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Writer in the Garret

~ A writer living one word at a time

Writer in the Garret

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Summer sighs…

31 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Random Thoughts, Uncategorized

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Tags

gratitude, imagination

shallow focus photo of brown spider

Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

I watch a spider hanging from a branch of my avocado tree, following the movement of her body as she spins to repair the web torn when I slid the pot away from the window.  She swings toward a leaf and misses, eases up the filament, swings again. Misses again. “I’m sorry,” I whisper but she doesn’t respond. What would I have her do, shake one leg in outrage? I turn away from her efforts wondering how many times I’ve been the giant in the fairytale, wondering how many small worlds I’ve sent into oblivion, either by accident or design.

 

selective focus photography of house finch perched on bird feeder

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

Sparrows are stopping by for afternoon tea and I take out more water for them. They wait to eat more seed until I distance myself and don’t notice when I sit on the porch bench to watch. I take pleasure in the way they use their wings to push each other away from the seeds, feeling better about the human members of our household who wriggle on our couch vying both for position and popcorn during a movie.

 

animal antenna arthropod background

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com

 

I heard a cricket last night, here early for who knows why. I wondered where it was hiding. The evening air was hot and still. The fountain splashed music and a bird swooped over the yard toward sparrow apartment nests behind the ivy leaves. In spite of the car engines and a blast of The Stones from down the street, I could hear the cricket for just a bit, a little sigh at the passing of time.

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Hot town, summer in the city…

15 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Hope, snark, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

…finish with a hellish cold and call it all shitty.

Nah, not all. June brought Bob’s and my fiftieth anniversary, which we celebrated by taking the train to Glenwood Springs. When in doubt, find water…really, really hot water. We parboiled our way through four days and chugged home, at certain points traveling 25 MPH because the tracks were so hot in the 90-plus temps. We couldn’t risk bending them by going fast. True story.

July brought some rain, some hail, some corn on the cob, some strawberries. Once again I managed to kill numerous plants through a dearth of assiduity. (Hah! I looked it up after I typed it and was right in both spelling and meaning–that I forgot, was gone, was too much of a jerk to follow the watering schedule.)

August brought the cold from hell, simply because my immune system was bored. I’m going to the State Fair to compete in the mucous-producing

short red hair woman blowing her nose

Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

competition. It’s gross, but the sashes are stunning.

I know it’s time to move on because I’m beginning to wish I could wear jeans again. (Aren’t these little life milestones entrancing?) I know I’ll be more creative–as in actually writing, for instance–and life will have more zing, too, when I can crawl back into the jeans.

Maybe next time I’ll torture my remaining readers…are any of you out there?…by writing a take-off on What I Did on My Summer Vacation. Snorking, gagging, and using tissues will be prominently featured.

Doesn’t the woman look cute blowing her nose? You ought to get a load of me.

Cough.

 

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Crawling out of the hole…

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in snark, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

angst

I’ve been hiding in my cocoon of late. Lots of reasons, none lethal, but as spring screws around with brightening the landscape, I’m beginning to peer out at the world. I replaced my lost cell phone (see previous post) and, thanks to the help of my technically more advanced daughter, have managed to get most of the attachments I want to take up residence in the thing. Now all I need to do is to think of something to say.

I haven’t hung out at Wisdom Court much lately. There’s a character knocking at the door to my mind, but she hasn’t yelled loudly enough yet for me to pay her much attention. She’s too cheerful, and I don’t feel like dealing with that at the moment. I’ll let her come in soon, if only because I need writing to take me over again, but it’s cold again today and my study is a pit. I have years’ worth of files to subdue and slip into slots. If I could capture the cat hair festooning  the furniture, I could make an afghan to keep me warm.

I need to send out a newsletter, but am missing an inspiring message. “Please buy my books,” doesn’t cut it. If Spring will finally extend herself into a hug across the land, maybe my limping brain cells will line up in formation and respond with grace instead of the post-winter whine I hear in my head every morning. My brain has shrunk into a petty nitpicker and nothing’s better at killing the creative spirit. (Yes, that’s an excuse for not writing.)

weenmess

And how’s your day going?

 

 

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Happy Halloween Shenanigans…

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

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Posted by Yvonne Montgomery | Filed under Uncategorized

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Free books and a cozy corner…

26 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in e-books, Free Books!, Uncategorized

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…and maybe a slice of pumpkin pie? All sound good to me. Come be a part of our Amateur sleuths Group Giveaway.  Click the link and find 8 Free Amateur Sleuth Mysteries to read. Download any or all.  The deal ends October 2. Happy Autumn!

http://mailchi.mp/ebookdiscovery/8-free-amateur-sleuth-mysteries-ends-oct-2

 

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When less seems like more…

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Eclipse, Life, The sky, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

inspiration

IMG_20170821_114932467_HDR

I didn’t want to drive to Wyoming with 200,000 other hearty souls, so we stayed at home for the eclipse. Here in Denver our image would be about 92.5 percent of a total eclipse and I decided that would be good enough for me.

IMG_20170821_114830694

As the shadow of the moon began to consume the sun, the day dimmed, little by little. We were using a pinhole camera made from a box. Yes, there was the tiny circle with the tiny partial shadow. And then we looked at the sidewalks.

IMG_20170821_114840629_HDR

The closely-spaced tree leaves overhead created small holes, and astronomer bugs had gnawed holes in some of those leaves. The sidewalks were teeming, burgeoning, bubbling with images of the sun made smaller by growing shadows of the moon. We were surrounded by an infinite number of eclipses, and the resulting landscape–moonscape–sunscape showed a new universe at out feet.

It was amazing. It was science. It was magic.

 

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31 Days of Spooky Stuff, October 6: The Uninvited

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Books I like, Ghosts, Gothic, Hauntings, Uncategorized

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Tags

books, horror

One of the inspirations for my Wisdom Court novels is this 1942 novel written by Irish author Dorothy Macardle. It’s a thumping good ghost story that was later adapted to film in 1944.

In this January 9, 2016, review in the Irish Times, author Anna Carey provides an interesting feminist slant to an old form: the haunted house novel.

The Uninvited, by Dorothy Macardle: ghosts of a sensible persuasion

by Anna Carey

This chiller from 1942 is decidely old-fashioned, but the author makes it all enjoyably eerie – and throws in a few pithy social observations as well

Dorothy Macardle: like many other Republican feminists, was appalled by the decision to enshrine the domestic role of women in the Constitution. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, a few years later, she wrote an excellent novel that shows just how unhealthy it can be to idolise women as pure domestic goddessesDorothy Macardle: like many other Republican feminists, was appalled by the decision to enshrine the domestic role of women in the Constitution. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, a few years later, she wrote an excellent novel that shows just how unhealthy it can be to idolise women as pure domestic goddesses

After the Irish Constitution was introduced in 1937, the writer and activist Dorothy Macardle wrote to her good friend, Éamon de Valera, to tell him what she thought of it. “As the Constitution stands,” she wrote, “I do not see how anyone holding advanced views on the rights of women can support it, and that is a tragic dilemma for those who have been loyal and ardent workers in the national cause.”

Macardle, like many other Republican feminists, was appalled by the decision to enshrine the domestic role of women in the Constitution. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, a few years later, she wrote an excellent novel that shows just how unhealthy it can be to idolise women as pure domestic goddesses.

First published in 1942, Uneasy Freehold has been reissued as the second in Tramp Press’s brilliant Recovered Voices series, The Uninvited (its American title). In it, two Anglo-Irish siblings, Roddy and Pamela Fitzgerald, find an enchanting house for sale in Devon called Cliff End. But when they make enquiries about purchasing it, the owner tells them that it’s been empty for 15 years.

Its previous residents were the owner’s daughter Mary, her artist husband Lyn, their small daughter Stella, and Lyn’s model and mistress, Carmel. Mary and Carmel both died tragically at Cliff End, and Stella was brought up by her grandfather. Six years earlier, a couple lived there, but left after having “experienced disturbances”.

Roddy and Pamela are undeterred, but once they’ve moved into Cliff End strange things start to happen. They hear a woman sobbing and see mysterious lights. And then a mist appears, a mist that looks very like a woman with cold blue eyes.

Who exactly is haunting the house? And what does this spirit want with Stella, now a young woman who yearns for the perfect mother she never really knew?

Stella’s fascination with Mary allows Macardle to explore the dark side of the blind veneration of a saintly mother figure. Stella’s bedroom is a Marian shrine – in both senses of the word: “Pale blue walls – her mother’s favourite colour . . . Mary’s pictures – Florentine madonnas; a sketch of Mary as a girl and before it, in a glass vase, one white rose; even a statuette of her mother – a white plaster thing. It’s a culte. Oh the piety, the austerity, the white virginal charm!”

Macardle shows how limiting this cold ideal of virtue can be – and how long its unhealthy effects can linger.

Of course, the ultimate test of a ghost story is whether it’s scary or not. And while The Uninvited is enormously readable and full of nicely spooky moments, it rarely produces the sort of creeping dread triggered by, say, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Demon Lover. This is mostly because the moments of terror are generally balanced by the characters’ sensible and thoughtful discussions of what might be causing them. This may sound tame, but turns The Uninvited into a different yet equally enjoyable ghost story.

Pamela and Roddy become not just the victims of a haunting, but amateur sleuths determined to unearth the source of the mysterious incidents at Cliff End. They put together a dossier on the previous household and bring in friends and experts to help them. I was not surprised that Roddy, putting off writing a book review, wondered “how on earth was I to give my mind to Peter Wimsey and his mysteries while our own diabolical problem was crying out to be tackled?” There’s more than a touch of Wimsey-creator Dorothy L Sayers’s wit and inventiveness about The Uninvited.

In fact, the dark subject matter and the complex issues explored by Macardle, combined with the engaging characters and light touch, make The Uninvited one of the most entertaining Irish novels I’ve read all year.

When de Valera was asked for his verdict on the 1944 film version of The Uninvited, his response was: “Typical Dorothy”. I hope she took it as a compliment.

Anna Carey’s latest novel is Rebecca Is Always Right

Comment to be entered in the Halloween drawing. A signed copy of the Wisdom Court Trilogy: Edge of the Shadow, A Signal Shown, and All In Bad Time, is the prize.

the-uninvited

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Heading for the Gold…

08 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Colorado Gold Writing Conference, Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

autumn, Colorado Gold, RMFW, writers conference

E-book reader with stack of printed books

Colorado Gold, that is. It’s time for the annual gathering of writers at the Denver Stapleton Renaissance Hotel, 3801 Quebec Street, Denver. Tomorrow night, 9/9/16, many authors, including moi, will sign their books from 8 pm to 10 pm. The public is welcome to come see us, ask questions, buy books. Hope to see you there.

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Near the end-end

14 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Uncategorized, Wisdom Court, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

plot elements, writing process

Portrait of crazy stressed young business woman screaming and pulling her hair over white background

No lick and a promise this time. I’ve sent All In Bad Time (Wisdom Court Book III) to beta readers for reactions and commentaries. Until I get feedback, I’m trying to clean up my work area and find and file all the scraps of paper decorating my study.
And how’s your summer going?

The problem with being sort of done with a book is the limbo left behind. I’m still thinking about plot points, still dreaming about scenes, and definitely still waiting to see what kind of comments I get. That’s the scariest part. During all the times I feel I was delusional to become a writer, I’m most convinced when I first show the tender shoots of my prose to someone else. (Can you tell I don’t work with a critique group?) Then I start dreaming about specific words to replace others, curse the plot points I didn’t stress in the “final” draft, and up the amount of antacid to deal with the ball of lead in my gut. Good times.

So, why do I continue to write? I have reasons, most psychiatric, but secretly I yearn for the moments when the world of my book gets several pieces from the universe, all at once. I love the joy of figuring out plot snarls, even as I peer over the edge of the abyss called Stuck In Space. I’m a total sucker for the rare and beautiful moments when characters talk and I just record what they say. I’ve never found any other way but writing to stumble into those highs.

Now, as I have to pretend I live in the real world, my hopes for you writers out there are these: may your words flow smoothly; may you enjoy your work in progress; may you finish with real satisfaction; and, of course, may your work hit the bestseller lists.

Cheers!

 

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Feed Your Head…said the White Rabbit

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

               Colorado Mountains Silhouette During Summer Sunset. Mountains Sunset Scenery.

I just registered for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Writing Conference, September 11-13, at The Westin Westminster. Checking through the list of panels and speakers made me happy.

Top-notch authors, editors, agents and make Colorado Gold one of the very best conferences in the country. We hermit-writers who spend most of our time muttering over plot points in rooms full of books will be able to hang with our own kind, meeting luminaries and not-there-yets. Tales will be told. Libations will be consumed. Fun will be had.

And don’t forget the pitch sessions and critiques with editors and agents. Sign up soon if you’re interested in showing your work to professionals. Those slots go fast.

If you’re interested, check out rmfw.org and get the details and deadlines. Attending the Gold is a great investment in your writing career.

I hope we’ll see each other there.

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Wisdom Court Series

ghost, ghosts, ghost story, thriller, metaphysics, supernatural, women, dreams, accomplishments, opportunities, romance, friendship, dachshund, Boulder, Colorado, Victorian, shadows, creepy, shivers, book, good read,
ghost, ghosts, ghost story, thriller, metaphysics, supernatural, women, dreams, accomplishments, opportunities, romance, friendship, dachshund, Boulder, Colorado, Victorian, shadows, creepy, shivers,

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