St. George, or naming characters and the sometimes sensitive outcomes of this

Happy St. George’s Day! I do hope you are celebrating with something tasty, or wrestling dragons, or scaring snakes, or whatever suits your fancy. St. George was one of the saints responsible for soldiers, as well as one of those fighting plague and leprosy. He, coincidentally, was born on the same day as Shakespeare (if you can believe any facts about that latter mystical person). So he would…

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On (Eeek!) Being Seen

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com I was messaging with my sister this morning and telling her about my book self-promotion (which I dread) and my reaching out to a local bookstore to maybe take some copies. I typed “I feel afraid.” She asked, “What are you afraid of?” and after a pause I told her I was afraid a. of them just laughing at me or b. them offering to carry my book. No way to…

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AWOL but now returned

I’ve been away from this blog for several weeks now, after all the entries relating to my new book (Spit & Polish). Partly, I wanted to give you lovely people who subscribe to this blog a bit of a breather. Partly, I was recovering from many week away from home base – I was looking after my kids’ cat and had to relocate for weeks. Coming back, I had all of those appointments and other…

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The joys of working with a small press

I’ve been having so much fun! Four years ago, when I published Recycled Virgin, I created Somewhat Grumpy Press, and decided I wanted a Pallas cat to represent it – but then I was coping with the pandemic, a pending move, and my MS, and I realized it was getting beyond me to manage. So I gave the press to the current very capable publisher, Tim Covell, and he is racing away. He’s taken it into a…

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Not celebrating International Women's Day

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com I just can’t. I am too close to rage about the state of women’s rights in the world today. It’s all cheery to say “Yay, Women!”, but hey, why are we still not being paid the correct rate? Why do republican candidates in the US think it’s okay to play Stepford Wives and talk in mealy-mouthed voices and fight reproductive choice? Why do women and men both…

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Daylight Savings Time, or, who resets the cats?

Every year around this time, and in the fall, the inter webs are full of discussion about Daylight Savings – that horrid shifting of an hour that results in more traffic accidents, less efficiency at work, grumbly people, and increased coffee sales. Sure, might have been useful in the days when we were all creating victory gardens etc, but seems to me farmers, generally speaking, live their lives…

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An Excerpt from Spit & Polish

A little taste to encourage you to run right out and pre-purchase Spit & Polish while the ebook remains on pre-release sale. It’s available on many platforms. The paperback will be released February 29, 2024. Nightingale Pledge, 1935   “I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practise my profession faithfully. I will abstain…

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On the joys (?) of revision

Photo by KoolShooters on Pexels.com “Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”―Bernard Malamud So went the quotation in my email from Writers.com. (I highly recommend this newsletter, btw) I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, adjusting prose to make it clearer and more bright, to enhance the emotions in your first draft, to make your words sing – that can be pleasurable. I…

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Stretching umbilical cords, or the joy/sorrow of letting kids go

I woke this morning thinking about how my kids, the hearts of my heart, are about as far away from me and each other that they can be, geographically. One is in Europe, one in Australia, one back in Kingston while I am in Vancouver. It reminded me of the imagery I tried to share with them (but of course they found repellent, because, kids) that I can almost feel the leftover umbilical threads…

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Self-promotion, or why I'll never succeed in politics

This meme showed up on Facebook this morning and it made me laugh out loud. I’m battling with self-promotion. When I wrote my first book, Recycled Virgin, and launched it right in the middle of the pandemic, I just couldn’t force myself to do any promotion. Life felt too grim. So my first novel sunk gently into the muck. It is still available, and I think it’s worth a read, if I do say so…

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Being a nursing student, or getting by with a little help from your friends

Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com There are lots of books and stories about the trauma of training to become a medical doctor. There are fewer about nursing education, for some reason, unless you count the romances and Cherry Ames-type books. Apparently nurses have an easier time of it. I beg to differ. I’ve looked at nursing education from both sides now…as a student and teacher. Anyway…

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Medical progress, quackery, and the profit motive

The last couple of days I’ve been disabled with back pain. This is new for me as my multiple sclerosis means most of the time I rarely feel any pain. Anywhere. Which can make for missing some essential things going on in my body. Right now I am wondering if it is a kidney stone or a bulging disc or I’m just generally falling apart but I have places to go and things to do and I haven’t got time…

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Beautiful Kingston, Ontario: Antiquitate Civilitate Humanitate

(A Civil and Creative Community with a Proud Past) Photo by Rasheeque Ahnaf (Piash) on Pexels.com That slogan in English reads a bit like something from Winnie the Pooh, with all the capitals, but I’ve got to admit it does sound like Kingston. Kingston was the first capital of the United Province of Canada. It is filled with limestone buildings, hospitals, universities, military structures,…

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Life in a Sanatorium

In my upcoming book, Spit and Polish, Ruth Maclean, a nursing student, is reprimanded for her slowness and clumsiness. The nursing school sends her to practice her basic nursing skills at the local veteran’s hospital and sanatorium which, coincidentally, has been flooded with patients and needs more staff. Hmm. When she first arrives, she is given the patient rules, which were lengthy. Rest…

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Florence Nightingale

Dear old Flo (as she would have hated to be called) wasn’t necessarily someone you would want to sit beside at a formal dinner. You’d be trapped forever next to her as she waxed poetic or fierce about the need for nursing to be valued, for health care to be less custodial and more caring. I don’t think she had much of a sense of humour about it, either. Of course, it was the 1800’s, and maybe…

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Job or mission?

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com As I wait eagerly for the official release date of my book, Spit & Polish on February 29th, I find myself thinking about the education it requires to become a nurse. And about the saying “once a nurse, always a nurse’, which seems to crop up whenever a nurse is in the room. But is it so? Nursing education gets nowhere near the accolades that medical education…

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On being seen, or sending out advance reading copies of my latest book...

My lovely publisher at Somewhat Grumpy Press has assembled my book and we are creeping closer to the actual official publication date. I’m at the point of sending out “advance reading copies”, which for me is a very scary thing. (PS: this is not the final version of the cover – we all know the back looks cut off…) See, when we write, we’re alone. We wrestle with words, shape them up, get them…

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