I began my writing career, such as it is, in 2017. My brother, Jann Rowland, was doing well as an author, so why couldn’t I? How hard could it be? I had always been an avid reader, so why not treat the world to my unique humor and sarcastic wit? I won’t describe the rude awakening I had upon publishing my first literary masterpiece, but the reviews were unflattering, to put it mildly. Almost every part of my storytelling was…
I have been a self publisher my entire writing career. It started with my first release back in 2013, and snowballed from there, with a few releases here and there, what I could fit around my day job, until finally I decided to leave that job and become a full time writer. Only once did I submit to a publisher, and that was not accepted. The only things I have ever done that were not self published were audiobooks, which…
Welcome to my favorite season, which this year begins March 20. Anyone who knows me is aware of my dislike, bordering on hatred, for winter. Those months are depressing, with their colder temperatures and limited sunlight, but I think it’s the snow that bothers me the most, probably because it needs the cold to exist. I’ve often said I might enjoy playing in the stuff if I could do it at 70° or 80° outside (that’s 21° or 27° Celsius)….
Today, I’m supposed to do a glimmer-of-gold post. Looking back, I have already done one on kids, so I had to search for a different topic. I decided to go with writing! Writing is like a moving target. When you write something that you think is pretty good, you feel proud, right? Well, then you come back years later to it with the intent to make a few touch-ups here and there, and you end up completely rewriting each paragraph….
Going back to Handel for this Tuesday Tunes, though there is a reason I’d use this particular composer again. In 1738, Handel resented the opera Serse (Xerxes, based on the Persian king–the name is the Italian form) in London. The opera was, unfortunately for Handel, a failure, lasting only five performances, for various reasons we won’t go into now. After a revival in the 1920s, the opera rose to prominence and is now Handel’s most well-known. The opening aria from the…
Did you ever wonder why poor people are called “piss poor?” The saying originates from the practice of using urine to tan animal skins. (Gross, I know!) Families who did this to survive would pee in a pot and sell the full pot to the tannery. I don’t even want to think about how the tannery smelled! Of course, if you were so poor you could not even afford to buy a pot, then you “didn’t have a pot to…
I have been thinking about changes I’ve gone through since I decided to follow (far, far behind) in my brother Jann’s footsteps and become a published writer. Part of the impetus was my move to Calgary to help care for my mother, but a larger consideration was the fact that I was fast approaching retirement and wanted something that would keep me busy and generate extra income. Jann had been writing for a few years and his choice had…
Christmas 2022 is a matter of history and with New Year’s celebrations coming in a few days, I decided not to tax anyone with anything that might be construed as thought provoking. If you’re like me, the post Christmas let-down has you in cruise control right now and you almost recoil at any task that requires more than a few brain cells to complete. In that vein I present an excerpt from book 5 of my Elizabeth Said, Darcy Said…
Christmas is past and now we move into that week between Christmas and New Year’s. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but this has always seemed like a week in limbo to me, with little happening other than waiting for the year to end. I am also not much of a fan of New Year’s, for I have never seen the movement of one year to the next as anything exceptional. Maybe I am a bit of…
I love Christmas. The season seems to bring out the best in just about everyone, from friends and acquaintances ready with friendly greetings and holiday wishes, to strangers who wish you the best of the season while shopping in stores or passing on a busy street. My first Christmas celebration with my wife still ranks as one of our best. She was three weeks away from giving birth to our first child, a son, so we limited the length of…