Have a Dickens of a Christmas!

Mother, Madge, Jack and I are heading off to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. This year I'll be stepping forward from the rest of the choir to do a solo: O Holy Night. And on Christmas Day, we'll each read aloud from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, about this sour old man named Ebenezer Scrooge who slowly comes to realize the value of caring for others as opposed to the value of a bank book. My favorite part is when he buys Tiny Tim a fat goose for the roasting! Num! For myself, I happen to like finding goose-egg-sized chocolates bulging up my Christmas stocking.

Read the book -- and see the 1951 movie starring Alastair Sim. Watch out for the ghost of events yet to come, though. Scareee!

Hey, be like Scrooge -- the reformed Scrooge -- and think of others this Christmas. Like the homeless animals at the BCSPCA! And, hey, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good Silent Night.

A Royal Thank You

... to my buddy B.L. of Vancouver, who introduced my author, Melanie Jackson, at not one but TWO school presentations. Way to go, B.L.! And I happen to know you're an ace writer, so keep on writing!

This being a royal thank you, I have an excuse to blather about my personal heroine, the very royal, very cool Elizabeth I. That Queen Elizabeth, who lived way back in the 1500s – hey, around the time Melanie Jackson was in kindergarten! – was redheaded and spitfire-determined, just like me. She reached the throne purely by her wits, after having a whole pack of enemies plot against her life. And then she reigned for a whopping forty years. I suspect Elizabeth was stubborn - another trait we have in common - and determined not to give up, no matter what. Yay, Elizabeth! There's a great historical novel about her called Young Bess, by Margaret Irwin. It was made into a movie, too! The photo shows Jean Simmons as Young Bess. Ahem, movie producers: ever be interested in casting a musical version of Young Bess? Puh-leeze, consider yours truly.

Speaking of stubbornness, I marched next door to ask Mr. Dubuque what had become of his wife. "Mrs. Dubuque - you do remember her," I said.

"Yeah. Well," Mr. Dubuque grunted, closing the door. Or trying to: it met my foot. "Ursula's visiting relatives back east."

"Funny," I said, though I wasn't smiling. "I once practiced my Junior Sleuth Club interrogation techniques on Mrs. D. Asked her about her background. She said her entire family lived in Sweden."

"Ja?" Mr. Dubuque scowled at me. He rammed the door against my foot. I had to withdraw it, or for the rest of my life look like I was walking on the side of a hill.

And then there's that garden he'd uprooted and replanted. Weird thing to do in late autumn. From my bedroom window I stared down at the rich orange zinnias freshly growing in the Dubuque garden - and wondered, and wondered.

A huge round of applause for S.P.!

My buddy S.P. from Vancouver sent me in this cool-sounding plot for a novel she's working on. I love it when kids write stories. Take it away, S.P.!

"I started a new story about a month ago and I'm still sticking with it. (I haven't gotten writer's block yet, like I always get). It's called Trouble in Tulum and it's about an eleven-year old girl called Elma Nichols who wins a two-week vacation with her parents and way-too-mature 16-year old sister to Tulum, in Mexico. But when she gets there, she hardly gets to relax at all. She gets wound up in a swirl of protests, purple-haired people, deep, ice-cold fountains, a strict substitute teacher, playing soccer in a monsoon, and more.

"So far, I've written six chapters and 63 pages. I'm really excited about it! So far, I've used dramatic irony, excitement, inner conflict, humour and exaggeration.

"By the way, here's the description I wrote for my book:

"When Elma Nichols and her family win a two-week vacation to Tulum, Mexico, they are overjoyed. Elma wants to swim with dolphins, her sister Madison wants to soak up the sun, and their parents want to relieve all their stress that's been building up. But little does Elma know that she's going to get tangled up in a mystery involving a heated protest, a day trapped at sea, and dozens of purple-haired people. Can she stop the protest, solve the mystery and still manage to make the most of her
vacation in paradise?"

Brussels sprouts more than leaves
This post is dedicated to Dinah's friends C. and M. in North Vancouver.

I just got some horrifying news. I hope you're sitting down. My author, Melanie Jackson, recently served Brussels sprouts to dinner guests. Like, what is she trying to do, alienate the planet? My North Van buddies C. and M. heard about it and are in therapy right now.

Melanie remains irritatingly blasé. "Brussels sprouts are good," she insists. "Would you like to try this nummy recipe I found, where you make them with slivered almonds?"

"Sure," I reply sweetly. "That's number two on my list of choice things to do today -- right after strapping myself to the Skytrain tracks."

Gad. You can see what I have to put up with.

Here's what C. and M.'s dad wrote in his e-mail to me: "M., with a shocked look on his face said, 'But Dinah doesn't like Brussel sprouts.' C. piped up, 'Don't you remember, when Dinah was making the Brussels sprouts disappear at the dinner table, she threw the last one out the window where the bad guy was trying to get into the house. It went into his mouth and he fell into the yard. The neighbours reported a man dressed all in black, limping and chewing something with a disgusted look on his face.' "

Ah yes, how fondly I remember that episode. It was near the start of The Mask on the Cruise Ship. Brussels sprouts as Scud missiles: now that's a good use for 'em.

Happy Ghoulish Hallowe'en
This post is chillingly dedicated to Dinah's friend T.M. in Toronto.

I decided to go out tonight as a salami. Hope you don't have a beef with that. I decided I needed a change from being, for example, a witch. Last Hallowe'en I went out as a witch and -- well, let's just say the evening was somewhat disastrous. You can read about it in my adventure, The Man in the Moonstone.

Anyhow, I'd had the salami-costume idea for a while, because I'm a singing salami on the radio. In commercials, I belt out tunes for Sol's Salami on W. 4th:

You'd have to be balmy
Not to love Sol's salami ...

That's the latest jingle. Sol writes 'em himself. I think he was in kind of a bad mood when he wrote that one. Oh, well. The jingle stuck in my head, so I decided a salami I would be.

It was almost the witching hour, or the trick or treating one, anyway, and I was swathed in a brown comforter with yellow scarves pinned along it. Mustard on a salami, get it? Plus, Madge had artistically twisted a brown scarf and sewed it to the top of a sunhat. When I put the hat-with-scarf on my head, it was supposed to be twisty-looking end of a salami. And she'd dangled a large price tag from the scarf. Pretty cool. And ... to make the costume even more effective, I was carrying a particularly garlicky salami in my treat bag. To give off an unforgettable aroma, if you smell what I mean.

Off I waddled on this moonless night, along with my buddies Pantelli and Talbot. Talbot started telling us the history of Hallowe'en. Talbot's into history the way I'm into -- well, the way I'm into Reese's Pieces, you might say.

"About 2,000 years ago, in Ireland, the Celts started their New Year November first," Talbot said, as we headed up the path to the Dubuques' house. "The Celts believed that on New Year's Eve, the dead came back. Sort of like a rerun. I mean, you think you've seen the last of Great-Aunt Hattie, and here she is again, though maybe without all of her flesh."

Pantelli and I laughed enjoyably at this image, though a little girl walking behind us with her dad burst into screams. I have to say this about Talbot: he really makes history come dead.

His costume was fun, too: he was the Headless Horseman from the story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving. Talbot wore an elongated collar painted a lovely rich shade of blood-red; his eyes peered out from holes in the collar.

Pantelli was, as usual, a tree. Pantelli's really into trees.

We reached the Dubuques' front door. Weird. No fake fog wisps attached to the door, no fake skeleton hanging from the outside light. Mrs. Dubuque was usually so into seasonal decorations, too.

Then Mr. Dubuque opened the door, snarled at us, and tossed a lone peanut into each of our bags. Whoa. His wife always shelled out tons of goodies. And remembered that I liked Reese's Pieces.

"Where's Mrs. D.?" I demanded. Maybe she was running a bit late this Hallowe'en.
"Gone," he barked -- and slammed the door.

Maybe it was Talbot's Headless Horseman, or the weird whooo-ing noises other kids were making on the sidewalk. But I thought of the way Mr. Dubuque had said "Gone," and of the strange digging he'd been doing lately, and --

I wondered if he meant that Mrs. Dubuque was gone ... for good.

In the Pink – Or Not

My sister Madge and I were sitting at our kitchen table, stuffing information packets for a save-the-spotted-owl rally on the weekend. Jack, who's the coordinator of the student Spotted Owl Advocacy Committee, would be the main speaker.

There are just a few spotted owls left – a lot of their habitat, old-growth forests, has been chopped down. As Jack says, why can't we think before we act? All it takes is some planning between developers and environmentalists. Like, duh, JUST TALK FIRST, okay, guys? Jack, who wants to be a history teacher one day, says history is full of disasters, all because people wouldn't talk to each other.

Myself, I love yakking. As much and as loudly as possible.

Hey! You can check out how to save Spotty yourself: visit the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. Tell 'em Dinah sent you. And remember: the more we talk about Spotty, the more people have to listen.

Anyhow, as Madge and I were sitting and stuffing, Madge raised the subject of this blog. "It's pink," she said, shuddering.

Madge has this thing about pink. She hates it. Maybe you read in The Summer of the Spotted Owl how she totally dissed this one woman's wardrobe and car because they were, yes, all pink.

"Well, poor Spotty's not in the pink," I punned sadly. "Not for the time being. But as to regular pink, Madge. Some excellent things are pink. Strawberry ice cream. Candy floss. Bubblegum pie."

"Bubblegum – ?" Madge winced. "Please, Dinah. I don't want to know."

"But I do want to know." I set down the packet I was stuffing and stared out the window, over our fence. "About Mr. Dubuque. Yesterday he dug up a whole bed of azaleas. And now there's fresh earth on the flowerbed, and tiny new flowers. He either dug something up or buried something."

My eyes widened behind my as-always crooked glasses. "Or someone."

Cabbages and Kings

Hi. You might've read about me in Orca Books' Dinah Galloway Mystery Series. My latest case is called The Summer of the Spotted Owl. Thanks for visiting my blog! Just don't annoy me by drooling over how cute my sister's fiancé Jack is. A lot of girl readers do that, and – well, try LavaLife if you're that desperate.

Anyhow, here's the latest. Mother served cabbage today. Yech! I snuck it upstairs to my room and Frisbee'd each leaf down into our neighbors the Dubuques' garden. Problem. Mr. Dubuque was digging up his azaleas at the time. Possible benefit. Briefly, Mr. Dubuque was no longer bald.

The "kings" part of this post's title? Oh, that's blatant self-promotion. Kings are on my mind because of the treasure I hunt down in my next adventure, The Shadows on the Train, out in spring 2007. Hey, check out my adventures c/o my publisher, Orca Books. Or visit my own, personal, accept-no-substitutes website.

Or ... have a banana-honey-peanut-butter sandwich. That's my fave kind of sandwich, and I intend to make one within minutes.

But back to Mr. Dubuque. Talk about mysterious! As well as angrily wrenching the cabbage leaf off his head, he threw his shovel aside and turned an unbecoming shade of mottled purple. As in, looked ultra guilty.

Why was Mr. Dubuque digging up his azaleas? Is he short on salad ingredients? Or ... is he hiding something?