Category Archives: Random

Tea and Spontaneity

My husband and I can offer visitors over 50 varieties of tea, from one of perhaps 10 pots, in any of a frighteningly large number of mugs or cups. [If that worries you, well it worries me too and I’m on a new mission to downsize our tea capacity — since I don’t want to open a tea room!]

Suffice to say, we love our tea. So this building was iconic to me when I saw it recently in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Red Rose Tea Building, Saint John, NB

Red Rose Tea Building, Saint John, NB “Only in Canada, you say?”

Here’s a link to Red Rose’s history of tea.

You can’t read much of this photo, but part of the text explains that King Cole tea originated with Barbour’s General Store.

Harbour Passage's tourist information: A Legacy of Tea

Here’s a link to Barbour’s history of King Cole tea. Writing this post, I discovered there’s actually a tea museum in the General Store. That would have been fun to explore when I was wandering around the city. (I did have a mighty fine cone of gelato, though.)

On a somewhat related note, check out what my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday.

Teacup-shaped planter with pansies

So that’s the tea. Where’s the spontaneity? We were in Saint John for a Barbershop competition (my husband co-directs the newly-formed Halifax Harmonizers (who took second place) and sings in two quartets (September Sound competed and also took second place in their event). The competition was held in the gorgeous and historic Saint John High School. The school has flat, wide, marble banisters. Without those nasty impediments most schools put at the bottom to discourage sliding.

Blurred image of Janet sliding down the banister

Janet in action: moving too fast for the camera!

My Current Work-in-Progress

This is the final installment for the Writers’ Blog Hop, and what more appropriate way to end than with a look at the participating writers’ current works-in-progress? (Link to the others at the end.)

This blog is a work in progress, needing a review, devotional and feature post every week. But that’s pretty self-evident.

I’m also working on the next Redemption’s Edge novel, Secrets and Lies. Different characters, different situation, but suspense and danger will ensue. There may even be some romance… 

Here’s my current one-line summary:  A single mother struggles to rein in her teenage son, guard her heart against two charming men, and keep a drug lord off her back.

If you read Heaven’s Prey, you may remember references to Harry’s sister, Carol. This is her story, and it takes place between the final chapter and epilogue of Heaven’s Prey.

What would it be like to live with the public shame of having a dangerous offender for a brother? What if his enemies, who can’t get at him easily, decide to target Carol and her son? And what if this single mom has to handle all this in her own strength, because she’s afraid to pray for help?

Let me introduce you to a few of my imaginary friends, the ones I’m spending time with these days.

  • Carol Daniels: Starting fresh in a new city, she doesn’t want anyone to connect her with her past.
  • Paul Daniels: At sixteen, he’s living a double life to keep peace at home.
  • Patrick Stairs: A successful investment consultant, he’s been walking empty since his wife died.
  • Joey Hill: Friendly and easy to talk to, he’s the late-night deejay at Carol’s favourite radio station.

Four people with secrets. One of them’s telling lies. Secrets and Lies releases this November from Choose NOW Publishing.

Blog hop for writers

Here’s the link to the other participants in the blog hop. Thank you to Ruth L. Snyder for organizing this. It’s been fun to get to know the other “hoppers.”

Renovations and a name change

renovations

Photo credit: Janet Sketchley

This blog started in March, 2008, as God With Us: Finding Joy, sharing weekly devotionals. It grew to include posts on Christian living and reviews of Christian fiction.

But I found myself reading more speculative fiction, which didn’t seem to match my review-readers’ interests. So I started a second blog, speculative, sporadic… and slightly odd, to indulge my inner odd.

There was enough overlap between the blogs that I’ve decided to merge them. There are Christians who enjoy speculative fiction. If that’s not you, I hope you’ll still find some posts here to enjoy… and consider coming back (or subscribe to future posts).

So… newly-merged blogs, new template with customized menu (WordPress tutorials rock)… a new title seems appropriate.

Welcome to Tenacity: thoughts on faith and fiction.

Why tenacity? Well, it’s a short name, but it says a lot. Patience, perseverance, in it for the long haul. Tensile strength, even. Those are all things we need. Things I need and will probably keep talking about.

The background image I’ve chosen only shows the edges, but the complete photo is of a small wild rose growing in a cleft in a granite boulder. Tenacity.

Wild Rose in Granite
Photo credit: Janet Sketchley

If you have this blog bookmarked or you subscribe in a feed reader, thank you and don’t worry about making a change. The link address isn’t changing (janetsketchley.wordpress.com). If you get posts via email, thank you and you still don’t have to make any changes, just please don’t delete “Tenacity” or mark it as spam. It’ll still be me, just under a new blog title. Either way, consider stopping by the site to see the new layout. I’m really pleased with how it turned out. (Thanks, WordPress crew!)

Re-sizing

This blog-scheduling thing is still in flux. I’m finding twice a week limiting, but I can’t commit to three times every week. The new schedule will be two or three times a week:

Monday: maybe a review, maybe no post.

Wednesday: devotional, every week.

Friday: maybe an interview, thoughts on a topic, or a gathering of helpful links I’ve found lately. Or maybe not.

speculative, sporadic... and slightly odd

I’ll also be posting at speculative, sporadic… and slightly odd on Thursdays: reviews, oddities, anything that catches my interest.

Downsizing

God bless us each with a fresh year where we grow in awareness of His presence and in trust of His care.

To simplify my life a little, I’ll be dropping to two posts a week here:

Mondays will offer reviews, author interviews, web finds and all the things that used to come on Fridays. This will let me keep up with the reviews I want to do for speculative, sporadic… and slightly odd.

Thursdays will be devotional days now, instead of Wednesdays.

Keeping Track of Blog Posts

How do you keep up with the blogs that interest you? You don’t want to spend all day online, but you also don’t want to miss anything.

I may have mentioned before how easy Bloglines is to use. That’s how I keep track of the blogs I don’t want to miss but don’t need to read daily. I enjoy the “keep it new” feature if there’s a post I want to keep to read again.

Blogs I want to read daily, like Other Food: Daily Devos and Rainbow Gulf of Love, I get by email. I’m careful to keep it to a few, though, or they’ll end up sitting in my in-box and not get read.

Something new I’ve discovered is Read it Later, which lets me mark a specific post for later viewing. This is great if I think it’ll be a one-time thing and I don’t want to set up a new bookmark or subscription. The Read it Later button sits on my Firefox toolbar, and it’s a one-click deal to use. No logging in or other tricky bits.

If you need a way to subscribe to blogs and you’re not familiar with RSS (=really simple syndication, I believe) here’s a reader-friendly explanation from Thomas Umstattd at Author Tech Tips.

What works best for you?

Here we are!

Welcome to God With Us: Finding Joy at its new home. I’m really pleased how easily the posts and images transferred. Three cheers for WordPress!

Unfortunately the blogroll didn’t transfer, and it may take me a few days to get that set up again. I have a few other loose ends to tidy, too.

Monday’s book review should roll in on schedule, though.

Blessings!

Janet

Last Post Before This Blog Moves

Tomorrow I’ll be migrating God With Us: Finding Joy to its new home at http://janetsketchley.wordpress.com/ [EDIT: Sept. 2013… we’re now Tenacity and at http://janetsketchley.ca/ and not planning to move again!]

The link won’t be active until then, but please update your bookmark or subscription (or however you keep finding me!). I don’t want to lose touch.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for stopping by!

This blog will be changing

Well, only the blog address is changing. I’m going to try migrating the existing posts to the new site, and with help from the wonderful support options from WordPress, I just may pull that off!

Moving day isn’t until January 30, and I’ll give you the new address (and a reminder) on the 29th.

Some of you know I’ve been writing under a pen name for the past few years. God’s word for me recently has been “integrate”, and part of that integration will be dropping my professional name to write under my legal name.

The focus of God With Us: Finding Joy won’t change, and I’ll still be the same person, but the name change does mean a blog address change. I’m sorry for the irritation to those of you who get my posts via email — it’ll mean unsubscribing from this feed and subscribing to the new one (please don’t do that yet — next Friday’s post will have the new address.

Blessings,

Janet Sketchley (“the writer formerly known as Joanna Mallory”)