General

Niagara Falls or Bust… or When Life Serves You Lemons – Make Lemonade

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Back in early January, I received a brochure from the local bus company with their 2011 tours. The last weekend in May caught my eye. It was exactly the trip my girlfriend from Kingston and I had planned on doing for years. Niagara Falls and tour some wineries. I tore that page out the brochure, scanned it and e-mailed it to her. It was agreed, we would go.

A couple of days later, I booked our vacation and we began planning what we would do in our free time. Until the trip hit my credit card and even from then until the invoice arrived, the whole thing seemed totally surreal.

Then on May 5th, the unthinkable happened! The trip was cancelled. Only twelve people (including the two of us) had signed up.

What can I say, we were handed lemons. But, what do you when life hands you lemons? You make lemonade. A couple of quick text messages back and forth and we decided we would still do it but on our own.

So by May 6th, I had a room booked for the two nights at the same hotel my husband and I used the year my friend from Wales came over and we were tentatively booked on Grape and Wine Tours Best Kept Secret Dinner Tour (wine tour with tastings and 3 course gourmet meal at an undisclosed restaurant) on the Saturday. They come and pick us up at our hotel and bring us back afterwards. I confirmed our booking by phone the following weekend.

While in Niagara, we’re going to do something that one of us has never done before. We’re doing the Journey Behind the Falls which I’ve done but not my girlfriend and the plan is for the Saturday morning before we head off on our wine tour, we’re going to go for a ride on The Maid of the Mist which she’s done but I haven’t.

Weather permitting, on our way home we’re going to stop in St Catharines at Lock 3 of the Welland Canal. With any luck we’ll see a ship going through.

All in all, it promises to be a wonderful weekend. I think I made us a fine jug of lemonade.

And before anyone gets any ideas about our houses being empty during our absence… forget it. Our husbands are staying home and we each have a large dog.

General, Notes

Additional Voices for ReadPlease

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In addition to the voices that come standard in Readplease, you can download more. With these voices, you only get one male and one female but that’s okay. What languages can you get these voices in you ask? British English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

I downloaded the British English voices and can’t wait to listen to my manuscript being read back to me in that accent!

The nice thing is after you download and click install, you’re finished. The software automatically adds your new voices into the program.

General

Reading Software

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My fellow writing partner showed me a piece of software she had downloaded on her laptop before we went our separate ways after our “writing date”. It’s called ReadPlease 2003. Best of all, you can download it for FREE! Yes, I said free. And better still, it sounds natural. It’s not that tinny, monotone voice that some reading software programs have.

I downloaded it as soon as I got home and tried it out for myself. I copied and pasted the first chapter of my WIP manuscript into it and hit the play button. The software read what I’d written back to me.

In the free version of the software, there are four voices to choose from – two male and two female so you can choose the person you want to read your work back to you.

Reading your work aloud is the best way to judge the flow, pick up on wrong or missing words, or over-usage of a word within a short span of text. Now you can keep yourself from going hoarse and still get the job done.

ReadPlease can be found here: http://www.readplease.com/

 

 

General

Subscription by e-mail

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After a great deal of aggravation, frustration and consternation, I finally got a proper “subscribe by e-mail” link set up on my blog. When I finally succeeded, the simplicity of it all was mind-boggling.

Here I’d been making it far more complicated than it needed to be. Anyway, to make a long story short, if you subscribe by e-mail to my blog, every time I put a new post up there, you’ll be notified.

Some months, I’m quite prolific on the blogging front… other months not so much.

 

General, Notes

Writing Date

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This afternoon I’ll be heading out to meet my usual partner-in-crime for our monthly writing date. We’ll be welcoming a new member into our afternoon of “creative genius”, although I use that term lightly.

I’ve not written anything for a while so am hoping that this will get me back on track. These “dates” have helped in the past and I’ve been rather prolific in my word count on occasion.

 

General, Novels, Stories

Seven Things: Work, Writing & Research

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I received this award from Janice Horton author of Bagpipes & Bullshot and coming later in 2011, Reaching for the Stars. As it goes, I now have to share seven things about me that you might or might not already know.

1. My first job after graduating from secondary school was as a keypunch operator at a local pharmaceutical company. After that job, I worked at various other local companies mostly in the data entry field. I returned to school when my children were small and got a degree in computer programming. For the past almost 24 years, I’ve worked for the same company in a variety of positions and sometimes more than one at the same time. Now it’s just one – payroll.

2. Before I began primary school, we lived in a winterized cottage along the St Lawrence River. I remember sitting in our yard facing the river, waiting for the Royal yacht Britannia to sail past, Union Jack flag in hand ready to wave when it did. I can’t remember if it was on the same Royal visit, but I remember coming in to town and seeing the Queen’s limo.

 

 

 

 

The streets were lined with crowds and I was on my father’s shoulders and I asked “When’s Santa Claus coming?” That was my first experience with the Royal Family.

3. My father was British Home Child who was raised at The Orphan Homes of Scotland west of Glasgow. He came to Canada in 1930. I was always fascinated with his history and vowed that the first year I had three week’s vacation, I would go to Scotland to see where he was born and where he was raised. I made that first trip (by myself) in 1993 and have never looked back. I fell in love with the country immediately and knew that was where I would set my novels – especially after discovering a spooky old ruined mansion near my father’s birthplace.

4. Living an ocean apart from where I’ve set my novels has proved to be a challenge. Thankfully, I’ve got good friends and family in Scotland who have answered what they might think are some pretty daft questions by times. I’ve taken loads of photographs on my trips abroad so I can refer back to them when need be. Being a member of the Aberdeen & North East Scotland Family History Society has helped immensely, too. It’s truly amazing how helpful people are when you tell them you’re writing a novel and need help with…

5. My second encounter with the Royal Family came in 1999, when I had the honour of meeting Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne at Quarriers Village (formerly The Orphan Homes of Scotland). The invitation was originally extended on April 1st so I immediately thought it was a prank and someone was yanking my chain but it was legitimate.

6. I use real places and events in my writing. My third (as yet uncompleted) manuscript is based around a helicopter ditching in the North Sea and another I’ve got the concept (TV guide blurb, if you prefer) only done is set in Lincolnshire after the Market Rasen earthquake.

7. I bought my husband and I two small (miniscule) plots of land from Lochaber Highland Estates so we can call ourselves Laird and Lady as we are Scottish land owners.

And now to pass the torch on to seven more versatile bloggers…

Dorothy Bush
Brenda Visser’s The Write Way
Maggie Jagger’s Books and life, historical, paranormal, real
Coreene Smith’s E.C. Ramblings
Brenda Hammond’s What Flutters By
Linda Poitevin’s Angels Gather Here

and lastly

Catherine Durnford-Wang’s Observations of a Baby Boomer

 

General, Novels

Finished reading…

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I just finished reading Dying Light by Stuart MacBride. Like his first published crime novel, Gold Granite, this was the second gripping tale of DS Logan McRae set in Aberdeen.

I was so taken with his first (what can I say, Aberdeen and crime?, I’m there… wouldn’t even have to be crime… mostly Aberdeen does it for me) that I have all but his most recent one. According to Stuart’s website the books are written so they can be read in any order. However, unlike the way I write, I like to read in published order. So if I stick to that, then the next piece of his I’ll be reading will be Broken Skin.

Stuart MacBride’s website is at http://www.stuartmacbride.com/

My Scottish roots and writing by Melanie Robertson-King