Family. Narrowly defined it’s two parents and their biological children; extended it includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Now the definition has become much more fluid. The parents could be two men or two women, might be married but could also be living together without the benefit of marriage. A parent might not be biological. A child could easily have more than two parents once you count in the step parents after divorce and remarriage. They could be foster parents or adoptive parents.

Family. Often we think of our pets as family. Many would argue pets are much more reliable, much more loyal, to us than our human family. Pets won’t fight over who gets grandma’s jewelry or the profits from the sale of great-auntie’s house. If a dog gets his feelings hurt all you have to do is smile at him and scratch behind his ears and all is forgiven. When you walk in the door after a hard day’s work, your cat will curl up in your lap and your dog will just about knock you over at the door with happiness. Neither one comes running to tattle on the other.

Family. It’s said our friends are the family we get to choose. In my book Mary Bishop, Mary is alone after the Civil War has decimated the home, the life, she once knew. Her daughter died shortly after birth, her son died at Gettysburg, and her husband later commits suicide. She reaches out to an old friend, Sarah, from her life back in Virginia. She doesn’t know if Sarah is alive or dead, but she has an address where her friend once lived. To Mary’s delight, Sarah still lives at that old address and doesn’t hesitate to drop everything and run to Mary’s side. It’s a long and difficult journey (train from St Paul to Stillwater, steamboat upriver from Stillwater to Taylors Falls, and then a ride with a travelling minister north from Taylors Falls) but she does this without being asked. “Why?” Mary asks. Why is her friend doing everything she can to make her old friend happy again? “Because we are family,” Sarah answers. Something Mary told Sarah years before when Sarah’s husband was killed and Mary refused to leave her side until Sarah could pick herself up again.

Family. These are the people who are there for us no matter what. They might judge us, but only lovingly. They defend us against those who would tear us down. They will sit with us and just listen, all night if need be. They might be biological, they might be steps or halves, or they might be a very good friend.

Have you ever just sat alone and listened to the world around you? Even in the middle of the night, when everyone is asleep and we think it’s perfectly quiet, it’s not. The house makes little noises as it settles, beams expanding or contracting with the changing temperature, creaking and snapping. Outside tree limbs brush against the house as the wind tosses them, not always so gently. There could be the distant rumble of an approaching storm, or the forlorn wail of a train whistle.

On an early spring evening I can hear the peeper frogs singing in our garden as they look to attract a mate. Come summer, there’s the deep-throated croak of a toad and the chirps of crickets rubbing their legs together in the long grass along the neighboring woods. I can even hear the trucks passing by town on the highway. A heavier footfall in the woods leaves me to wonder, is that a deer, or a bear? I know there are bears in our woods and they like to wander into the neighborhood to raid bird feeders and garbage cans.

These night time sounds can be restful, like the patter of rain on the sky lights of our bedroom and on the leaves of the trees outside. Or, they can be scary, particularly if I’ve spent the evening before watching horror movies. But I tell myself, I am no longer a pretty young co-ed, and I would never dream of investigating a noise in the basement while wearing only my underwear, so I’m probably safe. (For the same reason I’d change from my red uniform shirt to my yellow if Captain Kirk ever asked me to beam down to the planet surface with the away team.) At worst, the noise I think I hear within the house is a mouse and it will soon find its way onto one of the sticky traps set out for that very purpose.

Solitude recharges our batteries. If you concentrate on each little sound and not let the worries of the day intrude, you will feel your heart rate slow, your muscles relax. And if you’re a writer, you might even be able to hear your character’s voice telling you the answer to the plot problem that’s been troubling you all day.

Listen to the silence.

Mothers. We all have one. Most often it’s the woman who gave birth to you, but it might not be. It could be the woman who fostered or adopted you. It could be the aunt or grandmother who raised you when your biological mother could not. Some children have two mothers. Whoever you call your mother, this Sunday is the day set aside to honor her for her love and sacrifices. Of course, we should honor our mothers every minute of every day if only in the simple things like a kiss and I love you when you leave for school in the morning or go to bed at night. Or perhaps by offering to wash the dishes after dinner without having to be asked. How about cleaning your room merely because it’s messy.

While celebrated world-wide, the tradition of setting aside a day to honor our mothers began officially in the United States in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure setting aside the second Sunday in May. Anna Jarvis created the idea for the holiday in 1908 but would later denounce the commercialization of the holiday and spend the rest of her life campaigning to have it removed from the calendar. Her vision was one of a personal holiday between a mother and her family, one where you would wear a white carnation as a badge, visit your mother, and attend church as a family.

It’s a day traditionally celebrated with cards, gifts, flowers, and a family dinner mother presumably does not have to cook or clean up after. Teachers lead school children in the creation of macaroni artwork and hand prints in paint or plaster to bring home to their mother. Some mothers are served a lovingly prepared breakfast in bed of orange juice, cereal with too much milk and sugar, and heavily-buttered burnt toast. If dad helps, breakfast might include a much appreciated cup of coffee to wash it all down.

When my children were small, I remember getting tiny bouquets of violets or dandelions clutched tight in their sweaty little hands and presented with a big smile. Hand-drawn I love you Mommy cards and dandelion bouquets were some of my best Mothers Day gifts. Not to say I don’t appreciate the grown-up gifts of chocolates, wine, spa baskets, books, and the like delivered by post and followed by the I love you Mom phone calls.

Being a mother has been the hardest, and most rewarding, job I’ve ever had to do in my life. It’s made me realize just how much my own mother had to do, had to give up, over the years to raise five children. I was not always perfect, and there may have been times they wished they could fire me and hire someone else, but in the end I have two wonderful happy adult children successful in their jobs and NOT living at home.

Whether you are lucky enough to still have your mother, as I am, or whether your mother has since passed on from this world, take time on Sunday to remember all the wonderful things your mother did for you over the years. Forget any petty arguments or ill-will you may still harbor and give her a call to say I love you, Mom, and I appreciate all the things you’ve done for me.

I love you, Mom, and I appreciate all the things you’ve done for me.

“Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.” Remember that song from Girl Scouts? At least, that’s where I learned it. It made for a great campfire round, but is there any truth to it? Are old friends better than new ones? Or, for that matter, are new friends better than old?

I’ve lost track of some of my oldest friends, the ones that go back to childhood. Some I know where they are but we don’t talk anymore, and some I have no idea where they are now. The beauty of Facebook has been the ability to reconnect with old friends. I’ve “friended” old classmates I would not have necessarily considered a “friend” back then, but that I do now. Does that make them a new friend, or an unrecognized old friend?

Then there are my somewhat old friends, the people I grew close to when living in western New York State for 30 years. Between Facebook and email and ever expanding/improving cell plans they’re easy to keep in touch with…although, even then we’re not always good at it.

Now I’m making new friends here in northwest Wisconsin. Some are neighbors, some fellow church members, co-workers, and many are also writers. I’d have a hard time if required to label some of them as “gold” and some of them as “silver”, especially if based solely on how long I’ve known them. My friends are my friends and I hold them all equally close to my heart.

Mary, the heroine in my novel Mary Bishop, is struggling with feeling alone now that her husband has died. She has formed a friendship with the minister’s new young wife, Frances, but mourns the loss of her friends from her past in Virginia. Some died during the War, while others moved on after the fighting ended and she no longer knows where they are, or if they even still live. But there is one, her friend Sarah, who did keep in touch after moving west. Mary wonders why they eventually stopped writing, and is her friend still living in Minnesota? She writes Sarah in hopes of finding her old friend. She thinks her old friend will be the answer to her problems, more so than her new friend. Does that make Sarah a “gold” friend and Frances a “silver” friend? Especially once she finds out the role Frances played in bringing the two back together.

Perhaps the label of “gold” or “silver” changes with the moment. Perhaps which is your answer depends on what is your question.

I was talking with my sister on the phone the other day, telling her about the recent success of my book, and she reminded me of something rather prophetic that I said to her during our annual Vegas weekend in January. I had announced several times that this is “the Year of Jane”. Some of you may recognize that phrase from the successful CBS sitcom “The Middle”. Last season Sue Heck declared her senior year of high school to be “the Year of Sue”. Everything she did that year was the culmination of all her past years, and the catalyst for what was to come…college life.

For the Year of Jane, everything I’ve done in the past to hone my skills as a writer has been in anticipation of this year, 2016, the year I publish my first novel. No, I don’t have a contract yet, but I have known from the moment I started writing this one that it will be published. I have never referred to “if” I publish, but always “when” I publish.

My blog is a success and I’m up to 121 followers with readers from all around the world. My Facebook author page is growing, as is my Twitter feed. (I’m finally getting the hang of using those hashtags!) Then last week the highpoint of my writing career so far. I get the phone call that tells me my book is a finalist in the historical category of WisRWA’s 2016 Fab Five competition.

WisRWA is the Wisconsin chapter of the Romance Writers of America, and the Fab Five is their annual competition for unpublished romance writers. To enter you need to have a completed romance novel and to have not published a romance novel before. I have a completed novel, Mary Bishop. Yes, I’m in the middle of some extensive revisions, but it was what I considered complete until my critique group pointed out some holes in my plot line. So back in February I submitted the first 2500 words of my novel. Lucky for me, this included my one-paragraph prologue and all of my first two chapters. Each chapter introduced one of my two timelines that run throughout the book so it was a good introduction for the judges. The first round is judged anonymously by my peers and the top five (Fab Five) from each category are chosen to continue to the final round. The final round is judged by an editor and an agent who work in that romance subgenre.

This is a huge opportunity to be read by someone in the industry, and possibly have my entire manuscript requested and, ultimately, my first novel published. You can see why I’m insisting that this is, indeed, the Year of Jane.

We all know what it’s like to feel lonely. You can be in a room full of friends and family, people you love, and feel lonely. They can all be talking, laughing, having a good time, and you feel like you’re outside looking in through glass. Being lonely is not the same as being “alone”.

I’m “alone” right now and enjoying the solitude, regenerating in the quiet. It’s Sunday the 10^th and my husband is on a road trip across Canada to Alaska with his cousin. I finished my errands yesterday and I don’t go back to work until tomorrow, so I have the treat of a day just for me. I spent the morning cross-stitching, drinking coffee, and catching up on some DVR’d shows. For lunch I finished my Chinese leftovers from last night out with a girlfriend (dinner and a movie). Now I sit at my computer drafting this blog and then working on my novel revisions. Classical MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) is playing in the background, a cinnamon-scented candle is lit (leftover from the holidays, but who cares), the sun is shining outside the sliding doors, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Temps are supposed to be in the 50s today so I’ll even try opening those sliding doors to listen to the breeze tickling the still leafless trees, and the birds singing that spring is near. I don’t get many days like this. If I make good progress on my writing this afternoon my reward will be a bubble bath with wine and a good read. Does it get any better? I doubt it.

We all need a day like this now and then, a day to ourselves where we can shut out all the worries and concerns of our everyday life. Some people like a long afternoon nap, others a walk in the woods. Doesn’t matter how you unwind, the point is we all need to unwind…alone.

But I would argue being alone is even more important to writers. This is the time we can most clearly hear our characters speak. This is the time we can let our muse take over our thoughts, the time we can allow our plot to percolate through our brains and out our fast-typing fingertips. Writers are by nature solitary creatures. Oh, we do seek each other out from time to time to compare notes, share tips of the trade, and to reassure ourselves that we aren’t truly alone because all mankind has perished except for us and we somehow missed it while we were being alone. My local chapter of the Wisconsin Romance Writers of America (WisRWA, Chippewa Falls) is sponsoring a one-day workshop in Eau Claire this coming October the 8^th and I’m looking forward to meeting others who feel the creative urge the way I do. It’s also why I attend my critique group in Amery one Monday a month, and continue to correspond and share my writing with my old critique group back in western New York. These are the people who help me remember WHY I write, but most of the time I need a quiet day like this one to ACTUALLY write.

Alright, the door has to be closed. The breeze is still a little too cool and those birds are distracting me from writing.

Books have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I come from a family of voracious readers. My parents are retired school teachers and there were always books, magazines, and newspapers in our house. I remember being read to as a child and couldn’t wait until I was able to read for myself, starting with Golden Books, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Uncle Wiggily, Little House series, and oh so many more I can’t even remember them all. My parents censored what movies and television shows I watched, but they never censored my reading. While I wasn’t allowed to watch The Exorcist, I was allowed to read it; the same with Helter Skelter and In Cold Blood. But I also read, by choice, such classics as The Scarlet Letter, Silas Marner, The House of Seven Gables, and, of course, poetry.

And for as long as I can remember, I have made up stories. Not in the naughty child sense, although I’m sure that probably happened a time or two when I’d been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to, but out of the desire to share with others all those characters living in my imagination. The desire to explore the places I knew certainly must exist outside my own little world.

As for the question of e-books or traditional, I read them both. I love my Kindle for travel. I love how it doesn’t close and make me lose my place should I fall asleep while reading (not an unusual occurrence). However, I would never take my Kindle into the bathtub with me. For bubble baths I tend to stick to magazines. They’re light weight, I can hold them in one hand, leaving the other free to hold my wine, and if a magazine does by chance fall into the water I’m not going to cry or get angry.

My Kindle is great when I want to read something particularly trashy and don’t want everyone in the airport or the park to know, such as Fifty Shades of Grey (book 1 only, too trashy even for me). My Kindle is perfect when I decide it’s time to read a great Russian novel like War and Peace or Anna Karenina because it’s not near as heavy as the traditional print version. But when I’m researching my current work-in-progress, or something I might want to write in the future, I need to have a traditional book so I can highlight passages and write notes in the margin and dog-ear important pages. I know you can do all these things with an e-reader, or so I’ve heard, but it’s not the same. And studying maps, diagrams, and charts just doesn’t work as well on an e-reader, especially if you have to flip back and forth to refer to them while reading.

When the sale of e-readers and e-books began to take off, the media predicted traditional publishing houses would soon be a thing of the past. No one would want printed books when they could get the same thing in a lighter, cheaper, electronic version in a blink of an eye, with just the push of a button. Why go out into traffic and/or bad weather to find your nearest Barnes & Noble when you could sit back with your bunny-slippered feet propped up all warm and comfortable while you drink wine (I’m beginning to see a pattern here) with one hand and browse your e-reader store with the other. You can make a selection, press the “buy now” button and there it is, ready to be enjoyed without having to leave your home.

Then the great publishing apocalypse never happened. The traditional publishing houses are all going strong. I could quote you statistics on the matter, but you can Google those for yourself if you’re that interested in the numbers. Suffice it to say, I am not the only person who continues to read print books while also enjoying my e-reader. Plus, e-books have opened up the publishing world to a much wider range of writers. While some, if truth be told, would be better off waiting until they’ve honed their skills a little more before making their debut, most are gems who would never even get noticed, never get read, because they’re not quite good enough for the big houses.

As for our young readers, the children just being introduced to the world of books, I believe we should stick to print. Let them feel the paper in their hands, smell it, experience the beautiful art work in all its brightly printed glory. They spend enough time in front of digital screens.

The exact origins of April Fools’ Day, or All Fools’ Day, are unknown. Celebrated for centuries by many different cultures, it is a day for telling jokes and playing pranks. Remember elementary school and all the silliness? The jokes that were only funny to other children your age? Tell the little girl who sits behind you there’s a spider in her hair and she might start screaming and swatting at her head. Tell your mother the same thing and she’ll just look at you with mild amusement and respond, “I don’t think so, but nice try.” Coat the edge of a quarter with pencil lead and bet some little boy that he can’t roll it down the center of his face without dropping it and before you know it he’s grinning at you, unknowing, with a black line dividing his face in two, certain he’s just proved you wrong while you and all your friends point and laugh. I got caught by that one.

Of course, pranking is not just a past time of the young and silly, it’s also enjoyed with great relish by some you would think too old for such nonsense. There’s the rubber spider on a co-worker’s chair, or the pool of fake spilled coffee across their desk. Playing pranks can be fun for all ages if done sparingly and with careful thought to the recipient. It’s only funny if the person being pranked thinks so.

Elaborate hoaxes have been played on the public over the years, often meeting with an unbelievable level of gullibility from the people. The media have reported outrageous fictional tales with great success. In 1957, the BBC reported Swiss farmers were having a record spaghetti crop and showed pictures of smiling people harvesting strands of pasta from the trees into over-flowing baskets. In 1985, Sports Illustrated amazed many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 mph. Does anyone remember 1996, when the Mexican fast food chain Taco Bell announced they were buying the Liberty Bell and renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell? How many of you, just for a brief moment, were horrified and outraged before you realized it had to be a hoax? In 1998, Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper” and scores of clueless customers tried to order the fake sandwich.

All done in the name of fun, good, clean, harmless fun. Do you have a favorite prank from your past? Or perhaps you’re planning your best one yet for this year? Tell me about it. Maybe I’ll tell my supervisor, the one who’s out on maternity leave, and the office manager that I’m quitting. Act all outraged and see if I cause a panic. (She has two weeks of leave to go before she comes back.) No, I better not. That could backfire on me. They could say fine, if that’s how you want it you can leave right now. That wouldn’t be very funny. Not funny at all.

Perhaps I should work an April Fools’ Day joke into my book. I think Mary would be a very good sport about it. She might even be the instigator.

Writers are compelled to put words on paper. If we don’t, our characters won’t let us rest. Their voices become louder and louder, forcing their stories upon us until we relent and write them down. Our characters are our best friends. They can also be our worst enemies. Their homes are our homes, their dreams/sorrows/joys, our dreams/sorrows/joys.

When writers don’t write we become irritated, sad, and sometimes just plain bitchy. Nothing feels right again until we can sit down at our computer, or pen in hand if a traditionalist, and start writing. To put it plainly, when I don’t have time to write I feel lost! I’m not me and I can become pretty difficult to live with.

Since we moved from New York State back to Wisconsin almost five years ago I’ve had lots of time to write. It took me four years to find a permanent job. I did temp work here and there, but I needed something permanent to get me out of the house, to introduce me to new people, and to have a little extra money in the pocket. Then I found the perfect part-time job, 2-3 days a week most weeks. It gave me enough time away from my writing to keep me fresh, yet not so much as to stop me in my tracks. Now I’m working full-time filling in for a co-worker on maternity leave. I know it’s temporary, but it’s really putting a crimp in my writing time and I’m getting cranky. I have to work extra hard at finding the time to work on my novel revisions.

Right now I’m writing new chapters to insert where my timeline has holes. I underestimated how difficult this could be. I have two parallel timelines running: my heroine’s past love with her husband, and her present day with her second chance at love now that her husband has died. Yes, this is a challenging approach for a first novel, but it’s the way Mary Bishop tells me her story and I can’t do it any other way. She won’t let me. She’s a woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to stand up for herself. I admit, I’m a little intimidated by her strength, and also more than a little in awe of her. (Don’t look so shocked. I already told you our characters are very real to us.)

So, I struggled along writing insert chapter one, two, three, and then I got stuck; as stuck as if I’d stepped into the proverbial quicksand. The more I tried to move forward, the deeper I sank and I was getting desperate. So last weekend I went back to the beginning. It was the only way I could think to get out of the quicksand. I started reading from the beginning; reading, revising, reviewing, and taking notes. My second insert chapter brought a new character into the mix. I had to go back to the beginning to reference her as she was now going to play a key role in Mary’s story and couldn’t just suddenly show up in chapter 22. A dog was added, a dog that would save the life of an important person in Mary’s life. Again, couldn’t just have him appear unannounced in chapter 24.

So, now I’m back on my feet and running, a little wet and dirty for my struggle, but moving forward again, nonetheless, and hopefully avoiding all the other patches of quicksand I know are hiding out there. Unfortunately, right now I must take a break to tackle another obstacle to my writing time. There’s a pile of ironing that’s taking on a life of its own, and a button that isn’t going to sew itself back on my jacket. Mary will have to be patient for just a little bit longer.

The promise of spring is being dangled in front of us here in northwestern Wisconsin. One day you can touch it, almost believe you can grab hold of it and keep it, only to have it retreat from your reach the next day.

Birds are returning. We can hear them in the trees above our heads. The ice on the St Croix River is breaking-up with loud cracks echoing off the riverside cliffs. The snow is almost completely melted, only lingering where it’s been pushed in great parking lot piles by the plows. And some days the sun is actually as warm as it looks, tempting us to open our windows and step away from our offices to turn our faces up to the heavens and sigh. The only grumbling I’ve heard is from the skiers and ice fishermen who are not quite ready to end the season that for many had a late start this year.

A sure sign of spring in our neck of the woods is the start of maple syrup season, the time when taps are gently hammered into the thick trunks of waking maple trees and the sap drained into buckets to use in the making of maple syrup. Sugar shacks are firing up their boilers and soon a fresh batch of syrup will be hitting the local shops and breakfast tables. Forget that artificial big corporate brand you buy at the grocery store. It’s nothing more than high fructose corn syrup and caramel coloring. If you haven’t tried real maple syrup, I urge you to do so. There’s nothing like the flavor of natural maple to bring those pancakes (or french toast) to life.

But that’s not the only use for maple syrup. It makes wonderful candy, flavors your baking, even your home-brewed beer. Amazing! Google it and you’ll find so many recipes you won’t know where to start. Here’s a favorite in my house. I found it on allrecipes.com a couple years ago and it’s a keeper. It calls for pan-frying in a little butter and vegetable oil, but I bake them on a sprayed cookie sheet at 350 for about 40 minutes, or until cooked through. Moist on the inside and crunchy nutty sweet on the outside. Mmmmmm! If you try it, let me know what you think. And feel free to send me any other suggestions for what you do with real maple syrup.

Pecan Breaded Chicken Breasts
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 tablespoons real maple syrup
1 cup chopped pecans
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

Combine pecans, flour and salt. Brush chicken breasts all over with maple syrup and coat completely with nut mixture.

Final note to make my point: It was 70° last weekend and now it’s snowing.