Other than my Dark Origins post in collaboration with Writing to be Read later this month, this is my last post for 2023.
Having started 2023 with my husband in hospital with a venous sinus thrombosis and ending it with both my sons undergoing major 4-hour surgeries, I feel I need a break. I will be back on 8 January 2024. I thank all of you, my blogging family, for all you support, reads and comments during the course of this year.
For this last Thursday Doors post of the year, I am sharing the gingerbread and chocolate house display I created during Covid. Some of you have seen it before, but it is very cheering and worth re-sharing. PS, its a South African Christmas display so you won’t see any snow or ice. My little joke: These are the houses that Robbie built.
Chocolate Swiss Chalet with Jelly Bean fairiesGingerbread chapel with Daffodil fairiesWhite chocolate house with Jelly bean fairy on a swingMilk chocolate house with an autumn fairy (this fairy was dedicated to Miriam Hurdle’s granddaughter, Autumn). I interviewed Miriam this week about her lovely children’s book, Tina lost in a crowd. If you missed it, you can read the interview here: https://writingtoberead.com/2023/12/13/growing-bookworms-guest-post-with-childrens-author-poet-and-memoirist-miriam-hurdle-growingbookworms-childrensfiction-readingcommunity/Gingerbread mansion with Rose fairies. Can you see their pints of Guinness. Another little joke. Milk chocolate house with fairies swimming in the pool
The house below is my niece’s contribution:
Gingerbread house created by EmilyThis is the complete display.
You can choose any one of the following options. If you feel exceptionally inspired, feel free to write more than one piece, or get them all together in one. The choice and creativity is yours,
Choose two people, concepts or theories which are opposites of each other. Write a dialogue, two paragraphs or two stanzas to bring out the perspective of each side.You can use a conflict, war or a debate as a backdrop.
Choose the above image as your inspiration.
Weave in the two lines from the poem given above in your piece – be it poetry or prose. Give due credit to the poet.
Colleen provided a beautiful picture for this week’s Tanka Tuesday. Sadly, it doesn’t really fit into a boiling hot South African heat wave pre Christmas period. So … I picked my own picture to write a poem about. This picture also works for Terri’s red and green holiday colours Sunday Stills challenge.
This is the second last Thursday Doors challenge for 2023. I am taking the opportunity to share a few night time doors and a through the door picture. You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2023/12/07/military-stuff/
Veranda dining area at Madikwe Hills towards the lounge and bar area.
Reception area at Madikwe Hills at night
This is a picture of TC having coffee in the coffee shop at the hospital on Tuesday. I took it through the glass doors of the cake display cabinet.
This is a clip of a leopard tortoise sighting we had during our recent visit to Madikwe Game Reserve:
This is a YT short of a ground squirrel which I thought was very cute:
The Evil You Choose by Dan Antion
What Amazon says
The Evil You Choose
Zach Amstead has kept his ability to participate in lucid dreams a secret for over fifty years However, in the high-tech world of the 21st century, he has been discovered by an FBI Special Agent who has a corrupt agenda and who is willing to employ illegal tactics while working toward his goal.
Thomas Slocum gives Zach a choice – cooperate in an illegal operation or be treated as a terrorist. Slocum’s plan puts Zach on a collision course with organized crime leaders, a corrupt politician and brings innocent people into dangerous situations. Worse, the FBI process which allowed Slocum to uncover Zach’s abilities threatens to expose the abilities of his best friend, Billy.
Zach must get ahead of the FBI in a precarious race. He must protect Billy, and he must choose which criminals he can trust.
My review
The Evil You Choose is the second book in the Dreamer’s Alliance series and focuses on Zach and Billy as older retired men who have developed their different abilities over the years, and amended their lives accordingly.
Billy, in particular, is very interesting as he lives largely ‘off the radar’ but has advanced technology at his fingertips to investigate and learn about anything he wants too. I liked seeing how Billy’s intelligence had developed and how he ran rings around the FBI and the ‘powers that be’.
This book introduced a new character, Thomas J Slocum, an FBI agent with a personal agenda. Mr. Slocum has come across records from Zach’s time at the Pathway School and learned about his lucid dreams. With his access to information due to his job and position, he has learned interesting information about Zach’s movements and formed his own conclusions about the reasonableness and possibility of Zach’s lucid dreams. He uses this knowledge to coerce Zach into working for him. His aims are to investigate certain well connected crime families, in particular the DeLitos who are a part of Zach’s past, and bring them, and their government connections to justice. Mr. Slocum’s primary aim is to push his own career goals. There are others involved, however, who have their own, different personal agendas.
Zach believes he has no option but to assist Mr. Slocum and he engages the assistance of Billy, his brother, Mike, and his daughter, Abbie, to try to stay one step ahead of both the FBI and the crime families he is being forced to spy on.
I enjoyed the development in Abbie’s character and abilities in this second book. I’m feel certain her role in the series is going to increase and become more important.
The story is engaging and fast paced and although the story line of the FBI exploiting people with unusual abilities is not new, Zach’s lucid dreams is certainly a fresh angle for me and makes the entire story interesting and unusual.
This week: Your writing invitation is to compose a series of three dodoitsu.
“The dodoitsu is a Japanese poetic form developed towards the end of the Edo Period, which came to an end in 1868. As with most Japanese forms, the dodoitsu does not have meter or rhyme constraints, focusing on syllables instead.”
WritersDigest.com
Below you will find three kigo phrases that pertain to the northern hemisphereand the southern hemisphere (5 syllables each). Use one kigo phrase in each of your three poems.
#1: “early winter dusk”
#2: “chilly north winds blow”
#3: “warmth around the hearth”
For the southern hemisphere:
#1: “dusk in the garden”
#2: “fine weather bird songs”
#3: “early summer clouds”
Please write each of your dodoitsu with this syllable count: 7-7-7-5.
The amazingly talented Resa McConaghy, costume designer and “Art Gowns’ creator extraordinaire, has created the most splendid post about my historical novel, A Ghost and His Gold. It has photographs and drawings and is an incredible exploration of the history in words and pictures.
Francesca Clark-Bartlett, wife of the American Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, seeks more power than she already has. Meanwhile, the attractive yet naive Melissa Iverson wishes she had never inherited her family’s vast fortune.
After they both become entangled with a 44-year-old, womanizing British intelligence agent, the two women find themselves in a web of deception and mystery. Threatening letters, dark family secrets and connections to persons of power all tell them that the path they tread is wrought with danger.
Daniel Kemp’s Once I Was A Soldier is a thriller brimming with international intrigue, and a story of poignant self-reflection.
My review
This is the second book in the series that starts with What Happened in Vienna, Jack? The author does a good job of connecting the main character in this second book to the same main character in the first book. Terry Jefferies aka Patrick West, is now middle aged, but is still working for British Intelligence under men who are devious and happy to set him up and misuse him for their own advantage. He has become a womanizer with an active service role that involves heavy drinking and seducing various women ‘of interest’ to the British authorities. Terry is a far less likeable character in this book than its predecessor, but the odd memories and backflashes to his younger days and his Irish love interest from book 1, did allow me to like him a little and feel sorry for what a poor example of a man he’d become. Terry is actually a victim in this series as his employers keep him in the dark about a lot of essential information which is only disclosed slowly as the story progresses.
Melissa Iverson is a spoiled rich kid who is hell bent on getting her own way at any cost. She is instrumental in the death by suicide of her father, following which she heartlessly retrenches the elderly couple who have worked for her family their whole lives and sells the family property. It is impossible to like Melissa as she is so selfish and heartless, she literally throws the Spencer’s out on on the street. Subsequent to her father’s death, and even before, she has spent her life hopping from bed to the next and, given that this book is set in an earlier more conservative time, she suffers several consequences as a result of her rash and uninhibited sexual behaviour. It is impossible to like Melissa and so even when she turns on the ‘poor unloved girl who just wants to be looked after’ act, I was not able to feel sorry for her. I thought the ‘setting up’ of her character was well done by the author and aided the inevitable clever twist at the end of the story.
The other important character is another spoiled and selfish woman called Francesca Clark-Bartlett, wife of the American Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Melissa and Francesca are connected through society and Melissa published a book written by Francesca about her father. Terry’s employers need information about Francesca and her husband and Terry is sent to America to seduce her. Francesca is not the sort of woman anyone could seduce, but she is happy enough to exploit Terry, whom she find attractive, sexually and also introduce him to her circle of sad, sexually deprived friends. Terry is happy to oblige and a part of the book is devoted to his erotic engagements with Francesca and her friends.
Melissa starts receiving letters threatening her life and immediately reaches out to Terry which whom she has had a previous week long affair. He goes over to America to assist with finding the potential killer and becomes involved again with Melissa.
The story is involved and you have to pay attention while reading as the lives and circumstances of these two women unfold and their relationship with each other is revealed. Terry is injected into all of this intrigue with little knowledge of the real stakes. It makes for an intriguing and fast paced story with an unexpected and exciting ending.
It can be hard to create well-rounded, real-seeming characters. However, once you know what they would do in random circumstances, writing their stories gets easier. I offer up this writing exercise. From the point of view of a character, write a journal entry. It’s even better if this journal is outside the timeline of your story.
Not Just for Writers! If you are not a writer, pick a character from any story that you like. If you like to cook, dish up something you think the character would like. If you paint or draw, sketch out the character’s favorite room or place. Or even draw the character. You get the idea — make whatever you create something related to that character. Then tell me what you’re going to do in a comment. Or better yet, do your own blog post about it, and please link back to this one.
For my own response to this challenge I decided to write a journal entry for Daphne Moultrie from my “A Medium’s Peril” series. My image collage below would be an “art” response to the challenge, with Daphne’s new gown and the pie she made.
The artwork
Picture caption: A bunch of red roses on a cross shaped grave within a cemetery filled with similar cross shaped graves.
This artwork is going to evolve into the cover of my forthcoming collection of paranormal, historical stories called And, the Grave Awaits.
This is an extract from the Journal of Kate Henderson from The Soldier and the Radium Girl.
From the journal of Kate Henderson
I am all alone in the house tonight. I could have gone to a dance with Charlotte and some of the other girls, but I didn’t want too. I am very sad, and I do not want my melancholy to spoil their fun. The newspaper headlines seem to get worse every day and I don’t know if Jake is wounded or gassed, or even dead.
There was no telegram for me today, but I think it is too soon. If there is bad news, it will only come tomorrow or the next day.
My curtains are open, and a lovely breeze is coming through my open window. It is heavy with the scents of damp earth and blossoms. The lights of the town twinkle in bright lines in the darkness and I can hear faint strains of music. It is so peaceful and pleasant. Such a striking contrast with what I’ve read about life for our boys in the trenches.
Jake doesn’t say much in his letters about the conditions, but Grace tells me her brother’s letters are full of complaints about the poor conditions of the dugouts.
“Gilbert said the first thing they did when they first arrived was to clean the place up and get it as sanitary as possible. He says there are frequent inspections from battalion, regiment, and brigade officers to enforce the requirements for good sanitation. It’s a good thing as it will help stave off diseases,” Grace said.
“He says life is a constant battle against the endless mud and water.”
My days in the studio are busy but the working conditions are pleasant. The big windows let in lots of light and the girls are cheerful and good company. I almost feel guilty that I have such an interesting and safe job, compared to Jake who is fighting in France.
I wonder where Jake is now and if he is safe and well. Is he thinking of me? I wish he was here.
My Dark Origins post today is a fun war book quote quiz. Do go over to Writing to be Read and test your knowledge. I will share the answers later this week.
Thank you for hosting, Kaye Lynne Booth.
Wishing all my American friends a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.
Your writing invitation is: Compose a series of three tanka:
Below you will find the three kigo phrases (five syllables each). You can use them as the “turn lines” or “pivots” (third lines) for each of your three tanka, or as the first line of your tanka.
You must use one kigo phrase in each tanka as either the first line or the pivot line in each of your three tanka poems.
I used:
The first month of hail, Advanced spring garden, Gather around braais.
I love this idea, Colleen. I also added to Robbie Kigo poems.
roberta-writes.com 