Had a lovely Mother's Day yesterday. Now that the kids are adults, the gifts are better, lol! 
Pretty cushion is from 21, book is from 19, and chocolates are from my husband.

Honestly did not expect anything from my husband but he remembered my favourite chocolates! I also received a beautiful bouquet from 21's girlfriend on Friday, as well as some cookies & cream drops from 21 as a prelude to her Sunday gift.
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I feel very, very, lucky to have the family that I do, and I am so proud to be a mother to these two wonderful young people who amaze me every day.

I had to give up coffee.
I know, I know, it was such a huge part of my brand! I used to put 'coffee addict' in my social media profile descriptions. And I LOVED it so much.
But I thought I had asthma because I started experiencing shortness of breath and was prescribed an emergency puffer. Then I noticed it was generally after I drank a caffeinated beverage. I was drinking very strong black coffee - two large mugs full every day - plus tea in the afternoon.
I stopped drinking coffee first and noticed a HUGE improvement. Then I noticed the same thing but not so severe after drinking tea. So I cut out all caffeinated beverages and I haven't needed to use my puffer since.
Whether it was anxiety increased by the caffeine, or another kind of caffeine sensitivity, I had to cut out coffee and caffeinated tea which was a really hard thing to do. But when it's breathing vs a great drink, well you decide you can do without the drink. 
I'm not a fan of decaffeinated products because of the methods they use to take the caffeine out, so now I drink chamomile tea in the morning and a really yummy coffee substitute made from barley and chicoree in the middle of the morning. It's called Uncoffee and it's really good.
I definitely feel a drop in my 'cool' factor, as drinking strong black coffee made me feel ruthless and capable for some reason, lol. But I have to say the gentle soothing taste of chamomile tea has grown on me and I do quite like it.
I may try drinking caffeinated coffee and/or tea at some point in the future, but for now I'm happy with my coffee substitute and herbal tea. The funny thing is that I still make strong coffee for everyone else in my household every morning, because it's become a habit and I love them and I like to do it.
Still trying to find out what has been causing coughing and lung irritation since the end of November, but so far we have determined that I don't have asthma or a lung infection. My doctor has put in a requisition for allergy testing, but my husband also stopped using some new laundry rinse he had started just before I developed these issues, so I'm hoping that's it (yes, he does the laundry). I really, really hope that was the issue because I'm worried I've developed an allergy to our dog and my doctor seems to think that's quite possible, if not even likely. And I don't know what I'm going to do in that situation.

I just watched this on Prime. It was such a sweet movie, once I got past seeing Renée as Bridget Jones in early 20th century clothing. The nostalgia for all the Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny books and characters was excellently portrayed, and the story itself was heartfelt and tragic, then ultimately, ended on a wonderfully happy note.

Worth the watch if you’ve got 90 minutes and read Beatrix Potter books as a child. But, then again, who didn’t?

Having a low key Sunday here today. The weather is nice although a bit chilly still.

We went to visit my dad at his retirement home and he was in a really good mood and quite talkative. He has stage 2 dementia so his memory is pretty bad, but he was glad to hear that 19 has finished their first year at university and 21 is mostly living with her girlfriend in a small town an hour east of here. 

When we left, my husband, who is not big on going out for breakfast/lunch suggested we go to Gabriel’s and see if we could get a table. I quickly agreed. Their breakfasts are amazing.

Now back home and will spend the rest of the day reading. I’m almost finished a reread of the first book in the Gormenghast trilogy (Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake) and in the middle of I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy. Husband is making a Thai curry for supper.

19 starts their summer job tomorrow and 21 is going into week three of hers, so I will have the house to myself for the next four months - woohoo! As an introvert I am very excited about this. I also will have Friday evening to myself this week as husband and 19 are going to the Ottawa Charge playoff game.

Should be a good week!

I have finally broken free from all social media, and it feels…AMAZING.

My Instagram accounts (I had two) were permanently deleted yesterday after being scheduled for deletion for thirty days. I left Facebook over a year ago.

I remember my first invitation to be someone’s ‘Friend’ on this thing called Facebook, and wondering what on Earth they were inviting me to. I think my first child was an infant or a toddler, and our second child hadn’t come along yet.  But it felt good to be invited, so I joined up, never imagining what the platform would eventually become. 

In time, I started to use Facebook more for self-promotion of my writing business, but I always had a love-hate relationship with it. Sure, it was cool to ‘meet’ people and gather a large number of ‘friends’, but I recognized, even then, how much of a time sucker it was and that it wasn’t actually…real? You know, you could make a ‘Friend’ on Facebook, but were they actually your friend? Or were they also caught up in some misguided social experiment that existed in the ether of computer chips and laptop screens?

I get why social media took off in the way that it did. And I do understand what folks get out of it, having been involved for so long myself. My daughter is about to turn 22, so I’ve been on and off Facebook, and then on and off Instagram, for a long, long time. The first time I deleted my Facebook account was when I decided that having photos of my family (not a huge number, but they were there) on an account that now largely promoted my erotic books, made me uncomfortable. Having personal photos at all on such a widely used platform made me nervous. And going through my account to delete them individually was too monumental a task. So I deleted my account and started fresh with a commitment to avoid posting personal photos unless they were my own headshots. I deleted it again when I decided to rebrand myself as AE Lister (rather than Elizabeth Lister). 

I finally got rid of Facebook permanently a couple of years ago, deciding to focus on Instagram instead. I even created a second Instagram account to indulge my obsession with actor Sam Reid and his portrayal of Lestat de Lioncourt in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat, and it was alot of fun. But curating those accounts took time out of my day and, more importantly, kept my attention focused on how many followers I had, how many likes a post had, how many shares etc.

More importantly, with the influx of generative artificial intelligence, I was becoming aware of the damage that Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and the other billionaire tech bros were doing, and had always done, to enrich their private coffers. 

I read the book Careless People, A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams, and fully realized what a disgusting, horrible person Mark Zuckerberg truly is. He literally makes my skin crawl. 

Seeing all of these creepy billionaire tech bros at Trump’s inauguration had a visceral effect on me, as well.

I had never really gotten into using Twitter very much, but as soon as Elon Musk took it over, I deleted my account. I didn’t want to be involved in anything connected with that person.

Perhaps, if Instagram wasn’t now a part of Meta, I might not have made the decision to leave. 

Instagram had a lot of positive content on it that I curated into my feed. I followed horse ranches and tourism accounts for places I wanted to visit. I followed actors that I liked and personalities that I found compelling. Much better than Facebook, for sure, because there was no assumption that any of these people/accounts were my ‘friends’.

Still, this content that I was seeing was distracting me from real life and the current moment. Also, my Instagram feed had become a slew of advertisements and sponsored content, which was what led me to break away from Facebook. I resented having to wonder if things I was seeing were AI generated or real, a task becoming more and more difficult. The questionable value these platforms had possibly provided to me and to my life, was deteriorating before my very eyes. 

But the deciding factor was the discovery of a deposition from a social media trial about underage users, where evidence was brought forward indicating that these companies weren’t simply negligent with regard to keeping young users off their platforms, hooking young users (and everyone) was intrinsic to their business model.

"Bobby Allyn:
Yes, so Zuckerberg took the witness stand.
And you could tell he was getting kind of testy. He often responded by saying things like, "I think you're mischaracterizing me," or "That's not what I said at all," or "I think you're taking this document out of context."
Zuckerberg was trying vociferously to demonstrate that the lawyers in the case were basically trying to lawyer him, right, to try to catch him in a gotcha moment.
But, meanwhile, what the plaintiff's lawyers were really focused on was trying to really illustrate that Zuckerberg himself was interested in recruiting and retaining children as young as 11 years old to Facebook and Instagram and keeping them on the platform for as long as possible with all of these very sticky features like likes and push notifications and beauty filters, was something that Zuckerberg himself ordered.”
 
~ PBS News, Ali Rogin, Jackson Hudgins

Here’s an article about the landmark verdict in the case.

I realized that we had all been hooked. The platforms are deliberately addictive. And I should have understood that a business created from a socially stunted man's idea of rating female classmates at college in terms of attractiveness likely did not have any kind of moral underpinning. The introduction and proliferation of Meta’s latest product - Smart Glasses - also enraged me, as more and more evidence is showing that a large number of men are using the hidden recording feature in nefarious and predatory ways. Who could have predicted it?

So I decided that was it, and I had to disconnect from anything connected to Mark Zuckerberg, and reclaim my life from the time-suck and delusion of so-called ’social’ media.

What I have noticed: 

• I am calmer and more focused. 
• I am reading actual books (not ebooks) again. I still read some ebooks, but I make sure I always have a paperback or hardcover book on hand to indulge in the visceral experience of reading language on a printed page. I forgot how much I loved that. I’m actually​ reading literature again, which is a big time investment but one more meaningful to me than scrolling on my phone. I may write in the romance genre, but I have a love for literary masterpieces that I’ve put by the wayside for much too long.
• ​I’m letting myself feel bored, without immediately trying to find something to do that involves my laptop or my phone. 
• ​I am feeling the urge to go places again, and not to be satisfied with a homebound existence with the illusion of social activity and involvement.

I’m at the point in my life and my writing ‘career’ that if it so happens that I lose out on self promo from not being active on social media, then so be it. I have a decent sized email list, a website, and this blog for posting content. I know I will miss out on lots of opportunities by not being in the thick of things on socials, but I’m at the point where 'missing out' is more of an attraction than a deterrent.

Because what I don’t want to miss out on, is my life and the people in it.

I am about to turn 57 years old this June, and I don’t want to live out my remaining years in a blur of likes and shares and meaningless engagement. I want to be fully focused on whatever amount of living I have left to me, and on the people I truly care for.

​I’d rather lose myself in a good book than in the endless scroll of social media.

So my husband and I headed West early Saturday morning for the Islands and Ink Book Fair at the Gananoque Curling Club. We missed a turn off so arrived later than planned but still with half an hour to set up my table. I had decided on a minimal display this time, as I went full bore at the last two conventions I attended - with fancy little blackboards and stacks of books on my table.

I’m quite happy with how it all looked and I made quite a few sales, so I’m thrilled.

I had decided to discount my prices as well, and to have a deal for buying more than one book. In fact, I bundled my backlist series’ together for $25 for a 3 book series, and $30 for a 4 book series. I’m going to keep doing this, as it makes it a lot easier to offload subsequent books in a series. I also had my individual backlist books at $10 each. My two latest releases, A Flash of Golden Fire and A Hellish Thing, were $20 each or both for $30 and everyone chose the duo. I’ll be keeping this price listing at Can*Con in October. Although I won’t have a sales table in the vendor room, I will have books and bundles on site for the asking.

It’s so difficult for an inaugural event in terms of attendance, and we were all hoping for a more substantial turnout. But the people who did come to my table were lovely and enthusiastic, and I had a great time.

Thanks so much to Mary Holmes and her amazing team for a wonderful event! 

I did not think I would be so hyped for this space mission, but I happened upon the launch when I was bored and found it quite exciting and very nostalgic. As a kid we’d watch all the rocket and space shuttle launches, sometimes in school, and it was pretty freaking cool.

Now, as an adult, it just boggles my mind how they can do this sort of thing, and calculate so precisely how to make everything go exactly to plan. I watched the re-entry and splashdown to make sure they did make it back okay, because, again, I was expecting something to go wrong, merely because I couldn’t imagine that everything would possibly work as it was supposed to. 

But it did, and they are safely back home. I’m not sure how practical this kind of space exploration is, considering all the stuff going on on the planet itself, but I did find it gave me some sense of optimism and encouragement that in some things, humanity might actually know what it is doing.

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter Weekend!

Now that my kids are grown, Easter isn’t really a big deal at our place. We are atheist humanists so there isn’t a religious angle. I do tend to enjoy pagan celebrations though, so there is a feeling a rebirth and renewal now that the snow is almost gone and above zero temperatures are a daily occurrence. 

Of course, we are having a big family meal on Sunday (Ham and Scalloped potatoes), but our 21 yo daughter may not make it into town with her girlfriend. She has a life of her own now, about an hour away from us, which is fantastic. At least they were both here over Christmas.

I’ll get the kids each a small bag of Cadbury Mini-eggs and an Easter Creme Egg just for the sake of tradition, but I’m going to buy myself some Charles Dickens books at the bargain books section in Indigo as my Easter treat. I got Great Expectations for Christmas and now I want to read his whole catalogue.

My youngest and I watched the launch of Artemis II yesterday, and it was definitely nostalgic for me, growing up in the seventies and eighties. It’s exciting and all that, but I wish money was being spent on other things. I don’t actually foresee humanity being able to colonize other planets as a realistic or practical goal. So then, what is the use of spending billions of dollars to fly four people around the moon? Because we can? I don’t really get it.

Anyway, I’m trying not to spend too much time contemplating current events because sometimes I look around and wonder if I’m living in some weird other dimension. Still hoping for the best and that things can turn around over the next couple of years.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend with family and friends, and are enjoying the turn of the weather like I am.

Cheers,

Alison

​A huge thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed an ARC of A Hellish Thing. I can see them piling up over at Goodreads and Bookbub and I am super grateful for all the positive words.

Good reviews help sales but do you know what else they do? They give me life! They make me think that perhaps I’m a half decent writer after all. They make all the hard labour of birthing a book absolutely worth it. Every time I have a book releasing I’m tied up in knots wondering if anyone will actually like it. I honestly do get so stressed every time.

So thank you again to all my readers, especially those who have followed me all these years. You guys are the reason I do this.

xo
Alison

This never gets old, especially when the cover, designed by Jaycee DeLorenzo, is this beautiful. Holding in my hand a book I have written is a pretty special thing.

I’ll be taking these with me to the Islands and Ink Book Fair in Gananoque, Ontario, in a few weeks (April 25th), to sell alongside A Flash of Golden Fire.