Vaya con Dios, BookBar

I originally wrote this for October and set it to autopost, which didn't happen. 

Take 2. After too long of a delay, I finally had another book launch to get excited about. Unfortunately this news is bitter-sweet. The venue for the book launch party was BookBar, which sadly announced that after ten years, they will be closing on January 31, 2023. The reasons are many, explained best by them. After wrestling with the usual challenges of running a small business, aggravated by Covid lockdowns and its precautions, the final nail in the coffin was the City of Denver's mandated increase in minimum wage.

A decade ago, BookBar took over the location of another bookstore in the Tennyson Arts District, one that limped along and even sold ice cream to help pay the bills. BookBar expanded that hybrid model by offering coffee, food, and alcohol. Wine and readers, who would've guessed? Though the inventory was heavy in literary fiction and contemporary non-fiction, what endeared BookBar to the local community was their willingness to take a chance on local authors. BookBar became the go-to venue for book launches, poetry gatherings, and even hosted readings for the Colorado Book Awards. BookBar was a favorite location because of their friendly staff and attention to detail, like making sure consignments were paid, something other area bookstores found hard to do. In appreciation, people (me included) regularly ordered books from BookBar to avoid patronizing Amazon, who themselves are retreating from brick & mortar store fronts. BookBar was a spot to meet friends, out-of-towners especially were taken by the place, or to kick back with a good read, a coffee and pastry, or with a beer, glass of wine, or a cocktail.

During the quarantine, I sought to cope with the disturbing weirdness of it all by drawing a daily cartoon of cats dealing with the pandemic in ways that were both feline and human. Honestly, I thought that after two weeks to flatten the curve, plus another two weeks to let things settle down, that we'd be back to normal in a month. Two months, tops. Was I wrong. A few dozen cartoons became a hundred, then two hundred, three hundred, and more. When I was done, deciding that the fiasco in Afghanistan and the then looming war in Ukraine were fitting disasters to end cap the Covid disaster, I realized that I had chronicled the history of this pandemic--lockdowns, the masking, the hoarding, social distancing, Zoom calls, mostly peaceful protests, the vax/anti-vax wars. Hex Publishers offered to publish an edited collection of my work in Cats In Quarantine: A Cartoon Memoir of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which received a Starred Review from Kirkus Reviews.

As for my favorite cartoon? I have many but if there is one that I think best describes me and everyone else during the pandemic, it's this one:

New Years reflections

I'll start this first blog of 2022 with a wish for a speedy, complication-free recovery to my fellow bloggers, their families, and everyone else who's been affected by Covid, which as you know, unless you've been completely unplugged, is absolutely rampaging across the globe. These are unnerving times and not what we'd hoped for as we enter the third year of this plague.

Welcome to 2022 indeed. Bah.

The next point I want to make is about the meaning of New Years and all this talk about accompanying resolutions. As Douglas said, New Years is supposed to be about new beginnings and endless possibilities. But it has never felt like the right time of year to celebrate new beginnings. New life. New hope. For us Canadians, and for much of the far northern world, January 1st means staring down the two darkest, coldest, and bleakest months of the year before the warmth and light of March. I love winter. I love getting out to play in the snow. Ottawa where I live has plenty of exciting activities. Tobogganing with your kids, cross-country and downhill skiing, skating on the canal, snowshoeing or hiking the crisp, white trails through forests of maple and pine. I have done all of them, and still enjoy cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and hiking.

Snowshoeing up a mountain

But there are often about three good hours in the day during which to enjoy them. This morning it is -17 C outside, which will warm up to -11 by two o'clock. The sun sets at 4:30. The day, indeed the week, is planned around weather forecasts, which fluctuate wildly. Most times, it takes about fifteen minutes to get dressed up to take the dogs for a walk, let alone go skiing. It's hard work. So much of my day is spent inside, even before the long, dark evenings. During the pandemic, with its isolation and restrictions, even cinema, theatre, shopping, and dining out have often been off limits. January 1st as the promise of new beginning? It doesn't feel like a time to be starting afresh with new resolutions and new determination.

February view from my TV room

The Jewish New Year falls in September. Although that might herald new beginnings in the southern hemisphere, it is the start of the end in the north. Crops ripen, daylight wanes, temperatures begin to drop. It's a beautiful time of year, but it's the culmination of what has been, not a celebration of what's to come.

To me, the perfect time to mark the new year is spring. Maybe the spring equinox. That is truly the time when spirits feel renewed and hope rises. In my case I watch the snow melt at the fringes of the garden and the first spring crocuses poke up. Days become longer than nights, and neighbours come out from behind their snowbanks to greet each other. Smiles everywhere. My thoughts begin to turn to the cottage. 

My morning coffee place

This year it feels especially sensible to put off hopeful thoughts of 2022 for a couple of months. The virus has us by the throat again, exhausting essential workers, stressing business owners, and once again confining to quarters many of us, especially seniors like me. All my hopes of seeing friends and family are on hold with the words "let's see how the case count is in a month". So I limp along with social chats and books events with Zoom and What's App. I read, I write, I watch TV, and try to keep the dogs and myself exercised and entertained. It's a time for small pleasures. 

The time to think big will come.

Coming to a VERY painful conclusion

by Rick Blechta

Two nights ago I woke up at 3:00 a.m. because I smelled a skunk, but that’s another story…

As I tossed and turned trying to clear my mind and get back to dreamland, something flitted through my consciousness that was exceptionally disturbing: my WIP is telling the wrong story. That certainly woke me up completely! Allow me to explain.

The basis of my plot is about skullduggery within high the US government and my protagonists are trying to discover exactly what’s going on and then how to make it public — without getting themselves murdered. And that turns out to be a very difficult thing to accomplish.

All perfectly normal stuff for a thriller, right?

I believe it was Barbara who first brought up on Type M the problems the pandemic is causing writers who are trying to write novels that are relevant. Do we acknowledge how societies’ are coping with the new reality of our lives or do we carry on as if nothing has changed? To my mind, that won’t work unless we set our plots in 2019 or before.

And that’s my problem. I was trying to tell my story ignoring the pandemic, and two nights ago it suddenly became apparent that this would flat out, not work.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night as I wrestled with what I could do. First off, would anybody right now — and in the foreseeable future — actually care about an illegal operation within the US government to make off with huge amounts of cash? Should I scrap the entire novel and come up with something else? Could I adapt the plot somehow and move it in another direction?

Now I usually don’t dish out much information about things I’m writing, but in this case I feel it’s necessary to make my conundrum clear.

As I puzzled through the issue over the course of several hours I began to see a possible way through the mess, to possibly improve my story by working in the pandemic.

I’ve gotten to a place where I believe much of what I’ve written can be saved, but there’s a lot that will need to be cast aside. Also disheartening is that a fair bit of research is heading right down the drain. 

Sad as the whole thing is, this is what writing is all about. It could have just as easily happen when the novel got to a publisher or editor, “We really like the story you’re telling but could you change it to…?

So it’s once again Back To The Drawing Board for moi. Sigh…

But perhaps in the long run, I’ll be saving myself even more work.

The Days of Our Lives

A running theme here at Type M, understandably, has been our reflections on this pandemic. For me, the disruption has been minimal. As a freelance writer, I work from home so no change there. I'm fortunate, knock on wood, that my clients are weathering the financial storm. Though the lockdown or shelter-in-place or safer-at-home or whatever your local government calls it, has given me a severe case of cabin fever. I can't wait to enjoy a good meal and a cocktail at a nice restaurant. When I walk my dog, it's amusing to see people detour around one another. If you wear a mask, then for some reason, you're given a wider berth.

I've attached a photo of my calendar to show what I had planned for this weekend. Originally, I was supposed to be at Comicpalooza in Houston; however like everything but the virtual online events, that got cancelled. Last Friday, I was looking forward to high tea at a swanky hotel downtown, and that didn't happen. For later that evening, I had a Weird West reading scheduled for the Colorado Book Awards at the BookBar on Tennyson Street. Instead the reading took place via Zoom. We had over seventy people tune in, which was more than the number who usually attend the event in person. As you can see, I also had an interview scheduled with Social Security to review my eligibility for Medicare, and thanks to the magic of the telephone, did take place. The green "Parking" indicates that I have to move my car for street sweeping, but because of the pandemic the city has suspended fining people who haven't moved their rides. The city still sweeps anyway. The decrease in parking tickets represents a significant loss of revenue for Denver but I'm not crying.

The Real Heroes

It suddenly dawned on me (Donis) that it's time for my Type M entry. I'm amazed I remembered, because as far as I know, the date is Thronday, Maprilune the twenty-oneteenth. I was wondering whether to muse on the pandemic yet again. Have we all heard enough? Then I read Barbara Fradkin's excellent entry, below. "As artists, we document the emotional reality of our times," she said, and I couldn't agree more. The great Barbara Kingsolver notes that “a novel works its magic by putting a reader inside another person’s life ... The power of fiction is to create empathy.” As an example, she says that a newspaper will give you the facts of a situation, say a plane crash, but a novel will show you just how it felt to be one of those hundreds of people who were killed in the crash.

We will convey to future generations what it felt like to live through this pandemic. Many times I've been reminded of the absolute indispensability of nurses at times like this. Doctors may get all the glory, but it's nurses who really do the work, especially when science doesn't know the answer and tender loving care is all that keeps people alive. That's the way it was during the 1918 pandemic and that's the way it is now. In 1918 there was a war going on and the government censored the pandemic news because nothing could be allowed to interfere with war production. There was no cure, anyway. No one knew why this strain of flu was so bad. A person could be well in the morning and dead by sundown. The great heroes of that time were the Red Cross volunteer nurses. When I did the research for The Return of the Raven Mocker, my historical mystery set in Oklahoma during the pandemic, I didn't have to make up any stories about the heroism of the women who took on the job of helping the sick. I just used the stories I read about in the papers and heard from family members who lived through it. Here's an excerpt from the book:

“There are fifteen of us left,” Martha said, as she showed the doctor around the makeshift command post. “Eight other volunteers have either come down with the flu themselves or decided they don’t want to risk it. We all meet up here at dawn and make our plans for the day. Usually somebody stays here at the school to make soup and deliver messages. We have tried to let folks know that they should telephone here or send a message if they need help. We have access to a telephone in the school office. We divide up house calls. We go to anybody who asks for us, but lately a couple of us will ride or walk up and down the streets looking for a red ‘X’ on the doors. That is the signal the town council decided that everyone should use to let folks know that there is influenza in the house.”

"What do your nurses do for their patients when they call on them, Mrs. McCoy?”

“Whatever we can. Try to see that they are clean and fed, that the house is clean and the air in the sick room is not too warm or too stale. I carry aspirin in my kit, and menthol rub, and lemons, when I can get them. My mother and some other ladies in the area make useful tonics and medicines for fever, the cough, nausea, and for diarrhea. Sometimes the best thing we can do is stay with the patients for a while, especially folks who have nobody else to look after them.”

“How many in the vicinity have died?”

Hattie and Martha exchanged a glance. Often when they knocked at houses with the sign, no one would come to the door. Sometimes someone inside would yell at her through the door, or gesture to her from behind a closed window. Go away. We’re better. Don’t bring more illness to this house.

Other times no one would come to the door because no one could. Martha could tell the difference by the smell. Her nose had become acutely sensitive to the odor of sickness. In that case she would simply open the door and walk in, praying that she would find everyone ill but still alive. She wasn’t always so lucky.

On the day that she and Cousin Hattie revved up Scott’s touring car and made the circuit of nearby farms, they found that both Fosters and their five children had all succumbed during the night. The women wrapped the bodies in blankets, dragged them into the parlor, and laid them on the floor in a row for the convenience of the gravediggers. Then they filled a washtub with well water, washed themselves with carbolic soap as best as they could, took another dose of garlic honey, and drove to the next farm.

“I don’t believe any of us have wanted to take a count. There have been several,” Martha said.

If they lived through it, the women (and it was mostly women then) who voluntarily put themselves in danger in 1918 suffered shell-shock afterwards just like soldiers who had done battle. So here it is 2020 and we're living through our own version of a little-understood plague. Screw the politicians and protestors. We know who the real heroes are here.