So. Robin Williams. Dammit. The first Robin Williams movie I ever saw was Mrs. Doubtfire. I was 13, my parents were getting a divorce, and my father thought that some related comedy might be healing. He was right. He and I saw a lot of movies together — RW’s and otherwise — throughout my teen years. This was a time when I was angry at my father for the divorce, unhappy at school, and in dire need of something uplifting. I won’t say that RW was my only solace, or the only reason that my father and I were able to rebuild our relationship, but he sure helped. My father loved RW. They were close in age. My father was a pastoral counsellor; RW often played psychologists and doctors. RW sometimes even sported a beard that made him look a lot like my father. I think the reason RW’s work resonated so much with my father, and with me as well, was his wistfulness. He was a comic, but behind the comedy was always something a little sad. Now, of course, we know he couldn’t fight it back any longer.

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Imagine this: You are in a community hall. On the stage, a band is playing traditional folk music, led by a fiddler. In the hall, people are dancing until the wooden floor bounces — the whole room moving in unison. You are dancing with a partner, but you are also dancing with a whole line of other people at the same time, alternating between twosomes and foursomes and everybody. Onstage, a caller is shouting out the moves. But you’ve gone through the sequence several times and it’s in your body now, you can flow smoothly from one move to the next, your momentum carrying you and buoying you up.

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So last year I told you all about my adventures in starting my first real vegetable garden. This year? Not only are the vegetables back, but I’m madly researching flowers, shrubs, and trees. I have to admit I didn’t anticipate this when the subject of buying a house first came up between my life partner and me. At the time we were living in a generic high-rise apartment building. I envisioned purchasing a lovely old house with history and personality, with enough space for us each to claim a separate office room. Location was important. Public transit was important. A garden didn’t really enter into our priorities, or even our thoughts, beyond “oh yeah, we’ll have to mow our lawn.” We ended up with all those things, PLUS a large urban yard with nothing in it. 1250 square feet of fertile soil, almost twice the size of the one-bedroom apartment we’d lived in for years. Blank slate, wheeeeeee! Now, two years into home-ownership, we’ve become devoted plant-growers, enthusiastic and slightly less clueless than when we started. (Home-grown carrots? Best thing ever. Even when they’re shaped funny. Same for tomatoes, but I hadn’t realized how much I missed the taste of real carrots….) Honestly, I don’t quite know what hit me.

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So I spent two days this week with a loved one in hospital in Montreal, Quebec. That was scary for a while, but the scary part is over now (knock wood) and I’m slowly coming down from all that stress. What I’m starting to remember now are the little things that happened while I was focused on my own loved one’s story. The way the first-responder firefighters switched into French to debrief the paramedics. The way the gurney’s legs retracted as the bed platform slid into the ambulance. The first intake guy at the hospital, who also talked with the paramedics in fluent French (while I, despite being non-fluent, tried to eavesdrop and read the medical notes he was making on the computer — in French)…and then came over to us and said, in a clearly non-francophone accent, “How you doin’, mate?” So completely unexpected that it almost made me laugh. The tiny room where we saw the nurse, which had a second door opening onto a big lab (?) room…where people were joking and gossiping and carrying on just as if I wasn’t sitting there next to a hospital patient and trying not to freak out. The fact that my loved one was the youngest in the waiting room by about 50 years. And then, in the ward…

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Up until recently, I could say that I didn’t watch TV. At all. Sure, I had a TV, but no cable, so it was only ever used for movies on DVD. I moved out of my mother’s house in 2005 and hadn’t watched much of anything since. Then, about a month ago, we got Netflix. (I did mention I’m a late adopter, right?) We haven’t been binging like most people do — one or two episodes a week is about all we watch. So far, at least. (My media addiction of choice is the Internet.) So we’re catching up (very very slowly) on Doctor Who, Sherlock, and of all things, Buffy, which I never watched when it was on…and enjoying them all thoroughly. Oddly enough, all of these series have some things in common, if you squint.

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Hello readers! This is Siri Paulson checking in to tell you how 2014 is shaping up around here. First, if you’ve been following my serial fantasy story “Still Waters Run Deep”, you’ll be pleased to know that the fifth and final installment has just been posted. (And if you haven’t been following it, why not? you can access the first four installments through the same link.) Go forth and read! Second, we usually release three works for sale each year, in April, August, and December. This year, due to unavoidable delays, we have had to postpone our April release. However, we’re excited about August and December. We’re working on a new anthology for August, with a theme we think you’ll really enjoy (hint: there will be both romance and fantasy). And in December, KD Sarge is back with a new SF novel featuring the fabulous duo of Taro and Rafe. In the meantime, check back here on the first of every month for a new free short story, and every Tuesday for a blog post from one of the four intrepid TDP authors. Come say hi! We don’t bite. Usually. (Cue evil laughter…)

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I’ll be honest, guys. I really struggle with this time of year. By the time March hits, it’s been cold for so long (especially this year) that I’ve forgotten how summer feels. It’s still dark. I’m tired of my winter clothes and of wearing a giant coat. I feel like I’m slogging through life.

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You’ve heard of early adopters, right? Excited about new technology, always eager for the next great gadget? Then there are the total refuseniks, the ones who aren’t on Facebook or who don’t have cell phones. Somewhere in the middle, but closer to the second group, are people like me. My family got its first computer when I was still a kid. But it was always an older computer. I remember using WordPerfect 5.1, orange text on a black screen, for years. Yep, that was on DOS. The other day someone in my household ran into computer problems and ended up at a DOS prompt, and then at a DOS Shell menu…cue the nostalgia! I remember first using email in DOS, and being annoyed when the Internet started going graphic and our computer didn’t have that capability so it got harder and harder to surf the web… I got my first digital camera and my first cell phone in 2004 — and there was no going back. Those two things were just too convenient. No more paying to develop tons of rolls of photos after a long trip? The ability to phone anyone…from anywhere? Eureka! Still I remained a late adopter. I got a laptop in 2005 only because an acquaintance was selling one, an ereader in 2011 only because it was a gift. (The laptop was another game-changer; the ereader less so, although I now read about 1/3 of my books in ebook form and my bookshelves thank me for…

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Remember the resolutions you made a month ago? How are you doing on them — are you still going strong? Did they fizzle and die right away? Or are you somewhere in between, struggling along, weighed down by the cold and dark and sheer endlessness of January? That last one is where I’m at right now. My goals for this year have to do with making space — clearing out physical, mental, and time-filling clutter so I can refocus on what’s important to me. The very first step in that goal was to spend more time writing. Instead, I’m spending less time writing and more time…renovating my house? I’m doing a writing challenge that involves twice-weekly check-ins on my blog. If you read those posts, you might notice a lot of what sound like rationalizations or excuses. I’m busy with Real Life. I’m not writing a lot but it’s quality over quantity. Renovations also relate to my goal of “making space”. But all of that is deliberate.

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As we head into the holidays, a joyous time that can also be stressful due to the sheer amount of stuff that needs doing, I’m finding my own stress level ramping up. And it’s got me thinking. Are we addicted to stress? Here’s where I’m coming from. I’m a writer with a day job. That means that (like most of you, no doubt) I always have multiple projects and to-dos on the go, and a certain amount of stress is unavoidable. But I’m also a worrier with some compulsive tendencies. I’m always setting myself extra projects, or goals I can’t meet, and then stressing out when I inevitably fail.

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