Musings Over a Cup of Coffee. Sit, relax, and enjoy a cup of coffee with me.
On Halloween
When I was a kid, my best friend’s grandmother made her a beautiful, spangly princess costume for the elementary school costume party. My mother, who did not sew or have much interest in costumes, told me to “be creative.” I took a pair of long johns that had been dyed green as part of an elf costume for a Christmas pageant, dug out flippers from my brother’s closet, blew up a long balloon, and tied it to the back of the long johns. Instead of being a princess or a witch or a goblin, I went to the party as a frogman. I won first place—not because it was well done, but because the judges had never seen anything like it. (Sadly, the photo has been lost to history.)
When my son was in pre-school, he told us he needed a costume for a Halloween party the next day. Unlike my mother, I could sew. I sat up half the night making a cat costume that included a cat hat with pointy ears and a nice wiggly cat tail. In the morning, he put it on, looked in the mirror, and said, “This is nice, but I want these.” He held up a pair of broken Groucho Marx glasses we’d gotten at a garage sale. The cat costume went into the donation bag, and the Groucho Marx glasses were a hit at the party—who knew?
After the cat incident, I gave up costume-making. I now confine my creativity to writing characters for my books. Perhaps in a backstory, one of them will have gone to a Halloween party as a frogman wearing Groucho glasses. I like that idea.
Home is Where the CorningWare Hides
In fiction, and especially series fiction, we create homes and communities. Jamie from A Cabin by the Lake Mystery Series settles into Northern Minnesota on the shores of Lake Larissa. Liza from the Liza and Mrs. Wilkens series lives in a garden apartment in the heart of Minneapolis. Red Hammergren from the upcoming Sheriff Red Mysteries is the law in a rural county filled with good and bad people.
In real life, sometimes, we have to move from the place we call home. In my case, it was from a three-bedroom rambler on a quiet cul-de-sac to an apartment in Seattle. While Jamie, in her move from New York City, was able to pile all her belongings into a car, I had to sift through years of things. What should I keep, and what should I donate, recycle, or throw? I discovered essays from my high school years, family letters to and from people I didn’t know, and a box of canceled checks going back to the 1960s. (Things were a lot cheaper then.)
At some point, I lost all perspective on this. I tossed things I should have saved and kept things that I should have tossed. In the flurry of moving, I gave up trying to sort and hired a packing company to box it all up. They didn’t ask questions, they simply packed what they saw. When it all arrived in the new apartment, I discovered that I had nineteen CorningWare casseroles I had accumulated over the years. Some were in plain sight in the kitchen, and others were stashed in closets. Why nineteen CorningWare casseroles? I guess I wanted to make sure that if I broke one, I’d have another in reserve.
A friend suggested they might be valuable. I looked a few up on eBay, and one that appeared to be exactly the same as casserole #14 on my counter was listed for $17,000. Really? My thought was to insist that anyone who came to visit had to leave with a casserole. And if it happened to be worth $17,000, so be it. I am now down to a reasonable six.
Watch and wait because I have the feeling that one of the characters who lives in my fictional world will either be a CorningWare hoarder or someone who made $17,000 off a non-descript 1 ¾ quart casserole with blue flowers on it. A murder will probably be involved 😊.
Sold Out!
In the chaos of life changes, I haven’t done much book promotion. However, I had a wonderful time at Lake Country Books in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. I even sold out Death of a Dream Catcher.
Book News: A New Series!
Two books in my new Sheriff Red series are available on Bookshop.org and Amazon for preorder. The Lake Will Take Them will be released in March, and The Pines Were Watching will be released next September.
Lovely Reviews
Thank you, Greg Stout, author of the Jackson Gamble Mysteries, for this review of Death of a Dream Catcher:
Say this for author Norlander: She does not cheat the reader. The clues are there, so that, when the solution is revealed, the reader is left feeling satisfied (hint: the “dream catcher” is not a reference to a Native American totem).
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Keep those reviews coming in! Reviews tell me my books are being read and motivate me to create more plots, characters, and communities.
Happy Halloween!!
