Who was C.W. Bowie?

 C.W. Bowie is the pen name of three writers.  (no room on a book spine for all of our names, therefore we created C.W. Bowie. )

C is Claudine Wirths.  W is me.  

And the third part - Bowie- is a shortened version of Mary Bowman-Kruhm's name.  

Together we wrote the picture books - Busy Toes and the companion book - Busy Fingers. 

We had a lot of fun creating those books. It was in the mid- 1990s and the internet was in its infancy, but we kept sending the manuscripts back and forth by this new thing called email.  

I had met one of them on a computer bulletin board that was using GE's computers at night, because at that point, businesses stopped using their computers when everyone went home, so someone got permission to use it and called the internet bulletin Board - GEnie - and off we went. Many, many different subject areas. My husband was in an antique auto group and discovered there was a writer's group there (several of them) and he got me into that group and I met so many other writers, famous and not. I met Claudine there and she introduced me to AOL and the writer's boards there so I could meet her writing partner, Mary, and off we three went, writing together.

Fingernails

Other people can type with long fingernails. not me.  

I grew up in the era of short fingernails, well kept, was what you did. Also I grew up with typewriters. 

So when fingernails get annoying, I crop them short again.  

Husbands of writers do sometimes complain

 My husband gently complained when his life bumped up with my writer life.  

-- When I got up in the middle of the night to write down a thought and the light woke him up. (Go back to sleep!)  

-- later on when I got up in the middle of the night to type a thought/ scene into my computer, which was 10 feet from where we were sleeping. (Go back to sleep!) 

-- when he ran upstairs to tell me something / disaster had happened and I stopped him and refused to listen until I completed the story that had just come to me. (you can't microwave eggs because they burst) (That PB story, much revised, sold a few years later.)

The modern publishing world

 Mental math. I just realized it's been about 20 years since my last book was published. 

What else happened about 20 years ago? Publishers closed their doors to submissions from writers and decided to only consider submissions from agents. Since there are not enough agents for all the writers out there, many writers no longer can get published. Even those who have won awards and had excellent reviews.  

Lucky for me, many of my books are still in print, but over 20 years is a long time for books to be in print and more and more of them go out of print each year.

Never park for a weekend under a tree

 Beware of parking in the shade. two examples:

1- I went to a writer's retreat on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Decided to park in the shade of a tree. Looking forward to lots of walks by the water which were cancelled because it rained all weekend. Not to worry. Rain will wash my car. Well, maybe it did, and the sun came out the morning we were leaving. So I packed up and went to my car to discover it covered -- really covered -- with bird droppings. Guess who took shelter from the rain in that tree? I managed to scrape some of it off my windows so that I could drive to a gas station and wash my windows so that I could drive the 3 hours home.

2-- I went to another writer's retreat in Southern California. The sun is hot, hot, hot there and I didn't want to get into a hot hot car at the end of the weekend, so I parked under a tree, in the shade. WRoNG. When I came out that Sunday, I found my car covered with pollen. really, really yellow all over. Again had to clean off windows before I could drive home

Typing skills come in handy

 In high school in the 1950s, the only meeting I had with the high school counselor was about what types of jobs I wanted after graduation. Every single job I was interested in, the counselor told me was only for boys and men/ no girls or women allowed.  

So my mom said I should train for secretarial work. (notably a woman's job) I agreed, but only if I could do it at a Junior College. (now called community college).  

After one year of that, I transferred to the academic course and went on to the state university, working part time with my secretarial skills eventually using one of the world's first word processor - IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter).  

Soon afterwards companies began putting computers onto executive's desks and fired the secretarial pool. Those poor (mostly men) suddenly found that they had to do their own typing, not just throw a scribbled pack of paper at the secretarial pool for them to figure out and type up. (yes, I laughed at this)

Eventually I could type almost as fast as people talked, so in later years I was always asked to take the notes of any meeting I attended. (which got me in trouble when I quoted a higher up and she complained, claiming she never said those words. (sorry, she did and I had typed them as she spoke them)

My typing skills also came in handy when I began writing books, eventually having 45 published books. (most of which are out of print now, but some are still available - Yay!)

credit cards or cash?

 I keep finding pennies and yes I still pick them up and used them. 

One cashier intended NOT to give me the pennies part of my change and I insisted on getting it , because I grew up when pennies meant something. (penny candy for one) Cashiers these days really aren't trained how to handle real money. They just want to shove a black box at us for a credit card, not realizing or caring that the place has had to raise prices because credit card companies charge stores for each time a customer uses one.

Also, why is there no constancy about those credit card boxes. Tap here. 

WHERE? 

one box says - over here on the left side of the keypad. Another box wants you to tap the screen. Another box wants you to keep your card flat on the screen for a while, until the cashier does something on their register while others want you to quickly tap and lift it off. I just shake my grey hair head and pretend that all that stuff is confusing to me.

 (actually it is confusing to everybody, but I have a senior excuse  )