The Girdle of Melian

eans even less time for blogging! Even my ROW80 goals have fallen by the wayside a little, as we're moving apartments! Lots of time spent packing, and finishing up my final essay for school, in between work and family life, before we head off on vacation! Would you believe it, I still haven't shared the photos from last summer's vacation! I think about all you wonderful bloggers, and the posts I'm missing, and I keep saying to myself, just wait until school is over! Until then... Here are some shots from a recent walk through the Geneva Botanical Gardens: The language of flowers Absinthe! Cacti! The language of flowers, and Lady Wortley, who travelled through Turkey Do you have a botanical garden in your city?

hotos of Founex and beyond! And the promised snip... Rainy day roses Early morning roses Another rainy day Rainy days at the Palais des Nations Sunny day! Bus stop roses Spot the peacock... There he is! Food truck! Bastard burgers at the Hamburger Foundation A standard burger... Swaf beer! Swaf is a play on soif = thirsty in French An older view of Lake Geneva/Lac Leman Giant hourglass! Lunch near the giant hourglass Burgers at the United Nations Beach My main ROW80 goals-related writing lately as been my snip for the July writing exercise on the thelitforum . These are the original rules set by Barbara Rogan: "SHOE EXCHANGE: An Exercise in POV “You can never really know a person until you walk in his shoes.” An old saying, but one perfectly suited to fiction writers. We can’t know our characters unless and until we immerse ourselves within them: an act...

new book by Kait Nolan and a new book by Lori Benton! The King's Mercy by Lori Benton "For readers of Sara Donati and Diana Gabaldon, this epic historical romance tells of fateful love between an indentured Scotsman and a daughter of the 18th century colonial south. When captured rebel Scotsman Alex MacKinnon is granted the king's mercy--exile to the Colony of North Carolina--he's indentured to Englishman Edmund Carey as a blacksmith. Against his will Alex is drawn into the struggles of Carey's slaves--and those of his stepdaughter, Joanna Carey. A mistress with a servant's heart, Joanna is expected to wed her father's overseer, Phineas Reeves, but finds herself drawn instead to the new blacksmith. As their unlikely relationship deepens, successive tragedies strike the Careys. When blame falls unfairly upon Alex he flees to the distant mountains where he encounters Reverend Pauling, itinerate preacher and friend of the Careys, now a prisone...

a da! Now that the 2019 Edition of WRiTE Club has ended (congratulations to Wendy Cross and all the participants!), I can reveal my own input: I wrote under the pen name Galadhon, and fought in bout 3 ! Here's the scene I entered, the opening of Blackbird's Song : The ghost appeared in the doorway. I saw her from my cot, and thought it was Alice, in a Victorian dress of her grandmother’s, or some such fool thing. But Alice is no fool, and she has no business in Vimy field hospital anyway. Five other cots in this tent, all occupied. But this was in the still, cold hour before dawn, and the other men slept, wounds buried beneath prickly wool. I’d also been asleep, and dreaming of Alice, on an icy winter morning at the skating rink in Westmount Park. I was showing off, recreating some of my best weaves and dodges from last season’s hockey matches, and in my cot I tried to turn, and the searing pain in my leg jolted me awake. I was afraid I’d cried out, and k...

ooks, books, and more books! I thought I'd do a recap of all of my visits to the Library in English in Geneva book sales from the time we arrived in Switzerland. I'm not sure I've captured all the blog posts, but here are the Twitter posts showing the stacks of books I've gotten each time! Spring 2018 book sale Spring 2017 book sale Autumn 2016 book sale Spring 2016 book sale 2016 Geneva Book Fair : meeting Joel Dicker Autumn 2015 book sale 2015 Founex village fair Spring 2015 book sale , and second haul A to Z Challenge blog post on the library Autumn 2014 book sale , and second haul Spring 2014 book sale Geneva book fair 2014 : meeting Irvine Welsh I seem to have set my ROW80 goals a bit early. For this ROW80 round, I need to keep going on edits for The Handful of Time . I'm only on chapter 3! Otherwise, I could work some more on edits for my short story, Blackbird's Song. And finally get around to submitting Druid'...