AUTHOR LOIS WINSTON'S NEWEST ADDICTION--CROSSWORD PUZZLES

Author Lois Winston, she who writes about me, stops by today to talk about her latest addiction. Maybe she’ll write me an addiction like this and forget about dumping dead bodies at my feet? A reluctant amateur sleuth can only hope…

I’ve recently become hooked on crossword puzzles. With everything else I have to squeeze into the twenty-four hours of each day, this seems rather puzzling to me—pun intended! After all, I have a book to finish writing, and contrary to Anastasia’s hopes, I have no intention of refraining from dumping dead bodies at her feet. My readers would be extremely upset.

I also have a staggering number of unread books piling up on my bookshelves and in my Kindle. At this rate I’ll need to live well past the century mark before I get to them all. And yet, I keep buying more books! Then there’s life in general, including family responsibilities, and of course, the need to sleep at least several hours a night.

So why am I devoting nearly an hour each day to the crossword puzzles in my two daily newspapers? (Yes, I still read newspapers. It’s where I get many of my ideas for my novels and all those dead bodies Anastasia complains about.)

I think my new addiction must be attributed to my dear friend Janice. She passed away recently after an eight-month battle with Stage 4 cancer. I spent much of that time taking her to doctor appointments and chemo and visiting with her during her many hospitalizations. Janice always carried around crossword puzzles with her. As a retired R.N., she knew the importance of keeping her mind sharp, and she did so by exercising her brain in two ways: She was a voracious reader of mysteries and romances and a diehard crossword puzzle fan.

Having sat with her during hours of chemo, I know how difficult it is to concentrate on a book during these sessions, given the constant chatter from fifteen other chemo patients, their accompanying friends or family members, and the nursing staff, all filling one fairly small room. In addition, a TV was always blaring in the background. So Janice passed the time working her crossword puzzles when she tired of conversation.

I sat down to work my first crossword puzzle after returning from her memorial service. It had been an extremely emotional day, especially since, as her oldest friend, I was one of the speakers. Perhaps she was somehow sending me a subliminal message from Heaven that day. She had always believed in angels, ghosts, and premonitions. I’ve always pooh-poohed the supernatural. Was this her way of telling me she was right and I was wrong? Maybe. Because now I’m working crossword puzzles each day to honor her memory and our lifelong friendship. Hopefully, it will help keep my mind sharp. After all, there are more Anastasia books to write and all those books to read, especially if it’s going to take me decades to do so.

How about you? Have you ever had an experience that caused you to rethink how you felt about something?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Anastasia and the gang wish all our readers a very merry Christmas!

DECORATING WITH JEANIE - GUEST P.A. BEES ON ANGELS

When we think of Christmas decorating, we often think of angels. Today author Patricia Bohnert shares with us some interesting facts about angels. Writing as PA Bees, Patricia is a published short story author and an aspiring novelist. Her published works include Marjorie's Art Find and Intersection of Intent. Learn more about her at her website. -- AP  

December seems a good month to talk about angels.  Whether you have an angel tree topper with white lights under her robes and she holds her own lit candles in her hands (yes, I have this angel) or like to join in to sing “Angels We Have Heard On High” on the radio because of the melismatic rise and fall of the ‘O’ in the refrain Gloria, (melismatic, that’s a cool word) angels are all around us in December.

Have you ever heard of the book The Watkins Dictionary of Angels by Julia Cresswell?  I do not know how many of these books were sold, but I picked one up at a used book sale and it looked like it had never been opened.  What a shame!  It is fascinating reading. 

There are over 2,000 entries, in alphabetical order, relating to angels and angelic beings.  That is a ton of research.  Something the author, Ms. Cresswell, must be very good at as she has a number of books in print having to do with names including three books dedicated to Scottish, Irish, and British first names.  Two of her other books are The Penguin Dictionary of Cliches and A Dictionary of Allusions.  I need to find both of these books; my curiosity is aroused!

Back to angels for a minute, many angels seem to be in charge of a specific month, day of the week, or location.  Nonanrin presides over Friday.  Really?  Was the word Friday established when this angel was named?  Perhaps I am taking this too literally.  Days of the week must have been designated in some way and somewhere there is a translation.  But, if we are to use the name Nonanrin, then I want to know the REAL name of Friday back when it was decided Nonanrin was in charge.  (Writers can be such a pain, can’t we?)

And take Rasliel, for example.  What a self-promoter he was.  Rasliel was one of the angels of the eighth lunar month.  If you say the name of Rasliel, and presumably the others of the eighth lunar month, ‘in each thing that thou wilt do … thou shalt profit.’  Who wouldn’t go around mentioning Rasliel’s name?  That is, if you can pronounce it correctly.  I am sure the charm does not work if you mispronounce his name.  I hate that, don’t you?

This is not a book I read every day.  But, when I want to use a symbolic name in a story I often turn to it.  In my short story “Daniel” (God is my judge) there are only two characters, Daniel and Sahaman.  It is a story about coincidences, geocaching, and finding love.

Sahaman (an angel of the ninth lunar month) is a name I can see being used today.  Putting her in the story gave me a chance to play up the significance of the number nine.  Without The Watkins Dictionary of Angels and Julia Cresswell this story would never have been written.

 

Thank you Ms. Cresswell for an interesting read and a fun short story idea!   And know that at least one non-academic has thoroughly thumbed your book.  And keep up the good work, after all, ‘Hey, you’ as an email address would never work for millions of users; we need names.

Have a very Merry Christmas.

Intersection of Intent

One woman’s desperate act starts an apocalypse of events for the residents of New Minden, Ohio. Twenty years later deceit, hidden motives, stale leads, and fresh clues intersect with murder and mayhem when Jacob, Keith, and Bobby, three of the town’s sons, look for the truth. All have their eyes on the young librarian, Colleen – not all for good intent. Intersection of Intent.

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