Mollie Hunt's Blog, page 48

BENCHES OF NEWPORT, photographs

 

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Benches of Newport, Oregon

 

Lynley Cannon’s FRIDAY FELINE FACTS & FANCIES, If the Box Fits!

 

Lynley Cannon, star of the Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery series, is often referred to as a crazy cat lady herself, but when it comes to the feline species, this sixty-something cat shelter volunteer knows her stuff. Check here each Friday for instructive and intriguing information on our favorite subject: cats!

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“If it fits, I sits” is a quote referring to a cat’s determination to squeeze into small spaces, be they a box, a basket, or through a partially open door.

~Cat Call, Chapter 28

 

Check out more of Lynley Cannon’s kitty tips, tricks, and facts preceding each chapter in CATS’ EYES, COPY CATS, CAT’S PAW, and CAT CALL.

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OLD MAU, a Cat Poem for National Poetry Month

 

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OLD MAU

 

The universe takes notice

when Old Mau

passes by.

Venerable at twenty-one,

even the strays

don’t come near him.

Scrappy Dan

goes the other way—

No scraps today.

 

Old Mau chases dogs

for sport,

sinking claws

into unsuspecting

poochie noses

too close to his fence,

too curious.

 

Old Mau

crosses the garden,

stalks the unkempt lawn:

the beetle,

the moth,

the mouse,

the mole.

 

Old Mau

blinks green eyes

at the sunshine;

King of the World.

 

Cat poem by Mollie Hunt, April 2018

 

 

Lynley Cannon’s FRIDAY FELINE FACTS & FANCIES, Noises

Lynley Cannon, star of the Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery series, is often referred to as a crazy cat lady herself, but when it comes to the feline species, this sixty-something cat shelter volunteer knows her stuff. Check here each Friday for instructive and intriguing information on our favorite subject: cats!

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Black Cat Hiding Under Christmas Quilt, by Artist Lisa M. Nelson

It is common for cats to be afraid of loud noises, especially thunder. It is best to leave them alone; they will find the place where they feel safest, often under a bed or couch where the sound is muffled.

~Copy Cats, Chapter 20

Check out more of Lynley Cannon’s kitty tips, tricks, and facts preceding each chapter in CATS’ EYES, COPY CATS, CAT’S PAW, and CAT CALL.

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Lynley Cannon’s FRIDAY FELINE FACTS & FANCIES, Stress

 

Lynley Cannon, star of the Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery series, is often referred to as a crazy cat lady herself, but when it comes to the feline species, this sixty-something cat shelter volunteer knows her stuff. Check here each Friday for instructive and intriguing information on our favorite subject: cats!

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If you are feeling stressed, so is your cat. Cats are sensitive by nature and can pick up on tension, sometimes before we are aware of it ourselves.

~Cat Call, Chapter 2

 

Check out more of Lynley Cannon’s kitty tips, tricks, and facts preceding each chapter in CATS’ EYES, COPY CATS, CAT’S PAW, and CAT CALL.

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Guest Star: Angels Unaware – reblogged from Katzenworld

Here is a sweet and thought-provoking story which I enjoyed and wanted to pass on to others. Read Angels Unaware, by  Andrea Gaines.

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Source: Guest Star: Angels Unaware – Katzenworld

 

 

BOOK TALK with AUTHOR LYN McCONCHIE

 

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Lyn McConchie is a New Zealand writer of speculative fiction, picture books for children, a nonfiction humor series, a number of standalone books and many short stories, articles, poems, opinion pieces, and reviews. Her writing has won many awards including several Cat Writers Association Muse Medallions. Most recently, her Ancient Egypt alternate history fantasy, BASTET’S DAUGHTERS, received a Cat Writers Association Certificate of Excellence and is now in competition for the CWA Muse Medallion in that category.

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~Tigger~

 M y guest today is Lyn McConchie, author of 43 books, hundreds of stories and articles, and a few dozen poems.

With such a body of work, where do I start? Why, with the cat material of course. Lyn, you are one of the rare authors who have taken on the genre of cat fantasy. Please tell us a little about how that happened. When everyone else was writing about monsters, aliens, and vampires, why did you choose cats?

I’ve had cats all my life, and as a small child my much beloved cat, Silver and my dog Lassie – a terrier mix – were a team. Lassie would taunt dogs to chase her between the 6 foot high gate-posts of our drive, and as they passed Silver would quietly step off the top of a post, and land on the intruder’s neck and shoulders, his solid 12lb weight driving their face into the ground, while his claws raked them. The intruder would flee yelping, Silver calmly stepping off again as they fled. I watched for years, and once I began to write I remembered that, and many other episodes in which my cats had demonstrated an ability to plan and, somehow, cats edged their way into quite a lot of my writing.

You began to write in 1989 and have teamed with sci-fi author Andre Norton for several books. (I’m so impressed, I’m falling on the floor right now.) What were things like then compared with now? Did you ever attend any of the literary sci-fi conferences?

Andre was a friend of mine long before I ever began writing. She encouraged me hugely and I had seen three of my books published before I wrote Key of the Keplian, my first fantasy, which was written chapter by chapter simply to cheer her up when she had surgery and was taking longer than she expected to recover. It was written in one of her worlds and I would have had no legal right to produce such a book for publication.  I was stunned to find she had taken the completed story to her own agent, who had sold it and his phone call to say so left me reeling. After that, and with her permission – indeed again with her enthusiastic encouragement – I wrote three more books set in her Witch World, and three in her Beast Master Universe. The latter trio by her specific request.

      Being on the other side of the world, I’ve never been able to attend any of the literary conferences, although I have attended SF conventions in Wales, Canada, and America, as well as quite a number in Australia over the years.

You are planning to start the new book soon and are also expecting revisions for three others. Will these be cat-centric with Miss Emily and Mandalay?

The one I am about to start is, yes. It’s the fourth in my series of Holmes and Watson – and cat. I was approached in 2015 by an editor in the UK asking if I would write a Sherlock Holmes story for an anthology of new Holmes stories they were about to produce. I did so – and fell in love with the characters of Miss Emily, a freelance secretary, and Mandalay, her brown Burmese cat, which finds all manner of odd items which he then brings home to his mistress. Some are so odd that Holmes becomes involved, and I have been writing those ever since. Wildside Press liked my suggestion that I do these as a series of novellas which could be published as e-novellas, and once three were out, they were then combined along with a new longer short story, and brought out as a book also. So far there has been SHERLOCK HOLMES: CATALYST, but I have also completed CATACLYSM, and CATASTROPHE, and will be beginning CATAFALQUE shortly.

      The revisions are for an SF/disaster novel set in Australia – COALS & ASH, (yes, cats) sold to Altair Press there  – the next Holmes double, SHERLOCK HOLMES: FOUND DEAD, (no cats)  and a fantasy, DAUGHTER OF A CITY, (a cat or two but not much about them.) However I have in mind at least two books to write in 2019, both of which will be quite feline oriented.

Are any of your poems about cats?  

I would say about a third of them. This one was published in a National New Zealand farming magazine back in the early’ 90s.

                     Thermostatic.

                Parked in front of my fire, sprawls my Siamese cat

                Tummy happily warming, paws spread across the mat

                And when the fire needs stoking, I need no thermostat,

                Because I am summoned by the howls –

               of a chilly indignant imperious cat.

As a long-time member of the Cat Writers’ Association, you demonstrate your true devotion to cats. How many cats do you have? Do they help with your writing?

I had two for some time, but when they died, the next cat I got didn’t want to share. He made that very very clear, and so, for the past 14 years he has been an only-cat. CATALYST was dedicated to him, and his ‘help’ was acknowledged in the forthcoming Coals & Ash as well.

I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand, but so far the closest I’ve come is watching Xena, Warrior Princess. (Beautiful scenery!) Do you really live on a farm and raise “colored” sheep?  

I do, I was crippled in an accident in 1977, and when I was unable to work 9-5 any longer I retired on medical grounds in 1988, bought a small farm the next year and settled in to live a pleasantly rural existence just outside the quintessential small village. I do breed coloured sheep, I also have free-range hens and geese – the geese acting as watch-geese (I think that last lot of would-be shed-burglars are still running) and now and again I raise a beef steer or two.

      Our scenery certainly is beautiful, and varies hugely from river flats, to mountains, to plains and semi-deserts, which is why a number of movies and TV series were/are made here, you can find any backdrop required in one small country along with a population that specializes in getting involved, being helpful, and being able to fix/build just about anything out of spare bits.

Tell us briefly about your favorite real or fictional cat story.  

That’s impossible to answer. I love Doreen Tovey’s cat books which were  non-fiction, Andre’s cat books which are SF/F, and so many of the cat short stories Andre took for the Catfantastic anthologies were brilliant. I also love a number of cat or dog mysteries.

What is the most useful writing tip you’ve ever been given?  

“Save everything you write. It may not be accepted, but somewhere down the road you may re-write it, or cannibalize it and sell it then.” And it’s true! Andre told me that before I started writing. That and “always read a contract slowly and twice, query anything you don’t understand until you do,” which I was told over breakfast by MZB in 1991. (I was signing a contract for a short story in her fantasy magazine at the time, in the middle of a trip around the USA and had stayed the night with her editor and been brought over early.)

What five words would you use to describe yourself?  

Old, lame, happy, busy, and becatted.

Add something you would like to tell us just for fun.  

My very first book was published completely by accident. I was writing funny stories about my farm and animals in letters to overseas friends, and a local writer friend who’d seen some said I should sell them. I asked where, and was told there was a ‘smallholders’ magazine that could be interested. I sent off four, and they bought them. The editor then came to me and asked just how much of the material I had, and I said “um, quite a lot.” “Enough for a book?” “Yes.” The rest was history – and my very first book published in 1993, FARMING DAZE. which went on to sell six more in the series.

Do you have any other writing news we should know about? (Awards, launches, readings, etc)  

I was just shown the gorgeous cover proposed for COALS & ASH, and am completing the revision for the book this week. Since most of what I sell appears overseas these days I rarely have a book launch.  I am in discussion on teaching a writer’s course locally over May sometime. I will also be speaking at a regional writers conference in September. What with one thing and another – including writing 3 books most years now – there is always something going on – not the least being the deceased mouse I received first thing this morning before I opened my email to find this interview. 

Purrs to all,

Lyn (and Thunder who insists on being included otherwise he won’t get off the keyboard.)

Thank you so much, Lyn. You are an inspiration to cat writers everywhere!

Here are more ways to connect with Lyn McConchie:

Website: www.lynmcconchie.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lyn.mcconchie

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/66725.Lyn_McConchie

Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Lyn-McConchie/e/B003OGQU0Q

Here is a small selection of Lyn McConchie’s books:

Bastet’s Daughters

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If this were the ancient Egypt of our time line, the year thahttps://www.amazon.com/Bastets-Daught... this story begins would be around 1365 BCE. It isn’t. If this were the ancient Egypt of our time line it would be only a nation. It’s an Empire. If this were the ancient Egypt of our time line it would be known by that name. It’s Napata. And if this were the ancient Egypt of our time line then the Gods wouldn’t be real. It isn’t and— They are!  

Three of Andre Norton’s Beast Master Series, written by Lyn McConchie

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Two more cat-centric covers by Lyn McConchie

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THREE PICTURES

 

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I’m looking at a picture of my parents. My father in a plaid shirt and turtleneck, standing arms across his chest, smiling. My mother sitting, outside somewhere, the green of grass for background. Legs crossed ladylike, cigarette in hand. She is smiling too.

I realize with a start that they are my age… I am their age… The age they were in that picture, I am now.

The picture has been on that shelf for some time. I have lived in this house over thirty years, though it doesn’t seem possible. When I put the photos in their double brass frame, I was much younger. My parents may still have even been alive. Now it comes around. They are gone, I am old. I will be following soon.

Okay, maybe not that soon. I’m healthy, reasonably. I’m not staring down the jaws of death or any such. All is well, in fact. No lost abilities, yet. But I can read the writing on the wall. It’s right there in the photos: my parents, happy and enjoying life one day, gone the next.

There is something else I read in that picture though. I look closer, at the smiles, the twinkling eyes. They’re not hiding away, dreading what will inevitably come. Live life now, they say in those captured images.

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There are two other photos on the shelf. I didn’t intentionally group them, more like set them in a spot where they fit. But now as I look, the fit is more apt than mere spacing. The fit is perfect.

One is a photo I’ve always loved, taken by my father when we were at the beach. I was in my twenties, long hair blowing against the perfect blue sea. My son, age three, sits in my lap, all blonde hair, soft skin, and possibilities. We are holding a beach ball.

I remember the time, sad now that I hadn’t been more mindful, too busy in my own life and friends. Still, for that moment, we were a happy family. I have a picture to prove it.

The third photo, also taken by my father, is of my mother, my grandmother, and me. It was shot from behind as we walked hand in hand in Laurelhurst Park. The year was 1953, which would put my mother at forty-two and my grandmother in her sixties.

In spite of the white hair which makes her look older, I am currently the age my grandmother was then. I know what happened after that picture. I know about the gradual debilitation, the nursing home, the death. She, on the other hand, walks with her family through a sunlit park, blissfully ignorant. She is looking at me, the tiny girl with her whole life ahead of her. I feel sad and sorry, having dashed her hopes with my wandering ways.

But maybe she would have liked me anyway.

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Lynley Cannon’s FRIDAY FELINE FACTS & FANCIES, Love/Hate

Lynley Cannon, star of the Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery series, is often referred to as a crazy cat lady herself, but when it comes to the feline species, this sixty-something cat shelter volunteer knows her stuff. Check here each Friday for instructive and intriguing information on our favorite subject: cats!

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Freddie Mercury, drawing by Anna Duyunova

Notable ailurophobes include Napoleon Bonaparte, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Hitler.

Notable ailurophiles include Albert Einstein, Florence Nightingale, H.G. Wells, Sir Winston Churchill, Pope Benedict XVI, George Burns, John Lennon, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Queen Victoria, Nostradamus, and Vanna White. Freddie Mercury of the band, Queen, phoned his cats when he was on tour.

~Cats’ Eyes, Chapters 29 & 30

 

Check out more of Lynley Cannon’s kitty tips, tricks, and facts preceding each chapter in CATS’ EYES, COPY CATS, CAT’S PAW, and CAT CALL.

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MIRACLE MONDAY *****ADOPTED!*****

Do you want to make a miracle? Adopt a shelter cat and you will instantly become that kitty’s miracle-worker.

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MUFFIN  
*****ADOPTED!*****

Update April 5, 2018: After more than a month and a half at OHS, Muffin went home today to her forever home. I met the nice older lady who lives quietly alone, a perfect fit for the shy Muffin. She plans to give her lots of attention and love.

MIRACLES DO HAPPEN!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Muffin is an 8-year-old black female Domestic Short Hair cat.  She is located at the Oregon Humane Society: 1067 NE Columbia Blvd. – Portland, Oregon 97211

She has been at OHS since 02/21/2018.

Her Adopt Fee is only $15

 

What my friends at OHS say about me:

I am sweet and loving and will likely bond very closely to one person.

Loud noises and busy environments make me nervous.

I love to be loved, but don’t enjoy being picked up. Let me come to you for cuddles!

I’m getting older, but still enjoy playing! I’ll let you know my favorite toys when we meet!

I have a history of being bullied by other animals, so I may prefer to be your one and only.

The type of home I’m looking for:

I may prefer a home without dogs.

I will flourish in a calm environment and a low-traffic home.

I will need patient and loving owners who will work with me to help me be the best I can be.

It could be with you! Click here or visit OHS to learn more about the adoption process!

I have a video!

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Adopt Muffin or another shelter cat today, and make a miracle happen!