Here in Canada Black Friday is just another working day, but yet a lot of the mega sales and promotions are creeping up over the border. In Canada our big sale day similar to Black Friday is Boxing Day (the day after Christmas), which never made sense to me because it’s the day after Christmas. A shopper, at least this shopper, wants to get the deals before I have to shop, not after everything is bought.

It always amazed me to see interviews on the news of people who were spending all of Christmas Day in line for the opening of the stores on Boxing Day. Spending Christmas with my family is more important to me that waiting in line for the chance to get half price on a television… when I already have a good television. Although my husband thinks a little differently, he’d love a new television with all the latest hi-tech gizmos. Still, he doesn’t want it bad enough to spend Christmas on the sidewalk.

But there is always the rush of all-day shoppers who just go early in the morning. If that’s your thing, then go for it and have fun.  Please, don’t give Thanksgiving with your family to do it.

To all my American friends, I wish you the best Thanksgiving with your family, and the best shopping with your friends.

I’m sure how witty that is, but around  here, that’s what it feels like. We had some absolutely great weather, then suddenly, the sky is cloudy, the temperature has dropped, and it’s been raining for days.

More than anything, my husband is reminding me that it will soon be close to the time to change the tires on my car, as at 7 degrees Celcius something technical happens with the rubber that meets the road, and it’s time to change tires, and not wait for the first snow fall, which here in Canada, can potentially happen when the temperature hits  0 degrees Celcius.

Next weekend is the time change. I like that time change because I allegedly get to sleep in an hour. Also, I won’t be late for church.

So here we are, the leaves are falling, the days are shorter, the ads are out for buying winter tires, and someone has already been into the Halloween candy.

Yup. Fall has definitely fallen.

Oh, yes, I did say free, didn’t I?

I just discovered a great link site that features free Christian e-books.

http://thecheapebook.com/live/category/deals/christian-books/

Not everything is free, but it does show featured discounts and other really good deals.

Of course, as I say to so many people, please support your local author, and even those who are not local. Us authors, we still have mortgages and car payments. But freebies are still great. Most of all, I love the free sample a free e-book gets, because that is a good sample of an author I’ve never seen before. Then when I go to buy the next one, I know I won’t be disappointed.

So enjoy the freebies and the near-freebies on this page. I know I will.

Well, I’m not really sorry, but I thought it would make a good subject title.

I often go into Amazon.com and read the comments from people who have bought my books. With this digital age, books are no longer totally purchased by release date. As well, it’s easy if you picked up a book mid-series (I do this all the time), now you can go back and get them all, and read them in order.

That aside, I don’t know how I didn’t see this sooner, but I just read this reader comment on When Pigs And Parrots Fly for the first time

I don’t know how to paste the link, so I’ll copy and paste it. Thanks for this great comment from Barbara Higdon.

I really enjoyed the book . Amusing and kept my interest. I would recommend this book to anyone. NO blatant sex scenes, actually no sex scenes at all. They weren’t needed to make the story good wish other authors would do the same thing .

I love to hear when someone enjoys one of my books like this.  People often comment that they would like to be able to hand a book to a younger relative – recently a granddaughter – and she didn’t have time to read the book first. Well, with my books, there is no worry. They have always been this way, and they will continue to be this way. Meant to be enjoyed by adult women, but still safe for younger readers.

While I was out shopping at the Dollar Store this weekend, I noticed they had all the Halloween stuff out in full display. The funny stuff as well as the ugly and gruesome. Yuk. As well as the costumes, there were plastic pumpkins, which of course reminded me of real pumpkins.

Due to health reasons my dog is on a vegetarian diet. Yeah, you read that right. A dog, on a vegetarian diet. She has vegetarian kibble, and instead of adding canned dog food, we add pumpkin. Believe it or not, she doesn’t just like pumpkin, she loves it. As I am thinking that fresh then frozen is going to be better than canned, I started to think of buying pumpkins for Halloween. I don’t want to pay a fortune for a million pumpkins, so I have started thinking, I should ask my neighbors if when Halloween is over, if they want to give me their used pumpkins. I will gladly take them, and my dog will happily eat them. One ice-cube size portion at a time.

Yeah, the things we do for our furry babies.

Finally, here it is, the Labour/Labor Day weekend – your spelling will depend which side of the border you are on.  However, this is one of the few holidays that is a holiday both in the US and in Canada, unless you work in retail, and if that is the case, if you are one of them I hope you are getting paid time and a half.

I’ve always found it funny that even though Canada and the USA share so many things, we don’t share the same holidays. Recently I went to a conference in Portland, and one of the days I was gone was a holiday in Canada, but it was a regular working day in the USA. Fortunately for me a friend had recommended that I get a Nexus pass for the border, so instead of waiting for an hour and a half, I was across in ten minutes.

This weekend the border lineups will be insane because it’s a holiday on both sides of the border.  I’ve often wondered what people do on the other side of the border that could be worth waiting 2 or 3 hours.  A park is a park, and a mall is a mall. Yes, there are specific destinations, but most weekend crossers aren’t going for those.

Although today in Vancouver, it’s raining and somewhat cool. But is it really any better a few hundred miles south?

This is it for my travels this year. Now that I’m home I have a new project – I’m going to learn how to write a screenplay. I have a couple of ideas, so let’s see how this goes.

In the meantime, it’s good to be home. My dogs were very happy to see me, and even my son’s girlfriend’s dog was happy I was home.

Although, I’m sure a good part of the reason everyone was glad to see me was that I came home with Winnipeg Kielbassa (or for the locals, Kubassa) which is Ukrainian Garlic Sausage, as well as the most spectacular corned beef, two things that are not made that way anywhere else on the planet except in the Ukraine, and I’m not going there for deli meats.

In fact, I love this place so much, if you are ever in Winnipeg, go there. It’s called Central Meets, 630 Nairn Ave, Winnipeg, MB. The location is at the east side of the Nairn Street bridge. They don’t have a website, and it’s probably because they don’t need one. Every time I go there, there are four to six people working cutting and packaging the meats, and when you take a number, there have been a minimum of eight customers waiting. This place is fantastic.

To tell you a little history, the butcher who owns and operations this business used to have a corner store with a small butcher shop in the back, and when he closed up the little store he opened up this huge butcher shop in a busy commercial area across the city.

I love to see the little guy succeed.

Now that I’ve been home for a week, I want to share a bit of reflecting on doing two writers conferences back to back. First I went to the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, OR, then, with one day in between, I went to the Oregon Christian Writer’s Conference, also in Portland, OR.

How I love my GPS.

I normally wouldn’t recommend anyone doing this, but it worked great for me. At the Willamette conference I was in learning mode, and I sure came home with a lot of notes and thoughts on screenwriting. At the OCW conference I was in teaching mode, so I spent most of my time there either leading workshops or taking appointments and talking with writers who are still in the beginning stages of their writing.

I learned lots and it was great hooking up with old friends and making a few new ones. I think that’s a real important part of attending a conference. Unless you’re married to another writer, there are things our spouses or significant others just don’t get. It’s great to be in that atmosphere of creative thought and fantasy.

But then again it’s great to be home too. Now, back to the drawing board.

I had the most fantastic trip. Two writer’s conference back to back! Very busy, but very fun. For the first one, which was screenwriting, I was in learning mode. I have lots of great notes and have a lot to digest. The second was book-writing, where I only went to one session of classes, and the rest of the time I was either teaching, or taking appointments with learning writers. I remember what it was like when I first started writing, and I wish those tools had been available to me then.
Then when it was all done I traveled a little further to visit a friend, and I stayed at a cottage on the McKenzie River. It was so beautiful and peaceful I wish I could have stayed longer.
But alas, it is time to get back to real life.
And my deadline. Hello computer. 🙂