Tag Archive for: All Things Considered

Flexing, Resilience, and Going Home

/in /by

By AB Plum




















In a little over three weeks,
I’ll board a plane for a twelve-hour flight to the US, headed for:

California.

Silicon Valley.

Home.

After two-plus months in
Copenhagen without a dishwasher, I’m really looking forward to that luxury.
(No, washing dishes by hand wasn’t the hardest adjustment. But … I washed
enough dishes growing up as the oldest of six kids to say:  been
there done, that).

On the other hand, washing
dishes here three times a day reminded me of how many people in the world lack
water to drink or cook or bathe or clean their teeth. Our three-room Danish
apartment would make those resilient people think they’d entered Heaven. Nobody
forced me to take this sabbatical so no whining allowed.
Frankly, I’ll miss the
incredible public transportation. It took me a day or two to remember to click
on and click off trains and buses—not too different from San Francisco. And
maybe the easiest adjustment. Never having to drive or find a place to park has
reinforced how glad I am that I like to walk (because the train doesn’t stop in
front of my apartment).  J

Returning home, I’ll have to
re-adapt to shopping for groceries once a week instead of every day. Having
three niche markets fifty feet from our apartment has changed our buying habits.
I wonder, though, if I’ve seen the future here? Consumers load their own
grocery bags (plastic, paid for if they forget to bring one). Plastic surprised
me since in our part of California, plastic is banned from supermarkets.

When we first arrived in
Denmark, I vowed to learn to speak Danish.

Didn’t happen. I’ve learned
to read and understand quite a bit. My vocabulary has expanded and my
pronunciation is somewhat understandable to a tolerant native. But speaking
full sentences? Expressing more than the basics: Where is [the bathroom]? What time is it? How do you say … In most
cases, Danes reply in English. But the majority of grocery store clerks still
greet me in Danish and ask if I want a receipt.

The elevator continues to require
an act of faith to step into, but my heart rate kicks up only about ten beats
instead of twenty. Flexibility. Resilience. The little steps matter.
Going to the airport is the
next big step. We’ve opted to go by taxi because of our luggage—too much to
handle on the train. We’ve about accepted the fare—almost a quarter of one
airline ticket. We congratulate ourselves on our adaptability. The fare still feels outrageous …

We leave on a Friday—bedlam at
the airport as we know from our earlier flight to Scotland. We’re flying on a
budget airline. The gates are practically in Germany. We’ll probably worry
until we board about what we’ve forgotten. Maybe our new-found flexibility will
extend to asking, What difference does it make what we’ve forgotten?
Because … the one huge change
we soon embraced after our arrival?

We can live quite comfortably
with far less “stuff” than we have.

If we had to walk out of this
apartment with nothing but the clothes on or backs, our medications, our
wallets, our passports, and nothing else—not even our laptop—we’d get along
fine.

Have you spent an extended
stay in a foreign country?

What was your biggest
adjustment?

Did you feel a bit smug about
your resilience to new customs, food, language, etc.?

****  
AB Plum and her alter-ego,
Barbara, have spent the summer in Denmark, making sojourns to Scotland and
Finland. The first trip required a great deal of flexibility to resolve some
immigration issues. The second trip required a whole new mindset relative to
Finnish.

Despite a few turbulent days,
Barbara will meet her deadline for publication of Crazy Daze and a Knight, a romantic comedy exploring a second
chance at love. Available on Kindle August 27.

STUFF HAPPENS—READY OR NOT

/in /by
by AB Plum



STUFF HAPPENS—READY
OR NOT
Everyone would probably agree:  travel requires flexibility.
Moving to another country for three
months demands a lot of flexibility.
As I am learning during my three-month
great adventure in Copenhagen. (It’s not all about the pastries).
The first big flex point for me came
as soon as we reached our apartment.
As a walker, I always check out
places to walk. Quiet streets, little traffic, and sidewalks on both sides of
the street appeared promising.
Until … I realized bicyclists had
their own routes running parallel to the sidewalks. And cars could park halfway
up on those same sidewalks. Which, by the way, were blocks of two rows of cement
blocks side by side, separated by three-by-three cobblestone squares running
down the middle. Grates, front steps, and boutique displays occupied the space
next to the buildings. Another walker coming toward me left about two inches to
navigate. Damp or dry, those cobblestones were treacherous.
Time to flex.
Luckily for me, a cemetery is about
a quarter of a mile from our apartment. I figured out if I walked early in the
mornings, I avoided most pedestrians, bikers, and parked cars. When I walk to
and from the train—about half a mile from the apartment—I still clench my teeth
a lot. Nonchalance comes with time and practice.
Another flex point came with
settling into an apartment without a dishwasher in a kitchen about half the
size of my own. Hey, I grew up with my sisters as co-dishwasher. I could cope.
Hands in sudsy water might even generate conversations with several stubborn
characters.
Cooking with a minimal number of
utensils (as in 1 skillet and 1 sauce pan) tapped some ingenuity as did a
refrigerator with frost on the walls. (Yes, I contacted the apartment owner. He
suggested turning the temperature from 2 to 1 not worry). Okay …
Elevators have never appealed to me.
In a building over a hundred years old, they creep me out. On the other hand,
the two days the elevator stopped operating and I climbed sixty-six stairs to
my penthouse apartment, I could hardly wait to test my claustrophobic fears.
Now, I step into my vertical coffin,
compartmentalize my terrors, and bend my knees each time we lurch to a stop.
Flexibility is good for the body and the soul.
My biggest challenge?
My new laptop. The touchscreen
drives me crazy. I realize this technology has zip to do with living in Denmark
or anywhere else. But … I feel as if I’m in hell every time I try to access my
email, touch the wrong note, and end up looking at something I intended to delete.
I have seriously begun to doubt that I do, in fact, possess opposable thumbs.
Flexibility only extends so far.
************  
AB
Plum aka Barbara Plum is spending the summer in Denmark, putting the finishing
touches on her latest romantic comedy, Crazy Daze and a Knight, due for release
in mid-August.

Oh, The Places We’ll Go

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By AB Plum
When writing
a novel, time and place matter. They anchor, at the simplest level, the story
setting. Characters don’t exist in a vacuum so I like putting them in a
place, at a time, when they have to make choices.

The Early Years, Book 1 in The MisFit Series gives the month, the city, and the specific
location in the city. The narrator makes a choice to commit murder. He pinpoints
at the micro level a horrific train accident and its relationship to him. The
train station, the frigid cold, the crowds—all symbolize the trajectory of the
narrator’s future. 

All this setting gets settled in less than a page.

When I wrote
the Danish descriptions, I did so from memory and with a few details from my
husband, born in Copenhagen. All the while I wrote the MisFit Series, we discussed how much fun we’d have going back and
staying for more than three weeks.

So, this
summer, we’ll leave Silicon Valley and stay in a Copenhagen apartment near
where my husband lived as a little boy. (Go figure that my WIP is the Ryn Davis
Mystery Series set in the shadow of Google. Who knows? Ryn may meet a Dane in
one of the upcoming mysteries).

My plan is to
absorb more than the kringles, polse, plaice, and rødgrød med fløde (flaky almond-stuffed pastry, hot
dogs, flounder, and raspberry/strawberry porridge with thick cream). I hope to
return to the US speaking en smule dansk (a little Danish). I plan to visit all
the tourist spots and those
out-of-way cultural and historical landmarks known only to Danish citizens.
With lots of family there, I think we’ll experience this setting more deeply
than we now can only imagine.

I’ll
write my July blog from Denmark. My plan is to write about the main train
station (Københavns Hovedbanegård). This setting is the scene referenced
above in The Early Years. This setting lays
the groundwork to delve into a psychopath’s dark mind.

****** 
AB Plum lives with her husband and alter ego, Barbara Plum off the beaten path but writes in Silicon Valley—a setting
unto itself. She tries to capture the nuances of the place in her new Ryn Davis
Mystery Series.














Books Not Recommended

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By AB Plum

Years ago—I
can remember exactly how many but can’t grasp when the days flew by, as the
cliché goes—I worked in my county library. I was sixteen. An avid reader. A
card-carrying patron from grade-school days. Working there was the best job in
town. I earned minimum wage, got vacation, and experience that later helped me win
a job in the university library. Two decades later, I received my MLS degree and worked in a large, urban public library system. 

Of all the
wonderful memories I can resurrect in two minutes about the county library, one
stands out most vividly.

Picture a floor-to-ceiling front window with
sunshine flooding the comfy couches, the New Books shelves, and the magazine
nook. Mysteries occupied the wall with the periodicals (yes, we subscribed to The New York Times and the New Yorker). Westerns
required a third of the same wall. Science fiction didn’t merit its own spot.


A large study section at the rear of the building separated the adult and children’s collections as well as our small, local museum dedicated to a local nineteenth-century opera
diva.

Our
janitor kept the nearby public and staff restroom spotless. Graffiti never appeared on any public spaces
in our quiet little town.

A right-turn
from the restroom took patrons past the office the librarian shared with the
staff to process new books, repair damaged ones, fill boxes for year-round
bookmobile deliveries. Large windows at ceiling height added to the ambiance of
space and light. Five bookcases sat under the windows. 

The shelves bulged
with “forbidden” books. 

Forbidden to anyone under twenty-one.
Forbidden to the “older ladies” who came in weekly for novels by
Faith Baldwin, Bess Streeter Aldrich, Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, and so
many other writers whose pages those ladies devoured. Forbidden to anyone who
didn’t explicitly know the secret collection existed. (I certainly had no
inkling before working there).

But … did I,
five years shy of the required age, read Huck
Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, Ulysses and dozens more banned books in my small, Southern town?

Absolutely. Within
the first six weeks of my employment. It took me that long to work up my courage. I worried
about going to jail. Or maybe directly to hell.



Of course I
never admitted my jaded tastes to any of my co-workers. I sneaked the books off
the premises—usually on Saturday afternoons when I was left to close up. And I never
checked the books out.

I felt guilty about my subterfuge but not guilty enough to stop reading from the
forbidden shelves. I rationalized that my caution was okay since the library’s
treasurer, Mr. Schneider—a septuagenarian and the first vegetarians I’d
ever met, entered the “Forbidden Chamber” and removed more than one
book every week without stopping by the front desk on his way out.

I suspect
the librarian knew what I was doing. I suspect she never confronted me because
she knew me from my previous years of reading eclectically from the general
collection. I suspect she realized I would read most of the “Forbidden
Books” during my Freshman year in college–still three years short of twenty-one.

Lots of
ethical issues skim the edges of my dishonesty. Thoughts for another day. I’ll
simply say I’m grateful I benefitted from censorship and an open-minded librarian.

What about
you? Did your library ban books? Did the library have a special place for
“mature audience” books? Did you, as a teenager, read any books in
that category?

*****AB Plum
writes books that might well have gone into the “Forbidden Chamber.”
She keeps sex and violence and offensive language to a minimum. (Well, the
language might be a stretch). She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband and
alter-ego, Barbara Plum). She enjoys hearing from readers, so catch up with her
on:

Twitter:  @ABPlumWriter




















Horse and Buggy Redux

/in /by

By AB Plum

A rep from the National Transportation Safety Board recently exhorted the California legislature to pass a law banning all cellphone use while driving. Yes, this included hands-free usage while behind the wheel.

Yaaaay!

Ha-ha.

Such a law will pass when cows give chocolate milk.
Or when we find gold coins in the street.
Or when parents stop giving their kids phones at age 3 (and younger).
Or when couples go to dinner and actually talk to each other without their cells on the table.
Or when non-emergency workers leave their phones in a room other than the bedroom.
Or when pedestrians cross streets looking around them versus texting on their cells.

Do I sound like a Luddite?

Guilty.

But … I realize how unenforceable such a law would be. At the same time, I wonder if stronger restrictions are possible with teenage drivers? All the multi-tasking myths aside, driving requires concentration. Talking on a phone is distracting. Ergo, chances of accidents go up.

Of course teenagers counter with the irrefutable argument, “our reflexes are better than old people’s reflexes, so if they can use a hands-free cell, why can’t we?

The discussion will go on and on. Legislators will avoid taking action because they’re politicians. Twenty years from now, babies will be born clutching cell phones in their hands—an electronic umbilical cord which won’t get cut at delivery.

Did our great-great-great-great grandparents debate the pros and cons of reading the newspaper while driving their horse-drawn buggies?

What about you? Are you a hands-free driver? Do you ride with a teenage driver who chats on her phone while navigating traffic?

*************
AB Plum gives her cellphone number to her husband, children, brother, and best friend. They know better than to call her on it because she rarely carries it—especially in her car. An unrepentant Luddite, she lives and writes in the heart of Silicon Valley. She’s considering writing a Sci-Fi novella about a society without cellphones.

Her latest mystery novel, All Things Considered, releases on April 25. “How does an insomniac sleep through two bullets that killed her rock-star lover?” Preorder here and solve the mystery. 

I often offer bonuses to readers of my newsletter. If you’re interested in these exclusives, sign up here. 


Something Rotten in Denmark

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By AB Plum

Smell is one of the least used elements in writing fiction. Interestingly, many scientists believe smell is our most primitive sense and can instantly generate deep memories and emotions.

Capturing smells, however, is hard. Yet, in nearly every book I’ve written, I try to tap into smell as a portal into characters’ pasts and into their feelings.
Since I like a challenge, I decided to introduce smell very early in my latest WIP. My goal is to show a strong conflict between the Main Character and her lover. He’s addicted to popcorn–the more butter, the better. She, having popped a ton in the vintage popper she gave him as a birthday gift years ago, fights gagging on the buttery fragrance. Well, she thinks stink.
So, why did I choose popcorn over grilled steak? Or baking brownies? Or fresh roses? Or just-squeezed lemons? Or dirty socks? Or cologne? Or Brussel sprouts? Or millions of other smells?
Answer? From my own memories of weekly trips to my great-grandmother’s house. Spring, summer, winter, or fall, almost as soon as my mother, sister and I arrived, Grannie went to the kitchen and popped a huge pan of popcorn. Sprawled on the floor on my stomach, I ate, listened to the grownups gossip, and felt so loved because Grannie never forgot to make this just-for-me treat.
The fragrance of corn popping brings an instant collage of me and my five siblings scarfing popcorn in front of the TV on Saturday nights. Squabbling over where to set the pan. Claiming, as the oldest kid, the right to hold the pan and mete out servings. Crunching the “old maids.” Feeling comforted by the ritual of using the special pan, having patience while the oil melted, measuring the popcorn, shaking the contents, and then pouring it into the bowl and topping with butter. TV without popcorn? A big waste of time. (I like to think I learned a few life lessons).
Today, a good book is my favorite popcorn-side dish. I’d rather eat cardboard than eat air-popped corn. Same for packaged, pre-popped corn sold in supermarkets. Movie-popcorn–well, the fragrance of the corn popping–ranks as near edible because of all the memories of going to matinees and spending my dime on the tender, fluffy kernels.  (I know the earth is round, and I know that modern movies no longer use the Iowa-grown, hybrid stuff I grew up on).
As for storage, we always kept our unpopped corn in five-pound coffee cans. Still do. Moisture, doncha know? And OBTW, yellow is the popcorn of true aficionados. 
What about you? What’s your favorite smell? What memories and feelings does the smell evoke?
**** AB Plum, aka Barbara Plum, writes dark psychological thrillers and whodunnits, along with light paranormal romance in Silicon Valley. A bowl of popcorn often sits next to her computer for inspiration.