Are my Psycho Kitties From Another Planet?

 

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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 

National Parks and Reserves of Canada

 

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 https://books2read.com/u/mYgK6x

 

National Parks and Reserves of Canada

I am a Canadian writer and all my mystery, historical, romance, and young adult novels are set in Canada. Canada is the second largest country in the world and has forty national parks and ten national park reserves covering an area of approximately 342,000 sq km (132,000 sq mi). This is about 3.2% of Canada’s total land area.

Canada’s first national park, Banff National Park (formerly the Rocky Mountain Park), was created in the province of Alberta in 1885 to protect the land around the Cave and Basin Hot Springs from being developed. Two more parks were created in 1886: Yoho National Park and Glacier National Park, both in the Rocky Mountains in the province of British Columbia. The land for the Waterton National Park, in southern Alberta, was set aside in 1895.

After Waterton it was nine more years before another park was created. The Thousand Islands National Park, which encompasses the one thousand islands of the Islands Parkway on the St. Lawrence River, was established in 1904. These islands are the remnants of former ancient mountains. Then, from 1907, when Jasper National Park was formed, to 2015 when Qausuittug National Park was established on Bathurst Island in Nunavut, forty-four more parks and reserves were created in the ten provinces and three territories. Each park or reserved was formed to protect the habitat of some animal or plant, or for its scenic magnificence. An example is Qautuittug which is the habitat of the endangered Peary Caribou.

One of the features of the parks are red Adirondack chairs. The placing of the red chairs began in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland/Labrador in 2011. The members of the park staff positioned eighteen sets of chairs throughout the park and held a contest to see who could find all eighteen sets. The winner won a pair of red chairs. Since then the other parks have followed suit and now there are over two hundred across Canada, all made from 100% recycled plastic.

Some are easily found while others require a bit of a hike. When you find them, sit and enjoy the beautiful view, whether it is overlooking a lake, taking in mountain scenery, enjoying a prairie vista, or listening to a flowing river. The parks offer much to see.

Banff is the most popular park in the country with over four million visitors each year. Tuktut Nogait, in the Northwest Territories, has the least amount of visitors with less than five. A combined total of over fifteen million people view the beautiful scenery of all the parks every year.

Putting Puzzles Together VS Writing a Mystery Novel

 

https://www.amazon.ca/Killer-Match-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey/dp/1990086241

https://www.rcn.media/product-page/secrets-of-a-town-s-cursed

https://www.rcn.media/product-page/Banished-To-The-Fifth-Planet

https://bookswelove.net/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

My daughter and son-in-law gave me a one-thousand piece puzzle. It has been years since I’ve put a puzzle together and I thought it would be fun. However, as soon as I dumped out the pieces on the table I realized that putting the puzzle together would be much like me writing a mystery novel.

     First, the big pile of pieces is like the big mishmash of ideas, clues, scenes, characters, and settings that make up the notes I have for my mystery. Before I can start the puzzle I have to turn all the pieces upright so I can see their colour, just as I have to sort through my notes when I start my novel. I have to decide where in the story my book begins much like I have to decide how to start my puzzle. I can outline my novel as some writers do or I can jump in and start writing. With the puzzle, I can find all the outer edge pieces and put them together or pick scenes of the picture and find the colours to match.

     I decide to start with outer edge and I sift through the pile to find them. I return the rest to the box. As I work on the edge I have to go back through the box to find edge pieces I missed, just like I have to go through my manuscript and find where I have missed adding some important information or missed putting in a misdirection.

     Because of the way they are cut, it is hard to decide if a piece is part of the outside edge or if it is a regular piece. Just like writing, is that a clue or a red herring?

     With the puzzle I know at the beginning what the end result will be because of the picture on the box. Sometimes when I start my mystery, I know the ending, however sometimes the characters say or do something that I hadn’t planned on and I am left trying to figure out how to get them out of a situation or how to diffuse something they have said.

     I learned that there are various names for the parts of a puzzle piece: loops and sockets; knobs and holes; tabs and slots; keys and locks; even outies or innies. Sometimes it is frustrating to try and get knobs to fit into the holes. The colour looks the same only the tab doesn’t fit correctly into the slot. Or the pieces lock perfectly but there is a slight difference in colour. If one doesn’t seem to fit in a spot, I have to match it somewhere else. That is the same with my writing. Sometimes I come up with a good line or a scene only to find that it doesn’t suit where I want it and I have to find a better match somewhere else.

     When I get stuck with trying to figure out where my story goes next, I can work on a different section in my novel. In the puzzle if I can’t seem to make a scene come together I can go to a different part and work there. Every puzzle piece is tailored to go with the rest to make the picture just like every clue, every scene, every red herring has to fit into the story properly.

     What is frustrating to a puzzle solver is finding that one or two pieces are missing at the end. This is true for the reader of a mystery. All the clues have to be pulled together, the red herrings explained, the mystery solved, and the murderer caught. I can’t leave any pieces out.

     And the last thing I realized about how putting puzzles together and writing mysteries are similar is that both of them are an excruciatingly slow process for me.

Virtual conferences VS Physical Conferences

 

https://www.rcn.media/product-page/Banished-To-The-Fifth-Planet

 https://www.rcn.media/product-page/secrets-of-a-town-s-cursed

 https://www.bookswelove.com/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

In the time of virtual everything because of Covid, I took part in my first virtual writing conference last year. I was both a panelist and in the audience for some sessions. I have attended physical writing conferences in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton and there is a definite difference between the two. In my opinion each has its own pros and cons.

     There is a lot of coordinating and cost for the organizers of the physical conference. They have to find a venue usually a hotel with boardrooms. This allows the panelists and attendees to book a room and stay close to the conference. There are usually guests of honour who have to be paid. Besides monetary costs it takes a lot of time to figure out the panels: subjects, panelists, and the timing of sessions to accommodate writers or editors publishers who are on more than one panel. They also have to recruit volunteers to look after the rooms. These volunteers make sure the moderator runs on schedule, the audience clears out in time for the next one, and there are fresh glasses and jugs of water for each new session.

     There are also costs for the panelists and audience members of the physical conference. If they don’t live in the city where the conference is being held they have to travel which entails gas, hotel, and meals or plane tickets and car rental plus hotel and meals. If a presenter wants to be in the audience of any of the sessions they have to pay the registration fee just like everyone else. There is the also the extra cost of a banquet ticket if one is planned.

     I lived on Vancouver Island at the time and in order to attend any physical conference off the island I had to drive 1.5 hours to the ferry, and to make sure I get on it I have to be there about an hour early or pay for a reservation. Then it is almost two hours ferry travel to Vancouver. So that is four hours. If I am going to Calgary or Edmonton, it is another day’s drive. I could fly which is quicker but I would still have to pay for the ticket and to rent a vehicle to get around once there.

     Like the physical conference it would have taken a lot of time to plan the arrangement of the panels and panelists of the virtual conference. Monetary costs were probably low because there was no venue, no banquet, and no guests of honour.

     It cost me, and everyone else who took part, nothing to attend the virtual conference either as a panelist or an audience member. I had no plane ticket or vehicle gas and parking to pay for, no hotel room to book, and no new clothes.

     The length of the physical conference has to work around the time frame of the panelists and attendees. Unless they take a day off work the first panels can’t start too early on the Friday because of ability to get there. For that same reason, it has to close early on the Sunday so those leaving can start their long drive home or get to the airport in time to catch their plane.

     Because there is no travel involved, the first session of a virtual conference can start around the time people get home from work on the Friday. The only thing everyone has to remember is the difference between time zones. Being on the west coast the morning sessions started very early for me. The evening sessions ended before my supper time.

     When it was time to be a panelist I set my computer up and clicked on the link a few minutes before the session was to start. Pictures of the other panelists showed up on my screen and we visited a few minutes before the moderator started the session. When I was in the audience I clicked on the link and waited for the panelists to show up on my screen.

     Being on a virtual panel, the guests only see a shoulders and head shot of me so I just have to wear a good top and comb my hair. I have to make sure there was no light like a window behind to put my face in shadow. Also, depending on where I was I could have some unexpected interruptions—pets, children, phone ringing.

     Getting ready for a physical conference I have to pack enough clothes for the weekend. If I am on a panel I have to make sure I have all my material with me when I leave home. If I forget anything, I am out of luck. No packing for a virtual conference and all my material will be in my house somewhere.

     At a physical conference there are many panels taking place at the same time which can be frustrating if I want to attend more than one of them. For this virtual conference only one panel was offered each hour so I was able to take part in as many as I wanted. When I finished my panel or the presentation was over I could leave my office and pet my cats, pick strawberries, sit on my deck, or train my chickens to run an obstacle course.

     The downside to the virtual conference is that the only people I see are my fellow panelists. I don’t see the audience expressions so there is no interaction between me and them. I like to watch them to see if they are bored or glad that they came. I am happy to see that ‘ahah’ moment when something I say answers a problem they have been having.

     At both conferences there is time for the audience to ask questions. When answering a question at a physical conference I can speak with the audience face to face, I can judge to see if my answer is making sense. The questions at a virtual conference are typed so I don’t see the person asking. When I answer it I am only looking at my fellow panelists.

     Part of the fun of going to a physical conference is the contact with my fellow writers. We can meet for meals or a drink or have a quick chat between panels. I can walk through the conference centre soaking up the writing atmosphere. I meet readers, talk about books, and get feedback on my own books. It is wonderful when someone comes up to me and tells me they enjoyed a presentation I made or want some advice, or liked one of my books. This does stroke my ego because we writers need to have our egos stroked once in a while. We spend months, years even, alone writing a book, wondering if a publisher is going to like it and if a publisher does, will the readers like it and if they do will they tell us. It is a great feeling to go to the Vendor’s Room and see my books displayed on my publisher’s table. Even better to have someone buy one of mine and ask for an autograph.

     During a virtual conference, there is a Vendor’s Room showing a picture of all the panelists and their books. There is also a chat room where authors and readers can connect.

     There are a lot of differences between the two conferences. Most physical conferences have been cancelled for this year or turned into a virtual conference which is perfect in today’s time of lockdown and social distancing. In the future I am sure they will return as writers and readers decide what they like best: the convenience of the virtual conference or the comradery of the physical conference. I like both and if, in the future, I am able to attend either of them, I will.

New Years Resolutions and Writing

 

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 https://www.rcn.media/product-page/secrets-of-a-town-s-cursed

 

 

http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

Almost everyone makes New Year’s Resolutions and we writers are no different. Resolutions could be described as promise made by a person to change themselves or something in their lives for the better. It could be volunteering at a charity, spending more time in nature, or cutting down on stress. This change begins on New Year’s Day and is supposed to last for the year.

While making a New Year's Pledge is a custom observed mainly in the Western Hemisphere, it is becoming more popular in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The top ten resolutions are said to be: spend more time with loved ones; get in shape through exercise; lose weight; travel more; quit smoking; stop drinking; enjoy life more; read more; pay off bills; learn something new.

I don't smoke and seldom drink, so I can take those off my list but this is how the rest of those resolutions relate to my writing.

      Spending more time with loved ones:

Writing is a solitary undertaking. I sit in a room alone with my computer (some writers use pen and paper.) I don’t like to be disturbed because that disturbance usually comes when I am right in the middle of a scene and I want to get it all down the way I am visualizing it. In order to spend more time with loved ones, I have tried to set up a schedule of writing in the morning and having the afternoon and evening free. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. If my writing is going slow then it may encroach into the afternoon in order to get my time in. But when there are family events, my writing takes a back burner. Memories of spending time with kids, grandkids and now great-grandkids are so much better then memories of staring at a computer. I read an article about one best-selling writer. Her son asked her if she would go to his baseball game. She said she couldn’t because she had to work on her next great book. I understand a deadline but I thought that was a lost opportunity on her part.

        Getting in shape through exercise.

I spend my writing time sitting in a chair. If the story line is going well, I want to keep at it to the detriment of other activities, so I schedule my exercising as soon as I get up in the morning. I am able to do that because I have a set of weights at home that I use so I don't have to go to a gym and I walk in the afternoons and evenings.

        Losing weight.

Hunger distracts me when I am writing. I find that I write better if I have a full stomach, usually full of chocolates, but anything works. To offset that I try to stop eating after 6pm and go for a walk after supper.

       Enjoy life more and travel more.

For me, these two go hand in hand. I love travelling whether its by motorhome, flying, bus tour, or ship all of which I have done. Its great to see new places and learn the history and customs of different countries. Also, sometimes I've managed to do some writing while on holidays (mainly in motorhome) so its a win/win situation for me. But since I enjoy writing my books and planning more stories, I guess I am enjoying life even when I am sitting alone in my office.

       Pay off bills.

A small percentage of writers actually have best-sellers and make lots of money. Most are happy to have a small income to help pay off their bills because they write because they love to write. That's me. I have an idea and want to write the story around it and I'm lucky that I have a publisher for my novels.

Learning something new.

Most beginner writers take writing courses to learn their craft. For others writing comes naturally. Many writers take a course in something they are writing about so the reader feels that the writer knows what they are putting in their books. When I write my historical novels I do a lot of research—reading books, visiting the places I am including in the book, and checking sites on the Internet. I have learned so much about Canadian history that I didn’t know before. I like to live by the saying: keep learning because it doesn’t cost anything to store the information.

So how do my New Year’s pledge(s) relate to those resolutions? I am going to continue doing my exercises in the morning before I begin writing so that I stay in shape. In spite of liking to write with a full stomach I work at maintaining my normal weight and will make sure that I continue to do so. Luckily at this time in my life, I don’t have any large debts and can write because I love to. I am not going to take up smoking nor will I drink more. But I think the most important one is I am going to continue enjoying life by doing more travelling and by writing more but also by spending more time with family and friends.