Happy Birthday America

Before I do anything else, let me wish our country a happy birthday. It seems like a bleak time in America right now, and it is, with all the political division, the racial strife, and a pandemic that is dividing us in so many ways. But there is something about this country that people need to remember. We are resilient. We will come back from this. Maybe not today or tomorrow or next month, but we will. I only hope that when we do, we come back smarter than we have been acting lately.

You can sure tell it is summer here in Florida. Every day is in the 90s, with humidity that melts you anytime you step out the door. Which means that, except for going out to the mailbox once a day, we don’t leave the house unless we absolutely have to. The summer storms are coming in every day, and a couple of days ago, we got a doozy of one, with rain and thunder and lightning. But since then, it’s been the norm for where we live, the storms come toward us and then separate going north and south and leaving us in a little slot that doesn’t get much.

I’ve been taking advantage of the extra time the weather and the pandemic have imposed on us to do a lot of writing on my new family historical saga. I nailed down another 5,200 words yesterday, which put me at a bit over 93,000 words total. I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one. I don’t know exactly how long it will be until I’m finished, but the end is in sight.

Speaking of books, how do you make an author’s day? In my book Big Lake Quarterback, I included my 17-year-old granddaughter Hailey Robinson, and her younger sister Destiny as characters. Yesterday, Hailey, who is reading the book, called me laughing out loud and telling me how funny it is and how much she loves it. She said the teenagers in the book are just like the kids she knows, and she feels like she’s right there with them. For a girl who really isn’t into books, I was thrilled when she said she loves it. That’s high praise and made this old man’s heart smile.

While I am writing, among everything else she does, Miss Terry is making sure we don’t go hungry. A while back, I wrote that I bought her a new Breville smart oven with an air fryer. Yesterday she tried the air fryer part of it for the first time, making chicken drummies. They were delicious.

She also made herself some fried green tomatoes. People seem to love them, but I am a carnivore and try to avoid vegetables at all costs.

Today being the 4th of July, there are fireworks going off all around us, and I’m sure will be some idiots firing guns in the air, too. That always terrifies me because what goes up must come down. Many years ago, I had a friend who was left a quadriplegic because of a pistol that was fired in the air, and when the bullet came down, it hit him in the head. I’ve written before about how when I was a teenager we lived in an upstairs duplex, and my parents were standing on the front porch on New Year’s Eve when our drunken downstairs neighbor came out on his porch and cranked a round off from his pistol, not really realizing that there was a porch with people directly above him. The bullet missed my mother but drove a long splinter deep into her leg. I had seen my Dad angry a few times in my life, but I’d never seen him so enraged that he wanted to kill somebody. I really think he would have killed that man if other people had not intervened. As it was, the fool went to the hospital, and then to jail So have fun, but be careful, and please, keep your damn gun inside the house where it belongs. That’s where mine will be.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Big Lake, the first book in my Big Lake mystery series, which made the New York Times bestseller list and has 779 reviews on Amazon. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – Everyone wants freedom, and many are willing to sacrifice someone else’s life for it.