Category: Blog Posts

Going back to the cabin.

Posted on March 31, 2017 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

Although I’ve been hunkered down in my office everyday for months, only emerging for food and coffee, it’s only now that I’ve written the first chapter of the next Fortune Bay book (sorry, not even a working title yet) that I feel like I’m back to work.

I’ve been busy since publishing Home for Christmas November first. (Eek! 5 months ago!) Besides Cuba, Christmas and the dreaded annual family business year end, a final (I think) edit of my Mayan murder mystery (more about that in a later post) and endless publishing, promotion and general book-business housekeeping, I also wrote a sequel novella to the Murphy family trilogy, called Family Matters. At the moment, I am reserving this book for a group of supportive readers whom I know have finished The Good Neighbor and Home for Christmas because it really is a sequel to those books and should be read after the other two. (If you’ve read those books and reviewed them, just let me know at Judy@JudithHudsonAuthor.com and I’ll add you to the selected readers list.)

Then there was the nasty finger problem that involved 6 months with a splint on the middle finger of my right hand that made typing a challenge, and probably had something to do with the fact that I did not jump right into writing another full-length book. But, I’m pleased to say, the stitches came out today! break out the champagne! Let’s just hope the digit says healthy.

I’ve also started plotting another mystery (yes, it’s a series) and a new trilogy of books set down the shore of Majestic Lake. So far, I think of it as the three-sisters-who-have-never-met-before-inherit-a-very-funky-old-hunting-lodge-from-the-grandfather-they-never-knew trilogy. Here’s the photo that inspired that one. I don’t think it will materialize on paper though for at least a few months.

So I’ve been juggling the three books in my head for over a month, a very confusing stage to be at, and this week when I finally started typing page one, Lily’s book came out the winner.

Lily showed up in Family Matters, but you won’t have to read FM first to enjoy this book. She’s Max’s daughter who has run to Fortune Bay for reasons that are just beginning to reveal themselves. (I’m only on chapter two.) But I do know that Pierre, the new French-Canadian chef at the resort will somehow be involved in helping her working out her problems, and I’d hazard a guess that she helps him, too.

So, I’ll get to work, and keep you up to date on my progress. That’s all for now,

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What covers reveal – and a cover reveal

Posted on February 24, 2017March 11, 2017 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

Exciting news! I’ve received the cover from my designer for my current novella, Family Matters, a sequel to The Good Neighbor and Home for Christmas.

I’ll let you in on a secret—my designer is my daughter, Rosey Hudson. Feel lucky to have such a talented graphic artist for a daughter because it allows me to maintain a lot of control over the look of my covers, as well as getting her invaluable feedback.

And don’t forget The Good Neighbor is still 99¢ – until the end of February.

If you already have a copy of The Good Neighbor, make sure the Automatic Book Updates for your kindle are turned on. (See how HERE.). I’ve made a few small changes, a few—ahem—typos and commas that I just couldn’t stand for and I want everyone to get them.

I’m not planning to release Family Matters for quite a few months, but I’ll be sending free Advanced Reader Copies to everyone who lets me know they’ve reviewed The Good Neighbor on Amazon or GoodReads. Just email me at judy@judithhudsonauthor.com .

I have definite ideas about what I want my on my covers . If you’ve read my books you’ll know that I don’t write a lot of graphic sex, and I didn’t want my covers to promise something the books didn’t deliver. (No naked male torsos on the covers, although there are a few shirtless firemen scenes.)

Seriously though, I feel the cover is a contract between me and my readers, and to me these books are first and foremost a story about a woman. Sure, she has people in her life and one of them is probably a man who (spoiler alert!) she falls in love with, but I feel like the stories are more than just the love story. (And yes, a few of the men’s struggles have featured strongly too.)

Right now, I’m reading a book that really spelled out my feelings about the value of romance books, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, by Leslie Daniels. The quirky protagonist Barb thinks she’s found an unpublished novel by the late Vladimir Nabokov and so acquires an agent to try to sell it. The agent gives her a stack of romance novels and suggests, with her journalism background, that she try writing one. So Barb settles down to read them.

She says in the quote in my opening:

“I read the romances. They played me as if I were a piano, my grandmother’s black baby grand. I could feel it happening, like a drug taking effect. The drug was tenderness. It didn’t come from the sex scenes but from right before, right after. The narcotic was not lust but the tenderness between people, the love in spite of their unlovableness.”

That’s what I want people to feel when they read my books, that inspite of our unlovableness, there’s someone out there that can love each one of us.

Now, I can relate to this protagonist because I didn’t read a romance novel until I was in my mid-thirties. My mother didn’t read them and I didn’t have an aunt who passed them on to me. I read mysteries. Then I stumbled on a Norah Roberts book (Tears of the Moon, the Irish Jewels Trilogy) at the library and Oh my God!

I’d never heard of Dame Norah (I know – deprived!) and gobbled up every book I could get my hands on. I tried other authors, enjoyed some, was disappointed with others, so when I read Barb’s comments on romance today in the Nabokov book, it struck a chord.

Barb also goes on to say, “Lust is like a robin attacking his reflection in a pane of glass again and again.” I don’t think I’d go quite that far. (grin)

Thanks for reading Fortune Bay books.

Judy

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Cuba

Posted on January 23, 2017February 9, 2017 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

We went to Cuba for a week just before Christmas and I came home with more questions than answers. Most of what I’m writing here today was told to me by local Cubans because, after only one week on the island, I can’t pretend to really understand the situation or what life is like for the average Cuban.

I’ve always heard that the embargo’s been tough on the Cuban people, but people I met on the trip told me that now they have the double and triple whammies of the collapse of the Soviet Union (and the virtual elimination their assistance toCuba) and economic problems in Venezuela, one of their key trading partners.

But the people we met are making do with a smile. “We have the wonderful weather,” one of them told us. “And music and dancing.”

The country is beautiful country, and the people are very friendly, making do the best they can. I came home with a new appreciation of all we take for granted.

We’d heard unemployment was high, but online sources peg it at 3.5% – Much lower than Canada, the US and the UK’s 7.2%. Sounds good, but as is often the case in Cuba, all is not as it seems.

One young man who worked at the resort told us he made $500 per month, but it goes directly to the government and they reimburse him with $40 per month.

That’s for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. He felt lucky to have the job, though, because he said unemployment was so high. Not what I see in those outside reports, but where do they get their figures?

We soon started tipping for absolutely everything. A one CUC peso tip, equivalent to one US dollar, is really nothing to us but 1/10th of his weekly wage, and he was highly paid compared to many. He said, quite openly, that

to make ends meet, almost everyone has a black market business going.

A cigar factory in the town of Jaruco. I assume the bars on the windows are for ventilation and to keep people out. There didn’t seem to be glass.

I don’t know how many people offered to sell us cigars that the company “gave” to a member of their family who worked there. We visited the home of one of our guide’s family members in what looked like a middle class neighborhood in a medium sized town. They had 4 tiny rooms for at least 4 people, acceptable by our standards and I think well off by Cuban standards. Their tiny back yard was full of chickens in cages – no doubt a source of extra income.

This, along with a small refrigerated compartment on the left was all of the food available at this government store. Fine if you wanted olives or coffee.

The stores are woefully under stocked. Much of the meat, all beef, and most vegetables are not available to the local people, only to the tourists.

There is not much a visitor can do about that, but we can help out with consumer products. I had always heard that you should take things, almost any “thing”, to leave with the people you meet, but it didn’t really sink in until we saw how few “things” there were in the stores. Or, I should say “the store”, because in many towns there is really only one government run store.

One of our guides happily showed us his watch and cell phone and shoes and said they were

The extent of the dry goods in the government store, the only store in town.

all gifts, hand-me-downs from tourists. We became increasingly generous with tips to everyone we came in contact with because I hadn’t brought an gifts to give away. I often thought of the drawer of old cell phones and glasses I could easily have brought. Anything, even shampoo, is valuable. One young man said he used it to barter for an eye examination.

Apparently the wonderful free health care system is not as wonderful as we have been led to believe.

Old cars were everywhere, but we saw lots of horse-drawn buggies too. Gas is expensive.

Long waits and shortages – or complete lack of availability of medicines – is common. I asked about the food vouchers I had heard were given to every person. Not really any more, I was told. One thirty-something young man said he remembered when he was a boy there was milk for children for breakfast, but not anymore.He said it was particularly difficult for old people without family. They receive one very poor meal a day at a public facility that he said was very unhygienic.

No one has internet in their homes.

For us, the week turned out to be a break from computers and internet. They system at the resort was so difficult and frustrating to use that we soon gave up completely. The country has only had WiFi for a few months. In town squares, you see people clustered around cell phones and I soon recognized these as WiFi zones.

Uniformed children getting onto a school bus.

In many ways the people are well educated – Cuba is known for its universal education system – but except for the lucky few, it ends with high school. It was hard to really understand how the system there works in such a short visit, because there are large gaps in what the people know about the outside world and possibly even what they know about how their own country is run. That might all change with the coming of the internet.

Comparing our two systems, social and political, is like comparing apples and something that is not fruit at all.

Someone gave me this mind boggling explanation of how one person can sell a house to another, something which for some reason, I was told, is illegal, unless you do it like this – Couple A owns a house. Man B wants to buy it. Woman A divorces Man A, on paper, and keeps the house. Then she marries Man B. Then she divorces Man B and remarries Man A, leaving the house with Man B. The same process is followed if you want to sell a car.

A walk in the beautiful, overgrown Hershey Gardens.

The trip has left me with a lot to think about. About freedom of information and, obviously, about our consumer system, both the good and the bad.

Cuba is a beautiful country though with a rich history, friendly people and contagious music.

They are struggling to provide visitors with the best they can offer, but a lack of supplies means any hotel is at least one less star than it advertises. But don’t hesitate to go. Our visits are so important to their economy, to the people and their ability to feed their families.

If you’ve visited Cuba, I’d love to hear your memories.

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Have a Ferry Merry Christmas

Posted on December 30, 2016 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

I wrote this post a few years ago, but it seemed apropos again this year.

Merry Christmas to all and I wish you a happy New Year.

One snowy night before Christmas, I waited with an expectant crowd in the parking lot of the Nanaimo ferry terminal on eastern Vancouver Island. The crowd was buzzing with excitement. An entire family in Santa hats arrived, adding to the festive air.

Lights spilled out the open terminal doorways highlighting the falling snow. We don’t usually get snow on Vancouver Island, maybe a couple of days each winter, but in this particular Christmas season we, like most of Canada, had been battered by wave after wave of snowstorms.

Taking ferries to and from the mainland is a fact of life for islanders everywhere. As I waited in the dark parking lot for my daughter, I thought back to the first time I spotted her, blurry through my tears, among the hundreds of students pouring out into the parking lot on her first Thanksgiving weekend home from university. Now, years later, she lives in Vancouver and once again the ferry was bringing her home for the holidays.

But what about my husband? I’d taken him to the tiny Nanaimo Airport two weeks before in the middle of our first, blinding snowstorm to catch a flight east to attend a family emergency. When we got to the airport we discovered nothing was flying out that day – but if he could get the ferry to Vancouver, he might still catch his connecting flight. In almost white-out conditions, we made a run for the ferry and he did just make his flight that day.

Now, two weeks later, as I slogged through the snow to pick up my daughter, I wondered if he’d get home the following night in time for Christmas. My trusty Rav 4 made it to the ferry, the windshield wipers barely clearing the window before the sticky snow covered it again, the headlights showing only the swirling snow ahead.

My daughter and I stopped at the airport on our drive home to see what the chances were of my husband’s flight making it in the next night, Christmas Eve.

Apparently zero to none.

In the empty, echoing airport, we heard an attendant tell a traveler that the bags he’d last seen two days before in Vancouver might be in the truck of lost luggage that had just rolled off the ferry. And that they might get the trucks unpacked in the next few days.

“But tomorrow is Christmas eve,” he wailed. “All of our presents are in those bags.”

“Sorry,” the attendant said.

Although we here on the coast love to complain about holiday ferry sailing waits, the fact remains that, barring gale force winds, the ferries will make it through. They’re our stalwart link to the mainland and, for me, on this unusually snowy Christmas, the ghostly white ship was the envoy responsible for pulling our family together.

It kept on snowing right through Christmas Eve, but finally, at noon on Christmas day, my husband made it home, with his bags, on the ferry.

It’s the same story for families up and down the coast, from Saltspring to the Queen Charlotte Islands. In good times and bad, and when all else fails, we count on the ferries to keep our families together.

I hope you made it together with you and yours this Christmas.

See you in the new year.

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Scanning Photographs and Slides

Posted on November 19, 2016 by judyhudson@shaw.ca

Welcome to the second post in the Making a Family Album on Shutterfly series. (You can view the first post HERE.)

Last week I encouraged you to organize your photographs. Mine go back 100 years to my mother and father’s parents. And of course, this does not include the hundreds of digital photographs I have of my immediate family. In the interest of full disclosure, my daughter made this beautiful family album of her childhood years for a family Christmas present last year. Now I just have to organize my childhood and my parents!

If all of your pictures are already high quality digital, you can skip this post completely and make the Best Christmas Fruit Cake Ever from my recipe instead! Then come back next week for the introduction to the Shutterfly program.

If you are not sure of the quality of your images, read on.

If you are using old photographs and slides, read the section on resolution and the scanner section below.

USING DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS

UNDERSTANDING RESOLUTION & PIXELS PER INCH

To check the file size of your photographs, open your file explorer, or however you usually find your photo images, hover the cursor over the image and look for the pixel size. The largest size my little Nikon Coolpix camera takes is 4608 x 3456 pixels , but my digital SLR takes larger files.

(More pixels = more visual information= more details)

By opening the menu on the camera I can set it to take photos as small as 640 x 480 pixels, a size I would use in these blog posts. You only need 72 ppi (pixels per inch) for an image to look good on a computer screen, but you need 300 ppi for the same image to look as good when printed.

So, just because it looks good on the computer does not mean a picture will look as good when printed at the same relative size as what you see on the screen.

That said, you cannot add information to an image. If it was shot at 640 x 480 pixels, making it three times larger will not show up any new details, it will just make it blurrier.

For print, you want to shoot the largest size, most pixels possible.

At 300 pixels per inch, (the resolution necessary to print), assuming your original photo is in focus,

4608 x 3456 pixels will make a clear photograph 15″ x 11.5″

(4608 ÷ 300 = 15.35, 3456 ÷ 300 = 11.52)

640 x 480 pixels will make a clear photograph 2.1″ x 1/6″

So, divide the number of pixels of your image files by 300 to see what potential size of prints your digital photographs are. And I’d recommend changing your camera to take the largest pictures possible if you think might want to print them later, for example on a trip. Yes, it takes more room on the memory card, but you can always make an image smaller (we’ll go into that another week) but you can’t make it bigger without losing clarity.

SCANNING PRINTS AND SLIDES

You can take photographs and slides in to most places with a good photo department, here in BC I’d say many small photo stores or London Drugs, and Costco, and have them scan all of your prints and slides onto a DVD or thumb drive. But that can be very pricey, especially for slides, so you’ll want to carefully select the pictures you actually want in the book before you have them scanned. Also, I have had bad luck with scanned slides before so if you decide to go this route, have a small sample scanned first.

For prints, you might be able to use your current printer scanner, if it’s a good one. My daughter used the scanner at work to scan many of the photos she used in our first family album. I have a HP Office Pro 8600 plus that’s a few years old, and it will scan prints to a resolution of 4800 dpi (dots per inch.) You only need to scan it at 300 ppi to reproduce a photograph at the same size. However, a very crisp image, and some of the very old, very small black and white images I have of my parent’s honeymoon are incredibly crisp, can be scanned at 600 ppi and successfully printed at twice the original size.

A 4 x 6 print scanned at 100 ppi, it will look as crisp as the original printed at 1.3″ x 2″

at 300 ppi it will look as crisp as the original printed at 4″ x 6″

I repeat –

you can not add information to an image,

a blurry or mediocre image at 4 x 6 will still look blurry

if scanned at a higher resolution and printed to a larger size.

Scanning at a higher resolution takes longer and is not always worth the trouble if there is not enough detail captured in the original print. For the most part, I’d suggest scanning old family snapshots at 300 ppi or slightly higher and planning to make them no larger than the original size in the album.

BUYING A DEDICATED SCANNER

Because I have a lot of my own and my father’s slides, I bought a dedicated scanner, an Epsonperfection scanner that scans prints and slides and even film. It cost about $200 a couple of years ago and I have been very happy with it. It’s a flatbed scanner, versus a drum scanner which would only be necessary if you were planning to print very large, say greater than 11″ x 14″.

There are advantages to using a dedicated (no printer attached) scanner for prints. Often, you can lay out many small prints at once and set it the software to separate the prints into separate files before you hit scan, rather than you having to scan them one by one or cut them up with photo software later.

You can also do some corrections right in the scanner software, taking out color casts that cloud old photographs, cropping, brightening etc, before you scan.

SCANNING SLIDES

If you have slides to scan, make sure you buy a scanner specifically for slides and prints, and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. It’s no more difficult than scanning prints and you can get amazing quality images from slides, often suitable for a two page spread.

Slides are very expensive to have professionally scanned, because they are fiddly and take a long time, minutes per slide, to do a good job. But often, they are exceptionally crisp images in a very small package. Think about how good slides can look projected to many times their original size on a screen. Slides will soon be completely obsolete though, ending up in the garbage without a backward glance. So I took the time to go through all of my own and my father’s slides, saving only the best for my book.

If you don’t have a slide projector, you can get an inexpensive slide viewer that you hold up to your eye one slide at a time. Consider getting one. There may be some real gems in that pile.

Next week, I’ll get you started with Shutterfly for those who are ready to surge ahead.

Now – to work!

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Judith Hudson – Author

your spot for Romantic Women's Fiction and Exciting Travel Mystery

Category: Blog Posts

Going back to the cabin.

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What covers reveal – and a cover reveal

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