Tag Archives: western romance author

Don’t roll your eyes

23 Monday Jul 2018

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I’ve heard the phrase “living your best life” a lot, and I never really gave it much notice. I have to admit, that the people who used that particular phrase tended to be the yoga, green tea type–the ones who drink kale smoothies and run at 6 am.

Not me, in other words.

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Ew.

But lately, I’ve been thinking about what MY “best life” looks like. I’m turning 40 this fall, and I’d heard that when you hit your forties, you just no longer give a crap about other people’s opinions. And I feel that coming on! Women In Their Forties used to seem like a club far in the future, women I had nothing in common with, and suddenly it’s upon me. I’m kind of excited! I feel like I get to play with the big girls now. šŸ™‚

But what do I WANT? What kind of life do I want to live? I have a few personal rules that I’m holding onto that I think help me be the happiest I can be. They might change as I go, but so far, this is what I’ve got:

  1. I’m wearing clothes that fit me well, and I’m not dieting to fit into ANYTHING.
    I think that’s self explanatory. I mean, this is the body I’ve got. I can either enjoy it, appreciate it, and dress it well, or I can be critical of it. I prefer the former.
  2. I’m guiltlessly saying No to the stuff I don’t want to do. That list includes, but is not limited to: volunteer positions I don’t have time for, going out after 8 pm, babysitting, group work, and donating at the cash register.
  3. I‘m taking the time to smell the roses… and the first drafts! I’m lucky enough to be writing for a living, and that doesn’t come easily. I don’t take it for granted. But in all the hustle of making that living, it’s easy to forget to enjoy the process. So I’m reminding myself to have fun with this. I mean, if you can’t have fun when making up stories, then when?

So my personal “best life” might not include kale or yoga, but it does include writing a whole lot of books, holding my family close, and enjoying the ride.

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Don’t roll your eyes. Yes, I hear it. You could paint all of this onto reclaimed wood and decorate your lake house with it. But it’s also sincere.

So what about you? What does YOUR best life look like?Ā 

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The Johns Family

11 Monday Jun 2018

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The other weekend, we went to a local historical park, and they had a caricature artist doing drawings for people, and he was really good!

So the Johns family stood in line for our very own, and this was the result:

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I don’t share photos of my family online, so this is as close as I’ll get to that line. LOL!

In all our goofy glory! ā¤

They politely never speak to us

28 Monday May 2018

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In the spring, I like to sleep with the window open. It’s nice to have a cool breeze and a warm blanket. When it gets too warm, I replace the open window with the blast of an air conditioner, but for a few weeks, it’s the perfect sleeping temperature.

Mr. Johns and I lay in bed talking and listening to the outdoor sounds of our neighbours. We’re in an apartment, so it’s not exactly romantic ambiance, but it’s entertaining. We’re early to bed people, and where we live, it stays light a really long time. (We’re pretty far north.) So other people stay up a lot later with the sun, and their voices will filter over to us.

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We don’t normally hear anything interesting. There will be some teenagers walking down the sidewalk–and that’s normally just laughter and unintelligible banter. Sometimes there will be the murmurs of the neighbours smoking in the evening across the way. It reminds me of our city days, when we used to live in downtown Toronto, and you knew way too much about your neighbours, and politely never spoke to them.

I like that time of day when Mr. Johns and I enjoy that cool breeze. We talk, vent, dream, joke about things that amused us that day… and I sometimes wonder if there are other people with their windows open who listen to the fragments of our conversations, too.

If they do, they abide by the Close Quarters Rules of Etiquette and politely never speak to us.

 

It could change everything

10 Thursday May 2018

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Most of our competition, in my humble opinion, surrounds men. We compete to get male attention, or to keep male attention. Don’t tell me high heeled shoes are for us.

There’s nothing wrong with looking good. I try to look my best, too. So I’m not saying we should all just let it go, but looking at each other as mutually beautiful creatures instead of competition could change a lot for us.

I think writers are naturally competitive–although less with our looks and more with our professional accomplishments. Still, I think the theory applies.

I’ve been practising a different outlook for a couple of years now. When I see another author who has achieved the thing I want most (at the moment,) I pray, “God, thank you for blessing her. Please also remember me.”

Because there is room for more than one beautiful, successful, accomplished woman. In any sphere. If we stop being competition, we become community.

 

My writing buddy

03 Thursday May 2018

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You may recall that I got my little green Quaker parrot a while ago, and he has been settling in ever since. He’s a lot of fun!

He’s also really full of personality and spoiled rotten. He has me home with him all day, so he’s never alone. We have another bird he likes to visit, too, so he’s got lots of interaction. He likes trying any food we eat for dinner, and if we don’t give him any he screams at us and it drives Mr. Johns crazy. So Pichu now has a plate of his own, and we give him a dollop of whatever we’re having so he can eat at the same time, and that seems to have solved that problem.

He’s also smart enough that time outs work. So if he nips or something, he gets a time out. We set the timer on the stove for five minutes and he’s ignored for that amount of time. It’s stopped the nipping, because there is nothing this bird hates more than being ignored. He’s now very gentle. I can hold his beak in my hand, rub his head, touch his feet… He’s very sweet!

So while I write, he’ll either sit on my shoulder, sit on the back of my chair, or sit at his cage. And when he gets bored, he squawks at me until I stop typing and play with him, or he beats up this rag that he likes to play with.

On this particular day, he found my post it notes. I took the picture before he shredded them. šŸ˜‰

 

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He’s got me by the heartstrings! Such a sweet birdie.

Bookish Flirting

30 Monday Apr 2018

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When I was taking my English degree in university, I had this particular English class that had more guys in it than usual. Normally, English classes are chock full of women, but this one had a few different guys, and I met one who started dating. We’ll call him Alpha Guy.

Now, the word “alpha” should be taken with a grain of salt because this was, after all, an English lit course. All the guys I ever met in English Lit courses were brainy and bookish. Well, Alpha Guy was brainy and bookish, but also tall and muscular. There was instant chemistry, and we started dating.

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Now, there was another guy in the class who’ll we’ll call Sweet Guy. He was thin, short, way smarter than the rest of us, and totally interesting. But not as someone I wanted to date. He was shorter than me and of a pretty thin build. I could probably have bench pressed him. He had been really nice to me that semester, but I didn’t think of him as anything more than “that guy who will get an A+ on our next paper.”

Alpha Guy ended up being a massive jerk. We won’t get into that, but before I clued in to exactly how unworthy of my time he really was, he stood me up. We’d made a plan to meet in a certain building at a certain time after our classes were over, and I went there, but he never showed up. I waited and waited, and started to feel stupid.

Then Sweet Guy walked in. I tried to pretend I hadn’t been waiting long, but I must have looked ticked off because Sweet Guy walked up to me and said,

“Are you waiting for Alpha?”

Me: “Yeah, he’ll be here soon, I’m sure.”

SG: “How long have you been waiting?”

Me: “Like, half an hour. Maybe I’ll just go.”

SG: “I gotta tell you… I’d never keep you waiting like that.”

Me: (unsure if I’d even heard him right) “What?”

SG: “I wouldn’t.”

Then he looked me in the eye, gave me this small smile, and walked out. Didn’t turn back. Just walked away. And Sweet Guy suddenly became a whole lot more interesting!

I ended up dumping Alpha Guy (and good riddance!), and Sweet Guy probably went on for his PhD. I don’t know. But IĀ hope he found someone amazing who melted for him and saw the passionate man under that reserve.Ā He deserved that.

Eventually, I would meet Perfect Guy–muscular, sweet, smart, totally in love with me and still is to this day. He wasn’t an English Lit guy, either. He was a computer guy. I married him. ā¤

Victoria_College

University of Toronto: Victoria College

Claire and Frank and Jaimie

28 Saturday Apr 2018

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Any Outlander fans out there? I’m sure there are tonnes of you! I never did get around to watching it until a few days ago when I watched the first episode and then had to go to bed because it was late. I knew a few things about the series (but not enough), so after watching the first episode, I thought, I like the serious and sweet husband, Frank. Is she seriously going to go back in time and cheat on him with a cutie patootie Scotsman??

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Yes, these are the things that over-thinkers worry about. And I was quite worried about it! Because cheaters always think they are deep and complicated people, and they revel in their conflicted feelings. But they aren’t deep. They’re just cheaters. (I have strong feelings about that, you might have noticed.) And I didn’t want Claire to be a cheater! Because if I got invested in a show and found out I couldn’t respect the main character, then I’d be really annoyed.

But everyone was raving about the show, so I decided to look up a few spoilers to put my mind at ease that it wasn’t just a glorified affair. But then I got sucked down the rabbit hole of spoilers because it’s a seriously interesting plot, even when you’re reading spoilers about it, and now I know how the whole series goes, and I’ve ruined it for myself.

Crap.

I need to find a new Netflix show to binge on, and someone needs to remind me not to look up any spoilers.

But I have to know–are there any fans of the show who like Frank better than Jaimie? I haven’t come across any yet, and while I haven’t watched much of the show, I DO like Frank better! He’s more appealing to me, even if he has horrible ancestors.

Opinions, anyone??

The here and now

22 Sunday Apr 2018

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Life never turns out quite like we imagined, does it?Ā I think it would be boring if it did!

I’m a real goal-oriented person. I’m never quite so happy as when I’m aiming at something higher. And when I’m aiming up, I think, “It will be so amazing when I get there! I’ll have really arrived. I’ll be able to sit back and enjoy it.”

But I don’t. I arrive, and then I look around myself and realize, “Huh. Nice view. Not exactly what I thought it would be, though… But you know what? Up there! That’s what I need!”

Sometimes I don’t quite hit the mark, and I’m left a few feet short, feeling frustrated. It wasn’t supposed to end up like that. They say if you aim for the moon, if you miss, at least you land among the stars. But there are millions of light years between stars, my friend! But what can you do? I pin my hopes and all my effort onto the next goal, because… that’s just me.

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While there are perks to being a hard working go-getter, I think there are also perks to being able to sit back and enjoy the here and now, whether it’s a few feet shy of those ambitious daydreams or not. Because at some point, I dreamed of this. Or something very close. I might not always hit the moon, but I’m sure as heck off the ground!

So don’t get me wrong, I’m totally going to keep aiming at the next goal. I mean, why not? It’s fun! It keeps things interesting. And frankly, it’s an integral part of my personality. But sometimes there’s a long work period until you achieve the next level you’re aiming at. Sometimes the moon is so close, yet so far… So I’m going to do my best to enjoy the here and now, too.

Because I do love my life! ā¤ And view from here is gorgeous.

I’m not as mean as I seem

14 Saturday Apr 2018

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It’s hard to explain my job. People don’t know what to expect when you say that you’re a writer. When you tell people that you work from home, they assume that you have the best of both worlds, and that you have time for relaxing, for family, for favours… and you make an income! But that isn’t really true.

I might choose my workload, but that choice is based on how much money I need to make. I don’t get paid by the hour. I get paid when the book the is done. No one cares how many hours it took me to write it, edit it and polish it up. All they care is that I have it done by deadline. (And I always do. šŸ˜‰ )

I don’t have a workplace to come home from. That means it’s hard to tell when I’m busy or free. I’m home. I’m around. For 90% of the population, that means you’re free. If someone works long hours and gets home late, people know to give you a bit of space with your family. “Wow. She must be exhausted. Let’s leave her alone.” But there are no such cues when you work from home. So I have to say it in so many words: “I’m sorry, but I’m really busy. REALLY busy. I’m not going to be available for a while. Maybe a few months.” And that sounds like a brush off–and I get it! I hear the way it sounds, too!

I’m really not as mean as I seem when I say that I’m busy. I’m just… busy. And probably a little overwhelmed, because when I get busy, my family starts getting more demanding of my time, too. And then I have to prioritize my family and my deadlines, and everything and everyone else falls behind them.

I’m not as mean as I seem when I say that I’m busy. I promise.

And for the record? I’m really busy right now.

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My body is betraying me

09 Monday Apr 2018

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I remember when I was twenty-five, when I could strain a muscle and be better two days later. I took that entirely for granted.

About three months ago (or more?), I strained my shoulder typing. I was typing at my new desk and didn’t have a back support yet, and I was reaching too far forward. These things happen. Now, I didn’t exactly stop typing and give it a rest, either. You know me–workaholic that I am–I kept typing. I mean, I have deadlines, and I can’t just decide to take a few days off. That’s not how deadlines are met!

And then there was the fact that my desk was just so pretty, and I didn’t want to ugly it up with the back support. And so I just plunged on, hoping my shoulder would get used to the new position and stop hurting. It did not.

It took about ten days of prescription strength muscle relaxants before the stabbing pain stopped, and then I had to do about four weeks of physiotherapy until my arm stopped aching.

How does that happen?? I feel like my body is betraying me! It should be able to survive a little more punishment than this.

Anyway, I finished my physiotherapy, my shoulder is back to normal, I have my ugly little back support thingy on my chair, and I’m back in good shape.

But still… Why couldn’t I keep my youthful ability to bounce back?

Youngoldwoman