Plagues and Pandemics: What Can History Teach Us?

July 19, 2020WritingBlack Death, Bubonic Plague, Covid 19, Pandemic, Robin Barefield, Yersinia pestisadmin

We find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic, but how dangerous is Covid-19? Should we stay at home? Do we need to wear masks? We listen to the biologists and politicians debate, and we weigh what they tell us. I think when trying to see the future, though, we must first turn around and look at the past. What cautionary tales does history provide us about plagues and pandemics? Let’s investigate the worst epidemics humans have endured, and maybe we’ll understand why we should take Covid-19 seriously.

I’ve thought and read a great deal about pandemics lately (hmmm, I wonder why?). What did we learn from the great influenza pandemic of 1918, or how did humans respond to the bubonic plague or smallpox?

Over my next three posts, I plan to discuss the worst plagues and pandemics the world has faced. Only one of the deadliest diseases ever to attack humans has been cured. Several of the others can now be treated, but a few infectious diseases remain elusive to us, even today with our advancements in science and medicine.

Let me begin with a plague I’m sure many of you think only belongs in the history books.

Yersinia pestis

The bacterium Yersinia pestis caused three of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history. This organism spawns the bubonic plague, septicemic plague, and pneumonic plague. The bacterium invades but does not harm fleas, and the fleas usually pass it on to small animals such as rats. Humans contract the plague either through flea bites or from exposure to the body fluids of dead animals infected with the bacteria. One to seven days after exposure to Yersinia pestis, a human develops flu-like symptoms, including fever, headaches, and vomiting. In the area where the bacteria entered the skin, painful lymph nodes swell and sometimes even break open. The plague poses a mortality rate of 30-90% if not treated. After the discovery and widespread use of penicillin in the 1940s, the death rate from the plague dropped to 10%.

The following represent three of the worst plague pandemics.

The Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian hit Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 541 CE. Historians believe the plague crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt, brought by fleas carried on rats hiding in the grain holds of ships. The plague wiped out 40 % of the population of Constantinople and then raced across Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Arabia. In one year, this plague killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people or half the world’s population.

The Black Death

From 1346 to 1353, the Black Death annihilated between 75 to 200 million people in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Between 25% to 60 % of the population of Europe died during this pandemic. Experts believe this outbreak began in Asia and again jumped continents, spread by fleas riding on rats aboard merchant ships. People referred to the plague as the black death because of the black skin spots associated with the disease.

Humans did not know what caused the plague nor how to stop the disease, but they understood it spread by proximity to infected individuals. In Venice, authorities required boats to remain isolated and away from port for forty days to ensure the sailors did not bring the disease to shore. The Italian sailors referred to this forty-day isolation as “quarantino,” from which we derived the word quarantine.

The Great Plague of London

From 1348 to 1665, the plague continued to ravage England. The Great Plague of 1665 was the last and one of the worst of the epidemics, killing 100,000 London residents in six months. The name “Bubonic” derived from the appearance of blackened swellings, or buboes, in the victim’s groin or armpits.

While some reports state that Yersinia pestis is now extinct and no longer a threat, nothing could be further from the truth. In 2007, a wildlife biologist working in the Grand Canyon found a dead mountain lion. Curious about what killed the lion, he performed a necropsy on the animal. A week later, the biologist died. Yersinia pestis had infected both the mountain lion and the biologist. This death was not an isolated incident. Since 2000, the CDC has received between one and 17 reports per year of cases of the plague. Luckily, today we know to treat the plague with antibiotics, and this treatment not only helps stop the spread of the dreaded disease but also usually saves those individuals infected with it. Should Yersinia pestis become resistant to modern-day antibiotics, though, we could again face an epidemic of the plague.

In my next post, I’ll discuss smallpox, cholera, and AIDS. Until then, wear a mask, social distance, and wash your hands. From the Middle Ages to today, doctors have learned those are the only three sure actions humans can take to battle a pandemic.

Check out the new and improved Readers and Writers Book Club.

Readers and Writers Book Club Member Benefits Include:

Save money on books—Fifty Percent Discount.

Access to Author Masterminds author podcasts.

Exclusive, free access to author’s finest short, timely articles.

Participate in the Battle Of The Books.

Participate in monthly book club meetings.

Participate in raffles and prizes.

Participate in Monthly Book Club Discussion with Authors

Receive new and upcoming book club benefits.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

Mystery Newsletter

Osmoregulation in Salmon

July 5, 2020Fish, Kodiak WildlifeKodiak Wildlife, osmoregulation in salmon, Osmoreulation, Pacific Salmon, Robin Barefieldadmin

Osmoregulation is the process of maintaining salt and water balance across the body’s membranes. Any fish faces a challenge to maintain this balance. A freshwater fish struggles to retain salt and not take on too much water, while a saltwater fish tends to lose too much water to the environment and keeps a surplus of salt. Fish have developed behaviors and physiological adaptations to survive in their environments, whether fresh or marine water, but how do fish manage to thrive in both fresh and saltwater?

A catadromous fish spends most of its life in freshwater and then migrates to the ocean to breed. Eels of the genus Anguilla represent catadromous organisms. Anadromous fish begin life in freshwater, spend most of their lives in saltwater, and then return to freshwater to spawn. Pacific salmon and some species of sturgeon are anadromous fish.

How does a salmon maintain the composition of its body fluids within homeostatic limits? How does it reverse its osmoregulation physiology when it swims from a freshwater environment into the ocean or from the ocean to freshwater?

In the ocean, a salmon swims in a fluid nearly three times more concentrated than the composition inside its cells. In such an environment, the fish tends to take on salt from the water and lose water to the denser ocean. This exchange would result in severe dehydration and quickly kill the salmon if the fish did not adequately deal with the issue.

A Salmon faces the opposite problem in freshwater, where it lives in a solution nearly devoid of salts. In this case, the fish has more salt in its body than in its environment, presenting the problem of losing salt to the environment while flooding its body with water.

How does a salmon deal with these two warring issues of osmoregulation? The salmon has evolved behavioral and physiological adaptations to allow it to live in both fresh and saltwater habitats.

In the ocean, a salmon drinks several liters of water a day to maintain its water volume, but in freshwater, it does not drink at all, except for what it takes on during feeding. In freshwater, a salmon’s kidneys produce a large volume of very dilute urine to offset the excess water diffusing into its body fluids. In the ocean environment, though, a salmon’s urine is highly concentrated, consisting mostly of salt ions, and it excretes very little water.

A salmon also has a remarkable adaptation that allows osmoregulation by the fish in both marine and freshwater environments. A salmon uses energy to actively pump Na and Cl ions across the gill epithelial cells against their concentration gradients. In saltwater, the fish pumps NaCl out of its blood and into the surrounding ocean. In freshwater, the pump works in reverse, moving NaCl out of the water, over the gills, and into the blood.

These amazing behavioral and physiological adaptations allow a salmon to move from fresh to saltwater when the fish leaves its nursery area to travel to its ocean feeding grounds and then back from its marine habitat to freshwater when the salmon returns to spawn. The critical changes in osmoregulation are not immediate, though. When a salmon smolt first leaves its home stream, it must rest in brackish water for several days or weeks while it adjusts, and then it will slowly move into water with higher salt concentrations. As the smolt adjusts, its kidneys begin producing more-concentrated urine while the NaCl pumps in its gills reverse direction and start pumping NaCl out of the blood. When the salmon returns to its natal stream to spawn, it must again remain in brackish water for a period while its kidneys adjust, and the NaCl pump changes direction to pump NaCl out of the water and into the blood.

I am always amazed by how animals and plants adjust to the demands of their environment. Anadromous and catadromous fish, however, must adapt to two environments with opposite physiological requirements, and to do this, they flip the switch on osmoregulation from one extreme to the other.

Check out the new and improved Readers and Writers Book Club.

Readers and Writers Book Club Member Benefits Includes:

Save money on books—Fifty Percent Discount.

Access to Author Masterminds author podcasts.

Exclusive, free access to author’s finest short, timely articles.

Participate in the Battle Of The Books.

Participate in monthly book club meetings.

Participate in raffles and prizes.

Participate in Monthly Book Club Discussion with Authors

Receive new and upcoming book club benefits.

Mystery Newsletter

Incredible Spot Shrimp

June 14, 2020Kodiak Wildlife, ShrimpKodiak Wildlife, Robin Barefield, Shrimp, Shrimp in Alaska, Spot Shrimpadmin

Spot shrimp are the largest wild species of shrimp found in Alaska, with females reaching more than 12 inches (30 cm) in length. Because of their large size, marketers often refer to them as “spot prawns,” but they are not prawns.

What is the difference between a prawn and a shrimp? They might look similar, but shrimp differ from prawns in many ways. Prawns and shrimp are both decapod crustaceans, but they belong to separate sub-orders. Shrimp have plate-like gills and a set of claws on their front two pairs of legs, while prawns have branching gills and claws on three sets of their legs. Shrimp have three body segments, with the middle segment overlapping the front and rear sections, causing their bodies to curve. Prawns, however, lack the body segmentation and have straighter bodies than shrimp. Shrimp and prawns vary in many other ways too, including their reproductive habits. Prawns release their progeny into the water to survive on their own, while a female shrimp carries her eggs on her abdomen for five months.

Spot shrimp range from Southern California to the Aleutian Islands to the Sea of Japan and the Korea Strait. They occupy a variety of habitats and water depths from very shallow to 1510 ft. (460 m), but they most commonly live at approximately 300 ft (90m.). They usually remain close to the bottom and stay near rock piles, crevices, under boulders, or in other areas where they can seek protection from predators. Juvenile spot shrimp remain in shallow, inshore areas and migrate offshore when they mature.

Spot shrimp appear reddish-brown to tan and have horizontal bars on the carapace. The distinctive white spots, from which they derive their common name, are located on the first and fifth abdominal segments. The slender body of a spot shrimp has five pairs of swimmerets on the underside of its abdomen. A spot shrimp repeatedly molts throughout its life and grows larger with each molt.

The most amazing fact about spot shrimp is, like some other shrimp species, spot shrimp are protandric hermaphrodites. They mature as males and later transform into females. They reach sexual maturity at age three when they can produce sperm and spawn as males. As they grow, they pass through a transitional stage and become females capable of producing eggs. Research indicates not all spot shrimp follow this pattern, though. Some skip the male-phase of the life cycle and develop directly into females.

Before mating, a female molts into a shell specialized for carrying eggs. Each egg attaches to her abdomen by a hair-sized structure called a seta, and she carries the eggs from October to March. Biologists believe each spot shrimp spawns once as a male and one or more times as a female. They spawn at depths of 500-700 ft. (152.4 m to 213.4 m).

Spot shrimp are bottom feeders, and they feed at night. They eat a wide variety of bottom organisms, including worms, diatoms, dead organic material, algae, mollusks, and even other shrimp. Fish such as halibut Pacific cod, pollock, flounders, and salmon pursue and eat spot shrimp. Spot shrimp can live seven to eleven years.

Due to destructive fishing methods used to catch shrimp in many areas of the world, biologists consider the commercial harvest of shrimp to be one of the most unsustainable of all global fisheries. Bottom trawls destroy everything in their path. In Alaska, the shrimp harvest is mainly restricted to pot fisheries in certain areas.

In Southeastern Alaska, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game closed the spot shrimp fishery to commercial and sport fishermen in 2013, but the spot shrimp population in the area has continued to decline. Biologists wonder if recent warmer, more-acidic ocean waters could be the cause for dwindling spot shrimp numbers, and they are beginning to research the issue. Shrimp remain most vulnerable to acidification during early life stages when they rely on calcification to build their exoskeletons.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

Alaska Wilderness Mystery Novels by Author Robin Barefield: Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman's Daughter, and Karluk Bones.

Mystery Newsletter

Whale Season

May 24, 2020Fin Whale, Humpback Whale, killer whale, Kodiak WildlifeFin Whale, Grey Whale, humpback whale, Minke Whale, Robin Barefield, Sei Whale, Whale Biology, Whale Evolution, whales, whales in Alaska, Wildlife of Kodiak Islandadmin

Spring marks the beginning of whale season here in Alaska. The humpbacks and grey whales begin arriving from their long migrations north from their wintering grounds, and the north Pacific Ocean teems with life as the waters warm and phytoplankton blooms. Swarms of krill and other zooplankton feast on the abundant plant life, and fish such as herring, eulachon, and similar species follow the zooplankton into the bays on Kodiak Island. In turn, huge baleen whales, including fin, sei, and humpback, gather to eat the krill and small fish. I am thrilled any time I see a whale, but I think it’s a special treat to stand in my front yard and watch these magnificent creatures feed and blow.

Sea mammals evolved from land mammals, and they resemble us in many ways. Whales, like humans, have lungs and must breathe air to survive. They are warm-blooded, and they bear live young. Whales nurse their young with milk, and while you might not think of a whale having hair, all whales do have hair at some stage in their development. All members of the order Cetacea evolved 45 million years ago from hoofed mammals, such as cows, sheep, and camels. Comparisons of specific milk protein genes indicate the hippopotamus is the closest, living, land relative to whales.

The order Cetacea contains more than eighty species; although, taxonomists debate the precise number. Biologists have recorded thirty-nine cetacean species in the North American Pacific.

Cetacea comes from the Greek word “ketos,” which means “whale.” All cetaceans have forelimbs modified into flippers and no hind limbs. They have horizontally flattened tails, and they breathe through a nostril, or blowhole, located on the top of the head. A blowhole has a nasal plug that remains closed except when forced open by muscular contractions to breathe. This plug seals when the whale dives. A whale has internal sensory and reproductive organs to reduce drag while swimming, and they do not have external ears but instead have a complex internal system of air sinuses and bones to detect sounds.The lungs of a cetacean are relatively small, highly elastic, and elongated. A whale has a muscular diaphragm, allowing the animal to purge a large amount of air in a short time. With each respiration, a whale replaces 80% to 90% of the air in its lungs. During a deep dive, a cetacean slows its heart rate and decreases blood flow to peripheral tissues.

Cetaceans living in the cold ocean waters of the North Pacific must somehow maintain a body temperature nearly the same as a human’s body temperature. A whale uses several mechanisms to accomplish this feat. First, it has a thick layer of blubber with few blood vessels, reducing the heat loss at the body surface. A whale has a counter-current heat exchanger, with arteries surrounding veins at the periphery. Hence, vessels flowing from the cold periphery to the warm core partially absorb heat lost by vessels flowing from the core toward the surface. A cetacean also has a high metabolic rate to produce heat, and it has a low body surface to volume ratio, which conserves heat. Finally, a whale has a slower respiration rate than a land mammal, so the whale expels warm air less frequently.

Most cetaceans produce large calves, and the large body volume relative to surface area minimizes heat loss in the calf. Calves are born tail first, and as soon as the calf emerges from the birth canal, the mother or another whale nudges it to the surface for its first few breaths.^[3]Cetacean mothers nurse their calves with a pair of teats concealed in slits along the body wall. The milk has a high-fat content, and the calves grow at a rapid rate. Whale mothers tend and guard their calves closely, and a calf often rides the bow wave or the convection currents produced by its mother or another adult when the whales travel. This method of travel is so efficient that the calf barely needs to move its flukes to keep up with the group.

Two suborders comprise the order Cetacea: The Mysticeti or baleen whales and the Odontoceti, or toothed whales. We most commonly see fin whales in Uyak Bay, but we also spot sei, humpback, minke, and killer whales. No matter the species, whenever I see a spout of water, excitement buzzes through me while I watch one of the largest animals on the planet.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_1316-4-768x1024.jpg

Mystery Newsletter

Open publish panel

Mammalian Diving Reflex

May 3, 2020Harbor Seal, Kodiak WildlifeDiving Reflex in Humans, Harbor Seals, Mammmalian Diving Reflex, Robin Barefieldadmin

The mammalian diving reflex is a fantastic biological adaptation intrinsic not only to marine mammals but also to land mammals, including humans, whose ancestors once lived in the ocean. I am currently editing my wildlife book and was once again awed by how deep some marine mammals dive and how long they can stay below the surface without breathing. I think the mammalian diving reflex represents one of nature’s most incredible adjustments for air-breathing mammals required to find food in an inhospitable environment void of air.

What is the mammalian diving reflex? Biologists mostly have studied the reflex in harbor seals, so I will use a seal to explain the elements of the physiological changes. A harbor seal can dive as deep as 1640 ft. (500 m) and stay submerged for over twenty minutes. When it dives, a harbor seal’s heart rate slows from its normal rate between 75 to 120 beats per minute down to just four to six beats per minute. Blood shunts from peripheral tissues tolerant to low oxygen levels and flows to the heart, brain, and tissues dependent on a constant supply of oxygen to survive. These adaptations allow the seal to conserve oxygen while it dives and searches for food.

Seals utilize additional adaptations to conserve oxygen and withstand the rigors of increased pressure when they dive. Before a deep dive, seals exhale several times to collapse their lungs, and they then store their oxygen in blood and muscle tissues instead of in the lungs. Harbor seals have a proportionately higher blood volume than land mammals of the same size, and seals also possess ten times more myoglobin than humans. This oxygen-binding protein helps prevent muscle oxygen deficiency.

Researchers originally believed the diving reflex was an automatic response triggered by breath-holding and submergence in cool water. In recent studies, though, scientists attached a device similar to a Fitbit to harbor seals. The device records blood flow and oxygen levels in the seal’s brain, and the study produced some interesting results. Seals can control their diving reflex. Seals contract their peripheral blood vessels beginning 15 to 45 seconds before they dive, and they restore normal blood flow to their blubber several seconds before they reach the surface. When seals are feeding, they return to the surface to breathe but often don’t stay there long enough to restore normal oxygen levels. Researchers also learned that seals slow their heart rates more if they plan to stay underwater longer.

Biologists hope to learn if other animals, including humans, can also consciously control their dive reflex. The world’s top freedivers can descend to a depth of 426 ft. (130 meters) and return to the surface, and the record for breath-holding without moving tops 11 minutes. Are these free divers able to control the physiology of the diving reflex to accomplish these incredible feats?

The next time you see a harbor seal, pause for a moment to consider the rigors this animal must endure just to eat dinner.

I hope you are well and navigating our changed world. Life remains quiet here in the wilderness of Kodiak Island, and we feel oddly removed from the biological havoc wreaked by this virus. Even here, though, we have been touched by the economic disaster the world faces. I look forward to better times for all of us soon! Take care.

Join the Battle of the Books contest, and you could win a $500 Amazon Gift Card! I am very excited to have my novel, Karluk Bones, included in this contest.

Mystery Newsletter

Open publish panel

Writing

April 12, 2020WritingAuthor advice, How to become an author, Robin Barefield, Writing, Writing Advice for authorsadmin

Are you thinking about writing a book, or maybe you’ve already started one? A few weeks ago, Dee S. Knight wrote a guest post for my blog, and in it, she offered great advice to beginning novelists. I know she learned much of this information the hard way, just as I did. As soon as I read her bulleted points, I decided to expand on Dee’s wise words and tell you about the emotions I experience when I write a book.

My education is in biology, and I knew very little about the mechanics of writing a novel. I love to learn, though, so I read every book and magazine I could find on writing. Much of the advice was good; some was not. I am still learning how to tell a story, build compelling characters, put it all together, and polish it. Writing a novel requires fortitude and diligence.

I jokingly tell friends that all authors are delusional. When I begin writing a novel, I’m confident I’m about to tell a fantastic story, and my creation will top the best-seller list. By the midway point, my book doesn’t seem so great anymore. Toward the end, I’m optimistic I’ve written a reasonably good book, but by edit number seven, I am sick of reading this piece of junk I wrote. When My publisher sends me the completed and published novel, I hold it in my hands and wonder if it’s any good and if anyone will read it. After this rollercoaster ride of emotions, you’d think I’d never want to write another novel, but I can’t wait to tell the next story bursting to escape my brain. It’s no wonder so many famous novelists had severe mental problems or were alcoholics or drug addicts. We authors lack sanity.

Before I wrote my first novel, I read some great advice from a well-known author. I think the author was Mary Higgins Clark, and she said if you want to write books, begin by writing 15 minutes a day – every day. You might think you need great chunks of time to write, and perhaps a lack of time is your excuse for not writing a novel. Not many of us can carve out big pieces of our day to write. We have jobs, we have families, we have lives. I guarantee if you follow Ms. Clark’s advice and manage to write 15 minutes a day, soon you will find 30 minutes a day to write, and before long, you’ll manage to write an hour a day. You might not write for an hour in one sitting, but if you can write 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, and so on, you will make progress.

Writing is like exercise. You must do it consistently to keep your mind sharp and to stay focused on your story. I hear authors talk about “writer’s block,” and I don’t know what they mean. Somedays, my brain feels so sluggish I write mush, but I write something. I can always delete it the next day if it’s terrible.

In her post, Dee encouraged beginning novelists to spend time learning the craft of storytelling. Read books on the subject or take an online class. Storytelling has rules, and sure, you can break the rules, but you should know what the rules are before you break them.

Once you complete your manuscript, you must edit it, and you cannot skip this step. You need to edit your book until you can’t stand to look at it anymore. Once I’ve read through it repeatedly, I send it to a professional editor. Yes, professional editors are expensive, but you want your masterpiece expertly polished before you send it out into the world. When the manuscript comes back from the editor, I go through it again and try to understand the changes the editor has made. I do this edit not only to make myself a better writer but also to be sure the editor hasn’t changed the voice or meaning of my book. Next, I send my novel to other authors I know will give me honest feedback. I then do one more read through and send it to my publisher. He will e-mail the galleys back to me for one or two more edits. Yes, editing is not for the faint-hearted, but skip any step in this process, and you risk releasing a book full of embarrassing errors. Even after you’ve done all the above, your novel will still have errors – I guarantee! I want to cry when I find a mistake in one of my published books, and it’s even worse when someone else points out the error to me.

If you want to write a book, and if you have a story you must tell, then I encourage you to do it. Dee is correct, though. Writing is a business, and you need to think of yourself as a professional. If you are determined to become an author, then you will succeed, but to be victorious, you must write every day. Nobody has enough time to write a novel, but if you plan to become a published author, you must find the time.

Thank you, Dee, for letting me borrow your wise advice!

Happy Easter and Passover to everyone who celebrates these holidays. My wish for all the world is that a year from now, these terrible days will be only a hazy memory. Stay well!

Join the Battle of the Books contest, and you could win a $500 Amazon Gift Card! I am very excited to have my novel, Karluk Bones, included in this contest.

Mystery Newsletter

Open publish panel

Jumping Hurdles

March 29, 2020Living in the wilderness on Kodiak IslandAlaska, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Pandemic, Robin Barefield, Small lodge, Tourismadmin

Sometimes, life seems like a series of hurdles, and this winter, a new, huge hurdle appeared out of nowhere, catching most of us by surprise and forcing us to re-evaluate our priorities.

I hope you and your loved ones are well. We don’t know what will happen in the coming days, and many of us are struggling to cope with the present. As some of you know, my husband, Mike, and I own a small lodge in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, Alaska, and a few days ago, the Governor, in effect, closed Alaska to visitors for at least the next month. I know he made the right decision. I am sure the coronavirus will eventually spread to all areas of the state, but we need to do everything we can to slow its rate of infection. Folks who don’t need to travel should stay home. Even though Mike and I feared the Governor might halt travel to Alaska, his mandate still hit hard, and we find ourselves trying to decide what to do to survive economically.

This is not the first time a national or world event has impacted us. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and the 9-11 terrorist attack both nearly decimated tourism in Alaska. Economic downturns always hurt the travel industry, and during one of the many budget squabbles in the U.S. Congress, the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge closed, and we had to cancel goat hunts already in progress. The COVID-19 threat differs from previous disasters, though. During earlier crises, I focused my anger on one person or a group of people. Whether it was a drunk captain, deranged terrorists, or spoiled politicians, I could always picture the cause of our near-economic destruction.

Unfortunately, a pandemic is no one’s fault. We can’t blame anyone for the coronavirus. Our government could and should have acted faster, but even with the best response, a very infectious, novel virus is hard to stop. We have no idea when this virus will run its course, but until then, we remain at its mercy.

I find the economics of our situation disheartening and depressing, and I know the government won’t miraculously bail us out of our financial woes. Even in the past, when the government caused our economic problems, we never received assistance to help us rebound. I certainly don’t expect help this time, but I know we will be okay. We will jump over this hurdle. As long as our family, friends, and we stay healthy, all else becomes insignificant.

I thank the health care workers and first responders who are fighting on the front lines of this pandemic. They take incredible chances every day.

Stay well, and we will get over this hurdle, and hopefully, something good will come from the pain. As you can see from the photo, I have a beautiful place to self-isolate.

Join the Battle of the Books contest, and you could win a $500 Amazon Gift Card! I am very excited to have my novel, Karluk Bones, included in this contest.

Mystery Newsletter

Open publish panel

Romance Author Dee S. Knight

March 8, 2020WritingAnne Krist, Dee S. Knight, Erotic Romance, Erotica, How to Get Published, Jenna Stewart, Romance, Writing Advice for authorsadmin

I am thrilled to introduce you to Romance Author Dee Knight. Four weeks ago, I wrote about Dee Knight and Jan Selbourne and their combined newsletter. Two weeks ago, Jan wrote a guest post about her award-winning books, and this week, Dee, another award winner, will take the reins.

Dee has written an excellent guest post, and she not only describes her journey to become a successful author but also offers fantastic advice to new and struggling authors. I like all the points she makes, but I couldn’t agree more with her assertion that to write well and succeed as an author, you must write every day if possible. We are all busy, so if you want to be an author, it is unacceptable to say you have no time to write. You must find the time, so get up an hour earlier, write during the fifteen minutes while you’re waiting for the kids to get out of school, or key punch during your break at work. Look for those tiny gaps in your day when you can squeeze in a few minutes of writing.

Before I take over Dee’s post, I’ll hand it to her. Her words are not only inspirational but also instructional.

Welcome, Romance Author Dee S. Knight.

So many authors say they were writers as children. Indeed, some even give the impression they were developing the great American novel before they even came out of the womb. Sadly, that wasn’t me. Oh, I’ve always had a knack I suppose for spinning a tale. But to write it down? No.

I take that back. In fifth grade we were assigned the task of writing a story. I liked mysteries, being a Nancy Drew buff, so that’s what I decided to write. It was truly a dark and stormy night and murder was afoot. I killed off one character by page three, and by page five, when the murderer was creeping up on the house to off the next character, I scared myself so badly, I quickly had the police scoop up the bad guys and happily wrote THE END. I think I decided then that the writing life was not for me.

Even when I worked at a county library in Virginia and my coworkers suggested I take up writing, I smiled and said yes, maybe someday, I knew I didn’t have the interest. So why, when in my 50s and with a couple of months’ time on my hands I decided to write a story I’d been building on for years, I have no idea.

Passionate Destiny. A romance by Dee S. Knight

Writing the story was my husband’s idea. He was working as a consultant and had two months left before we would be leaving town to go to the next contract. There was no use in my looking for a job, so he told me to try writing a book. Truthfully, it sounded fun and easy. I mean, how hard could it be? I had the story in mind. All I had to do was type it out and fill in a few blanks. So I set up the keyboard on a TV tray and typed while Jack was at work. In fact, I typed from when we got up and finished breakfast until it was time to fix dinner, and again after he went to bed until the wee hours of the morning. I typed like that for a month, when I ended with 95,000 words and a finished romance novel.

I was astounded! I had written a novel, a real novel! And it was fun and easy! I’d read articles where people said writing a book was hard. What ninnies, I thought. Writing was a breeze, compared to teaching high school kids, driving a tractor-trailer nationally, or brain surgery, all of which I’d done. (Well, not brain surgery. That was a little poetic license.)

Anyway, now that the writing was done, I was ready to take the publishing world by storm. Except, I had no idea how to do that. I looked up publishers online and came up with a few ideas. I sent inquiries off to five, and promptly received four rejections. The fourth publisher was more encouraging. I like your writing style, she wrote back. However, we are a publisher of erotic romance and your book doesn’t have enough sex in it. If you decide to write an erotic novel, I hope you will consider us.

Sex? She wanted sex? Who can’t write about sex?

Your Desire. An erotic romance by Dee S. Knight

So I sat down for the next month and wrote a 95,000 word sexy romance—or what I hoped was a sexy romance. Until then, I’d never heard of erotic romance and had no idea what made a book erotic. I must have done all right because she accepted it and set me on the path I continued taking for the next sixteen years. In that time, I’ve written a variety of romance sub-genre, nearly all erotic. There have been space romps, ménage, paranormal, time travel, contemporary and historical, and one non-erotic novel. I write using three pen names: Dee S. Knight, Anne Krist, and Jenna Stewart.

Only A Good Man Will Do. An erotic romance by Dee S. Knight

I have to admit, I’ve enjoyed these years of writing, though getting the books on paper (or disk or whatever) hasn’t always been as easy as it started. At times, beating my head against the wall would have been more fun than getting words out. I started one book, Passionate Destiny, in February, and by October swore that if I didn’t have it finished by Thanksgiving, I’d toss it out. Fortunately, I completed it a week before then and sent it off. It became a Top Pick in Romantic Times magazine. Other books—some easy and others more difficult—have won awards from RWA (Romance Writers of America) chapter contests. I’ve been lucky enough to win the prestigious Maggie award from Georgia Romance Writers, and most recently, Only a Good Man Will Do, won Best Erotic Romance of 2019 by the Las Vegas Romance Writers.

It’s humbling to submit your work to someone else to review and judge, but submitting to contests is something I would suggest to writers. Unless you simply want to write for yourself or your family, you have to let others read your work eventually. Contest judges critique the entries and make suggestions, helping you grow.

One Woman Only. A romance by Dee S. Knight

Another suggestion I’d make is to consider online publishing. When I started, my goal was to get in with New York publishers, to have an agent and to see my books on bookshelves. It was a big disappointment to learn that bookstores will not consider print-on-demand for their books, and back then, success with an ePublisher wasn’t considered worthy by NYC publishers. It took years for ePublishing to get its act together and prove their editing and authors were not only good enough but in some cases excelled over the print world. Now, I’m happy with ePublishing and the advantages it offers—excellent cover art and more say in the cover, excellent editing and some back and forth in what is accepted, and faster publication.

Naval Maneuvers. An erotic romance by Dee S. Knight

I would suggest for novices to publish through a publisher before giving into the temptation of self-publishing. With opportunities like Amazon and Draft2Digital, it’s easy to put your ideas into electronic format and sell to the world. But working through a publisher first means you see the great advantage of working with an editor and cover artist. Those things are very worthwhile and will help shape the kind of work you present to readers. It’s like walking before running. I was with publishers until very recently, and each taught me something new.

I haven’t written thousands of books, but I have written a few. So, if I were to give any advice to beginning writers it would be:

Writing takes discipline. This is something I wish I’d understood early on. Set aside some time for writing a bit every day.
Write every day, and keep on writing. You think that taking a break is okay and that writing again will be easy. It isn’t. Take it from me.
Don’t second guess yourself by thinking others are better than you. They aren’t. They’re different from you, but that doesn’t make them better. Believe me and my experience, and don’t talk yourself out of writing because you think you can’t write XYZ better than another author. Be your own voice.
Learn to self-edit before submitting your work to publishers or agents or contests. One of the best ways to do this is to read your work out loud. Believe me, if I can read my sex scenes out loud and not die of embarrassment, you can read what you’ve written. It doesn’t have to be in front of anyone, just so you hear the words as they are on the page and not in your head.
Learn the craft of writing. When I wrote my first several books I had no idea what point of view was, or conflict, or internal/external goals. I just wrote. But once you know all that stuff, your books will be better.
If you can find a critique partner, it’s a good idea. But, find someone who will be honest and not just nice, someone who will support you and not knock you down, someone who respects you and your work. That isn’t easy to find, but when you do, you’ll see how invaluable such a person is. If you join a group, make sure it’s not too large or you’ll be spending all your time trying to sift through contradictory comments to find what’s right. Trust me, when it comes to critiquing someone else’s work, everyone has an opinion.
As I said earlier, enter a few contests. Not all of them cost a lot of money and the feedback is worthwhile.
Don’t give up your day job. Treat writing as a business (instead of a hobby) but don’t expect for it to pay as a business. Not right away, anyway.
Write. Always write. The only way you learn how to do it and do it well is to do it.
Develop writing habits. If you have good habits, it will help your writing. If you have bad habits, you’ll spend a lot of time redoing your work.

Thanks, Robin, for letting me share!

Thank you, Dee. I enjoy meeting authors who write in genres other than my own. I find it difficult to write love scenes in my novels, let alone erotic romance scenes, so maybe I should get a few pointers from you!

I agree with your advice for new authors. Authors today have many publishing options, but they are not all good choices, and too many scam artists prey on those eager to publish their first book. Do your homework before you sign a contract.

In my next post, I plan to write more about Dee’s advice for authors and offer a few tips of my own. Dee has inspired me!

Mystery Newsletter

Open publish panel

Author Jan Selbourne

February 23, 2020WritingAustralian Author, Behind the Clouds, Coffee Pot Book Club Award, Historical Romance, Jan Selbourne, Lies of Gold, Nomad Authors, Perilous Love, The Proposition, The Woman Behind the Mirroradmin

I am excited this week to present a guest post by Australian Author Jan Selbourne. Jan writes about her path to become an author and the true-life inspirations for her novels. Jan is a wonderful author, and I can’t wait to read her newest book, The Woman Behind the Mirror.

Thank you, Jan for this post, and I will step out of the way and let you tell your fascinating story.

Hello Robin, thank you very much for having me as your guest.

I’m Jan Selbourne, author or four historical fiction books and the Aussie half of Nomad Author’s Aussie to Yank newsletter.

I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and thank my parents for my love of books. As a child I suffered from severe asthma and when confined to bed my mother made sure I had books for company. School introduced me to more books and being part of the Commonwealth (the 54 member states that were former territories of the British Empire) we learned British and European history. I was hopeless at maths, so I guess that’s where the urge to write began. A year at business college put me into an accounting career and when I was 21, I joined the tide of Australians travelling to the United Kingdom for a working holiday. In front of me was the history I’d read about. I was hooked. However, career and marriage and children kept the urge to write firmly on the backburner. ‘When I retire’, I said to myself. Then a change of direction to a large historical society in northern New South Wales as committee secretary. This society’s archives hold the history of that region from first European settlement. Life for early settlers in colonial Australia was not easy and their stories are awe inspiring. When I finally retired it was My Time to Write – and I had no idea what to write about.

Inspiration came from an article on how people react when faced with extreme danger and my grandfather’s WW1 military service records. In Behind the Clouds, Adrian and Gabrielle Bryce, who can barely tolerate each other, are trapped in Belgium as the clouds of war loom over Europe. Plunged into a nightmare of lies and betrayal, they flee for their lives as the German forces cross the border. Narrowly avoiding capture, witnessing death and atrocities, they reach safety as two different people – to face charges of treason and a woman who’ll stop at nothing to see Adrian dead. Behind the Clouds was later renamed Perilous Love.

A throwaway comment “at any age a lot of change happens to us in ten years” gave me the idea for Lies of Gold. A love affair ends in anger, Katherine is left with the consequences; hard living and war has numbed Julian. Ten years later fate steps in. Gold is crossing the Channel to Napoleon Bonaparte and Julian’s orders to find the traitor bring him back to Halton Hall and Katherine – and the man of many faces whose gold smuggling covers something much more sinister. I was thrilled and honoured Lies of Gold was awarded the 2019 Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Silver Medal – Historical Romance category.

In 2014 I visited the Western Front where my grandfather served during WW1. Thousands of graves of young men who never came home. So many of those graves inscribed “Known Only to God”. ID tags missing or their bodies unrecognisable. In those days war service records were handwritten with a service number, name, date of birth, nationality, marital status, religion recorded on the first page. I wondered if a soldier could steal the identity of a fallen comrade. I was told it was possible but the chance of discovery very real and the penalties very harsh. That was good enough for me to write The Proposition. One man enlists to avoid arrest, the other to avoid the money lenders. In the thick of battle, one is wounded and collapses beside the body of the other. It’s a risk, a hanging offence, his only chance of a new life. Harry swaps identity discs. Now Andrew Conroy, he’s plunged into a nightmare of deception and murder.

In 2018 I met Dee S. Knight – believe it or not – over a book. Dee had reviewed Perilous Love, – I wrote to thank her and we clicked. Despite Dee living in Idaho, me Down Under New South Wales and writing in different genres, we share a lot of the same values and a good sense of humour. A good sense of humour is a must in the publishing world! Dee has written many wonderful books (spicy hot books I might add) and she’s been super supportive to me, a virtual newcomer. In 2018 we began our Aussie to Yank newsletter and it’s a lot of fun. Not only do we write about what’s going on in our respective parts of the world, we’ve interviewed wonderful authors from Canada, across the U.S from Alaska to the east coast, Britain and a couple of Aussies thrown in for good measure. As I wrote in our last newsletter it still amazes me how unique each story is. There is indeed a book for every reader.

Dee and her husband Jack have recently established Nomad Authors Publishing and they offered to publish my just completed 4^th book, The Woman Behind the Mirror. I am grateful to Dee for her encouragement and help during the final editing and I’m very excited about this new venture. Here’s a little bit about The Woman Behind the Mirror.

Betrothed by her father to a man twice her age, Sarah Forsythe does the unthinkable—she runs away with the son of a Methodist minister. Not to Gretna Green, to colonial America—For Sarah, this “new world” brings broken promises, abandonment, poverty and shame. Around her, the American Revolution is seething, and the siege of Boston worsens by the day. As British soldiers seek out traitors and treason, a desperate Sarah breaks open a safe looking for cash. Instead, she finds a box holding Bank of England documents. Through willpower, bitter determination, and lying through her teeth, Sarah manages to make her way home to England. What she doesn’t know is that two men follow, and they will do anything to claim those documents. Bank investigator Neil McAlister faces an almost impossible task—to determine the true owner of the documents by deciding who is lying. Most of all, as danger creeps ever closer, he needs to know who wants the secretive, beautiful Sarah dead.

Thank you again Robin and I’m looking forward to your next newsletter. Jan

Thank you, Jan, and I can’t wait to read your books. Congratulations again on the 2019 Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Silver Medal for Lies of Gold. Here are a few links to Jan’s books and her social media accounts.

Mystery Newsletter

Open publish panel

Authors Jan Selbourne and Dee Knight

February 9, 2020WritingDee Knight, Historical Romance, Jan Selbourne, Nomad Authors, Romance Noveladmin

I love meeting other authors. Writing is a solitary endeavor, and only another author understands the passion driving us to tell our stories. We spend hundreds of hours writing, editing, revising, and promoting our novels, but really, all we want to do is tell a good story. I’ve shared my blog with several guest authors over the years, and most write in genres different than my own. Mary Ann Poll writes Christian horror, Rich Ritter pens edgy westerns, T. Martin O’Neil tells fictionalized stories based on his experiences as a Naval Intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, and Steve Levi writes in a variety of genres, including his popular series on impossible crimes.

This week I’ll introduce a pair of authors I met recently. These ladies immediately caught my attention because Jan Selbourne lives in New South Wales, Australia, and Dee Knight and her husband reside in the Western U.S. Despite the distance separating them, though, Dee and Jan write a highly successful joint newsletter.

I asked Jan and Dee how they met and why they decided to write a newsletter together, and Jan said, “Dee and I have books published with Black Velvet Seductions, but we didn’t meet until I wrote to Dee thanking her for the review she’d posted on one of my books.”

Dee added, “I read Jan’s Perilous Love and absolutely was crazy for it! I don’t write reviews for books I don’t like but will frequently write them for books I love, so I wrote one for Perilous Love. That’s how we first exchanged e-mails, but we kept at it because Jan has such a great sense of humor, and I like to think mine is as quirky as hers. I can’t believe we live so far apart and yet have so much in common!”

Dee and Jan have never met in person, but from their joint e-mails, you would think they were lifelong friends. In this post, I will introduce you to Jan Selbourne and Dee Knight by reposting one of their joint newsletters. In my next post, Jan will tell us about her life and books, and in the following post, Dee will share her story.

I’ll provide a spoiler on each author. Jan recently won the Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year awards – Silver medal for her historical romance novel, Lies of Gold, and Dee writes in at least six different genres under several different pen names. I am awed by both women, and I know you will be too.

If you like their newsletter, don’t forget to sign up for it here, so you don’t miss an issue. This is the link to sign up: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/h8t2y6.

Check out Jan’s Amazon page and Dee’s Amazon page, and click on their names at https://nomadauthors.com to view their websites.

Hello from Jan
Today, 18 January 2020, I intended archiving last year’s blogs and author interviews but instead I’m watching the lovely steady rain fall. The best rain New South Wales has had in a long, long, time. It’s not only filling creeks and rivers it’s giving our wonderful firefighters a well-earned breather. Before I was interrupted by the rain, I was glancing through some of last year’s work and it occurred to me that every author interview begins with the question. “What inspired you to write your book?” The next question asks about our characters, are they based on people we know or pure imagination? Was the story planned or did it grow as the chapters increased? That’s the beauty of books, each one is new and unique for the reader, taking us on an adventure from the first page.

Nomad Authors has hosted wonderful authors and it never ceases to amaze me that each book we have featured in our newsletters and blogs is a new story to entertain. There is indeed a book for every reader.

My first attempts at writing were full of enthusiasm and lacking the essential substance, inspiration. It was by chance while sitting in the doctor’s waiting room that I picked up a three month’s old journal and read an article on how a person’s true character emerges when faced with ife threatening danger or massive upheaval. For example, the tough guy turns to water and runs, the small insignificant person steps up and takes charge. An idea was forming in my head and again by chance, I was sorting through old family papers and came across my grandfather’s World War One military record. He served with the Australian Imperial Forces in Belgium and France and was involved in some of the bloodiest battles. He came home but was never the same and it was years before he could talk about the horrors of that war. I decided to research the events leading up to the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 and what followed was called The Rape of Belgium. I was reading the atrocities my grandfather spoke about. There was the inspiration and the setting for my first book Behind the Clouds.

I’m sure every reader could name a book that inspired them in some way. Charles Dickens’ books were instrumental in bringing about overdue social change in Victorian England. Remember ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’? Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life inspired millions of people around the world. Again, there is a book for every reader and that brings me to my pal Dee who has just released Burning Bridges. The first page hooks you and by the last page you’ll be asking the same question as I did – how many times did this happen. Dee, what inspired you to write Burning Bridges? Until next month, stay safe and remember, if you can’t be good, be careful. Jan.

Hello from Dee
Inspiration is a strange and wonderful thing. Take the inspiration for my latest book, Burning Bridges–war and the death of a mail carrier.

I grew up during the Vietnam War. We generally watched the news after dinner each night and the war was right there in our faces. In the lotter, Jack’s number was under 100, and he definitely would have been drafted had he not been going to a military college and the government thought they would get him eventually. Fortunately, the war ended before Jack got out of school, but we both had friends and schoolmates who went overseas. It took me a long time before I could even consider writing anything related to Vietnam in one of my books. But on a drive up to visit my mother once, I heard a radio report about a mailman who had died. When his family cleaned out the garden shed in back of his house, they found two bags full of mail stuffed in the back. The Post Office said they would do their best to connect the letters with the intended recipients, but the mail was more than a decade old. Suddenly, lost letters…the war…a young man leaving for the unknown and a girl staying behind with a terrible secret.

I had my inspiration.

I had quite a lot of research to do for Burning Bridges. Some of it—like the concert at the Alan B. Shepard Convention Center I knew because I’d been there for concerts, back in the day. But I knew nothing about the ships and the kinds of work they did in Vietnam. A story in one of the letters Sara (the heroine, Sara Richards) receives is a true story I found online. I changed it up slightly, but for the most part, it’s something that actually happened. The story made me realize how little any us knew about the day-to-day conditions our men and women faced over there. But then, I guess that’s often the way with war.

Anyway, that was my inspiration for Burning Bridges. I can’t wait to spring Jan’s surprising new book news! Then she’ll have to tell us about her inspiration! Maybe next month?

*Burning Bridges, a non-erotic romance by Dee S. Knight writing as Anne Krist: “With surprising twists

and believable interplay between characters, BURNING BRIDGES is an unforgettable love story filled with passionate desires and potent emotions.” –5 stars AlwaysReviewing.com

Finally, don’t forget that you have access to free stuff on the Nomad Authors site. This month there’s a poem I wrote just for Valentine’s Day. It shows one of the differences between men and woman. Hope you’re staying safe, dry and warm in the northern hemisphere and cool and safe in the southern! Dee

Mystery Newsletter

Open publish panel