Kathy Lynn Emerson's Blog, page 20

Books Looking for Good Homes

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today writing as Kathy.

Over the long President’s Day weekend, I tackled a job I’d been putting off for far too long—weeding my reference book shelves. Over many years of writing historical novels set in sixteenth-century England, I’ve accumulated hundreds of books to use in my research. With the advent of online used bookstores, it was very easy to locate older titles. Amazon.com made it equally easy to find new biographies and works of social history. Best of all, I was able to take a tax deduction for the legitimate business expense of buying books for research. I bought a lot of books.

The downside is that the shelves in my office are weighed down with hefty tomes. Yes, they still are, but I was able to identify eighty titles I no longer have a use for. A few were just bad decisions on my part—they didn’t contain the information I hoped they would. Some were useful, but since I’ve already used the nuggets I found in them, there’s no reason to hold onto them. Others were purchased when I was working on one particular novel and I know I won’t be revisiting that aspect of sixteenth-century life again. I bought several books on sixteenth-century Russia, for example, as part of my research for Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe, and I no longer need to keep them.

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So, there I was with eighty books, many of them fairly specialized. They aren’t the kind of thing the local library, or even the local college library wants as donations. Ditto nursing homes, prisons, and so forth, that might work for novels. Amazon.com now charges sellers a monthly fee to list books on Amazon Marketplace. (Add your own expletives here!). I tried plugging ISBNs into a couple of buy-back bookstores (ABE Books and Cash4Books) and they both responded by saying they weren’t buying that title at this time. Other older books don’t even have ISBNs.

Hmm, I thought. What now? I’m not about to take these books, many of them like new if you don’t count the sections I highlighted, to the dump. There are Maine libraries that might want them, and I know I can count on fellow Maine Crime Writer and retired librarian John Clark to help me reach out to them, but for right now I’m trying out a solution that could find homes for them with individuals who share my somewhat odd interests.

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To start with, I made a list of titles, alphabetical by author, added the condition of each one, and saved the doc file as a webpage. After tinkering a bit to make it look better in that format, I uploaded it as http://www.kathylynnemerson.com/ResearchBooksGiveaway.htm What this offers is to give away these books. All I ask in return is to be reimbursed for postage and (if necessary) any box or mailer I might have to buy to accommodate an oddly sized book.

Step two was to post that link on my Kaitlyn Dunnett Facebook page, and especially to the “A Who’s Who of Tudor Women” page that’s attached to it. I haven’t yet publicized it at the Who’s Who website (http://www.tudorwomen.com/ ) but that’s probably the next step . . . right after writing about it here. I’m a little slow at following through on all the things I could be doing, but so far I’m absolutely delighted with the response I got from just the Facebook post. In the first seven days, twenty-three of the eighty titles were adopted. In addition to finding homes for some of the books, I’ve also made some new friends. We obviously have interests in common. The only snag so far has been discovering that it would cost around $100 to ship a box of books to England. The interested party decided against adopting those titles, but we went on to chat by email about the book she’s writing about a sixteenth-century ancestor. Fascinating subject!

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Over to you, dear readers. Do you know any individual or institution with an interest in books like these? If so I’d appreciate it if you’d let them know about the giveaway. And if you have ideas of your own for finding good homes for gently used reference books on any topic, please share in the comments section. And of course, if there’s a book on my list that you’d like for yourself, you have only to let me know.

Depending on how this experiment goes, I may do some more weeding in the not too distant future, in biographies of sixteenth-century people in particular. Those currently fill two six-foot long shelves in my office to capacity.

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Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of more than fifty-five traditionally published books written under several names. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries and the “Deadly Edits” series (Crime & Punctuation—2018) as Kaitlyn and the historical Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries (Murder in a Cornish Alehouse) as Kathy. The latter series is a spin-off from her earlier “Face Down” mysteries and is set in Elizabethan England. Her most recent collection of short stories is Different Times, Different Crimes. Her websites are www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com and she maintains a website about women who lived in England between 1485 and 1603 at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women.

 

It All Started With . . .

Dorothy Cannell: I came home from school one afternoon when I was six and told my [image error]mother our class was having a play.  It was Red Riding Hood and I had been chosen to play her.  The result was delightful, she was thrilled.  When father came home from work she told him the exciting news and I basked in the lovely glow of their approval.  But not for long.  There was no play, and had there been, it was highly unlikely I would have been chosen for the lead.

I was mousy quiet and the teacher couldn’t have thought I’d have the confidence to carry it off.  Unfortunately the school did frequently put on plays; the performances held on the gym stage before an audience of parents.  During the coming days my mother continued in her delight, wanting to know when it would happen and if she should make my costume.  Sickening panic set in.  I was terrified that she might meet my teacher on the street, the school was very close to where we lived, and bring up the subject.  I would wake in the night with my heart pounding.  It never occurred to me to confess.  I wasn’t afraid that parents would be angry with me; what I couldn’t bear was their disappointment.

I can’t blame my need to draw attention to myself and to feel important, on being a middle child lost in the mix of four.  I got every bit as much love as the others.  Eventually my mother talked less about my starring role, and finally when she did bring it up I told her the play had been cancelled.  My long nightmare was over in the sense that the threat of exposure was lifted, but the memory of my dreadful lie haunted me throughout my childhood.  Obviously it didn’t stop me from telling others of the more mundane sort – no, I wasn’t the one who’d taken a slice of cake in the cupboard, started the argument with my sisters, or knocked the coats off the hall tree.  But never again did I tell a lie for the reason of making myself important.

[image error]The need, however, to reinvent myself into someone more interesting, exciting and enviable, remained rather than the nonentity I was at school.  And so I concocted an inner life, one where I was possessed of fabulous talents – the ability to do sixteen perfect cartwheels in a circle and ride bareback on a horse were favorites.  In real life I was horrible at anything athletic; but in one of my alternative worlds I had been brought up in a circus and made to leave it because my parents wanted me to have a normal upbringing.  In another I was a budding ballerina forced to practice in secret because my father couldn’t bear to see me dance.  This was because my mother, a great dancer, had died from a fall (something slippery on the stage) when I was a baby and he was still wracked by grief and unable to deal with my having inherited her gift.  I was also the head of the school diving team, able to leap from the high diving board and enter arched gracefully into the water without causing a ripple and win a trophy long held by a rival school.

None of the inventions were fully mine.  They were culled from books I read.  What I did was enlarge upon them, weave them into other events, because I never wanted to leave any of my secret worlds behind.  Gradually, it wasn’t all about the invented ‘me’.  The other people who’d made their way in grew in interest, and without knowing it was happening dialogue was there and plots formed.

People often ask me, as they do others in fields, what made me a writer?  There are many reasons.  My father was an avid reader and my mother a story teller, but as I think about it now I’m sure that the Red Riding Hood lie was a huge impetus.  Make it up, but don’t pretend it’s real.  Any yet, isn’t fiction a form of truth when written from the deepest part of who we are?

Happy reading,

Dorothy

Just the Ticket For Cabin Fever

John Clark sharing bits from the wayback machine and my experience helping GMLA (Great Moose Lake Association) last weekend. Last week at our monthly Hartland Couples Club meeting, I overheard two members discussing the limited number of GMLA members available to work the weigh-in for the annual fishing derby, so I offered to help out.[image error]

Mikeala (a student at MCI) and her dad helped out with prizes and the drawings

I have many memories of going ice fishing, the first when our neighbor, Henry Hills, took me out on Sennebec Lake. I was seven or eight and I couldn’t tell you what we caught, but I had fun. After returning from college at Arizona State, I got back into fishing, both open water and ice in a big way. My friend Jon Marks and my neighbor Sam Morrison often ice fished twice a week, hitting Lake St. George in Liberty, Maranacook Lake in Winthrop, Parker Pond in Mount Vernon, Sennebec, Sheepscot Lake in Palermo, Wyman Lake in Moscow and Embden Pond, as well as several smaller pickerel holes. Some days we’d sit for hours and catch nothing, other times, we could barely keep up when the flags went up.

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Some of the derby participants waiting to hear whether they won.

When I operated the patient education program at the state hospital, I often took some of the boys on the adolescent unit ice fishing. I remember one late February trip to Embden when the ice was over two feet thick. We were using a hand auger and it was so difficult to drill below a certain depth that the kids lost their footing and the auger spun them in circles. I ended up drilling through more than 40 feet of ice that day.

We made up games like pickerel bowling. After we caught one and it froze solid, we’d stand 75 or so feet apart and see if we could skim the frozen fish across the ice and through the other person’s legs. On Sennebec one winter, we had as many as seven eagles swoop down to grab fish we’d caught. They made a regular circuit from Megundicook to Chickawaukee outside Rockland, then on to Alford in Hope and Seven Tree in Union before hitting Sennebec. It was quite an impressive sight.

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One of the many bass entered in the derby

Perhaps the highlight of my ice fishing career came when we were fishing on Sheepscot. It was the same day as the derby sponsored by the local fish and game association, so we’d bought tickets. Sam hooked something really big and after ten minutes or so, hauled out a nine pound togue. It took first prize in that category and I bet it was weeks before he stopped grinning.

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The weigh station and two of the bigger door prizes

Jon moved to Florida and Sam died. Those events, coupled with an increasing discomfort in really cold weather, led to my finding warmer winter activities.

It was great fun to watch the participants in this year’s derby bring in their fish. We held the weigh-in on Saturday and Sunday from four to six at the Irving Tanning Community Center. Several things stood out. First, while skill can be a factor, luck is a bigger one and it’s an activity anyone in the family can enjoy. That was clearly demonstrated by the number of youngsters who won prizes. In fact, two brothers, both younger than ten, swept the cusk category as well as placing second in the most yellow perch caught contest.[image error]

Lots of fun to be had for a couple bucks.

The folks involved in getting prizes and selling tickets do one heck of a job. In fact, so many tickets were sold, that they had to sell what remained from last year’s ticket supply (this years tickets were blue, last year’s orange, so there wasn’t any confusion.) In addition to three cash prizes in each category, there were more than 30 door prizes. The money raised goes toward buying brook trout to stock Great Moose Lake—800 last year and another 800 this year. Three years ago, the funds went to buy a huge number of smelts to enhance the food supply for all game fish.

Here are the biggest fish in each category: White perch 1 pound, 11 ounces, crappie 2 pounds 2 ounces, small mouth bass 3 pounds six ounces, large mouth bass 7 pounds 2 ounces, brook trout, 1 pound 10 ounces, brown trout 1 pound 7 ounces, cusk 1 pound 4 ounces and pickerel 2 pounds 11 ounces.

I was impressed by the enthusiasm and good fellowship among those waiting to see who won. It was clear that many knew each other and plenty of ribbing went back and forth. If you’re looking for something new to combat ‘cabin fever’ this is a great way to do so. Fishing derbies are held almost every weekend from mid-January through early March all over Maine.

Doin’ Nuthin’

by Barb, who’s been enjoying a glorious February in Key West

I handed in the manuscript for the seventh Maine Clambake Mystery, as well as the manuscript for my second holiday novella, on February 1. It has been a crazy year full of moving and other things and I worried I wouldn’t make my deadline.

But then I did and since then I have been taking time off.

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The Cat Man at Sunset

For whatever reason over the last several years I’ve always had a deadline at the end of our time in Key West. (Even though the deadlines changed and the amount of time we spent here changed.) I’m not boo-hooing. Key West is a great place to write and I reward myself with time in the pool at the end of every writing day. But there was always pressure and never enough time to do everything we wanted.

So I have really enjoyed this time. We’ve had house guests. Sherry Harris, who writes the Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mysteries, (there’s a new one, I Know What You Bid Last Summer, out tomorrow!) and her husband Bob spent a few days. Sherry had the same February 1, deadline so we both were goofing off, though we did manage to find time to solve all the problems of the publishing business and the world.

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Why did the iguana cross the road?

And then we had a week with family, our son Rob, daughter-in-law Sunny and their wonderful four year-old, Viola. Guests get Bill and I to do touristy things we wouldn’t do otherwise, like going to the daily sunset celebration, the beach, Fort Zachary, out for breakfasts and boat rides. Viola is a water baby, so there are at least two “whole family swims” everyday.

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Shrimp boats

I’ve had things to do, of course. The synopsis for Book 8 is due March 15, so I’ve been noodling, making lists of scenes and characters. The working title is Sealed Off, and Viola and I read books about harbor seals. She loves to be read to, but seems to especially enjoy that it was for “my work.” She wanted to know if I needed to research mermaids for any reason, because she was definitely up for that.

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Sunset

I’m doing a presentation for the Friends of the Key West Library on March 12, so I’ve been thinking about that presentation as well. And, as always, taking care of writerly administrivia.

The most important thing I’ve done is emptied my brain. It took a few days to do it. After spending ten hours a day with my characters in the last two weeks before my deadline, at first I felt a little lonely and lost without them.

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Bill and Viola both take photos

But then I was grateful for the quiet, the time to think and process. Downtime makes me more creative, braver, more willing to push the envelope when I get back at it.

In March, I dive back in again, but I’m so happy I had this time.

Note: Before I dive back in, I’ll be back in Portland for this evening of staged readings of adapted works my Maine crime writers at the Portland Stage. Love to see you there!

All photos by Sunny T. Basham Carito.

Weekend Update: February 24-25, 2018

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Barb Ross (Monday), John Clark (Tuesday) , Dorothy Cannell (Wednesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Kate Flora (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora

HANDS UP! GIMME ALL YOUR…

Not a holdup, but hands up and shoulders back and keep moving! I posted this previously, but a new development of my own has prompted me to revisit and add a bit.

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Because of years of back problems (and now osteoporosis and arthritis) and years of sitting at a keyboard, I’ve collected exercises and advice from various sources. Today I’m sharing some that can benefit writers, office workers, and others who sit long hours at desks and/or keyboards can benefit from exercises and activities aimed at preventing carpal tunnel, neck and back and hip pain, and weight gain.

PREVENTING CARPAL TUNNEL

Be sure you have your chair and keyboard so your wrists are straight rather than at an angle with the keyboard. Sit up straight like your mother told you. Don’t slump. Habitually letting shoulders slump forward can lead to “dowager’s hump” and rotator-cuff injury. A lumbar support cushion strapped to the chair back can facilitate this. The cushion’s pressure on the lower back is a great reminder to sit erect.

Train yourself to use the mouse with either hand, so you don’t overuse one hand. Even before I learned this about carpal tunnel, I taught myself to do this because of pain in my index finger from clicking and scrolling. I think the same thing could be true of using the touch pad repeatedly with the dominant hand. Here’s where I’ve failed to protect myself. Rather than switching hands occasionally, I’ve kept using my left for the mouse because I liked having my right free to jot down notes. I’ve also neglected the exercises in the next paragraph. So–you probably guessed it–I’m experiencing an early symptom of carpal tunnel issues in my left hand. The symptom is tingling, like “pins and needles” in my index and the next two fingers. So learn from my failing.

This next sequence of exercises continues carpal tunnel prevention and helps keep arms and shoulders limber. Do these once and hour while you’re at the keyboard.

PRAY

Put your hands in a prayer position, pushing toward your sternum and with your elbows raised to the sides. Hold for a count of ten. Release the prayer hand position and point your fingers downward stiffly, pressing the backs of your hands together. Hold for a count of ten. Repeat that sequence three times.

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Similarly, as in the photo, grasp the fingers of one hand with the other and pull back, hold for a count of ten and relax. Repeat the sequence three times with each hand.

SHAKE IT UP, BABY

Release and shake out your arms and hands. Hold your arms out straight from your sides and roll your arms and shoulders frontward, then backward.

STRENGTHENING

Remind yourself to stand straight with shoulders back as if the lumbar cushion is attached to your back, shoulder blades pinched together slightly. Get up at least once an hour and walk around, go up and down stairs, more often if possible. I set a small timer for twenty minutes.

SILLY WALK

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A variation is to do gentle lunges, enough to tighten the buttocks but not enough to stress the knees. You probably don’t need to sink as low as the woman here. I do my silly walk down the long hall beside my basement office. When I began, to keep my balance, I touched the wall on both sides.

TURTLE

The head weighs about the same as a bowling ball, so as we age, we need strength to keep it vertical. This exercise will improve posture and strengthen neck muscles. Sit or stand straight, shoulders back, in the posture I described above. Looking forward, pull your head back, chin down, turtle-like. Hold for a count of five, then relax. Do five repetitions. Do the set three times a day. And here’s the “hands up” in my title.

WINGS OR THE BIG W

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This exercise will prevent the shortening of chest muscles and stretch your back. Sit or stand straight, shoulders down, shoulder blades slightly pinched together. Hold your arms out from your sides, elbows bent, hands pointed up so your arms form a big W, or wings. Pull your arms back and hold for a count of five, then relax. Do five repetitions. Do the entire set three times a day.

I’ve worked the Wings and the Turtle exercise into walks with my dog. Sasha doesn’t notice my nutty behavior, and neither do the birds and squirrels along our dirt road. None of these should be too time consuming and should improve flexibility and decrease risk of pain from overuse.

Lastly, pay attention to the body’s reactions, the movements and stretching of various muscles, and on your breathing. Focusing on the present moment and on the sensations created by the various exercises can reduce stress and increase the benefit of the activity.

I invite commenters to suggest additional activities or exercises to add to the repertoire.

Fact, Fiction, Moral Imperatives, and Jen’s New Book

As I write this, Magnus the Cat is in the next room attacking the contents of my closet. I’m not entirely sure what’s in there, but whatever it is, by the sound of things it will be all over the floor by the time I’m done here. There’s no question that Marji the Pup loves hijinks, but Magnus definitely is no slouch in that department. They make a winning team.

Meanwhile, I’m in the throes of eleventh-hour preparations of my eighth novel, the second in my Flint K-9 Search and Rescue series. The novel (titled Inside the Echo, to be released this coming Tuesday, February 27) follows K-9 handler Jamie Flint and her team – both human and canine – as they search for a group that’s mysteriously vanished during a dog sledding expedition for battered women in Maine’s Mahoosuc Mountains. When the authorities learn that a rogue gunman was at the heart of the disappearance, the question turns to which abusive partner is behind the violence. Jamie Flint, herself a survivor of domestic abuse, is haunted by memories of her own experiences as she and her dog, Phantom, fight to find the missing women before the shooter does.

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I’ll admit, this has been the toughest novel I’ve written yet. Not just for the content, which has inevitably taken me to some dark places. Beyond that, though, life has changed so much in the past year that finding the energy and the will to visit those dark places isn’t as easy as it once was.

Not so long ago, I lived in an apartment with my mom and my sweet old dog Killian in Cushing. She did the cleaning. I shopped and cooked. And worked as a writer and editor, fourteen hours a day. No guilt. No thought of living a bigger life. Just… y’know. Words. Tons of words. All of them, beautiful fiction. That small, simpler world feels very far away lately.

Without getting into politics too much, I will say that the 2016 presidential election shifted the ground beneath my feet in many ways. I’ve found myself asking more than once whether writing fiction is really where I should be putting my energy. I’m a passionate defender of wildlife and the environment, so the deregulation and gradual dismantling of vital protections that’s transpired over the past year has meant there are daily phone calls to make to local and state representatives; letters to write; petitions to sign; marches to march. What good does fiction do in the grand scheme of things? Should I really be helping people forget reality, when it feels to me like right now that’s the very last thing we can afford to do?

Meanwhile, I’ve gone from that apartment in Cushing with my mom and my sweet old boy Killian, to a whole new world. I have a new house, a relatively new partner, new puppy and cat, and a brooding fifteen-year-old boy walking our halls whenever he’s on break from the Maine School of Science and Math. It turns out, I quite love all of those things. I love taking care of our old New England farmhouse. I love baking bread and making marmalade, pickling pickles and sewing (I don’t actually have the sewing down yet, but I’m very optimistic), and I can’t wait to get my hands dirty in the garden come spring. In the face of a strange new world, all of these things feel important to me.

When I was thinking about writing this post, I reached out to fellow Maine Crime Writers to ask if there was a time in their lives when they had wavered in their faith in fiction. Had they worried about the impact of putting more violence into an already-too-violent world? I got some wonderful encouragement back, and particularly loved the response I received from Kate Flora:

“As for the fact that we write violence–yes, we do–but we tend to write in genres where good triumphs over evil and the moral order is restored. I’ll never forget the night Hallie Ephron came to her launch party for a book that was published right at the time of 9/11. She’d just been doing a TV interview where the interviewer asked her…didn’t she feel guilty at such a time, profiting from violence and death. Hallie’s response was perfect–she said we should all wish the real world was more like fiction, where the bad guys get caught and moral order is restored to the world.”

Upon much reflection, I think Kate (and Hallie) are right: it’s important to not only be able to escape to a world where good triumphs over evil, but to maybe even inspire some hope that the same is attainable in life. I’ll continue to call my senators and representatives every day, to remind them where I’m at and that – whether they believe it or not – they still work for me. I’ll march, I’ll write, I’ll keep on top of the news.

And then, I will write my fiction.

Jamie Flint is a strong single mom running a successful business of her own, who just happened to be the victim of an abusive partner at one time. That doesn’t define her, though – it doesn’t even define this novel, at least not completely. There’s also a brewing romance, some great character interaction, adventure and twists and nail-shredding suspense. There’s a ghostly edge, and tons and tons of quality dogged-ness. There’s a lower body count in this novel than in any I’ve done before, and ultimately I think the perspective I’ve gained over the past couple of years means added depth to both my characters and my content.

I still worry about whether I’m doing enough to make a difference in the world right now. I’m not sure that’s going away anytime soon. Ultimately, though, I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. It’s both a tool of escape for me, and one of understanding. I hope it can be the same for my readers.

Jen Blood is the USA Today-bestselling author of the Erin Solomon Mysteries and the Flint K-9 Search and Rescue series. Her latest novel,  Inside the Echo, is out February 27. 

 

Beginning the Third Year of Caregiving.

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Bob and I, dancing in a Paris park. 2005

Lea Wait, here. Although Bob Thomas and I’ve known each other, as friends and/or lovers, off and on for fifty years, we didn’t live together or get married until 2003. I’d taken care of my mother for the last 25 years of her life, and Bob had cared for both his mother and his previous wife, both of whom died of cancer. We knew one of us would, some day, be caring for the other, and part of our decision to marry was our vow to each other that we would do that. In the meantime, we would support each other in what we wanted to do, individually and together.

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Bob, at home, 2013

I was a writer. He was an artist. Two creative people who loved each other. We could make this work.

And we did. We traveled, to see family, and so I could sign books. One memorable trip to Beirut, where Bob had grown up, with a stopover to see friends in Paris. New Year’s Eves in Quebec City. New York City, where we’d met. Family weddings in Arizona, California, New York State, and New Jersey.

But two years ago we knew that our years of careless celebrations of life were coming to an end, and I would be the caregiver this time. (Although Bob kept insisting I might die in an automobile accident any day and he’d be the one left alone.)

At Bob’s suggestion, about two years ago I posted on this blog that within the past two months he’d been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, COPD, and then he’d had a stroke. Our lives changed.

That first year, after his diagnoses and stroke, our major concerns were Bob’s regaining his strength and ability to eat, drink, hold a paint brush, and deal with the pain in his legs from his peripheral artery disease. (Oh, yes. He had that, too. And a minor seizure disorder. And occasional internal bleeding, resulting in serious anemia.) Despite everything, he was stubborn and worked hard, and, overall, dealt well with his challenges. [image error]He was able to paint again.

Last year I posted again, writing about what it was like to live with someone whose health issues influenced every day of our lives. The major change for me at that time was that I was now doing all the “household chores” that Bob had done: shopping, errands, cooking, cleaning up, and so forth. My writing time had been cut back.

And yesterday, after the past few, rough, months, Bob suggested it was time for me to write yet another blog, letting the many people who’ve asked, know how he’s doing.

2017 was an increasingly difficult year. In May Bob had (on top of everything else!) an appendectomy which, because of his other issues, kept him in the hospital for ten days. He suffered brief oxygen deprivation, and learned how critical it was to be on oxygen. He came home with oxygen tanks and associated apparatus. But he didn’t use the oxygen all the time, and last summer we occasionally went out to dinner or for short visits to galleries where his work was hung. He didn’t paint much.

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January, 2018

He tired easily, and was frustrated by having to use a nebulizer and emergency inhaler as well as, some days, the oxygen. But he enjoyed golfing (9 holes, and he rode on the cart) with neighbors, and greeting friends on our porch at cocktail hour. Standing or walking for any time or distance were difficult, but we cut back our schedules, and worked around that.

In September Bob’s brother, Rich, arranged a week in York, Maine, for all four Thomas brothers and their significant others. Bob used his nebulizer and inhalers and meds, and sat quietly most of the time, but it was a good week, with memories and laughs and good food. Bob quietly told me, “This may be the last time all four of us are together.” But we hoped that wasn’t true.

Bob was gradually becoming weaker. Then, in October, he went through a week during which both of us wondered (separately) whether he was dying. I moved a cot into our bedroom and slept there. Bob had major problems breathing, and his struggles were frightening. He used the oxygen all the time, and the nebulizer every couple of hours.

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With granddaughters Samantha & Vanessa, several years ago

Finally his doctors (who work together impressively) convinced him to go to the hospital, and we spent several days there for tests and treatments. The base problem was not his COPD, which we had assumed … but his heart. His heart was failing more, and his lungs were struggling  because of the lack of blood.  Doctors upped the diuretics he takes, and he came home.

In November and December Bob had a few good days — but our definition of “good” has radically changed. Since early December Bob’s spent most of his time in bed, or sitting in a recliner in the bedroom. He’s become addicted to CNN and sports, and his television is on close to 24 hours a day. He uses oxygen all the time, and takes over two dozen medications. The stair lift and ramps I’d installed in our house when I was taking care of my mother make it possible for him to get up and down stairs relatively easily, and make it easier for me to move our meals upstairs so we can eat together.

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Bob, 2016, with part of an exhibition of his paintings

Bob and I both, individually and together, have hours and days when we’re (quietly) depressed or angry.  We don’t talk much about the future.  Bob sleeps off and on during any 24 hour period. I sleep at night, lightly, so I can wake up if he has trouble breathing and I can help with his nebulizer. The diuretics have helped, but they also cause severe, painful, cramping. Sometimes he gets confused. He now depends on me for almost everything. In December our understanding next door neighbor drove to our house to pick up Bob and I to attend a party at his house — and returned us home in an hour. Bob hasn’t left the house since then except to visit doctors

Me? I spend a lot of time wishing I could help more: make his breathing easier. Take away the pains, when they come. It’s horrible to watch someone you love struggling, and not be able to help.

I’m tired most of the time. I try to cook food Bob craves. (Only in the past week has his appetite diminished.) I set up his oxygen and nebulizer and medications. My study is next to his room, so even when I’m working, I can hear if he calls me or is struggling to breathe. I’m interrupted often. I find it hard to focus on writing. I asked for (and got) an extension on my manuscript due last fall, and an extension on the book that was due February 1. I haven’t finished that one yet, and I have two other manuscripts due this year. Some days that panics me.

I know our situation won’t get better. While I’ve been writing this short blog Bob has needed me five times. He’s having a bad day. I feel guilty that I’m not with him all of the time. I want to seize and value every moment with him. When he wakes up, even after a short nap, he calls for me, to make sure I’m still here. I feel guilty that I can’t drop everything to be with him. But I have commitments, and I have to meet them.

We’re both doing our best. But … no. It isn’t easy. It’s painful, and frustrating, and scary.

We don’t have a timeline. We don’t know exactly what will happen next, or when. All we know is that we’ll face whatever comes in the best way we can.

We cherish this time. We say “I love you” a lot. And we’re very lucky to have had the past fifteen years together. Some of the best years of our lives.

And those years aren’t over yet.

Note: Bob read and approved this blog.

THE TOUGHEST DECISION

Vaughn Hardacker here: This past month has been an emotional roller coaster. On January 29th we were forced to have our seventeen year old Maltese, Maggie, put down. She had been failing rapidly and was blind, deaf, and living in constant pain from arthritis. Throughout my life I’ve had a number of pets but this was the first time I have had to have one put down. It is an experience that I never again want to have.

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Maggie

I started feeling guilty the minute we made the decision (actually I wimped out on that one–Maggie was my domestic partner’s dog and I left the final decision to her) and now three weeks later, I still feel as if I have betrayed her. In the nine years I was in her life, Maggie taught me about unconditional love and trust. On the drive to the vet’s office, she rested in Jane’s arms and all I could think of was how she trusted us and we were about to end her life. I’ve often thought that when my quality of life deteriorates and quality of life is no longer good I wanted to end it. I’m certain that Maggie’s QOL was gone and all she did was sleep twenty hours a day but I asked myself: What gives you the right to make this decision? Would Maggie agree with our decision? I can only rationalize our actions and tell myself that Maggie is no longer suffering.

Jane had periods of crying from the moment she made the toughest decision she’d ever made and I (the world’s most adept at pain avoidance) vowed no more pets: it hurts too much when they pass on. However, watching Jane’s grief as she perused facebook looking for puppies made me relent. I realized that while a new dog could never replace Maggie’s place in her heart, a new pup would help her deal with the grief. Henceforth, Skipper, a nine week old Yorkshire Terrier (aka Yorkie) entered our lives.

Skipper has a lot of Maggie’s mannerisms and some that she didn’t share. It has been over twenty years since I’ve had to train a puppy and it has opened my eyes to how they can be like a human child–for instance, instead of the 2:00 A.M. feeding, there’s the 2:00 A.M. pee call. It has been just over three weeks since we brought Skipper into our home and we have found him to be extremely intelligent–as a matter of fact, in the short time he’s been with us, he’s already got Jane and I trained…

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Skipper

Stealing Bases & Writing Crime

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Baseball and crime writing? Trust me, I’m not coming out of left field with this blog post.

Spring training has started and as a Red Sox fan I’m pretty excited about my team’s prospects. The Sox have a new manager and some great players. The new season is like starting to write a new book. It’s a time of optimism and fresh ideas. “Batter up” I think to myself every time I sit down to write.

As a writer of crime and thriller novels, I can’t help but see the parallels between a good crime novel and a baseball game. Can the phrases “stealing a base” and ‘stealing signs” merely be coincidences? How about Curt Schilling’s bloody sock in the  2004 Series? Or Dwight Evans memorable catch in the 1975 World Series, stealing a home run off Joe Morgan and winning game six? Love it when a new pitcher “comes out of the pen.” There’s even a “three strikes” law that puts criminals away for life. And let’s not forget that the dreaded Yankees wear pinstripes (Boooooo!).

Writing a novel is a lot like a baseball game in many respects. Both have set parameters. My novels tend to run between 100 and 120 thousand words. A baseball game is nine innings and has no set time, although there’s extra innings if the game is tied in the ninth. In both, it’s crucial to get off to a good start. In both, it’s important to keep the pressure on in the middle, whether that be a compelling subplot or putting in a competent middle reliever or pinch runner. Then you have to finish strong. In baseball that means clutch hitting and solid defense combined with a shutdown closer. The crime novelist, as well, needs to round all the bases and write a killer ending that provides closure for the reader. Sometimes the ballgame goes into extra innings, just as sometimes the author needs to add more scenes to adequately wrap everything up for the reader’s benefit.

The goal for us writers when we start a novel is to “hit it out of the park.” Is it any wonder why baseball and literature are so tightly entwined? Or why the Red Sox are so near and to many writers hearts? Robert Parker’s Spenser was a big Red Sox fan. Authors past and present loved the Sox including Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Updike and Steven King. In fact, King wrote a novel called The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It’s about a girl who gets lost in the woods and survives by thinking about her favorite Red Sox pitcher.

Fenway Park is an iconic landmark and shown in many Hollywood dramas. I even used it as a setting in one of my earlier horror novels, when I was writing in that genre. My favorite scene in the movie The Town, based on Chuck Hogan’s crime novel, Prince of Thieves, takes place in Fenway Park. Ben Affleck’s character and his gang pull off the heist of a lifetime when they sneak into Fenway Park dressed as Boston cops, and manage to make their way into the cash room, stealing millions.

A new year for the Red Sox brings with it much optimism and hope for a winning season. Just as the Sox hope to have a great year—and crush the dreaded Yankees—so are all of us crime writers. As the Sox open the season in April, I too will step up to the plate with my new thriller, THE NEIGHBOR (coming April 24). Hope you can check it out and let me know if I hit out of the park with this one. Here’s the link to check it out. https://www.amazon.com/Neighbor-Joseph-Souza-ebook/dp/B074DGFKS8/ref=la_B0083J9IZ8_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518998292&sr=1-2

Now Play Ball!