When Does Christmas Season Start?

The Twelve Dates of Christmas

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/twelve-dates-of-christmas

https://books2read.com/The-Twelve-Dates-of-Christmas

https://www.amazon.ca/Twelve-Dates-Christmas-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/1772992518

Single Bells

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/single-bells

https://books2read.com/Single-Bells

https://www.amazon.ca/Single-Bells-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/0228628385

When I was a child (not quite pre-history) Christmas season started when our school put on the Christmas concert for parents. We children practiced our roles in plays and choirs and got our costumes organized by our parents (mainly mothers). The concert was held on a school evening about mid-month and most of us and our families walked to the school for the event. Santa appeared when the concert was over and we each received a bag of goodies from him. We were all excited to see Santa and each of us happy with what was in the bags.

Dad would go and buy our real tree, since there weren't artificial ones, about a week before Christmas and put it in a stand of water. We would decorate it and that was the only decorations in our house and most houses in our neighbourhood. No one had outdoor lights. Some of the stores put up decorations in their windows and painted scenes on their windows.

Nothing much changed until I was in my teens, when we added a few more decorations around the house and Dad and some other homeowners hung outdoor lights on their houses.  But, because television channels were limited, there still wasn't much advertising for toys or other gifts. People would go to the stores and wander around looking for the right toy for their children, the right clothing or piece of jewelry, or tool, or household appliance for other members of the family. The types of gifts and costs were limited.

But nothing good lasts for long. Soon stores put the Christmas decorations on their shelves in November and then in October, and now in September. They even start playing Christmas music in September. Television advertisers bombarded parents with what they need to buy for their children and then switched to bombarding children with what they should want from Santa. This is even before Thanksgiving and Hallowe'en.

When I was a child, the Christmas hype lasted about two or three weeks and then we had the gratification of Christmas morning. Now the hype lasts for months and many people get hype fatigue so that by the time Christmas actually arrives, they just want it over with.

So then, why am I advertising my Christmas novels now, in October and before Hallowe'en? My sister and I wrote both of them and now we have a third one coming out November 1st. Since I only post on the 24th of each month, this is my chance to start promoting it, and the first two, and gives readers time to check them out.  

One of Canada's Attractions-The Bay of Fundy

 

https://books2read.com/Road-Tripping-Southern-Alberta

Amazon US: https://us.amazon.com/Road-Tripping.../dp/B0GNJFDZMF

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Road-Tripping.../dp/0228639352

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/.../road.../1149544339...

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/1968339

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/.../road-tripping-southern-alberta...

I began my writing career as a travel writer, switched to fiction writing for many years and am now back to being a travel writer again. All of my articles and books have been set in Canada, which is where I live. Roadtripping Southern Alberta is my latest travel book and, as its title suggests, is about what there is to see and do in Southern Albera. But I have travelled across Canada and learned much about its exciting and varied history and have seen many of its attractions.

Today I’d like to describe my husband's and my visit to the Bay of Fundy situated between the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Bay has the highest tides in the world and was formally designated one of North America’s seven wonders of nature in February, 2014. (The others are Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Mount McKinley, the Everglades, and Yosemite National Park).

       From Moncton, New Brunswick, we drove south on Route 114 to Hopewell Cape and the Hopewell Rocks, arriving in the afternoon. It was low tide so after we paid, Mike accepted the cart ride offered while I decided to walk the trail to the Rocks. I arrived at a viewpoint overlooking the ocean floor and the reddish rock structures.  Mike and I took the stairway down to the floor and wandered out among the tall formations. The ground was surprisingly solid with a few muddy areas.

       The Hopewell Rocks were originally a massive mountain range that was older than the Appalachians in the United States and bigger than the Rocky Mountains in Canada. Over millions of years the range wore down and after the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age, water seeping through cracks in the cliffs eroded the sedimentary and sandstone and separated the Rocks from the cliffs. The incoming and outgoing tides have eroded the base of the rocks at a faster rate than the tops and that has caused their unusual shapes. Those shapes and the vegetation growing on top have given the formations their nickname of the Flowerpot Rocks.

       Due to the tides, the Rocks are covered in water twice a day. Some visitors are able to see the high and low tides in one day but since the next high tide would be at night, Mike and I found a place to camp and returned to the Rocks the next morning. There is approximately six hours between low and high tide and the entrance fee covers a return visit to enable visitors to see the Rocks during both tides.

       Again, Mike took his ride and I walked. I reached the viewpoint and the change was astonishing. Just the tops of some of the rocks showed, the rest being under water. The tides can reach a height of 16 metres (52ft), which is as high as a four-storey building, twice a day. I walked down part of the stairs but the rest was blocked off to the public because they were under water. High tide is a good time to take a kayak tour and three kayakers were paddling around the formations.

       After seeing all the water and the partial formations, it was hard to believe that just the day before I had walked on the floor of the bay. It was an amazing experience. 

Some Canadian History

 

Canadian Historical Novels for Young Adults

West to the Bay

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/west-to-the-bay

https://books2read.com/West-to-the-Bay-Yarmey

https://www.amazon.ca/West-Bay-V2-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/0228630568

West to Grande Portage

 https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/west-to-grande-portage

https://books2read.com/West-to-Grande-Portage-V2

https://www.amazon.ca/West-Grande-Portage-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/0228630479

West to Fort Edmonton

 https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/west-to-fort-edmonton

https://books2read.com/b/West-to-the-Bay-Yarmey

https://www.amazon.ca/West-Fort-Edmonton-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/0228636000

I have written seven Canadian Historical Novels, three set during the Hudson's Bay Company Fur Trade in Rupert's Land, now Canada, and four set during and after the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon. All are based on historical facts. But Canada has lots more in its exciting and varied history. Here is on part of that history. PS. I am also a travel writer so this might sound like a travel guide.

The Fortress of Louisbourg is situated on the east shore of the Cape Breton Island and well worth the visit.

       In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed and France ceded its claims to present day Newfoundland, the Hudson’s Bay territories in Rupert Land, and Acadia (Nova Scotia) to the English. France kept what is now Prince Edward Island, the small islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon as well as Cape Breton Island. The settlement of Louisbourg was founded on the east side of Cape Breton Island in 1713 and, between 1719 and 1745, the French built a fortified town. With its several thousand inhabitants it grew into a thriving and busy seaport in North America and was a key trading and military centre for the French in the New World. It was the base for the profitable cod fishery of the Grand Banks since salted and dried fish was an important food in Europe. The value of the settlement’s dried cod exports in 1737 was eight times higher than the value of the fur trade during the same period.

       In 1745, war was declared between France and Britain and the English launched an attack on Louisbourg. While the harbour was well defended, the low hills around the fortress provided cover for the attackers. The residents of the fortress held on for forty-six days before being captured. However, three years later the town was given back to the French by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

       A second attack occurred in 1758. There was no strong French navy to defend the town against the 16,000 troops and 150 ships and after seven weeks it was again taken by the English. They occupied it until 1768. Eventually, they decided that it should never return to being a fortified French base and they destroyed the fortress.

       Although the site was officially commemorated more than a dozen times with monuments, plaques, and cairns, it remained mainly forgotten and neglected until the 1930s when a museum was built and some of the streets and ruins excavated. In 1961, reconstruction began on one quarter of the fortress aided by the Government of Canada. First the area was excavated with the ruins of more buildings and walls being found as well as millions of artifacts. Since then, streets, buildings, and gardens have been recreated so it looks as it did in the 1740s.

       The Fortress of Louisbourg is the largest reconstruction project in North America.

       I took a tour bus from the parking lot to the fortress. I visited with the guard at the entrance and began my tour. I walked up and down the streets of the fortress and toured through the buildings seeing the household furniture and goods of the period. There was an ice house where ice was placed during the winter and used during the summer to keep food cold so it wouldn’t spoil. I watched the fife and drum band escort the cannon firers up the hill to the cannon and waited until it was fired. I listened to the soldiers talk about their daily lives. I checked out the gardens and watched women doing embroidery. Throughout the site interpreters dressed in period clothing were able to answer all my questions about the fortress and its history.

        While visiting, there is a long list of activities to do such as firing a musket or cannon, sampling some rum, learning a dance, or being a prisoner of the day.

       For those who want something to eat there are restaurants serving 1700s fare and a bakery from which you can buy a loaf of bread.

My Writing Career

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https://www.amazon.ca/Gold-Fever-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey-ebook/dp/B00PEOSJR8

I worked off and on at various jobs for many years while raising my children and when I began taking writing courses I still had teenage children at home. I wrote some historical and travel articles and had them published in Canadian magazines. My children had left home when I got my first contract for a non-fiction travel book, which morphed into seven travel books about the backroads of Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon and Alaska. Travelling, researching and writing each one of those took up my days, evenings, and nights for a year between 1990 and 2000. When I finished the last one, I decided to try fiction writing and spent days in my office on the computer.

However, I found fiction writing lonely, so I also decided it was time to get a job so I would be out and about with people. I took training to be a nursing attendant, also known as residential care aide, and began working in a long-term facility on the evening shift. I also started writing my first mystery novel. Then my husband and I moved to a small acreage Vancouver Island and I got a job in a group home looking after disabled adults.

I do not like getting up to an alarm clock so I took a position in the afternoons from 4-9 pm. This gave me time during the day to work in my yard, hike, dragon boat, pick and can or freeze fruit from my trees, and of course, write. I did this for twelve years and in that time, I also wrote and had published six novels. I finally retired which gave me more time to write, but I also travelled more, sat and enjoyed the sunsets more, and visited family more. I have also published eight more books since then.

I try to write something every day, even if it is just some ideas for a scene or about someone the main character of my WIP might meet. Usually, these ideas occur in the middle of the night, so I always keep paper and pen by my bed to write this down.

     And I must be doing something right because, since I began my writing career I have had twenty-two print and e-books published and I have five more coming out in the next two years.

My Fourth Klondike Novel

 

BWL Publishing Inc has published three different genre collections. The first is The Canadian Historical Brides. They wanted a book set in each province and territory and we Canadian authors, who wanted to participate, were invited to pick one of the provinces or territories to write a book about. I chose the Yukon and wrote my first Klondike book, titled 'Romancing the Klondike'. Then I wrote a sequel to it titled 'Rushing the Klondike'.

BWL decided to publish a second set, The Canadian Historical Mysteries, I again chose the Yukon and wrote 'Sleuthing the Klondike'. Now, BWL is presenting The Paranormal Canadiana Collection. I don't read paranormal novels or nor do I know much about paranormal phenomena but I like a challenge. I read a lot of books, watched paranormal shows, and researched on the Internet to learn about hauntings and ghosts and Haunting the Klondike is the result. It is set in the 1930s and is the fourth and final of my Klondike novels.

The main characters of Romancing the Klondike were cousins, Pearl Owens and Sam Owens so it seemed fitting that they should be the main characters in this last one.

Here is the first chapter for your enjoyment.

Struggles with the Setting in My Novels

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/romancing-the-klondike

https://books2read.com/Romancing-the-Klondike

https://www.amazon.ca/Romancing-Klondike-Yukon-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/1772992682

https://books2read.com/Rushing-the-Klondike

https://www.amazon.ca/Rushing-Klondike-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/0228622328

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/sleuthing-the-klondike

https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0228624762?tag=books2read02-20

I have written in many different genres, non-fiction, mystery, romance, and historical. According to the professionals, I have to make sure my characters are multi-dimensional, my story plot is fast paced, and my setting is exciting. Readers want to identify with the main characters so they have to be believable and likeable. Readers want action in the story so the plot has to move along at a good clip. And readers want to learn about the place where the story is set, so it is important that I know the setting itself.

For my Travelling Detective Series, I had been to each of the places in the story and knew my setting. My descriptions of a town or a building or a street were true because I had seen them. I’ve heard of some authors who write about a place they’ve never been to by using Google Maps to check out the buildings or streets.  

However, this is much harder in historical novels because that setting is no longer readily available in the way it was in the time period. Research is important and this is where non-fiction books, museums, archives, and paintings or photos of that time come in handy. And, of course, the Internet. It is the easiest and quickest way to learn about a historical event or a place or what clothing was worn, and even people’s names at the time.

I have written seven Canadian historical novels in two different sets. My Young Adult Canadian Historical books are: West to the Bay, West to Grande Portage, and West to Fort Edmonton. For each one I spent as much time researching the areas, the history, and the people at the time as I did writing the story since I hadn’t been to the Hudson’s Bay or Montreal or Edmonton in the mid-1700s to early 1800s, I hadn't paddled a canoe or York boat, nor had I taken part in trading furs.

Luckily, for my Yukon books set during the Klondike Gold Rush, I’ve been to Dawson City three times and even hiked the Chilkoot trail on the hundredth anniversary of the gold rush. Many of the buildings in Dawson today are still from that era. However, I still had to research the clothing, the founding of Dawson City, the people who headed north, and what life was like for the newcomers from 1896 to 1898.

I enjoy research so much, that sometimes I go down the rabbit hole and my actual writing suffers.

Romancing the Klondike is one of the twelve books of BWL Publishing, Inc. Canadian Historical Brides Collection.

Rushing the Klondike is my sequel to that book.

Sleuthing the Klondike is one of the twelve books of BWL Publishing Inc, Canadian Historical Mystery Collection.

Haunting the Klondike is one of BWL Publishing Inc. Paranormal Canadiana Paranormal Collection and will be out in June, 2026

Are my Psycho Kitties From Another Planet?

 

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/the-criminal-streak

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/betrayed

On the evening of June 24^th, 2025, I arrived home in Edmonton, Alberta, from a dragon boat festival in Vancouver, B.C, just in time to celebrate my husband’s and my anniversary on August 25^th. I found a message from my son about two ten-year-old cats whose owner had died unexpectedly. No one in the family wanted them and they were going to be euthanized if no one else took them. My husband and I had put our eighteen-year-old cat to sleep a month before and had decided we wouldn’t be getting any more pets because it is so hard to say goodbye to them. However, it didn’t seem right that these sisters should die through no fault of their own. So hubby and I decided our anniversary gift would be to adopt them and I called the number. It was arranged that we would pick them up on August 26^th.

For our anniversary we decided to go out for dinner but he had to go help our daughter and didn’t make it back in time so we went to pick up KFC. While we waited for our order I tried to fill up our drinks but the Pepsi syrup ran out and I only got carbonated water. I waited while the tanks were changed. Carbonated water came out for the first bit and I kept dumping it out while waiting for the syrup. Then the power went out. Luckily, we did get our chicken order but our drinks were kind of anaemic.

When we got home, we found our power was out also, so we had a romantic meal by twilight. The power came on about an hour later and we had to reset our clocks. My husband couldn’t get the one on our gas stove to work and somehow he locked the oven door while trying.

We picked up our cats on the 26th. One, renamed Lovey, snooped around and settled in. The other, renamed Trixie, went and hid under the bed. Over the next few weeks, Lovely adopted me and Trixie adopted hubby. After spending their lives in an apartment, it took them a while to venture out into our back yard. But once they were comfortable, they wanted to go out every morning and we had to leave the door open all day so they could come and go as they pleased. They weren't impressed when the cold and snow came.

Lovely likes to sit with me on my chair and she purrs loudly and sleeps soundly. She follows me around the house and waits at the top of the stairs when I go down to the basement. Sometimes she goes down with me. At night she sleeps against my legs or face to face and she licks my arms and purrs. Trixie likes to purr on hubby's lap in the evening and rubs his face with hers. She goes out to the garage with him and sleeps on the chair. At night she sleeps with her head against his.

We naturally thought, that being sisters, they would get along. But no. They growl and hiss at each other when they walk by, they swipe at each other if one gets too close, they tease by blocking the door so the other one can’t leave or come back in the house. They hiss at each other from across the room.

And we are not safe. As I said, Lovely likes to sit on my knee when I am in my chair. However, if I want to move her so I can stand up, she hisses and growls at me then walks across the living room hissing and growling at anything she sees. Trixie will let hubby pet her for a while and then swats his hand or claws him when she has had enough. If we walk too fast past them, they growl, grab at our legs, and even chase us while yowling.

So, the questions are: have they been taken over by aliens from another planet? has some evil entity taken possession of them? or are they just psycho? After all, we only have the word of a person we met for half an hour, while picking them up, that their owner had died, that they were ten-year-old sisters, and that they'd lived in an apartment all their lives. We really know nothing about their previous life. And they aren't telling us anything. Lol