Writing

Reading Is Fun-da-Mental

A while back there was a call for readers at a particular online event celebrating a Canadian poet who had just released a new book. I’ve done these open mic things in the past and really enjoyed it, so I put my name forward and I was accepted for the reading last Thursday night. I was initially super-happy but then I realized that, rather than being able to choose what I was going to read from one of my short story collections, it was a POETRY reading. I don’t write a lot of poetry but I’ve been working on a few pieces recently, and I had one I was really proud of, so I thought, what the heck—this will be a safe space to try it out and maybe get some feedback. The poem I’d chosen to read was about narrowly missing hitting a deer with my car, and how the universal forces of time and karma came into play—I mean, there was more too it than that, but that was kind of the main thing. It was a pretty personal piece and I thought I’d just read that one and be done. The event started and the guest poet was amazing, reading some of her poetry and chatting about the things that informed her writing, particularly the deaths of her parents when she was younger. Her mother had passed away from cancer when she was in university and then her father had died suddenly and tragically a few years later AFTER HE SWERVED ON THE ROAD TO AVOID A DEER AND CRASHED HIS CAR. And I was like WTF am I supposed to do NOW?! Was I really going to read a poem about how I SURVIVED a potential deer/car incident when her dad DIED IN ONE? Obviously not—I’m not a MONSTER (unlike the woman at the last reading I was at, a Valentine’s Day event about “Love”, where we were specifically asked NOT to read anything that included violence, rape or incest. SHE read an essay about EXACTLY ALL OF THAT and it was so disturbing that no one knew what to say. And I was even more upset because I write a lot about death but I managed to find one of the few pieces I’ve written that didn’t involve someone dying, and I don’t think anyone even heard me because they were still in shock over such a flagrant violation of the Valentine’s Day Spirit, although if you think about it, the original Valentine was dragged around Rome, beaten to death and had his head cut off, so she may have had a point).

 At any rate, I was now left in the position of being shortly introduced and not having anything to read, so I was scrambling, flipping through docs and trying to find something I was equally proud of or was at least polished enough to read to a group of PROFESSIONAL POETS. So my turn came, and I read a couple of things, including a poem I wrote for my dog, and no one responded, not even in the chat, and then I just shut off my camera because I felt so dumb. But then the next reader started his presentation by saying really nice things about my literary magazine, DarkWinter Lit, where one of his first poems was published, and that made me feel a little less embarrassed.

Then yesterday, I was fortunate enough to do a live reading at a coffee shop/bookstore in a nearby town with a few other writers. It was a much better experience aside from a quirky microphone. One of the stories I read was one that I’d never read out loud to an audience before called “Twist of Faith” and I’d forgotten that at one point, there’s some very dark humour. When I got to that point, people in the audience started laughing, and then I started too, and could barely keep going–a combination of nerves and relief that other people thought it was funny too. But I finished and got some great feedback, as well as a complimentary swag bag that contained GROUND COFFEE, and if you know anything about me at all, you’ll know that I would have preferred wine.

Long story short, being a writer is hard.

In other news, I was very disappointed by this ad which is ostensibly for flooring but also for a fox? So I messaged the guy to find out more about the fox and he didn’t take it very well at all. 

Apparently the fox DOESN’T come with the carpeting, and personally I think this ad is extremely misleading because I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s more interested in the fox than the carpet it’s sitting on. The fox is very cute and looks equally confused as to why it’s featured in an ad for a FLOORING STORE NOT A PET STORE, and someone should tell this guy that his customer service is as sh*tty as his ad sense if he yells at people who come into the store to pet his fox the way he yelled at me for inquiring about his fox.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s the poem I wrote about my dog:

For Atlas

It’s 2 am and
My dog is whimpering
In the throes of a bad dream.
Does he miss his mother and
The way she would comfort him
When he was frightened?
Is he lonely for his brothers
And sisters,
For the warmth of their bodies
At night?

He cries and twitches
And I wonder what haunts him.
I am his pack now.
I shake him awake and tell him
Everything is
Just fine.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Last week, the building where I work was visited by a couple of ghost hunters who have a Youtube channel. They did a walkthrough and pointed out several areas that they felt were haunted. For example, one of the women pointed to the freight elevator and claimed that it was haunted by a worker who had fallen down the shaft. Now, I’m no skeptic, but as someone who is terrified of elevators and who is forced, on occasion, to run the freight elevator, I did extensive research on whether or not this was actually possible, and it’s not. The elevator won’t move if any of the doors are open, and you can’t open any of the doors unless the elevator is right there. So sorry, ghostbusters—that one was just your imagination. They also claimed that a vase in a booth on the second floor was haunted—they speculated that the person who had owned the vase was super-pissed off because her possessions had been sold and left to languish in a dusty old factory, BUT…she was also thrilled to be noticed. I can’t prove that one wrong, except to say that if anything IS haunted in the building, it’s the life-sized animatronic Hallowe’en character Michael Myers who, when plugged in, swivels around in time to the movie’s music and slashes the arm carrying his knife up and down. But that’s not the scary part. Even when he’s not plugged in, his eyes follow you EVERYWHERE, and I regularly hang a pink handbag from his arm and put a Barbie tank top on him, but the next time I see him, THEY’RE GONE. And he looks even madder than when Laurie poked out his eye with a coat hanger, because he likes to be pretty in pink.

But the best part of the whole spooky ghost adventure was they claimed one of the most haunted spots was on the second floor, in a booth called Fox and Feather Vintage. And do you know why I believe THAT? Because that used to be MY booth before I moved downstairs to the main floor! And that explains why I never sold anything out of there—too many bad vibes, I guess. And the bad vibes have continued because I was talking to the vendor who rents it now and she said her sales have been terrible. Not surprising. But now that my suspicions have been confirmed, I want that booth back, if only to sell stuff like this that I found on Facebook Marketplace:

Haunted frame? Why not? In fact, my only question is why is there a brown Crayola marker next to it? Is it for scale? Or is there a more insidious reason, like that ghost lady enjoys arts and crafts? I know—arts and crafts are not necessarily insidious—depending on what exactly the ghost is drawing. And the condition–“Used-Fair”? Not “Used-Possibly Dangerous”? I really want to buy it just to find out whether or not it’s really haunted, because it seems like the person who owns it isn’t sure, like they’re hedging their bets with “possibly” haunted, instead of “goddamn right it’s haunted house down boots”.

In other news, I’ve decided to start my own press, as an extension of DarkWinter Literary Magazine. It’s going to be called DarkWinter Press. I won’t be publishing my own work, but as soon as I get it set up, I’ll be looking for some projects. First though—if anyone on here has some experience with how to format things for Kindle Direct Publishing (eg: what program to use, how to do covers and images etc.) I’d be happy to touch base. I already managed to set up my account thanks to D. Wallace Peach of Myths of the Mirror and her support, but I know there’s still a ton to learn. Regardless, I’m as excited as a ghost in a vase or Michael Myers in a Barbie t-shirt.

Also, I recently competed in The Evil Squirrel’s Nest Annual Contest of Whatever and the Squirrel has posted all the entries prior to the final judgement. You can read them here!

Also, also–Happy Easter to those who celebrate it!

The Cleaner

A couple of weeks ago, the owner of the antique market where I work came in. I was with a customer, and when I finished, he called me over. “Come here, Susan,” he said. “I need to talk to you.” I immediately went into panic mode, thinking I was going to get fired for writing a short story about the antique market (it’s called ‘Revenge of the Juggernaut’ and you can read it in At The End Of It All, which is a totally shameless plug for my new short story collection) and he must have realized that I looked like I was about to run out of the building, because he followed up with, “Don’t worry, it’s good news.”

Good news? Was I about to get a raise whilst at the same time my hours were being reduced so that I could work less and make more? Was there a secret office hockey pool that I hadn’t known I’d entered that I had just won? And if you know anything about me at all, you know that I know nothing about hockey at all, but I still managed to do incredibly well in my last office hockey pool, even though I picked my players solely on the basis of them having cool last names (I’m looking at you, William Nylander, whose name rhymes with Highlander, and as legend tells us, there can be only one). But no, I hadn’t won anything, and then I got even more nervous when he told me the news.

Owner: I wanted to tell you that we hired a cleaner.
Me: (air quotes) A ‘cleaner’?…What kind of ‘cleaner’?
Owner (befuddled): Someone to clean.
Me: Clean WHAT exactly?

Maybe I’ve watched too many mob films, TV dramas, and John Wick movies, because to ME, a cleaner is someone who cleans up, like, dead bodies and whatnot. And I was pretty sure that we only sold antiques at work, but maybe THAT was just a front for something much more insidious, which would explain why my young boss quite often gets hedgy when I ask him questions like, “What happened to that vendor on the third floor?” or “What were you doing here so early this morning?”

But the owner quickly (maybe TOO quickly, which is exactly what a mob boss would do) clarified that he had hired a person to clean the bathrooms, vacuum, mop the floors, sweep the stairs and so on, and he would be coming every Wednesday. “Isn’t that wonderful?” he said. “Now you don’t have to do it any more. Of course, there will still be weekly maintenance but the majority of the cleaning will be done on Wednesday, so you don’t have to mop the floors or scrub the toilets any more.” And he said this like he honestly thought I had EVER scrubbed the toilets. I have, however, probably once a week, mopped the floors in the bathrooms, so it was a pleasant surprise, even though I had literally just finished mopping the floors and now all I could think was “Damn, if I’d only waited until Tuesday.”

Nevertheless, on Wednesday, we were all very excited for the cleaner to arrive. Which he did. And almost immediately, one of my co-workers leaned over and whispered to me:

Co-Worker: THAT’S the cleaner?
Me: Apparently. He looks like…a cleaner.
Co-Worker: I know, right?! What do you think he cleans, when he’s not cleaning here?
Me: I couldn’t begin to say, but he definitely looks like…a cleaner.

And what we meant was, we had never seen a person who looked more like a person who cleaned up murder scenes and mob hits in our lives. If there was an epitome of someone who ‘cleaned’ for a living, that was this guy, who looks kind of like Chazz Palminteri’s cousin. We spent the morning expecting to see large white trash bags, or at least rolled-up carpets being hurried out of the building by a team of his henchman, but sadly, all he did was wash down the toilets, vacuum up all the rock salt from the carpets, mop the floors, and sweep the stairs. And he did an amazing job–almost like he was a…PROFESSIONAL.

In other news, my Canadian publisher recently sent me the cover mock-up for my new novel, the sequel to The Seventh Devil, called The Devil You Know. And I couldn’t be happier about it. The book won’t be out for a while–I just got the printer’s proofs to check, but here’s the cover if you haven’t seen it on Facebook or whatever:

The Times, They Are A’Changing; November 31st

Have you ever felt like an idiot of your own making? Because I felt that way last Sunday. I woke up, looked at my phone, and the time said 9:00 am. It was a little later than I normally wake up, but I’d been up past midnight and deserved a sleep-in. Then I went downstairs, where all the clocks (and I have A LOT) said the same thing. Ken was out, and I sat down to read other people’s blogs. It occurred to me that the clocks were supposed to be changing on Sunday night, so I looked it up. Sure enough, the time change was going to happen on Sunday at 2 am. Then I read Positively Alyssa’s blog Fight MS Daily where she bemoaned daylight savings time, and I actually posted this comment: “Our clocks don’t change until after midnight tonight–I didn’t know other places did it earlier!”

After that, I casually wandered into the kitchen, where I realized that the tea tin clock I have above the hood range on the stove seemed like it had stopped keeping time. I was just replacing the battery when Ken came in:

Ken: Oh, did I forget that one?
Me: What one?
Ken: That clock. I changed them all when I got up this morning, but I guess I missed that one.
Me: What are you talking about?
Ken: Spring forward? Daylight Savings Time…
Me: That’s not until tonight. Sunday at 2 AM.
Ken: Which was at 2 AM. This morning. Several hours ago.
Me: Time is a construct.

Then, this Friday morning, something even more amazing than time and space relativity happened. I was contacted by Cecilia Kennedy of Fixing Leaks and Leeks, a fantastic writer in her own right and author of The Places We Haunt among many other things, to tell me that she’d written a feature called “Women Writers Shaping The Future Of Horror” for Horror Tree, and I was one of the writers she listed in the article, which you can read here: https://horrortree.com/wihm-2023-women-writers-shaping-the-future-of-horror/

I was so excited that I ran outside in the pouring rain in my housecoat and slippers to tell Ken about it. Slippers and housecoat, you ask? Well, it was only 9 am. Or maybe it was 10, who knows? Time is a construct.

Finally, there’s this. Every year, my friend over at Evil Squirrel’s Nest hosts The Tenth Annual Contest Of Whatever. This year’s prompt is ‘November 31st’ and I highly recommend you participate in this fun contest–you can scurry over to the Squirrel’s site for more details. I don’t normally write to prompts but this one was too good to resist, so here’s my effort:

No Argument Here

Carol and her sister Martha never really got along. They were always at odds with each other from the time they were children, causing their parents to describe each of them as capable of starting a fight in an empty room. As adults, they maintained a distant but moderately amicable relationship, at least until Carol got married at the age of 52. Martha, who had remained single and had resigned herself to spinsterhood, felt shut out, and the drunken toast she gave at the wedding was hurtful, especially her insistence that Carol’s new husband had made the wrong choice. After a few years of cold silence between the two sisters, Martha decided it was time to turn over a new leaf and repair the familial bond, the only one she had left. She resolved that she would reach out to Carol, who was happily settled with her husband and their three miniature poodles, and no matter what Carol said to her, she would take it in stride, and prove to her sister that their relationship could begin to finally flourish. No arguing, she promised herself—no matter what. Martha drove to Carol’s house on a gloomy November day and stood on the stoop for a moment before taking a deep breath and ringing the bell.

Carol opened the door. She was momentarily speechless then her face hardened. “Well?”

“It’s been too long, Carol. Can we put the past behind us? Maybe go out for a coffee?” Martha waited for a response.

Carol’s eyebrows arched. “Let me check my calendar.” She remained in the doorway, unmoving. “I’m free on November 31st.”

Martha gritted her teeth and smiled grimly. “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

I hope you participate–I had a lot of fun with this one! And finally, let me apologize to any of my followers who’ve been experiencing frustration because your comments have been disappearing. I had no idea until my good friend Bear Humphreys, who writes a fantastic photography blog called Bear Humphreys Photo, emailed me privately to tell me that one of his comments had disappeared. I checked my spam—it was the usual nonsense, which is to say, a few random porn sites sandwiched between interminable comments about ‘Amazingness’, ‘Sensationalness’, and ‘Phenomenalness’ all posted by people purporting to represent trailers, RVs, campers, sprint vans, conversion vans, van windows/doors/trim repairs, and every possible thing that could relate to RVing or camping, as if I’d ever do ANY of that. Then I checked my TRASH folder and discovered A LOT of comments from legitimate followers that had somehow ended up there. I think I restored all of them, but I can’t be sure, because the majority of the RV-obsessed comments, aside from the ones that somehow got into my spam folder, are in the trash. And these sites are posting literally every five minutes—there were over 5 pages of trashed comments just for Thursday alone to work through! But I think what happened is that I was forced to switch from the WordPress app to something called Jetpack, and that seems to be when the comments started to get screwy. So I’m keeping my eye on things, and I’ll be checking regularly to make sure my friends don’t end up with the trailer trash. (And please please don’t use the words RV, camper, trailer, van etc. in your comments or they might end up in spam!)

Creative Wednesdays: At The End Of It All Reviews

I’m feeling really great right now because there have been several reviews for At The End Of It All and so far they’ve been extremely positive! If you’d like to read some, you can go to this fantastic blog Myths of the Mirror and read what D. Wallace Peach, the well-known author and blogger had to say in her February reviews: https://mythsofthemirror.com/2023/03/01/february-book-reviews-4/

You can also read about what Gord Jones, a Bookland Press colleague and author of the novel Predators And Prey, had to say here: http://www.theworldofgord.com/2023/03/at-end-of-it-all-stories-from-shadows.html

And then of course there are Twitter reviews:

And here’s what some people had to say on Amazon:

It’s a genuine thrill to know that your writing is having an impact on people, and I thank everyone who’s left a review from the bottom of my heart!

Smells Like Teen Syrup

On Thursday, I went out shopping. Thrift store shopping because this month is ‘Cabin Fever’ month at the antique market, which means most of the booths, including mine, are on discount to encourage people to come out even when the weather is crappy. Sales have been good—or I should say, stock has been moving, because between the commission the market already takes combined with the discount of 20% that I agreed to, I needed to do a little buying. So I headed into town to Goodwill. It was absolutely pouring rain, in keeping with the ‘weather is crappy in February’ theme (three days before it was a blizzard), and I ran into the store, soaking wet. After taking a turn around the metalware section, I headed for vases. A few months ago, I found a vase at a different thrift store, and recognized it as something I’d seen at the market before—turned out it was a Chinese vase from the late 1800s and I resold it for $300—not bad considering I’d paid $5 for it—AND had a coupon. So I’m convinced that the same thing will happen one day, just like I’m convinced every time I play the lottery that I’m going to win, but I never do and I’m always disappointed. And on Thursday, I was not only disappointed but also disgusted. Why? Because I was looking through the vases and turning them over to see it there were any interesting makers marks, as one does, when I picked up a small urn that looked like it might be satin glass. As I flipped it over, suddenly my hand felt…wet. Something had dripped out of the vase and onto ME. And it wasn’t water. No, it was some kind of weird oil. AND IT SMELLED. I immediately went to the cashier, holding my hand in the air:

Me: Do you have any paper towels? Something just dripped onto my hand from that vase over there.
Cashier: No, sorry.
Me: Nothing? Like Kleenex or wet wipes? Seriously? It’s BURNING.

He grabbed me a couple of tissues and passed me a pump bottle full of hand sanitizer. And as I cleaned myself off, I realized that the smell was kind of perfume-y, but not the good kind of perfume. The smell was more like if you said to an AI, “Design me a perfume that smells like maple syrup and gingerbread” and it gave you a bizarre approximation of what it THOUGHT that was. Or like when you walk past the Yankee Candle store in the mall, and the mixture of scents is initially sweet then REALLY off-putting. And I had to keep shopping with this weird, expired candle/moldy syrup smell on me until I got home.

Once I was home, I washed my hand very vigorously with soap. I dried off and checked but it was still really pungent. I took off my rings and washed them too, but it didn’t help. That night, I had a long bath, and when I got into bed, I shoved my hand in Ken’s face.

Ken: What are you doing?!
Me: IT STILL SMELLS!
Ken: Yes, it does. Please get your hand away from me. It’s like a candle that no one wants burning in their house.
Me: I KNOW!!

On Friday, the scent was still very strong, despite me having washed my hands several times and soaking my hand in wine, which is totally something that normal people do. And then I had a bath again on Friday night, but every time I waved my hand near my face, I could still smell the combination of old gingerbread and expired maple syrup. Sure, it was getting fainter, but how the f*ck was it still lingering?! Was it the cockroach of smells? On Saturday afternoon, Ken and I were out, and I held my hand up to his nose:

Me: It’s still there!
Ken: Get it away from me!
Me: You are SO mean. “Meh, don’t make me smell you!” What a baby.
Ken: Is this going to be a forever thing? Like, you will always smell this way? Because…
Me: That’s not very nice.
Ken: And neither is the way your hand smells.

I have scrubbed it and scrubbed it, and even as I write this, if I put my hand up close to my nose, I still get a faint whiff of that oil. But I don’t feel quite so bad tonight though, because Ken just made coffee and it smells even worse. Maybe if I rub the grounds into my fingers…

Here’s a picture of Ilana in a box because a picture of my hand is nowhere near as cute:

In other news, my new short story collection At The End Of It All came out last Tuesday, as you might have read, and I was completely floored when I saw that it debuted at Number 1 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases Chart. And it stayed at Number 1 for most of the day before being supplanted, so despite reeking like the corpse of a gingerbread man who has been embalmed in maple syrup, I was pretty excited. I know a few of you have started reading it—I hope that if you like it, you can give it quick review. It would mean a lot.

A Novel Idea

As you may or may not have known, I haven’t been working at the antique market since before Christmas. I didn’t really specify why—it was mostly because I haven’t had much time to write, and I had a new novel idea brewing in my head that I really needed to get done. So I took a six week leave. Well, I asked for a leave and they told me I’d have to just quit, so I did, but then a couple of weeks ago, I was asked to come back. And I am. On Monday. And not a moment too soon, because on Friday, I finished the book. I initially felt like I powered through this one, but I worked on the last novel pretty much once a week until it was done. So technically, this one probably took me the same amount of hours, except that I wrote about 2000 words almost every day since January 2. It’s called Charybdis—yes, like the whirlpool monster from Greek mythology and it’s a gothic thriller.  I’m super happy with it. I like to finish a chapter or two and let Ken read it first for feedback, but this time, as I got close to the end and started explaining to him what was going to happen, he said, “Stop. Don’t tell me. I want to read the rest of it in one chunk and find it for myself. I want to be surprised.” And that was fine, but then the other day, I was driving on the highway and the weather was shitty, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I crashed my car and died, he would NEVER KNOW. And it would haunt him for the rest of his life. So I started trying to summarize the rest of the book in my head VERY succinctly, so that I could whisper it to him as they were loading me into an ambulance or whatnot.

But then, after I had finally come up with a pretty good synopsis of the ending for him, I started struggling with the plot a little, trying to make it both suspenseful, twisty, but logical. I literally lay awake in bed for hours, trying to put all the pieces together in a way that made sense, and once that happened, I completely changed what I’d thought I was going to do (because I’m a pantsing plotter), and then I had to re-summarize the whole ending AGAIN just in case I got hit by a forklift or something. So as you can see, I’m exhausted. If only there was a place where I could sit and rest…

Seriously. Was there no thought AT ALL put into this sign? If I’m sedated, why would I BE DRIVING?!

And here’s something really weird that happened last week. I looked out the window at my balcony, and I yelled for Ken. He came slowly ambling in (because no matter how much I yell, he never runs), and I pointed at several small pieces of blue and green paper:

Me: How did that paper get up here? It wasn’t there yesterday.
Ken: That stuff is all over the neighbourhood. It’s like someone shot off a confetti cannon. There’s a gold paper star right in the middle of our back yard.
Me: AWW. That’s kind of nice. But strange.
Ken: Maybe they all flew out of a recycling truck that drove by very fast.
Me: I think you’re reaching. Let’s just call it magic.

In other news, I just found out that my first novel Smile is under contract with my Canadian publisher to be translated and published in Georgia. And every time I tell people that, they say “Great, y’all!” No, not Georgia the state, Georgia the country. And what language do they speak in Georgia? Georgian, of course. It’s due to be released this summer. Maybe I should buy a confetti cannon. Now that I’m going back to work, I can afford one.

Creative Wednesdays: My Spooky Six Interview with Willow Croft

Thanks to my good friend Willow Croft of Willow Croft: Bringer of Nightmares and Storms for her unique and very fun interview with me for The Horror Tree’s Spooky Six Interview Series. I hope you enjoy finding out more about me, especially the reason why I never dangle my arm off the bed. You can read it here on The Horror Tree!

Jan-uary Ads

On Friday, I was surfing through ads on Facebook Marketplace and I saw something that made my heart soar. No, it wasn’t a clock. It was, in fact, an ad for a cabinet, but it wasn’t the cabinet I was taken with. I’ve become so used to people who can barely put two sentences together online, let alone describe a product they’re selling with any accuracy at all, that this ad description almost made me weep:

Capacious?! And an example in another colour for inspiration? I have found my people!

I immediately followed this seller and took a look at some of her other ads. One in particular touched my heart: “The camera doesn’t do the colour justice; see the close-up picture of the fabric juxtaposed against white paper for a more accurate sense of the colours.” She used a SEMI-COLON. And JUXTAPOSED things. Why can’t everyone be so literate AND courteous? Prior to Friday, I had become inured to the lack of simple spelling, punctuation, and sloppy descriptions that are par for the course on online buy and sell sites, particularly with a highly rated seller named ‘Jan’. The majority of Jan’s ads are an enigma. Yesterday, she was advertising “Decorations Puts”, which I can only assume means ‘decorative pot’, but with Jan, you never know—it could be some kind of insult or a strangely worded command. And right before Hallowe’en, this was a group of things she was trying to offload:

Now, call me crazy, and a lot of people do, but I don’t think that particular Hallowe’en staff deserves even minimum wage—I mean, they all look half in the bag. I appreciate that she managed to spell both outdoor and chair correctly, and I love that she named the bank:

Buyer: Hi, I’m here for the piggy bank.
Jan (cradling it in her arms): His name is PETE.
Buyer: Um, ok.
Jan: SAY IT. SAY THE NAME.
Buyer: …Pete?
Jan: MR. BANK TO YOU.

But I have no idea what ‘2 landre’ basket is, except ‘landre’ is French for ‘moor’, so I can only assume these baskets are to be used in gothic novels by heartbroken heroines who wander the moors in torrential downpours, kind of like an umbrella but with many holes. Sadly, it seems that Jan is almost as misguided in her efforts as this coat she’s currently trying to hawk:

I can imagine that living with Jan is an ongoing adventure, trying to decipher whatever madness comes out of her mouth, because if she’s this bad at written English, how on earth does she speak?!

Jan’s husband: Hey Jan, where are you off to?
Jan: Gone to stone. Bach will eat moussaka.
Jan’s husband: Delicious. Or terrifying. Only time will tell.

But at least Jan isn’t as morbid as this person, who’s selling Vintage Death. And I was like, who the hell takes a picture with some alive family members and some who look VERY DECEASED? I was sure those two Scottish children were just sleepy from the photographer taking so damn long to get the shot. But then I did some research on Victorian death photography and it turns out they REALLY ARE DEAD. And everyone else in the photo just looks casual, like “Och, it’s a lovely wee day for a pic of the fam. Come on, Mam. Gi’ us a wee smile. Let Dead Robbie lean on you so he don’t fall over.” Victorians. I’m currently writing a Gothic thriller called Charybdis (based on a short story in my new upcoming collection) that partly takes place in the Victorian period so I can’t wait to find a way to fit this bizarre practice in.

New Year, Same Me

It’s New Year’s Eve as I write this. I’m feeling slightly nauseated, not because I’ve been drinking—I mean, it’s only 11 o’clock in the morning after all. No, it’s because Ken decided to run some errands, and right before he left, he made himself a cup of coffee because he obviously HATES ME. The smell has permeated the house, reaching right into my office, and now I understand how the woman feels who posted this ad on Facebook Marketplace:

I don’t know what her husband did to her that he no longer deserves a wet/dry shop vac, but I’ll bet it involved a percolator. So right now, my house smells like a skunk died in the kitchen, and I’ve taken futile refuge in my office to think about the new year ahead. I never make New Year’s resolutions, as I’ve said before– mostly because if I want to change something about my life, I do it when I think of it, not on some arbitrary and imaginary date line. But still, the moving forward of time does give one pause, and by “pause” I mean “let’s stop and think about what the f*ck we’re doing and do we want to keep on doing that?” So here are a couple of things I will most likely be doing in 2023:

1) I will finish the book I’m currently writing by the end of February. I have to, because I quit my job at the antique market to focus on it. Also, the antique market was no longer a fun place to work, and Ken and I promised each other that when we retired, we would only work at jobs we enjoyed doing. Not that I didn’t enjoy the work I did BEFORE I retired, but moving forward, I will only work at things I really, REALLY enjoy, like driving a forklift around the neighbourhood helping people move picnic tables or whatnot, or petting kittens and puppies. And writing. Writing is definitely something I enjoy. The new book is called Charybdis and it’s a gothic thriller that takes place in two different time periods involving a little-known reclusive Victorian poet and the modern-day graduate student who’s researching her life. What horrors will she discover? If you know anything about me at all, you’ll know there will be several! And then, once Charybdis is done, I’ll be starting on the third book in The Seventh Devil trilogy. Book 2, The Devil You Know, will be out this summer, and Book 3 will be called The Devil You Don’t. And of course, there’s At The End Of It All, which will be out in February and I can’t wait for you to read it. I love writing short stories, and I already have some more stories in the planning stages, which is to say I have notes on my phone like ‘laces where joints are supposed to meet’ and ‘Glitter for Brad’ and I have no idea why I wrote that down but it’ll make a great story once I figure it out.

2) I will travel more. I will have to do this spontaneously, because whenever I PLAN to travel, I instantly regret making travel arrangements and would rather just stay home.

Me: But what’s the use of being retired if I can’t travel?
My mind: Where do we want to go?
Me: I don’t know. Somewhere fun.
My mind: Home. Home is fun.
Me: No, NOT HOME! We need to see more of the world!
My mind: We’ve already seen plenty. The world is too scary now.
Me: Sigh. You have a point.

3) I will buy more clocks if I want to. You can’t stop me, KEN. In honour of clocks, I promised to show a picture of my favourite:

But I WILL make Ken a deal. I’ll stop buying clocks if he stops drinking coffee (at least in the house). Tick tock…

Anyway, Happy New Year. Let’s hope 2023 is a little more sane that the last few years.