Simple Beauty

The greatest beauty is in the simplest things.

Two Sentence Tuesday -- A Great Read

What a great read.
I've just finished reading Invisible Boy by Cornelia Read. It was witty, passionate, gripping, taut, and sad all at the same time.
I generally don't read murder mysteries although I do enjoy them. This one came to me through a contest held by the gracious and talented Women of Mystery. I am so tickled my name was drawn.
I'd been looking forward to it since I won several months ago, but there were books ahead of it so it waited patiently on the TBR pile.
I am so glad it's number came up.

Two sentences:
"I finally slept okay, considering.
Dean woke up at dawn, his circadian rhythm still governed by some lingering neurochemical trace of childhood heifers and cornfields."

-Invisible Boy, Cornelia Read (Grand Central Publishing 2010)

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As for me, well, yes I've been writing. I changed my approach on Dead Broke after realizing I needed another major character and that it required, at least for now, a prologue.
The problem is my new character doesn't want to do anything. She didn't do much alive and she is reluctant to change now that she's dead.


I am trying to forge ahead in hopes that she will blossom. I am sure she wants to.

Here are two from the prologue:

"The Guild Mother crossed the name off her list.
"We did as we could. Miracles are up to someone else."
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Thanks for being here. For more or to get in on the fun please see the Women of Mystery.

Gratitude Monday -- Alberta Summer

It's summer in Alberta and that means our provincial flower, the wild rose, is in bloom.
Our summer is all too brief. I'm happy it's here and I'm doing my best to show my gratitude by enjoying it as I can.

Photo-Finish Friday -- Friends

Cats just love my husband. He loves them right back despite his allergy.
The cat next door, Toad, spent a winter's afternoon looking at him with unmasked adoration as he cleaned the windows.
Click to enlarge and you'll see how taken Toad was.

Tuesday Offerings- Begin Again Edition

Cold and rigid, like my WIP.

It's Two Sentence Tuesday time and I'm back with a bit of work.
Last week I didn't play along, not even at home, because I was a bit played out from getting a manuscript ready for betas. A Fly on the Wall is in their tender hands now. All I can do is wait. And write something else, of course, to keep my mind off it.

I'd set aside my current WIP some time ago to concentrate on AFOTW. By the time I dusted off the file again Dead Broke was cold and rigid.
I re-arranged a few things and it helped. Then I decided I needed to start over so I killed off three of the four chapters one morning. Later than day I resurrected them. I realized my approach had been wrong all along and I needed to back up and change perspective. Some bits in the chapters could be made to fit.
I've done a bit of writing on it, but mostly I've been thinking and sometimes rubbing my hands together as I giggle maniacally over an idea.

Ahh, it's good to be creating again.

From Dead Broke:

"The last bit out loud was clearly for my benefit. The carp tipped his fedora to me and swam away."

I spent many an hour on my deck these last few days enjoying the sunshine and a good book. The book is Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air. It's set in the mid-70s at a radio station in Yellowknife, NWT. Hay brings the station, the people, and the north alive in her book and I found it captivating.
Two sentences:
"But she discovered soon enough. The enmity of newsmen is no small thing."
- McClelland & Stewart, Emblem Edition (2009)
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Thanks so much for reading me. Two Sentence Tuesday is the brainchild of the Women of Mystery. Slip on over there for more.

Gratitude Monday--Bobbing Along Edition

It was a glorious Sunday. The last day of spring. We spent it as we've spent many a Sunday morning lately. Fishing.
The small lake we've been going to is not much bigger than a pond. It's in a hollow beyond a hay field. It's safe, protected, and often still.
An osprey guards it and has a nest high atop a spruce tree along the wooded south shore.
We hear birds call, a family of ducks patrols the south, a loon nests along the west edge.
Fish jumped. Huge ones and small ones and many in between.
We tried fly fishing, I did some regular casting, and we trolled along as we let the canoe take us where the lake's current thought we should be.
They taunted us, these trout, with their jumps and twists. It was their home and they called the shots.
We were just happy to be out on the lake.

Photo-Finish Friday -- Life Goes On

An ordinary day in Santa Clara, Cuba.

Enlarge the photo and you'll see laundry on the second floor and a woman hanging out the wash on the top floor.
This building is across the street from one of the most sacred sites of the Revolution. It looks over the wrecked train that Che Guevara toppled to cut off supplies to the military. Castro entered Havana a few days later.
Life goes on.