Reading and Other Pastimes by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I think I have bitten off more than I handle.

I have plans for crafts to make for Christmas, and I even have the supplies, but when will I have the time to make them? Honestly, I’ve had the supplies for a couple of years now.

I’ve also been trying to practice my clarinet, but there is that time problem again because I also have signed up for a class online that I have to finish by the end of May and let’s not forget that I have a job and two different volunteer jobs, and a sister-in-law who needs rides periodically.

I know for most people this pandemic has meant doing less, staying home (and honestly it did for me at first) but then I needed to find a job and things started to open up again, and now I’m busier than ever! HELP!

There are not enough hours in the day especially since I’ve been doing so much reading since Christmas.

Right after Christmas, I started reading clear through all my Dick and Felix Francis novels, every last one of them, with a short break to read “Crooked Swan” (which I mentioned in an earlier post) but now I’ve finished those novels and, after reading one of my romances, have switched to my HP books.

Okay, not a good idea being as I’m such a slow reader, but clearly, I’m getting a ton of reading done this year.

If you count just before Christmas when I read the first twelve Boxcar Children books (which I also own) then all the Francis novels I own, including the one Konnie gave me for Christmas, that’s another thirty-nine books, and I’m currently on book four of the HP series, so that makes (counting The Crooked Swan and that romance) fifty-seven books in approximately sixteen weeks.

If you want to just count this calendar year, that cuts it down to about forty-three books read, so far, but I’m doing that at the expense of other pursuits.

And I’d really like to get better at playing my clarinet, make those Christmas crafts, and do some other sewing for me, all while working twenty hours a week, volunteering another seven hours a week, doing things like running my own errands and helping my sister-in-law run hers and of course my course work and learning excel.

On top of all that, one of the local stations I get shows Star Trek the original, NextGen, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise in that order from six until ten Sunday through Friday nights. I don’t stay up to watch Enterprise, sometimes I don’t even watch DS9 and Voyager because I’d rather read, but I do want to watch them.

I’m at a point when I have to choose what is more important.

That’s never an easy task for me, probably because I’m on the spectrum.

I am trying.

For starters, I need to read my scriptures more than fiction.

Second, I need to finish that course and learn excel to get a better job, something that isn’t temporary.

Third, I need to lose weight. I need to exercise, and I have been trying to work on that, promise.

And fourth, I need to write my post.

With so much time on her hands, Konnie has already written her next post and has an idea for the one after that. I can’t say the same. She had to remind me it was my turn to post this week.

Yikes!

Worse still she reminded me right when I remembered I had homework and practice still do and as well as clean the litterbox and feed both me and Patches.

And that meant missing my shows!

Plus, I’m only on the twelfth chapter of Goblet of Fire, and for anyone who knows the HP series, you know that isn’t very far into the book.

And no, I have no intention of reading every book I own before Christmas this year, for one thing, that would impossible. I have too many. Just physical books I have tons; if you add in what’s on my reader and I swear I’m pushing three hundred if not more.

Actually, it’s probably more because I’m certain I have way more books than Nativities and at this point I have well over two hundred Nativities counting tree decorations and my jewelry.

Of course, some of those books are craft, cook, and instructional books. (i.e. my clarinet books.)

And let’s not forget that I'm a writer! I do have several WIP’s. The most urgent of which is my epic sci-fi which I have been trying to work on, occasionally. I really should put more time into it.

I also have some counted cross-stitch designs I’d love to get done, including one which is a Nativity, but who has time?

Something has to give, but what?

Anyway, happy writing everyone.

Reading and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Writers are readers, that’s just what we do. If we’re not writing, you’ll probably find us with our face in a book. And that’s just where you could find me the last few weeks. I’ve actually been doing a lot more reading than I probably should have, and very little had to do with my book club.

As you may already know I’m a big fan of Dick Francis, and well, this last month I finally got my hands on all four of Dick and Felix Francis’ books with Sid Halley as the hero. Meaning, I’ve spent a ton of time reading those books in order for a change. I had read three of them, but not all four, and never in order. Boy does it make a difference.

Not always in a good way.

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the books − the writing is fantastic. Dick and his son Felix are excellent story tellers, the problem is they weren’t so great with remembering the details about several of the characters' lives.

Yeah, they’re mostly the secondary characters, but those details matter.

In the first Sid Halley novel, Charles Roland had two daughters, of which the elder one was living out of country with her foreign diplomat husband, and their two children. But in the third book Jenny (Sid’s ex, and Charles’ daughter) is an only child.

Also, at the end of the first book Jenny met a diplomat while visiting her sister and fell in love with him, she was engaged. In the second book, she wasn’t married, there was a man in the picture, two actually, but she wasn't married. In the third book she was married to a Lord but they didn’t seem to have a loving or devoted union, more like they lived separate lives. In the fourth book, Charles has two daughters again, but they are both living out of the country with diplomatic husbands, and neither had any children.

And where Sid's friend, Chico Barnes was concerned, in the third book he’d quit being a private eye to settle down; he’d gotten married, and they were expecting. In the fourth book, years later, his marriage had ended because he’d wanted kids and his wife hadn’t. Excuse me?

It was bad enough that at the end of the third book there was no mention of Sid quitting being a P.I. there was no hint that his bride was pregnant, not one word, yet in the fourth book she was pregnant at the time the third book ended and he quit being a P.I. because of that and what happened near the end of that book.

They are all well written stories, and do work as stand-alone books, which is what they are sold as. They aren’t even marketed as a series, but they do have the same main character, you would think they’d keep the story straight from one book to another.

Though in their defense, Dick Francis never planned to write more than one novel with Sid Halley as the hero. The vast majority of his heroes show up in one novel only. The fact that he does have at least two main characters who show up in more than one novel is the exception, not the rule with him. I get the feeling he didn’t make, and keep, detailed notes about the background of the various characters, and certainly didn’t double check those “minor” details before writing the next book in the series.

And I get it, sometimes it is hard to remember all those details, especially if it is years, even decades between books with that character and you write tons of other novels in between. Who even remembers what they wrote a decade, or more, ago?

Even if I pulled up all my files, I wouldn’t be able to tell which stories were started in 2009, because my computer shows last date a file was modified not when the file was started. I have no idea what date I started any of my stories. I can give guesstimates but not exact dates. I’d have to do math to figure out just the year I started any of my novels, if I can even remember that much.

Come on, give me a break, I wrote Forbidden Connection well over a decade ago, and I’ve been doing Nano for something like fourteen years, and I never once saved starting a new story for just November, I can think of a few times when I started more than one story in a single day let alone a single month.

Anyway, how do you keep track of all those minor details in your past stories? What kind of notes do you have? And have you kept them?

Happy writing everyone.