Crime of Fashion by Chautona Havig My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is one of the few mysteries I have read in which I did not guess the villain ahead of time. I did wonder, about ten pages before the denouement, but it seemed so unlikely! I like this series. It’s clean (I mean, well-written without a lot of furbelows) and entertaining, and the characters have depth to them. You can understand their motivations. Many of us want to be as independent and free-spirited as Alexa. Do keep reading the series! In subsequent books, we begin to understand how she became the person she is. View all my reviews
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Why Write Right Now?
When I was a little girl, growing up out in the country, I read a lot. (I believe that if you listen, you can hear my mother laughing hysterically.) I read a LOT. I liked to be outside, though. I tamped down nests for myself in the hayfield and hid there, reading. I piled up leaves around me like walls and read in my little leaf house. I read while swinging on our backyard swingset (So why can’t I read while I use the treadmill?) and laying in the sun on the beach at the lake. My sister and I created our own library. We had a lot of books, so Dad made us shelves and we stamped and put cards and pockets in all the books. I still have some of those books. I read a LOT. And I knew that someday, I would be a writer. I wrote poetry and little stories even then, but someday I was going to be a real writer. Mysteries, like Carolyn Keene, or maybe something along the lines of Anne of Green Gables or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or Laura Ingalls Wilder. My tastes were eclectic. Then I grew up. I married Read More
How to get old people to talk to you
When I worked with elderly people, especially retired farmers or the veterans of WWII, I used to urge them to write or tell their stories to someone, because they would be of interest to future generations. None of them were enthusiastic about the idea. Some found the task overwhelming. That much concentrated mental exercise can be exhausting. Some of them just didn’t believe that they had anything interesting to say – no one would care. Some were too sad or too bitter to review it. Some of them felt that it was none of my business. 😉 A note here: I worked for an agency that provided care for elderly people. For the purpose of this article, I am talking about men and women who are over 90, usually in need of some physical or medical assistance and often living alone in their own homes or in assisted living facilities or nursing home. Comfortable company is a blessing to them, and they are glad to have someone to talk to, but conversation is often difficult. When you talk to an elderly person in this situation, remember that you are talking to an intelligent adult, addressing them with dignity and respect, Read More
Life
My English teachers always told us: write what you know. Even then, I thought that was a silly thing to say to 14 year old kids, since they have limited experience. I did better writing about things I WANTED to know. My imaginings were much more interesting than my ho-hum reality. In the many years since then (pick a number between thirty and forty), I have experienced enough life to inspire a hundred novels. My Swedish Minnesota roots go waaaaayy deep, but after I was married, we lived in many places. My husband was in the Air Force, so a few of those moves were military transfers, but most of it was just my husband’s nomadic impulses. In twenty years of marriage, we lived in 22 houses. It was mostly just local moves, and as long as our family was together, it was okay. As David said, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” We lived in beautiful places. In those places, I made friends and met different people. Some of those people were very different. In Germany, we had lovely neighbors – mostly elderly people who welcomed us warmly, asked Read More
The Other End
A writer weaves stories around the people and events in her life, the things she sees and does. For a while, I was afraid that I would forever write stories about Legos and bicycles and Cub Scouts, but eventually all my sons graduated and went off to college. I took on a part-time job as an in-home caregiver for a company that helps elderly or disabled people stay in their home instead of being forced to move into a facility. The experience was very eye-opening to me. I had never interacted much with people on the other end of the “pro-life” spectrum. They were human, they were alive and they wanted to be treated that way. They did not see themselves as inferior to or less important than people of other ages. I became sensitive to the callous attitudes of the younger generations who say things like, “If I ever get like that, just shoot me.” or “I want to remember them as they were when they were young.” People in this stage of life are just as precious to God as they were as preborn babies. They often need the same kind of care as a baby – being Read More
“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” ― Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter is such a charming name. How could she have possibly written anything other than the gentle children’s stories? To many of us, her life seems idyllic. She was intelligent, well-educated and lived in beautiful places. After a youthful loss, she married later in life and went on to become successful in her lifetime. My sons never fully appreciated Peter Rabbit. I had hoped that Mr. Jeremy Fisher or even Tom Kitten might appeal to their juvenile taste, but they were neither adventurous or disgusting enough for those boys. My youngest granddaughter will sit through a story or two, but she has nice manners and is only four years old.