Oh look, Rum and Eggnog!
Oh look, Rum and Eggnog!

Oh look, Rum and Eggnog!

Ah… it’s rum and eggnog sea­son! We finally had our great, huge — too huge, and prob­lem­at­ic, tree taken down. Too close to the house, too big, and still grow­ing! So we were at last able to put up our out­side lights! I did NOT fall out of a tree whilst string­ing red and blue LEDs all through it. I *might* have done a bit of shop­ping on Santa’s behalf the oth­er day, but I won’t bur­den him with it: I’ll use Canada Post. And we atten­ded a vir­tu­al party on the week­end. Those are great because we don’t have to decide who’s the des­ig­nated driver.

So this week’s epis­ode of the pod­cast https://totallyfantastictitle.podbean.com/e/33-gatekeepers-deception-10-what-have-you-done-now/ was based on a painting.

I went with my mum to an art show put on by the Burn­aby Artist­s’s guild. We walked up and down the aisles look­ing at all the racks, hung top to bot­tom with beau­ti­ful paint­ings and draw­ings and multi-media pieces, amaz­ing art cre­ated by loc­al tal­ent. The piece that caught my eye was a very small water­col­our paint­ing, only about 3 x 4″ called Tun­nel Vis­ion by Jane Appleby — please look her up, her work is beau­ti­ful, lots of nature scenes, and she tends toward col­ours I like. So this piece caught my eye, and it is just as I describe it in the chapter: the trees are of mul­tiple col­ours and they sweep over­head in an arch that looks like a roun­ded tun­nel, and I just stood there and stared at this little paint­ing for ages. And I knew I would write about it in my book. I was writ­ing Book Two at the time, as yet untitled, and I had no idea how this tun­nel through the trees would fit in the story.

I star­ted writ­ing, describ­ing the voice Kyer heard in her head, and the horses stop­ping, Kyer going back to find the entrance to the tun­nel, Derry being pissed off that she stopped. I wrote it, Jesqel­lan volun­teer­ing to go with her, the trouble they had step­ping on the smooth, wet sur­face, and I had abso­lutely no idea what they would find at the oth­er end of the tun­nel. I kid you not that when the two of them arrived at that clear­ing, it was covered in mist and I had NO IDEA what was in there. Kyer stepped for­ward, Jesqel­lan warned her to stay back, he did his little detect magic spell, then she car­ried on and when that mist circled upward into the trees, the hairs on my back stood on end. I exper­i­enced that scene exactly the same way Kyer did, and when she found that sword, I knew it was the right choice for her to take it. I had no clue what it was, who the dead war­ri­or was, nor if the sword would be sig­ni­fic­ant in any way. In fact I was kind of dis­ap­poin­ted that it prob­ably meant she would no longer use Bren­dow’s sword.

I won’t say any­thing more about her new weapon at the moment, but now you know that her sword was just as much a mys­tery to me as it is to Kyer.

Look up Jane Appleby, artist, to see her work, and sup­port your own loc­al artists in your area! https://janeappleby.com

As for me, I would love it if you sup­por­ted my art by listen­ing to, and lik­ing and shar­ing my pod­cast! Drop a kind review of Gate­keep­er­’s Key on Goodreads…https://www.goodreads.com   Hon­estly, reviews REALLY help authors.

Gate­keep­er­’s Key is avail­able, in audio only, on lots of plat­forms includ­ing Chirp, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play and oth­ers. NOT Audible.

https://www.chirpbooks.com/audiobooks/gatekeeper-s-key-by-krista-wallace

https://books.apple.com/ca/audiobook/gatekeepers-key/id1533520773

https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/audiobook/gatekeeper-s-key

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Krista_Wallace_Gatekeeper_s_Key?id=AQAAAECcmgnahM

Oh look! A rum and eggnog. Cheers!