Tag Archives: historical fiction

Not celebrating International Women’s Day


Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

I just can’t. I am too close to rage about the state of women’s rights in the world today. It’s all cheery to say “Yay, Women!”, but hey, why are we still not being paid the correct rate? Why do republican candidates in the US think it’s okay to play Stepford Wives and talk in mealy-mouthed voices and fight reproductive choice? Why do women and men both seem to feel that women belong in the kitchen, preferably pregnant and docile? Why is the Christ I learned about being touted as someone who wanted women to bow and scrape to men? (I don’t remember that lesson). Why are we still overwhelmingly likely to suffer violence, even from those who purport to love us?

It’s enraging, as someone who grew up in the long long fight of trying to be treated as an equal.

And year by year, month by month, day by day, I am seeing women’s rights being eroded everywhere. Even here in my beloved Canada, things are slipping. Not that we’ve ever been allowed to be equals, no. But at least the effort used to be there.

I’ve led a fairly quiet life, and yet I have had to suffer multiple instances of sexual assault, had to endure being paid much less than someone doing my exact job, had to fight to be seen despite accruing qualifications and expertise. It’s annoying, and dangerous. And I’m living in a “democracy”, as vs. a place where I would be required not to be seen at all.

There are many many places like that. I’m grateful not to live in any of those places, but on the other hand, I’ve been raised to believe in equality of opportunity. It feels bad to lose it. And I worry about our kids and grandkids who have to try to push their way forward. It feels so redundant to fight for rights again, to fight for women and the2SLGBTQ+ community, to worry about anyone who isn’t a white male being the object of hatred. And I worry about the white males, too. It must be terrifying to lose privilege. Perhaps they could use this understanding and apply it to the treatment of everyone else? And don’t they wish they could have a broader definition of their roles than the standard one?

So that’s why I don’t celebrate International Women’s Day. It feels like wearing a pink t-shirt against bullying. Pretty but ultimately meaningless.

In my recent book, Spit & Polish, I write about a time where women had very limited opportunities. The war was over, and the men coming back took back all the jobs that women did so well while they were off fighting. Women were back to being nurses, secretaries, teachers — if they were allowed out of the house at all. Ruth Maclean, my main character, is part of a new change in nursing. Nurses were working to become less of a drudge, more of an educated professional, and being fought all the way.

It’s a process that still continues. Even with the professional nursing corps, male nurses are often paid more than female ones. Why? And nurses, particularly female ones, are victims of assault way too often. It needs to stop. We need to take women seriously, stop squashing them, stop trying to shove them back into the kitchen unless they want to be there. Stop killing them.

Then we can truly celebrate International Women’s Day.

Spit & Polish is now available on book sites in ebook and paperback format, and through your local bookstore. It also can be ordered through Somewhat Grumpy Press directly. Why not also check out the other books published through Somewhat Grumpy Press? Lots of good reading to be found…

Life in a Sanatorium


In my upcoming book, Spit and Polish, Ruth Maclean, a nursing student, is reprimanded for her slowness and clumsiness. The nursing school sends her to practice her basic nursing skills at the local veteran’s hospital and sanatorium which, coincidentally, has been flooded with patients and needs more staff. Hmm.

When she first arrives, she is given the patient rules, which were lengthy. Rest periods every couple of hours were mandatory, during which the patients couldn’t even read to pass the time, and nurses weren’t allowed to speak any louder than a whisper. Patients were propped outside in the fresh air, even in winter. The rules around spitting were very intensive, as TB bacteria were present in sputum. It was collected in little pots or bottles that then the nurses had to clean out (ick). Sterilizing and cleaning were major duties every day, often using vile solutions of oil and iodine. It’s a miracle nurses’ uniforms remained white. It’s a miracle nurses remained!

Patients were grouped into several categories: absolute bedrest, basins (where they can wash themselves in their room and go to the bathroom), OTW (out to wash), and then up and about, gradually increasing their amount of time out of bed hour by hour. Any of these steps could be revoked if the patient’s temperature went up. It was a long, long healing time – it’s a wonder patients didn’t go mad (more often). Still the food was often good, since the hospital had to try to reverse the extreme weight loss caused by the disease. That’s assuming the patients could eat. TB often creeps away from the lungs, and patients could have throat abscesses, spinal infection, kidney involvement, and more.

Punishment for not obeying the rules was pretty severe, too: “It is expected that any patient that cannot adapt herself to these necessary restrictions will inform the Medical Superintendent and make immediate arrangements for transfer to an institution more suited to her tastes’, and that ‘she will not endeavour to make herself more comfortable by lack of discipline which can hinder the staff and make matters more difficult for fellow patients’.” (Raymond Hurt, Tuberculosis sanatorium regimen in the 1940s: a patient’s personal diary) Needless to say, nurses disobeying the rules would also be severely reprimanded. Nursing students, even more so.

It was a fascinating period to research for the book, and I was specially interested since my father had been hospitalized for TB in the very sanatorium Ruth is sent to. I also did part of my nursing training there, though by that time it had changed to a hospital for severely disabled children. Still, the building remained pretty much as it was back in Ruth’s day, almost falling apart. It had been thrown up during the war to house women workers at the ALCAN factory, and been unloved surplus ever since. It’s been taken down since I was there, and when I went looking for pictures you could see Kingston was embarrassed by it, as there were almost no photographs available.

There are many books detailing life (and death) in various sanatoria world-wide. Thomas Mann’s classic novel, The Magic Mountain, covers both the physical and psychological aspects of a long stay in a sanatorium in the Alps. It is a good read for a long winter…

Spit and Polish , which does have more action in it than The Magic Mountain, is available February 29, 2024.

On being seen, or sending out advance reading copies of my latest book…


My lovely publisher at Somewhat Grumpy Press has assembled my book and we are creeping closer to the actual official publication date. I’m at the point of sending out “advance reading copies”, which for me is a very scary thing. (PS: this is not the final version of the cover – we all know the back looks cut off…)

See, when we write, we’re alone. We wrestle with words, shape them up, get them edited and sent to Beta readers – but that’s all while the book is still in its malleable state. We can change things, big things, and always do. Now, though, I’m hoping readers will be captured by the finished story, enjoy it, perhaps even like it enough to write me a sweet review (or a bad one, after all, all press is good press, really). But what if they finish it and go…”meh?”

Suddenly we are seen, our toils are judged, and as we are gearing up for the release of the book, we have to remain enthusiastic about it – happy to market it and speak kindly of it and more. That’s hard to do when the response is lukewarm or missing.

So as I wait for feedback, I find myself wanting to hear back if the story touched people at all, if they liked the main character, if the nursing stuff rings true. I wouldn’t mind if they say the book is a waste of paper and severely damaging the planet by killing trees for no known reason (well, yeah, I would mind but I’m trying to be a grown-up here). A reaction is always something.

Imposter syndrome is rife in authors – I imagine even Margaret Atwood feels nervous when she sends her babies out into the wild, and she has piles of accolades behind her. It’s something about creating things out of your head…hard to put out your creative soul for the world to judge.

So readers, of my book and others, be kind to your authors. Write them a review. Let them know they’ve been seen, even if you don’t love what they’ve written. Maybe it’s written well? Maybe the spelling is correct? Writing is lonely enough without an utter silence when a book is released…

I’ll be publishing excerpts on this blog from time to time – I hope they intrigue you. Let me know!

(I released my first book, Recycled Virgin, at the start of the pandemic. No book launch, no reading events. Hard to market. Reviews crept in, slowly slowly. Check out its page to read them. Heartening. Still proud of it. You might enjoy it, too.)

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Gentlemen and ladies, start your engines…


zieglerwriterdeadlineOnce again, I’m trying my hand at the #NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Contest. It’s a bit insane, given that I have officially “given up writing” (see previous blog entry), but there’s something oddly compelling about a contest with a very short deadline, given parameters, and a small word count, even for we procrastinator types.

See, in the contest, you are sorted into heats, given a genre, a location, and an object to work into your story. This time they are allowing some freedom about the genre definition, but really really want the location to figure prominently in your story. There are hundreds of people competing in the contest, which has several rounds; people gradually get winnowed out and tossed to the four winds until the last round where you compete against maybe a hundred people from around the world for the last fast fast entry.

As for me, well, I’m procrastinating. What else would you expect? I was given the genre “Historical Fiction” and a location and object that I don’t find particularly inspiring to my creative mind (plus I am not a fan of historical fiction genres unless they are very well-done and I can guarantee 1000 words is not going to be enough to do a good job). So I’ve been researching, looking into ideas that I can pluck from my local area and inhabit with people.

Right now I’m thinking of George’s Island (sometimes without an apostrophe), a little drumlin in the harbour in Halifax that has been used for defence since the first inhabitants landed here. It’s nicely situated in the middle of the harbour, with commanding shooting lines to cover any entry to the landing spots themselves.

The island has been used as a fort, as a prison, as a party locale(recently), a provincial park, and also, alas, as a parking place for many of the Acadians expelled in the Grand Derangement. It’s a windy spot, always, and tales of the poor women and children left there in November of 1756 give me the chills. The Brits didn’t treat the Acadians well, to put it lightly, tossing around 10,000 of them out of the Maritimes and leaving them to freeze and die on boats and in the water and on George’s Island (until they needed them to repair the excellent farmland dykes the Acadians built that were broken down and so they allowed a few of the men back). True, it was wartime. True, the French and Mi’kmaq were winning battles and scalping people and some of the Acadians were right in there fighting the Brits, despite some of their neighbours swearing non-combat oaths. But so many died with the expulsions that the shame was great enough to alter the course of Canadian history.

Longfellow made up Evangeline, and the rest, as they say, is history. Never deny a poet can move a country. Even if he’s never been for a visit to the place.

But enough of politics. Now I have to whip together a story involving these elements, make it read human, channel my inner Wolf Hall-ishness (hahaha), and come up with a readable short short story to send in by midnight tomorrow. Yikes!

On the very good side, we get feedback from our entries, and I can post my entry in the forum for other participant’s comments. Should be interesting…and who knows, maybe this will get me started writing for real again.

Or maybe, my apartment will just get really really really clean…

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