{ Diane Dupree-Dempsey }
An infinite monkey writes...
Book two will be here soon – Did you read book one?
Beggar’s Gate – Book Two: Guardians of the Fey
Will be available from Amazon on June 27, 2021!!!
To celebrate and make sure we’re all prepared for the launch of Beggar’s Gate, the ebook version of Broken Circles – Book One: Guardians of the Fey is going onto a Kindle Count Down sale beginning May 29th when it will be on sale for $.99, the price will go up to $1.99 on May 31st, to 2.99 on June 2nd and finally back to its regular price of 3.99 on June 4th. Don’t miss this chance to read how the story started, before the next adventure begins!
Party Time? Back to the new normal?
I was supposed to go hiking today. I was going to go with two of my favorite people on the planet — peeps I hadn’t seen in waaay too long — I was excited.
Yet this morning, I called and postponed. I am not ill, though I feel like crap. I didn’t break a leg or have a tragedy befall me. What I also didn’t do was sleep last night.
Insomnia of a sort, isn’t entirely unknown to me, but last night I didn’t sleep till after four and woke up around five — that is unusual. Normally, if I have trouble, I fall asleep around two or three, then sleep in till seven. One hour of sleep has left me feeling like that thing the cat hacked up (which I really don’t want to clean up.)
And I am embarrassed by this. Embarrassed to have to postpone over what seems like a wimpy reason. I am also embarrassed by not having slept as if I see it as some kind of weakness.
WTF?
The thing is, everyone has a night like this once in a while. Why I should be embarrassed? I really do not know – I need to forget about feeling silly and figure out why I didn’t feel sleepy.
I am sensing anxiety in myself. Was this triggered by laying there watching the clock tick over, knowing I was supposed to get up and drive somewhere? Or was anxiety the cause of me not sleeping in the first place? DK.
Looking back, I did have caffeine later in the day yesterday than I usually do. Noon is my cut-off, but I recall swigging down the last quarter cup of my tea yesterday, only to glance at the clock and realize it was past noon. Was that truly enough to cause a sleepless night?
Honestly, I will never know without testing and I am not going to drink tea past noon just to check it out.
But it bears looking at, what could I be feeling anxious about? What other things were in place that might have contributed to the insomnia?
Could it just possibly have been fear of my upcoming social activity?
I am an introvert and yet even I am feeling the need to be around people after having hung close to home for so long. While I am not really eager to be getting out and hanging with big groups, I was really looking forward to being with two wonderful friends. So why would that set me off?
Perhaps because I have a very real concern about getting caught up in going places. I do want to see more friends and family but in small groups. This wasn’t a party; I was going hiking.
Maybe, I was seeing the hike as a beginning, as indeed it is. I am going to a party tomorrow night, and there have been other invitations. Most insidious of all, I find myself thinking things like, “We should invite so-and-so for dinner. We need to reconnect after all”. The thing is, there are lots of so-and-so’s out there. It is my own mind that is pushing me toward being social, at the same time I really don’t want to add so many activities to my calendar. I remember the pre-pandemic days when my months would be chewed away with an event here, a party there, lunch or dinner with this friend or that. All wonderful and fun things, but I hated being that busy and I have no desire to go that direction again.
Is that what is at the bottom of my anxiety and sleepless night? Fear of the flood gates I myself am beginning to push open?
P.S. I wrote the first part of this post on Thursday. In the meantime, I have gotten some sleep – Yay! – and have gone to my party. The party last night was wonderful! Granted it was a small group consisting of some of my oldest and dearest friends. You know, people I’ve known for thirty/thirty-five years, so being with them was always going to be great. After the last year it just felt amazing to be with other people!
The long and short is, still riding the high of being with friends last night, I reached out to a couple of people today and made lunch plans. The flood gates are beginning to creak open!
Come to think of it, last night was a potluck and I have a lot of strawberry shortcake left, maybe we should invite…
Future? Past? When would your time travel take you?
Review of: The String Rider: A Time Travel Story About Love, Betrayal, and String Theory
By: John Espie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Book description:
Trevor jumps forward to steal lotto numbers for his dream girl Rubie. Except, in the future, Rubie has been murdered … and Trevor instantly adores the daughter he’s raising with another woman. Never mind his missing thumb or the fact that he drives a minivan … with eyelashes. So, upon his return, Trevor must ask: How can he save Rubie? And does saving her mean his daughter won’t be borne, or can he — should he — have both?
I should mention I did get this book free in a Goodreads Giveaway. However, it was a book I would have read anyway.
I enjoyed The String Rider, so let’s start with that. The time travel format, where an individual can travel their own “string” into their past or future is an interesting one. It is similar to one I have used quite differently in an as yet unpublished manuscript, so I am clearly on board with the idea. This book presents an intriguing question – if you go into the future and find it seems to be a happy one, yet cherished people from your present are missing, do you try to change the future? I found it an interesting question to ponder.
Trevor is a well-developed character, who continues to grow throughout the story. His story arc is a satisfying one and he feels like a complete person. I will say, he occasionally acts like an idiot. It may be simply his immaturity, but I was puzzled by the way he dealt with some of the situations he found himself in. Maybe it’s just me, but if you find yourself in an unknown future, maybe don’t call attention to yourself before you figure out what’s going on.
The other characters in the book were less filled out character-wise, which is too bad since they were interesting people. I would like to have gotten a little deeper into who they really were. This brings me to my only real complaint about the book — it felt too short, and a bit rushed. Granted, it took place in a short period of (collective) time and the pacing was probably deliberate because it was a fast-paced book. My personal preference is for something a little slower with a deeper dive into the details. If you like something to move quickly, this book will suit your tastes.
There was plenty of action as well as some thoughtful moments. The conclusion of the tale itself was satisfying. Yet I wanted something more from the ending. I can’t honestly say what more I wanted, but once again it felt rushed to me. It could just be I was simply sorry to be done with the book since I really did enjoy it.
I am giving this book four stars. It is well worth reading and I suspect the things that bothered me, will actually appeal to others who want that fast pace.
Now, take a moment to ask yourself, what would you do if you found out you had an apparently happy future coming, but not with the person you loved most in your present. Would you try to avert that future? It is an interesting question, isn’t it?
The times we’re living in …
It’s almost April. My Dad’s birthday was April 5 and, if he were still alive, he would be one hundred years old this year. Now here’s the thing, a couple of years ago, on Pearl Harbor Day, I made a post on Instagram and Facebook about my Dad being a Pearl Harbor Survivor. I had relatives respond with variations on the theme, “gee I wish I had heard his story about that day.” Since I did hear his story, I wrote a speech about that day titled “Pearl Harbor a Secondhand Memory”. I not only used the story Dad had told me, but I talked to my Mom, my sister, and my two younger brothers for their versions of Dad’s story. I also did some research about his ship, the USS Hulbert.
It was one of my best-received speeches. I even used it as a target speech for the District 39 Speech Evaluation Contest one year. It made a woman in the audience cry. I was and am proud of that speech.
My mom loved the speech and wanted me to share it with my siblings. This year, I thought I would record the speech and post it online for my family and friends. I know a lot of them would want to hear Dad’s story.
And then I thought again.
What a wildly inappropriate time in history for me to tell that particular story, don’t ya think? With violence against Asians of all nationalities on an upswing it would be incredibly tone-deaf of me to put a story about the attack on Peal Harbor out front and center in my little social media feed.
I am grateful I caught myself in time. Grateful that I didn’t post something that had potential to contribute to the ill feelings swirling around because of Covid. Feelings, I might add that were exacerbated by our former president and many other politicians. I am certain my self-censorship is the right thing to do at this moment in time.
I do think I will make the story available to some family and friends in a private way, but I have to wonder, will there ever be a right time for me to tell Dad’s story to the world at large? It may be that that window has closed. As proud as I am of w my Dad was, it just might be time to let his past remain in the past.
Diane Natters On
Happy Wednesday World –
It is midway through the week and I have just spent a cold, rainy day, sitting by the fire editing Beggar’s Gate – Book Two: Guardians of the Fey. It is exciting to be making progress and I am hoping to send the second book on to my Beta Readers soon.
Writing a second book is an interesting experience. Somehow, I suppose I had imagined it would be just continuing on with the story from the first book, and it is, but it also isn’t. Book one finished a story but opened the door for a new one to be told. Yes, yes, all that is obvious, but I have never gone from “The End” to a whole new tale before. It’s rather fun.
Spring is almost here and I think many of us are feeling a little more optimistic these days. I am hoping I will soon be getting my “Fauci ouchie” — to steal a phrase I heard on NPR. The vaccines may get the world back on a more normal footing, but I have to wonder what changes will linger on. What is “normal” really going to look like?
Soon the warm weather will come and I will be spending my time outside in my Sky Chair, playing my Ukulele, and focusing on book three, but for a little longer, I will be sipping my tea by the fire and editing.
Take Care,
Diane
Review – L. R. Braden’s “A Drop of Magic”
I enjoyed A Drop of Magic. I have also read book two in the series and am partway through the third one, so I would have to say the author is doing something right.
The world of these books starts with magic and the Fae as something everyone knows about, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other discoveries for the protagonist Alex Blackwood to discover along the way.
Do you like Magic? Fairies? Mysterious happenings? If so, I would say you will find this series an interesting and fun one.
