A group of scholars at a local university recently released a list of words they feel we should use on a regular basis. The study they performed actually focused on ten words that can make you sound smarter. I’m glad they included definitions, because some of these were unknown to me. Perhaps I didn’t attend the right college.

Just think, my friends—within this blog you’ll find ten words you can use to dazzle your friends! Drop some of these into your daily interactions and they’ll be positively beaming at your newfound intelligence. Either that, or they’ll wonder which meds you took this morning. Read on.

Acedia – Spiritual or mental sloth; apathy.
“When she broke up with him, he fell into a state of acedia and didn’t go out for two months.”

Anfractuous – Indirect and containing bends, turns or twists; circuitous.
“The road to the castle was anfractuous.”

Blithering – Senselessly talkative and babbling; used chiefly as an intensive to express annoyance or contempt.
“His Twitter posts were the confused ramblings of a blithering fool.”

Bombinate – Buzzing, humming or droning to the point of distraction.
“A fly bombinated in the sun porch, making it difficult for John to relax.”

Bucolic – Of or relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life.
“Sitting in his office, Jack felt a twinge of longing for his bucolic childhood on the farm.”

Effulgent – Shining brightly; radiant; emanating joy or goodness.
“Her beauty was enhanced by her effulgent personality.”

Gauche – Lacking ease or grace; unsophisticated and socially awkward.
“His gauche demeanor made Tom stand out at the party.”

Guttle – To eat or drink greedily and noisily.
“As the man sitting across from her guttled his meal, she knew that the blind date was a mistake.”

Mugwump – A person who remains aloof or independent, especially from party politics.
“Ever the mugwump, he refused to take a side in the partisan bickering.”

Stultify – Cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of tedious or restrictive routine.
“The stultifying clerical work robbed the young intern of the enthusiasm she’d felt on the first day.”

There you have it. Ten words to a better you through an enhanced vocabulary. Personally, when I write, I tend to shy away from words that necessitate a Google search. I do that on purpose, not because I think my readers are gauche or bucolic, but because when I read something with uncommon words, I find the experience stultifying.

To represent the flip side, I have my own list of words that I wish we would stop using so often: witch hunt; fake news; misinformation; recount; tweet; very, very bad; terrible, terrible thing; biggest, most awesome crowd ever; impeachment.

On a final note, I would like to apply a few words to our elected office holders. You can insert whichever names you want.

“I wish our politicians would be more like mugwumps instead of blithering on social media and bombinating on cable news shows.”

Wow, I feel smarter already!

Happy New Year.

Rather than write a proper post, I thought it would be fun to share my list of new year resolutions with you. The ones that are marked with an asterisk are the ones that I’ve already broken.

* Drink less
* Eat more healthily
Try to write 1,000 words a day
Try not to beat myself up if I don’t hit 1,000 words a day
Submit to more publishers
* Don’t get upset by rejections
* Exercise more
Explore ideas that take me away from the familiar
Spend more time with the dog
* Try to avoid Twitter (it raises my blood pressure)
* Approach the 9 – 5 with a sense of confidence and optimism

Be thankful for all the friends I have on here who accept me as part of a vibrant writing community

With love – Ash

I hope everyone reading this is enjoying the winter holidays as much as possible.

I can’t help thinking of WW2, when my parents were engaged for Christmas in 1943, and married in January 1944, when the U.S. Navy promoted my father to the rank of Lieutenant and deployed him to Staten Island, NYC, where my mother awaited him. One of the perks of promotion was the right to marry.

I’m well aware that Americans weren’t experiencing the same war as the British, or even other citizens of former British colonies, including Canada. For everyone in the former British Empire, the war started in 1939, when King George declared war on Germany. After France fell to the Nazi regime in 1940 (along with several of the Channel Islands), everyone in the British Isles waited anxiously to find out their own fate. Children were sent to the countryside or to other countries while planes with swastikas on them dropped bombs on London.

I’ve been told that my London-born great-grandmother Bessie, a proud Cockney living in New York City, felt personally offended that her city was being bombed by a monster called the “Luftwaffe.”

At this time, the fate of the Jewish diaspora within Nazi-controlled countries was literally unspeakable. No one outside those countries knew anything with certainty. It was only in 1945 and later that my mother’s New York Jewish friends found out what happened to their extended families in Europe — or, in some cases, they had to make reasonable guesses, based on the known facts.

Americans, like Swedes, were safely neutral all this time. Only after the Japanese Air Force bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1942, did the U.S. government declare war on the Axis countries: Japan, Germany, Italy. So The War for my parents (the most serious one, the war that defined their young adulthood) really only began in January 1943 and lasted until spring 1945.

After the U.S. joined the war, the tide turned, and the chances of a worldwide Nazi/Fascist conquest which would last for a thousand years grew increasingly unlikely.

Why does the dumpster fire of 2020 remind me of the war? The most obvious answer is: Nazis! Fascists! The other obvious answer is the worldwide pandemic, which affects everyone on earth, but not all to the same degree.

Governments have responded with various degrees of caution—with lockdowns, partial-lockdowns, reopenings and reclosings. In the absence of a cure or any form of prevention apart from quarantining, governments have had to try to balance the health of human bodies with the health of the economy. As a result, some countries are still in free-fall, while others are almost completely Covid-free.

Just as patriotic citizens in London and New York were told to stay indoors after dark and cover their windows with blackout curtains (or better yet, avoid turning on lights), people in countries with lockdowns are being encouraged to stay in our “bubbles” of a few close companions, and keep a lid on festivities. (Drinking alone now sounds more wholesome than it has in the past.)

The wartime carols, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (for sure), and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” sound more poignant to me this year than they have for a long time.

The news of a vaccine sounds like news of an armistice. So there is change on the horizon. The big question is: will everything go back to normal after the vaccine is widely distributed? Will some people be left behind, because they are overlooked by the local health-care system, or because they refuse the vaccine because they distrust the system (often for good reasons)?
Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I hope that being home alone with a Significant Other or a few is a sexy experience for at least some of you.

I’ve been teaching university classes from home, and it has turned out to be more fun than I foresaw when the local university shut down in March 2020 (in the middle of a semester!) Not having to catch a bus from home to school in the cold and the dark of winter (when classes are scheduled before 9:00 a.m. or last beyond 4:00 p.m.) has been a great convenience. Although I haven’t been able to see my students, they have shown up in surprisingly large numbers for Zoom classes, possibly because they also like the convenience of attending class from home. I know I still don’t understand all the technological bells and whistles available to me, but I’ve been able to communicate with students in various ways, and several have told me they enjoyed the classes.

Meanwhile, my female spouse Mirtha has had numerous Zoom meetings of her own because of her position on various boards and her job as the co-ordinator of a group of local LGBTQ elders (age 55+).

When we wake up in the mornings, I ask her what meetings she has, at what time, and which device she plans to use (phone, laptop, or the Mac in our spare bedroom, called the “library”).

We could have spontaneous sex any time we’re not otherwise occupied, and we could do it anywhere in the house. Yet we don’t.

I’m well aware that we’re incredibly lucky compared to many other people: we live in Canada, where basic health care is available to all, and where dental and eye care (which are not part of the government health-care system) are covered for us by work-related insurance. We haven’t needed emergency government funding because our incomes have never been interrupted. We follow the local safety protocols, and we’ve stayed healthy.

Yet fear of the virus seems to be universal, even for those of us who live far from major coastal cities. There have been anti-mask demonstrations here in Saskatchewan, on the Canadian prairies, and the arrival of winter weather brought a predictable Second Wave. Just because many people in the world couldn’t find Saskatchewan on a map (it’s a large rectangle in the middle of the continent) doesn’t mean we’re safely isolated.

I’ve been told that the possibility of imminent death gives some people the urge to live as fully as possible while they can. Some of that joie de vivre seemed to spring up during WW2, although the possibility of imminent death really varied by location and occupation. (Obviously, anyone in the armed forces was at greatest risk. They were the front-line workers of the time.)

This situation might have affected me—and possibly my spouse Mirtha—differently when we were younger. Maybe we have a different relationship with death now than we did in the past. Then it seemed like a villain that could attack without warning. Now we know we’re guaranteed to meet it sooner or later (within the next thirty years), and it won’t be a surprise.

Whatever your methods of keeping fear, anxiety and depression at bay, I wish you well. (But if you’re an anti-masker, please consider the evidence that there really is a war on.) If you’ve been inspired to have lots of actual sex, or write a lot of erotica, good for you.

Personally, I’m still waiting for the publication of my erotic novel, Prairie Gothic, because apparently the publisher is still waiting for a review from Publishers Weekly, which had good things to say about a story I had in a major erotic anthology in 2014. As with many other things, their response to my novel remains to be seen.

I haven’t written much this year, but I do have plans for three single-author collections, and will take a stab at writing something between now and New Year’s Day 2021, before I start teaching two new on-line classes.

Life, lust, energy, inspiration, and determination all seem to be related. I wish more of all that to all my fellow ERWAns in the new year.
———————–

I have a confession to make: many of my stories were inspired by personal experiences.

I’m sure you’re as shocked to hear that as I was to admit it. Writers hide behind the disclaimer “this is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual people and events is unintentional.” While that’s true in my case, I must concede that many of my characters are composites of people I’ve met. They’re not exact clones, but I’ll take a physical trait from one, a speech pattern from another, an interesting quirk or habit from someone else, mix them all together, and presto—I’ve created a character.

The same is true for many of my plots and situations. Something may happen and I’ll play the “what if” game. I’m reminded of a story about the creation of the classic ‘60s sitcom “Get Smart.” When Mel Brooks and Buck Henry pitched the idea, they said “What if James Bond and Inspector Clouseau had a child together?” Thus was born bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart.

One of my holiday romances, “Mistletoe and Palm Trees,” was inspired by something that happened to me. I had planned a trip to Siesta Key, Florida to do a few book signing appearances and spend a week on the beach. At the last minute, my traveling companion was unable to go, and I took the trip alone. I thought “What if a guy ended up in the Florida Keys alone during the Christmas holidays because his girlfriend broke up with him and he met a woman in a similar situation?” That experience was good for a book and a sequel.

Another romance, “Who Gets the Friends?” resulted from something that happened during the break-up of my marriage several years earlier. I discovered that once we split, some of the so-called mutual friends we had didn’t want to associate with me any longer. I had to start all over, not only with my life but in making some new friends. This was the plot for my story.

Many of my spy thrillers and private eye mysteries may not reflect actual exploits of mine, since I’ve never held either occupation, but some of the situations in those stories incorporate real events. My romantic mystery “The Other Woman” (Vic Fallon Book Four) is an example. At the beginning of the story, Fallon runs into a politician from his hometown while on a layover in an airport, and the man is murdered shortly after they speak. In my own case, I once had a long layover in the Atlanta airport. I saw our state’s Attorney General at a departure gate and we spoke for a few minutes. He wasn’t killed afterward, but again I played the “what if” game.

The Nick Seven spy thriller “Catch and Release” is another example. I was having lunch at a restaurant that had waterfront dining. Many boats were docked nearby, including a yacht. Servers from the restaurant took food to the yacht for four people, but I only saw three. One of the trays was taken into the cabin where the curtains were closed. “Hmm,” my devious mind thought. “Who’s inside? Is it someone who doesn’t want to be seen? Possibly a celebrity, or a criminal in hiding?” That jumpstarted the story and my imagination took over from there.

I’m always amused when someone says “I’d better not wind up as a character in your next book!” It also tickles me when I get asked if the sexual exploits of my characters were inspired by personal experiences. In both cases I just smile and remain silent.