Cathy Lamb's Blog, page 7

Today was an ordinary day and then a bird miracle occurred. This Blue Heron flew over my head while I was in my garden thinking about how truly terrible my Christmas story is that I’m trying to write.I thought to myself kind and generous thoughts like: You should quit writing. You should become a hermit in the backwoods. And, remember, Cathy, it’s a Christmas story. Don’t kill anyone off. No one wants death with their stockings and ornaments.Then the Blue Heron appeared out of nowhere. I love blue herons. You could say that they are the Lamb Family Bird. When Innocent Husband, Rebel Dancing Daughter, Adventurous Singing Daughter, or Darling Laughing Son or I see a Great Blue Heron, we always yell out, “GBH!” It’s a family moment.Anyhow, I watched the Great Blue Heron as he watched me, marveling at how elegant and cool he was. A few minutes later another Great Blue Heron soared over my head, like a mini blue plane, flapped his enormous wings at Great Blue Heron #1, and they both flew over my pink magnolia trees and golden lilies, on to their next adventure.A pair. A couple. Friends. It was just an incredible moment.Sometimes ya have to look for that little bit of beauty and sometimes the beauty comes to you and you are very lucky indeed.Have a good day. Wishing you a bird miracle.

On Saturday I left Oregon at the torturous, bone-jangling hour of six in the morning to head to Helena, Montana.

I don’t “do” six in the morning. I feel like I’ve been hit in the face by a flying goat. It’s unhealthy for me to get up that early. Definitely a fright to my nervous system. I don’t like any frightful things happening to my nervous system as I am nervous enough already.

But, alas, I’ll do just about anything to de-fry my brain and calm down in Montana. It’s like heaven was drawn in a painting and the painting landed across the entire state. I feel like I can breathe when I’m there. Plus, there’s something about the rivers and the mountains that make writing and delving into my boiling and toiling imagination easier.

CLICK ON THE SUBSTACK LINK FOR MORE (Free, of course)

https://cathylamb.substack.com/p/finding-peace-in-montana

Need a summer book?

Available only on Amazon.

2023 was not a good year.I’ve had worse.Years I try not to think about much.But 2023 was tough.Someone lied about me and it was very painful.Don’t worry! The lie was not about me burying a body, slugging someone in a bar fight, running naked along a river, or watering a weak man’s Alfa Romeo with a hose after popping a cherry pie into his smirky face. These are all things I’ve made the characters in my books do, but I have never done anything so exciting myself, unfortunately.The lie that was told was like being bitten by a know-it-all crocodile with a weird smile and a superiority complex.CLICK ON THE LINK FOR MORE FUN AND GAMES…

https://open.substack.com/pub/cathylamb/p/not-an-easy-year?r=kayfq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

(Yes this is what happened to my house…)

Hello all,

If you would like to read the Prologue of Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid, copy and paste the Substack link below.

Have a good day!

https://open.substack.com/pub/cathylamb/p/a-little-snippet?r=kayfq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

 

Thanks to everyone who bought my new book Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid.

Truly.

Thank you.

Cathy

I have spent hours this spring covered head to foot in dust, tiny branches, and dirt.

I love to garden.

To me, gardening is dirt therapy.

If I’m upset or stressed or jittery or anxious, I like to dig in the dirt. I like to tear up pesky weeds and plant pretty flowers.

My garden is far from perfect, but it always gives me the perfect place to cool my brain off, settle any prickly emotions I’m dealing with, and focus on one thing: Making things better.

There is so much in life that I can’t make better. Don’t ask me for my list because it will go on forever and it will get boring and tedious and you will see the dark shadows hiding inside my frazzled brain.

But even an hour working in my garden will make it look better and make me feel better.

When I garden I often get ideas for my books and characters. Sometimes they’ll pop in my head when I’m standing near my pink magnolia – the setting, the conflict, or who the main character is deep down, not the person she shows everyone else because that’s the person everyone wants to see.

Sometimes it’s a plot problem and, voila, while I’m holding up a worm, I know how to fix it.

Sometimes I’m ripping up weeds and I’ll figure out what needs to be ripped out of my book.

I’ve figured out who is going to die in my books when gardening. That can be a sad reckoning but I simply jump on a shovel and I know that that’s the way it’s gotta be.

When I’ve got the hedge trimmer roaring, I’ll think about word counts and goals and what I need to do to get my books written.

When I’m yanking out mint that grows like a sneaky weed, I sometimes think about the blonde woman with a temper who gave it to me. I liked her, but she later pulled a gun on the woman she was living with who sprinted down to my house like lightning to call the police.

Yep. Mint makes me think of guns and sirens, but it also makes me think of, for some reason, annoying people who won’t go away, and I wrestle it right out of the ground like the curse that it is.

I’ll talk to myself and often talk out loud while wandering amidst my yellow lilies and pink cherry tree. I like talking to myself and I don’t like being interrupted when I’m having my own two-way conversations.

Now and then I’ll think of someone who has ticked me off when I start lopping off pine tree branches with my clipper. That makes me sound dangerous in a botanical sort of way. I assure you I am not.

When someone lied about me last year, it was so painful and made me so angry, I cried into my rhododendrons. Luckily, later, while cleaning out dead leaves from a garden bed, I decided that I would give her condescending, judgmental, and patronizing personality to one of my characters.

I can’t stand that character, you’ll hate her too, and yet the inspiration came straight out of dead leaves.

There, that is the mean side of me. The vengeful side. But who wants to read newsletters by people who claim perfection? That would be so dreary.

When I’m cleaned off and don’t have cobwebs or spiders hanging from my hair, I’ll journal in my garden. I’ll grab my computer and write my books, staring at the pink magnolia and purple butterfly trees, the lanky columbines, the delicate violas and my late mother’s burgundy clematis.

They bring me peace.

Writing and gardening. In my life, those two go together like dirt and worms.

 

Read on Substack – sign up for my Substack for columns on life, writing, and laughter that will come to your inbox when I can get myself together and write…

https://open.substack.com/pub/cathyla...

His name was Joe.He had a dark beard, dark eyes, and always seemed a little angry.He lived two houses down from our home on Deauville Drive in Huntington Beach, California. I was about eight years old when I knew Joe. His three kids played outside with me, my sisters and brother.Joe had an Alfa Romeo. It was white and slick and fast. No one else in our neighborhood had a speedy car like that.We had an old, black, clanking Ford, long and tank-like. We would regularly stuff two parents, four kids, and two temperamental dogs into that car. My parents did not believe in fancy cars. They did not believe in flashy things. They thought any outward expression of wealth was in poor taste and “showy.”In our middle class neighborhood, where children freely roamed, and parents kept a loose eye on their offspring, that fancy, showy Alfa Romeo stood out. CLICK ON THE LINK FOR MY SUBSTACK ARTICLE.

https://open.substack.com/pub/cathylamb/p/the-alfa-romeo-that-sparked-ten-kids?r=kayfq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

 

 

When I was a kid I played outside as much as possible, read books and daydreamed.

Of course I had to write about it.

 

 

Rainy day here in Oregon, which means it’s the perfect time for me to continue writing my Christmas book.I have one character nicknamed Whisky and another named Bellini.It’s a love story.Ho ho ho!!