I Love October by Gloria Alden

(Here's a memory blog by former WWK blogger Gloria Alden--enjoy!)

 

I Love October

October

The month is amber

gold and brown

blue ghosts of smoke

float through the town.

Great Vs of geese

honk over head

and maples turn

a fiery red.

Frost bites the lawn

the stars are slits

in a black cat’s eye

before she spits.

At last small witches, goblins, hags

and pirates armed with paper bags,

their costumes hinged on safety pins.

go haunt a night of pumpkin grins.

                      - John Updike

Every three or four weeks while teaching third grade, I posted a poem pertaining to the season or some unit we were studying for my students to memorize. The above poem was one of their and my favorites.

In spite of the fact that my eighteen-year-old son and my six-year-old granddaughter both died in October, I still love October in N.E. Ohio. It makes me think of the Dylan Thomas poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Yes, Dylan wrote it during the final illness of his father, but I see October as making a last brave stand against the closing of the year by going out in a blaze of glory. At least that’s true here in the north.

Everywhere I look this time of the year the colors are rich and vibrant. At the beginning of the month the fields were filled with goldenrod and purple asters. Soon the leaves started to turn to orange, red, amber, gold, purple and burnt umber. Orange pumpkins like round globes appeared at roadside stands, farmers’ markets, and in stores. Corn stalks are gathered for decorations. Even the sky seems a more vivid blue.

Maggie likes the cooler days, too.

I love the crisp autumn days with cold nights and cool mornings often warming up later in the day. And then there’s Indian summer giving me that last bit of time when I can try to finish up all those chores that should have been done by now, but I didn’t quite get around to. Now I can’t procrastinate any longer. My time is running out. Not only do I need to finish planting the rest of my exuberant purchases at my favorite garden centers from last spring, but there are large clumps of daylilies that should be divided and replanted, and daffodil bulbs I dug up last spring when they were done blooming because I needed room for something else. Of course, before that can be done, I need to prepare a place for those plants to go. All the cannas and dahlias need to be dug up, stalks and leaves removed, and the roots and rhizomes cleaned, dried and packed in dried leaves or wood chips and taken to the basement for the winter. The vegetable garden needs to be stripped of dying vegetation and bedded down for the winter.

My great-granddaughter playing in the leaves. 

Fortunately I like to rake leaves even though it does get tiring when you have as many as I do. The armfuls of leaves I fill my wheelbarrow with are fluffy light reminding me of those long ago days of jumping in piles of them. What fun that was. Now I’m too old. It would take a very big pile to cushion my fall. I consider raking leaves my workout since I don’t go to a gym, nor do I have any exercise equipment in my home. When the leaves have dried enough, I’ll mow through them to chop them up, and then use them to mulch my gardens. I also have a lot of pine needles in some areas. Those I save to mulch my blueberry patch or woodland gardens.

Maggie is waiting for me at one of her treat stops. 

One of my favorite activities in the fall is my morning walk through the woods with Maggie. I enjoy the rustling sound of leaves as I walk through them, and the smell that’s unique to fallen leaves, a mixture of a pungent earthy scent with a touch of sweetness, too. A question that I always have in the fall is how did Native Americans move silently through the woods when hunting? I can even hear my soft pawed dog moving. When I was still teaching, I gathered leaves on that walk and dried them between the pages of books to prepare them for art projects for my students. I’m still tempted to do that because the forest floor is a mosaic of jewel like leaves that all too soon will lose their colors and turn brown.

 

October also brings Halloween. It’s a fun holiday where kids and adults can dress up, play games and get treats, too. It’s a time of ghosts, skeletons, ghouls and other things that go bump in the night, but also princesses, football players, scarecrows and less fearsome trick or treaters.  I enjoy seeing the Halloween decorations many people decorate their homes or yards with. Some people believe Halloween promotes witchcraft and evil. I don’t think that’s any truer than mystery writers, readers or movie viewers are more prone to murder. Halloween dispels fear of the boogey man. Once a child dons a costume and sees other children doing the same, no matter how gruesome the costume, the child begins to put many fears aside. Back before Halloween parties and parades were discontinued in schools, my students, fellow teachers and I had so much fun on that day and in the preparations that led up to it. I think Halloween is a fitting end for October.

What do you like about the month of October?

How do you feel about Halloween?

Why I Love Book Clubs by Gloria Alden

I belong to two book clubs. The first one I joined was in the fall of 2006. It was a new book club started by Carol Baker, the local librarian, and we met in a café with lunches and antiques and crafts for sale. It was called The Brew Basket. I think the first book picked was To Kill a Mockingbird, but I didn’t keep a record then.

Eventually, Carol couldn’t be with us because government funding for the library was cut back. She still had another book club at the library. We met there every third Thursday for several years until the Brew Basket went out of business. Then we went to several other restaurants for a while and finally ended up at Roby Lee’s, a larger restaurant where we had more room and where we still meet at 11:00 a.m. on the third Thursday of each month, except when one of our members has us meeting up at her cottage on Lake Erie in July.

Then in December, we meet at my house and each of our members comes with two or three books for us to pick from for the following year for January to November. The extra books are added to a list for anyone to read after they’ve read that month’s book. We have a potluck meal at my house, too.

When we meet at Roby Lee’s, we discuss the book-of-the-month and then some of us stay for lunch, some order take-out, or some, like me, order the meal for takeout, but stay there to eat from the salad bar, which is really good and includes soup, dessert, and delicious small slices of white pizza. Carol Baker is retired now and has joined us again. The waitresses who takes care of us always bring coffee or tea and fresh baked bread with butter to nibble on while we’re discussing the book or talking about what has gone on in our lives since the last time we met.

The other book club I joined was the Red Read Robin. It was started in February 2008 and meets on the last Thursday of the month at 6:00 p.m. It’s a larger book club with over half of the members related to each other and at least half of them go to the same Mass I go to. We sit together. This book club is held in a member’s home where she prepares the meal, or if the member for some reason can’t or doesn’t want to have it in their home, they pick a restaurant for us to meet in and usually bring some little gift to give us. One of my best friends has a small house and a husband with a disability so she always chooses a restaurant. The hostess of the month always serves wine with the meal, too. We just celebrated our tenth year this past month. This book club always has wine with the meal, too. The first book that was chosen for that book club was also To Kill a Mockingbird. Only three members have dropped out, not because they didn’t like us, but because they were too busy like Erin, who is a teacher and just had her second child, an adorable baby girl, and an older son, who is now in kindergarten. Her husband is also a teacher and both of them have lots of papers to grade. Another member moved back to her hometown in PA, and only comes once in a while because of the distance to drive at night. Two of our members live at fifty miles away so don’t come quite as often, and when it’s their turn to have the book club, they have it on a Saturday afternoon so no one has to drive the distance after dark

My love of belonging to book clubs, which have so many positive aspects. First, it’s interesting to hear everyone’s opinions of a book you’ve just read. Some really liked it. Some had a few complaints and then there’s one member who often hated the book, which is kind of upsetting for the hostess of the book club that night who picked the book.

Second, it’s fun to be with fellow book lovers, who have become my friends over the years I’ve belonged to both book clubs.

Third, I’m introduced to books I might never have heard of or particularly wanted to read. I’m a big mystery fan and read more mysteries than anything else, but it’s good for everyone to read other books, too. There have only been a few over the years that I didn’t like, but that is because the person who picked the book didn’t bother to read it first. I often pick a good mystery, or a book I’d read in the other book club and enjoyed.

Do you belong to a book club?

If not would you like to belong to one?

MALICE DOMESTIC MEMORIES

WWK goes to Malice! And, we all had a terrific time. Here are a few memories we wanted to share.

Gloria Alden

I enjoyed meeting new people and seeing those I've met before at other Malice Domestic conferences. Particularly, I liked the banquet with the speakers and the awards. Everyone was so friendly, nice, and helpful. I enjoyed the walk my friend Irma and I went on one of the nice days. I was happy to get eight books in the bag we were given, and was glad we had name tags to remember folks. Everyone seemed to be laughing and smiling, even those who weren't with Malice Domestic, but a medical group, also meeting. I thought all of the meals were very good. And, I liked the comfortable and clean rooms we had with very comfortable beds.

Paula Gail Benson

PGB, Gloria Alden, and Shari Randall

The best way to describe this year’s Malice Domestic was “a mad scramble!” WWK was terrifically represented by Annette Dashofy, nominated for Best Contemporary Novel; Shari Randall, nominated for Best First Novel; Grace Topping, recognized at the New Author Breakfast for her first novel; and Debra H. Goldstein, who not only promoted her new series, but celebrated signings with stories in the Guppy Anthology and the Malice Anthology.

Gloria Alden and I caught up with each other in the hall. Marilyn Levinson and I also stood at one of the hallway’s tall tables to talk. I got a hug from Debra Goldstein and Kaye George as I was waiting to hear Annette Dashofy’s panel. The New Authors’ Breakfast, where we watched Grace Topping speak, gave me another opportunity to spend time with Annette.

Some of the happiest moments from the banquet were the tie-winners in two categories! Shari Randall and Dianne Freeman took home teapots for Best First Novel while Tara Laskowski and Leslie Budewitz tied for Best Short Story. I was sitting at the table with husband and wife short story nominees, Art Taylor and Tara Laskowski. They were wonderful hosts. Both were delighted when Tara’s name was called.

I see that K.M. Rockwood is in some of our group photos, but I missed seeing her in person. Kathleen, we’ve got to plan a time to get together next year!

Annette Dashofy

 

Annette Dashofy

This was my seventh trip to Malice Domestic and my fourth as an Agatha nominee. There’s definitely something Cinderella-ish about wearing that little green ribbon on my name badge. Seeing my books in the Dealer Room is quite a kick too. But the best part by far is seeing all my friends, be they writers or readers, whom I only see once a year! We’ve become family. A murderous one, perhaps, and family of the heart rather than blood, but Malice is one family reunion I look forward to every year.

Debra H. Goldstein

Malice was a wonderful insane time. Between eating, networking, eating, and networking, I squeezed in three signings – two tied to the launch at Malice of two short stories: “Pig Lickin’ Good” in MURDER MOST EDIBLE (the Malice anthology) and “Nova, Capers, and a Schmear of Cream Cheese” in FISHY BUSINESS (the Fifth Guppy anthology) and one tied to my Foody Panel.  Add in get-to-gethers for SinC national, SinC Guppies, SEMWA and with my agent and other authors she represents, I barely found time to attend a few panels, have drinks with very special friends, be part of the Malice-Go-Round, and take my “whenever we are together picture” with Dru Ann Love. I was supposed to be back in Alabama for something on Sunday, but instead of being home by 9:30 a.m., I was stranded in DCA for over twelve hours .. got home at 9:30 p.m.

 

Standing: Annette Dashofy, Grace Topping, and Marilyn Levinson
Seated: Debra H. Goldstein and K.M. Rockwood

Marilyn Levinson

I had a wonderful time at Malice. I finally got to do Malice-Go-Round. It was especially nice to hear, as I went from table to table, that so many had enjoyed reading DEATH OVERDUE, which was an Agatha nominee for Best Contemporary Novel last year. I got to spend time with dear friends I only get to see at Malice, had drinks with Matt, my Crooked Lane Books publisher, then went out for dinner with my fellow CLB authors. I also got to spend time with my agent, Dawn Dowdle and fellow agency authors. Such a warm feeling pervaded this year’s Malice. I enjoyed taking part in my panel and observing other panels, and made a new friend at the banquet. I was thrilled when my table host Shari Randall won an Agatha Award for Best First Novel and my fellow CLB writer Ellen Byron won Best Contemporary Novel. Sunday morning I woke up early to make the 7 a.m. New Authors’ Breakfast to support my friend, Grace Topping. My only glitch was that my Super Shuttle driver came much earlier than he was supposed to. When I called, I was told they weren’t sending another driver. As a result, I had my first Uber ride to the airport.

Shari Randall

What a weekend! I am still floating!

It’s always a joy to see friends at Malice and it’s extra special to see blogmates from WWK. A scheduling conflict meant that I missed our blog photo op, so I’m hoping to have myself Photoshopped into the picture at some point. I did get this nice shot with Paula Benson and Gloria Alden, and many of us are in the Guppy photo that followed the Sisters in Crime Breakfast. I want to go on record as one of those voting for a change from breakfast to cocktail party for this gathering of writers.

Shari Randall

I didn’t think anything could top CURSES, BOILED AGAIN being nominated for an Agatha Award, but actually winning the award had - and has - me completely gobsmacked. In a Malice stunner, I tied with Dianne Freeman for the award. Even more surprising, our category wasn’t the only one with a tie. Leslie Budewitz and Tara Laskowski tied for Best Short Story.

I nabbed the last seat at Grace Topping’s table at the New Authors Breakfast where she introduced us to her new book, STAGING IS MURDER. Hearty applause followed her interview - she was calm and professional before 8:30 am - quite a feat.

I was busy with the SinC board, stuffing book bags, signing, and a panel, but I managed to chat with Debra Goldstein, Marilyn Levinson, Annette Dashofy, and Gloria Alden and her friend Irma Baker several times through the conference, and was able to have lunch with Paula Benson and share an Uber with her, Leslie Budewitz, and Linda Landrigan to the airport. I also spotted Annette Dashofy at the gala banquet but didn’t get to talk to her, but let me tell you, she looked amazing. I hope she shares a photo!

Grace Topping

I attended Malice Domestic for the first time about twenty years ago, accompanying a friend who told me about it. Other than my friend, I didn’t know anyone there. Over the next several years, I continued to attend Malice and met people I now call friends. Attending Malice has become like a family reunion.

This year’s Malice was extra special—I made my debut as a published author there. My first book, STAGING IS MURDER, was released three days before the conference. It was a thrilling experience to be on my first panel, sign books, and be introduced at the New Authors’ Breakfast. Celebrating my book launch at Malice, among the people who helped and encouraged me along the way, is something I will always remember.

Grace Topping interviewed by Cindy Silberblatt

MALICE DOMESTIC by Gloria Alden

At the beginning of this month my friend Irma Baker and I went to Malice Domestic in Bethesda, Maryland at the Marriott Hotel. I’ve gone to Malice Domestic, a mystery writers and readers’ conference for over twenty years, and it was nice to visit with people I’d met before as well as the banquets. We were given a heavy cloth bag when we signed in containing eight books in it.

Our room was very nice and had comfortable beds, too, with windows letting sunshine in during the day.   

There was a guy with a table displaying all the books he published on a table for free. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the table until there was only one book left. I wasn’t really looking for it. There is a woman there who sells books on the hotel’s lower level, and I always buy a book or two from her, too. I felt sorry for her because she wasn’t selling as many because of the free books being given away.

There were several banquets with good food and people who stood at the front and talked to those of us at the table eating breakfast and later dinners. There were tables in an open area where we could sit at tables and order lunch, breakfast too, except when there was a breakfast for everyone one morning, or dinner if there wasn’t a banquet that evening. At one of the banquets those who had won awards for their books were introduced and everyone applauded.

It was nice meeting people I already knew and meeting new people, too. The nice part was if someone looked familiar they were wearing their name tag with their name and where they lived so one could walk up to them and see who they were, and were they were from.

I was on a panel called Detecting Duos the day before we left. It was nice, but not a lot of people were there to listen to us.

Irma and I left on Sunday and headed for Alexandria to visit two friends of hers. One was Cecilia who had us stay for supper – pizza. After that we went to the Best Western Hotel where we spent the night and had breakfast in their basement area with wonderful food and all free, too.

After we left and went to a nursing home where Irma’s other friend lives. She is not in good shape so I stayed in the lobby reading a book while Irma spent an hour with her in her room.  Then we left and headed towards home stopping for lunch at a restaurant that had delicious food.

We didn’t get home until after six o’clock Monday evening. I so wanted to get home and see my dog, Maggie. My daughter called me as we left Pennsylvania and went into Ohio to see how soon I’d be there. She told me Maggie was really missing me.

Have you ever gone to Malice Domestic?

Do you think you’d like it if you haven’t been yet?

Animals in Cozies by Gloria Alden

Animals in Cozies by Gloria Alden

It seems like most cozy books include animals. I know mine do, probably because I'm an animal lover with a dog, cat, and ponies, too. Although pets aren't just in cozies by any means, they are more likely to appear there. Readers of this genre are looking for something a little less threatening than a police procedural or thriller.

One of my fictional female police officers has a large malamute that can take on any criminal. Since the officer is tough, she can handle most criminals, too. My protagonist, Catherine Jewell has a cat and acquired a dog at the end of the second book. She ends up giving the dog to a little girl who is grieving, but acquires another dog in the fifth or sixth book. Her romantic interest, the police chief of Portage Falls, her small home town, also has a cat and then ends up with a dog of a murder victim at the end of the first book.

In my opinion there are several reasons why authors include animals in their books.

       

One: Writing is a solitary life. The writers need to isolate themselves as much as possible to

write, and unless the writer has another job with social interactions or an active family living

with them it could be a lonely life.

Two: Pets humanize the protagonist, showing a tender side to them. Because both cats and dogs are popular pets, many readers can relate to them. Of course, children can soften a

protagonist, too, but children create problems. It's hard for a sleuth, especially an amateur

sleuth to take off sleuthing on a whim when they have children to consider. Not that it's

impossible, but it's much easier to leave a cat or dog at home than a child.

As I mentioned above, my protagonist has a cat, and after giving away the first dog she acquired, she ends up with another dog (a collie who looks like my Maggie). Because I've had cats and dogs for years, I find them easy and natural to write about. 

Do you enjoy reading books with animals? Does your main character own a pet?

THE IMPORTANCE OF EXERCISE by Gloria Alden

                                                              

Awhile back I heard that walking is done less by people in the United States than any other country in the world. In fact, a radio report said less than 13% of Americans walk on a regular basis. I didn’t hear the whole report, just this little bit of information, but I’m sure it didn’t include the walking we do to and from our cars or to the refrigerator to get a bowl of ice cream. I wonder if walking up and down an escalator counts?

I think most writers or office workers don’t get enough exercise, and I’m one of them. After all writing is a sedentary job. Even much of our social interaction is done sitting at a computer or on a phone. And on the times we meet family and friends in person; usually it’s to go to lunch or dinner as I will be doing today, with two sisters and a sister-in-law, or maybe to a movie, concert or the theater as I did a few nights ago. More sitting.

I’ll admit I’ve never liked the bend and stretch and other boring types of exercises. Years ago I’d sometimes exercise with some TV guru. It never lasted. I had a cheap treadmill once, but found that monotonous, too. Once I had a stationary bike in my laundry room. I’d peddle away for a half hour every day watching Jeopardy on a small TV over my sewing machine, but that was years ago in another house, and going to a gym doesn’t appeal. The closest one is almost ten miles away and rather expensive, and I neither want to spend the time nor the money.

However, the one exercise I do enjoy is walking. Every morning during spring, summer and fall when the weather is nice, I go for a walk in my woods that lasts a half hour or more, and if I go beyond my woods it’s much longer. The only time I skip the walk is if it’s winter and cold and if it’s raining. I use a walking stick and sometimes two which are old broom sticks. They not only help me walk, but also help me brush down any spider webs across the trail.

All the years of camping with my family; husband, kids, parents and brothers and sisters included a lot of hiking. We’d take at least one trail in the morning and sometimes another one later in the day. All my siblings and my youngest daughter, Mary, still like to hike. When I go to California to visit Mary, she always plans hikes for every day often in a redwood forest. When my siblings and I get together for extended camping trips, hikes are a definite part of the activities. My youngest brother is even a marathon runner, an extreme form of walking, I’d say. He’d probably be horrified I’m relating what he does to walking, but marathon runners do slow to walking at times during a race.

Other exercises of mine are carrying buckets of water to ponies and chickens, cleaning stalls at least once a month or more often, and sometimes shoveling snow in the winter. But my exercising really increases in spring and summer. Then it’s also spading the vegetable bed, planting, weeding and mowing the lawn and not with a riding mower, either, and so many other yard and garden chores.  All this cuts into my writing time, but I consider it helping me to live longer so in the long run I’ll have more years to write. Did I mention before that I’m an optimist?

What do you do for exercise? Do you think you get enough exercise?

After Christmas by Gloria Alden

I know it’s time for my Christmas tree to go, but I enjoy seeing it lit up with colored lights. The Scotch pine needles are starting to fall off.

Just like my sisters I wanted a real Christmas tree. So I had Jacob, my grandson, take me to the Christmas tree farm where I’ve been getting my trees the last few years. He has a pickup truck so it is easy to bring it to my house. He brought it in and put it in the tree container. Last year Jacob and his sister helped me decorate the tree, but this year he had somewhere else to go so I decorated it myself. I also put up a small fake tree in the library, too, in front of the large window in there.

There’s always so much that’s needed to be done before Christmas. Shopping for gifts and wrapping them. Wrapping up grab bag gifts and preparing a Christmas meal.

This year my California daughter, Mary, came home and spent most of her time cleaning my house and getting it ready for company.

On Christmas Eve my sister Suzanne always has her sisters and brother and their kids at her house. I always take simple gifts for the nieces and nephews, bags with socks and gloves in them and if they have young children which most of them do, I put little toys in the bag, too. That evening we exchange gifts with each other. This year my daughter Susan went with me instead of Mary. She was too tired from cleaning.

My son who lives next door, if you count my barn and pony pasture between us, and his children and grandchildren came to my house on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when my brother Phil and sister Suzanne visited. We exchanged some gifts because my daughter Susan and her husband Mike came over with their two children Jacob and Emilie.

I’m not the only one who wraps up grab bag gifts for Christmas Day. After the large bag with mixed grab bag gifts has been passed around and everyone opened gifts, we start to trade off what we don’t want for something else. It’s nothing very expensive and usually what we find in our junk drawers. There are some nice things, too. The grab bag gifts dates back to when we were children and my father, who was a purchasing agent, received one. So we started creating our own grab bag gifts.

Before Christmas I went to a concert that featured a fantastic singer named Andy Cooney. He has the most beautiful tenor voice and encouraged us to sing along with him. I bought four of his CDs. One was of the Christmas songs so I played that a lot before Christmas. According to his bio that we received he has won all sorts of awards. He is an Irish Tenor and sings mostly Irish songs. His grandfather was from Ireland and he visits Ireland a lot. 

Now that Mary flew back to California, Susan comes over to help me with things like putting my checkbook information online now. Of course, I still write checks and mail them out to pay my bills.  Mostly I sit in my nesting chair reading the newspaper or reading a book and looking at my tree that I know will have to go soon.

How was your Christmas? What did you enjoy most about it?

ARE GHOSTS FOR REAL?

Books and movies with a paranormal theme are quite popular now: those with ghosts, vampires, zombies, werewolves, witches and other paranormal or fearful beings. I haven’t heard much about aliens from another planet lately, but at one time there were serious believers in them and there probably still are. With any topic – even climate change – you’ll find believers and non-believers.

I’ve always been pretty much a skeptic although some of the articles and stories from people who claimed they’d actually been examined by aliens made me wonder a little. My mother believed in them. For me the other paranormal beings I never considered them anything more than something spooky for Halloween. But as I grew older that started to change as I listened to the stories I heard from family and friends and to a lesser extent from my own experience.

My grandmother was a fearless woman, who one night chased off a peeping Tom with a broom when my grandfather was on a fishing trip. However, after my grandfather died, she saw and heard the doorknob turning on a side porch door. She got out of bed and checked to see who was out there. Not only was no one there, but there were no footsteps in the snow on the porch and no wind to cause a rattling. Sometime after my grandmother died, my cousin Linda’s husband was working on the house one evening prior to their moving in when he heard a shout coming from the basement. He packed up in a hurry and left. When he told my cousin about it and imitated the voice, she said it sounded just like her grandpa, who he had never met. One evening after they moved in Linda went into labor with her second child and my aunt, a very unimaginative person, came to stay with their first born child, a one-year-old. Towards morning, the baby awoke and was fussing and my aunt lay there listening and wondering if the child would go back to sleep since it was still dark. Then she heard the back door open and footsteps coming across the floor. She called out to her son-in-law asking if they’d had a boy or girl and there was no answer. So she got up to check. There was no one there and the door was still locked.

Fast forward to the old house I bought after my divorce. My son, never given to flights of fancy, was in the basement working one evening with another man on replacing the wiring when they both heard footsteps. He called out and getting no answer went up to check. No one was there.

When I finally moved into a house not completely finished inside, I would see shadows out of the corner of my eye; but nothing more. I didn’t mention it to my youngest daughter, Mary, because I didn’t want to spook her. But early one morning after working a midnight shift when it was not quite light, she was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast and she saw something white at the foot of the steps going upstairs. It was the shape of a man with what looked like a dark belt in the middle. At another time she heard men’s voices talking where the back door originally was, and once she even heard someone riding a horse through the living room. It had to be Chick, the former owner who had lived there over fifty years before he died. He raised Arabians and bred them. I’ve never seen or heard him, and I know he’s gone now, but sometimes when I’m relaxing in my bath at night, I hear the low murmur of men’s voices coming through the wall in the direction of the library. It’s sort of like talk radio, but so low no words can be made out.

My sister-in-law told me of a time when she was almost asleep and had turned over not realizing she was so close to the edge of the bed. She almost fell out when she felt a small child’s hand on her back pressing to keep her from falling. Many years ago, a small child had fallen down a well on their 1842 farm and drowned.

A few years ago, my daughter Mary’s best friend, Tracy, from grade school, died of ovarian cancer. She was a great friend with a terrific sense of humor who liked to play pranks. Even though my daughter had moved to California years before, they stayed in touch joking and laughing over the phone or on visits when Mary came home. Long before she found out she had cancer, Tracy would tell my daughter if she died, she’d come back to haunt her. Sometime soon after she died, Mary was sitting quietly in her apartment when a large candle inside a glass jar suddenly went out. There was no wind and no reason for it to go out. At another time the water faucet in the kitchen started dripping for a while on its own and then just as suddenly stopped, and her cat started staring at a wall and growling. A few days later when she was at work on the midnight shift and feeling sad, she brought Tracy’s obituary up on the computer to show a nurse she was working with. It was then that a clock on a wall near one of her patients came loose and fell. Mary and the other nurse had never known that to happen before. Later that evening another nurse, one who had given Mary trouble ever since Mary had started there, dashed out of the break room where she’d been taking a nap saying the room was haunted. A chair had started rattling and moving. She said she'd never go in that room again. Mary had complained about this nurse to Tracy in the past. Those things stopped after that, but Mary feels Tracy was letting her know she was there.

Do I believe ghosts communicate with the living? I don’t think so except maybe briefly as in the case of Tracy and also a few experiences my son, daughters and I had after my son died. At one of my Sisters in Crime meetings we had a mother/daughter paranormal team come who had been featured on some ghost hunters TV show. They said the vast majority of cases of  a haunting they get called about have a rational reason for what seems to be a haunting and it’s not ghosts. However, they do believe there are actual hauntings. What they seemed to think and I tend to believe, too, is it’s someone who has not accepted their death and can’t leave a place they feel is their home. Maybe Chick was upset with what we were doing to his house. We totally gutted it. But he must have come to accept it because he seems to be gone now and I’m alone again. I think.

Have you ever had a paranormal experience?   Do you think ghosts are real?

What I'm Currently Reading by WWK Authors

What I'm Currently Reading—Linda Rodriguez

Currently for work, I'm reading far too many full manuscripts of short story collections and novels for a university press' national contest. A few are dreadful, a moderate number are quite competent, so far two are outstanding, and the bulk are mediocre. I've done this for years, and I'm pretty good at it. I have an excellent track record of finding the one manuscript that will be chosen by the final judge as the winner, and many of the books I selected have gone on to win major prizes after publication. What it's taught me is that the majority of folks submitting manuscripts to contests are not really ready yet, but need to go through another major revision first.

For fun, I'm reading Virginia Woolf's Collected Letters, Vol. IV,  gossipy, funny, inspiring, infuriating, endearing letters that give a great peek into the mind of one of the greatest writers of the 20^th century.

For my continuing education, I'm reading Claudia Rankine's Citizen, a combination of poetry and essay that takes the best look at race in the United States I've ever seen. Ir's so full of wisdom and incredible writing that I'm taking it in small morsels to enjoy and reflect on and learn from. Here's an example that's particularly apt right now.

“Because white men

can't police their imagination,

Black men are dying.”

What I’m Currently Reading—Margaret S. Hamilton

Amp'd, by Ken Pisani

I will be attending the Midwest Writers Workshop in a few weeks, and signed up to have a SMP editor critique my query letter. What is she looking for? The next Amp'd. I read it, just in case my books are similar. Alas, they are not.

Meet Aaron, who lives with his hoarder father, exists on a diet of pain pills and medical marijuana, and counts fish in a river. He's in love with radio commentator Sunny Lee, who reveals all manner of science factoids during her daily radio spots. Add Will, a fellow amputee who dabbles in explosives, Cancer Boy, and the four foot alligator in the bathtub for a glorious romp through Paris, Illinois.

Vonnegut's world view combined with R. Crumb's cartoons and a whiff of Holden Caulfield. Hilarious despair. So it goes.

 

 What I’m Currently Reading—Shari Randall

Since I just hit SEND yesterday on my manuscript for the Lazy Mermaid Lobster Shack Mystery Number One (my editor assures me that St. Martin's marketing department will eventually conjure up the perfect title) my reading has been done in stolen moments. Warren Bull’s series on classic mysteries sent me to the bookstore, where I picked up Mignon Eberharts Escape the Night. The New York Times (in 1944) promised "suspense to the very end!" Pure escapism. So far so good.

What I’m Currently Reading—E. B. Davis

 

The cover tells you this is a fun read, but The Little French Guesthouse by Helen Pollard wasn’t the romantic comedy I assumed and downloaded. What I found—the deconstruction of a woman and her subsequent reassembly. It’s about changing the focus and direction of life, finding supportive people, applying professional skills to new markets, and realizing that as we change what was once comfortable chafes. People, places, things of old no longer nurture. Growing takes guts, pain, and loss, like a snake shedding its old skin and reemerging, perhaps more vulnerable for a time but better and bigger in the long run. Due to changes in my own life, perhaps I identified with the main character’s transformation. I can only hope I reassemble as well.

What I’m Currently Listening To—Grace Topping

I love books—in any form, but I’m partial to recorded or audible books. They keep me sane when I drive long distances, stand in long airport lines, and in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. Sometimes they put me right to sleep, and other times they keep me entertained until sleep takes hold again. Also, recorded books bring the stories to life in a way that simple reading doesn’t do. Right now I’m listening to two mysteries by Anne Perry—one in my car and one on the portable CD player on my nightstand. Perry’s two different series, one featuring William Monk/Hester Latterly and the other Thomas Pitt, are well-crafted character-driven mysteries that are compelling and reveal so much about human nature and what drives people to do the things they do. I highly recommend A Sunless Sea and Long Spoon Lane, or any book by Anne Perry.

 What I’m Currently Reading -- Julie Tollefson

After months of nonstop busy-ness, my family took a long, leisurely vacation this summer during

which I had the luxury of reading several terrific books. Two excellent but very different books stand out. The first, Renee Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn has been on my to-read list for months. In this young adult tale inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, the teenage Shahrzad is a fierce, strong, smart protagonist who seeks to avenge her best friend’s murder at the hands of the Caliph of Khorasan but discovers things are not as they seem on the surface. Political intrigue, kissing, and sword fights--everything I love in a story. Can’t wait to read the next installment in the series, The Rose and the Dagger.

The second standout vacation book was Lou Berney’s The Long and Faraway Gone, winner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. This dark novel set in Oklahoma City explores the long-term consequences of two horrific events as its damaged main characters struggle to find meaning and definition in their lives three decades later. Berney masterfully weaves together the mysteries of the characters’ separate stories, the past and present. Not as much kissing and no sword fights, but a compelling story nonetheless.

   

What I'm Currently Reading—KM Rockwood

I'm just finishing up The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson. The environment is a major character. It's very interesting. He continually disregards the "show, don't tell" advice, but the book works, and it's a successful novel.

Next, I've chosen The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths for my "beach read" this year. Tomorrow we are joining my husband's extended family for their every-few-years gathering at Ocean City, NJ, which is where they went for a week every year as a young family living in a tiny south Philadelphia row house. I know I will need a book that will keep me interested but not require a great deal of concentration, since I will be constantly interrupted. 

The story is set in Brighton in 1950. The body of a girl is found cut into three pieces. Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick—the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old war friend of Edgar’s. They served together in a shadowy unit called the Magic Men, a special ops troop that used stage tricks to confound the enemy.

What I’m currently Reading—Gloria Alden

I’m currently reading two mysteries and an older classic. First, I’ll write about the one I’m reading downstairs in my nesting chair. It is The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson. I’m finding it fascinating and hard to put down. The blurb inside says Eden was its name. “An alternative school for happy children.” But it closed in disgrace after a student’s suicide. Now it’s a care home, the grounds neglected and overgrown. Gloria Harkness is the only neighbor, staying close to her son who lives in the home, lighting up her life and breaking her heart each day.  It gets spookier and spookier the further I read. The whole setting is scary and when someone from her childhood shows up, Stig of the Dump, and claims he’s being stalked by a woman from their class, they go to where the she was to meet him and find her murdered.  Gloria starts in investigate and finds that four had committed suicide from that class, but were they suicides or murder? Library Journal writes “A terrific stand-alone that is complex, haunting and magical.” And the praise from other sources goes on and on.

The mystery I’m reading upstairs is Carolyn Mulford’s Show Me the Ashes, The fourth in her Phoenix Smith mysteries. I enjoyed the first three books with Phoenix , an ex CIA agent who is now living in a small Missouri town where no one except her closest friend knows she was once a CIA agent. Even though she’s not connected with that past life anymore, she finds a lot to keep her busy solving crimes and getting into dangerous situation.  The first three books elicited lots of praise, and I’m sure this one will, too. I know it has me reading long past the time when I should be turning off the light and going to sleep.