Fun times ahead!

Yesterday I left my apartment without putting the alarm on because I couldn't press the code into the keypad with my gloves on.  This morning I figured out that I can put the alarm on before putting on my gloves.  I blame my lack of logical thinking on the cold and the fact that as a South African I am not equipped or adapted enough to deal with freezing weather.  When my brother tells me the weather in Cape Town is 33 degrees Celsius I want to jump on the next plane to fly there to hit him.  -12 degrees here on Monday.  It's snowing heavily and the temperature is supposed to drop to -29 degrees Celsius by Sunday.  Fun times.
Kiev is in the news quite a bit lately, the peaceful protests have turned violent.  Luckily I don't live or work in the city centre so I am safe.  There is a part of me that thinks 'Wow I am living in an event that will one day be part of history and will feature in history text books.  How cool is that?'  But then I think of the Ukrainian people, how angry they are, how many of them leave their warm homes to protest in the freezing weather and that puts it in the right perspective.

I have to put it out there - I LOVED AMERICA.  I was a bit nervous.  I watch CSI, Dexter, Bones.  It does seem that there are serial killers everywhere.  But America was better than they show on TV and in the movies.  The people are terrific, Five Guys fries are awesome, Shake Shack burgers are the best, and the Gingerbread lattes at Starbucks...to die for.  I got to stay a half a block from Times Square, visit the 9/11 Memorial, eat family-style Italian food, see a Broadway musical, the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, eat Maryland crab cakes, Maine lobster, do the Freedom Trail in Boston, experience a blizzard and winter storm - it was awesome!  Definitely worth another visit.
Hush Baby became available on Amazon just before Christmas and is doing well with some good reviews already.  Check it out.

This week The Colorful Art of Pain made its appearance on Amazon.  This is a book I did with Canadian artist Daniel Quinlan.  I worked with his wife when I was in Moshi Tanzania.  Daniel suffered ongoing chronic pain from a pinched sciatic nerve.  He decided to stop painkillers and started painting as a way to take his mind off of the pain.  When he used up his brushes he turned to finger painting.  In a three year period he painted 125 canvases with his fingers until he had to stop when he could no longer move his fingers.  The Colorful Art of Pain contains over seventy of his original paintings he painted during this period.  My job was to tie all the paintings together with a story.  I have to say I enjoyed the challenge and am very proud of the result.  The book is available on Amazon as a paperback and on Kindle.  Please check it out.
Otherwise life goes on.
At least the supermarket across the road delivers to the door so I don't have to try and lug home bags of groceries in the snow.
Happy 2014 to all!  May all your hopes and dreams materialise this year so that this becomes a year to remember for many good reasons.
Cindy

Not everyone will like what you do and that's okay!

The curtains go up, the music starts, the audience begins to laugh and applaud, and I run off the stage crying.  Granted I was five years old at the time.  And today if I was in that audience I would also have laughed.  Five year olds dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts, topless except for balloons cellotaped in strategic places, must have looked quite hilarious.  Especially when some balloons popped as the curtains opened.

It took me years to recover from that experience and get over my stagefright.
Writing a book and publishing it is a bit like going out on stage.  You put yourself out there for everybody to see and comment on.  You stand there completely exposed, at the mercy of your audience.  Sometimes the balloons pop and your audience see more than what you bargained on.  Occasionally they find mirth in something that should have been serious.  Some love to tear everything to shreds, not quite distinguishng the fine line between being critical and just being a bitch.  Others identify with your characters and love what you do.
Here's the thing.  You can't please everybody every time.
We are all different, unique, with different experiences which shape our opinions and perceptions.  We don't all like the same things.
For me cucmber in a salad is a fate worse than death.  I always gingerly fish them out when I happen upon them.  Other people might like cucumbers so much, they even, horror upon horrors, eat it before it even goes into a salad.  Standing in the kitchen nibbling on pieces of cucumber while they prepare a meal.
You don't have to like what everybody else likes.  Not everybody has to like what you do.  So it stands to reason that not everybody has to like what you write and that's okay.
Cindy Vine lives at the foot of Kilimanjaro and is the author of Not Telling, Defective and C U @ 8.

Home sweet home

After being an expat teacher for over 25 years, I really cherish the time to return home to Cape Town, South Africa during school holidays.  Nothing beats seeing family and old friends.  Not the exotic beaches in Thailand, delicious seafood in Goa or seeing Ankor Wat at sunset.  Once I set eyes on Table Mountain dominating the Cape Town skyline I know that I am home.
This time I returned home 2 weeks before the end of the school year.  I'd been experiencing worrisome health issues, the result of a local doctor trying to give me alternate meds to the ones prescribed by my Cape Town specialist with disasterous consequences.  It's taken 3 weeks but my specialist has been able to stabilise my blood pressure and pulse rate.  It's just my blood sugar levels that is still not right.  I know that it will come right in time.

Of course all this medical stuff puts one off track and makes you lose focus.  My writing was moved to the back-burner and marketing of my books became non-existent.  I think that's one of the hardest things about self-publishing.  You have to do your own marketing.  The downside of that is when you are sick nothing happens.  Everything grinds to a halt.  Loses momentum, and you have to pick up the pieces and start again.  Frustrating.  But being home, seeing my mountain, surrounded by love makes it all bearable.
Hush Baby is the novel I'm currently working on.  I think it is going to be a goodie and I'm planning a great twist at the end.
C U @ 8 has already received some good reviews and was my venture into the light-hearted fun side of life.  With Hush Baby I'll be venturing back into the dark side to uncover more of humankind's cruelty to each other and how people react and deal with those kinds of situations.  Defective, Not Telling and The Case of Billy B are all dark realistic fiction.  The kinds of books I love to read.