Sara C. Walker's Blog

A week of life, death, and romantasy

Turtle guardian with a few of the hatchlings.

Just to recap: in January and February we had unprecedented dumpings...

2025 so far…

April:

It's been quite the experience. A terrible ice storm hit my area the last weekend of March. We were helpless as we watched the ice accretion climb to a full inch. The power went out. Trees bent over to touch the ground, and then the temperatures dropped. It was too cold to sleep, so I laid there, listening to the trees snap and shatter all night long.

We were fortunate to have a small generator to run the sump pumps and essentials, but at one point, it died and needed a new fuel filter. The...

Baking, tea, and a giveaway

I thought I was done with testing gluten-free dairy-free apple fritters. Then the neighbour kid showed up with our vegetable order. Back in October he came to the door with a fundraiser. For $23 we could have 8lbs of assorted vegetables or 8lbs of apples. Since the produce was scheduled to arrive mid-December, I opted for vegetables so I could incorporate them into Christmas dinner. He delivered apples. I guess this is a sign that I should carry on with the apple fritter experiment. My family is...

Apple Fritters Test#2

Nice crumb, but not quite cooked all the way through. 

For test number 2, I used the same recipe with less milk th...

Apple Fritters Test#1

It’s been almost a year since I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease and had to give up gluten, dairy and other inflammatory foods. For the most part, I don’t mind. I...

What is Urban Fantasy?

Image from Depositphoto. Very popular cover image used for many urban fantasy books. 

I’ve been asked this questio...

Vacation

Last month I was growing more and more desperate to get away, swim in a lake, and walk in nature. So I booked a vacation and over the civic holiday weekend we headed to Manitoulin Island (the largest freshwater island in the world) where I also got to spend some time with my mom.

Of course we always make time to visit Kagawong for the candy shop and chocolate shop, where I found a few treats:

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Ghost Hunting

I volunteer at a local museum, where I sometimes research and curate exhibits. This means I sometimes get fun perks like tagging along when a paranormal investigative team tours our building, which happens to be a 160 year old jail that is very much haunted.

I’ve been on a few of these tours with teams headed by a couple different mediums. I don’t have much faith in the equipment that’s brought along, though. There’s just something I don’t trust about the machine that blurts out a random word or...

Urban Fantasy in Toronto

Today I discovered my Julia Ivory series made a list! It’s such an honour to be discovered let alone added to a list. I’m not sure how Bob found me, but I’m delighted he thought of me when creating his Great International Urban Fantasy Books Set In Canada! Thanks, Bob!

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Overloaded

This spring came with a few challenges. Most notably the morning I noticed the kitchen floor had a bump under it.

About ten years ago I’d finally had enough of the crappy peel-and-stick kitchen floor that came with the house, and we went to get new vinyl. So we went to the local flooring store. We were promptly told that they wouldn’t remove the old flooring, and they wouldn’t glue vinyl down. Instead, they sold us this “floating” vinyl floor with a sheet of underlay stuff. It’s not what I wante...