Tag Archives: Somewhat Grumpy Press

The joys of working with a small press


I’ve been having so much fun! Four years ago, when I published Recycled Virgin, I created Somewhat Grumpy Press, and decided I wanted a Pallas cat to represent it – but then I was coping with the pandemic, a pending move, and my MS, and I realized it was getting beyond me to manage.

So I gave the press to the current very capable publisher, Tim Covell, and he is racing away. He’s taken it into a more professional status, created the official logo, organized all the business bits of the press. The press has a stable of seven authors (so far) and has published eleven books! He’s worked hard to get them into bookstores of the brick and mortar kind as well as the online sources. It takes a lot of legwork.

I don’t know about you, but I find this impressive, given the pandemic, Tim’s other projects, and his full-time job.

In my travels as an author, I’ve also had the chance to meet Anne O’Connell of OC Publishing, and Cathy Mackenzie, of Writing Wicket. They also all run small presses and they all really work hard for their authors. It makes me want to support them.

And it makes it fun to do promotion for me and our books. I hate doing promotional things, but there’s something much more pleasant when you feel well-looked after by your publisher. I know my books are important to SGP, and that’s a feeling it’s hard to get from larger publishers, if you can even get them to publish your books. (He’s trying to get me to do TikTok, though, and I am not persuaded…but at least I can argue…and he’s done good promotion for Spit & Polish to date.)

There are lots of fraudsters out there – do check Predators and Editors and Writer Beware to be sure you are with a good publisher – but I highly recommend the small press experience. You may have to pay for some services (fair enough, given the time these things take), but as long as you take care, it’s well worth it. Do be careful of the presses who demand lots of money upfront, or people who offer services with an additional cost (like offering to film YouTube things for you as a high cost). You need to do your homework.

It’s important, too, to do your work beforehand – write your very best, get it edited a few times, get it in good shape, then contact the publisher. They don’t take every offering – their time is limited, too – but it’s likely you will get a friendlier response than the depths of silence often received from the larger presses.

I’ve recently taken training from the Editorial Freelancers Association and Queen’s University in developmental and structural editing. I’ve edited 5 books to date and so far they’ve been well-accepted. I’ve got two more pending and one in its final stages, but I might have room for editing your writing – if you need a developmental editor, please contact me, and we can talk. I’d love to help you turn your project into a successful book. You can reach me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and through here.

Have you had experiences with small publishers? Editors? Was it good? Bad? Indifferent?

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…

Stretching umbilical cords, or the joy/sorrow of letting kids go


I woke this morning thinking about how my kids, the hearts of my heart, are about as far away from me and each other that they can be, geographically. One is in Europe, one in Australia, one back in Kingston while I am in Vancouver. It reminded me of the imagery I tried to share with them (but of course they found repellent, because, kids) that I can almost feel the leftover umbilical threads tugging at times, especially when I am worrying about them, or when I know life is being challenging for them. It’s a weird thing.

I raised them to be independent, to question the status quo, to be unafraid of trying new things. This has resulted in them being all over the world. I miss them, still find such joy in their contact with me. I have fantasies of them all being together, chatting and laughing with each other again. I used to love listening to them talk amongst themselves. This is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

But that’s the thing – you’ve got to let those kids go. Let them vanish and like that old tiresome quote: If you love something, set it free. If it is yours, it will come back to you. It’s risky, though. They may never come back. One of mine hasn’t. Still have that psychic umbilical attachment, though, even if these days it is more of an ache.

In my upcoming book, Spit & Polish, my main character, Ruth, is dying to leave her small town and move to the slightly bigger city of Kingston, ON. She’s bored, the local boys are mean, and she dreads having nothing to do but wash diapers for her always increasing brood of siblings.

In that time period, the years after WW2, choices for single women were few. All the jobs that had opened up for women during the war were closed with a snap. Men needed the jobs, everyone thought. Women should get married and have babies. And endlessly support their husbands, no matter how unfulfilling that might be. Ruth, at her young age of 18, didn’t love that option. She wanted an alternative.

Cloyne in the 1930’s

But her parents wanted her nearby, of course. At least until she got married. Which is why Ruth was so surprised to find her mother supporting her to go away to nursing school. It meant a very real increase of work for her mother, and Ruth is frequently guilty about her escape. (Not so much that she wants to go home, though…)

While nursing might seem a stereotypical choice for women now (I beg to differ, having had a very varied and exciting career as a nurse myself), it certainly wasn’t then. Nursing was just becoming respectable, and nurses were continually being portrayed as being easy, loose, a bit tawdry. Nursing schools were incredibly strict to help control this image, and students were held to a very high standard for behaviour. Of course there were a few who snuck out after hours, misbehaved with patients, followed doctors like eager puppies. Ruth doesn’t dare. She knows she is there on a short leash from her father, and she is terrified of losing her route to what she hopes is a satisfying career.

It doesn’t help that challenges are thrown at her every time she steps just a wee bit out of line. Still, she keeps on, gradually becoming braver as she falls more in love with nursing. It gives her strength to stand up for her choice, even as another pregnancy makes her guilt about not being at home to help her mother. Fortunately, Mrs. Maclean is willing to do the letting go, to allow herself to accept the risk of losing Ruth forever.

I’ll be doing an interview about the book with OC Publishing, on their Author’s Journey sites : YouTube, and Facebook, on Tuesday February 27. I’m delighted to have a chance to visit with Anne O’Connell, who has been a tremendous supporter of writers and writing.

Spit & Polish officially launches February 29th. It’s on sale (the ebook) for pre-order until then on Kobo, Amazon, Apple Books and more. Why not grab a copy and see what happens to Ruth in this first in a series of books on Ruth, nursing education, medical care, and Kingston, ON in 1946.

Medical progress, quackery, and the profit motive


The last couple of days I’ve been disabled with back pain. This is new for me as my multiple sclerosis means most of the time I rarely feel any pain. Anywhere. Which can make for missing some essential things going on in my body. Right now I am wondering if it is a kidney stone or a bulging disc or I’m just generally falling apart but I have places to go and things to do and I haven’t got time for this.

Onto YouTube I go, for helpful (?) advice about self-diagnosis. It wasn’t helpful. I don’t have a doc to go see so the only alternative to self-diagnosis is sitting in the ER for hours which would likely aggravate everything with not much reward. SO YouTube it is.

After listening to a relatively sane doc tell me how to relieve things, the other videos cued up. The first one was about faecal impaction (it must sense my age and state of decrepitude). According to the handsome charlatan, drinking water or eating fibre or even exercise won’t help this – you have to pay for this doc’s special advice. (She was “once on a prestigious medical faculty” – I’d be interested in knowing where she is now, as fraudsters regularly assign names of people that don’t exist to their miracle cures. I’d look it up but sitting is painful.) He went on about how bits of stool linger in your bowel for years – that old chestnut. It just ain’t true. I do wish some of these people would look inside a bowel now and again. Or prep for a colonoscopy.

It all reminded me of the tuberculosis treatments back in the time of my upcoming book, Spit and Polish. Back in 1946, tuberculosis was common. Overcrowding, traveling to places where it was epidemic during the war, poverty, poor diet — all of these created a happy environment for mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacterium that causes TB is a nasty wee thing, designed to defeat elimination. The cells have a waxy coating, which makes them resistant to drying out and to attack by antibiotics. Fortunately, it reproduces relatively slowly, so it isn’t as wildly infective as say, Covid, but once you have it, it is the devil to get rid of. Our usual immune system has a very hard time digesting the cells. And it can lay latent for years. My father had TB in 1946. He survived with no long term effects, but when he was going through chemotherapy in the 1980’s, those rotten little cells started coming alive again.

TB is often in the lungs, but as you will read in my novel, it can infect any part of the body, including the kidney, spine and brain. Back in 1946, there weren’t any antibiotics widely available that effectively treated it, so TB patients were put through all sorts of torment as their docs tried to keep ahead of the disease.

The chief therapy was bedrest and better nutrition, sunbathing and moderate exercise. That could go on for years, and did, in sanatoria all over the world. This was expensive and money was needed, so more interventions were invented to apply for grants. Things like inhalants like mercury and paraffin were tried, to ease coughing. They often eased patients into the next world.

Frequently patients with bone involvement were placed in traction or casted to keep the bones in place while a hoped for reconstruction could take place. Patients could remain casted for months, which led to other problems.

Surgical approaches were used, aimed at letting the lung “rest” and cure itself-and, as the mycobacterium tuberculosis are aerobes, so removing oxygen from the area would help slow its growth. Surgical treatments could be temporary, like a created pneumothorax, or permanent, like a Semb’s strip, phrenic nerve crushing, rib removal, lung collapses and resections and the like. Needless to say, patients who experienced these treatments were forever deformed and visible. This made it difficult for them to live in a tuberculosis-afraid society.

Add the prejudice that some types of people (I’ll leave you to imagine who, but hint hint, they are assumed to cause every bad thing that happens to them) were predisposed to TB, and no one even wanted the affected to deliver the paper. It was a bit like the early stages of AIDS.

Fortunately for the surgically maimed and those awaiting maiming, streptomycin came on the scene, with initial miraculous results. Other antibiotics followed, and combinations of antibiotics that worked well against the tiny foe.

Unfortunately, antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis is now on the rise, so the future surgically maimed may yet be waiting in the wings.

Want to know more? See my upcoming novel, available February 29, 2024.

Beautiful Kingston, Ontario: Antiquitate Civilitate Humanitate


(A Civil and Creative Community with a Proud Past)

Photo by Rasheeque Ahnaf (Piash) on Pexels.com

That slogan in English reads a bit like something from Winnie the Pooh, with all the capitals, but I’ve got to admit it does sound like Kingston.

Kingston was the first capital of the United Province of Canada. It is filled with limestone buildings, hospitals, universities, military structures, and prisons. We used to have a statue of local boy Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s First Prime Minister, but his history is at best mixed, so he’s been moved to think over his crimes in the local Cemetery. We still have his house from the 1840’s and you can go tour it and marvel at how the elegant of that time lived.

The area has been settled for hundreds of centuries, acting first as a home for Iroquois, and then for the “five nations” formed of Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Wyandot peoples. These residents traded furs with the French – beavers were everywhere and their fur much prized. Following this, the French and English traded ownership for years.

Kingston is ideally suited as a defence spot, situated on the shores of Lake Ontario, the end of the Rideau Canal, and near the end of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Various armies and navies have resided here, and there are leftovers. We have Fort Henry and Martello towers, and the military university, Royal Military College. Many of these places have been in use since the War of 1812, where Kingston played a significant role.

So Kingston was a friendly place for the military for decades. After WW2, Kingston’s Queen’s University opened up so many spaces for returning soldiers to get upgraded education, they had to be put up in tents all over the place. The population of the city increased madly, and I can only imagine the trials and tribulations that the local government went through.

In my book, Spit and Polish, I deliberately focused on the immediate post-war period. So many books talk about the war, but it’s often like those stories where the prince and princess marry and live happily ever after. I wanted to see the city coming back to life after losing so many of its population to the war effort.

Ruth has just dipped her toe into Kingston life. She’s coming from the tiny town of Cloyne, about an hour and a half north of the city. She’s so tasked with her nursing school work she barely sees everything else (except stores that sell new stockings!), but she already knows she loves the place. She does go to local eateries and shops, and you’ll see their names in the pages of the book. She also rides the beleaguered Wolfe Island Ferry, which was actually running at the time.

Cloyne overlook

In the current time, Kingston has a vibrant arts community, several colleges and universities, innovative research departments and businesses, and a wonderful climate. I can understand why Ruth loved it.

See Spit and Polish, launching February 29, 2024, for more about this enchanting city and the time.

Florence Nightingale


Dear old Flo (as she would have hated to be called) wasn’t necessarily someone you would want to sit beside at a formal dinner. You’d be trapped forever next to her as she waxed poetic or fierce about the need for nursing to be valued, for health care to be less custodial and more caring. I don’t think she had much of a sense of humour about it, either. Of course, it was the 1800’s, and maybe with the wars and all, there wasn’t much to laugh about.

Back in her time, the only requirements for a nurse were “a loving heart, the want of an object, and a general disgust or incapacity for other things”. In other words, if you were lazy and unloved, here’s your career. Her response was “This reminds one of the parish where a stupid old man was sent to be schoolmaster because he was past keeping the pigs.” She wasn’t going to accept this sort of thing, and set about creating a nursing corps of women who based their care on science and intelligence.

She was all about cleanliness, which was key at the time. Sanitation and fresh air and quiet were all deemed vitally important in getting people well. Of course, in her time, they were pretty dirty places, the hospital and home.

In our time, it’s getting that way. Contracting out cleaners and sealing hospital windows means the cleanliness aspect is suspect. The noise of modern hospitals, where (from my recent experience) quiet is an unknown commodity isn’t a help either. We seem to be heading backwards.

In my upcoming book, Spit and Polish, nursing student Ruth Maclean reads a bit of Florence’s Notes on Nursing every day. It’s a good thing, too, because a lot of her training at that time was based on Florence’s edicts. And her instructors required the absolute obedience to instruction that Florence Nightingale demanded.

My book takes place in 1946, just after World War II. It was an exciting, if slightly gruesome, period for medical advances. During her time at the tuberculosis sanatorium, she is witness to the changing protocols of TB treatment, the surgeries and inhalants, the introduction of antibiotics. As her skill levels grow, she becomes even more excited about the detective work of nursing, the assessment of patients, the thrill of making them comfortable. But she still must keep the focus on Florence’s approach to patient care:

“I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper choosing and giving of diet–all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.”

Becoming a nurse is an honour and a privilege, but with responsibility to match. Ruth learns about this as she travels along her first year of working as an aide, battling challenges and challengers all the way.

Catch the release of Spit and Polish, this February 29th, 2014. It will be available (so my publisher assures me) on all platforms and through bookstores (you may have to ask them to order some in) or through somewhatgrumpypress. I so hope you’ll enjoy it!

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.)

rv-cover-amazon3

Cutting cutting cutting


Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

It seems to me a lot of my life is spent cutting – physically, as I clip threads and cloth, virtually as I edit my writing and try to help others with theirs. I like to to throw a bunch of material on a table, pull off a long stretch of fibre, toss as many words around as possible.

Trimming at first seems easier, once the ideas are in place. But that’s deceptive. It’s easy to end up with too much to handle, to have threads and yarns and stories get tangled in knots as you try to work with them. Teasing out sense from the resulting mess can take longer than choosing words, threads, fabric properly the first time. Hard to do when you are just learning, difficult habits to break even as you gain experience. Thank heavens for editing, and the chance to rework.

Just ran across an excellent article by Jason Hamilton with the Kindlepreneur folks, listing the words you can and should minimize if you want to be read (writing for yourself is always a good idea, but some of us don’t feel validated until our reading is read by others and cheered or booed), and it threw a bit of salt on my writing wounds. I just know I simply use too many of these words all the time, repeatedly, inappropriately, and when I sit down at my computer I can hear them trying to escape into my writing. (as they just have, by way of an example).

“Just” is a pernicious weed in my writing. I pluck it out, it creeps back in. I overuse “felt”. Looking over my recent creation my ever helpful ProWritingAid told me I had my poor heroine say, “She couldn’t help herself” do something many many times, surely not the approach I wanted for a strong female character!

I have trained myself to flinch at adverbs, but I kindof like playing with run-on sentences. They are dangerous friends, though, easily transforming themselves into sets of wrongly linked clauses. Unplanned hilarity can result. And while I am all for unplanned hilarity, it is hardly appropriate in a death scene. Well, most of the time.

And so, and so, like the boy in Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, I must grab my Vorpal sword, gird my loins, and get cutting.

One, two! One, two! And through and through 

      The vorpal blade went (goes) snicker-snack! 

It’s going to take me a while, and golly I do wish I hadn’t sent my inelegant MS out to be looked over already. I have hopes, though, that one day, like the aforesaid boy, I’ll be able to cheer “Oh frabjous day! Callow! Callay!” and chortle in my joy.

And maybe, just maybe (she says, violating already her hard fought principles) someone else will chortle with me.

(On a side note, I highly recommend ProWritingAid. It catches the most amazing things, like when I start every sentence in a paragraph with the same thing, or when I babble on vaguely. It’s worth the investment, IMHO. Of course nothing helps more than a good editor, an outside set of eyes, particularly an understanding set. If you’re looking for one, check out Somewhat Grumpy Press, where I work with another great editor to help others avoid these problems and others.)

Happy writing!