This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddes Fish Promotions. Barbara Alldritt will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
While pursuing an academic career, Barbara was hit hard by a debilitating disease. She quickly determined she needed a new direction in life. Always interested in writing, she turned to creating stories about this new path.
These are stories that show that even in trying circumstances, there are still ways to find humour.
I once heard that all reactions to life could be summed up in one of three words every child knows: yikes, yum and yuk. The 100,000 other words in the English language are just refinements and explications of the basic emotions conveyed by these three words. “Yikes” expresses the primary negative but protective emotion of fear; “yum” and “yuk” are the simplest ways to express the fundamental judgments of good and bad which underlie all of life’s experiences.
Sweets were never my favourite treats. As a child I’d always preferred savoury or sour tastes. Fresh baked bread with butter, crackers with cheese, or salt and vinegar potato chips topped my list of favourite comfort foods then. These preferences stayed with me into adulthood.
In my late thirties, my health started to change. I couldn’t sleep past 2:00 a.m., and I started reacting badly to many of the foods I’d always eaten without problems. My legs became weak with patches of numbness. When I was forty-two, my doctors told me I had multiple sclerosis, a chronic illness in which physical disability tends to creep up slowly. However, within just two years, I needed a scooter to do my shopping or enjoy a “walk” along the beach or in the forest. I had to use a wheelchair to manage safely in the house as well. Fatigue became my constant companion.
In my first summer of full-blown disability, I adjusted to the trauma of unwelcome life changes by eating great volumes of chocolate every day. Coffee or raspberry-filled chocolates and bars of bitter dark European chocolate were my favourites. I became addicted to both the sugar and the caffeine, but my fatigue was just a memory as long as I kept my body topped up with chocolate.
Author Barbara Alldritt was born and raised on a farm in Saskatchewan and although there was always work around the farm she preferred hiding behind the couch reading a book rather than be out in the fields hoeing potatoes or washing dishes in the kitchen. After High school she travelled extensively in Western Canada and then set out on a 2-year adventure around the world and met her husband on that trip in Western Samoa. They returned to Canada settling in Calgary. Barbara then returned to higher education at the University of Calgary and completed her Honours Degree in 1988, and was awarded the Faculty of General Studies Gold Medal and the Lieutenant Governor’s Gold Medal for that year.
They then moved to Vancouver, BC, and Barbara entered a master’s program at UBC. In the throes of completing her MA and preparing to start her PhD, MS hit her hard and put a stop to her academic work.
Needing a new direction and given her interest in both research and writing she looked into many options for maintaining her health from taking up aqua-fitness to nutrition and what she should and should not eat.She also became active in the MS Society and produced their newsletter, in which she wrote stories that looked at the humorous side of living with a disability. Many who read her stories were inspired to contact her to tell their own tales and adventures. She interviewed them and added them to the newsletter, resulting in this compendium of stories.
CONNECT WITH BARBARA ALLDRITT
WEBSITE - https://barbaraalldritt.com/
GOODREADS - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21918420.Barbara_Alldritt
PURCHASE LINKS YA GOTTA LAUGH
AMAZON.COM - https://amazon.com/dp/0228854482
AMAZON.CA - https://amazon.ca/dp/0228854482
AMAZON KINDLE - https://amazon.com/dp/B09HKPLHG2
INDIGO CHAPTERS - https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/ya-gotta-laugh/9780228854500-item.html
BARNES & NOBLE - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ya-gotta-laugh-barbara-alldritt/1140284315
BOOK DEPOSITORY - https://www.bookdepository.com/Ya-Gotta-Laugh-Barbara-Alldritt/9780228854487
SMASHWORDS - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1107091
APPLE IBOOKS - https://books.apple.com/us/book/ya-gotta-laugh/id1588808339
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting about this book, this sounds like an awesome short story collection
ReplyDeleteSounds like a book I will enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the excerpt and Ya Gotta Laugh sounds like a very enjoyable read and I like the cover! Thanks for sharing with me and have a fantastic day!
ReplyDelete