Month: December 2020

Creative Wednesday – The Seventh Devil

I know I mentioned my newest novel, The Seventh Devil, back in October with a couple of cover mock-ups, but last week I finally signed the contract with my publisher, Bookland Press. They had a different idea for the cover, so we agreed to a compromise. The best part is that the book is available for pre-order on Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and a lot of other places, with a release date of June 15, 2021. I like the new cover, but I really loved the original concept that my daughter had designed, so I’ll be using that one for the short story collection I’m putting together, which is why I haven’t been submitting to any journals lately—they all want first electronic rights and I’m trying to keep the number of previously published pieces to a minimum.

So my new challenge for 2021 is to find a publisher interested in a collection of 30-35 spooky, weird short stories/flash fiction complete with its own cover (see below for the mock-up). I don’t know about ‘twisted tales’, so if you have a better idea, let me know:

Missed Opportunities

A few days ago, on Christmas Eve Eve (yes, that’s a thing and I’ve celebrated it for years by opening a special bottle of wine), I was on the hunt for that last elusive gift. Ken is an avid photographer, and I wanted to get him something camera-y, but I have no idea what kind of cameras he has (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Polaroid?) so I went to this strip mall in the next town to a little camera store that I found by googling “Camera stores near me”. A few days previous, I had phoned one of the larger chains, and when I told the man on the phone that my husband liked photography and that I was looking for something fun to get him for Christmas, he said, in a kind of weird way and with a heavy English accent, “Oh, ahem, I really couldn’t tell you…I would really have no idea…I’m probably the wrong person to ask.” Wrong person to ask?! You work in a goddamn camera store! But looking back on the incident later, it occurs to me that maybe he thought the conversation was more porn-based than it was in reality, which says much more about him than it does about me (or does it?). So when I went to the small camera shop on Wednesday, I was sure to preface my request with “My husband takes a lot of pictures of trees” and I refrained from adding, “Wink, wink, nudge, nudge”.

Seriously, here is one of Ken’s photographs of a tree. He’s very talented.

Anyway, I came away from the camera store with a gift card, assured by the owner that Ken could buy whatever he liked, which suited me fine. But as I was leaving, I noticed another business in the plaza, a hair salon. It was called The Main Attraction Hair Studio. And all I could think is, ‘There’s a missed opportunity if ever I saw one’. Like, who was the genius who said, “I know that the word ‘Mane’ is another word for long, luxurious hair, but if we call it “The Mane Attraction”, nobody is going to get THAT”? It’s like having the last name Taylor and being a seamstress, but calling your business ‘Tailor-Made’. I mean, why would you NOT capitalize on the obvious?!

And while I was taking a break from writing so I could think of more examples, I asked Kate for help:

Me: What are some other fun plays on words that people could use for their businesses?
Kate: Um…Sofa King.
Me: I don’t get it…
Kate: Because their sofas are so f*cking comfortable.
Me: (laughs hysterically)

And I remember when I was a kid, being absolutely fascinated by the Dew Drop Inn, a motel in the cottage town we used to visit. I don’t think I would have been quite as impressed if the name had been the Do Drop Inn, although that’s kind of cute too. Of course, if I owned a motel, it would be called the Come Inn…and it’s no wonder that people think I’m talking about sex stuff all the time. At any rate, I started thinking of some other fun names for businesses and I designed a quiz just for you. You have to match the names with the businesses. And just to up the ante, all the names I made up kind of sound like porn shops, so you have to guess which one is actually a porn shop. Also, one of them is an real business name that I found online, so you have to figure that out too. Answers are below the picture of an ad I found that is, apparently, someone else’s idea of a quiz, only theirs costs much more than mine:

1) Let’s Get Fizz-ical
2) We’re Going To Pump You Up
3) One Man’s Junk
4) The Hole Shebang
5) Can You Dig It
6) He Shoots, He Scores
7) Quality Tools
8) We Suck
9) Big Ass Slabs
10) Pour Some Sugar On Me

a) Excavating Company
b) Sporting Goods
c) Donut Store
d) Confectioners
e) Chainsaw Milling and Timberwork – this is a real company, I sh*t you not
f) Tire Repair
g) Vacuum Repair Service
h) Adult Novelties i.e. porn
i) Soda Shop
j) Thrift Store

Answers: 1i, 2f, 3j, 4c, 5a, 6b, 7h, 8g, 9e, 10d

How’d you do? As for What? I don’t know. All the pictures are exactly the same and the description just says ‘Working condition’. I really think there was a missed opportunity there.

 

Holiday Decorating Quiz Extravaganza

I adore decorating magazines, especially in December, because they have those fun quizzes in them, like the one I did this year on how to “Unwrap your signature holiday style”. I love it when anyone assumes that I actually HAVE a style to unwrap, like there’s a part of me just DYING to run into a forest and gather evergreen boughs and whatnot. The explanation under the headline was “If determining your home’s holiday look is your own personal nightmare before Christmas, fear not. We’re here to help.” Personal nightmare?! Aren’t we getting a little dramatic here? Because the nightmares I have focus on the house burning down or worldwide pandemics, not so much on whether people appreciate my decorating style. But the magazine thoughtfully provided a list of 10 questions to help me determine exactly how to discover my “festive style” by giving me four choices—A, B, C, or D, and then adding up the choices to correspond with a style. Here we go:

1) Which winter wreath would you hang?

I chose D, the “Feathery Evergreen”, except that I would forgo the peacock feathers and bow, and add twinkle lights. Now it looks just like the wreaths that Ken and I hang in our windows every year. We keep them in a closet under the stairs along with the twenty extension cords we need to make them light up.

2) Choose the prettiest gift wrap.

While “Snowflake Chic” and “Golden Glamour” were both very fetching, I myself am partial to “Last Year’s Leftovers” with a side of “”Scotch Tape and a Bit of Ribbon”.

3) What’s Your Must-Watch Christmas Movie?

I’d only seen one out of the 4 choices—A Christmas Story, which is so wonderfully random with the leg lamp and the pack of dogs that continually appear out of nowhere to wreak havoc. As for the other options, It’s a Wonderful Life is way too morbid, A Muppet Christmas is way too Muppet-y, and I’ve never actually seen Love Actually. MY must-watch movie is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Not the live action film, which is ridiculously over the top, but the original animated classic, which I can recite almost verbatim, having watched it every year since I was old enough to remember. It’s tradition, and I don’t care if it messes up my style score. Also, Die Hard WASN’T on the list, which frankly is ridiculous because it’s the best Christmas movie of all time. Yippee Ki Yay indeed.

4) Which candles will you set out this season?

While “a selection of unscented tea lights and votives in mercury glass containers” sounds quite glam, I’m gonna go with NONE, because as I previously mentioned, one of my personal nightmares is having the house burn down, and candles are tiny fires that aspire to be bigger ones, in my book. Don’t get me wrong—I HAVE candles but I only use them when the power is out and I can see them in the dark.

5) Which wallpaper would you use for an accent wall?

What? Now I’m putting up wallpaper?! Go to hell.

6) Select a pair of holiday pajamas

OK, this I can get behind. I’m going to pick…a “monogrammed crisp white button-down nightshirt and matching pants”? Nooo. “A long sleep tee featuring a flamingo donning a Santa hat”? Nooo. Ok, these choices are NOT appealing to me. I shall choose the reindeer patterned flannel pants I bought last summer on sale, accented with a Joe Fresh tank top in “used to be crisp white but then I washed it with a black hoodie and now it’s kind of grey and I only wear it to bed”.

7) Your Yuletide tree is…

Whichever one is closest to where we parked the car at the tree farm. The magazine’s option D is “An imperfect long-needled pine, chopped fresh from the forest”, so I kind of won this one except that in recent years we’ve been buying small potted trees that we can replant in our yard in the spring rather than going into the forest, finding the biggest tree and chopping it down with…a herring (that’s your Monty Python reference for this post) . The best part of this question is option C, the picture of a “life-like” tree that you can buy from Canadian Tire for $500. I can get a whole decade’s worth of real trees for that price, imperfect though they may be.

8) Pick an ornament.

One of the choices is a felt ketchup bottle. It’s thirteen dollars. I can’t even. I’ve used the same vintage glass ornaments from the early twentieth century for the last twenty-ish years. I also make my own ornaments to give out to friends and family made from wood. On a more serious note, I choose a word each year to burn into them–this year’s word is HOPE because I think we all need a little bit of that.

9) Choose a Christmas card to send out.

I would if I could ever remember to actually send out Christmas cards in time for them to get to people. So while I love the “Paisley Reindeer Card” ($7, Hallmark. Yes, for ONE card), I usually end up buying a box of whatever’s left at the local convenience store, and taking them with me when we visit family. Nothing says “love” like hand-delivery, am I right?

10) How do you usually spend Christmas Eve?

None of the options seemed quite right, so I made up my own. Being with my family, enjoying good food and drink, listening to beautiful music, laughing and hugging, and being grateful that the house isn’t on fire.

When I tallied up my score, I’d gone rogue too many times to establish a Christmas style. I wasn’t “Formal Elegant”, “Colourful Eclectic”, “Fresh Contemporary”, OR “Rustic Country”. And I’m good with that, because all of these trappings of consumerism are not what Christmas is about anyway. To quote the Grinch:

“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

grinch

Have a wonderful Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa and anything else you celebrate in December even if you can’t be with the ones you love. Here’s some hope from me to you that next year will be better.

Advent-ures

Christmas is one of my favourite times of year, not because I’m particularly religious—in fact, I’m not religious at all—but because I love the trappings of the season, many of which date back to pre-Christian times. I adore the tree and the twinkle lights, the decorations, even the snow on the ground for one day of my life. And of course, the presents. I’ve never been too proud to say that I like getting presents as much as giving them, and if you know anything about me at all, you’ll know that the Jehovah’s Witnesses can come to my house as many times as they like, but until they lift their weird-ass moratorium on getting gifts, they will never own my eternal soul. But the one concession I make in terms of the more heavily Christian aspect of the holiday season is the Advent calendar. Every year, I buy several different kinds for Ken and Kate. The current favourites are Lego for Ken and Lego Friends for Kate. For a treatise on Lego and sexism, please feel free to go to My Week 266: Toys for Girls and Boys; luckily, Ken and Kate have no issues with ‘girl’ vs. boy’ toys and Ken’s Lego snowman is holding a pink and purple boombox decorated with hearts, while Kate’s Lego girl figure is wielding a sword (and why there’s even a sword in an Lego Advent calendar is a mystery for another day). I also got them your standard Lindt chocolate calendars, one of which I had also purchased for myself but then gave away to my nephew, leaving me sans Advent-ure.

And you’d think that SOMEONE in my house would be like, ‘Oh poor you—here, let me buy you an Advent calendar of your own so that you can join in the fun’ but alas, that did not happen. What did happen is that, hopes dashed, I went out at the last minute to get one for my own damn self, but all they had left were Reese’s Peanut Butter calendars. At first read, I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Why, that’s not so bad’ but let me assure you that after last year’s Reese’s fiasco, I was none too pleased. Let me explain:

There are 24 doors on an Advent calendar, one for every day from December 1st to December 24th. Every door on the Reese’s calendar is exactly the same size, with the exception of December 24th, which is HUGE. So every day last year, while Ken and Kate were oohing and ahhing over the adorable Lego, or the assorted Lindt chocolates (balls, bells, bars, teddy bears), I extracted a very small, very miniature peanut butter cup from my calendar. But the last window was so big that I consoled myself: ‘It’s going to be the BIG CUP. Maybe even the one stuffed with Reese’s Pieces!’ I mean, it had to be, right? There had to be a pay-off at the end that made the tiny cups, barely a morsel in the mouth, and all the waiting, worthwhile. Because part of the discipline of the Advent calendar is NOT ripping the whole thing open and eating all the chocolate at once—it’s having ONE each day no matter how bad your chocolate craving is. So every time I thought of skipping ahead, even by one day, I would remember the BIG CUP waiting, and I would go have a glass of wine instead. Then at long last, it was Christmas Eve, the day when I could finally reveal my Big Cup and gloat a bit while Ken and Kate were nibbling on their Lindt bunnies. I pulled back the giant cardboard window and guess what was in there?  Inset into a much smaller container within the giant window was a very small Reese’s ‘praline’ cup. A tiny  f*cking PRALINE CUP?! A month of waiting for that? I’ve been disappointed many times in my life, but this one made the top ten.

(Slight tangent: I was also very disappointed two days ago when Kate, Ken, and I finally finished the very complex 500 piece jigsaw puzzle we were working on as a family, only to discover, as I had indeed suspected, that Atlas had eaten several of the pieces, and Mexico City was looking very hole-y. Atlas defended himself by claiming that he was only trying to help, but undermined his own defence by whispering, “They were so delicious.”)

At any rate, I’ve made my Reese’s Peace with being deprived yet again of the Big Cup. And I’ve already bought the Lego Advent Calendars for next year and hidden them in the fireplace. And before you think I burned them in a fit of pique, let me explain that when we moved into our house, the previous owner privately called me over to the elaborate fireplace surround they had constructed, and pulled down what looked like a decorative panel to reveal a hidden compartment. I’ve used it ever since to hide presents, although it’s a bit too warm for chocolate. And then two days ago, Kate was assembling her most recent Lego Advent toy:

Kate: This Lego cake is adorable! I hope there’s one just like it in next year’s calendar!
Me: Who can say?
Kate: I’ll go look—it probably shows it on the box.
Me: What box?
Kate: The one in the fireplace.
Me: What are you talking about?
Kate: Your secret hiding spot. Behind the gold panel. Come on, Mom, I’ve known about that for years.

And now I’ve lost my secret hiding spot. Imagine my disappointment.

Find the secret compartment

Pump It Up!

I like cream. Not whipped cream, not ice cream—in fact, I hate ice cream, and I can hear you muttering right now, “Weirdo”—but no, I’m talking about body cream. Lotion that comes in all different scents, with luxurious ingredients like hemp oil, shea butter, infusions of collagen, and jojoba, which is the best word to say in the world. But do you know what I hate? The damn pump containers they come in. Every single one of these things is designed specifically so that the pump stick thing (I just googled it and it’s call a dip tube, and if that isn’t the most sexual term for a thing that isn’t particularly sexual, I don’t know what is, and don’t pretend that you weren’t all like Ooh! as well) doesn’t go right to the bottom, leaving you inevitably with an inch of cream that you can’t access. Then you have to take off the lid, and try your best to get the rest out of the container by a) turning it upside down and slamming it against your hand if the container is small or b) sticking your hand INTO the container and scooping it out, if the container is large enough, thereby getting it all under your fingernails, which is what I’ve been doing for the last few days with a particular favourite. The only problem is that every time I take off the lid, the dip tube pump thing falls out, forcing me to reassemble the whole damn thing every time.

And here’s where I found myself on Wednesday night, in a perfect storm of circumstances. On the weekend prior, I had stupidly carried a heavy bag and re-injured my bad shoulder, eradicating all the good, and the extensive number of dollars, that the recent round of shock wave therapy had provided. My shoulder, like the rest of the world, went into lockdown. And there I was, in my bathroom, half naked, trying to scoop the last of the collagen cream out of the bottom of the stupid container, when the dip tube not only fell out but the whole lid fell on the floor and rolled under the bathroom vanity. And what did I do? I waved the arm that wasn’t in agony imperiously and yelled, “You know WHAT? You can just f*cking STAY THERE!!” You may be surprised to learn that the lid did not respond and is, in fact, still under the bathroom vanity where it is paralyzed with fear.

And then, to add insult to injury, I had to see my doctor, he of the dick-ish bedside manner, who matter-of-factly referred me to an Orthopaedic surgeon. While he was looking for the referral form on his computer, all the while muttering, “Where is it?” and forcing me NOT to respond “Would it be under ‘O’?”, kind of like trying to help your elderly parent figure out how to reset their password on ‘The Facebook’ or akin to watching my colleagues walk me through how to download and edit a document in Teams, he DID offer this:

Dr.: I’ll also give you a cortisone shot.
Me: Oh, Ok…um, will it hurt?
Dr. (laughs): No. Oh, I found the referral form! It was under ‘W’.
Me: Makes sense. Are you going to do it now?
Dr.: No, I don’t have any cortisone. I’ll fax a prescription to your pharmacy and you’ll need to pick it up, then make another appointment and bring the vial back here next week.

NEXT WEEK? How many more cream jar lids will have to die before I get some relief?!

In other news, I couldn’t resist sharing this ad, which I saw last week after my post about my chair, and I wish there was a way to tell the Facebook algorithm that I ALREADY BOUGHT ONE and to stop sending me ads for chairs. But this one for a ‘single seater couch’ is the best marketing strategy I’ve ever seen:

There are four pictures, all of the same chair, with one showing a huge rip in the arm, and they’re STILL asking $150 for it! And it made me think of other ways to advertise things to make them sound more valuable than they actually are, so here are some examples for you to guess:

Upright bathtub
Winterized motorcycle
Compact minivan
Organic glass
Semi-liquid product with dip tube

But I’m sure you’ll be able to think of lots of better examples than I can.