2/12/2023
Hello, Friends,
As you will have seen on the opening page, GETTING A LIFE has a new cover by the fantastic Kelly Carter who also created the print and ebook editions of the book.
Getting to this point has not been easy. Last March my daughter received a diagnosis of breast cancer, so I have been supporting her whenever she needed me. As well, my pain-riddled, depressive brother ended his life in September. He was seventy-nine and very ill, but still, he was the last remaining person in my family besides me to be alive. So I have had a lot of distractions both physically and emotionally over 2024. Fortunately, Ursula has been declared cancer-free now. She has radiotherapy and more immunotherapy to go, while hopefully the chemo is at an end. At any rate, our family is celebrating her renewed health and I anticipate more time to work on my writing.
Hopefully, both versions of GETTING A LIFE will be out in December--not the best time to put it out, but here I am with a completed book. I'm thinking Kobo for ebook and IngramSparks for the printed version. Yes, in print! Using the publish-on-demand (POD) system makes it possible for me to make the book available in print. I hope you're as thrilled as I am that GETTING A LIFE is getting a new life, and will be offered to young adults around the world. To read more about this book, go to Getting a Life above.
So, what happened to MAGNIFICAT: SONG OF JUSTICE? Inanna Publications went into a restructuring this past summer, so the book was postponed to hopefully the spring of 2024. This is the third time books from Inanna have had to be rescheduled since powerhouse-now-deceased editor Luciana died. So I've moved GETTING A LIFE into the spotlight for the moment. By the way, if you're interested in reading MAGNIFICAT, just let me know in the contact form on the last page of this site. I will put you on my email list for updates on what's happening with this adult book so much a labour of love that grew out of my deep interest in Mexico and Central America.
Meanwhile, I'm looking for an editor for the sequel to GETTING A LIFE. I have called it FINDING JAGUAR WOMAN, the code name for Hildie's mom when she was in the liberation army fighting against the tyranny of El Salvador's oligarchy in the 1980s. In this installment, Hildie goes to live with her father's Salvadoran family. She needs to know them and have their love and support again like she did as a small child before she was whisked off to Canada. Most of all, she wants to find out what happened to her parents in the war. Both died, but where and why--and maybe even how? And what made them choose the war over their love for Hildie, their only child? Hildie has lots of questions and she intends to find the answers.
During this time, I will be working on promoting GETTING A LIFE, re-writing whatever needs change in FINDING JAGUAR WOMAN, and doing my own preliminary editing on the recently completed third book of the trilogy, ISSUES OF TRUST.
I hope that your life is full of interesting things to do, as well, to distract you from this darkest time of year in which our creativity at least symbolically goes dormant and works its magic to return in the spring.
Kathleen
26/9/2022
When I was 70, I engaged with a counsellor to discuss the next decade of my life. Moving into one's seventies can be a bit daunting. I made a commitment to continue with my writing and made some headway with my various projects. Not too long ago, I reached 80. So what would I do with this decade (assuming I have a decade)?
Before I answer that question, I need to tell you about several difficult times that have disrupted my writing processes. The first was the death of the editor who had chosen my book Magnificat for publication. Then Covid invaded the world, and Inanna, the small publishing company, ran into the crisis of how to replace a powerhouse like Luciana as well as deal with the economic swings caused by the pandemic. Authors were given the opportunity to try to find another publisher for their works. The ones who chose to remain, like myself, were moved into a long, chronological line for their turns to be published. My book slipped back to fall of 22 then fall of 23. I was dismayed by this situation, as I really don't want this book to be posthumous!
Then, our son who had multiple sclerosis came down with a serious urinary tract infection and was sent by his group home to a hospital teeming with Covid. People with MS have to have their immune systems suppressed, so we were not surprised when he contracted Covid, but hopeful when he seemed to pull through without too much problem. But then long Covid entered, and he gradually moved into a coma and then died at the end of last February. So since then, I've been kind of off track with my writing, although I have written some stories about Karl's remarkable personality and life.
Recently, I realized that I was in a bad space. I sat up as though from a long and miserable sleep to decide that I need to get back in action. I am moving ahead to get my books Soaring with Amelia and Getting a Life back online and in print form as well. I hope to have this process in motion within a few weeks.
Then I will do a revision of Finding Jaguar Woman, the sequel to Getting a Life, and hand it over to an editor. After that, I will tackle the revisions and editing of the third book, Issues of Trust. We'll see how far along I get with these projects. I'm looking forward to the revisions and then working with my editor. The more I can do, the happier I am. And I'll keep writing about Karl, although in shorter stories and as I come to them in my emotions. I understand that many people work to finally be able to enjoy a leisurely retirement from work. I worked to retire so that I could finally write. So I'm looking forward to getting busy again.
I hope to have good news for you in a few months as I move my young adult books along into self-publishing.
I hope that you, too, are finding relief and a new sense of freedom as Covid slows and rules and regulations relax.
Kathleen
1/4/2019
Last fall I joined a reading group that is studying books that contribute to the reconciliation and healing process that has begun in Canada over the past few years. In truth, this process has always been part of the Canadian mosaic, but it has taken the majority of the population a very long time to acknowledge both the necessity and the reality. Our first book was The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King who gave us a history from an indigenous point of view. King's anger used with humour helped us to get an overview of how we as a country got to where we are now as a racist nation.
Our second books was Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga. Talaga relays the stories of seven indigenous young adults who died suspicious deaths in the Thunderbay, Ontario, area where a large school for northern Indigenous students is located. Students attend from a wide array of communities in which no education past eighth grade exist. They board with local families in Thunderbay and experience different levels of care and support. Common to all students is isolation from their families and traditional ways of life. For most, going to high school is their first time in an urban area with all the risks urban life can present.
Talaga painstakingly outlines the life situation of each individual student and makes us keenly aware that the loss of young people is much lower because of intensive care and oversight given by the indigenous school faculty and staff. Nevertheless, even the loss of one student much less seven is too much. She lays a case suggesting that racial hate has motivated these deaths, citing a few cases where students have survived and lived to tell the tale. Seven Fallen Feathers is a must-read for every Canadian seeking to go deeper in their understanding of the shameful racism that belongs to Canadian society. We must read and digest in order to reverse the hatred that lies often under the surface of our society and sometimes erupts into the public eye.
An acclaimed journalist, Talaga was part of a team that won an award for Gone, a series of stories on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She delivered the 2018 Massey Lectures, All Our Relations. She is of Polish and Indigenous descent.
All Our Relations,
Kathleen
PS: My relations, that is ancestors, were of Scottish, English andGerman descent. That is, we were settlers who eventually settled in northern Texas. When I asked my mother if any of our Texas ancestors fought in the USA Civil War, she hemmed and hawed a bit and said she thought our ancestors chose to be part of the "Indian Guard"--that is, those who stayed behind to protect theirs and others' homesteads against the Apaches. So I have a deep recognition now that I owe some compensation to the indigenous peoples. Since I'm in Canada now, my obligation is to support the indigenous peoples in our national process on truth and reconciliation.
20/04/2018
For a number of reasons I am creating a new website. Welcome. Feel free to explore and learn who I am as an author and what my writing is about.
Much of writing is not writing, at least not creative writing. I have spent much of the past weeks researching and composing replies to a very long questionnaire requested by a potential publisher. This activity is not a loss, however, as much as an opportunity to clarify how I understand my novel and how it needs to be published and marketed. I have been increasing and pulling together my network of support that is so essential in presenting my book as a credible and desirable work of art.
Meanwhile, I have to keep up with the work I do in my Canadian Authors Association Writers Circle. Ten pages every two weeks should not be difficult, but my brother and sister writers can be demanding and I find myself not wanting to let them -- or myself -- down! So I go over and over my writing trying to make it as perfect as possible. Once I have written the submission, I try to anticipate what each of the other writers will have to say about this effort and take their concerns into account. Each of us has strengths that we try to impart to the others. Despite my best efforts, they still have lots of suggestions! And I have comments for their submissions too. So reading other submissions is part of the process. I enjoy keeping up with their stories as well as my own.
Then, just to complicate my time management, I am working with an editor to re-tool my second novel, Getting a Life. I love this story and want to give it my best effort.
Then I have executive meetings of the CAA to attend, and the monthly evening program we sponsor. Of course, there are other activities, such as phoning to welcome new members to our branch. Additionally, this year the national writing conference called CANWRITE2019 will take place in Vancouver, so we have lots of extra work to do to make it happen. I know it's going to be a great conference and am looking forward to it.
Oh, and then I have the rest of my life which I'll tell you about another time, or from time to time as events take place.
And next week is the ROOM Feminist Writers conference. I'm signed up for a number of workshops and eager to discover new and exciting ways to write and think about writing, not to mention meeting other writers who have interests similar to mine.
I do eat and sleep. Thank goodness my spouse Ed cooks creatively with a lot of talent for making things taste wonderful!
More later.
Kathleen