Here I Go Again

What you do when you’re a self-quarantining author and your new book came out on Thursday? If you are me, you sit around for a couple of days playing catch-up with other duties like e-mail and such. Then you jump right back into it on Sunday with a new book project, and that’s just what I did yesterday!

With The Road To Wrinkle Ranch live on Amazon and doing its thing, I decided that I might as well make myself useful. So I started working on my next book, Big Lake Dispensary. I got a late start in the day yesterday, but by the time I knocked off about 5:30, I had 3,000 words done. Not a lot, but it’s a good start. And I’ll tell you what, from what I’ve seen so far, Sheriff Weber and his crew have sure got a mess on their hands in that little mountain town of theirs!

Sales of The Road To Wrinkle Ranch are doing good, but I’m frustrated because I know at least nine people have told me they left reviews for it, but only four of them have shown up yet. One person said they got a message from Amazon saying that it could take several days for her review to post. They may be in the book business, but apparently they don’t understand how important reviews are to an author. Especially when you have a new brand new book you’re trying to get off the ground! I can’t believe they physically take the time to read and approve every review that comes in, based on what I’ve seen in the past. I’m not sure what the delay is, but I wish they would get it fixed.

While I was busy writing, Terry was working on several projects around the house, including ordering some new smoke alarms to replace the ones we have. Our current ones have sealed batteries and are past their useful date. I can’t think of a scarier situation to be in than in a fire, and we both like having smoke alarms that we know are in proper working condition. She also installed a new magnetic strip on the shower door in our master bathroom. The old one had deteriorated and fell apart, making it hard to keep the door closed.

Terry also made homemade pizza for dinner yesterday. Pizza is my favorite food, and I’ve had a lot of them in my life, but none come close to Terry’s. Of course, she makes everything from scratch, from the dough and the sauce, and it is beyond delicious.

So what’s on the agenda today? Probably more writing for me. We do have to make a trip to the grocery store one of these days because we are beginning to run out of things we need. Aside from that, it will be the same thing we have been doing for several weeks now, staying home and away from people as much as possible. I have a friend who thinks we are paranoid, and maybe so. I know some states are opening back up, and a lot of people are frustrated with being quarantined. But that’s okay. They can do whatever they want to do. We’re going to do what feels right for us. We figure that even if we’re wrong and it is okay to go back to normal life (which it’s not), what’s the worst that can happen with us staying home? We have more time together? I get more writing done? That seems like a pretty good deal to me!

Before I close, I wanted to give you a heads up about a new scam. The other day I got a letter in the mail that contained a check for five dollars from an outfit called LRM. There was no address on the check or the envelope, but it was made out to me and included a letter saying that they had been contracted by the US government to help distribute stimulus checks.

The instructions told me to endorse the check, and then copy both the front and back of the check and the deposit slip and send them to the company at an e-mail address provided. They said that once they have that information, and once I deposit the check, they will know that I have a valid bank account, and our stimulus money will be deposited within 24 hours.

I’m not sure what LRM stands for, but I suspect it might be Let’s Rob Morons, because you would have to be a complete moron to fall for something like that! No thanks. If and when we ever get a stimulus check, we’ll just wait for the nice folks at the IRS to send it. Lord knows I send them enough money every year!

Congratulations Tara Milliken, winner of our drawing for an autographed copy of Baca, the first book in my pal Billy Kring’s excellent Ronny Baca mystery series about a struggling actor and part-time private investigator. We had 94 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon!

Thought For The Day – A man and a woman can be friends with no sex involved. It’s called marriage.