KristinaStanley

Mystery Mondays: Debra Purdy Kong

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 20 Comments

oppositeFrom security guard to author, let’s welcome Debra Purdy Kong. This week is of special interest to me since both Debra and I have a background in the security field. The first book I read of Debra’s, THE OPPOSITE OF DARK, gave me confidence that I too could write about security. Debra also signed with Imajin Books not long after I did, so we are travelling this year’s writing journey together.

Here is what Debra has to say about the security business and writing.

Patrolling & Dispatch: Two Very Different Worlds

By Debra Purdy Kong

When you’re a security guard at a post-secondary campus as I was, you’ll soon realize that there’s a lot to learn fast. Memorizing the location of every fire panel, emergency phone, panic alarm, and roof access in over thirty buildings is just the start.

I walked for over six hours per shift, in and outdoors regardless of weather, and quickly figured out the shortcuts between buildings and specific rooms. While the job was physically tiring, there were plenty of relaxing moments, especially on Sunday summer afternoon when nothing was going on. Patrolling helped me stay in good shape and provided great background material for my transit security specialist Casey Holland in THE OPPOSITE OF DARK, and bike patroller, Evan Dunstan in my upcoming novella, DEAD MAN FLOATING, which will be released on Sept. 12th.

My work at the campus’s dispatch centre required different skills. We had to know where the 90+ cameras were situated and how to maneuver them efficiently. Phones had to be answered and the guards’ many call-ins typed up accurately. In this job, a calm demeanour was everything. People often came to the office to file a complaint or seek other assistance.

The most stressful part of the job was liaising with 911 call-takers, paramedics, and the fire department during medical or other emergencies while my supervisor and the security director looked on. Many times I ended a shift, relieved that my dispatch partner and I hadn’t royally screwed up when things got crazy.

In DEAD MAN FLOATING, I mention that Evan has had some supervisory shifts. To do this he would have also worked at dispatch and probably will in future novellas. It’ll provide great fun when all hell breaks loose.

So, did I prefer patrolling or dispatch? Oddly enough dispatch. Patrolling took its toll on my knees and became tougher every year. Yet, part of me still misses those sweet, Sunday afternoons when all seemed right with the world, and no one was doing something stupid or criminal. But then, if it had all been peaches and cream, what would I have to write about?

Thank you Kristina, for hosting me! Stay tuned for announcements about my Facebook virtual launch party on my website at www.debrapurdykong.com. And another thank you to Kristina for giving away a copy of DESCENT at the party!

Debra’s Bio

Promo Photos 009Debra Purdy Kong’s volunteer experiences, criminology diploma, and various jobs, inspired her to write mysteries set in BC’s Lower Mainland. Employment as a campus security patrol and communications officer provided the background for her first novella, Dead Man Floating as well as her Casey Holland transit security novels, The Opposite of Dark, Deadly Accusations, Beneath the Bleak New Moon, and The Deep End. She has also released two white-collar crime mysteries, Taxed to Death and Fatal Encryption.

Debra has published short stories in a variety of genres as well as personal essays, and articles for publications such as Chicken Soup for the Bride’s Soul, B.C. Parent Magazine, and The Vancouver Sun. She assists as a facilitator for the Creative Writing Program through Port Moody Recreation, and has presented workshops and talks for organizations that include Mensa and Beta Sigma Phi. She is a long-time member of Crime Writers of Canada. Look for her blog at http://writetype.blogspot.ca More information about her books is at www.debrapurdykong.com

THE OPPOSITE OF DARK ebook link: myBook.to/TheOppositeOfDark

Next week on Mystery Mondays we welcome Rosemary McCracken, author of the Pat Tierney mysteries. Jack Batten, the Toronto Star‘s crime fiction reviewer, calls Pat Tierney “a hugely attractive sleuth figure.” so come and visit next Monday.

Mahi Mahi: Fishing off a Catamaran

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes life offers a bounty.  Mattina is equipped with two stainless steel rod holders, one off each hull, and we love to fish while we’re sailing. Sometimes we catch a Mahi Mahi . . .

Mahi Mahi
Mahi Mahi

Sometimes we catch a shark. The trick is to get the lure back without hurting the shark. This shark snagged a homemade cedar plug, and lucky for us, it popped out of the sharks mouth and we got the lure back. The shark swam happily, or maybe grumpily, away and all was well.

Shark 1

 

And sometimes we don’t catch anything at all, but we still got to sail.

Thanks for reading . . .

Farley’s Friday: A Wheaten Underway.

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 7 Comments

Farley here.

So I’m sailing again. What do I do underway? Well, unless there are dolphins swimming by, I get bored.

And when I’m bored, I get crazy.

I go to the forward guest cabin and I roll right . . .

Farley Rolling 1

And then I roll left.

Farley Rolling 2

And lastly, I play with my squeaky toy.

Farley Rolling 3

I mean what else does a dog do when sailing. Matt and Kristina won’t let me steer, at least not all the time.

It’s a talent being able to entertain yourself.

Woof Woof

As If Subordinating Conjunctions Can Be Confusing

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

Did you know if you want to spend a lifetime learning something, punctuation and grammar can give you the opportunity.

This week while proofreading my  novel, I noticed I wasn’t using ‘as if’ consistently. Sometimes I put a comma before the words and sometimes I didn’t.

I noticed this while I was reading on my Kindle. Last week I blogged about How To Avoid Errors In E-books, and here is one more instance where the new addition to my process helped me. As if!

I looked up ‘as if’ and found out it’s a subordinating conjunction. I knew this but had forgotten. Now I know the rules for comma use with ‘if’, another subordinating conjunction, so all I had to do was apply the rule to sentence containing ‘as if.’

The rule, you ask?

A subordinating conjunction joins two clauses of unequal importance. If the clause containing the subordination conjunction comes before the main clause then follow the clause with a comma. If it doesn’t, don’t.

  • As if he could stop the bleeding with his eyes, he stared at the knife impaling his calf. (subordinating conjunction before main clause)
  • He stared at the knife impaling his calf as if he could stop the bleeding with his eyes. (subordinating conjunction after main clause)

Attention to detail is a must when writing a novel, but how can you do that if you don’t know the rules? This brings me back to the lifetime of studying idea.

Keep on the look out for areas in your writing where you’re not consistent and you might find areas where you don’t know the rules. Grammar: How to Learn What You Don’t Know gives another idea on learning grammar.

How do you figure out what you don’t know?

Thanks for reading . . .

Farley’s Friday: What’s A Dog To Do In A Boatyard?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

I ask you, do I look bored?

Farley in Boatyard

My humans are getting their Lagoon 380 Catamaran ready for a winter of sailing, so for me it’s all hang around the boat yard and wait for them.

And what’s with the leash? I’m used to being free. How humiliating. What if one of my pals saw me?

Okay, so enough of the whining. What’s good about the boatyard?

There is a long dock I get to run on, and best of all, there are dolphins in the harbour.

“Hey,” I bark. “Come over here.”

The dolphins ignore me.

“Hey, I’m bored, Come play,” I bark.

Nothing. Dolphins just seem to swim and blow air out of their heads.

Then I get distracted by a man and a woman fishing. They guys casts the lure.

“Wait for me,” I bark. I run to their boat, but they are too far away for me to jump on board.

“Cast again,” I bark, and the guy does. Humans are so smart.

Kristina tells the guy she doesn’t know why I bark when someone casts a lure, like it’s not obvious. I wag may tail at her, encouraging her to figure it out.

No, luck. While I”m not paying attention she grabs my harness and I have to sit under our boat again.

One more week of this and we should be in the water! The boat I mean,  to me or my humans.

Woof Woof.

Do you want to improve your grammar?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Here’s one method on how to become more confident with your grammar skills.

Scientific America Mind (October 2013) has an article called What Works, What Doesn’t that discusses techniques that work or don’t work for learning. The second item in the article discusses the importance of self testing. The article makes the point that before reading a chapter the student should take a test to see how much they know on the subject. The theory is we learn by our mistakes.

Each year I read a different book on grammar in an effort to keep my skills strong. As a writer, I consider grammar knowledge an important tool for creating a novel.

Thinking I should test the theory put forward by Scientific America Mind, I set out on the search for a grammar book laid out with an introductory test, study information and an end of chapter test.

I found Sharp Grammar: Build Better Grammar Skills by Kaplan  follows this process.

I’m now working my way though the book, surprising myself by what I know and don’t know. If I only learn one new thing, I think it’s worth the effort. I also believe that continual practice will keep me at the top of my game in the sport of grammar. Can you ever practice too much?

What do you do to keep improving  your grammar and punctuation skills?

Farley’s Friday: A Wheaten Terrier at the Cottage

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Farley here.

The summer is coming to an end and that means all my peeps go back to their own lives. The kids go back to school and get too busy for me. Not to mention, they live in different parts of Canada. I get to go to the Bahamas, which is great, but I’m still sad about the pack dispersing.

I don’t understand kids. They’re always in the water. No matter how hard I bark at them to stay on land, they jump in. This time, they  took a camera.

“Get out of the water,” I bark in my frantic manner.

They laugh and swim deeper. Now I’m not sure they can hear me when they’re under water, but I bark more anyway.

They get the giggles and have to surface, but not before taking this odd photo of me!

Farley wants to swim

It gets worse. I told you about tubing, well now they want to water ski too. I make sure I get in the boat and can at least bark safety instructions. Why oh why do kids like water? It’s just too stressful for me.

Farley wants to waterski

Woof Woof.

Farley’s Friday: When a Dog Visits

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 5 Comments

Farley here.

After a wild weekend of playing with my new girlfriend,  Jersey, I had to nap. Jersey is a 10 month old Portuguese Water Dog. And don’t you think she has the best hair ever?

Farley and Jersey- Done

If you have a visiting dog, make sure they play nice and can share. Once a a golden doodle visited me and snarled and snapped when I tried to take her bone.  After that incident, my humans supervise the first time I play with another dog’s toy. Jersey didn’t have that problem.

Being young, Jersey has trouble settling down. The humans picked up every shoe they could find and placed them on the railing. Ha, don’t they know dogs are patient? All Jersey had to do was wait for her moment, and then, and here’s where she gets a bit silly, she runs straight to the closest human and shows her prize.

SHOES

This is me chasing Jersey away from the shoes. Okay, it looks likes she’s got the upper hand, but I saved her first by distracting her from the shoes.

Dogs sharing a toy.

Jersey didn’t listen very well and didn’t seem to care when the humans got all excited. She even knocked over a table. Kristina is strange  – she just laughs at it all and says she likes having other dogs around.

When another dog is visiting, especially a puppy, the house needs to be dog-proofed. No food can be left on counters, no chemicals can be left out, for sure put away your favourite shoes, and don’t forget dogs love to chew leather so any electronics with a leather cover should be out of reach too.

Don’t leave young dogs alone with children. They don’t know how to be gentle yet. Don’t let the dogs eat in the same room as another dog.  I don’t mind other dogs eating my food, but some dogs growl a me if I go near their bowl.

But really,having said all that, how could you not love a dog with hair like Jersey’s?

Woof Woof.

Offline Blogging Software

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

There is always something new to try or learn. This month, I decided to try the 30 day free trial of MarsEdit.

Why? I work offline most of the time. Living on a sailboat means I don’t have regular internet access, hence I need to write my blogs and upload when I have access.

I downloaded the free trial – I love a free trial. The free trial gives me time to decide if I want to spend my money on the software without taking the risk that I won’t like it.

My advice on first use: Once you download the free trial, check how many blogs you’ve written and set the refresh limit to this number. The first time in the software all of your blogs will download to your computer. After that’s done. reset the button to a lower number to speed up the process.

My likes:

  • When you write a scheduled post, the date columns lists the date the post is scheduled for so you can see your upcoming posts without having to go online. Sometimes I forget how far in advance I’ve written posts.
  • Easy addition of photos.
  • Adding categories and tags offline.
  • Works with WordPress – since that’s what I use for a blog platform.
  • Any time an idea strikes me for a blog and I happen to be working on my computer, I can pop over to MarsEdit and store the idea.
  • Free Trial.
  • MarEdit will download the latest version of a post when you hit the refresh button. This is helpful as I often write the blog but make changes when I see it online. These changes get sent back to my computer and then I have the latest version of the post.

Where I would like to see improvements:

  • Help file could be better. For example I couldn’t find an explanation of the Refresh vs. Refresh All command. I didn’t  try the community forum or the support function. Since I work mostly off line these are not features I would use.
  • I’d like to create folders so I can organize my blogs and couldn’t figure out how to do this.
  • I’d like to be able to add a link but I guess that’s not a reasonable expectation from software what is meant to be used offline. To do this, I underlined the text to remind myself to add the link once I was online. Then I submitted the post in draft status so it wouldn’t go public on my blog. There is a link function, but you have to know the URL, and if you’re offline . . .
  • If you do add a link offline, and you want to the linked URL to open in another page, you need to go online and set this feature
  • Even though I set the post date to a later date and left the Post Status button as published I thought the post would be published on the date I chose. Instead the post published immediately. This is fine, except that I have a schedule I like to keep. I thought If I set the date, then it would post on that date. I learned I had to set the Post Status to draft and the go online and set accordingly.
  • Not all of my pages downloaded to my computer.

I think the software is a little over priced. After the thirty day trial I’m not sure I’ll buy the software. I’m still very positive about it, but I think I’ll look around and see what else it out there. If the price was $29 or lower, I think I’d buy in now.

These are just my views on trialling the software. If you’ve had a different experience I’d love to hear about it.

Are there any programs you use to help you write or blog? I’d like to try something else before I make my final purchase decision.

Thanks for reading . . .