December 2, 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

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

 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 tem that won an award for Gone, a series of stories on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She delivered the 2018 Mawssey Lectures, All Our Relations. She is of Polish and Indigenous descent.