Looking at the New Old Days

What I'm reading: 7th Heaven by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro; Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch, by B.J. Daniels; Colby vs. Colby, by Debra Webb

First: Catherine Kean will be announcing her winner after 5 PM today, so there's still time to read her post, leave a comment, and be entered in the drawing.

This is a very short post today, as we met with our realtor last night and he said we need to have the house ready to show before the Memorial Day weekend. As I type, the painter is working up his estimate to do the interior painting required to make the house presentable. It's turning into more work (and money) because the realtor also said that our walls had too much "stuff" on them, which means if we take it off, that leaves nail holes, which means we need a lot more painting done. Since the walls haven't been painted in years and years, there's no way the same paint color is the same paint color -- fading, etc.

So, as we scramble to get things ready, I'll leave you with a couple of cartoons that actually triggered my thoughts for Monday's Good Old Days post.

The first is "Pickles" by Brain Crane




The next is "Mutts" by Patrick McDonnell



Don't forget - read and comment on Catherine Kean's post by 5 PM today. And check back to see if you're the winner.

Catherine Kean and her Four-Legged Muse

Today I welcome author Catherine Kean to Terry's Place. She's generously offered a signed copy of any book mentioned in her blog post--DANCE OF DESIRE, MY LADY'S TREASURE, or A KNIGHT'S TEMPTATION--as a prize to one commenter. Make sure you leave a comment, and check back tomorrow to see if you're the winner!

I adore cats. Affectionate, stubborn, unpredictable, and full of mischief, they are, in my opinion, what a creative muse would be if given physical form. As a writer of medieval historical romances published by Medallion Press, and with a summer deadline looming, I call upon my muse every day. Some days it’s energized and inspiring me in creative leaps and bounds. On others, it stubbornly makes me question every darned word I type. I guess it’s safe to say I have a willful muse. As willful as the kitten we adopted a few months ago.

Looking back, I see cats have been with me through many milestones in my writing journey. As a child, nurturing my growing imagination by reading book after book, my constant companion was a long-haired orange and white kitty named Dandelion, who, like a true gentleman, suffered all kinds of indignities: wearing costume jewelry, being presented to my elementary school class for “show and tell,” and being dressed up in doll’s clothes. When, as a teenager I sat out in my parents’ garden, handwriting my first full-length novel (a young adult romance) in pencil in a lined notebook, he’d wander across the lawn to me, his fluffy tail in the air, to see if I would scratch his chin.

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While I was away at university completing my B.A. in English and History, Dandy ventured out one day and never came home. I was without a cat companion until I married, moved to Florida to live with my husband, and adopted a scrawny ginger male kitten from the local humane society. Since my husband is British, we called our kitty Tango, after a fizzy orange drink sold in England. Tango sat with me while I worked on my first contemporary romance novel, a truly awful manuscript which is tucked away in the back of my filing cabinet never to be looked at again.

While I typed, Tango curled up on the ream of printer paper nearby or sprawled on my computer desk, showing off his striped belly. Tango purred and danced in my arms to celebrate my first contest final and win, my first publishing contract, and the first time I saw a printed copy of my debut novel, Dance of Desire. When his kidneys started to fail, and I knew my time with him was drawing to a close, I immortalized him in the pages of my third paperback, My Lady’s Treasure, which is loosely based on the legends of King Arthur; Tango inspired the character of an ancient orange cat named Merlin.

When I had to make the difficult decision to end Tango’s suffering, I wondered if we’d ever adopt another cat. We’d taken in another humane society kitty some years ago, a sweet, gray tabby named Minton; maybe one cat was enough. But my daughter, a budding writer with oodles of talent, had never had the fun of a kitten. So, I found myself with my husband, daughter, and visiting parents at the humane society one morning last December. There, in the front cage, was a pinky-orange fuzz ball, who showed off for my daughter as though to say “I want to be yours! Take me home.” As we made plans for New Year’s Eve, and I celebrated finishing up galley proofs on my current release A Knight’s Temptation, Book 3 of my award-winning Knight’s Series, we welcomed Kai to our family. My daughter tells me Kai means “seashell” in Japanese. A good name, since he’s the color of the inside of a Conch shell.

Kai is incredibly cute, loving, and talkative. He’s also brimming with mischief—unlike Minton, who, at fourteen, is content to snooze most of the day. When I sit at my computer to write, Kai sulks outside my room and cries in his squeaky voice. If I ignore him—as in, say, when I’m concentrating on that thrilling scene where the hero and heroine are just a breath away from kissing, and the tension is so delicious that—Crash. Kai will knock something off the upstairs desk. Think he’s quiet because he’s fallen asleep? Weeeellllll, guess again. He’s more likely unrolling yards and yards of toilet paper in the spare bathroom.

Quite honestly, there are times with Kai when I could tear my hair out. I feel that way some days about my muse. Sometimes, the distractions of the phone ringing and doorbell dinging just seem to block the steady flow of words—just like Kai meowing outside my door. Other days, the inspiration flows beautifully, like Kai caught up in the glorious fun of toilet paper unraveling.

At the end of each writing day, though, my muse has always given me some good material for my work-in-progress. And, as I sit back on the sofa with my husband and daughter close by, with a soft, sleepy, purring Kai in my arms, I’m happy. Because, with my kitty muse, I’m complete.

For more information on Catherine Kean’s medieval historical romances, including her award-winning Knight’s Series, please visit her website at http://www.catherinekean.com

And be sure to check back tomorrow to see if you're her lucky winner.

Remember the Good Old Days?

What I'm reading: Broken Prey, by John Sandford.

Yesterday, we spent our usual Sunday morning at Panera with friends. We were talking about getting rid of "stuff", and what we were finding as we went through our "stuff" and the conversation segued to "I remember when…"

Both the men are scientists, and they were discussing the advent of the calculator that could do simple math. Now, how many people can do any sort of math, much less complex calculations, without a calculator. But then, a small machine that could extract a square root was a marvel. We came from the slide rule days. Anyone else remember those 8-foot slide rules mounted above the chalk board in math class?

I can still see Miss Rose marching back and forth in a Vanna White manner as she moved the slide and the hairline gizmo and showed us how to multiply, divide, and find things like sines, cosines, and logarithms. I still remember looking those up on tables in a book. I think math homework took a lot longer in those days.

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And phones. Leonard Nimoy tells a story of being on a street corner when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, flipped it open to answer, and passersby pointed, saying, "Beam me up, Scotty." Or what about Uhura's earpiece – Bluetooth?


Or television sets. Our first television was housed in a piece of furniture, although the screen itself was probably no more than twelve inches across (and not square.) It was powered by tubes, and repairmen were called out to replace them as they burned out.



Another memory – lettering charts. No Powerpoint in those days. They used rapdiograph pens and Leroy lettering sets to label their charts. As a matter of fact, our son owes his name to one long session where my husband was creating graphs. The X axis was months of the year, and hubby was abbreviating, using only the first letter of each month, on countless graphs. He came home that day and said, "If it's a boy (another 'good old days' thing—no ultrasound, You didn't know what you were going to get until birth day), we're going to name it Jason, because I've been writing it all day.

July August September October November.

I've got another pickup scheduled for Friday, this one by the Salvation Army. And I've "freecycled" my sewing machine, and a modest collection of LP records from the 60's. While it's true that one of those records might have some value, I opted to let someone else discover the possible treasure. They were all very well-worn. Nothing pristine, and we don't even have a turntable anymore. We'd copied most of them to cassette tapes, and now have them on CD or on our iPods. Not worth moving.

But yes, there's always the possibility that we're giving away something that would have been worth the trouble of researching value, advertising, shipping to a buyer. My father got rid of my brother's Lionel train set, and there was a run on them after they stopped making them. We let our kids play with their Barbies and Star Wars toys. Probably the biggest "oops" was when my folks tossed two pictures they'd had framed and hung in our childhood bedroom. They were freebies—a gift from a friend who was an artist, and he worked for Walt Disney creating animation cells. We had a picture of Pluto and Donald Duck that were original cells, and probably would be worth a pretty penny today.

My lazy streak says it's easier to type a one line header on an email and wait for someone to come take it away. Today I've gotten rid of a sewing machine that hasn't been touched in over 15 years, two Reebok slides leftover from a short-lived exercise fad, an ice cream freezer not used since the kids left home, and a box of cookbooks and recipes that haven't been used in at least a decade. I have enough recipes in the collection I'm keeping that if I wanted, I could have something different every day for the rest of my life. But I won't—we have our normal favorite meals, and although I try new stuff from time to time, I've found that reading cookbooks or even watching cooking shows, something I did endlessly years ago, merely results in spending too much time thinking about food, which leads to too much eating, which means I have to either spend more time at the Y or give up chocolate.

So, what do you remember from your personal 'good old days'?

Tomorrow, my guest is author Catherine Kean talking about dealing with her muse. Be sure to come back. She's giving away an autographed copy of one of her books – winner's choice – to one lucky commenter.

And don't forget my May contest. I'm finding all sorts of items to put into the prize package – and who knows. Maybe someday one of them will be a priceless collectible.