. There were some little daisy-like things, a purplish number that I believe might be a cornflower, buttercups (I think, they were smaller than the buttercups I remember from childhood), and those orange bell-shaped flowers that grow on something like a small bush... People of New England, you know what I mean.
I carried these as I walked toward the red barn that was my turn-around point. When I got to the barn (actually just short of there as night was getting more serious), I turned and faced the mountains - well, significant hills - that make a wall at the end of this particular road, about two miles distant.
It had rained during the day and as dusk gathered there were pools and tatters of mist in half a dozen places on the dark green hillsides. Mists also swirled around the hilltops. I hadn't noticed the mists til just that moment. They were very beautiful and a lovely surprise.
The Japanese have a word for this - my kids give me grief about the fact that I say this, "The Japanese have a word..." every time I see such mists. I can't remember their word. I will look it up later.
I listen to music while I walk. I can't remember what was on, Squeeze, I think, when a jogger and her giant white dog came up behind me. I was picking another apple at that moment, thinking fine thoughts of our misty hills and trying to remember the Japanese word, when the dog woofed. Having been caught picking an apple (they are wild, but still) I started. I took a bite and, finding it corrupted, threw it out and had no courage to pick another with a witness.
The jogger was a fellow fattie, though much younger than me. She gave me a kind, rather embarrassed smile as she wobbled by. The dog - who hadn't scared me a bit really, he was clearly a gentle giant - was on a leash. As they passed, the dog kept looking back at me, slowing his owner.
After the jogger had gotten about twenty yards ahead of me, the dog just sat down in the middle of the road as if to say. "I've had enough of this nonsense. Why aren't we on the couch where we belong? I want to stay with that apple picking broad." The jogger, embarrassed, patted the dog's head. She then gave him a stiff pull on the leash and started jogging again. He was defeated and trotted along behind her like a furry ball and chain.
To her credit, the runner kept at it til she was out of sight. It was uphill so I was impressed. No doubt she waited to go jogging until the road was likely clear of observers and, then, damn, there I was.
I walked past the old barn that comes up just before our dirt road. It is weathered and brown but has a shiny new tin roof. It is a barn for a Vermont Life photo shoot. I felt I cut a romantic figure, walking past it with my bunch of wild flowers in my hand.
I put the flowers in the press as soon as I got back into our dining room. I felt sort of bad about pressing them - something so 'pit and the pendulum' about tightening the screws. I'll take a picture when they're done in two weeks. I will want to remember this.
August 5, 2015
Goodreads Giveaway Time
Click in for a chance at one of three signed paperbacks. A summer e-book sale is also coming. Stay tuned. Keep hydrated. Ta ra for now.
June 24, 2015
Thanks & Another Top Tip: Robertson Davies
Hello ethereal friends.
Thanks to those of you who picked up the book this last week. I hope you'll like it and tell others. If you don't like it, fair enough, but you should feel free keep that to yourself. (Kidding! [sort of]).
Anyway, while you were shopping for books this weekend I was taking my high-school-senior daughter on a whirlwind tour of the great universities of Ontario and Quebec.
U of T in the summer sun...
On this trip, for the first time in my long association with Canada, I visited the University of Toronto. For me this is literary hallowed ground. It has produced uncounted Canadian (and world) eminences, including Margaret Atwood, but for me it is to be cherished as the sometime intellectual home of Robertson Davies. He was the founding master of Massey College there. Davies is one of my literary heroes. His physical appearance (beard, eyebrows etc.) - and his name - inspired the character of Morgan Davies in Up, Back, and Away, and his work, especially his masterpiece, Fifth Business is my top tip for you today.
When I got home to Vermont after our trip this weekend I did a quick search on Amazon and found to my near horror that there is no e-version of Fifth Business, nor of any of Davies' other books available for sale. This is really incomprehensible (executors of Davies' literary estate, take note). He died in 1995 and he seems to have vanished into almost complete obscurity in the US and England. Canada keeps the flame (Fifth Business was number 13 on the Canadian Classics list on Amazon.ca when I checked this morning). Dear reader, I truly have your best interests at heart in recommending Davies to you. Fifth Business is his best work - I once saw it called the best book ever written in Canada. It's an engaging, lively page turner full of wisdom and mystery too. I enjoyed it at twenty as much as I did at 45 - for different reasons. You can start with that. I'm betting you'll want to carry on reading the rest of the Deptford Trilogy immediately.
When I was 22 I wrote a letter to the great man, and he wrote back. Here's a link to a blog post about that, including the text of his kind reply to me.
As noted, you can't get an e-books by Davies, but used copies abound and your library ought to have at least a few titles by him. If they don't you might tell them to get some.
I hope you'll read Fifth Business and maybe some of his other books and come back here to tell me "Thanks!" Cheers.
Thanks to those of you who picked up the book this last week. I hope you'll like it and tell others. If you don't like it, fair enough, but you should feel free keep that to yourself. (Kidding! [sort of]).
Anyway, while you were shopping for books this weekend I was taking my high-school-senior daughter on a whirlwind tour of the great universities of Ontario and Quebec.
U of T in the summer sun...On this trip, for the first time in my long association with Canada, I visited the University of Toronto. For me this is literary hallowed ground. It has produced uncounted Canadian (and world) eminences, including Margaret Atwood, but for me it is to be cherished as the sometime intellectual home of Robertson Davies. He was the founding master of Massey College there. Davies is one of my literary heroes. His physical appearance (beard, eyebrows etc.) - and his name - inspired the character of Morgan Davies in Up, Back, and Away, and his work, especially his masterpiece, Fifth Business is my top tip for you today.
When I got home to Vermont after our trip this weekend I did a quick search on Amazon and found to my near horror that there is no e-version of Fifth Business, nor of any of Davies' other books available for sale. This is really incomprehensible (executors of Davies' literary estate, take note). He died in 1995 and he seems to have vanished into almost complete obscurity in the US and England. Canada keeps the flame (Fifth Business was number 13 on the Canadian Classics list on Amazon.ca when I checked this morning). Dear reader, I truly have your best interests at heart in recommending Davies to you. Fifth Business is his best work - I once saw it called the best book ever written in Canada. It's an engaging, lively page turner full of wisdom and mystery too. I enjoyed it at twenty as much as I did at 45 - for different reasons. You can start with that. I'm betting you'll want to carry on reading the rest of the Deptford Trilogy immediately.
When I was 22 I wrote a letter to the great man, and he wrote back. Here's a link to a blog post about that, including the text of his kind reply to me.
As noted, you can't get an e-books by Davies, but used copies abound and your library ought to have at least a few titles by him. If they don't you might tell them to get some.
I hope you'll read Fifth Business and maybe some of his other books and come back here to tell me "Thanks!" Cheers.
June 17, 2015
Summer Solstice Sale!
Hello and welcome, intelligent general readers of Blighty!
Thanks for dropping by. If you've got time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down take off those wet things and make yourself at home. But you've come for the book, haven't you? Here it is. Just click that bit, or this one and you'll be carried instantly back across the pond.
Downloads of the e-version of Up, Back, and Away will be 99 p on Amazon in celebration of Mid-Summer's Eve/St. John's Day/Summer Solstice from 18 June to 23 June. (The story opens on that day in 1928, or at least gets there quite quickly). If you prefer paper, Mr. Bezos can oblige you, as can your local bookseller.
As for my fellow Americans and others, your e-book sale ended a few weeks ago. On the bright side, at $4.99 the ebook is still a fabulous bargain.
I'm so pleased you beamed in. I look forward to making your acquaintance. Feel free to contact me anytime (look over at my profile on the sidebar for contact information). Come back when you've finished and read a few of the first posts here and find out where the story got started.
The inchoate cover by the brilliant illustrator Juan WijngaardSolstice Sale
Hello and welcome, intelligent general readers of Blighty!
Thanks for dropping by. If you've got time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down take off those wet things and make yourself at home! But you've come for the book, haven't you? Here it is. Just click that bit, or this one and you'll be carried instantly back across the pond.
Downloads of the e-version of Up, Back, and Away will be 99 p on Amazon in celebration of Mid-Summer's Eve/St. John's Day/Summer Solstice from 18 June to 23 June. (The story opens on that day in 1928, or at least gets there quite quickly). If you prefer paper, Mr. Bezos can oblige you, as can your local bookseller.
As for my fellow Americans and others, your e-book sale ended a few weeks ago. On the bright side, at $4.99 the ebook is still a fabulous bargain.
I'm so pleased you beamed in. I look forward to making your acquaintance. Feel free to contact me anytime (look over at my profile on the sidebar for contact information). Come back when you've finished and read a few of the first posts here and find out where the story got started.
Here's a treat for stopping by - the inchoate cover by the brilliant illustrator Juan WijngaardMay 21, 2015
Happy May, Thanks, and Top Tip (Cecil Beaton), as Promised
Pansies and my pigeon toesMay is dwindling and I'll be sorry to see it go. We are coming off the coldest January - March temperatures in Vermont in more than 90 years. I'm not making this up. Go check with NOAA if you doubt me. (So much for all those old timers who like to boast about how cold winters were when they were young). Reprieve from our hard, cold winter arrived, at last, this month in a blaze of flowering glory. Thanks to all who picked up the e-book this last week during the kindle countdown deal. My enjoyment of May was boosted by sharing the Amazon best seller lists with the likes of Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman (two of my writer heroes), however briefly. A UK deal e-book will be coming in June so stay tuned.
Of course, I understand that news of my e-book deals is of limited interest but to thank you for bearing with me I have a top tip... Ready? "Cecil Beaton."
I've been an admirer for years. He's most famous as a photographer, and for good reason, but he was also a writer, a painter, a high society flibbertigibbet and, perhaps most importantly for my purposes, a diarist.
I have been drifting through the last volume of his unexpurgated diaries for weeks now. This volume contains entries written in the early 1970s in the twilight of his years. Beaton was a social climber and prey to appearances all his life, but he was not a shallow person - or maybe he was a deep person with shallows. He's a terrible moaner every time he is inconvenienced or gets sick ("I've had the worst cold of my life these last days...") and can be very fey (a room requires un note de rouge) but he was also very perceptive, hardworking, and tough minded.
I was touched that he was touched by a passage from The Pilgrim's Progress that was read out at a friend's funeral. He rebukes himself for not having read it himself and (correctly) admires the beauty of the language. He writes vividly and well (most of the time) and there's lots of fun gossip and the occasional brilliant insight. He is genuine admirer of Queen Elizabeth II for good reason (she's good at her job and presents herself perfectly) but he doesn't hesitate to criticize her hair-do. He is knighted in this volume and his details of the ceremony and the after-party are fascinating. He is sharp eyed and sharp tongued, but he doesn't spare himself, even describing the sad state of affairs of his genitalia following a prostate operation. Here's a link to a New Yorker article about his diaries, FYI.
Thanks again for following along. Thanks to all who downloaded the book. Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have anything to tell me.
May 14, 2015
99 Cent E-book and Other Top Tips
It's me!Hi all. Sorry to have been absent for so long. (You're forgiven if you're thinking, "Has she been absent?").About That E-book...
In any case, I'm here with a couple announcements. One is that the e-version of Up, Back, and Away is on a kindle countdown deal on Amazon.com RIGHT NOW (from May 14, 2015 to May 21, 2015). That means you lucky residents of the USA can get the ebook for 99 cents this week. Several hundred million of you have yet to take advantage of this splendid opportunity that comes with your status as a resident of the United States so I am here to urge you to get cracking.
Here's another link for your clicking convenience. I can't really make this any easier. Thank you for doing the right thing.
What's That About a Newsletter?
The other news is that I'm going to move some of my blogging energy (which has admittedly flagged lately) into emails. I'll be writing periodic emails about various things, mostly things that I have found and liked, or occasional observations, and sending those out to subscribers. There's a subscription link in at the top of the sidebar there on your right.
I'm not doing this for any money or anything- just trying a new way to communicate. I will tell you about my books (the only things in which I will have a financial interest) but as I only write one about every six years there won't be much of that. Want to see how it goes? Subscribe away.
Also, tell your friends about the e-book thing. Thank you. I'm all yours. Please get in touch with any comments, so long as they are nice.
Run and get yours! March 2, 2015
Sale! Sale!
A Lovely Preliminary Sketch for the Book Cover by Juan WijngaardI wrote that shouty magic word twice because the e version of Up, Back, and Away is available to shoppers on both sides of the Atlantic at a lovely savings just now.The ebook is 99 cents in the US through March 8. Here's that link.
Over on the island, it is 99 pence until March 7. Here's that link.
The marketing geniuses at Amazon have created these "kindle countdown deals" and the clock is literally ticking away on the book's home page. If you don't have your copy, maybe forego that Snickers bar or box of Smarties - remember how you said you weren't going to eat chocolate from the vending machine after the New Year? - and get this instead. And don't lounge around for days and days or POOF - price rise.
Also, this is one of those tell your friends situations. Thanks for stopping by. To those who have offered kind words and reviews, thank you. To those who have not been that impressed, I thank you too for having a look (and for not complaining too loudly).
