Hot Nights Cold Ice

I write about ice hockey, so you would think that hot summer nights wouldn’t be my cup of tea but you would be wrong. This week is the second round of the playoffs and this is when I get all my best ideas and I know that I will have time to write those ideas soon.

I was watching a Boston Bruins game last week and it was hot. The players were hot and the crowd was over heated and uncomfortable. It brought to mind hot nights in the old Boston Garden of my childhood.

The old Garden opened in 1928 and as the hockey season got longer a particular weakness of the building was revealed. Fog. When the old Garden got hot, the rink would generate fog. The image of those ghostly players moving through the fog created by poor air conditioning has always left me with the idea of unworldly hockey players. Now I have a whole magical universe filled with, shape-shifters, wizards and fairies all from one image caused by a hot summer night over cold, cold ice.

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An excerpt from the short story Accrocher Ses Pantins by Elizabeth Inglee-Richards from my new anthology Wicked Slapshots

  Packing was something I did fairly regularly. Every year the season ended, and Jennot and I went home to Moncton. It had been the same since the team had moved from Halifax in the sixties. Before that we still packed to go home, but home was much closer then. That day I thought I may be packing for the final time, at least a final time for a long time.

Jennot was tired. He wanted a break from hockey, a break from the team, and a few quiet years before we came back to Massachusetts. A few years that he didn’t have to be called Trey. I could see him taking the place of Walter, the current goalie coach. I wondered if Jennot would want a break from me as well. It wouldn’t be the first time we had parted in our lives together. Hyenas don’t mate for life, like people think wolves do, and neither do Bouda.

Above our bed was our wedding photograph. Our original one. Taken in the summer of 1927. I took it off the wall and held it in my hands. The only piece of our original life left to us after all these years. My most precious belonging. I didn’t think many of our clan kept many reminders of the past.

At the intersection of Sport and History

     Although it isn’t always obvious, I am from Boston . Yes, I have spent most of my life in the Philly metro area, but Boston is still home, if I had my way I would live in both places at once. Boston is a city of small places as you have probably heard over and over again this week. These small places are tied together with string made up of sport and history. Often the thread is sport and history at the same time as is the case with Patriots Day. The holiday is celebrated with the marathon, a Red Sox game and then the Bruins or Celtics in the evening.
      To give this a little personal context I left for Columbus OH on the 9th and was just returning home on the 15th. I was at a trade show that is long days and tight living. I was sick Sunday night. Monday we left around ten in the morning for our long drive home. I was co-pilot and I was glibly telling the driver about Marathon Monday when I started to get texts that something had happened at the marathon.
      Boston lives with one foot in the past. The Marathon celebrates the battles of Lexington and Concord. I know you’ve heard that a million times now, but it can’t be said enough, this is a public Civic holiday. There is so much going on that day; reenactments of the battles, reenactments of the ride of Paul Revere and William Dawes.
      It is often one of the first really nice days in Boston and after a long winter everyone wants to be out. Patriots Day is half memorial service and half Bacchanalia and totally, utterly sacred.
      I don’t know anyone who hasn’t stayed at the finish line until the last runner had crossed a million hours after the start, totally snookered and talking to people they had just met. It’s just something that you do at least once in your life.
     My brother in law had said he might go that year. He had gone in the past. He had decided not to, but it took me about an hour to get in touch with him. Patriots Day in general and the Marathon in particular is personal to Boston. It is ours in a way that no other holiday is.
     I have spent a lot of time texting and e-mailing this week. I have been angry, and frightened and sad. My family has been locked down. My family has heard explosions. Hundreds of rounds were shot not far from my old office.
     This week has been hard, but hard places make hard people. All Bostonians were wounded by this act even if we weren’t there that day. I doubt that we will ever know why this happened, I’m not sure I care why it happened.
      I want my city to go back to normal. I want people to feel safe. I want next Patriots Day to be sunny and I want to see happy locals giveing high fives to strangers again.

Mythic Monday

This past weekend I’ve been playing catch up. Catch up with laundry, catch up with making lunches. I downloaded a few books and my pod-casts, so I am almost ready for the week. While at work on Saturday, my co-worker and I had a long talk about folk lore and fantasy. So I started thinking about one of my favorite fairy-tails, or maybe I should say groups of fairytales. When I was little my mother read me Andrew Lang’s “Fairy Book” series. There are twelve books in the series. The first book is “The Blue Fairy Book” and it was published in 1889, the last one was the “Lilac Fairy Book” and it was published in 1910. In that eleven years fairytales went from rather brutal to what we think of them now - Jack went from “Jack the Giantkiller” to “Jack in the Beanstalk” One of my favorite stories was in the first book and was called “Bluebeard”. Basicly a woman marries a siralkiller and is told not to go into a room in the house they share, of course she does and finds all the dead wives he has had before her. In the version in the Lang book the woman’s brothers save her. I probably would have liked it better if she had saved herself. That said, Bluebeard is the French version of this type of tale, there other versions where the woman does save herself. Bluebeard scared the crap out of me as a child and engendered a lifelong love of horror. Read more about Bluebeard here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard

wicked slapshot

Mulit-Published Author Elizabeth Inglee-Richards Releases Wicked Slapshots Books To Go Now is proud to announce author Elizabeth Inglee-Richards hockey anthology, Wicked Slapshots, has been released! About Wicked Slapshots: First time together in an anthology, Elizabeth Inglee-Richards best-selling Paranormal hockey series. The Rebuilding Years: The Hampden County Hyenas are a hockey team that is a bit unusual. They really are hyenas-or boudas. Much like werewolves they are both man and beast-a perfect fit for hockey. It is a rebuilding year for the team and it's time to hunt for a new recruit. Breakthrough Game: When an old leader is ready to step down Rob Grahame is the only one who knows. How do you take on a responsibility you aren’t sure you are ready for? Rob and his team are both over their heads, in the midst of the play-offs with the core of the team shifting. Will Rob be able to step up and be the leader no one expected him to have to be? Will the hyena follow him? Wings and Blades: Betrayed by his wife, William Fonte, a defenseman in the Pan-American Champion Hockey League, returns home to Boston in search of a trade to the team he had loved as a child, the Nahant Nor’easters. Will he learn to soar again with the help of an angel from his past? Or will his past keep him earthbound? Accrocher Ses Pantins (Hanging 'em Up): In the nineteen twenty’s the world of Ice Hockey was changing forever, spreading south into the US markets. Two young lovers from New Brunswick were preparing to get married when the young man is offered his dream job as a goalie for a team based in Halifax. The couple has no idea what changes they are going to have to make for the team that doesn’t just wear the Hyena, they become the hyena quite literally. Rejoice: A Burden: It’s the last game before Christmas and Arttu, forward for the Nor’easter ice hockey team, is having a hard time with his asthma. When his fiance is kidnapped from the teams Christmas party by Nuuttipukki, a Holiday spirit trying to punish her for using magic on people without consent, will he be able to save her, or will Nuuttipukki drag her to hell? About Author Elizabeth Inglee-Richards: Elizabeth is a writer of modern Urban and Suburban fantasy. Her stories are mostly set in Delaware or Massachusetts, the two places she has spent most of her life. Many of her stories have a romantic twist and often deal with professional hockey players; after all there are never enough romantic urban fantasies about hockey! You can find her at her blog: http://elizabethingleerichards.blogspot.com Where you can find the anthology Wicked Slapshots: http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Slapshots-ebook/dp/B00BSAIDK...

Maintenance Day

It was a good weekend. Friday night I went to see Dropkick Murphys with my best friend - always a good time.

 

Saturday was a maintenance day for me. I slept late made my lunches for the week and did laundry. Then I watched some hockey, I can say that was research, but I would be fibbing.

I wrote a little, but not much.

Part of me feels guilty about not getting any writing or anything else real done, but at the same time I know I need down time. That is the problem with working so much is that you don’t have time to do the day to day things.

I’m not sure that I function well without some time off-probably no one does. It is the situation I am in though, so needs must.

My year goals:

    23884 out of 100000 76116 left to go

7 pounds lost 3 pounds left to go

How about you all? Did you make new years resolutions and if so how are you doing on them?

Look it is a post!

Wow I suck at keeping up with this thing. I wanted to do three posts a week but I’m not even managing three a month and I have to admit to feeling guilty about that but then again I wonder how people have time to keep up with things.

Then again people ask how I have time to work three jobs so I guess we all have things, right?

I had two days off in a row, yesterday and today, and I haven’t managed to get much done in them. Mostly watched television laundry and cooking. I got a little writing done, but not all that much. For all that I haven’t done much I feel better than I have in a long time. I guess we all need down time sometimes. Plus the cats seem to have enjoyed sitting all over me.

I’ve been playing around with a story, but you know how sometimes you get into a story and you just have a feeling that the story is just for you? Well that is where I suddenly find myself. Mind you I am going to keep at it - or I should say I plan to keep at it, but I know that nine out of every ten stories I start get dropped somewhere along the way.

The Beginning

First off - I decided to work on the post civil war story. I’m moving fairly slowly because I haven’t gotten the world worked out yet - I’ve only managed a little less than 3K on it this week.

Most of my creative friends tell me that pain completely stops creativity for them. I have the opposite feeling about pain. It is a good thing I do, since I feel pain every moment of every day and have since 1985. How I got to where I am is sort of a long story and will probably take a few posts - but I’ve promised a few people that I would tell my story.

When I was seven I started horseback riding. I know people think that you can only ride if you are super wealthy. That wasn’t true in the seventies, it may be true now, I don’t know.

When I was thirteen I won a horse in an essay contest. I wrote five essays about care and my training philosophy and what have you. When she was two years old and I was training her we were shot at.

Horses, especially young horses, don’t like being shot at and she turned into a crazy bucking bronco. I was unseated and fell across the saddle.

I want to say it hurt, but all I remember is numbness and coldness in my left leg.

That was the start of 27 years of treatment, and searching and eventually a diagnosis. Because my symptoms were all in my leg they didn’t think to look at my back until 2005 or so.

Knowing that I broke my back at 15 hasn’t changed my life much. I still take the same medications and do the same exercises. I try not to let the pain control me.

In fact I try to control it. I meditate and do yoga and try to keep myself as active as I can. In fact I have a job that involves being on my feet all day and a lot of heavy lifting. I try to stay as fit as I can and I do a lot of walking meditation.

I know most people see pain as something that stops you, I try to look at it as a way to focus myself and my life. I look at my accident as a basically positive. I may not have the life I though I would have but I never would have had as creative a life as I do now without that accident.

So pain is a creative, not a destructive force in my life.

How about you guys? Do you have things that you thought would be a hindrance that turned out to be a blessing?