Out of it!

My last Blog should have been called "Being in the Zone." But I left out "in." Which goes to show I'm not perfect.

Speaking of something completely different. Do not believe all you hear/read that eating six squares of dark chocolate a day will lower your blood pressure. It won't. Nor will eating cherries cure gout. Snake oil salesmen/women are out there with tales of magical cures with no scientific proof but, if you buy their book filled with tales of magical cures you will be saved. No, you will not be saved you will have shelled out $100.00 to pad their bank account and depleted yours.

But if you want to pad my bank account you may purchase my latest book from Cerrridwen Press. And there is the picture of the beautiful cover. No fake stuff here. This is the real thing. A contemporary romance with a paranormal twist. A good read with a happy ending. Sigh. I love writing romance.

Anita

www.anitbirt.com

Being the zone.

Have you ever experienced time stopping? Or seeming to stop? I remember reading about a famous Canadian hockey player who said, "when I'm going full speed down the ice with the puck on my stick, time slows. I'm in a zone."

Getting in "the zone" is the aim of most writers. To let go. To write without thinking. Letting the story pour out. That is going to be my main writing goal.

Being in the zone. I was in an accident on a starry winter night in the Arctic. I was visiting our foster son and staying with the teacher and his wife, Helen, the village nurse. On that starry night, we started off to cross the frozen ice to have a meal with the RCMP corporal and his wife on the other side of the fiord. I was sitting on the komatic (a sled) pulled by a Skidoo driven by the teacher, with Helen and their little boy as passengers. We headed down the snowy hill to cross the ice, the Skiddo hit a bank of pressure ice, I pitched forward and crashed into the tow bar.

I rememer lying in the snow, blood pouring from a deep cut on my jaw and staring up at the starry sky. Time stood still. I was part of the universe. I was floating in painless space.

Too soon, I was walked back up the hill to the house where Helen took over. The cut on my jaw required stitches. Helen was afraid my throat would swell and I'd die. She stitched me up, put an ice pack on my throat and I lived to tell the tale. That "moment in time," remains a with me.

Another timeless moment - sitting high and dry under a rocky ledge high up in the mountains, eating my lunch sandwich, watching the rain pouring down and thinking, "I am here. In this place." Me and the rain and the dripping trees. Quiet.

I'm rambling on about being in the moment. Time is precious. Take time to smell the flowers. To really look at a tree and wonder at its size. To linger over a morning cup of coffee with someone you love. To hold the hand of a small child. Precious moments too soon gone.

Thanks for stopping by. Have you had a timeless moment? Are you willing to share it with me and whoever comes by?

Anita
www.anitabirt.com

And now for something special!

ISABELLE'S DIARY, my contemporary romance with a paranormal twist is here! My book was released to-day by Cerridwen Press. THIS IS A PROMO. Go to www.Cerridwenpress.com for the price and how to order. (It's $5.95)

I love the cover. In a very subtle way it shows happy and sad motifs. What's my book about? It depends on whether you believe in ghosts. My heroine, Sally Carter, didn't until ...

Can a ghost appear on a bright sunny June morning? Can she sit in a cafe in the Welsh town of Llandrindod Wells weeping over the pages of a diary?

Who is the girl dressed in somber Victorian black whose appearance and sudden disappearance disrupts Sally Carter's orderly life? And why was Sally the only person to see her?

Determined to find the identity of the mysterious stranger, Sally seeks help from handsome Welsh historian Dan Conway. In their search for answers Sally discovers long buried family secrets and a branch of her family tree linking the past to the present time.

When Sally returns to her home in Toronto pieces of the puzzle fall into place. But a question lingers. Who was the weeping girl and why did she disappear without a trace?

Anita

Toads

A few days ago I told you about the risky ventures of baby Western toads as they tried to cross a busy four lane highway. Did I mention there were four lanes? With lots of big trucks hurtling by? Word went out when a highway maintenance supervisor saw the slick on the road from squashed toads. Not a pretty sight. He moblized a team. They built a little plastic fence to stop the toads crossing and loaded the little guys into buckets and transported them across to safety. According to the newspaper to-day. A million toads were saved! No doesn't that just warm your heart? It did mine.

I wanted to import toads into our garden to eat slugs but there were no toads available on the southern part of Vancouver Island. We have had one or two grass snakes show up but I haven't seen one for years. But - we don't have a lot of slugs either. Perhaps we have snakes in the grass! Or slinking around the flower beds.

Speaking of which. The flowers are particularly beautiful this time of year. Is it the change in light from the sun as it slants away from us that makes the colours so brilliant? I fear my tomatoes will not ripen. I have two plants loaded with tomatoes. We've had a cool sort of summer. Some sunny days and some rainy days. I'll pick the biggest of the tomatoes, line a box with newspaper and cozy them up in a dark place to ripen. Friends assure me this works. We shall see.

If any of you are on Facebook. Look me up.

Anita
www.anitabirt.com

And now for something!

Friends are wonderful, are they not?

My friend, Solveig, is a real sweatheart. She came by this morning and showed me how to put my book covers on my blog.

Aren't they intriguing? Are you ready to click on to www.Cerridwenpress.com to order copies? Be my guest.

I'm supposed to be working on my new book, tentatively titled, Tycara Gate. It takes place in Cornwall on the coast between Polperro and Fowey. My American heroine is caught up in a situation fraught with danger, where nothing is what it seems. And there I must leave you and do something productive like penning five pages of the above story. Or should I go for a walk? I'm on Facebook should you care to take a walk on the internet and look me up. There's not much there that isn't here on my blog but I hope to stir up interest in my books by featuring me in as many places as possible.

ISABELLE'S DIARY will be released by Cerridwen Press on September 6th. That's this Wednesday.

Anita

www.anitabirt.com

And now for - wait for it

You may leave now unless you are interested in cooking. My rant is about recipes where prep time is noted. Yesterday I tried a new recipe for lamb shanks. Prep time - 25 minutes.

I spent almost an hour before the stuff was ready for the oven. I decided that whoever made up the prep time had two assistants. One on the left to gather the onions, the garlic, the can of tomato sauce, the red wine vinegar/red wine, the orange zest, the lemon zest, the lemon juice, the brown sugar and the beef bouillon. This helper had to chop the onions and the garlic and prepare the zest. Did I mention, this same helper had to find the herbs and spices?

Imagine me doing the cooking I do the actual browning of the shanks, the onions and the garlic and add the rest of ingredients, then I retire with a glass of wine to read a book while -

The helper on the right cleans up the mess!

25 minutes to prepare is a fiction.

One last note. May years ago my husband and I visited Hawaii and had a wonderful meal at a hotel in Honolulu. The bread was fabulous. I asked for the recipe and it was graciously given to me. I used to make our bread. From scratch. One of the items in the recipe was this.

"Butter the size of a gold ball." I was entranced. Back home I discussed this with our daughter, Lesley. We tried to picture the gold ball in the fairy tale. You know the story. The princess accidentally knocked her gold ball down the well and the frog caught it. She had to kiss the frog to retrieve the ball. Sigh, he changed into a handsome prince and they lived happily ever after.

My husband, he of the logical mind, suggested it was a typo. Not gold ball but golf ball. At that point the recipe lost its allure. I felt like weeping.

Some day I may tell you about the time I made Hazel's Lemon Bomb. From a recipe!

Anita
www.anitbirt.com

And now for something else

My last blog was about parrots and three-toed salamanders but I have another little crittur to worry about now. "Young Western toads are running a deadly highway gauntlet as they hop inland to high ground from the swamp where they spent their tadpole months." That's a quote from The Times Colonist.

Imagine if you will hundreds of little toads heading for the high ground. Imagine highway staff doing their best to help by setting up plastic fences along Highway 19 to herd the little guys into bluckets for safe transport across the busy road. The highway was recently upgraded but they didn't think about making a toad crossing tunnel under the road. However, a local scientist who knows more about toads than I ever will says a tunnel isn't a good idea.

Imagine if two Western male toads meet in the tunnel and their defensive instinct kicks in! They don't really want to fight (sensible chaps!) and they back up and cause traffic jams.

Imagine a traffic jam of toads. I know what a bucket half full of baby toads is like. Years ago when we lived in Toronto we drove our Innuit foster son to visit friends at a summer cottage in the Muskoka region. Bob Montgomery took Simionie out at dusk and they gathered lots and lots of baby toads in a bucket. Simi wanted to bring them home to Toronto.

Imagine the bucket tipping and little toads leaping around my feet as I'm driving down an eight lane highway. I persuaded him to leave the toads in the country which he did.

Life is never dull. I will have reason to make merry on September 6th when my contemporary romance, Isabelle's Diary is released by Cerridwen Press, an e-publisher. Check my web site for details. Make me happy and order my book. My historical romance, A Very Difficult Man, was published on February 1st. There's an excerpt on my web site. www.anitabirt.com

Is there anyone out there? Drop by and comment on my blog.

Anita Birt