I received my Sony Reader (touch model) a couple of Christmases ago, and then when I bought the iPad, I loaded on several ebook reading apps: iBooks, kobo, Bluefire Reader, Stanza, Kindle. As a person with a brain injury, I was surprised and chuffed to find reading ebooks is easier than print books. There’s less text on the “page,” and on Sony and in iBooks, it’s easy to highlight and write notes (kobo is a close second), all strategies to help the reader to absorb, process, and synthesize the text. Still, at first I remained wedded to my favourite, familiar mass paperback. But after I became a member of Goodreads and began borrowing ebooks from the Toronto Public Library, I read ebooks more and more often. Before I wrote this post, I last read a print book months ago.

Most ebooks I read are borrowed. Until Overdrive finally created an eReading app, I used Bluefire Reader to read them on my iPad. I wasn’t interested in highlighting, printing, looking up words, or writing notes on these ebooks, so the rudimentary and restrictive practices of the apps and publishers didn’t impinge on me. But this week I wanted to buy three books for my background reading as I begin dreaming up my next novel. I wanted to buy them in ebook format. I wanted them to be as flexible and convenient to read as the mass paperback.

Apparently, I wanted the moon.

Traditional publishers are so scared — and seemingly ignorant of how readers use, lend, give away, sell print books — of what readers can do with ebooks that they insist on DRM (Digital Rights Management) locks. The idea is that they protect copyright.

The reality is they frustrate law-abiding readers and provide no deterrent to thieves.

The real result is that the publisher controls how, when, where the law-abiding reader can read the ebook and do nothing to thwart the pirates. Although ePub is an international standard, DRM locks are not. Everyone but Apple iBooks uses one standard. Apple uses another. An ebook readable in iBooks is not readable in any other app or Sony Reader. And vice versa. And Amazon is outside the ePub universe entirely. Consumer friendly, eh? Not.

Book #1 was available in Kindle format for about $4 cheaper than the ePub version. But I can only read Amazon’s mobi format ebook on my iPad’d Kindle app, which is rudimentary to say the least, lacking the features I need for background reading. I also wanted to be able to read it on my Sony Reader. To compound the insult to the international ebook standard and non-Amazon readers, the ePub version was more expensive than the mass paperback. If I bought it through the kobo bookstore or Sony bookstore, the ePub version would not be readable in iBooks, yet iBooks did not list their ePub version in the Canadian store.

Book #2 was the only book in that author’s arsenal that was not available in ebook format. What gives with the discrimination?

Book #3′s situation was totally ridiculous. It was available in ePub but only in certain territorial markets. So if I was a US customer of iBooks, I could’ve bought it in iBooks ePub. But as a Canadian, I was barred from buying it. My only option was mobi through Amazon’s Kindle store. Territorial rights in the global digital age are not only obsolete but an obstacle to reading. Given I resent buying an ebook I can read in exactly one place, I decided not to purchase the mobi ebook.

I wanted to buy all three in ePub. I could buy only one at an inflated price with limitations on which apps I could read it in. If this ebook did not have a DRM lock, I could’ve read it the way I wanted to on the device I wanted to in the app I wanted to. The upshot is that I’m reminded why I don’t buy traditionally published ebooks beyond what I must, why I prefer buying ebooks by indie authors that are DRM-free, why I will continue to mostly borrow ebooks — and why I will never put DRM locks on my ebooks. I don’t want to annoy my readers before they even load one up.

To check out what I’m reading currently and my Goodreads Author Page and bookshelves, please visit my Goodreads profile.

“When you recognize success, you make people feel stronger … and you go on to another success.”

The very first benefit of the grant is the hiring of social worker Michelle Ratcliff. The grant will also allow BIST (Brain Injury Society of Toronto) to expand its programs to provide support groups for those with brain injuries and their caregivers; workshops; and community meetings in two locations, not just the current one.

The Error message reads: “Whoops! No publishing allowed. This lens is currently locked for a violation of our Terms of Service, as per the email we sent you. You’re welcome to a) Grab your content and take it elsewhere, if you’d rather not continue with Squidoo or b) Review your content and make edits here in the Workshop to improve the lens. But you won’t be able to Publish the lens live until you can demonstrate that the violation has been addressed. Thanks.“

I wrote this how-to lens on autographing books for authors almost four years ago. Squidoo decided three days before Christmas 2011 (when book sales spike) that my article was  — pick one, your guess, they won’t tell, shhhh — pornographic; contained profanity; spammy (guess too many copies of Lifeliner in my pic); something they couldn’t support cause, you know, authors autographing books for readers is so … well, words fail me; a “doorway” lens  to affiliate programs like promoting authors autographing their own books; unoriginal (all those hours I spent writing and polishing was just, well, meh); article spinning (whatever the heck that is, but if I don’t know what it means then I must’ve done it, eh?); and plagiarism.

I’ve been down the false accusation of plagiarism road with Squidoo before.

They sent a nice note saying sorry, it was a “false positive” after I found the plagiarist of my article that they blocked last May. They wrote that they would greenlight it so it wouldn’t happen again, but they didn’t think to greenlight the author, namely me. They seem to have a default stance that Squidoo authors plagiarize and so no point telling Squidoo authors when their work is plagiarized, just cut out the articles. Some site.

Squidoo also wrote in their email to me dated 22 December 2011:

“We aim to support high-quality, original and useful lifestyle content that real readers will be glad to land on.”

Yes I can see how comments like these most recent ones would mean readers were not glad to land on it:

“i like this..” Oct 24, 2010 5:14 pm

“I will release my first book and it is all about my experiences as a mystery shopper. I found this site very informative and I am so excited to sign my book to someone who will really appreciate it. Thanks for the signing guides and more power” MysterySh0pper, Dec 11, 2010 6:32 am

“Thanks for the ideas….my first book signing is coming up in a few days!! http://map-thenovel.com” nitronarc, Feb 21, 2011 9:23 pm

“A lens about how to autograph a book: now I’ve seen it all! I am impressed with the research you did! (I’ve never had to autograph a book, but I have had to autograph the CD copy of an ebook!)” TravelingRae, Jun 18, 2011 12:16 am

This week, after I finished revising my novel and finally had the energy to deal with this company and do their work for them, I searched for plagiarized words from my autographing article, and it looks like it was copied elsewhere then possibly taken down or made invisible. Although Google shows other sites as having plagiarized my article, the sites themselves no longer show it, as far as I can tell.

Violations of my copyright are the only thing important to me.

Then I also noticed all my Squidoo lenses on installing and using Ubuntu were taken down. I can’t be bothered yelling at this stupid company again. If it doesn’t have the ability to know which writers are original and to see that it had screwed up before with the same writer, it’s not worth the effort to tell them. I know I said I was going to take down my Squidoo account last time they blasted me with their spraying figure-out-which-term-you-violated-then-maybe-we’ll-talk gun. But didn’t. This time I am.

There may be orphaned links on my website to my old Squidoo lenses once I’ve cancelled my account. Please let me know if you find any.

Last time, they only made nice because I blasted them back and reprimanded my copyright violator — thanks for the help Squidoo in telling me about them and helping me demand they take the plagiarized copy down, not — but I was mollified. This time, I don’t see why again I have to be treated as guilty until innocent. If they default to that position, then they have a problem with their contributors. From telecoms to Squidoo, I’ve had enough of behemoth companies banging their weight around. I quit. Writers looking for autographing advice — and my other former Squidoo essays — can come straight to my own website, thank you very much.

"We're lucky to have you around."

Anywhoo, yesterday I went through the dialogue of three of the main characters, sticking with one character at a time and not listening to the radio or reading during breaks so as not to lose their “voice” in my head. Today, I wrapped up some vocab consistency chores — it boggles my mind how authors of old ensured consistency in futuristic or accented dialogue with no search and replace feature in their pens or typewriters to do things like removing every “me” in certain dialogue. I also stumbled across a couple of details I’d begun and never finished. Was it serendipity that Ctrl-F for “me” landed me next to the first one? And the second one? I finally added a line that dropped into my head the other day, cleaned up a thread, and converted the whole thing to PDF. My part is done. What shall I do with myself? Oh yeah, update my website.

I haven’t taken the staycation yet because my anniversary was yesterday, Sunday, and I’d planned to start near the end of January. I wanted to finish my novel revisions first too. I had a moment last week where I wondered if perhaps I should’ve planned for an earlier down time. But I got better, and I carried on with revising my novel. And then a funny thing happened.

Saturday went as usual for the day before my anniversary; I was not in a good mood, and fatigue  crushed me until about just after the time of the crash: 6:30 pm. Twenty-four hours to go. Sunday dawned sunny — outside and in me. Was I in some sort of hallucinatory state? Had all my emotions fled, leaving me in neutral? Would the memory sideswipe me later when I was properly awake?

Some years I hadn’t noticed the awful date, but my body and subconscious mind always did, leaving me wondering what was going on until I would finally remember. But that was not what was happening yesterday. I had decided to eat what I wanted to, do what I wanted to, and not pressure myself at all. Pain did burrow into my neck near my shoulder and back, but I used my pain control methods and went about my day. After lunch, I decided I wanted to work on the dialogue of my latest novel. I was still feeling good, emotionally up, and except for the relinquishing pain, physically normal for me. I dove into my novel, took several breaks, munched on chocolate but not much, basked in the sun, ate dinner, and put on my CES device for the evening session. I checked the time about 6:24, and I noticed the time in terms of how much longer to keep the CES on, but it didn’t register as almost the exact time of the crash. I resumed revising dialogue; new futuristic vocab kept flowing into my head. I didn’t remember that twelve years ago, exactly to the minute, I was on Highway 7 about to be pranged.

My body and emotions didn’t remember either.

Wow.

Amazing.

I’m free.

I hope.

The question I have is why now? Why this year? Is it because I’ve restarted physio and my neck is straighter and my lower back in less pain and I feel like my old injuries are being taken care of again, at last? Is it because I have a new neurodoc — a neuropsychiatrist at Toronto Western Hospital — who has referred me to a sleep specialist, is referring me to the guru of acquired brain injury (who, BTW, is booking in 2014!), and is actively guiding me in my psychological, emotional, and cognitive recovery as well as strengthening me in dealing with certain people in community care, not just passively listening and nodding? Is it because I have finished my pre-injury goal (writing and publishing Lifeliner) and my get-me-away-from-this-brain-injury goals (first journey of brain treatment and writing my first two novels plus the screenplay for Lifeliner)? Is it because I’ve written my first true new-me novel? (Brain injury kills the old you; a new you rises from the ashes.) Is it because I am not alone any more in my fight to treat my brain injury and to get back into society, back to working (writing), and I have a health care team of at least three people actively helping me now? Or is it the accumulation of all of those things? I’m not sure. But 2012 is the first year post-injury that doesn’t yaw before me like a never-ending off-course ordeal I must battle alone.

Marketplace mimicked bad science well this past week. Their theory: COLD-FX does not work. Their results: don’t fit.

A little manipulation was in order using panning camerawork, fun quizzes, people-on-the-street interviews journalists are addicted to, jerky camerawork as they follow some poor target, lowered voice, clever camera cuts, grainy footage, undercover-type footage, selective submission of papers for scientific analysis (truly, have doctors and researchers not yet cottoned on to how journalists manipulate them?), highlight preferred statements over blasphemous one, present conclusions as mind-blowing, etc., etc.

Well, I don’t like it when my health is threatened, and so it’s time for a little fun. After all CBC’s Marketplace can’t hog it all.

But first: I take COLD-FX, have done for several years, as a preventative measure. I started because since my brain injury, I’ve become quite susceptible to colds; worse it takes me a month to recover from one. Going from cold to cold while trying to cope with the fallout of brain injury is extremely unpleasant. I took Flonase for awhile, but the side effects aren’t great. COLD-FX allowed me to stop the Flonase and for the first time in ages, I went a whole year last year without one respiratory infection. Hallelujah! I take COLD-FX as a preventative or prophylaxis because if I took it immediately in response to a scratchy throat, my body would still take weeks to recover no matter how efficacious COLD-FX is because that’s how it rolls these days with any illness I contract. I figure not getting one in the first place is better.

And so in the cause of health, I brave watching Marketplace. I haven’t watched it in years, ever since it went from trustworthy straightforward journalism to the gotcha kind. The old Marketplace may’ve been staid, but I trusted and respected it. New Marketplace makes me roll my eyes and switch the channel.

Anywhoo…

I sit back and watch … a mom-child convention. Huh? I don’t know what a COLD-FX luncheon for hockey moms has to do with a market report on a product. But it sure looks suspicious! Marketplace has set the mood and begins to reel us in with choice words.

“Brilliant marketing idea” — sounds like COLD-FX was all about marketing, not about helping people fight the bane of our lives: colds. (Let rolling eyes commence.)

“take a natural product, ginseng and get some science behind it.” — tsk, tsk, imagine makers of a natural health product standardizing their product and using the scientific method. What will they do next? Conduct and publish more than one study?

“just like a pharmaceutical drug” — the nerve!

“research pays off” — damn, it sounds dirty, having solid research backing their product.

Marketplace then capitalizes on something no lay person is going to know, that Health Canada takes years — and years and years — to approve new products, and it isn’t always for kosher reasons either. Imagine a company that decides it’s had enough of Health Canada’s notorious foot dragging and, gasp, puts on political pressure to light a fire under the bureaucrats to actually work on it. Tut, tut. Bet all companies wish they could do that. What would be better though is if the politicians reformed Health Canada to approve — or reject — new products in a timely manner based solely on science.

Oh look, now we have the person-on-the-street interviews. It’s interactive, snazzy, and provides a we’re-here-for-you backdrop to the “expert” interview. And here’s where the manipulations get awesome.

Erica Johnson asks their chosen expert from a prestigious Toronto hospital about the claim for immediate relief for colds and flu. Erica asks Dr. Andreas Laupacis, a general internal medicine specialist: “Is there any research that’s been done showing that Cold-FX helps stop colds in their tracks?”

He answers, the camera moving and panning, weaving and zooming on him, on her, on both: “Certainly all the [camera cut to Andreas only] clinical trials I’ve looked at there’s no such [camera cut to Erica only] evidence. They’ve studied patients with [camera cut to Andreas only] Cold-FX to prevent flus. I didn’t see any studies to show whether Cold-FX works or not in people that notice a flu coming and then take Cold-FX.”

Erica: “That’s right. The pitch: to stop a cold in its tracks.”

Uh, no, not right, he said “flu.” You Erica said “cold.” Two different viruses; two different topics. Just like the flu vaccine has zero effect on a cold and some effect in preventing flu, any product that can prevent a cold may not necessarily prevent the flu. Your expert, Marketplace, did not say COLD-FX does not prevent colds. He said flu, and only flu. (That’s probably why there were separate studies for colds and flu, more below.)

But a little repetition by Erica nicely masks that distinction. Gotta admire the manipulation.

What the heck did the Health Canada letter to Marketplace actually say? A few words pulled out say nothing and cannot be relied upon. I mean if movie companies can pull out glowing excerpts from bad reviews… If you want to know, check out their website for Health Canada’s statements (more below).

On to the “undercover” work! The better to make COLD-FX look like a big, fat fraud. Jerky camera work. Blurred faces. Closed captioning of what pharmacists say. The pitch: “Remember: there’s no published evidence for [taking COLD-FX for immediate relief].”

For some reason, I keep hearing the Twilight Zone theme.

More experts! This time Marketplace sends a select list of published articles on COLD-FX for analysis by Andrew Lane Ilersich, MSc, BScPhm, RPh at the Univeristy of Toronto. But it’s kind of boring just saying what they said. Quiz time! Grand revelation after each question and answer session! But did the analysis really say what Marketplace asserts it said?

As Syd Baumel wrote on the Marketplace website: “To begin with, the scientist didn’t do an independent search of the literature in case there were other studies of Cold FX out there. He only analyzed the four submitted to him by Marketplace.”

Andrew Lane Ilersich, MSc, BScPhm, RPh did put in his short summary headline of the meta-analysis “limited scope.” (More below.)

COLD-FX has ten citations and it looks like about eight clinical trials listed on its website. Cherry picking is sweet.

Baumel again: “Cold FX enjoyed a 15% reduction in cold frequency compared to those who took a placebo. Very modest effect, but statistically significant. To the individual user, this suggests that if you take Cold FX, it’ll spare you from getting a cold about one time out of 7.”

I personally didn’t understand this whole “once in seventeen years” of taking COLD-FX assertion on Marketplace. I’ve never heard statistics interpreted that way before, not in stats classes or research I participated in or studies I’ve read. Fifteen percent is one in seven and would be a standard way of putting it.

Anyway, how many people would bother reading the entire meta-analysis (PDF) to get the correct picture? Don’t your eyes glaze over at the very thought? So it’s pretty safe for Marketplace to reproduce only one paragraph from the plain-language summary and not the paragraph that states clearly that the studies “demonstrated a reduction in the risk of getting a cold.” It’s that old pull out one statement, ignore the other trick to make it sound like it’s saying what you want to. Here’s the entire summary:

“COLD-FX is effective for preventing colds in adults. Research findings from 4 experimental studies (randomized controlled trials) that compared COLD-FX to a placebo (dummy treatment) including over 1000 adults demonstrated a reduction in the risk of getting a cold. In all studies, the COLD-FX was used in a dose of 400mg/day. The duration of treatment ranged from between 2 months and 6 months.

Relative to placebo, the risk of getting a cold was reduced by about 15% when COLD-FX was used. The absolute risk reduction was about 6% (this means that if the overall chance of getting a cold is, for example, 50%, then taking COLD-FX reduces it to 44%). Altogether, 17 people need to be treated to prevent 1 person from getting a cold.

For those who contracted a cold, there was insufficient evidence that the duration or severity was reduced.

This analysis did not explore the effects of age, dose and/or duration of therapy on the effectiveness of COLD-FX, nor the cost-effectiveness of COLD-FX.”

How interesting: the analysis did not explore effects of duration of therapy or dosage taken, one or both of which would have large effects on COLD-FX’s efficacy, one would surmise.

Onto the gotcha journalism CBC enjoys. It makes their target look like they’re up to no good, even when s/he has a clear, legal reason for not answering their in-their-face questions (I mean, what journalist doesn’t know how lawyers make people shut up, even for the silliest of reasons? The buy-out seems to be the reason here. Oh, but perhaps journalists figure most people wouldn’t know how effective lawyers are at silencing people? I feel for target Shan, caught between a lawyer and a journalist. Gak.).

So Erica asks the big question. And Jacqueline Shan answers: “[I was just talking about Cold-FX inside.]”

Erica: “We didn’t hear you talk inside.” Really? They were able to track her down but were unable to make it in time for her talk?

Shan: “Our company was bought by Valeant. So I’m not allowed to make any public statement… You need to contact the company.” Pretty clear to me. It must suck for a journalist to be stonewalled by a large company, so take it out on an individual instead, eh?

Onward!

Oh hey, the lowered voice method! A lowered voice hints at nefarious doings, hints there was a bacteria cover-up even though Health Canada said there is no health risk in its last statement to Marketplace.

Marketplace quotes: “Based on currently available information, the presence of E. hermannii in a finished natural health product would be unacceptable.” Health Canada clarifies:

“Our earlier language was perhaps too black and white and did not accurately convey the science behind acceptable levels

After laboratory assessments were conducted by Health Canada scientists of the product on the Canadian marketplace, a low level of the bacteria Escherichia hermannii was found. Following a thorough assessment by Health Canada Scientists, it was determined that the level found presented the lowest risk to health and safety of Canadians [my emphasis] and, as such, no recall was initiated.

It is important to note that all health products have benefits and risks. When health products are found on the market that pose an unacceptable level of risk to health, Health Canada takes appropriate steps to mitigate and manage these risks.”

To be sure, I don’t recall any mass deaths or hospitalizations from COLD-FX-related E. coli contamination back in 2008 or 2009. Do you? But who needs to prove a dangerous bacteria contamination when all you have to say is “bacteria” to spring suspicion and fear into every viewer’s breast?

I feel for Marketplace. They really had to work hard to prove their theory about this product, going here and there, running all over the planet, from city to city, from expert to expert, using cameras that produced grainy pictures in China while using excellent ones for the scenes in which Erica appears.

On to the good stuff: an interview with Don Cherry.

Love the Don Cherry interview: one science-illiterate person talking to another, talking about two totally different things. One about immediate relief, the other about prevention. Neither notices. You don’t see this in the Markeplace piece, but in the extended Cherry piece I’ve embedded above.

Cherry begins by saying he doesn’t work for them anymore and he’s a little ticked off with COLD-FX, the company. Yet, get this, he still takes four COLD-FX capsules a day and ten a day, like the hockey players, if he feels a cold coming on. He relates in the extended Cherry piece that after a lifetime of being plagued by colds, after he began taking COLD-FX, he’s had just three colds in eight years. I don’t think anyone, least of all, Marketplace, or anything, like being fired, is going to pry the product out of his hands. He likes being cold-free too much. Me too, actually.

In all the hoo-hah, Marketplace forgot to mention an important point: “in the United States alone at least 1 billion colds per year have been reported” (from Predy et al, 2005 CMAJ article) with each person catching on average two to six colds. We know each cold costs several days of lost work or reduced productivity, never mind that it makes one feel lousier than hell. This is not peanuts. Dissing an effective remedy for colds harms public health.

The meta-analysis they had done listed four studies. I took a gander at them. (Note: in the meta-analysis, they were not identified in proper reference format, but I’m pretty sure I found the ones looked at as there can’t be more than one in the same year by the same authors on the same topic.)

2004 study: Elderly nursing home residents, 90 percent of whom had received the flu vaccine, had fewer cases of flu when taking COLD-FX for 8 weeks and 12, that is, 1 of 97 versus 7 of 101 who took a placebo. Taking COLD-FX reduced the risk of a fragile, elderly person from catching flu by 89 percent. By the way, flu kills the elderly.

2005 peer-reviewed study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal): Healthy adults who took the same dose as in the 2004 study but for 4 months caught 0.68 colds versus 0.95 for placebo and also only 10 percent caught more than one cold while 22.8 percent in the placebo group got multiple colds.

“These results are similar to those reported for zanamivir and oseltamivir therapy. These antiviral agents have been reported to reduce the severity and duration of illness by 1.5-2.5 days. In comparison, the ginseng extract treatment was found to reduce the duration of a cold by 2.4 days.”

2006 study: A variation of the 2004 study, in which after two months of use, COLD-FX reduced the risk of contracting a respiratory infection by almost half (48 percent) and the duration by 55 percent. I assume the infections were colds because they state that there was no influenza in the community during the study.

2011 study: A larger version of the 2005 study.

“data indicate that CVT-E002 at a dose of 400 mg/day or 800 mg/day is safe and well tolerated and results in a reduction in the number, severity, and duration of Jackson-confirmed URIs (upper respiratory tract infections) when taken as seasonal prophylaxis by healthy, community-dwelling older adults. Further studies with larger sample size are warranted to determine possible dose-related effects of CVT-E002.”

Ilersich concluded: “In summary, these results support the effectiveness of COLD-FX for preventing colds. There is insufficient evidence of a reduction in severity or duration of colds.” Insufficient evidence is science-speak for do more work, we don’t know one way or the other yet.

By the end of the twenty-two-odd minutes, Marketplace’s entire piece, when read between the lines and engendering Herculean effort not to be distracted by the bells and whistles, boils down to COLD-FX prevents colds. The claim it provides immediate relief needs further study; the China connection is no different than every other product we buy (have you checked where your frozen veggies are grown lately?), thus is not COLD-FX specific and is a separate topic; the bacterial contamination is old news and a non-starter. In other words, Marketplace told its alert viewers to take COLD-FX daily if you want to prevent colds.

Perhaps that’s why it ends its piece in the bathroom – with a shot of Erica and another expert washing their hands with soap, claiming that it’s more effective than COLD-FX. Washing hands with soap is effective in reducing colds. But what’s their published evidence proving their theory right? Where’s the double-blind randomized trial that compares the two methods side-by-side in reducing severity, duration, and frequency of infections, one for colds, one for flu?

——————-

References:

McElhaney JE, Gravenstein S, Cole SK, Davidson E, O’neill D, Petitjean S, Rumble B, Shan JJ. “A placebo-controlled trial of a proprietary extract of North American ginseng (CVT-E002) to prevent acute respiratory illness in institutionalized older adults.” J Am Geriatr Soc. 2004 Jan;52(1):13-9. Erratum in: J Am Geriatr Soc. 2004 May;52(5):following 856.

Gerald N. Predy, Vinti Goel, Ray Lovlin, Allan Donner, Larry Stitt, Tapan K. Basu. “Efficacy of an extract of North American ginseng containing poly-furanosyl-pyranosyl-saccharides for preventing upper respiratory tract infections: a randomized controlled trial.” CMAJ October 25, 2005 vol. 173 no. 9.

McElhaney JE, Goel V, Toane B, Hooten J, Shan JJ. “Efficacy of COLD-fX in the prevention of respiratory symptoms in community-dwelling adults: a randomized, double-blinded, placebo controlled trial.” J Altern Complement Med. 2006 Mar;12(2):153-7.

Janet E. McElhaney, Andrew E. Simor, Shelly McNeil, and Gerald N. Predy, “Efficacy and Safety of CVT-E002, a Proprietary Extract of Panax quinquefolius in the Prevention of Respiratory Infections in Influenza-Vaccinated Community-Dwelling Adults: A Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blind, and Placebo-Controlled Trial,” Influenza Research and Treatment, vol. 2011, Article ID 759051, 8 pages, 2011. doi:10.1155/2011/759051

Greg Ioannou has been my editor since the day I walked into his Colborne Communications office with my in-progress manuscript for Lifeliner. This was in 1999, just before my brain injury. I went to him seeking a structural editor and, perhaps, a copy editor. I’d worked as a copy editor and didn’t think I’d need much help in that area; however, structuring a book was new to me. We hit it off, and he set me a writing schedule. I dug into it enthusiastically. And then two cars hit my stopped car. But a most amazing thing happened: through all the years of recovery, Greg waited patiently. When I was able to return to writing Lifeliner in 2006, he happily met with me and worked with my new abilities (or limited at that time). He has provided sage advice and guidance for my novels ever since. You cannot pay for guidance and support like that.

This past Fall, when I made my annual trek to his office for novel advice, he stunned me by offering to publish my next novels, but not in the traditional way, in a new way, focussing mostly on ebooks. He offered fair and attractive terms. My work would be edited professionally by an editing house I knew and trusted. I would no longer have to work on the publishing aspect alone. My answer was a slam dunk: yes.

I submitted Aban’s Accension to him for editing, and until it’s released, he has listed me on his website as an affiliate author along with my already published books and a blog to boot. More blogs! This brings me up to three blogs — four if you count Google+ posts — and four websites I have to keep an eye on. There shall be some duplication, my energy being a tad limited.

In addition to my books and blog, you will also find on my Iguana Books page an exclusive excerpt of one of my short stories, free for you to read.

In the coming months, Iguana Books will be offering pre-sales for Aban’s Accension. And once I’ve completed Time and Space, I will be submitting it to them for editing. Keep an eye on this space or my Iguana blog for upcoming publication announcements.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Only Ben Cooper appears in this nicely short story. I like the interplay befween Cooper and Uddal; the mystery itself is Intriguing; and the ending satisfies. But this is a mystery with a message. And that message is hammered home in Cooper’s thoughts, a policeman’s dialogue, a character’s spouting. It was a bit Law & Order like in its preachiness. Booth made an effort to make the dialogue and thoughts natural, but it was the sheer overwhelming amount of it that ruined that effort. I would’ve preferred more of the usual Cooper mystery tone and less of the message being so obvious.

View all my reviews

You can find my post on a NaNoWriMo writing lesson — plus an exclusive excerpt from my third NaNoWriMo novel-in-progress Time and Space — on her website at lmstull.com.

I hope you will check it out, and while there peruse Stull’s writings as well!

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I find it a pleasure to read mysteries set in a country other than UK or US (yes, I didn’t include Canada because it’s not a big setting either), and I like this series because not only is the setting — Africa — new to me, but also the culture is so different, so personable and gentle. The tone is calm and thoughtful but not in an oh-get-on-with-it way but in a slow-suck-you-in-and-keep-you-glued way. There are levels of stories and mysteries, some minor, two the main event, that are woven in together expertly, all interesting. Tears of the Giraffe is a pleasurable antidote to Scottish grimness and North American alienation.

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I met with my case manager from COTA (see previous post for the story so far). I told her to get to it; I didn’t even give her a chance for her usual draining chit-chat. I needed my energy to get through the session with her; thankfully my moral anger kicked in to lend me energy and thinking power. I first pried the phone number of the Homemaking service from her by asking her point-blank for it. Later, she justified not giving me the phone number two months ago — she didn’t think she had to give it to me because I already had it, because she thought in that vague way of hers that I had already received help earlier from them. I’m amazed my eyeballs didn’t fall onto the table. I demanded to know why I’d ask for homemaking help if I’d already received it? She repeated she thought I had it. She was thinking of the student who helped me for a few months before quitting abruptly. Not exactly a provincial Homemaking program.

Anyway, after I got the phone number, I asked her for all the information she had gathered to date. Of my list of items, she had three done — sort of. She had a phone number for one; 311 for the second; an information sheet from the City of Toronto for the third. (And, oh yeah, an application for the funding help I’d been receiving for years.) It took her since October 18 to gather that. She said she had to research them on the Internet, that she doesn’t know about these Toronto services.

Her territory is the City of Toronto. She’s been working in this job for at least two years, but she didn’t tell me precisely how many. I do not have esoteric needs.

She also doesn’t know what the Rotary Club offers, which I’ve been told by two doctors and a therapist should’ve been contacted on my behalf for at least one item on my list that she said there was no help for.

As I mentioned in my previous post, she had totally gotten some of my needs wrong. But she denied it. She insisted that she’d gotten my list all correct and hadn’t asked me to repeat any of my needs in a follow-up phone call. She insisted that she had listened (the implication being I’d misspoken — imagine, me, the “articulate one” telling her I needed something I’d been receiving for years). When I informed her of her error last week and what she should’ve been looking into, she didn’t leap to correct it because she “wasn’t at work.” Apparently knowing she was meeting me today was not enough incentive to make things right.

She constantly apologised: “I’m sorry you feel this way.” Would you feel apologised to with those words? Nope, me neither. I finally told her to quit it, that if she was truly apologetic, truly understood how much she’d screwed up, she’d say she was sorry for screwing up. I then lectured her on ehealth and computerization. I have no idea if she took in anything I said. She just sat there. She did intimate at one point she didn’t want to carry a laptop around on the TTC. Good thing all the students and biz folk I see on the subway with their laptops don’t agree with her. They’d get much less done and make errors, as well as spending twice the time on the same task, transcribing pen and paper to computer when they got home or to work. I rhymed off a list of lighter computer devices she could carry with password protection. It made me wonder if any of these people pay attention to the world-shattering Apple launches.

I called her boss. She said she’d talk to the case manager and get back to me. CCAC did not react like this when I called about a disrespectful OT; they believed me — they didn’t say they had to talk to the OT as if to imply they needed verification — and immediately looked for a replacement.

After she left, I needed  a nap. But I stopped myself because I need to sleep at night. However, the rest of my day has been disrupted because as a person with a brain injury, it’s very difficult to refocus. I went from anger to weariness to distractedness to upsetedness. That’s when I called my MPP to see if I could be un-split. Only people with brain injuries — the folks who by the very nature of their injury need things to be simple — are split between COTA and CCAC. As I understand it, no one else is. People with cancer get 100% of their help, including case management, from CCAC. I’m ready to cry over this injustice and unnecessary bureaucracy. I’m hoping by writing this, by venting, I can get back to my day.

Update 4 Jan 2012:

The case manager’s boss called after speaking with the case manager. She wanted to discuss some issues. She wanted to persuade me to continue on with my case manager and was wanting to work things out so that could happen. I cut her off. I wasn’t working with that case manager, and I didn’t want any contact by any means with her. She tried again, and I cut her off again. So then she said there were issues that had to be discussed. There is nothing more upsetting than talking to someone with a sweet, gentle voice who implacably talks to the patient as if they are a problem, and in this case, will not meet the patient’s request for a new case manager unless the patient gets abrupt and brusque and refuses to discuss working with the problem case manager.

She began with miscommunication. If I wasn’t so upset — and one thing she knows as everyone in the brain injury community knows is that people with brain injuries have labile emotions, you never know what you’re going to get — I’d have laughed. She was talking to the person labelled articulate. I am always and immediately labelled as someone who communicates well by every therapist, every rehab person, every psychologist and doctor I’ve ever seen right from 2000 on. Any miscommunication was on my case manager’s part, but by wanting to discuss this with me as an issue, she was implying that my case manager had listened well and got down all the information correctly, thus it was me who had not communicated my needs well, who was the problem. I told her I had no trouble working with anyone else and in communicating my needs to anyone else; everyone but my case manager knows what they are.

She moved on to the issue of computers that my case manager had said I talked about. Basically, if I expected their case managers to have computers or iPhones, I should consider not receiving service from them. They don’t have funding, she said. (Why would a therapist need an agency to fund their own smartphone anyway? In today’s society, every professional should have one regardless, but apparently in the eyes of OTs, not.) Yet my very bringing it up in the first place, then suggesting we discuss it outside of the case manager issue was seen as a reason for me not to receive service from COTA. She told me I have until next week to think about it, to think about whether I wanted to receive service from them or not when she would call me back — next week because the case managers weren’t in the office (not at work?) this week and she wouldn’t be able to find out who’s available to take on my case until they come into the office next week, not that she’s hopeful there would be someone available.

It seems to me that by using that nicest-possible-we’ll-talk-to-you-when-you’re-less-upset voice and suggesting I need a week to think about it, she is threatening to remove services from me if I don’t behave. It isn’t about me having a choice, for COTA is the only publicly funded entity that provides case management services to people with brain injuries, and she knows it. Imagine what effect this would have on an ill or very injured person? They would comply and drop their request. They would put up with bad health care for fear of even that being taken away. And they would not have their needs met plus have their health worsened through the stress of thoughts of abandonment as well as the stress of being forced through gentle, implacable persuasion, to work with someone who doesn’t listen and doesn’t meet their needs.

Update 11 Jan 2012:

On Monday, the COTA case manager boss called and gave me the name of my new case manager. That’s it. Short and sweet. I was so astonished. And relieved. The only strange thing was her reaction to me asking her to spell out the new case manager’s name. I have a hard time understanding names over the phone, and so I’ve gotten into the habit of asking people to spell them out. I usually get an uh, well, never-had-to-spell-out-a-simple J-A-N-E before kind of response. But they do spell it out. She wouldn’t. She spelled out the case manager’s last name but neither spelled out the first name nor repeated it. You’d think someone working in the area of brain injury would be familiar with auditory processing or hearing problems and would not only ensure a clear phone line, but also enunciate names clearly and repeat them slowly. Sheesh.

The new case manager called me today to make an appointment to see me and right off the bat spoke slowly (not loudly, which is what people usually do when asked to speak slowly, much to my ear’s distress) and enunciated every word. It was a bit irritating, but then I told myself I had no — zero, zip, nada — problems understanding every word, including the name. He repeated his name at the end of our conversation without being asked to. How unusual after my recent experience. Hopefully, auspicious.

“Now listen, you who say, ’Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’

’Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (NIV James 4:13)

When you’ve had a brain injury and life has been turned upside down and inside out and over-hard, you tend not to think about life goals. And long-term goals are about what to do next week, for next month is barely perceptible, and anything farther away than that is incomprehensible. It isn’t just because time and how I perceive it has strangely changed, it’s also because twice already I’ve had my dreams severely disrupted because of car crashes. I don’t feel like tempting fate again.

But my therapist, the one who helps organize me and keeps me on track, decided in our last session that we were going to set writing goals for me, real honest-to-goodness goals like other people, like normal people who don’t expect life to go into the dumpster without warning, making one’s goals a joke. Today, on the first working day of 2012, I’m thinking “you gotta name em to claim em.” And so here they are. But first, an introductory word:

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) provides the motivation and initiation I lack to put what’s in my head into action. A novel or book is a big undertaking, and computers and iDevices aren’t up to the task of making that kind of writing happen. An AI would. But since that technology isn’t in my realm yet, NaNoWriMo works plus I’d rather be part of a community, it’s more fun. (Yes, I wrote that, me the one who loves her artificial thinking machines!)

Knowing this, my therapist suggested we plan around NaNoWriMo:

NaNoWriMo has three events throughout the year: the big one in November (NaNoWriMo) where the goal is to write a 50,000-word novel; Script Frenzy in April where the goal is to write a 100-page screenplay, play, graphic novel, or similar; and Camp NaNo in June or August. I’ve done the first two but not the last one.

I will write my main novels in November during NaNoWriMo. I will then spend the following four months revising, getting feedback, having it edited, and finishing final revisions before April. Gulp.

In April, I will write a play or work on one I’ve already done, the idea being it’s for fun, to hone my skills, and maybe down the road, for publication. But mostly in the total spirit of NaNoWriMo, which is to create for creation’s sake.

In June or August (I think we said August…), I will write another novel, but something easier, lighter that will take less time to revise. I usually use the summer months to outline and prep for my November writing, so this might be a squeeze. On the other hand, it seems that each year, my outlining gets moved closer and closer to November. I’m feeling quite nebulous about this goal, but as it gets closer, I should, with support, be able to grasp it and make it work for me.

So there you have it: writing goals. Scary.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another good read by Nevada Barr. What made me admire her more as a writer is that she had a scene where a lesser author, going for the easy titillation, would’ve thrown sex in. Instead Barr adds credibility and excitement and interest by not doing so. As a result, in more than one way, the last scene makes you want to get the next book — now.

This is the first book I’ve finished reading in 2012. A new year of reading begins!

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Friends and Readers:

May your end-of-year
Be happy

And 2012
Be blessed

And your tastebuds be acquainted with good macarons.

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

OK, it’s rare for me not to finish a book. I’m endemically inclined to finish any book I pick up, even if it takes me years. But this writer has a really annoying habit of jumping around in time. At first, I thought the publisher had screwed up the ebook formatting and left out pages. I’d be in the middle of a scene, “turn” the page, and I’m suddenly somewhere ahead in time. When I kept reading, I’d eventually enter one of the character’s thoughts of what happened from the point the writer left off. I felt like I was getting mental whiplash every few pages.

That was bad enough. But the editor did a piss poor job with quotation marks. I’d be reading dialogue, enter another bunch of thoughts (or even a simple “he said”) as indicated by a close quotation mark, then suddenly realise I was reading dialogue — except the editor forgot to put in the open quotation mark to indicate the character had started speaking again, necessitating me to go back and reread it.

The mystery itself is interesting. But when the physical act of reading is this difficult, it’s not worth pursuing. Thank goodness I borrowed this from the Toronto Public Library and didn’t buy it.

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book won’t leave my head. I keep feeling the coldness of a Lake Superior summer, the lushness of a temperate climate, the aliveness of the protagonist Anna Pigeon.

I’m sure I’ve read Nevada Barr before — I have memories of reading a mystery set in a desert — but this one was immersive to me, perhaps because, as a Canadian, the wild green landscape is more familiar to me.

I took this ebook out of the Toronto Public Library, and I was reluctant to turn off my eReader when something else called my attention. Even though I found it difficult to keep track of her cast of characters — the old-school method of listing characters and having maps at the front of books would’ve been handy — I found the plot, the descriptions, the mystery, and Anna Pigeon herself so compelling that being lost in who was whom didn’t stop me from reading. And eventually I would figure it out. I cannot wait to borrow the next one in the series.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had heard great reviews of this book, but I found it a difficult read — not style-wise but content-wise. And so at first I read it on and off.

“People just don’t talk about it,” [the Iranian woman] said.

That’s true for any suffering. People get a terrible health diagnosis, friends disappear. People spiral down into mental illness, family shuns. A young teen girl is arrested as a political prisoner, is tortured, held captive, forced to marry, and parents and fiancé don’t ask. Lives are destroyed in public and must be rebuilt in private. In Iran, the author Marina did it surrounded by the silence of not being asked what had happened and not feeling safe to tell. Here in Canada, sufferers get lectures on “get on with your life,” “move on,” “think positively,” “fill in a gratitude journal,” “focus on the good not the negative.” More sophisticated yet nastier ways of ensuring silence from the sufferer about their experiences.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” [my husband] asked when he finally read [my manuscript].
We had been married for seventeen years.
“I tried, but I couldn’t … will you forgive me?” I said.

Always it is the sufferer who apologises first — for not being strong enough, keeping silent, looking weaker than those who seem unscathed from similar experiences — not the ones who abandon, neglect, don’t ask. Yet, Marina’s husband did something different:

“There’s nothing to forgive. Will you forgive me?”
“For what?”
“For not asking.”

What a burden that must’ve fallen off of Marina’s shoulders in that moment.

At one point, I stopped reading the ebook on and off and started reading in large gulps, pausing only to process. I got over my antipathy to hearing about an unpleasant reality.

Marina seemed to have put behind her the horrific two years in Evin, Iran’s notorious political prison. She and her family emigrated to Canada, they built their lives up from nothing, and reached the Canadian dream. That’s when things began to fall apart. In the perfection of suburban life, memories came crashing back and robbed her of sleep. The only antidote was to write about it and then share it with her husband and then talk about it and then publish it so that her story became a witness to the truth of Iranian life.

It takes courage to bear your personal story to an ignorant world when it’s filled with pain and mind-breaking loss, even more when it exposes a criminal regime that hides behind the mask of religion. It’s told in a back-and-forth way. It begins in the present and ends in the past when she and her family were on their way out of Iran and then to Canada. In the middle she weaves memories of her childhood and the friendships that like a set of falling dominoes led to her incarceration in between the memories of her time in Evin and her forced marriage to one of the interrogator/torturers. What was most interesting for me was that she is not Muslim but a Christian and she went to a Zoroastrian school for a time. When I think of Iran, I think all Muslim with a diminishing minority of the original Persians, the Zoroastrians. I learnt that there were (are?) Christians allowed to practice their faith; that Christian women are allowed a different dress code from Muslim women; but that like Zoroastrians if they marry a Muslim they must convert, no choice.

It was difficult to know exactly what Marina was thinking during the telling of certain events, only later in her narrative did she reveal the fullness of her thoughts. I’m not sure if that was deliberate or the way her memory worked so as to allow her to re-experience the horror times without being sucked in completely.

“Why did we turn our backs on reality when it became too much to bear?”

After she was forced to accept her interrogator’s proposal, her thoughts turned to that question. Guilt rose up and her body rebelled. She was not allowed to express her feelings and thoughts about her interrogator’s proposal publicly, not allowed to be free in her choice, but her body expressed her disgust and pain for her. This story is not just a witness to Iranian atrocities but also to resiliency and the maturing of a conscience, of how a human being copes with and changes under suffering (and how some break).

I think this is a book that would be more appreciated in the second reading. It’s written in an accessible style, but there is so much to absorb and ponder that I’m sure much is missed in the first reading. I had only one day left before my library ebook expired when I went back to reread it; I had time only to reread the beginning. It made more sense now that I knew her whole story.

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CCACs vary a lot in quality, I’ve heard. Some believe Toronto’s is better than others, some not so much. I like my CCAC care coordinator and she’s done a good job, albeit requiring one half-hour yelling session over the phone about a disrespectful (and Luddite) OT who was sent to help me organize myself using my handheld device and computer. She sat in her coat, asked stupid questions whose answers were already in my file, and hand-wrote notes. Hand-wrote! The person supposed to be helping me with computer scheduling and GTD (Get Things Done) technology didn’t even have a Palm! I got the feeling that because I had a brain injury — aka I was stupid — that she thought she could treat me however she wanted to and I wouldn’t — because I couldn’t — object. Unfortunately for her, my anger rose up and stimulated me to action. Unfortunately for me, the same has not been true with my COTA Health case manager.

Maybe it’s because COTA Health saps me of all strength. It wearies me. It tires even my anger out. My COTA Health case manager usually costs me half-a-day or more of functionality every time I see her or have contact. Some care.

Side note: Only my CCAC care coordinator comes to my place lugging her work-issued laptop and takes notes on it. Everyone else uses pen and paper for note-taking, even the therapist hand-writes notes during our sessions, the one who my care coordinator assigned me after my yelling session and who has her own smartphone and who dictates her notes into the computer once back at the office. So it isn’t because she’s technologically challenged. It’s the way they do things. Why her office doesn’t issue a light laptop or iPad with password protection for note-taking is beyond me. But I understand that in general OTs, and other therapists, are notorious for not knowing how to use computers in the way those of us with brain injuries must if we are to be functional. It is unacceptable. But they get away with it probably because most of us with brain injuries don’t know how to push them with our outrage into the 21st century.

Community care is supposed to provide people with illnesses or disabilities care in their home, where they can benefit from it the most. People with brain injuries are short-changed in two ways. The first is the same as everyone else: funding has been cut back so much that I’m only entitled to three or four sessions with a social worker, something similar with a physiotherapist, and no care from a psychologist or similar therapist. I could be put on a waiting list for the latter but because I don’t have a serious mental illness and am not about to jump off a bridge, I probably will never see one. As for the other kinds of care available, three or four sessions are barely enough to get going on my needs. I can ask for another series of three. But people with brain injuries have trouble initiating. Initiating once to ask for care is impressive; twice impossible.

The second way we’re short-changed is in time. For example, I’m entitled to something like three or four sessions with a physiotherapist — within four weeks. That means if I need physio every two weeks or three — the time it would normally take for a person who processes information slowly to incorporate exercise suggestions and know how they’re working — I’m out of luck. I had to use my assigned sessions up in four weeks. If I recall right, I didn’t use them all because in the followups I’d stare at him and he at me with me not being able to give any feedback yet on his assigned exercises. It was a waste of my energy and everyone’s tax dollars; yet I could really have benefitted if I’d been allowed to see him a couple of weeks later when my brain had finally managed to spit out feedback. Also, as a person with a chronic condition, I’m not entitled to actual physiotherapy per se, only exercise suggestions. If I had an acute condition, like knee surgery, then I’d be entitled to physio. So if your brain injury causes problems with muscle tone, tough. You don’t get help. Well, unless you can pay someone. The other time issue is that people with brain injuries don’t get miraculously cured in a year or three. I know, I know, there are all these feel-good miracle stories out there. But scratch the surface — or know through your own experience — and you’ll find that it’s all hogwash. Yes, the people in those stories have improved tremendously. But no, they’re not “back to normal.” They’re not fully functional on their own like a healthy, independent adult. They have a lot of help and put a lot of effort in to getting through each day, even with the stupidly simple things like brushing one’s teeth (which reminds me …). Yet the bureaucrats at CCAC think people with brain injuries should be all done like dinner and no longer needing care after a year or so. I wish.

And then there’s my case manager at COTA Health who decided without telling me that I no longer needed her services after a few months. Long story short: About a year and a bit after she disappeared, I ran into her boss. Her boss spoke to her and at the end of September 2011 told me that my case manager would get back in touch with me and apologise for disappearing. (She’d apparently thought she’d discharged me.) And no I couldn’t have a new case manager. Give her another chance, she asked. I wish I’d been as angry at that point as I had been with the disrespectful OT. But I wasn’t. And so I acquiesced. Dumb decision.

Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I can initiate or stand up for myself, doesn’t mean that that part of the brain that allows us to advocate for ourselves works. It’s anger that gets a person with a brain injury to do move. And it’s sharp focussed moral anger, not the all-consuming brain injury anger, that opens one’s mouth to say this is not acceptable. Family and friends of a person with a brain injury need to help us with correcting a bad situation. And having one conversation with us ain’t going to do it. It sucks having to help, but not prodding in a gentle, wise way sucks more. I think too people who know those with brain injuries need lessons on how to do that. My new neurodoc did tell me a few weeks ago I didn’t have to put up with my case manager, that I could ask for a new one, especially as I had given her a chance. But one conversation with him wasn’t enough to prod me into action. Anyhow, I digress. You see, I just don’t want to deal with my case manager.

Back to October and her apology about a week after I spoke to her boss. In the rare case I’m offered an apology for sucky behaviour, I melt and accept fully. But not hers. I didn’t feel it. Still, I uh-huhed and agreed to meet her. On October 18, she arrived. She wanted to chat; I wanted to get on with it and get her out the door. From what I recall, every now and then, she wrote notes in her not-large spiral-bound notebook, a page of them. As I mentioned earlier, it’s pen and paper in therapy-ville. Given my long list of needs, I’d've expected her to write more, but thought perhaps she writes a lot in a few words. On the other hand, she asked me several times, until I was ready to bite her head off, if I wanted homemaking help. I said yes each and every time.

And that’s what has set me off today.

It is over two months later. I’d asked for homemaking help back in 2010 when the only action I’d received before she disappeared was being enrolled in the Trillium drug plan. She told me no can do to the homemaking back then. But she looked into it again in 2011. We were supposed to meet in early November about how she got on with my needs list, but she called to cry illness and insisted we meet on a day I already had two things planned. After a day of processing and realising that would put me behind the energy eight-ball, I called to say let’s talk over the phone on Remembrance Day instead, that way I would get the info without being infected and drained of energy. On Remembrance Day, she told me that she’d contacted a homemaking service that provides subsidies and they would contact me. She also had questions, questions that indicated to me her note-taking ability was, how shall I put it?, incomplete. I repeated myself from our first meeting. That did not make me a happy camper. She told she would call me the following week.

This is a familiar refrain with my COTA Health case manager: “I’ll call you next week.” But she doesn’t.

Over two weeks later, on November 28, I called her boss, asking where my case manager had disappeared to, wondering if the homemaking service was going to call me, wondering if I’d get help with my heating bills, being as winter was coming on. She said that she’d have her call me, that the case manager’s notes were in the computer, everything seemed to be there — but I didn’t take my own notes and didn’t recall all at once, over the phone, the long list of needs I’d given her, so I couldn’t confirm that in fact my case manager had transferred her pen and paper notes to the computer in the office completely. She asked me again to stick with her. Finally on December 6, I heard from my case manager. Still working on my list. And oh, I probably no longer qualified for the homemaking help. Great. Also: Somewhere along the way my case manager screwed up. Again. She’d added a financial need and dropped a corollary, which I found out for sure today. I had wondered about that when she’d called me on December 6, but I was so ticked and confused about the homemaking, I didn’t take it in. She ended the call with saying she’d call me the following week with more info, maybe we could meet.

So “next week” is December 21. Yes, in the busy week before Christmas she called me. She wanted my email address, which she had but lost, which she wouldn’t have lost if she’d used a netbook or laptop or iDevice or even a smartphone when we met back in 2010. But you know, the therapy community sure likes its pen and paper.

I was steamed. I emailed it to her Friday when I could email her without a long stream of invective. Today, she emailed me back with the info it took her from Oct 18 to discover, hoping we could meet this Friday. Is she kidding me? It’s Christmas week. It’s a friggin’ holiday. Even those of us with brain injuries get to have some down time, some time not having to deal with therapists and doctors and bureaucratic systems. This was my one week of freedom. Apparently not. I guess I should be grateful it took her only, uh, nine weeks total to get the info together. In her email, she also told me I had to call the homemaking service but neglected to include the phone number.

So in a nutshell, my case manager has learnt in just over two months and passed on to me that: the homemaking service was going to call me; the homemaking service considered me unqualified; the homemaking service needs me to call them.

As far as my other needs are concerned, she forgot a few (heating, hydro, transportation, etc.), added a financial break I already have, thinks I may have already received assistance in another (uh, no, else why would I ask?), contradicted my neurodoc in funding being available for one (she says not), and may or may not have gotten one right, I can’t tell. I told her to show up next week. I may need a caseload of chocolate to get through the meeting … assuming it happens.

In one of my conversations with the case manager’s boss, I asked if they had a centralized list of resources, you know, something each case manager could access and look up for their clients without wasting time repeating work others had done, without having to take so long to find the resources a client needs, something easily created and managed on a computer (pre-injury I used to design computer databases). They’d discussed it. Two years ago. This is the standard of rationed community care universally applied for those of us with brain injuries in Ontario, Canada.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The thing about Rex Stout’s writing is that it’s tight, matter-of-fact yet visually, auditorally, and smell-o-vision live. The characters are so strong it’s like they’re standing in front of you. By the time you finish your first Nero Wolfe mystery, you know Archie, Nero, Inspector Cramer, Fritz, and the principal clients as well as you know your own friends.

Homicide Trinity provides three short Wolfe mysteries. I like compilations of shorts by my favourite mystery authors; unfortunately, they’re harder to find than they used to be. They provide a quick immersion into a well-loved mystery series, reading them one at a time when you have only a few minutes to read — or so that’s the theory. However, these three stories were so compelling, I went right from the first into the second, barely pausing for a bite or breath. Whether you like mysteries or want to study how tight writing can succeed, check this one out from your library or buy it from your favourite bookstore. It’s worth the price.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m enjoying this series set in Sweden. The Torso is rather gruesome but not relentlessly so. Humour, personal conflict, doggies, and vivid descriptions of Goteberg and Swedish life add welcome counterpoints and keep one engaged. I also like the peek this series gives into a different society and culture. There is far more misogyny and objectification of women in Sweden than I would’ve expected of a socialist country. And I learnt that Scandinavian countries are not all one vast blonde sameness either.

I don’t know what it is about Tursten’s writing, but she kept me reading. I haven’t read late into the night in quite some time — until I loaded this ebook onto my Sony Reader — and I replaced the light battery in my Reader’s cover just so I could. I’ll be putting the next book in this series on hold at the Toronto Public Library virtual branch!

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That’s what I told myself.

Yup.

I was determined to start the first week of December.

Yup, determined.

Didn’t happen.

Fatigue and appointments kind of got in the way. Or so that’s the excuse I gave myself. But during a stern session Monday with the therapist who helps me set goals and figure out how to organize my schedule to meet them, I recorded in my iPod Pocket Informant calendar that today I would start revising. Easier written down than done.

I began the day with my NaNoWriMo pre-writing routine of breakfast and hot chocolate. I made myself some coffee. I took it and a big glass of ice water (writing is thirsty work) to my computer and promptly procrastinated.

But if my energy levels are up to the task, my schedule is a powerful force on me. When I see something written down, it’s like a magnet drawing me in to obey. And so I finally did by deciding to begin gently. I began with making the changes and additions I’d jotted down in my Script Frenzy Moleskine notebook as I was writing last month. It wasn’t so bad, and I got through two pages of notes. I also blogged on Google+ afterwards, like during NaNoWriMo, and copied my thoughts here.

The ice is now broken. Revising should become easier and easier in the coming weeks.

As some of you many know, I began my own self-devised hypothalamus treatment in 2010 to try and address a variety of organic problems that resulted from a traumatic brain injury in 2000. One of the nice side benefits was my exercise tolerance slowly improved. Then this past October, I started being able to walk farther. I could walk to nearby places I hadn’t been able to for years. Very liberating — although as is my wont, I kind of overdid it. But that wasn’t the lesson.

NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month — is a month of writing a 50,000-word novel every single day of the month. It’s taxing, both physically (if you’re typing for hours a day) and mentally (for obvious reasons). I had planned my month out carefully. I knew that writing every day would be a huge drain on my mental energy resources. I knew that it would be challenging cognitively. I didn’t figure on any greater duress on my muscles because I don’t write for hours. I don’t have the stamina for it. So I write a lot of words in a little amount of time. But daily writing is physically taxing in an energy sense. By the time I’m done writing, I’m fatigued in every way possible.

I suppose I could pace, but I’ve learned that the way fatigue works for me is that once I stop, it’s very difficult for me to start again and to remember where I was. It’s easier to keep going, feeling the energy drain out of my muscles and my brain, than to stop because then I can complete a chapter and it’s fairly coherent.

This year I wanted to blog on my NaNoWriMo progress, and Google+ provided the absolute easiest way to do it. Just write and press Share. I blogged right after I wrote each chapter (well, after a short snack break after I wrote each chapter) before I forgot the things that had cropped up during that day’s writing. It was probably not the wisest thing to do because it just compounded my fatigue and made it harder to recover. But that wasn’t the lesson.

I began to notice myself getting extremely weak and mentally stalled as the days wore on. I poured everything I had into my writing. Yet I was beginning to wake up so tired, I had barely anything to pour into it. I’d remind myself I wrote Lifeliner when fatigue was much, much worse than now, when it would’ve been impossible for me to write daily. Didn’t help. Then after a couple of weeks of will powering my way through NaNoWriMo and wondering if I’d ever have a scintilla of energy again, it dawned on me that I had not remembered a lesson I’d learned from my brain biofeedback treatment days: mental work is as taxing as exercise to a person with a brain injury. No wonder I was getting short of breath again. No wonder my body temperature returned to burn levels instead of the broil it had been on.

Increasing mental work while not decreasing physical exercise commensurately was a really bad idea.

That was my lesson.

I scaled back my exercise down to 20 minutes (or 10 on some days) from 30, and I didn’t exercise on days I went to physio or to see the doctor. And suddenly my energy rose up enough for me to take some pleasure from my writing and for my days not to be an endless desire for sleep and rest.

I am now scaling back up to my old exercise times, but it’s taking longer than I’d expected. That’s probably because I’m still recovering energy-wise from NaNoWriMo, and the appointments I’d been putting off until December have started. No rest for the weary.

Phew.

Winning National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) means I wrote 50,000 words of a novel in one month, the month of November. What it doesn’t mean is I’m finished. I wish! Nope, not finished. Sigh.

I took a break Monday from writing once I had completed my novel (which is officially 65,637 words), but today I bit the bullet and did what I ought to have done while I was writing: revise my outline to reflect the changes I’d made as I wrote. Next I need to write the logline — a 25-word summary — so as to focus my mind on the central theme or story of my novel Time and Space. I will also spend the next few days mulling over in my conscious mind — and giving my subconscious space to do its thing — how I have my time machine work and if I want to change it. Once I begin revising my novel, I’ll have had to decide one way or the other whether to stick with my current physics’ explanations or to change to something more out there. I’m getting better at keeping all these theoretical physics concepts in my head, but it seems like every time I turn around, I’m reading or seeing some new theory that pertains to my time machine — and to the future societies in which my novel is set. (My novel only begins and ends in 2011.)

Despite the challenges and me feeling like I don’t know enough (but then I’ve always felt that way my entire life), I’m still enjoying this novel. That’s a radical thing for me to say. My brain injury took away my ability to feel and the resultant circumstances turned writing Lifeliner from an accomplishment to a “thank god that’s over” moment. Plus my first two novels came from a different place than this one. It’s different, and I like it.

November 22

NaNoWriMo claims that at the rate I’m pounding out the words, I’ll finish — that is, get to 50k words — today. Uh, no. Methinks their computer will be changing that prediction tomorrow. Make no mistake though, I had a decent writing session this morning. I’m not sure I finished the chapter where it needs to be finished, but it is for now. Perhaps in revisions I’ll see something more that needs to be added at the end. But 1688 words that came out in spits and starts and flows and stops, is satisfying.

November 23

Back to my outline today, though looks like I’ll deviate again tomorrow. I’ve made such big changes in the last few chapters, I really should update it so that when I go to revise my manuscript, I won’t get lost.

I began this morning’s NaNoWriMo session by jotting down the steps to make the time machine as a guide for today’s chapter. But in the end, I didn’t need it, for I didn’t start building the machine in today’s action. I will tomorrow. It’ll save me some time tomorrow anyway for having done that today. I haven’t done much of that — writing down “facts” I’ll need to follow while writing. I thought I would have to. But I’ve been winging it, letting my fingers show me the way. I’ll “fact” check during the revisions, but I think it’s ended up being a more enjoyable experience having done it this backwards way around. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it at great length for months, and what I’ve relearnt and thought about has certainly come out in my writing. It’s the tenuous parts and the consistency parts I’ve left up to my imagination. It’s surprising the things I’ve invented. I think they’re viable in some distant future … maybe!

2019 words today. I’m oh so close to 50k. Tomorrow for sure, I’ll finish NaNoWriMo, albeit not my novel.

(On a totally unrelated note, why oh why does Google add extra paragraph breaks [or random letters to the end of my posts] requiring me to edit my post to take them out? Once I edit, at least Google doesn’t repeat the error. But it is annoying.)

November 24

Woot! My total word count as of today is an eye-pleasing 51515. I like patterns in numbers especially since I have now passed the 50k mark to win NaNoWriMo, which today it predicted would be — today! Well, actually I don’t technically win until I submit my masterpiece (self-deprecating tone in there folks) to NaNoWriMo for them to count up each and every word. But one milestone passed. Now to finish the novel!

November 25

Today’s outline didn’t make any logical sense as to how my main character would end up in the hospital, in an isolation room. So I changed it just enough to fit in with the rest of the book and still have her end up locked up and then rescued. A lot of back and forth as I filled in previous details as I went along. And then I picked up steam in the last few paragraphs. 2393 words today as I pull away from the 50k NaNoWriMo goal.

November 26

NaNoWriMo sent a pep talk for week 4 from Brandon Sanderson a few days ago. I put off reading it because I wanted to have it for when I really needed a push. Today was that day. Although I’m enjoying the writing, having fun with my story, I want a break. I want to lie on the couch and be indolent. I want to rest and recharge properly instead of lurching from writing session to writing session. But as I have learnt, once you stop the momentum, it’s almost impossible to begin again and far more difficult than to keep going, no matter how exhausted one is. Look how long it took me to get back into revising my second novel when I stopped? Forever.

Sanderson’s pep talk was just the ticket. ToNaNo (the Toronto Chapter of National Novel Writing Month) has been posting daily pep talks. Members have signed up for each day of November. I’ve read many of those, some brilliant, some so-so, although I have to admit the really long ones I skipped because my mind would wander and get drained. But it’s the official ones that have the real kick; they’re the ones that get me going when I can’t move from the kitchen table after breakfast.

Sanderson talked about the lessons of NaNoWriMo: Learning to finish (kick #1 — just because I finished 2009 and 2010, doesn’t mean 2011 is a given for me, especially if I don’t get to the computer and write, I thought when I read this). Consistency vs. Burst writing (hmmm… I think I’m a burst writer). Thinking like a Storyteller. This part really resonated with me:

“One of the lessons I learned as a storyteller was how to refill the creative well while doing other activities. You can do it while driving, exercising, eating . . . anything that doesn’t take your full attention. During these times, many writers I know run through plots in their heads, feel out character personalities, think about conflicts. They make connections, overcoming blocks.“

I had been dreaming of my book last night; I was adding details over breakfast this morning. Was I really going to let down my imagination and not make anything of what it was creating?

And his last lesson: Overcoming Writer’s Block. This is not usually a problem for me. But his advice to just keep writing in order to keep that momentum going, to keep in the groove so that the good writing could return, hit home. Not all my writing has to be non-stop typing. It’s okay if my words come in spits and spurts or with great wrenching to get them out — so long as I stay at the computer until I’m done. (Pacing is the mantra for those with brain injuries; one must pace, we are taught. Write ten minutes, pause for three. Talk about breaking the momentum. Pacing is antithetical to writing, for me anyway. I pace, my writing flow stops. It’s better to finish the scene or chapter until I “feel” finished; I can recover after that.)

So one more chapter done. 1561 words for today. My chapters are short.

November 27

I decided to make today a marathon writing session because the last few chapters are connected. (Plus I want it to be over! I’m impatient to see how it will turn out!) Even so, I still lost track of character changes and physics details and weather stuff. Sheesh. Better go back and fix the weather while I remember and am still in a writing mood. I ache, my neck is stiff, my eyes are heavy, despite the breaks I took, the chocolate I ate, the coffee I drank, and my usual cranioelectrical stimulation regimen. But I’m ready to revise. Go figure.

Before I begin real revisions though, I need a few days to think about my time machine. Do I want it to work the way I have it working? Or does it need changing? Changing will be a pain because there are so many outflows from it. But if another method works better, I should just bite the bullet and make all the changes. First though, a few days to think on it.

8105 words today (make that 8396 after fixing weather details). It has to be some sort of record for me. I am so thankful I finished both NaNoWriMo and my novel and am a bit in disbelief at it too. When it sinks in, I’ll celebrate! With revision time!!

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a needlessly big book and it’s filled with visual imagery that so realistically conveys the grimness of life and its grossest aspects that you just want to go kill yourself or hide under a rock.

The day I got to the point in the novel where the graphic intensity reached levels that both bored me and turned me off, I received a pep talk from Jonathan Lethem in my NaNoWriMo mailbox (National Novel Writing Month), to wit:

“The comings and goings, loosening and tightening of faucets, shittings and pissings and nose-blowings of everyday circumstances. Keep them at the periphery, in the subliminal range, unless you really want to try to make something of them, and then you’d better make it good. I’m trying to tell you to ignore transitions. Skip to the good stuff.”

Although MacBride is a good writer who has a great command of the language, he could’ve used this advice. By the time I read the pep talk, when I was about halfway through the novel, I was skipping entire pages, including repetitious reflections filled with guilt and dumb-ass thinking.

But the thing that really got to me, that changed my mind from “liked it” to “it was OK” was when Logan suddenly became stupendously stupid, just so as to fill more pages and keep the plot going a little longer. I thought: really? A detective can’t put two and two together when it’s given to him one right after the other? Really??? I’m supposed to think he’s a good detective when he’s that oblivious? Uh, no. Aside from that, the unrelenting grimness is not something I want to read. I set aside the book for a few days, just to recover. But though I finished it, I didn’t care about whodunnit. I almost always care! But this book wore me out that much.

In the end, I learnt a lesson as a writer. As Lethem put it so well: “Write like you’d read—and notice how much you customarily skip as you read.”

View all my reviews

November 15

Writing is therapy, they say, meaning writing about what troubles you is therapy. For me, the very act of writing is therapy. It’s a also great distraction from everyday troubles because all of my cognitive and creative processes are working overtime during the act of writing. Even my subconscious is engaged. Today’s NaNoWriMo was partly having to work out and describe the cultural norms in my future version of Toronto and partly writing therapy to escape the knowledge of my birthday tomorrow; the session went on for a very long time. My muscles and fingers are feeling it. But my word count is happy, if such an inanimate concept can be said to be happy. 3515 words. I’m ahead of my main competitors.

November 16

It’s my birthday. Of course I began it the best and only way I can: writing! NaNoWriMo and my time travel novel wait for no birthday to be over and regular routine to reassert itself. Today’s chapter was a continuation of a shopping and learning-about-the-future society journey my character started on two chapters ago. I think I’ve now filled in all the details about how this society thinks and acts. I’m sure during revisions, I’ll notice many gaps that will have to be filled in and details to be fleshed out. But I’m happy with this morning’s writing. It feels complete with nothing forgotten. 2771 words. I’m really pulling ahead of my goal word count now!

November 17

Two days of heavy writing have knocked me out. Thankfully, today’s scene was short. It seemed fairly straightforward too, and then I began writing my first paragraph. It went off in a different direction. Whoa. I had to reign my runaway fingers in and focus, focus, focus on the topic at hand, or the scene I’d originally envisioned anyway. I can’t move the plot forward if I’m obsessed with dogs.

November 18

I did the necessary today, the bare bones of a transition kind of chapter for my NaNoWriMo novel “Time and Space”. Or maybe I should say it’s a pivotal one, one that doesn’t need to be long but changes the course of my main character’s journey … for the moment. 1278 words.

November 19

I’ve reached and passed the 40k mark for NaNoWriMo! Yay! That’s all I got to say today. Today’s chapter wiped. me. out.

November 20

It makes a big difference when I have my normal (albeit low) levels of energy, instead of being so fagged I don’t want to move never mind think, like I have been for too many days. Having even some energy makes writing not a chore but exciting.

I looked at what was on tap today and made a face. Boring. And not right. Doesn’t fit. Doesn’t work. So I looked at little ahead in my outline, a little behind. Thought about it, remembered where I had left off yesterday, opened a blank page in WordPerfect and went off in a slightly but significantly different direction. I came to a pause, rather liked that line as the last one in the chapter, but was not happy with the word count: about 1400 words, over 200 words short of the NaNoWriMo suggested daily count. So I scanned back up my chapter, saw that one of my characters, Hope, really should say more. Wondered what? And then told myself, let her rip, let her loose, just let my fingers obey my instincts. So I did. I feel good. 2151 words (which according to NaNoWriMo is my daily average word count!).

Don’t forget that for this month only, in honour of my third NaNoWriMo, my first highly rated NaNo novel “She” ebook is on sale for 99¢ only!

At Amazon US

and Amazon UK

and Smashwords with coupon code PZ44G.

And now I’m getting offline to go snack and read. Happy Sunday!

November 21

My writing session was rudely interrupted by appointments this morning. Still, I had typed fast enough that I stopped at a natural break. I’ve completely left my outline now (though I think I’ll be returning to it tomorrow) — which is like walking on a tightrope over Niagara Falls without a safety harness — exhilirating and scary — and so the question for me was: was that break the end of the chapter or should I write one more scene? By the end of the day, I’d decided: time to write one more scene. NOW the chapter is complete. Two short writing stints equals one fat word count. And I think I really, finally have explained everything about this society and its tech … maybe. I’m only two-thirds of the way through the book though, lots of time left to explain more if needed. A little mystery is good! (I know, I know. Confusion is not.)

3179 words total for today. I should have cake after this. But I’ll content myself with a hot chocolate.

November 8

More difficult going today for NaNoWriMo. I had to go back and forth between the Index Card app on my iPad, to remind me what today’s chapter was about, and Penultimate app, to look and look again at the sketches of the new setting and new characters. As a result, I didn’t stray too far from what I’d planned. Sometimes whole new angles crop up as I write. Not today. Though I did make a decision on the dog character, something I’d been waffling over. Not anymore!

Still, I was not happy to be interrupted early in the writing process by a call from my case manager, saying she couldn’t come today. And of course she was only available on days that didn’t work for me when we tried to reschedule. Crap. I was sputtering along till she called. Maybe being annoyed by once again having my schedule dictated by others helped. After that, I sped up, and soon I was typing along. My fingers hurt. But that’s OK by me! I got 2028 words written this morn.

November 9

I took Classical Civilizations in Grade 9. My teacher: Mr Payne, a florid man with well-worn skin who kept a 40-ouncer in his office desk drawer and gave incredibly fascinating lessons on ancient Greek and Roman societies, philosophers, and literature. I have never forgotten his lesson on Plato’s realism or forms, particularly the day he shook a desk and told us in a loud voice that this was a copy.

I thought of him when I was devising my transporter for my NaNoWriMo novel “Time and Space” (http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/shireenj/novels/time-and-space) but not for long. Today though, Payne and Plato came back into my head as I wondered what one of my character’s ought to read aloud. Suddenly, I knew. I didn’t have the requisite books in my own library — we used school textbooks or translations back in grade 9 — but Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) and Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com) ebook reading software came to the rescue.

2092 words for today’s NaNoWriMo writing marathon. Snack time!

November 10

I watched The Illusion of Time on PBS’s NOVA last night. I was hoping to learn something new about time and time travel. I did learn one thing, but most of it cemented what I had already learnt. Seeing the same information presented in a different way means the knowledge sticks a little better in the memory banks anyway. A good thing.

So having learnt everything I can about time and time travel, it was time to write my how-to-build-a-time-machine chapter. A lot more stuff came into the chapter as I wrote. I think I was procrastinating getting to the time of the matter. But I finally got there. Wrote it out. Looked at it. Checked my notes. Fleshed it out. And I think enough of the bones and details are there for me to know what I was thinking when it comes time to revise the novel.

I was going to add some details to previous chapters that had flitted in and out of my head yesterday and today. But I’ve run out of time, energy time that is, and my head needs chocolate! Perhaps tonight I will be able to focus and think. 2519 words today.

November 12

It’s a procrastinating, vascillating, restless kind of writing day. I read the paper and Zite on my iPad, drank hot chocolate, made coffee, anything to avoid writing. I read the NaNoWriMo pep talk of the week and finally felt initiated enough to sit down at the computer. The chapter doesn’t go exactly as planned. Right off the top, my writing starts to go off on a bit of a tangent from my outline. Eventually I finish, but it doesn’t feel right. I’m restless, I head for the fridge, I’m not hungry, I head back to the computer. I work again on some of the dialogue. Details appear I hadn’t expected. Cool. I’m still not entirely happy as in I-feel-something’s-missing unhappy. But the brain isn’t producing, so time for lunch. Maybe this aft, I’ll find it, whatever “it” is.

2279 words today. I’m 700 short of the halfway point. I can’t believe that! But I can’t believe how far we’re into November either!

November 13

One should not write about French Toast on a weekend morning at brunch time. And one definitely shouldn’t write an entire scene during which the characters are eating said French Toast with puddles of maple syrup and heaps of berries. I am starving! Although after interspersing dialogue with descriptions of the diminishing French Toast on their plates, it’s not so bad as at the beginning. I guess OD’ing on an image does have its rewards.

2129 words for today’s NaNoWriMo session. Best of all, I’m well past the halfway mark now. NaNoWriMo says I’ll be done by November 23rd. I wish. Hopefully, if I keep my word count up — not always a sure thing during the saggy middle — I’ll get to the 50k mark then, but I wont’ be done my novel. Onwards!

November 14

So I had to do some thinking this morning. I had done a lot in the last few months, but not enough apparently! It’s amazing how much knowledge we store in our heads about our environment, how things work, things like infrastructure and language and names and classes and races and genders. My Toronto of the future is not like today’s, and where things are the same, there’s a reason for that. But I got tired of thinking and just decided to write and see what comes out. Of course, this means lots of inconsistency can pop up, which means needing an eagle eye during revisions or revising for one aspect of life in the future at a time. I’ll probably do the latter. It’s how I did it for my previous two novels, given I can’t hold a lot of different details in my head at the same time.

Fewer words today although more pages. That’s dialogue and short paragraphs for you. 1995.

In honour of my third NaNoWriMo, I’m putting the ebook and Kindle versions of my highly rated and very first NaNoWriMo novel She on sale on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Smashwords (with coupon code PZ44G) for only 99¢. Read a sample and download it today before November is over!

“I found this novel very difficult to put down.”

Another review of my novel She has hit the web! ReaderViews, an American company that specializes in book reviews, just published a review of She on their website.

Their reviewer Paige Lovitt wrote:

“What if you are traveling down a dark road one night and suddenly a gust of wind tremendously impacts your car, and all of a sudden your life as you have known it and loved it is over? What if you feel like your body is suddenly weak, in constant pain, and you have difficulties remembering anything? What if you career as a songwriter is instantaneously ended because the music has died within you?  How tragic it would be to have your fiancé and friends leave you because they believe you are faking your symptoms and don’t believe the truth about your condition.  What is the condition? While the symptoms sound like something that would be caused by a traumatic brain injury and depression, there is no disease. Instead there is a possession by an entity known to a few as Akaesman.

Akaesman seeks out individuals to inhabit and control. He feeds off of their life energy. For some people, he just invades them for a brief period of time, like for one week. For others such as the woman in this story, he inhabits her body for almost seven years.  Having lost almost everyone dear to her, except her beloved cat, this woman must fight to evict Akaesman.  Desperately fighting constant malaise and confusion, she searches outside of herself for others who understand this possession and for those who know how to treat it.  Discovering that there are a few doctors, lawyers and a Shadow Court designed to deal with this entity helps her know that this is for real.  Having friends and other professionals scoff at her diagnosis weakens her and strengthens him.

She has to do everything she can to fight from giving in to the weakness that invades her.  Trying out different medical strategies helps to some degree, but within the darkness that she finds within there is also a light. In this light is a higher being whose light becomes brighter as she seeks out spiritual help, and therapies based upon illumination.  Growing spiritually she becomes stronger, and she also seems to be led to the right people who can help her.  Shedding herself of this being also sheds much of who she used to be, but in some ways now she is a better person, because she is a survivor.  The real test will come when she knows that her music has returned.

“She” is an incredibly well written novel that made me feel like I had stepped into the main character’s shoes and was able to physically feel her struggling to survive.  Because of this, I found this novel very difficult to put down. I felt like if I put it down, then I wasn’t helping her to recover.  So I had to keep reading!  There were also times were I found myself covered in goose bumps.  Because of the intensity of her condition, it seemed so real.  The thought of having an unwelcome entity take over your body and your life is terrifying!  It is those fears and the emotional rollercoaster that this novel takes you on that makes it such a wonderful book to read.”

If you’ve read She, may I invite you to post your own review, a sentence or five, at Amazon or the website of the store you bought it at? Thanks so much!

1 November 2011

So NaNoWriMo began today. Usually, I’m so pent up in excitement and nerves, I can’t sleep the night before. But as +Errol Elumir put it in a tweet, I felt burnt out before it had even begun.

I’d been thinking about this novel since at least May, had been doing background reading since the summer, had been outlining and sketching it out for the last couple of months, had planned on writing up cheat sheets before November 1st, but life got in the way. And I so totally don’t feel ready; I feel in great need of a month-long nap first!

Time though stops for no one. It just keeps churning through each day until suddenly November 1st is here, and it’s time! That by the way, is a major theme in my new NaNoWriMo Novel: time. And space. Hence the name: Time and Space. Hahaha. Ahem. Anyway got the first chapter done. It helped that I’d written a few lines back in May and had saved them in my iPod Touch’s Notepad app and now that I have the newest version of the device and iOS, I was able to print it out to put before my eyes and inspire me. Now to go find a snack.

2 November 2011

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo went way better than Day 1. I had a couple of thoughts in semi-sleep last night about chapter one, remembered one of those thoughts, and made the changes. I reminded myself of how I ended chapter one, and then opened a blank document to start typing chapter two.

It was slow going at first, but this chapter is mostly about description and dialogue, not much plot movement, seeing as they’re in a ship and all. Once I got into those, especially the dialogue, I had fun, and the words flowed. It’s strange how voices come to me, how I know how to write dialogue for the different characters. I hadn’t thought much about how English would be for these characters, and in the end, the language was short, staccato, no casual words. It seems to fit. Of course, it isn’t at all what English will be like in a thousand years, and maybe I’ll have to add some sort of sentence that they’ve learned to speak her language so that she can understand to explain away why they speak our English. But at this point, I have the main bones down. 1960 words, a decent count.

3  November 2011

The biggest problem with writing, I find, is fear: fear of, can I write? Fear of, will anything come or will I just sit there staring gaga at the screen? Fear of, have I prepared enough, am I ready? But the biggest fear for me is will my energy last until I’ve finished my chapter? I suppose I could break up writing a chapter into two or more parts, but I found early on, back when I was writing “Lifeliner,” that if I did that, if I took breaks or did the pacing thing I was taught, the writing came to a stop. I lost the flow of my thoughts, I forgot where I was going and where I’d been. It was crap.

So I write a chapter in one go, hoping I can type fast enough to do it in an hour, and fuel myself with coffee and chocolate beforehand and ice water during. That Script Frenzy mug I received after my first Script Frenzy is the right size for my water-guzzling needs!

I had a lot of the caffeine-and-sweet stuff swirling around in my system this evening, and so I wrote another chapter. My imagination was on fire, and my energy was pretty darn good for the first time this NaNoWriMo. Four chapters done. 1919 words written tonight. Woot!

5 November 2011

The sun is such an energy giver. It’s blinding outside today, the sun is so strong. But it plus chocolate plus coffee plus ice water (I know, not the usual kind of writer fuel), have powered my words on today.

It was a slow start to the morning, and it didn’t help that I read an article in the “Toronto Star” about brain injury, specifically mild traumatic brain injury (which is what I have) that veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq are suffering from in droves due to concussive devices — IEDs. I was in a thoroughly bad mood by the end of it, even though it talked a lot about some of the new research into detecting this invisible injury, because it had brought back bad memories and reminded me of how abysmal brain injury detection and treatment is in Canada and how shockingly bad our veterans are treated. “Lagging behind,” is how the writer put it. I think that’s an understatement. But my Twitter followers bucked me up, reading @NaNoWordSprints inspired me, and off I went to my computer. 1866 words for chapter 5, almost all dialogue. Tis more fun to write, and my fingers had a hard time keeping up with my subconscious spilling out the words today. A good thing!

6 November 2011

One should not stay up late watching Masterpiece Mystery on PBS when doing NaNoWriMo, not even the night/wee hours before the clocks fall back. On the other hand, somehow sleep deprivation got me to break the 2000-word mark for the first time this NaNoWriMo! Woot! 2112 words today. I like the pattern of that number.Now I can turn off my computer and return to my regular Sunday schedule of being off computer, off the Internet (except to read the news, natch).

7 November 2011

An important chapter today for NaNoWriMo, and it strained my brain. No matter how many notes you write, how many sketches you draw and images you collect, trying to describe the future, even one completely of my imagination, is hard. Setting is important. Describing a setting that not one person on this planet will be familiar with because it’s all in my head, is even more important so that readers can follow the plot along and understand the characters and milieu of the time I’m putting my novel “Time and Space” in.But I’m done. The main bones of it anyway, and I’ve gotten my main character into the building that will become the central hub for the rest of the story. The one nice thing about writing so much description — including my main character’s reaction to this strange place — is the word count is higher than for dialogue. 2217 today!

Eight-hour later update: Oops. I forgot a detail, not a hugely important one but one that gives extra mystery and flavour to this time my main character is dumped into. Now added. Word count 2392.