So Hard to Say Goodbye

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Freya got to see cousin Melanie and meet her newest cousin, Vinnie.

The family visiting from England has returned home now. They went back hauling more stuff than they came with, at least in part because grandma doesn’t get enough opportunities to spoil the children, so I had to take advantage.

We had a great time together. The debacle on the trip to Beaufort has provided plenty of conversation and is already becoming part of the family lore.

But so many other wonderful things happened during the visit. Many good conversations. Trips to museums, visits with relatives, going to the park with the children, and playing in our backyard.

Freya bonded with Bean, Liz and Alan’s dog.

James spent a large part of his time here kicking a soccer ball around our yard. At six, he appears to be surprisingly athletic. (Surprising mostly because no one else on our side of the family is. We’re a bunch of hopeless klutzes.) Freya, who is eight, loved the tree swing and put in a lot of time on it.  There were many walks around the neighborhood and visits to the playground down the street.

A couple of days before their visit ended, we went to Target so the children could spend the money their English grandmother had given them for the trip (supplemented, as needed, by yours truly) and so I could fulfill my itch to buy a few clothing items for them. I get so few chances to do things like that.

Nice stance, right? He looks like he’s ready for the pros.

Freya picked out a new Barbie doll with interesting accessories. James wanted a baseball bat and ball. Since he’s only six, we found a tee-ball bat and balls for him. We also got a set of plastic balls too, for practice in the yard.

A little background on that:

Joe is a huge baseball fan and it’s one of the biggest things he’s missed since he relocated to England. Thanks to the Internet and MLB.com, he can still watch his beloved Braves, though he has to make adjustments for the time differences there. The children do sometimes watch with him.

Sadly, all the local minor league teams were playing out of town during his visit, but he did get to watch a number of Braves games on television while he was here. The children begged to be allowed to watch with him (possibly to avoid going to bed, but they did actually seem interested in the games).

For a good bit of the rest of their stay, James wanted to practice batting. His dad pitched many balls to him. He showed very good hand-eye co-ordination and was able to hit the ball pretty regularly. The kid might have an athletic future. Freya also took a turn with the bat. They took the bat home, along with a couple of balls, and an old youth baseball glove that had been hanging around here since it was abandoned years ago by another grandson who grew out of it. They may be the start of a wave of interest in baseball in England!

But now they’re gone. I’m always a little melancholy after family guests leave. The yard seems to echo with the squeals and laughter of the children. The house is too silent. I miss them all and my heart is a little empty.

But then I start to put the house back in order and get back to my normal activities – a bit of website work for my few remaining clients, gardening, watching baseball, myself, and most of all writing. And I begin to plan for the next family visit, and maybe another after that.

As a wise friend once told me, “There’s no ‘hello’ without a ‘goodbye’ first.”

The Beaufort, N.C. Visit

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Once we arrived in Beaufort, after the rather harrowing journey (see previous post), we had a wonderful time. I feel very blessed that all three of my children remain friends and enjoy spending time with each other. Since they’re widely dispersed geographically, the opportunities to gather aren’t as frequent as any of us would like, but perhaps they’re all the more special for that.

On our first full day there, it was still raining, windy, and chilly, but we decided to go ahead with some of the things we wanted to do that were mostly (or at least partly) indoors. That meant two museums which were high on the interest list: Fort Macon State Park and the Beaufort Maritime Museum.

Fort Macon is a restored pre-Civil war fort built on the tip of a coastal island overlooking the inlet from the Atlantic. The main part of the fort is below ground-level and built roughly in the shape of a diamond surrounding an open field. The cells of the building, once used as barracks, kitchens, and storage areas now all feature museum-type displays that show in (sometimes dismaying) detail what life was like for the men who served there. Each area displays a different time, starting from the pre-Civil war era when it was built, up to World War II, which was the last time it was used for military purposes.

Mess area in the fort.

The fort is surrounded by raised cannon emplacements. The State Park also include a very nice visitor’s center and displays. Weather prevented us taking advantage of some of the features like hiking trails and beach access, but we did spend most of the morning inside the fort and visitor’s center.

James with cannon at Fort Macon Visitor Center

After lunch at a local Beaufort restaurant, we walked over to the N.C. Maritime Museum in downtown Beaufort. The museum actually has two parts, a shipbuilding museum and the broader one. We skipped the shipbuilding, though we’ll probably go back for a closer look at a later date. The main museum has a number of exhibits that interested us particularly.

Raising a cannon from the seabed. Picture: Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps most spectacularly, the museum is the storage and display space for most of the artifacts retrieved in the undersea archaeological effort on the presumed site of Blackbeard’s main ship, the Queeen Anne’s Revenge.

I can highly recommend both places. They’re well-kept and well-run. Both had impressive displays that highlight unique moments in history. Fort Macon obviously leans heavily on military history, though it also highlights interesting facets of life at the time, including some of the gritty realities. (Bedbugs, anyone? Nineteenth century soldiers had to take apart their beds at least once a week and clean everything thoroughly to control pests. They also slept two to a cot in a frame the size of a regular single bed.)

The Maritime Museum also includes some fascinating information about and displays of marine flora and fauna. The display of a whale’s heart intrigued the children.

I can also report, from personal experience, that both have nice gift shops, well stocked with things that will tempt to children to nag their parents. And grandparents will find plenty of items that can be supplied with the justification that they’re educational.

A walk on Atlantic Beach

We concluded the day with a trip to Downeast Marine, the boat repair and sales place my daughter and her husband own. That was quite educational, too, though the children mostly wanted to see the 20-foot-tall statue of Blackbeard Liz and Alan acquired along with the shop.

Sunday morning was Easter, which meant baskets and Easter Egg Hunts in the morning. In the afternoon, we headed for Atlantic Beach, for a stroll on the sand. It was still chillly, but the rain had stopped and the sun actually appeared in the course of the afternoon. Joe and family live in Hythe, Kent, on a hill overlooking the English Channel. They found the cool, breezy weather pretty normal, though I found it chilly. They reported the water was warmer than the Channel water and the children took their shoes off to go paddling in the shallow surf.

 

 

An Unfortunate Incident on the Road

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Picture yourself barreling down the highway at seventy miles an hour in a rented minivan with your spouse in the passenger seat, son and daughter-in-law in the next row, two children in the third row and a pile of luggage in the back. It’s pouring rain, cold, and windy. You’re on the outskirts of nowhere.

Without warning, a message flashes up in bright orange on your dashboard. “ENGINE SHUTDOWN IMMANENT.” Below that, it suggests you have three seconds to find a safe place to pull over. When you press the gas pedal, there’s no response.

Good News: The highway isn’t too crowded here, and there is a shoulder so I can drift over to the side and stop off the road.

Bad News: Everything else.

Mixed News: We all have cell phones, but service shows only one bar. Fortunately, one bar is enough.

First Step: Call Avis Roadside Assistance. They’re only sort-of helpful. Suggest calling 911 to help us get safely off the highway, then they’ll provide a tow service for the current vehicle. Replacing it is trickier. A lot trickier. She’s looking into it.

Our gear stacked under the umbrella at a table outside the Circle K

A sheriff’s deputy showed up within a few minutes of my call. Fortunately we were within sight of an exit off the highway. The car did turn on again, although the ‘check engine’ light was now lit. Still, it moved when I pressed the gas pedal. With the sheriff’s deputy following us in case the car stopped again, we made it off the highway to a Circle K convenience store near the exit. The deputy wished us good luck and departed.

More conversation with Avis: They proposed getting us all an Uber to take us to the nearest Avis office, some 40 miles away (and back in the direction we’d already come). Of course, we’re several miles outside the nearest town, so it might take a while to get an Uber large enough to hold six people and luggage. And there was no guarantee the nearest Avis office would have a six-seater vehicle available, so we might have to wait for them to find another one for us or go to yet another office. I chewed all that over and had another thought.

We were heading to Beaufort to visit my daughter and were about 80 miles from there. I called her and she generously agreed to come get us. But it would take her and her husband coming since neither car would hold six people. He had to leave the boat shop he owned to come along, but he agreed, and they set out. We could work out how to get another vehicle later, in more comfort.

Meanwhile, the tow truck showed up take the minivan. We had to unload all our luggage, bottles, and other things from the van. The Circle K has a few tables outside topped by metal umbrellas. None of them are in use since it’s cold, windy, and raining. We stow everything on, around, and under one of the tables.

The gang poses under the giant pirate statue that marks Downeast Marine, the boat business my daughter and son-in-law own.

The Circle K was actually quite nice as roadside gas station/convenience stores go. They had an expansive selection of beverages, including coffee and hot chocolate available. They also had clean restrooms. There were plenty of snack food options and we sampled many of those as we waited an hour and a half for daughter to arrive. We rotated people standing watch over the luggage and going in to use facilities, warm up, and grab drinks or food.

Daughter and son-in-law arrived and brought us to their home in Beaufort. We had a great visit and did several interesting things while we were there, despite the poor weather. More on those in another post.

We’ll still need another minivan to get us all back home in a couple of days. It took five calls (three to customer service numbers; two to Avis offices) and an escalation to a supervisor to resolve the issue and find that there was a minivan available at the Avis office in the New Bern airport, about a 30-minute drive from my daughter’s home. We picked it up and it took us home and took the family to the airport with no trouble at all.

A Visit from the English Branch of the Family – Part 1

Karen McCullough Posted on by

This past week we were blessed with a visit from my son, his wife, and their two children. Those visits aren’t as frequent as I could wish, but that’s not their fault. They live in the south of England, which makes it quite an ordeal for them to get here. A long drive to London along clogged motorways, then navigating the tangled maze of roads around Heathrow Airport, parking, and getting through security, all come before they even get on the plane for the eight to nine-hour trip. The only mercy is the direct flight from London to Raleigh, so at least they don’t have to change planes.

The first couple of days were mostly about rest and getting over the jetlag for them. The children played in the yard or at the park down the street. The adults dozed, talked, ate, and took walks with the children.

When everyone was finally mostly functional, we went to the Greensboro Science Center, which is both science museum and zoo. The children were fascinated by the extensive and well set-up aquarium, watching the penguins waiting for feeding time or doing zoomies in the water. The sharks swam in their enormous tank ignoring the smaller fish and the moray eel who kept himself mostly tucked into a hollow space in a display log. Feeding time in the other enormous fish display was fascinating as the zookeeper dropped in lines with the preferred cuisine of the mantas and other varieties of fish kept there.

The day was pleasantly warm for early April so we spent more time outside in the zoo, walking a circuit that started with the meerkat habitat, wound past the gibbon exhibit, the crocodiles, various birds, and some play areas before reaching one of the highlights, the tiger area. Tigers are impressively huge and graceful and the weather seemed to suit one in particular, who was prowling around his area, trotting across grassy areas, climbing a rocky outcrop with stunning grace and leaping from one rock to another.

Then it was onto the maned wolves (all sleeping), a serval, a sand cat (almost unbearably cute), and a longer stop to gape at the adorable red pandas. Fortunately one of the two was awake and roaming around, giving the children an up-close view once or twice. Beyond that were flamingos, then the pygmy hippopotamuses (hippopotami?), an Okapi (which looks like someone threw together with spare parts from several other animals), and a Cassowary. I overheard a man from another party refer to the Cassowary as a giant prehistoric turkey. Pretty accurate, actually. We ended the zoo part in the barnyard, where sheep, goats, and a donkey were roaming in large enclosure.

The de rigeur stop for snacks inside came next. Our last stop was in the snake and insect lab in the basement area. James, the younger of the two children, is a fan of bugs. When he heard there was a tarantula, seeing it became his main goal. It took a little searching but we did, in fact, find the tarantula cage. While the rest of us kept out distance, James moved in for a closer look (through the glass, of course).

The next couple of days were filled with visits from relatives, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to see our son and his family, visits to a few other favorite places, and them spending time with one of Joe’s oldest friends and his family.

Then it was off on a trip to New Bern, where my older daughter and her husband are located. But that’s a whole ’nother story. Actually a couple of stories.

Red Panda

Mother’s Day Came Early This Year

Karen McCullough Posted on by

My husband proclaimed last Sunday was an early Mother’s Day because he had a great pair of gifts and couldn’t wait to give them to me.

He knows me well. The changing weather this time of year and daffodils and camellia blooms put me in the mood for spring. I’ve ordered some seeds and bulbs for my plantings and have even started some seeds I already have in small flats. We’re still several weeks away from the last frost date here in North Carolina, but it’s not too early to start getting ready.

So I now have a brand new Hori Hori knife, a great all-purpose gardening tool, and new clippers. Both will see plenty of use.

There’s plenty to do. Shrubs need trimming. Garden beds need to be cleaned out and prepared. Weeds have overrun parts of them and they all need fertilizer added. I have a bunch more seeds to get started.

I’m excited to get my hands back in the dirt and watch those plants grow again.

Left: The top flat holds coleus seedlings while the bottom are alyssum. They’re inside a red basket to prevent the chipmunks and squirrels from digging in them!

The Doubting Time

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I’m at that point in the current work in progress, tentatively titled Treadwell House – Sanctuary. It’s intended as a cozy mystery with paranormal or magic realism elements. I just passed 52,000 words. I project it to come in between 75K and 80K words, so I’m around the two-thirds point. And it seems like it’s always around this point in writing my books that it happens.

Some piece of my brain starts whispering to the rest that this is complete crap. Nonsense. Ridiculous. Nobody’s going to want to read this. It’s boring. It’s pointless. It’s just junk.

And maybe it is. An author is never the best judge of their own work.

But I know this feeling. It’s an old friend—or old enemy. I’m pretty sure it’s happened with every book I’ve written. Since I’ve scratched out more than two dozen of them now, it’s hard to say for sure, but I know that it has happened with at least the last five or six. It’s gotten to be predictable. I almost wait for it, though I dread it, too, because one of these times that voice might be right. It might just be crap.

Nonetheless, I’ll ignore the voice in my head and finish writing the book. I love the characters I’ve created, and I want to find out how the story ends as badly as I hope my readers will. (I do have a general idea, but I write to see how those will take shape in the reality of the novels.)

So far, the voices have been wrong. I’m going to hope that’s the case this time, too.

Malice, Matrimony & Murder Kickstarter Pre-Launch Underway!

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I’m excited to be part of this unique project. Around thirty authors (myself included) will be contributing mystery/crime stories centered around a wedding. Each story will be complete in itself, but each will also contain a clue to an overall mystery, which you’ll learn about at the beginning of the book. Solve the big mystery and win some interesting prizes. My current working title for my story is The Other Wedding Crasher. Learn more and sign up to be notified when the Kickstarter goes live here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marlabradeen/malice-book?ref=4oje6u

A Surprising Gift

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Each of my somewhat irregular newsletters contains a drawing. The prizes vary, but sometimes include copies of my books. Alicia H., one of the recipients of a prize from a recent drawing sent me these lovely pictures she took of my book, Wired for Murder, with some of her beautiful flowers. I was delighted by these:

   
You can have a chance to win books and other prizes by signing up for my newsletter using the box on the right!

The Night Prowlers: Publication Story

Karen McCullough Posted on by

The Night Prowlers

The Backstory:

I first contacted Avalon Books to query after my daughter had read a couple of their novels she got from the library and suggested that I could write something similar.

I’d been writing for about eight years at that point and had completed four novel-length manuscripts. When daughter mentioned Avalon Books, I read a couple of their books, and realized that the kinds of stories they published appealed to me, though none of the things I’d written to that point would be appropriate for them.

Still, I had an idea, so I quickly tapped out three chapters and an outline of a story I thought would interest them. Then I waited. I actually completed another book in progress at the time while I waited. A year or so later, I got a response from an editor at Avalon. She liked my idea, thought it would work for them, and wanted the full manuscript.

And that’s where it got interesting. I found the first three chapters I’d sent, but I couldn’t find the outline anywhere. This is so not me. I tend to be very organized and a bit of a packrat. I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t have kept a copy of the outline. But I searched both my digital files and paper ones and came up empty.

I had only the vaguest recollection of what I had put in the outline. I went ahead and wrote the book as it seemed like it should work, which I hoped was at least similar to what I’d promised. I actually completed that book pretty quickly, in just over a couple of months, as I recall. I liked the way it worked out even if I wasn’t sure how close it was to what I’d promised.

Hoping that the editor wouldn’t remember the original outline either, I sent off the completed manuscript.  Apparently it worked for her, too.

A couple of months later I got the Call. Avalon offered me a contract for the book, however they didn’t like my original title for the book and suggested “The Night Prowlers” instead.

It was published about a year later. This is the cover for the original hardback version:

 

Looking More Closely at a Couple of Scam Emails

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Like most people, I get lots of scam and phishing emails. They’re getting more sophisticated and personalized, which makes them even more dangerous, but there are still enough clues to alert you before you try to answer the email or click on the link. I’ve copied two of them to show some of those clues.  The first one is less sophisticated and easier to identify as spam:

Clues:

  • There is no company identification on this one at all; any legitimate message about email issues will include the name and usually the logo of the email host.
  • The “from” address is my own email address; it should be from the email host service. (Note: “From” addresses are ridiculously easy to fake, so don’t let one that looks legit fool you into thinking the rest of the message is.)
  • The message is addressed to my email address rather than to me by name. My email service knows my name and would address any legitimate email messages to me personally.
  • The big one: When I mouse-over the green box, the actual link pops up as you see here. It doesn’t look anything like an address for my actual email server. Always pay particular attention to what is between the “https://” and the first dot because that’s the base server the link is sending you to. In this case, it looks like “fleek.ipso.io”. That bears no resemblance to my email host service address, which look more like “email.hostservice.com”. I’m using “hostservice as a placeholder, even though the next one actually does show the name of my email host service.

This one is a bit more clever:

Clues:

  • It does include the name of my hosting service, InMotion Hosting in the “From” line, but the actual email address shows cpanel.net, not inmotionhosting.xxx.
  • Once again, the email is not addressed to me personally. They know my name and legitimate emails from them include it.
  • The email uses “InMotion” but the company name is “InMotion Hosting, Inc.” and always identifies itself that way.
  • This is a bit more technical, but the message about updating the SSL certificate for email is a bit of gobbledegook that sounds legit but in fact is nonsense.
  • The final test. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a screen grab that included the link that showed when I moused over the green box. But this is it: “https:// opwer90adfjepaawliapjerio.sdlficvuammosir. dweb. com / #karen@kmccullough.com”  (I’ve added a few spaces to ensure the link doesn’t activate.)

I think these are both credential-stealing attempts. Clicking on the links would likely take me to a page that looked legitimate and asked me to sign into my email account with my user name and password. That would give them complete access to my email server. Alternatively, the link could take me to a page loaded with malware that would try to download to my computer. Both are actually possible as well. I’m not about to click on those links to see what would happen.

Note: I haven’t blacked out the name of my hosting service because it’s also very easy for anyone to find out with just a tiny bit of effort.

Bottom Line: Examine carefully ANY email that asks you to click on a link. Always mouse-over the link area and look closely and carefully at the actual destination.