Kate Cornwell's Blog

This is a great article not just for writers, but for anyone who has a dream. What's stopping you from making it your reality? Read on…

Momentum is everything. Cut the brake lines. Careen wildly and unsteadily toward your goal. I hate to bludgeon you about the head and neck with a hammer forged in the volcanic fires of Mount Obvious, but the only way you can finish something is by not stopping.

danoigmusic, youtube.com

Great new video by my son, musician, Dan Oig!

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As a result of changing agreements with regard to the use of the car at our house-sit in Italy, we had to begin walking everywhere. There is a town two kilometers from the house named Pierantonio, which has a grocery and a few of the other things we needed, but getting there was a challenge. There are no walking paths like we had in Denmark. Scandinavia is a dream for both walkers and bikers, Italy is a nightmare.

We saw from the train that there was a road that went most of the way from our house to Pierantonio. So we decided to find out if we could forge through the bush and get to the road without having to walk on the very dangerous highway. If you can at all avoid it, you do not want to walk anywhere there are Italian drivers. I came close to being hit several times walking alongside the road.

We set out from the house and soon came to thick brush. We decided to keep going and fought our way through, acquiring several scratches on the way. When we emerged from the jungle we were at the train tracks and could see the road down a ways and on the other side. We had almost made it, but to get there, we were going to have to walk across a small train bridge. Not a great prospect. We jumped down the wall and walked across the tracks with no mishaps and carried on walking down a nice road the rest of the way to Pierantonio. It wasn't until we were on our way back that we ended up playing chicken with the train.

We had just gotten onto the tracks and were walking across the small bridge, feeling quite confident as the local train had just passed and we knew it wasn't coming our way again for at least 45 minutes. Or so we thought. Apparently the train sometimes goes to Pierantonio and comes right back. Halfway across the bridge we heard the unmistakable sound of a train coming. The tracks started to hum and we heard a rumble in the distance. I remember feeling confusion and then, "No way! This only happens in movies!"

"Run!" Jonas shouted at me. I started running at him. In my opinion the logical thing to do. Run away from the scary thing. "No, the other way!" he yelled in my face.

Apparently he saw right away that we were less than halfway across and there was a safe spot on the other side of the bridge. If we kept running away from the train, we'd be stuck huddling against the wall. My husband is a quick thinker.

So, I turned and ran as fast as I could straight at the train, which by now had seen us and was laying on the horn. This of course only served to raise my panic to death-inducing levels. I hit the end of the bridge and swung toward the safety of the trees, except it was a hill and I nearly didn't stop. Jonas was right on my heels and now he was yelling, "Stop!", as he thought I was going to run straight down the hill and break something valuable. He reached out and grabbed the back of my tank top, nearly ripping it off me.

Realising I was safe, I stopped running, and huddled against him as the train flew past us. We could see a terrified conductor looking out the window at us. He was scared? He should have tried being the very squashable people on the track.

Once the train went by, we ran for the bridge again. You know, the whole philosophy about getting back on the horse? We had to climb up the wall and now that we were in panic mode, we weren't as graceful as we'd have liked to be and sported several scrapes. It took Jonas a few tries to get up the wall, as he didn't have the benefit of me boosting him as I had. All the while I'm yelling, Hurry up! Another train might be coming!" I'm such a supportive wife.

We finally got up the wall and made our way home with our hearts beginning to slow their crazy thumping. We made a nice dinner and sat out in the pergola sipping wine and feeling exhuberant that we were still alive. As we laughed together, going over the crazy scenario, I reached down to brush something off my leg only to get stung by a wasp. I yelled for Jonas to bring me a cut onion as I winced in pain - pressing a cut onion to a sting for at least 15 minutes takes away most of the pain and keeps it from swelling.

So, in the end, the train didn't get me, but a tiny little wasp did. The moral of the story? An onion works great for a bee sting.

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I'm very excited about this new anthology, just released by The Dead Shoe Society. It's the first anthology I've been a part of and it has been a great experience. My story is called High-Heeled Killers. There are seven great stories in this anthology and one of them is by my husband, Jonas Saul. If you get a chance to pick it up, please let me know what you think.

We went for a walk this morning in our little village in Greece and came back with a few oranges and some pomegranates. For these two Canadians, used to full-on winter by this time of the year, we were pretty thrilled. Greece has been quite the adventure for us. Where we live, we are surrounded by orange groves. I am looking forward to the spring when all the blossoms will be out.

After we got home, I juiced up a pomegranate and a few oranges. We mixed the two together as my friend Alex suggested and wow! What a great flavor. I'm sure it helps that the fruit was fresh off the tree.

Little Kiki wants to be brave. She's trying, but the big world is so scary.

One warm Italian summer evening my husband, Jonas, and I were sitting in the living room reading with the windows wide open when we heard a small cry. We kept hearing it and finally realized it was a kitten and, from the sound of the cry, it had to be a very small kitten. The crying was heartbreaking. We went outside, but couldn't find where it was coming from. The kitten was obviously hiding from us in the dark.

The next day Jonas was outside hanging clothes on the line when he heard a very demanding meow. He looked up to see a little white kitten with azure-blue eyes sitting in the window of the old pig sty. It was the little kitten from the night before. He moved toward her, but she ran away. We put food out for her for a few days. The food was always gone within an hour. And yet, she still cried, and nearly broke our hearts. We tried a couple of times to catch her so we could bring her inside, but she just ran the minute we got close. It seemed that we wouldn't be able to do anything for her.

After feeding her outside for a couple of weeks, we had a breakthrough. We came home from the market early one afternoon and saw the kitten on the other side of the house near the old Cantina. I got out of the car and tried to sneak up on her. She raced away and into the Cantina. This was better because I could bring her food and work on getting her used to me. She couldn't hide so well in there.

So began the job of taming a feral kitten. We named her Cianna, which in Italian means "gift from God", or another translation, "God is gracious". It's pronounced "Kee-anna".

As I'd had to leave my beloved cat Downey behind in Canada when we moved to Europe, I was missing having a cat in the house. I've often wondered if being a writer means you have to be a cat lover. Both Jonas and I love having at least one cat around the house. We fell in love with the lost little kitten of the azure-blue eyes and wanted to make her part of the family. I had no idea just how difficult that would be.

I started with research on the Internet. Jonas also had some great advice about using her stomach against her. As a serious food lover, I think he instinctively understood this concept. Some great ideas come to me about how to get Jonas to do a few things … but I digress. Every morning I took soft cat food to Cianna and placed it just inside the door. I started with the food near where she slept, but each morning moved it closer and closer to where I sat in the doorway. She had to come near me in order to eat the tempting food. I left hard food for her during the night, but she was very tempted by the soft food.

At first, of course, she was cautious. It took a while for her to approach the food and she would eat with ears perked and watching me almost constantly. But she surprised me. It only took a few days for her to eat the food right beside my foot. Then I made her eat with my hand near the plate and on it went. Within a week she was letting me pet her. Another few days and I was picking her up. A week after that and we moved her inside.

Kiki as we now call her for short, has become an endearing part of our family. She is lively and playful, but also incredibly affectionate and sweet. She was very young when we found her. She had to be only six weeks or so, and probably because of this, she imprinted on me. She definitely thinks of me as her mommy. I've never had a kitten that liked to be picked up all the time, but Kiki does. She will meow at my feet until I scoop her up and she purrs and rubs on my face. Now who can resist a little sweetheart like that? She's definitely my little gift.

We've discovered that Cianna is an Applehead Siamese (which refers to the traditional shape of her head). I've never had a Siamese and have discovered through the Internet just what an amazing breed they are. Cianna is almost like a dog in her personality. She follows me everywhere, even to the toilet. She sleeps with us every night and spends her days beside me while I write, unless she's chasing and carrying her tiny mouse around. She's one of the best cats I've ever had.

I have to insert a comment here about the cat situation in Italy. It's almost another post in itself. Everywhere we go here, we see feral or just abandoned cats. We even saw a beautiful cat at a train station searching the faces of everyone going by and crying constantly. We figured the owner had abandoned him there when he got on the train and left for good. It's very sad. So, helping take care of at least one abandoned kitten was the least we could do.

Love this view on the world. 

Taken in Assisi, Italy

The Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. It's too beautiful for words.

I have so many mosquito bites I look like I have the measles. That's one thing that's difficult about living in rural Italy. I'm sure it's not so bad in the cities, much like in Canada. Out here with grass, fields and trees surrounding us, it's an insect zoo. We have scorpions, massive spiders, Daddy Long Legs, mosquitoes, flies, snakes and who knows what else. One downside to living in a two-hundred year old house; there are plenty of cracks. Here you pretty much live outside, even when you're inside. I'm not too excited about creepy crawlers, mostly because I've lived a very sheltered life in clean, new homes, and never had to battle so many insects. One thing I'm learning is that to really be Italian, you have to learn to live alongside nature without being afraid of it. There aren't a lot of scary creatures here, especially considering all the predators in Canada, there's just an abundance of everything!

I'm learning to look before I sit or get into bed and also before I reach into anything. After being here for a while, though, I'm doing it out of habit rather than fear. I've faced a few scary insects and come out unscathed, which is helping me to calm down. Just like anything, there's nothing to fear but fear itself. Besides, I have a big strong husband who rescues me whenever I scream.