A Dead Left Arm, Apparitions and Other Mini Dramas.

There is no other word or phrase for it, my left arm has been feeling numb, weird or ‘dead’ for about three weeks. I’ve had MS for more than fifteen years, and this weird feeling in my arm reminds me of before I was diagnosed. This current arm thing is a nuisance rather than something I need medication for.

Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com

BUT… but, it is more noticeable at night and as a result I haven’t been sleeping properly.

All of my life, I have had what I now know to be a ‘slow wave parasomnia’ – shouting out in my sleep. I ‘see’ windows falling in, spiders, and other weird things flying at my face. This first became a problem when I was 22 and my daughter was born (she is 23 now and talks in her sleep but it’s not as bad as me).

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Anyway, the other night, I thought I saw my husband crouching down next to me. I thought (in my half sleep state) what are you doing there? So I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. When my hand went through ‘him’, this woke me and I realised ‘oh, it’s just one of my weird sleep things’ I turned on my other side, and there husband was, fast asleep and oblivious to the apparition that my sleep had just caused.

Until I let him know what had happened the following day. ‘You are so weird’ he said to me. Well, I think that I only have myself to blame for what happened next…

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Last night, I had trouble sleeping again, couldn’t get comfy, arm felt weird etc. I heard our dog walking about, which usually means she wants to be let out in the night. Then the cat started running around. This was about 2.30am. I got up, despite me going to the effort of walking downstairs (which is no mean feat when you’ve got MS and your legs are asleep) Martha, our Border terrier stood stationary at the top of the stairs staring at me with her massive brown eyes, a-la a tired child.

Eventually, I fell back to sleep. I was having a dream that I was drinking red wine out of a plastic pint glass. I don’t even like red wine, and in the dream, someone came up to me and offered me a Prosecco. All of a sudden, there was a lot of shouting and then, a pillow was thrown over my head and landed on my bedside cabinet (in real life).

THE SAME THING HAD HAPPENED TO MR HENTHORN!

My husband was having a dream that I was stood over him blowing in his face! Except he didn’t think it was a dream because he thought he could really see me and threw the pillow at me, or where I thought I was, this went over my head. When I protested he said:

‘Oh, are you saying you didn’t just do that to me, you weirdo?’ he was still dreaming I think.

I said : ‘I was having a dream about drinking Prosecco!’ (to be fair I was half asleep and may have just mumbled).

‘Oh, maybe I dreamt it then!’ Mr Henthorn said. We laughed, I’m still laughing about it now.

Great, now I’ve passed on my weird sleep problem.

Not a mini-drama, but Petal cat who is a 14 year old stay at home kind of cat has started meowing to go out. She never does this, she even made out that she was hunting a bird the other day. The mind boggles.

Petal and Martha chilling in Alicia’s room.

So you see, I live in a sitcom, or a soap opera at least.

Happy Weekend!

Samantha

PS I wrote these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/~/e/B01M4LPH9U

What’s in a (Character) Name? Sharon Booth @Sharon_Booth1 #Guestpost #Uplifting Women’s Fiction #IARTG

Way back when I started reaching out and networking as an independent author, I saw a post on a reputable social media group asking if any authors wanted to appear on a blog called ‘Five Photos’. Before responding, I thought wow, this author writes uplifting women’s fiction. That sounds right up my street!

This author was none other than super talented SHARON BOOTH I have read every single one of her books – the first one being Kearton Bay my husband came home from work and saw me reading in the garden. ‘Why are you crying?’ he said. ‘Because this book is so touching… and SO cute!’ 

Thank you so much Sharon for joining me!

What’s in a Character Name?

Names are very important to me. I can’t just pick a character’s name out of thin air; I have to search for just the right one. First of all, it has to suit the character, obviously, but it also has to mean something to me or to the story.

With the first series of books I wrote it was easy. I’d spent a few years researching my family tree and I wanted to pay tribute to those people I’d been learning about, and who’d come to mean so much to me. The surnames of most of the characters in Kearton Bay are the surnames of my ancestors: Hollingsworth, Bone, Boden and Kean (hyphenated as one name for the story), MacLean, Crook, Hope … even Kearton Bay itself was named after my paternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Kearton. Rhiannon, who has Wiccan beliefs, is named after a Celtic goddess. In mythology, her son was Pryderi, so I named her son in the book Derry. Rose’s name was a given. She’s crazy about the colour pink, so she and her daughters all had to have pink names. Her daughters are called Fuchsia and Cerise. Gabriel Bailey, on the other hand, got his first name because I needed an angel’s name for the story to work. His surname was inspired by my favourite film, It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey is a real hero to me, and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather name my own hero after.

With the Skimmerdale books, it was the place names that took some working out. I wanted to be as authentic as possible, and spent ages looking at old Norse words, as so many places in the Yorkshire Dales have old Norse names. Skimmerdale itself is explained in This Other Eden. “Skimmer” was an old Norse word meaning “to shine brightly, to sparkle”. I had the image in my mind of sunlight glinting on the river as a Viking chief looked down upon it, inspiring him to give the area that name. The farm’s name, Fleetsthorpe, is derived from Fleets, meaning “stream or beck”, and Thorpe, meaning “the outlying farmstead”.

Bramblewick was a tribute to the novels of Leo Walmsley, who called his fictional version of Robin Hood’s Bay by that name. I borrowed it for a brief mention in A Kiss from a Rose, little realising that I would be revisiting the village and naming an entire series of books after it!

With my Moorland Heroes series, Saving Mr Scrooge made every use of the Charles Dickens’ classic on which it was loosely based. Jacob Marley became Marley Jacobs, and instead of Ebenezer Scrooge (which wouldn’t have sat well with modern readers) I named the hero Christopher Carroll, as Chris Carroll was the closest I could get to the original title. He was nicknamed Kit to be a bit more up-to-date – and because I was going through a Game of Thrones period at the time!

With Resisting Mr Rochester, the surname of the hero was fixed in stone, but I had fun playing around with the other important names. His first name became Ethan, which means strong and safe. Cara Truelove was inspired by two things: Cara means dear one, beloved (aw!) and seemed appropriate. Most people assume Truelove was just to emphasise how romantic she was, but in fact, it’s taken from an old legend connected with the surname Eyre. It tells how a companion of William the Conqueror, named Truelove, saved the life of the king, and was renamed Eyre in gratitude for giving William the air that he breathed. There’s no real historical evidence for this but it’s a lovely legend, and as I was looking for a connection to Jane Eyre I thought it was perfect. You can read more about it here. Although the book is obviously a tribute to the Charlotte Bronte novel, it was also inspired by Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Cara does share some characteristics with Catherine Morland in that novel, so I named Ethan Rochester’s home Moreland Hall in tribute.

For my current series, The Witches of Castle Clair, I did a lot of research into names with magical or mythical connections. The river was an important part of the town and its mythology, and the word Hrafn is old Norse for raven, so very appropriate for my stories. I found lots of names connected with the sky in some way for my St Clair family: Sirius, Star, Celeste, Sky, Iliana (ray of light), Raiden (god of thunder and lightning), Zephyr (west wind) and Aurora all have celestial meanings.

 

It does take time to research names, but I always feel more comfortable when I know I’ve chosen appropriate ones that fit the characters. I like to have them all in place before I start writing the book. There’s nothing worse than getting halfway through and realising I don’t like the name, or it doesn’t fit, and having to change it. It’s worth making the effort right at the beginning. After all, these people are going to be my best friends for several months. The least I can do is get their names right!

 

 

Author Bio

Sharon Booth is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and an Authorpreneur member of The Alliance of Independent Authors. She writes uplifting women’s fiction – “love, laughter, and happy ever after”. Although a happy ending for her main characters is guaranteed, she makes them work for it!

Sharon grew up in the East Yorkshire town of Hessle, and now lives in Kingston-upon-Hull with her husband and their gentle, and thoroughly gorgeous, German Shepherd dog.

Since giving up her admin job at a medical practice, she spends a lot of time assuring her family of five children, assorted in-laws and hordes of grandchildren – not to mention a sceptical mother and a contrary hairdresser – that writing full-time is a proper job and she hasn’t taken early retirement.

She has a love/hate relationship with sugar (she loves it, it hates her), adores Doctor Who and Cary Grant movies, and admits to being shamefully prone to all-consuming crushes on fictional heroes.

Find out more about Sharon at linktr.ee/sharonboothwriter

 

Sharon’s latest novel, To Catch a Witch, is the third in the romcom series The Witches of Castle Clair. It will be published on April 28^th and is available for pre-order here.

 

To Catch a Witch

Return to Castle Clair for the final chapter of the St Clair story.
It’s three hundred and fifty years since the famous witch’s leap happened in the North Yorkshire town. Riverside Walk is swarming with eager tourists, wanting to pay tribute to the legendary Blaise St Clair. It’s also Christmas Eve, and the family has gathered to celebrate an eventful year, and to look forward to even better times ahead.
But a shock event changes everything, bringing a whole lot of trouble to the door of Castle Lodge.
For something big is happening in Castle Clair. Strangers are arriving, a prophecy is unfolding, a mystery is deepening, a reckoning is coming … and someone’s getting rather too fond of Mrs Greenwood’s baking.
The past is colliding with the present, and the future is in jeopardy. No wonder the High Council of Witches is a bit miffed.
Will the St Clairs have enough strength, courage ~ and chocolate fudge cake ~ to see them through?

Or is this the end of the world as they know it?

Thank you so much Sharon! I cannot wait for To Catch A Witch to be published!

Join me next time, happy reading, Samantha xx

 

Unexpected

Minding my own business, pottering around.

I did not expect to be frightened, it was just so unexpected.

A fully grown pigeon in the mouth of one of my cats.

I screamed the house down.

The cat wasn’t expecting to see me in the conservatory.

And the pigeon wasn’t expecting to be inside,

its talons making a stiletto heel noise on the laminate.

The local bird sanctuary were not expecting a phone call

from a worried husband ‘We don’t take in pigeons’

What was most unexpected, was being rescued by my daughter.

Now grown up  but as a child had woken up her Grandad –

(Who lives just around the corner) because of a bi spider.

She braved picking up the stunned pigeon and released it into the wild.

Samantha Henthorn 2017.

 

(Please note, no birds were harmed during this poem, I’m not really sure how it got in through the back door, but T.C. was nearby licking her whiskers. We didn’t get to the bird sanctuary stage – we think it was just stunned, and after sitting on the flags for half an hour, it flew away. It is true that my daughter picked it up and put it outside – could not believe it! This happened about six months ago.)

Superstitious Writing

This photograph is of my dearly departed cat, Flower. Poor Flower, I was thinking about her only yesterday, I can’t remember if it was four, or five years ago she left us. Black cats are considered unlucky for some, but good luck for others… now on the subject of luck and superstitions… I have been considering this recently. Since publishing my ‘Quirky Tales to Make Your Day’ collection, I have occasionally been asked ‘did that really happen?’ None of it ‘really happened’, I made it all up, but some of the stories were written in the first person… I really want to write a story about a (fictional) event in Manchester. Is this too much, dare I ask? What if I want to set a story at a funeral? Loads of examples of ill fate are popping into my head, but I hardly dare write them. Ah I’ll just have to tell myself that Stephen King was obviously not a teenage girl with special powers at a prom, and Charles Dickens was not an orphan who got taken in by a gang of pick-pockets, or was he? He didn’t really fall on ‘Hard Times’ … or did he? Can’t believe I’m scare to write, must be the heat.

Happy writing, Samantha

Time Management Malfunction

Martha the Border Terrier puppy is a fast worker. I only turned my back to dispose of something, when I returned she had rearranged the hallway with the doormat, a puppy pad and a toilet roll. She is a constant source of amusement (By the way, the orange foot is a plastic doorstopper – her favourite toy)

If only I could write as quickly as she can destroy… later this week, one of my Open University text books got it in the corner. Very chewy.

New year’s good intentions have barely got off the ground. MS related appointments have already started (one morning taken) weekday visitors (one day) One visit to the vets for vaccinations (one morning taken) And of course, I had forgotten it was a bank holiday on Monday. I managed to finish an essay on Tuesday – hurrah! I have not written any of my book or my short stories this week – boo! MS means that I don’t have as much time because everything takes me longer. I was hoping for two days study and two days of writing.

Time is precious and management of it seemed surprisingly easier when I was nursing. It was all priority driven. Everything is a priority now, including my cats. I have been asked how they are coping with the dog. They are absolutely fine, here is a picture of Petal posing for the camera. TC will play with Martha, and Petal will let her sit beside her (unheard of in the world of Petal) Both are doing what they normally do, no signs of jealousy or  distress.

Start again Monday… Possibly a pet inspired story?

How do you manage time for creativity?

Happy writing, Samantha 🙂

 

 

Clever Girl ?

201

Natural Curiosity

 

Baby bird amongst the gravel,

a tiny lump of coal.

Naughty cat.

 

Samantha Henthorn © 2016