April’s Monthly Blog
It’s April Fools’ Day and for every email I write I have to preface it with ‘this is no April Fools’ Joke’ so that people will read it. My writing group, which is actually a critique group, accidentally scheduled for this evening. It doesn’t bode well for critiquing one another’s monthly output.
Speaking of writing output, I am so grateful that Sisters in Crime continues to have their three times per week writing sections. The many people who attend really spur each other to write. We don’t see each other’s writing, that’s not the point of the group, but the fact that there’s a community of writers seems to excite the juices. Thank you, thank you unseen people.
I’m writing in the office today. Diana, my daughter, started a new job and the plan is that she’ll work from home on Fridays each week and be in her new place Monday through Thursday. This is totally great! Up until now she’s been able to work from home quite a bit. Now, don’t misunderstand. I love having her at home. There’s something quite lonely when one has to keep MSNBC on all day so that one can hear people conversing. Since we share the home office and she has many Zoom meetings each day with clients it kept me out of the office space. Now I have free rein to use the office to my heart’s content four days a week. I can babble to myself or sing or whatever. No one except Barnaby, our dog, will ask what I’m doing.
But now we’d like to rearrange the office to accommodate a bit of added equipment. This means that I have to empty the bookcase that’s in there so that we can move it to the other wall. Oh boy do I not want to do that! Can’t the bookcase empty itself? have acrylic and oil paints from the dark ages stored on a couple of shelves along with jars of beads, brushes, canvas, and who knows what. On the bottom shelf I have boxes of photos that still haven’t rearranged themselves. On the very top shelf I have a variety of books including my dissertation that I’ll never read again. It’s definitely a conglomeration of stuff. I want to do it while no one can see me so that I can take time to review each item. I hate throwing out things that I have saved -- it’s not hoarding, it’s loving -- and I need to give each item the time it needs. This will get done by next week, no April Fools’ Joke!
Books I’m Reading
I’m listening to the best book. It’s by Fiona Walker and called The Village Detectives and The Poison Pen Letters. It’s a British cozy with ladies of a certain age who live in the village of Inkberry. They argue then make up then argue again. It starts out with a letter that says, “We regret to inform you of the death of Phoebe Fredericks …” She’s not dead. There’s a great deal of misunderstanding, secret trips to France, and some very wry laughs. The audible narration is quite good.
I’m reading an Agatha Christie novel, The Seven Dials Mystery. I’ve watched the various movies that are adaptations of the novel, but as usual, there are differences. The various alarm clocks are all set to different times as a practical joke to annoy Gerry Wade, a young man who could sleep through anything. The joke has dire consequences and the mystery begins. Apparently Netflix has produced a new adaptation of the novel with Helena Bonham Carter and Mia-McKenna Bruce which should come out this year.
Another book that I’m reading is A Flora Farrington Mystery, Flora’s French Murder Mystery by Anna A. Armstrong. Anna Armstrong is also known as The Cotswold Writer and appears on Instagram quite often. She has also written the FitzMorris Family Mysteries. These are all cozy mysteries. In the Flora Farrington book Flora is staying in a chateau near Paris chaperoning her goddaughter. Of course someone is murdered, there’s a handsome detective, and it all takes place in the 1920’s.
I wish you all good reading! Happy April!!