What Else Have You Got? by Sharon Wildwind

Sharon Wildwind's first mystery series is the Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen Viet Nam veteran series.  She also wrote a non-fiction book about her year as a nurse with the U.S. Army in Vietnam.  

 

Other works in progress include a mystery-romance series set in a nursing station in northern Alberta. She's also working on some plays.

 

As a fiber and paper artist she designs and make clothes, costumes, quilts, book bags, tea cozies, greeting cards, decorated boxes, shrines, and non-traditional books.

 

 

 

 

What Else Have You Got?
by Sharon Wildwind


In case you missed Calgary news about a month ago, the city was under a state of emergency from June 21st to July 4th. A combination of unusual weather patterns, flooded rivers in southern Alberta, including two in Calgary. Here is a photo of downtown Calgary from  the Calgary Herald on June 21.

 

See those trees that appear to be growing in the middle of the Bow River? That’s all that’s visible of Prince’s Island Park, named after Peter Anthony Prince, the founder of an early Calgary lumber mill. The Park hosts many local events, including the Calgary Folk MusicFestival, scheduled to happen five weeks from the day this photo was taken.

 

The Festival not going ahead would be a disaster on a lot of levels, but for me it was intensely personal. I’d planned to celebrate a renewal and rebirth there this year.

 

Last November the final book in my first mystery series came out. If you’re familiar with that series, you know the protagonists are Viet Nam veterans, that it’s set in the late 1970s, and the cut line for the series is “For these veterans, adjusting to civilian life is murder.”

 

I won’t say the series wrote itself. It was the usual hard work, but I had great research resources, since I’m a vet myself. Writing the final book was a scary place to be. I was done with the veterans’ experience. A voice in my head kept asking, “Sweetheart, what else have you got?” The answer repeatedly came back a depressing, “I don’t know.”

 

I went to hear a friend open a Saturday night concert at a local folk club. The audience was packed with older, grey-haired people like me. I thought, heavens, we folkies have been doing this for a long time. Like about 50 years for my generation. The first album I bought (with babysitting money) was Peter, Paul, and Mary: it had the cover with the brick wall behind them; Mary holding a bouquet; Peter and Paul with their guitars. We’re talking back in the day here.

 

The guy singing that night was Tom Lewis. He sang a wonderful Mick Ryan song, “The Song Goes On.”  (You can hear a sample here.)

 

The opening verse went straight to my heart.

 

There are singers that we love as we sing our lives away,

And though we all fall silent in the end,

They will sing with us forever they’ll be singing every day,

When we sing the songs they sang.

 

It wasn’t just us oldsters in the audience. There were at least two younger generations in the room, growing up with music just as we had. But performers were passing. I ticked a list of voices forever silent, but that just depressed me, so I switched to ticking off other folk albums I’d bought, concerts I’d attended, festivals where I’d volunteered, parties — oh, yeah, parties—, musicians I’d met, and musicians I’d love to have met. What else did I have? I had a lifetime of listening to music and getting to know musicians.

 

In addition to hosting the festival, Calgary is ripe with folk and live music clubs. It didn’t seem fair to saddle an established club with murder and mayhem, so I created my own fictitious club, Green Flag Folk, which I housed it in a wonderful, historic building, that had been Calgary’s first sandstone school. Here’s the building in pre-flood days. Unfortunately, it was in the flood area, but it looked okay when I walked by it a couple of weeks after the waters went down.

 

 

To run the club I created the Breland family; Sid, the Club founder and president; Jay-Jay, his cousin, who lived and worked in Nashville, but came to Calgary often; and Robbie, also a cousin, a no-nonsense woman who had a lifetime hold on being the Club’s volunteer coordinator.

 

People trusted Robbie with secrets because she knew how to keep her mouth shut. All of those secrets had been stewing for a long time and one night they would boil over and a musician would die. For the title I chose Carrying the Blood, a line from one of Ian Tyson’s songs, The Steeldust Line.

 

What I wanted to celebrate on Prince’s Island this July was that the first draft of Carrying the Blood is finished. What else did I have? I had another book in me; one I’d never imagined I’d write until that night in the folk club.

 

Flood water receded. Mud and silt covered the island, threatening to kill the trees. Debris was everywhere. Buildings were damaged or destroyed. Electricity was out. City crews, along with Folk Festival and other volunteers, rallied. The call for volunteers was brutally honest. Volunteers had to be capable of working 12-hour shifts in a muggy, sodden, mosquito-laden environment; of shoveling mud and silt into wheelbarrows; and of pushing those wheelbarrows to the removal trucks. Still the volunteers came. Age and height prevented me from being one of them, but they had my thoughts and prayers.

 

The festival will happen, though our Volunteer Coordinator warned us to expect changes. Many booths and stages have had to be rearranged to accommodate the post-flood realities. I’ve got my crew assignment, my T-shirt, and my volunteer badge. I am, as my husband christened this photo from last year’s festival “The Compleate Adventurer.”

 

 

And this year, on the Island, several fictional characters and I will celebrate not only our city’s resiliency and co-operative spirit, but the spirit of authors everywhere who ask the question, “Sweetheart, what else have you got?” with the answer, “I have another book inside of me, of course.”

 

Sharon Wildwind is a Calgary, Alberta mystery writer. Her web site is www.wildwindauthor.com. She’s also on Google +, and tweets @sharww.

 

In Honor of Veteran's Day - Sharon Wildwind

WINNING NAMES HAVE BEEN DRAWN OUT OF THE PINK WILLIE NELSON BASEBALL CAP.

AND,  THE WINNERS ARE PAT BROWNING, MARY FEATHERSTON (WHO LEFT A COMMENT AT FACEBOOK WHEN CAPTCHA WOULDN'T COOPERATE HERE), AND CARLEEN.  SEND ME YOU MAILING ADDRESS, PLEASE (BARLEYKW AT APPSTATE DOT COM) AND I'LL FORWARD YOUR ADDRESSES TO SHARON SO SHE CAN MAIL YOUR ARC OUT TO YOU.  AND THANKS, EVERYONE, FOR PARTICIPATING.  I HOPE YOU'LL GIVE SHARON'S WORK A TRY IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.  AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, PLEASE!

The Long, Long Trail Ends

by Sharon Wildwind

 

There’s a long, long trail a-winding

Into the land of my dreams,

Where the nightingales are singing

And a white moon beams.

 

There’s a long, long night of waiting

Until my dreams all come true;

Till the day when I'll be going down

That long, long trail with you.

~ Stoddard King and Alonzo (Zo) Elliott, December 1913

 

It’s been a long haul.

 

Even good things—maybe especially good things—come to an end. In three days, my publisher ships Loved Honor More, the final Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen Viet Nam mystery. Five books in seven years isn’t exactly burning up the mystery world, but I’m very proud of the run, especially since I had a day job, family events happened and the publishing world got really crazy. In short, it was life as usual in the writing lane.

 

 

 

 

People ask me, won’t you miss your characters? Maybe a little, but it’s time they get on with their lives without me looking over their shoulder. When writing the final book, I faced different questions that in the other four. Did I want all of my characters to survive or was I going to polish off one or more? Was I truly finished with the series, or did I want to plant a few seeds in case I wanted to write #6,. #7, etc.?

 

The hardest thing was taking a dispassionate look at the fall of Saigon and the weeks that preceded it. Thirty-five years out, it still appeared to me to be an unmitigated disaster. Reading and thinking about it still inflamed old passions that I thought had died a natural death. They haven’t.

 

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they remain the same)

~ Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808 – 1890), French critic, journalist, and novelist

 

The most fun thing was including a character named Kaye Barley. Yes, I did this with Kaye’s full permission. She said I could do almost anything I wanted, as long as the character got to wear cowgirl clothes at some point. She does.

 

One thing I’ve thought a lot about lately was the age span of Viet Nam veterans. At one end of the scale I imagined a grizzled supply sergeant who finished his thirty years in the military doing a tour of duty with the initial U.S. Military Assistance Advisor Group (M.A.A.G.), which, in 1956, assumed responsibility from the French for training South Vietnamese forces. My imaginary sergeant would have been about 48 when he was in Viet Nam, which would make him 104, were he still alive.

 

At the other end of the time span is the eighteen year-old Marine who was on the last helicopter out of Saigon on April 30, 1975. He’d be a spry 55 today.

 

Smack in the middle would have been a young Captain who led troops, flew helicopters, or worked in a field hospital during the late 1960s. His or her age today would be between 65 and 75. This includes my characters, and me.

 

We’re all a lot older, and a lot tougher than we were back in the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s a lot of water under the bridge, a lot of marriages, families, divorces, university degrees, second and third careers, dream vacations, hobbies, moves, and just plain survival because the ones of us who are still alive are, in every sense, survivors. Thanks to that pesky social media, we’re reconnecting with one another. In the past three years I’ve been contacted by and found information to contact more of the people I served with than I did in the previous thirty years. It’s a good feeling to get caught up on what’s happened since the last time we saw one another.

 

So my last advice to my characters is when computers come along, get one. Learn to use it. It’s going to come in really handy in about thirty-five years. Maybe on your journey to look up your old Army buds, you’ll look me up as well. I’ll be right here, waiting, and more than a little interested in how you’ve gotten on over the decades.

 

My last advice to you is that I have 3 Advanced Reading Copies of Loved Honor More that I’d love to send to 3 people reading this blog. I’ve left it up to Kaye to determine how those three people are chosen. So do what she tells you. And in the words of Bob Hope, “Thanks for the memories.”

 

 

Final quote:

You have never lived until you’ve almost died. To those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected never know.

~ sign over a Mike Forces bar, Pleiku, RVN

 

 

A Footnote:
Sharon asked me to tell y'all how to win a copy of an Advanced Reading Copy of her latest and last Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen mystery series.  I'm going to put the comments in our famous pink Willie Nelson Baseball cap and I will draw three names.  I'll do this on Monday, Nov. 12 and I'll come back here and post the names at Meanderings and Muses, so be sure you check back (and to be really really for sure for sure - include your email address with your comment).

I had to wait a day to post this (and only with Sharon's consent) because after eading Sharon's post I had a very long cry.  For a number of reasons - not least of which is the fact that Sharon showed a personal side of herself here.  That's a rare thing for her to do, being an intensely private person.

Sharon wrote, "Five books in seven years isn’t exactly burning up the mystery world, but I’m very proud of the run . . . "

But damn it, this is a series that SHOULD have been burning up the mystery world.  It should have and it still should.  No one has written about the Viet Nam war the way Sharon Wildwind has from the point of view that she has.  Not many people could.  And many who could have chosen not to, for a wide variety of reasons - many of them heartbreaking.

Many of us were here at home while loved ones fought a war that confused us all, including many who were fighting.

It was, and remains today, an emotional time in our lives. 

I first heard about Sharon's series was from my buddy Mary Jane Maffini.  She mentioned the books to me because A) she loved them, and B) because Sharon mentions Boone, NC.  Well, boy howdy, that was reason enough for me to pick up the first in the series.  Reading about Boone always just tickles me pink.  However - this time - I was hooked.  Seriously hooked.  And as I am wont to do when a book touches me, I dropped Sharon an email to tell her so.  And squealed about it at DorothyL where I learned I was far from her only fan.  Sharon Wildwind is one of those authors that just simply has not, for whatever reason, received the attention that this series and her talent deserves.  I've been an advocate of this series since I read the first chapter of the first book - and I will continue long after I've read the last chapter of this last book.  I urge each of you to give this series a try.  And, especially, if you're of an age that remembers Viet Nam the way I remember Viet Nam, you'll thank me for the introduction.

I've been lucky enough to have been a character in a few books.  Lucky and honored to have been in some acknowledgements.  These things are always a thrill.  But I have to say - this honor is going to live in my heart till the day I die.  Thank you, Sharon.  Not just for the honor of being a character in your book (which you know I love!), but for all you've done - I salute you, with great honor and great admiration.

NOTE:  Because the Blogger captcha thing is such a massive pain in the neck, anyone leaving a comment under my status about Sharon at my Facebook Page will also have their name tossed into the pink Willie Nelson baseball cap.  Thanks much!

Not So Simple Gifts by Sharon Wildwind

Sharon Wildwind is a mystery author and multi-media artist. Her fifth book in the Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen mystery series is due out soon. For more information about Sharon and her books, visit her web site www.wildwindauthor.com, her Facebook fan page, or follow her occasional Tweets @sharww.

Not So Simple Gifts

by Sharon Wildwind

This started when I was in university. The day after the semester ended, I cranked up my Christmas Elf workshop. There were three problems with this:

1. Sometimes the semester didn’t end until December 20th.

2. I hate Christmas shopping. I especially hate Christmas shopping in the last 5 days before Christmas. Most of all, I hate places where Christmas carols play incessantly, and at loud volumes.

3. I never had much money.

However, I did have several pairs of knitting needles and, when I went home from university, access to a sewing machine. I also had an abiding love of hand-made things. The solution was to make everyone in my family a Christmas present.

There was one problem with this. The Christmas holidays were one of my prime writing times. I was so focused on my studies that I never considered doing any kind of writing, even keeping a journal, during the school year. What can I say, except that I was young and just getting my feet on the ground. Learning how to make a living (AKA studying) seemed so much more important than learning how to make a life (AKA writing).

So what was it going to be? Presents under the tree or pages in a file folder? Let’s just say that my family learned to accept promissory cards in their stockings. They eventually came to understand that not all gifts have to be given on December 25th. January 23 is a fine date for gifts. February 2 is, too. However, March is pushing it, especially if Easter is early that year.

In exchange for agreeing that Christmas could be a movable feast, they got the side benefits of inventive, hand-made gifts.

There was the year I decided that my gift theme would be whimsical animal totems. My niece, who loved to work out, got a Fitness Chicken with a “Be Healthy” bracelet around its ankle.

There was the year I enlarged cookie cutter shapes and made all the kids a pyjama bag in the shape of fish, butterflies, and flowers.

There was the year everyone got a word, suitable quilted into a miniature wall hanging. Doodle Food was for the professional chef, who liked to play with his food.

And there was the Christmas after a particularly hard year that everyone in the family got a box filled with hope—and a few chocolates.

They also got a few hand-made books out of the deal because I learned to write in my head while making things with my hands. More importantly, I learned to hold what I’d written in my head until I could get to my keyboard or journal. That is a very useful skill for an author because there are times when you simply can’t commit what in your head to paper right away.

So from the red-booted Christmas Elf’s workshop in the frozen Canadian north, I wish you happy creating, whether it’s on paper or in another medium of your choice. You still have another three weeks to Christmas. It’s not too late to start making those Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa/Solstice gifts.

-----

I’ve taken the handmade pledge. Have you?

I pledge to consider handmade alternatives for all of my purchases, whether they are for everyday items or gifts, for myself, my family or my friends.

~Inspire Handmade <http://inspirehandmade.org/pledge.php>

Meet Me at the Cenotaph by Sharon Wildwind

Sharon Wildwind is the author of the Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen Vietnam veteran mystery series. She’s in the process of putting the finishing touches on Loved Honor More, the fifth and last book in the series. 

Meet Me at the Cenotaph

by Sharon Wildwind 

That phrase is a big deal in Alberta. Every Remembrance Day thousands of people meet one another at cenotaphs throughout the province to stand in a moment of silence.

The roots for this begin in 1885, when the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed. For decades the CPR conducted a colorful poster campaign encouraging Europeans to “Own your Own Home in Canada and Apply for a Ready-Made Farm.” The posters, which featured charming pre-fabricated farm houses and cheerful cows grazing on lush green grass were — let’s just say not exactly accurate was an understatement. Still people immigrated to Alberta in huge numbers.

The dream of many British immigrants was to make their fortune in Alberta, and then retire in England. They maintained a fierce loyalty to everything British, and taught their children to do the same. They believed that if England was at war, then Canada was at war. When the Great War began families encouraged their men to enlist to take up the fight.

In August 1914, Alberta was a few weeks shy of its 8th anniversary as a province. Imagine a landmass the size of California, Minnesota, and Connecticut combined, with a population of less than half a million people (about the same population as current-day Omaha). There were five cities in the province: Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, and Wetaskiwin.

For the men in those cities, enlistment meant a short walk or streetcar ride to the local recruiter.

In rural areas, which made up 99.9% of the province, settlers and First Nations people farmed, ranched, dug coal, cut timber, worked for the railway, and trapped furs. Recruiters got the word out when they would be passing through an area. Men flocked to join up. Men who lived in areas too sparsely settled to have a recruiter come to them walked or rode horseback to the nearest community or the nearest railroad line where they caught a train to Edmonton or Calgary in order to enlist.

During the Great War 35% per cent of the men in Alberta between the ages of 18 and 45 enlisted. Out of that total half a million population in Alberta roughly 1 out of 20 were either wounded or killed in the war.

The majority of Alberta women who served were nurses. Within three weeks of war being declared, graduates from virtually every nursing school in Canada, including the ten schools in Alberta, volunteered to serve for the duration of the war. Not all applicants were selected, but between 1914 and 1919 over 3000 nurses were in the Canadian military and 2504 of them served overseas. This was at a time when the average graduating class was 8 nurses per school per year.

When the war ended, people in Alberta played a large part in the founding of the fledgling Canadian Legion. Branch #1 is still open and still active in downtown Calgary. In fact, any legion with a branch number less than 75 was probably founded in the years after the Great War.

There’s an Alberta joke: how can you tell you’re in small town Alberta? You look for the curling rink/hockey arena, the Canadian Legion, and the cenotaph. Except that it’s not a joke. Every city and virtually every small town has a cenotaph. Each one has a distinctive local flavor.

In large cities, like Calgary, they tend to be of white marble, some of them with bas-relief carvings of soldiers with their heads bent and/or memorial wreaths, like this example from Regina, which isn’t in Alberta, but the carving is an excellent example of cenotaph art, and I wanted to include it.

Calgary Cenotaph

Regina Cenotaph

Each small town cenotaph has its own personality. The most common form is a stone cairn with one or more bronze tablets. In many communities the names of each man and woman who died in the Great War is inscribed. The photo here is from Crossfields, which has a population of about 300. It’s dated 1974 and was erected by the Royal Canadian Legion, Crossfields, Branch 113. I suspect it is a replacement for the original cairn.

My husband and I try to pay our respects at the cenotaph in every town we visit. The most memorable was in a tiny railroad town in British Columbia. It was late afternoon, cold, with a misty rain falling. We’d driven a couple of circuits around town without finding the cenotaph, thought we were sure there must be one. We’d checked the usual places: in front of the town offices, the Legion, and the library. There was no city park, which was the only other place we could think of that it might be. We speculated that the memorial might be a bronze plaque in one of the churches, as was occasionally the case.

As the afternoon light faded we spotted something that might be part of an old cemetery. It turned out to be the cenotaph. It was in a rock grotto, backed right up to the side of a mountain. Obviously no one came here much any more. Vines covered most of the surrounding rocks and dead leaves littered the marble flagstones. There was a wrought iron fence around the cenotaph, which was a six-foot tall marble obelisk, with long bronze plaques on all four sides. Obviously this town had raised a great deal of money for this memorial.

One side was names from men and women who had fought in World War II, but the other three sides were covered with double columns of the names of men who had died in World War I. Name after name after name, all from this one small town, including a list of six men with the same last name. Chances were that all six were from the same family: fathers, sons, brothers, and cousins. By the time we’d read all the names, it was too dark to take a photo, and I didn’t feel much like taking one anyway. It felt as if we were standing on hallowed ground and a photo would have ruined the feeling. We chose to take away only a memory instead.

This year it’s my turn to work holiday shift so chances are I won’t make it in person to the cenotaph this year, but my heart will be there. Or maybe it will be at that cenotaph in British Columbia. I sincerely hope that in the intervening years since we visited people have come along to clear away the vines and dead leaves and that there will be people there today reading that list of names.

----

Kaye asked for a photo of my office. It is such a mess I don’t dare photograph a lot of it, but this is my version of nirvana: uncluttered desk space; lots of inspiration cards, photos, and booklets, a journal, a black gel pen, and a cup of tea. If I’ve got that, I can write.

Sharon Wildwind - Home is the Place You Just Left

Sharon Wildwind is a northern writer with roots in the south. Or maybe she's a southern writer with her heart in the north. One way or another, she believes that while the past overtakes everyone, it doesn't have to overwhelm everyone. She spends most days at her computer, trying to get her characters to believe the same thing, while they go merrily about their ways figuring out who done it.


Home is the place you just left

If you live in North Carolina, I have bad news for you. The sky is not Carolina blue.

If you don’t live in North Carolina, or have no connections to the University of North Carolina, you probably don’t care. Unless you’re a professional artist, in which case you might want to know what we’re talking about here is Pantone reference color 278 or 282.

And, if you live in Alberta, as I do, you know that that beautiful, crystalline sky color we get in the fall and winter—shown below surrounding ruins of the old General Hospital in Calgary, with bits of modern Calgary peeking around the side— is Alberta blue.


This is, after all, a matter of perception and geography.

Decades ago, when I lived in North Carolina, I decided to write my first novel. Did I follow in the footsteps of Tarheel authors who choose the Blue Ridge Parkway’s color-drenched fall foliage or Cape Hatteras’s subtle tones of shifting sand, or the cool, gray stonework and lush green lawns of the state capital as the background against which to set my book?

Of course not. I picked a setting in northern Alberta, and for a very good reason. I wanted to do a snow story, something where the weather was part of the plot, where the climax took place in a blizzard, where characters discussed when would it snow, was it snowing, and how much more snow was expected.

There was one tiny problem. I’d never been to northern Alberta. I had no clue what the geography looked like. I had seen snow, first in Kansas, then in Western North Carolina, but how would prairie and Appalachian snows translate to snow in a tiny community an hour north of Fort Vermilion, Alberta?

This was long before the Internet existed, and though libraries cheerfully offered interlibrary loans, I never found a book with photos of the place my imagination wanted to go.

I didn’t care. Imbued with the energy of finally writing a book, I sat in North Carolina and wrote about the imaginary town of Whiskeyjack, Alberta, where bad things were happening, people were dying, and my heroine was the only one with enough insight and courage to save the town … only first, she had to learn to deal with snow.

Eventually I finished the book. And finished it again. And finished it again. And got a degree in creative writing. And immigrated to northern Alberta, where I finally got a look at the place I’d written about for almost a decade.


In case you’re curious, this is what a small town in northern Alberta looks like
at sunset on a winter day.

What I found amazing was the surprising number of things I’d gotten right about living in a small community that existed nowhere but in my imagination, and how much people did talk about the weather, and some, but not all of the effects snow had on everyday life.

And I learned that the sky color I had mistakenly, for years, called Carolina blue, was in reality called Alberta blue. At least, around these parts.

Fast forward almost a quarter of a century. I’m living in Alberta, I’m a published writer, and where are my current books set?

North Carolina: Asheville—Madison County—Fayetteville. I’m looking at the snow-covered ground outside my window, trying to recapture what Fort Bragg felt like on a summer evening, just at that point where blistering heat turned into almost bearable temperatures, the sprinklers came on in front of the Officer’s Club, and the odor of barbecued steak drifted through the stucco and red-tile roofs of senior officers’ country.



At least this time I have photos and memories to go by.










What I learned from living in one place and writing about another is to never underestimate a writer’s imagination. Yes, research is important, and eventually—preferably before a book goes looking for a publisher—a good writer must do some. If you don’t believe me, ask Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols (AKA P. J. Parrish) about loons.

Sometimes knowing too much about a place kills spontaneity. Sometimes we have to trust ourselves as story-tellers and dive head-long into creating a place we know nothing about. The late poet, Richard Hugo, favored what he called triggering towns, places in which some thing—perhaps just the name of the town seen on a map—planted a poem in his head. In many cases these were not places he’d been; in fact, he said that having been to the town often hindered him. If, for his poem to work, he needed a red water tower next to the railroad track, but there was no such thing, he’d be stuck about whether to honor th e reality or just put the darn water tower where it should have been in the first place. So here’s to imaginary red water towers everywhere!