Yesterday was a busy day for Miss Terry. She and her mom had some errands to run so they had a girls’ day out, hitting some of their favorite grocery and specialty stores. Terry loves to cook and she likes using good ingredients when she does it. There are several stores here in the East Mesa area that she always looks forward to visiting when we’re here.
While they were doing that, I stayed home working on a lot of last-minute rally details, making some phone calls, and answering a bunch of e-mails. I’ve got the rally schedule just about finished. I had to shuffle a couple of seminars around to make things flow better and to make sure we didn’t have two very similar classes competing with each other at the same time. I still have to run the schedule by Terry and our advance staff to see if they can spot any mistakes or omissions that I missed. Meanwhile, I do have the current, as of now, rally schedule uploaded. Check it out, I think you’ll agree we’ve got a great lineup.
I also took the time to call the Sheriff’s office in Minnehaha County, South Dakota. Our concealed weapon permits expire this summer and I have heard that we would now be required to be in the county 30 days before renewing. The lady I talked to the Sheriff’s office confirmed that, and said a receipt from a campground showing that we had been there 30 days would be required. Renewals are processed the same way as new applications. I don’t think we’re going to bother with it, I already have an Arizona CCW that is accepted in more states than the South Dakota one is, and I really don’t want to spend 30 days in Sioux Falls.
A while back the nice folks at Blue Ox contacted me offering to provide me with a TruCenter steering control to evaluate. The instructions they sent me look like it isn’t a major project, but then again, we are talking about me and tools. How could that possibly turn out good? So I called my friend Keith Shomaker at Redlands Truck and RV Performance Center and asked if he could have one of his guys install it on our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage while they are at the Yuma rally. Redlands is always a big supporter of our Western rallies, renting several booths, bringing techs in to perform work for rally attendees, and they even sponsor our morning coffee and donuts. They’re good folks to deal with.
Once Terry was back home, we had just enough time to unload everything from Explorer and get it put away, and then we went back to her parents’ house and picked them up to take them for a last dinner this trip together at Number 1 Eastern Buffet, one of our favorite Chinese buffets in the whole country. We’ve only been here a couple weeks and it has gone by way too fast. We’re looking forward to getting back together with Terry’s family after the rally is over and our business in Tucson is completed.
We’ll be on the road today, headed for Yuma, and the next few days will be a frenzy of getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal stuffed into envelopes and mailed out, and handling 1,001 last-minute rally details, from printing nametags, to ordering donuts to, ordering pizzas for the pizza party, printing schedules, and so many other things that I can’t remember them all right now. That’s why we make lists!
People are asking me when the next book in the Big Lake series will be out. Come on folks, give me a break! 🙂 We’ve got instant oatmeal and instant coffee, but I don’t know of any instant novels. Yes, there will be a sequel, whose working title is Crazy Days in Big Lake. I’ve got it started and I’m deep into the first chapter. But it’s not going to happen overnight; I won’t even have time to look at the manuscript until after the rally is over, but I’m constantly running scenarios for my books through the back of my mind, sort of writing the story mentally before ever getting around to putting it down on paper.
The original mystery, Big Lake, spent 75 days on Amazon’s Top 100 list, and has now dropped down to somewhere around 160 or 170, depending on what time of day I check. Since I first uploaded the book in late May it has sold over 82,000 copies on Amazon’s Kindle bookstore. The printed version is also now available on Amazon and selling well. The sequel, Big Lake Lynching, is selling steadily, and currently both books are in the top 25 in Amazons Mysteries and Thrillers, Police Procedurals category.
Some readers have requested a seminar on how the original book came about and what is involved in publishing a book on Amazon. So I’ll be doing a seminar titled The Making of a Bestseller at the rally. Hey, who knows, maybe somebody at the rally will be Amazon’s next best-selling author. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Thought For The Day – Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy you the kind of misery you prefer.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Congratulations, NIck on your awesome accomplishment of reaching so high on the Amazon list! Good luck with the rally! It will great, we’re sure, as your rallies always are! We’re sorry we have to miss it! Always great fun, very reasonable cost, and you and Terry do a terrific job along with your volunteers. Best wishes…Jeannie and Eldy
Nick, don’t feel bad about taking your time to write the next novel. After all, how often does John Grisham publish a novel? Or J.A. Jance? Or most other top-selling authors? Certainly not every 6 months! Those folks asking for the next book are just ignorant about the process of writing.
Betcha Miss Terry and her Mom shopped in our favorite grocery, Basha’s. Sure wish they’d expand eastward to Ohio 🙂
Take your time with the next novel – art can’t be rushed or pumped out. I wish we could attend the rally, hopefully the next one..and the one after that. Our house is officially listed now and we’re still in Texas. We have a very gung ho real estate agent! Could you please explain again why you chose South Dakota for your state of residence? Pete and I will need to make that choice soon and have no clue as to what to look for.
Probably just as well on the gun permits. Why would you even need or want one? We have been camping for over 20 years and have never heard of anyone being threatened in an RV campground. Don’t let paranoia run your life.
Nick, when we bought our Journey in 2002 in Salem, OR, we took it straight to Henderson Line-up and had a SAFETY PLUS installed. We love it and it has given us no problems at all. This is what professional truckers use. It’s a great product.
Cheryl, we used Texas for many years, but switched to South Dakota because they do not require a special license for RVs over a certain weight rating, which Texas does.
Also because after more than 7 years of registering our MCI bus conversion as an RV in Texas, the last time we took it in for an inspection, two different places in the Livingston area insisted it was a commercial bus and needed to pass the commercial inspection. We didn’t have time to waste arguing with them any longer as we spent a week there trying to get it done. So we switched to South Dakota. And added benefit we did not expect was that our insurance on the bus, van and motorcycle combined was almost $1,000 a year less.
Margie – Overall, the RV lifestyle is very safe. I won’t get into the whole gun debate here, but sometimes even RVs can find themselves in dangerous situations. Here is a blog post about what happened to us a few years ago.
https://gypsyjournalrv.com/2009/12/a-violent-encounter/
Damn Nick Ive only been reading blog for a few months now and never even heard about that!! I would been terrified and wet my pants or worse!! Glad you and Terri came through that all in one piece!!
CO, FL & MI only accept permits from your state of residency, so not having a “home” state permit is a problem for full timers using SD as their residence.