Hemingway And His Cats Have Nothing on Me

So I was writing in the study (a beautiful book-lined room with the requisite desk, computer, reading chair and comfy love-seat coach, not to mention some skulls and a great painting of Hemingway writing for good measure) the other day.

As I looked up from my writing, I realized that all four of the animals were lounging in the room with me.

After a slight heart-warming pause, I snapped some quick pics of the little fellows and posted it to Instagram with the following note:

"I’ve always loved this #jameslumbers painting of Hemingway called “The Sun Never Set” that hangs in my writing space. Love Papa’s cats in the image, and now have two similarly coloured ones PLUS a couple of puppies too!"

Left to Right: The Sun Never Set by James Lumbers, Meredith, Indie, Atticus and Maya

I have always loved that particular James Lumbers painting (among so many of his other works because of the beautiful "Moments in Time" that he captures using ghostly figures -- go figure that a writer of ghost stories and thrillers might enjoy that), but now this painting has an additional heart-warming feel to it, given the furry friends that I spend most of my days with lately.

I noticed, recently, that two of the cats in the Hemingway painting have the exact same coloring as Meredith and Atticus (the pair of mother and son cats in our home). Yes, Hemingway might have an additional cat in this painting, a Siamese cat, but we have two cats and two dogs: a golden retriever and a labradoodle.

So there! ;)

I finished three chapters on Macabre Montreal this week. I think I earned a celebratory drink of scotch. Thinking about Hemingway has, for some reason, put me in the mood for that . . .

Left: Papa Hemingway. Right: My Hemingway scotch glass: "Write drunk, edit sober."

A Recipe for Author Collaboration

Because I do so much writing for the Kobo Writing Life blog as well as Spirits Untapped, I haven't been updating this blog as often. (I know, I know, there's always SOME excuse, isn't there?)

But I wanted to share an excerpt from a recent guest blog post that I wrote for Dundurn, the publisher of the newly released Haunted Hospitals, a book that I co-authored with Rhonda Parrish.

The article is entitled A Recipe for Author Collaboration and talks about the origin of this book project and how the proper "ingredients" need to all be lined up for a collaboration to happen.

In much the same way that fire is created from the combination of the three elements of oxygen, a fuel source and heat, the ingredients necessary for a writing project are Inspiration and Commitment and Timing.  - From "A Recipe for Author Collaboration" on Dundurn's Blog

At When Words Collide, the Calgary conference where we met and decided to collaborate, we recorded a quick Facebook Live video that was originally posted to the Haunted Hospitals Facebook page.

If you're a fan of video over text, there are a few other videos on the Facebook page as well that I recorded at two of the locations from our book (The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia and Century Manor in Hamilton, Ontario)