Flashback Friday - Eat My Exhaust

It's that time of the week - Flashback Friday. And today - well today, we're going on a virtual trip to that place where most trips begin - the airport. Flashback a few years ago to the bowels of a prairie winter - possibly the coldest day of the year when I saw my sister-in-law off on a trip and, did a whole lot of people watching in the process.

"Eat My Exhaust", great title and one not to be taken too literally. It's the weather who "Eat My Exhaust" is targeting.  Why?  It's ridiculously freezing cold today. Not scary cold, not quite but  bordering on that.  Now for all of you from cold climes you know what I mean.  There's the point where you can see the cold in the air and it's awful uncomfortable to be outside for too long. And we all know it can get worse. Worse - that's where it steps into the land of scary cold.  Kind of like strong wind - hurricane.  

The day began at -30 celsius that's -22 for all you farenheit lovers.  Either way it feels like -43 c or so the weather channel assures me.  I'm taking their word for it and the furthest I'm venturing is the visitor side of the departure lounge in the airport.  I'd pay money to be on the other side of that line - the one where I was actually going somewhere.  Wait, that's right!  Eureka all I need to do is fork out some money get a ticket and head out.  Instead I'll be heading home to put on extra layers.  But in the meantime I'm having a virtual trip. 

It all started, pre-airport run, with an urgent discussion about a backpack that wouldn't close.  Ah, the horrors of travel, you want to take it all but soon discover that lugging all that stuff through airports, hotels and transport of all sorts; well, it's just not practical.  So with scaled down luggage we headed with said traveler to the airport.

Did I mention that I love the airport?  The hustle and bustle - the mystery of trips about to begin and the exhausted yet completed feel of trips that have just ended.  

Then, of course, there's the security line and while it's annoying, sometimes I actually like it.  Why?  Well, there's stories hanging out there. Yes, even amidst the frustrated and disgruntled passengers that have maybe been in line too long and on one flight too many.  There's characters too - I mean really, is that shifty looking man clutching his carry on a little too tightly because he's clutching the evidence of the money he's stolen from the small firm he worked for or, because he has an even darker intent?  And if the latter is the case, will security screens catch him or - is he smarter than that?  And in process right now - how far will security go as they strip one more article off that sullen looking teenager?  And what do they suspect?  

Ah - yes, I hear it, the rattling of another story as my outrageous imagination defies logic and trips on ahead of itself.  That's what I love about airports.  There are stories everywhere.  In fact, I'm thinking one day I'll just pack a lunch and hang out for the day.  Okay - or not.  But it wasn't a horrible thought.  Slightly eccentric I admit but I'm betting not boring, not for one minute.

Meantime it's bon voyage to someone who'll be setting foot in Cairo as a new day dawns over here.

And me - well tomorrow I heard the sun will be shining in a brilliant blue sky and the temperature?  I'll get back to you come spring.  

Any trips in your future - or would you like to pack a lunch and join me at the airport?

Til next time!

                                                                                Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

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Flashback Friday - Blowing the Dust Off My Passport

It's Flashback Friday and I'm feeling optimistic. I feel like soon it will be time to blow the dust off my passport and head for places clear of snow and ice, places where things aren't familiar and where I will be a foreigner. Yes, I'm dreaming about being a tourist. 

I know, I can't go - not yet. But I can dream. And who knows, maybe a trip is just around the corner or nearer the end of the year or at least close enough that I can begin thinking about it. So, thinking along that tract, there's no harm in looking back at old blog posts, past trips. And, as I did, I was reminded of one of the things I dislike about travel. Sure, there's a few things - long waits in airports, cramped airline seating but that's all ho hum standard. What is there at every stop, every custom's office and seems to be laughing at me like it was some cosmic joke is...

              There really should be a drum roll inserted here... 

                            Okay, here goes...

                            the passport picture.

Do any of them turn out good?

Did you ever have a passport picture that you wanted to show to anyone?

Not me. My thoughts are that if you've never been in trouble with the law and haven't had the opportunity to get a "mugshot", the next best thing is the passport photo.

"Don't smile," the photographer has almost invariably reminded me as they valiantly try to get a shot that is suitably sized and dreary enough to meet passport regulations. I've always thought that their direction should be followed by another. Something possibly in the line of, "don't grit your teeth" for invariably I always do. Is it possible to identify the animated person standing in an immigration checkpoint from that stilted, tight lipped picture on the passport?

One thing I have learned over the years is that when getting that dreaded snap - not to even attempt that second or even third retake. Why disappoint myself? I prefer to look like an escapee from a high risk security penitentiary in the first go around.

So, in a military dictatorship, in a country where I was particularly leery of the immigration process, I handed over my passport, bad photo and all, and waited. The immigration officer flipped through the pages, looked at the picture, looked again. And then he looked up at me and smiled broadly, "Must have been a bad day." He chuckled and stamped the book and that was that. 

Apparently vintage photography had some of the same
issues as the passport venue!

Til next time!

                                                                                Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

...a world you never imagined!

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Stark White and Naked - Yikes!

Stark white - glow in the dark.  Isn't that one of the tricks of Halloween - white sheets glowing in the darkness, ghosts reaching quivering hands to frighten little kids.  I know, you're not all into Halloween but it's my thing.  And yes, sheets well positioned may be rough forms of scary fun but they can be effective.

Footprints in the snow

White sheets - brings me to the topic of this post.  Yes, in a round about fashion.  I'm talking about paper not snow, like the only picture I had, but kind of comparable.  Blank paper without even a footprint, a smudge - nothing.  Now I've never been scared of a blank page - in fact they're one of my favourite things.  At least so I thought until this morning.  I discovered something then - blank pages are great if you're just free-form writing.  They're really crappy if you just want to get a start on a novel and not choke on the third page, mid paragraph because you have no idea where to go next.  A blank page can throw a long shadow.


Where was this story going and how many ideas could I incorporate into one story before it became a mish-mash of nothingness or how few before it began going circular mid-stream?

I needed direction - an outline, some logic to coral all the creativeness that was spinning quickly into nowhere.  So I moved to the synopsis.  Did I mention I loathe the synopsis.  Yes, loathe - there is no better word for how I feel about that short little condensed version of a story.  But you know, I've learned that if I skip right over my "beginning hebejeebies", a synopsis can be an awesome thing.  Okay, maybe not awesome, but along with an outline - a big help.

So I went there, to hebejeebie land with a different page, a new tactic, and looked again at another blank page.  Problem was there was still a problem.  I had a house and nothing else, not even a character name.  Yes, you didn't read wrong - a house can be a character, how much of one in this particular story... well even if I make it a female house, I sense that cannot be construed as either romance or woman's fiction.  And that folks, is what I write.  So I suspect the house will only be a small supporting role.  I'm sure not sure if I'll ever want to write about a house, not as a primary character anyway.  That's been done before, mostly in the world of horror - and done well.  No this was a story about people, about a woman.  A woman - now I'm getting somewhere.

So now I need a name - so off to the baby name section of the internet.  Unfortunately, the first one I hit on was something about "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Naming."  No, that wasn't what I typed in, it's what came up and the names - well they were names that were slightly unusual, they weren't who my character is.  Not that she isn't unusual but I sense she likes to work with her hands and not strictly her head.  Aha - a personality is finally beginning to emerge.  I left that site, checked out another - found a name and went back to the blank page.  This time success.  I began to type - single spaced, just to prove I wasn't yet serious.  Serious means using the correct font and double spacing.  I considered using a chalkboard print but that might be poking the fates so I stuck to publishing industry standard and voila.  One and one-half single spaced pages later I had a story, a character, and a rough-hewn synopsis that would make the writing industry cringe.

I'm pleased with the name of my character.  I think it suits her and I sense she might be happy with it.  I'd mention it here but with only hours into the whole project everything is subject to change.  Onward Christian Soldiers - okay, just onward one little writer sitting on her couch pecking away in the early hours of the morning.

And that's the journey of one story.  The beginnings anyway.  They're all different.

How do you begin a new project - an organized fashion or from every angle possible?

Til next time!

                                                                                Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

...a world you never imagined!

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The Real Killer - Stereotypes

 

The other day I was reading a social media post. It was a post where a writer was requesting suggestions for a scene in a book they were writing. They wanted to know what a grandparent's house might smell like. An incredible amount of people chimed in, which is great. Well, at least I thought it was great until I started to read the comments. Then, I couldn't believe it. The comments were unimaginative and ageist stereotypes. At first, I thought the first batch of comments were not reflective of the whole and skipped over them only to discover that the tone of the comments wasn't changing. They were all a reflection of the one previous, at least as far as making me shake my head. They all said the same thing in different words. Grandparents equalled old, stale, smelly and unhealthy.

Really?

What's wrong with that?

I'm sure most of you already know what's wrong with that and will be shaking your head right along with me. Except in a hundred comments, not one seemed to see what was wrong - yikes! There's something very wrong with that. 

Now, to be fair, the comments never exactly said that grandparents were old, stale, smelly or even unhealthy. Instead; mothballs, cigars/cigarettes, staleness and other words were a popular inclusion in the suggested descriptions. 

What's wrong?

Assumptions like that are not reality. I don't know about you but I've yet to walk into someone's house, no matter what their age or sex, and smell mothballs. I don't even know if you can buy them anymore - okay probably, but I don't think that they're on most people's to-buy list. And cigarettes/cigars, some people still smoke but rarely in a house and whether you're one generation or another, we've all heard of the hazards of smoking and most of us are dodging that bullet.  

Anyway, those were just a few comments that unfortunately repeated themselves. The others didn't get any better. I couldn't believe what I was reading but I kept going through stereotype after stereotype. There was nothing original, nothing individual about any of the suggestions. It was like they had balled it all up into one ageist group. You're a grandparent, therefore, you're old and, you do this. They were like descriptors from a box pulled out from under a ratty bed where the cobwebs had been blown off to reveal a treasure trove of ageist phrases. 

Either way you look at it, that's not fresh writing, nor even true or fair writing. At the least you're heading for a not a very exciting book. Especially if the other descriptors for characters fall into the same stereotypes for their perceived sex, and/or age, etc. In this case, what surprised me were the  number of people that chimed in adding one dull metaphor after another. I was literally yawning and know I would never want to step foot, in this dully and wrongly described grandparent's house. 

What if the grandparent in question was a fifty year old corporate executive or a sixty year old ski enthusiast or a seventy year old vegan novelist? Or even an eighty year old pool shark/cross country skier? 

If you read a story where the heroine was the stereotypical and so completely wrong, "dumb blonde" and where the hero was always saving the day - would you not be rolling your eyes and quickly putting the book down? 

As a reader I know the quickest way to kill a good story - load it up with stereotypical descriptors. As a writer, I'm doing my best to hunt those stereotypes down. So if you spot them in "my world", go ahead - let me know.

Til next time!

                                                                                Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

...a world you never imagined!

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Even the Squirrels are Cold!

 It's mid-winter on the prairies and we're getting weather that's not for sissies. Sissies - wrong word. And here's how I know that... I looked it up! And then, I discovered that Sissie is a variant of the names: Cece, Celia, Cissy, Fannie, Fanny, Fran, Frankie, Frannie, Franny, Pris, Prissy, Sissy. 

So today, I learned something. Sissie is not only feminine but also an
abbreviation for some pretty cool names. So - okay Sissie is out - winter is for Sissie's!  Why? They're tough!  Women are brave in any number of ways that men could never imagine and we're brave in imaginable ones too. Okay, I'm bias to my sex but I think there's some truth in what I said. 

That said,  every book I've written has always had a strong heroine. In fact, right now I have my heroine in the midst of breaking up a human smuggling ring - but that's a story for another day - although I'll give you a bit of a taster at the end. In the meantime, back to winter and this post. Today it's about how brutal winter can be on the Canadian prairies. It's -33 celsius today or -27.4 Fahrenheit. Had to add that .4 just in case negative 27 didn't sound quite cold enough.

So, sissies unite - we've got this...

Even though, it's so cold that driving can be a little bit hazardous. I mean think about it, you're stuck somewhere in the middle of the city or worse, the highway, and you get a flat. It's so cold that your mitted hands stick to the jack as you try to fix the tire. Okay, that's assuming you get the jack free from wherever the manufacturers have hidden it. Yes, that would be me - searching for the jack. Never mind the jack, this is the weather for "square tires". That's when, if a vehicle hasn't been in a heated garage, when they first begin moving, they kind of thunk along, the tires seeming to lose all their give on the pavement. 

Or a more precise explanation: Square tires occur when the cold is severe enough for the part of the tire resting on the road to remain flat for a time. So when you drive there's this clunking like the whole tire is flat rather than round giving more the impression of a square tire.  As you drive, the tire eventually rounds out. 

It could be worse - we could go back a century and be here with horses and a cutter - I can't even imagine...

So back to our modern world where my reality involves staying inside and working on my latest story. The story is set in the imaginary eastern European country of Anatar and my heroine who is about to put herself out there to stop a smuggling ring. Here's a bit of what I'm working on today:

Midas, Anatar – Wednesday, 12:02 a.m.

 

             Adrian Sinclair shivered as she stepped outside the hut and into thick silence. A silky-cool breeze skimmed her cheek. It was a less temperate area of Anatar, a small country in Eastern Europe. And, tonight, it was cooler than normal for mid-September. It was as if the weather were ushering a warning as a chill that ran through her body. Her senses were on high alert as if anticipating trouble. But the weather was the least of her worries. The plan was in place and time was slipping away. Once the sun rose, they had three hours to close the deal. Either that or call it a failed mission. Three hours was a long time and it wasn’t long enough. She was at the mercy of the fates and it was one of the most unsettling positions to be in. She’d rather be in the field, in control, a gun in her hand. But those were different times and not an option here, not yet.

Til next time!

                                                                                Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

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Flashback Friday - A Hop And A Skip!

It's Flashback Friday and in a world where travel even over provincial borders is seriously frowned on, let's head across the Saskatchewan border into Alberta. It's a trip from the past brought forward only by our imagination. Edmonton, you say, that's not far - no, but it will be fun. Because I've never explored that city before, driving through doesn't count - it's an adventure!

Edmonton

So let's head back to the past where:

A few months ago I was dusting off the passport but life has a strange way of derailing plans.  So while the passport simmers it was a trip over the border - provincial that is.  Edmonton, Alberta is not exactly international travel but it's a beautiful city to visit despite unseasonably cold weather, that I'll say I griped about - a lot.   

My friend claims no responsibility?

The fire exit that started it all.

If you want to really see a place, sight see a little outside the norm.  So we did.  First off there was the hotel fire exit - always know your way outside the hotel in case of emergency.  However, note to self, if there's a sensor box on the top of the door and no sign - don't open the door unless there's a fire.  Unfortunately, I opened the door.  So with a siren wailing, I had to admit my error to the hotel concierge.

A bus window view of things.

With a bad start behind us it was off to the bus stop.  I rarely travel by bus but my friend insisted that it was the way to go.  Unfortunately on Saturday the buses only run every half hour.  We found that out as our toes began to curl trying to preserve what heat there was left in our feet.

The bus is a whole other world and you're only getting a brief glimpse.  Who is the young man that keeps hiding behind the hood of his hoodie?  Who is the older woman who is chatting up the young man with the heavy accent?  Are they lovers or...   Then there's the girl with the sad eyes and the bleached blonde hair with the heavy swathe of blue cutting across one side - what's her story?  Overhead are the signs warning against bad behavior on the buses.  I glance warily around the bus for the culprit that may have instigated such persistent warnings - for the signs are everywhere.  But the ride turned out uneventful.  Instead we soon discovered that like foreign travel, even when English is the first language of everyone involved, there can be communication break down.  This time it meant a six block walk in the cold.

Musicians, Edmonton Farmers Market

Edmonton's Farmers Market

It was then that we discovered a real find - a farmers market.  Again, not something I'd usually tour while in Edmonton.  I'm glad we did.  It was fantastic.   A group of musicians greeted us at the entry with a variety of warm and vibrant down-home music.  They set the tone for the visit.  We nibbled our way through the displays that ranged from the usual vegetables and meats to homemade cotton candy and designer hats, while we listened to lively music and chatted with local merchants.  

Edmonton was cold!!

By the time we reached the West Edmonton Mall it was near the end of the day and the beginning of sore feet.  We left that super shopping area without a single purchase. But a cold beer and a warm Irish Pub just seemed like a nicer ending to a busy day than one more shopping bag.  And it was only one more bus ride away!

There's a world out there, outside the norm.  And this weekend I found it.  As a seatmate said on the return flight, "it was a change from what we were used to".  By this she referred to emigrating from the UK and coming to Canada.  Talk about stepping out of your comfort zone!  A trip to the West Edmonton Mall hardly seems worth mentioning.  But in the end it all makes for a good story - big or small a story is just a step outside the norm.

Til next time!

Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

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