Another Whimsey Give-Away!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 20th, I'll be doing a guest blog at my friend Joanna Campbell Slan's place - http://joannaslan.blogspot.com/.

And, I'll be giving away one copy of WHIMSEY.

I hope you'll take a minute to drop by and say "Hey!"

Seaspray by Joanna Campbell Slan

Joanna Campbell Slan is the author of the Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series that began with Paper, Scissors, Death, which was an Agatha Award Finalist. Her most recent book is Make, Take, Murder. Next year will see the debut of The Jane Eyre Chronicles by Joanna. These will feature Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth.              

Visit Joanna at www.JoannaSlan.com

 

Seaspray

By Joanna Campbell Slan

Seaspray. We named our house Seaspray.

You can’t see “her” from the road or from the beach.  She’s tucked away on an island off the Atlantic coast of Florida. When we first saw this small cottage, she was nearly overwhelmed by the straggly hibiscus that towered over her windows and the sea grapes that blocked the view of the ocean. She’d been empty for three years, abandoned and left to her own devices.

But I knew I was home. That tiny white board and batten structure plucked at my heartstrings. We were meant for each other.

“I’ve never asked you for anything,” I said to my husband David, “but this is what I want. More than anything. This is the place I’ve been dreaming of my whole life.”

It took some doing. Getting a loan these days is hard. There were so many hoops to jump through. Inspections. Appraisals. Going back and forth with the bank.  And on the day we closed the listing agent didn’t want to take down his sign. “You never know,” he said with a smirk.

“Yes, you do. This is ours,” I said.  I wanted to add, “Take it down or I’ll put it out in the trash.”

Seaspray sits at the end of a winding driveway full of overgrown trees. When we bought her, she had rats in her attic. Her windows don’t close tightly. Her decks are rotting. But she’s mine. I’ve wiped down her counters and washed her windows. I’ve scrubbed her floors. Slowly, she has revealed her secrets to me.

That strangely pitted siding on her interior walls is Pecky Cypress.  http://www.floridacypress.com/About%20Cypress.htm A fungus attacks the wood and causes those enchanting grooves. That odd room upstairs does, indeed, have superior light streaming through the big sliding glass doors. In fact, one of the former occupants used it as his painting studio. That Mexican tile floor is Santillo. http://fireflyforest.net/firefly/2005/07/29/saltillo-canine-footprint/ The tiles are handmade and then put out in the sun to dry, where the occasional animal crossing over it leaves a lucky footprint. That orange flowering plant isn’t a weed. It’s a butterfly bush and it attracts Monarch butterflies as they make their annual migration. And yes, that sound you hear is the surf. It is extra loud here. The waves crash up against the rock formations along the coast. The small pockets in the rocks make the perfect repositories for seashells, so I try to time my walks to take advantage of this natural gathering at low tide.

Seaspray came with an odd assortment of furniture the previous owners left behind. In our garage, I found a sagging dresser. I had it stripped and refinished.  It’s handmade, which explains why the drawer fronts are a little larger than they should be. That refurbished dresser sits proudly in our guest bedroom. Perhaps I’m prejudiced, but I think it absolutely divine, even if it takes a bit of effort to close the drawers properly.

Under a cheap decorator table cloth, I found a charming wicker table that I repainted navy blue. I glory in the weave and shape of it.

A ladder back chair with a woven rush seat was hidden under a chair cover. I fixed the frayed rushes on the seat with glue and clamps. I think its chipping paint tells a story, one that I love to “hear” again and again. At night, I pile my bed pillows on the chair, but I don’t like folks to sit on it. It’s too fragile.

I sleep with the window curtain pulled to one side, so that I wake to the sunrise over the ocean. I find the natural light much superior to any alarm clock, and the layered sherbet hues never fail to inspire me to get up and going on the day.

And yes, I still find time to write. My heart is full of joy; I think that happiness is spilling over onto the pages as I work.

I’ve come home, home to Seaspray.

It's Not Just the Life in Your dogs, It's the Dogs in Your Life that Count by Joanna Campbell Slan

Joanna Campbell Slan is the author of the Agatha-nominated Paper, Scissors, Death, featuring single mom and scrapbooker-turned-sleuth, Kiki Lowenstein. The second book in the series—Cut, Crop & Die—was released June 2009. Photo, Snap, Shot is now available for pre-ordering at Amazon.com.  You can read an excerpt from Photo, Snap, Shot at  http://tinyurl.com/yjaohfg

It’s Not Just the Life in Your Dogs, It’s the Dogs in Your Life that Count By Joanna Campbell Slan    

Recently, Entrepreneur Magazine announced its list of ten hot trends for the coming decade. Trend number ten-and-a-half on the list was pet-ownership.

 Boy, I saw that one coming.

 Here’s the scoop: Love me, love my dogs. It’s just that simple.

 We’re a package deal.

 Yes, I have a thing for cats, too. If my husband and I weren’t so allergic to them, we’d have several kitties. (Although I’d probably stop before I collected seven, like my friend Shari has.)

  Seriously, if a creature has fur and legs, I’m all for it. And it doesn’t have to have the requisite FOUR limbs either. My Bichon-poodle mix rescue pup Rafferty only has three legs. When SPCA found him, Raffie was holding his right rear leg pitifully and not putting weight on it. The vet at the animal shelter thought the leg was broken. It wasn’t. Raffie had been left outside in the elements so long that the fur wrapped around the limb, cutting off the blood supply. Although the vet tried to save Raffie’s leg, it eventually had to be amputated.

 But you’d never know Raffie was one leg short. Trust me. People watch him run around, jump up, and never realize Raffie’s missing ANYTHING, unless they stop and do a paw count. As my son says, “Rafferty falls down, he gets back up. He doesn’t waste time feeling bad. He just enjoys life. Raffie could teach anyone a lesson in not feeling sorry for yourself.”

 I can’t imagine a home without pets. Actually, I don’t think a domicile qualifies for “HOME” status unless it’s co-inhabited by fur children. My husband works long hours. My son is off at college. My life would be awfully lonely without my pets.

  My dogs are my friends; the constants in my life. When we moved to the metro Washington DC area from St. Louis four months ago, I knew I had at least two pals I could rely on: Rafferty and Vicky, my BDF (Best Dogs Forever). They sat in the passenger seat for the 882-mile drive. They were model citizens at the hotels where we stopped along the way.
  Okay, mostly model citizens. There was that one incident when the maid ignored the “Do Not Disturb” sign, and Rafferty felt compelled to play guard dog. He has a powerful “woof” but he’s really just a lover-boy. I guess when you’ve been abused, you want to protect a family that treats you like top-dog. He sure does.

 Vicky and Raffie rode beside me into my new life, and even as I cried a little to say goodbye to our home of 17 years, I knew that as long as I had my dogs, I’d be fine.

  And I am.

 Thanks in part to my dogs. They keep me sane.

 Being an author means spending days and hours alone in front of a computer.  Being a writer means you spend a lot of time with imaginary playmates. My dogs rescue me from myself by forcing me to return to the real world. Rafferty gets hungry around five o’clock. He’ll start nudging me, bumping my elbow, which makes typing really tough. Vicky, my little girl Bichon, takes up the challenge and starts licking me, which makes concentrating difficult. So by about five-thirty, I’m ready to take a break, even if I do come back and work more later. Writing is a very addictive process. If my dogs didn’t interrupt me, I might never, ever move from this spot.

 Shoot, let’s be honest. If they didn’t force me to get up and go out, I might never have a REAL life at all.

 Furthermore, I get my best ideas while we go on walkies. Long, long walkies. In hot weather and cold, in rain and in snow, on sidewalks and down paths. They sniff; I think. They explore; I plot. They piddle; I shout, “Eureka!”


 So, the next time you see my byline on a book, go ahead and smile. Sure, it’s my name on the cover. But you know I had two furry co-authors. Just don’t tell my publisher, okay? 



Photos courtesy of the Connection Newspapers. Taken by Donna Manz.