Category: aging

WiP Report: Hump Day

Yesterday my NaNoWriMo word count reached 23,147, and since I’m trying to add 2,000 words a day, I’ve almost reached midpoint or the Hump Day for Apart in April, the book I’m drafting this month. At this point it seems very chaotic, filled with brainstorms and incomplete scenes, not necessarily in the final order either. Also sometimes I’ve gone back and added notes in red to what I’ve already written. Going back and trying to rewrite while you’re drafting is something others counsel against. For that matter, I do too in Novel Basics, my book on writing the novel.

I must admit that I didn’t feel swell when I got up this morning. About six to eight weeks ago I did something to my right shoulder at my exercise class. Don’t nag. I’ve seen somebody about it and even had an MRI. Last night I dutifully took my painkiller and muscle relaxant for it before I went to bed early, so I could get off to a fast start to my workday.

But pain in my shoulder woke me up in the middle of the night, probably because I played Spider Solitaire on my iPad mini for an hour yesterday afternoon while I waited for my daughter to come home for supper. It really annoys me when something I do for pleasure turns out to hurt me instead.

And my physical frailty makes this whole business of having a career as an indie author at my advanced age seem stupid. Why can’t I just be happy volunteering at the library or a senior center like some of my friends do?

So I was gearing up to a rant when an idea popped into my head. What if Daniel is the Watkins Man in this book? And the thought made me laugh.

That’s the main reason why I write, you know. It makes me happy. And now I have to get back to it. I can hardly wait to find out what my heroine Minty does when she sees Daniel pretending to be the Watkins Man.

Best, Juliet

Juliet Kincaid’s historical cozy mysteries tell the story of business girl Minty Wilcox and dashing detective Daniel Price from newly met to newlywed and beyond in Kansas City, a place that could downright deadly a hundred years or so ago. The first four books in the series are available in both digital and print versions. Check them out at https://www.amazon.com/Juliet-Kincaid/e/B00DB4HWRG/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Dithering for Fitness

An Indie Author Lifestyle Blog

Perhaps you know the feeling. It’s ten until the hour. Your fitness tracker pulses you gently on your wrist. So you pop up from your desk where you’ve been hard at work on your next book (or story or promo pitch) and run in place. Or maybe you jog back and forth in your house, passed perhaps by another person living in the house on the same mindless journey. When your tracker pulses you again to tell you that you’ve gotten your 250 steps for the hour, you return to your desk, sit, and go back to work.

My mischievous monkey mind just flashed me an image of an open office filled with cubicles where dozens of workers simultaneously pop up from their desks to run in place. Or at the local coffeehouse, authors with their laptops hop off their tall stools and shift from foot to foot while they vigorously pump their— I just had to get up to get those 250 steps by walking through the house and met my daughter in the living room doing the same thing. (My daughter and I have become rather competitive in our fitness program. And fairly often, to her chagrin, I receive more steps, more miles, and more active minutes, not to forget all my hourly dots, than she does.)

But let us continue . . .

—arms. Sometimes my daughter gets caught short without her 250 steps completed while I’m driving us to our exercise class. So she starts stamping the floorboard and hitting her seat with her elbows until her fitness tracker gives her the message that she killed it for that hour.

Those little devices can be such tyrants and they’re also addictive, so I’d like to suggest a method of exercise that doesn’t require you to resort to dramatic measures that interfere with your writing or other activities.

What’s the secret of my success? Why, dithering of course. It came to me one day after I started from the home office at the front of the house to do something or whatever in the other end of the house. But by time I arrived in my bedroom, I’d forgotten what it was. Now as a senior citizen, I’m entitled to a certain amount of forgetfulness, but I’d like to suggest that, no matter your age, you too can exercise your way to admirable fitness and good health through purposeful dithering.

Here are some ways that I now dither on purpose to get more steps in my day.

Instead of dragging the hose from the back to the front of the house to water my planters full of zinnias in the front window, I dither back and forth half a dozen times between the kitchen sink and the flowers with a small watering can.

(My neighbor Joan does me even better by watering her plentiful array of flowers a half a Dixie cup at a time. On trash day she also puts the big bins at the curb early, so she has an excuse to amble back and forth with small bags of trash to dispose of or single items to recycle. This method also gives her plentiful opportunities to visit with passersby or to see what the neighbors across the street are up to.)

When I need more steps, sometimes I ferry items one at a time out to the assorted bird feeders in my back yard: a cob of dried corn on one trip and a suet cake on another.

I’ve also developed ways to dither in public without seeming to. For instance, occasionally I go to a grocery store I’m unfamiliar with so I have an excuse to wander freely back and forth from the bakery to the frozen food section several times in search of that special item. Youngsters, you can use this method as well. My daughter has become expert at matching coupons to products to get more steps at our drugstore.

And so in closing, I ask you to feel free to provide other methods of purposeful dithering you might use in the comments section. (P. S. To receive notifications of future blogs like this one, please subscribe.)

 

“Write Stuff Down”

An Indie Author Reflects on Senior Moments

Three of us dedicated senior hoofers have gathered near the back of the exercise center after class. We’re all 60+. (Well, to be honest, in my case, it’s 60++.) We’re all normal weight and short but not stooped over from osteoporosis. We all take at least three classes a week, so we’re far more active than the USA norm.

But still the issue of senior moments comes up. “Why . . . ,” says J. “My husband told me something yesterday and a half hour later I couldn’t remember what he said, so I had to ask him again.”

I almost parrot something I heard on NPR or read in the AARP Bulletin about the nerve endings or whatever in our brains not holding onto information like they used to. But frankly I don’t recall enough of it to talk about it, so I keep my mouth shut.

Friend D says, “I write stuff down. That helps me remember. I write stuff on calendars, things like that.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I don’t say since that would be rude. I do say, “Jess and I keep a calendar on the kitchen wall.”  My daughter and I put our appointments, classes and meetings on the kitchen calendar, a sort of plan for the household. But I also put my appointments, meetings, and classes on the engagement calendar Jess gives me every year. I put my daily to-do lists on that calendar, too.

The mention of calendars sends my friend J off into a lovely riff about the calendars her daughter gives her every year with pictures of the grand kids at Christmas, at Easter, probably summer vacations too though if she says it I don’t hear it because I’ve drifted off into a memory accompanied by considerable self-flagellation on the subject of writing things down. (I do that a lot.) Besides jotting down my daily to-do lists on my engagement calendar and print-outs of monthly calendars, I often put to-do lists in the journals I’ve kept since January 1986. Recently I created a checklist to use to track my social media activities.

And then I keep special lists, sort of like flow charts, of steps in the processes of doing new things in my journal or the backs of printouts of my work. For example, recently my daughter helped me with the cover for the paperback version of my most recent work, Old Time Stories. Specifically she told me how to work with some basic Photoshop tools. Before she started, though, I said, “Wait! Wait! Let me write that down.”

So, I wrote down her instructions in my journal, or at least I thought I did. The next day when I tried to work on that cover without her help, I couldn’t find those instructions. What I did find in my journal were many to-do lists, mostly of the same six things over and over again. (You know, some times you can go too far with writing stuff down or following any good advice, for that matter.)

So, I thought that maybe I wrote it on one of the pieces of paper littering my desk. No luck there either because I had a little throwaway party the other day to clear my computer desk. I must have had a mental lapse (aka a brain fart) and put the notes in the recycle bag.

Regardless, I had to take up my daughter’s time for her to repeat the instructions. This time I did write clear notes in my journal. What’s more, I made a frigging tab with a sticky note so I wouldn’t lose those notes. I also transcribed the notes into my typewritten log to help me remember those instructions the next time I need them.

So what’s the big deal?

It’s like this. Senior moments like these strike terror in my heart that I’ve begun that long slide into oblivion. But maybe I haven’t . . . When I was weeping about forgetting the instructions my daughter gave me, Jess said, “That’s not a senior moment, Mom. It’s a technical moment. Anybody can have them.” Thank you, sweetheart.

Here’s the cover for the trade paperback version of my new book (currently in process).  It’s the first one I’ve done more or less on my own. You can pre-order the eBook version from now until its publication on August 29, 2018, for only $0.99 at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F4JL8D5

 

WiP Report 8/8/18: Fear of Failure

I am very happy to report that I finished editing OLD TIME STORIES, my new collection of six mystery short stories and eleven nonfiction pieces about the people and places that inspired the stories. And this past Monday I posted the digital version on Kindle Direct Publishing in plenty of time for the 8/29/18 publication date.

Promptly I moved on to the next phase of self-publishing: producing the print copy, filing for the copyright, and creating postcards to promote it.

For the first time so far, instead of producing the trade paperback through Create Space, Amazon’s publishing wing, I started the process through KDP, a time-saver since all the basic information about the book like title, author, description, etc. went right over to the paperback file. I even downloaded a template for the cover of the 211-page book.

But then the process came to a screeching halt.

With individual short stories like “The Barn Door” and “Detectives’ Honeymoon,” I’ve expanded my indie author skills to include simple eBook covers. But as yet, I haven’t done the cover for print versions. And my daughter, who did the covers for the previous paperbacks in my Calendar Mystery series, currently is as busy as a button on a back house door, to quote my dear old dad. The template intimidated me.

So I said to myself, Fine. File for copyright, something I’ve done in the past, though not recently. But when I went on line to do it this time, I got hung in the form.

Again, I said to myself, Fine. Do the postcards. I did the front of the cards some time ago, but darned if I could remember how I did it. So when I tried to put the jpeg for the text side of the card four times on an 8½” x 11” sheet, I failed about six times.

At that point, I got anxious and started finding excuses to do something else, anything else. I scheduled my exercise class for the middle of the day even though I know that meant I wouldn’t get back to my writing in the afternoon. I went on a junket to the drug store and the pet store, though I didn’t really need to. I checked my email, Facebook and Twitter accounts. I played Spider Solitaire over and over. And then, thank God, it was time to start dinner and I could cruise through the rest of the evening without beating myself up for being such a failure.

For please be mindful that any lapse for an indie author of an advanced age is a sign that brain rot has set in and it’s down hill from here.

A collection of six historical fiction mystery short stories and eleven nonfiction pieces about the people and places that inspired the fiction, the digital version of Old Time Stories is available to pre-order for only $0.99 cents until August 29, 2017 at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F4JL8D5

The Case of the Mysterious Back Pain

Lately, due to back pain, I’ve gotten behind on my current Work-in-Progress,  a historical mystery short story called “Detectives Honeymoon.”  Now, back pain isn’t unusual for indie authors. Lots of you out there are indie authors, so you probably know what I’m talking about.

But my recent back pain isn’t the typical lower back pain that comes from sitting and typing for long hours. I’ve had that kind and I don’t get it much anymore because I’ve got a special chair with two cushions in it.

Oh no, this new pain was up under my right shoulder blade. It felt like some big guy stood behind me and jammed his index and middle fingers into my back. At its worst, my back started hurting within the first half hour of starting my morning writing session. Plus, one day when I was driving home from an afternoon exercise class, the pain of keeping my hands and arms on the steering wheel at two and ten was so intense it reached eight on a ten-point scale, way past the point of being able to ignore it, just short of my screaming out loud.

So I tried to figure out what caused it and how to fix it because, honey, I’ve got lots of stories and books to write before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I tried adjusting the height of my special desk chair, took both pillows out, put one back in and then the other. No help at all. I switched out my special chair with a kitchen chair. That didn’t help either. I quit using weights at my exercise class. I even took the Spider Solitaire app off my phone. Zip effect.

So finally I broke down and went to see a nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. She said the problem was muscular not a case of bone scraping bone. That was somewhat good news. She told me to keep taking Ibuprofen, up to six a day, and apply heat or cold. I hated the cold, but the heating pad felt good. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a way to write with the heating pad on my shoulder.

These things worked, along with walking, but only for a while before really I couldn’t stand to type for more than half an hour at a time without the pain getting to me.

But then one day, at my exercise class, I had an epiphany about the source of my back pain when the instructor lifted her right arm, crooked at the elbow, and twisted around to her right. “Now,” she said. “You should be feeling this right where your bra strap crosses your back below your shoulder blades.”

“Aha!” I said to myself. “That’s exactly where my back is killing me!” And now that I know what caused the injury in the first place, I’ve quit doing that part of that particular exercise.

Now, I suppose you want to tell me that I wouldn’t have had this problem at all if I didn’t dance for exercise. But I’m an endorphin junkie who enjoys the rush I get dancing four times a week. I get an even bigger rush when my characters make me laugh or cry. So I’m very happy to have solved this mystery and I can keep on writing that story and all the other stories I have in  mind.

Best, Juliet

A House in the Country

A Reminiscence

Whenever we went for a drive on Sunday afternoons and on long trips, too, back in the 50’s, Dad stamped white horses. If he spotted a white horse in a field by the side of the road, he’d lift his right hand from the steering wheel, lick the end of his index finger, punch it against the palm of his left hand still on the wheel, and slam his right fist against his palm to seal the deal.

On our rides, Dad and I competed to see who stamped the most white horses. So he liked to wait until we’d almost passed the horse and it was almost out of sight to stamp it, so I’d miss it and he’d win. He’d chuckle like crazy as I’d turn my head to look for the white horse and say, “Where is it? Where is it? I missed it. Oh darn it, Daddy.”

(Two can play that game.)

I don’t imagine we stamped too many white horses on a drive in Clarion County PA that we took close to the Fourth of July in 1955.

My dad’s mother, Grandmother Willman, wearing a faded, short-sleeved house dress, but as stiff-necked as usual, came with us. She wanted to find the house her husband grew up in. Though the area hadn’t changed as much as it would in the next decade with the building of the interstates and the subsequent development along them, it had been a very long time, sixty years or more, since she visited that house. You forget lots in sixty years, something I understand much more now than I did when I was fourteen going on fifteen, a supple young thing who didn’t understand how age stiffens necks.

Our usual seating arrangement in the car was Dad at the wheel. Mom rode shotgun. Our dog, a short-legged beagle mix with a big brown spot in the middle of her white back, sat in Mom’s lap. I rode in the back.

On that particular ride, Grandmother Willman sat in front, so she could give Dad directions. Mom, Dotty, and I rode in back.

Mom was obviously pissed off about the seating arrangements. She glared through her glasses with her snapping black eyes at the back of her mother-in-law’s head, covered with silky white hair pinned in two braided crescents that crisscrossed each other just above her seamed neck.

Mom always said Grandmother Willman was a bitch because before Dad married Mom, Dad sent most of the money he made working for the CCC home to his mother to save for him.

Or so he thought until his wedding to Mom on 7/11/37, he asked his mother for his money, and Grandmother Willman said, “Money? What money? I don’t have any of your money.” Whenever Mom told this story, she bellowed those exact same words in the exact same way. And so my dad had to take out a loan of $200, a substantial sum back then during the Depression, to start his married life with my mom.

I’m certain Grandmother Willman disapproved of my mom just as much. They were so different, the one a stern, church-going, teetotal countrywoman and the other a city girl with a New Jersey accent who didn’t attend church much, not even on Easter and Christmas, except for the social stuff like the annual picnic. Also Mom used words like “bitch” and “shit” and didn’t mind the occasional beer or cocktail.

Grandmother Willman’s disapproval of the girl Dad married the second time around passed down to me. Though my mom was a world-class housekeeper and kept a far tidier house than any of my dad’s sisters and his mom, she wasn’t teaching me crucial womanly kitchen skills. (She didn’t want me underfoot when she was in the kitchen fixing supper.) Also my mom earned her living as a nurse before she and Dad got married.

I was headed down the same wrong path of wanting to go to college and to earn my living instead of getting married, making babies, and keeping house.

But that day, given a choice between staying back at the family farm with Dad’s relatives that she barely knew and going somewhere, anywhere, in the car, Mom shut her mouth and glowered at her mother-in-law from the back seat. She was probably just waiting for Grandmother Willman to say something or do something Mom could bitch to my dad about for days, weeks, months, and years to come. (“And that’s another thing that burns my ass off about your mother, Homer,” she’d say.

The drive, maybe punctuated by Dad and me stamping a white horse or two, took a while because Grandmother Willman was unsure of the directions. It must have been a point of pride that in the end she did remember where the house was and finally the car bumped along a lane past a new farmhouse, white with bright blue shutters, till we came to an old house inside a square of dirt with a rickety barbed wire fence around it. Even I who’d never seen the house before was shocked by its condition.

“This must be it, Mother,” Dad said as he pulled the car close to the fence. He turned off the engine, opened his door and got out without closing the door on that side. He stared across the top of the car.

Mom squeezed against me as she looked out the window on my side of the car. “Is that really it?” she said. “I can’t say much for it.”

Staring at the old house, I tried to figure out what was wrong with it. Well, for one thing, it was the gray of weathered wood without any paint at all. There wasn’t anything green around it. Unlike my father’s mother’s family farmhouse, it didn’t have a pond sitting in front of it. And then I realized what I didn’t see, too. It sat alone inside that fence without a single outbuilding, spring house, outhouse or corn crib, shed or barn.

After a while, Grandmother Willman said, “I believe the people that own the place now are using the old house as a barn.”

“I think you’re right, Mother,” Dad said, his voice a little distant from outside the car. He turned and poked his head back in. “I tell you what. Why don’t we look around? The cows aren’t in the barnyard and I’m sure the new owners won’t mind.”

“Yes, let’s,” Mom said. “I hate to think we came all this way for nothing.”

Mom opened the door. The floppy-eared Dottie spilled out. My mom slammed the door and I jumped out my side. Grandmother Willman was the last out, helped by my dad though I don’t think she stopped looking at that falling-down house the whole time.

Dad went ahead and unlatched the wide gate, shut by a loop of wire, held the gate open while we trooped through, then closed it. A little closer, I saw that the windows didn’t have a bit of glass anymore though a rag of a curtain blew through a window on the second floor.

Glad to be out of the car, I ran ahead of the others, up the narrow stone steps and through the doorway (no door left) straight into the house. Momentum carried me through what must have been the kitchen and parlor, up narrow steps to a hall and into a bedroom. Finally, the sight of faded wallpaper shredded down the walls, straw littering the floor, mouse droppings, and the stink of must and decay stopped me. This is horrible, I thought. Finding the house in this condition was worse than not finding it at all. It was like walking inside a corpse.

I heard my mom and dad marching around downstairs, as they tried to figure out the layout of the house, but I couldn’t stand breathing the close, rotten air of that house anymore. By the time I got back outside, Grandmother Willman was there, too, gazing at the house through wire-rimmed glasses that reflected the sunlight so I couldn’t see her eyes.

I heard her voice shake, though, as she pointed toward a nearly leafless, thorny plant growing by the steps. “That’s a blackberry bush,” she said. “My mother-in-law made the best pies with the berries from that bush.”

Suddenly, I felt sorry for Grandmother Willman, in her faded house dress, stiffly corseted underneath, in her black granny shoes and stockings, as she remembered all the people she’d known and loved who’d lived in that now dead house, alone and solitary in a barren field.

 

Missing Miss A

Our Last Basenji

Wednesday, March 30, 2016IMG_1353

This will be the last day for our sweet basenji girl Acacia, whom we usually call Miss A. For I have an appointment for us with the vet at 5:30 this evening.

This day has been coming for quite a while. About a year and a half ago, our vet showed me an x-ray and diagnosed Miss A with a mass, probably cancerous. “Okay,” I said soon after that. “We won’t do anything expensive for her like dentistry. But as long as she’s not suffering, we’ll keep going.” And so Miss A and I have kept walking around our tree-lined neighborhood, especially lovely this spring.

Progressively she’s lost weight, down to between seventeen and eighteen pounds from nearly thirty pounds when we began her diet and exercise program the day after we had to put our Cory boy, our second basenji, down almost exactly three years ago today. (Varlet was our first.)

(In case you might not know, the basenji is an African breed, and the smallest of the hounds, used in packs to hunt lions and other big cats. Basenjis have distinctive, curled tails and sharp-pointed, foxy ears. And they don’t bark. That’s the very best thing about them. They do, however, make some weird sounds or yodels. Cory was vocal for a basenji. As for Miss A, she sometimes whimpers, sometimes growls, and occasionally she can be teased into giving a hoarse “woo.”)

Now, Miss A is mostly skin and bones except for the mass, not as big around as a soccer ball, but not much smaller either. And she’s very weak. When she jumps off my bed, for instance, she totters around or even sits down at first.

Still, until this week she ate fairly well and walked with me two or three times a day except when it was rainy or very cold. But then on Monday she ate only one out of her three meals. Yesterday she ate nothing but three treats after the last of our walks. Amazingly, in spite on this, we walked three times yesterday, a lovely spring day, for a total of fifty-five minutes altogether. Then this morning, she wouldn’t walk and she didn’t eat her breakfast. She did eat some of her lunch, a tempting mix of warm water, canned dog food and dry cat food. We walked for fourteen minutes this afternoon.

But I know very well that she will continue going down hill and so today’s her last day.

I already miss her, just thinking about that appointment. And I’m also thinking about what to do when she’s gone.

Some of that involves a pedestrian, rather heartless to-do list.

1) Now we can keep the doors open to the study and my daughter’s bedroom so Miss A won’t get in and eat the covers off the books in the bookcases.

2) I can put a quilt my mother made back on my bed and leave that door open, too, now that Miss A won’t be here to try to turn the bed covers back on her own. She was never very good at that and so I have no bed covers, blankets or top sheets that aren’t torn.

3) I can give away the last bag and can of dog food, and the rest of the marrowbone treats.

At this point, you might ask, “Aren’t you going to get another dog?”

If you’d asked me that question up until very recently, I would have said, “Of course I am. And she will be a basenji, possibly about two years old like Miss A was when we got her as a rescue dog to keep Cory company.”

But now I’ve decided that probably I won’t get another dog for assorted reasons.

1) My mother’s practical voice that speaks to me inside my head from time to time says, “A dog ties you down.” This didn’t keep her from adoring our Dottie, a beagle-dachshund mix (we think) we had back in the 50’s and 60’s.

2) Caring for and feeding pets can cost a lot.

3) Walking a dog might be too dangerous for me, now seventy-four.

Here’s why I say that.

A few weeks ago on a beautiful afternoon, as Miss A and I were walking down the next street, I was gawking at a neighbors’ yard looking for signs of spring instead of where I was going. So I didn’t see that the pavement ahead was uneven. I tripped. I fell–so hard that I thought I’d broken my nose. Suddenly I couldn’t see from all the blood in my eyes. After a minute, I sat up and found a paper towel in my pocket to staunch the flow. I managed to stand up and head toward home. Luckily I met up with some neighbors who got me more paper towels and walked me and Miss A home. Soon after that, my daughter drove me to the Emergency Room where the doctor on duty put eleven stitches in my forehead. That, the worst of my injuries, came from my sunglasses grinding up my nose and into the soft flesh of my forehead as I skidded along the pavement on my face. The cranberry-juice colored bruises faded away in about two and half weeks, but I’ll be hiding that scar with bangs and make-up the rest of my life.

Luckily, I had no broken bones. I didn’t have a concussion. But here’s the thing. Next time I might not be so lucky. So chances are slim to none that I’ll get another dog, basenji or otherwise. I have walked a basenji in my neighborhood for thirty years, but Miss A will be the last.

Goodbye, sweet girl. We will miss you.

Myself as a Work in Progress

IMG_0972WiP Report # 13

Boy, howdy, how time flies.

When I recently checked my files, I discovered that it’s been a year and nine months since WiP Report # 12 in which I reflected on my decision to quit trying to go the traditional route of getting published with the help of an agent and editors.

As I looked over that blog installment, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far I’ve come as a self-publisher since I posted it. By July 25, 2013, when I posted that blog, I’d published only five Cinderella, P. I. fairy tale mystery short stories as Kindle eBooks. I had also nearly finished writing Walls, a Cinderella, P. I. Novel. But as I said in the blog, besides publishing Walls, I wanted to revise and publish Wings, its sequel; two or three Cinderella, P. I. story collections; and up to five more novels sooner or later. Also I wanted to write a contemporary series with a baby boomer amateur detective “before I check out.”

There’s nothing like the devil on your tail or at least time’s winged chariot bearing down on you to speed matters up. And it certainly helped that I’ve been writing with the aim of being a published author since 1986, so I had about ten novels and other completed manuscripts in my files.

Still, I’m a little amazed to report that in the year between October 9, 2013, when I published Walls, a Cinderella, P. I. Novel as a Kindle eBook and October 9, 2014, I published three novels altogether including January Jinx, the first in a historical mystery series; two story collections, and an additional short story. All this added up to more than 300,000 words or the equivalent of 1,100 print pages. Plus in National Novel Writing Month, November 2014, I drafted a 50,000 novel set in a community college and tentatively called Fall into Murder. In the months since December 1, I’ve written another draft of Fatal February, the second Calendar Mystery. I missed my February 2015 deadline to publish Fatal February, but still I aim to have it out this year along with a third Cinderella, P. I. story collection, possibly a collection of essays about mystery fiction that I originally wrote for this blog, and a stand-alone thriller called Death in Shining Armor. Besides the sheer output, I’ve also taken on more of the tasks of self-publishing such as doing some of my own covers and formatting instead of hiring someone to do those things for me.

Perhaps most important, I’ve gained a lot of confidence in myself as a writer and self-publisher. For example, I used to get all bent out of shape with “hi tec anxiety,” but not so much anymore. I still beat myself up sometimes about my low sales figures, but they’re improving.

FYI: These five books are all available as Kindle eBooks and trade paperbacks at Amazon.com. If you enjoy these novels and stories, please review them. Even a few positive words help.

Till next time. Best, Juliet.

P. S. Didn’t my daughter do a beautiful job on the cover of January Jinx?

Diabetic? Who, Me? Part 3

Reducing the Risk

“The doctor says to keep doing what you’re doing and come see him in three months,” said my doctor’s nurse over the phone a few days after I’d had a follow-up blood test to the one of March 21, 2014, that showed me at high risk of developing diabetes.

All right! I thought.

Now, if you’ve read my original blog post of March 26, 2014 on the subject, you know that my initial response to the question “Diabetic? Who, Me?” was “No way” quickly followed by some research and the realization that I had indeed developed some symptoms of pre-diabetes including blurred vision, a ravenous appetite for sweets, and injuries slow to heal. And if you’ve read my follow-up blog of June 26, 2014, you’ve heard about some progress that I’ve made toward reducing my risk of developing diabetes.

Three months later, I’m happy report even more progress.

Following the eating plan designed just for me by a registered dietitian, I’ve lost a little more weight for about 12% of my starting weight. My BMI is now 22.7, well within the normal range. These stats sound good to me, so I’ve switched from weight-loss mode to weight-maintenance mode.

And I’m also happy to report, finally my waist measurement has dropped below 35 inches, pretty good for a woman whose waist has always been just two or three inches less than her hip measurement. (Like my Jazzercise instructor who came up with the line: I’m not shaped like an apple or a pear. No indeed, I’m shaped like a banana.)

The other day it just felt so good to put two pairs of slacks and a pair of shorts in the Goodwill giveaway bag because honestly I can’t keep them up anymore unless I tightly cinch my belt, not a stylish look. Right now, I’m wearing a new pair of cropped pants in the next size smaller than most left in my closet. And the belt I’m wearing is four notches in from where I used to buckle it. Hey, let me get up and do my happy dance.

Okay, that’s done and I’ll also report that my vision is no longer blurred and I don’t have any pain in my hands or even much stiffness. (T. V. has improved so I’m knitting more and that helps.) I did crave sweets the other evening, but I quickly dispelled the craving by eating a clementine.

All that said, I must admit to some disappointment when I actually read the report on my Hemoglobin A1c level. It has now dropped out of the high risk for diabetes zone into the increased zone, but only by two points, from 60 to 58.

Still that’s progress. And I will continue to do what I’ve been doing. Here are some things that have helped me make progress.

My daughter and I limit eating-out to three times a month. Most of our meals we prepare at home. One of my friends complimented me on the discipline required to lose weight. But honestly, it mostly just takes time: time to plan meals using my eating plan, to grocery shop, to fix meals, to clean up afterwards, and to record the calories and the carbohydrates I take in. A tip for success from me to you: Weight Watchers and Real Simple recipes help me get nutritious, enjoyable meals on the table fast.

Also, I try to stay on my feet and moving around at least three hours a day. My activities include walking the dog three times a day, Jazzercise three to four times a week, grocery shopping two or three times a week, and daily meal preparation. (Hey, it all counts.) Another tip from me to you: to avoid mid-exercise-class low blood sugar and subsequent collapse drooling flat-out on the floor, thirty minutes before class, I snack on a serving of Dannon Light & Fit Greek yogurt: 80 calories, 8 grams of carbs, 12 grams of protein. So good. (Peach is my favorite.)

Diabetic? Who, Me? Part 2

Not If I Can Help It

It’s been three busy months since I posted my previous blog about being diagnosed as pre-diabetic. Since then I’ve nearly finished my WiP, Wings, the sequel to Walls, a Cinderella, P. I. Novel; lost more weight–altogether 14 pounds or 10% of my starting weight; and dropped my BMI from 26 to 23. I’d like to brag that I’ve brought my waist measurement below 35” but I can’t. Still, several pairs of my slacks or shorts that once were too tight now fit comfortably in the waist. Others that fit before now practically slide off unless I secure them with a belt. This feels good.

More important, some of the symptoms of pre-diabetes that worried me three months ago have gone away. I haven’t had a sweet tooth fit for quite some time. My vision is no longer blurred. And I no longer have the scary pain in my fingers and left big toe.

How did I manage these positive changes?

1) I told people about my pre-diabetic diagnosis, both through my previous blog and in person, to friends and to strangers as well. From that openness came an awareness of just how many of us are touched by the disease in some way. For example, at a recent meeting of five people, one is pre-diabetic, two are diabetic and one has a spouse who is diabetic. At lunch recently, two of my old friends revealed they are pre-diabetic.

From my openness, I also received valuable advice. For example, my daughter and I went out to eat one evening. And when I’d revealed my situation to our server, he said, “I’ve been diabetic since the day I was born” and pulled an insulin pump out of his pocket. “But with this, I can eat whatever I want.” He calmed my fears of blindness and amputations and helped me make a good choice for my dinner.

Thank you all for your help, kindness, and advice.

2) I did some soul-searching. In my previous blog about diabetes, I mentioned my incredulity that I could have this problem. But a little reflection showed me that I didn’t always eat right, my weight was up and I was spending more time than usual on my butt at my computer while I worked on the WiP. Also in the past I added a whole bunch of stress in my life by trying to do all the many things required of a successful self-publishing writer. These tasks include writing, editing, and marketing through social media and producing blogs regularly. I’m even doing my own covers, for heavens’ sake. But around the first of the year, I had the wonderful epiphany that while I need to do these things, I don’t have to do them all at the same time! What a relief! I’m so pleased I realized this and removed a ton of stress from my life. And stress can cause diabetes. I also realized that it’s taken me years for me to get to that score on the blood test and it will take time to lower it.

3) I actively sought information on the subject. I went on-line several times to investigate it and also talked to some experts. For one thing, I made a follow-up appointment with my physician to discuss my situation. Something he said really struck me. In my previous blog I concluded that if I, an active person who watches what she eats, can be pre-diabetic, no senior is safe. When I expressed my disbelief about being susceptible to diabetes, my doctor said, “You’re susceptible. You live in America.” This stunned me at the time, but it’s true. The American lifestyle has led to record rates of obesity. None of us is safe from the threat of diabetes.

One of the most effective things I’ve done so far is visit a registered dietitian. Because I’m not actually diabetic, Medicare wouldn’t pay for this visit. But since my doctor had arranged the referral, the medical center charged a discounted rate. And it was one of the smartest $54 I ever spent.

The dietitian explained how the pancreas processes the food we eat, often less efficiently as we age, especially with starches and other carbohydrates. She introduced me to some useful products that will help me achieve my goals. And she designed a food plan specifically for me, based on my record of what I ate the day before our visit. Thanks to that food plan, I’ve been able to lose a pound a week steadily without the sense of deprivation some diets I’ve followed in the past have produced.

4) One piece of advice that I received soon after I posted my blog about being pre-diabetic came from my fellow senior and self-publisher, the radiant Edna Bell-Pearson, who said that when she’s faced with a problem like mine, she does something about it. So I’ve been quite pro-active in my attempt to reduce the threat of diabetes by very careful meal planning and by tracking both the calories and the carbohydrates in nearly everything I eat. This can take time. It can be tedious. I might not do it forever. And ultimately, I might have to go on medication. But I’ll continue attacking this problem because I have many more books to write, publish and promote in addition to Wings, a Cinderella, P. I. Novel before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Best, Juliet