Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Thank you to everybody who emailed or sent me messages or left comments after yesterday’s blog about the problems I was having trying to get everything transferred from Terry’s old Moto Z Play phone to her new Samsung Galaxy S 10+. Someone suggested trying to do it by Bluetooth, Someone else asked why I didn’t take the battery from my old Moto Z Play and put it in Terry’s, since hers kept going dead in the file transfer process. That would not have worked, because the batteries are not removable or replaceable. If we could have done that we would have bought new batteries instead of replacing the phones altogether.

However, I did finally manage to back up everything in the old phone to her Google account, and then when she opened the account on her new phone she was able to retrieve her contact list, saved apps, and things like that, so it’s all good.

The other day a regular blog reader asked me if the stories in my Newspaper Days blog posts are real and suggested that maybe I was bringing characters from my mystery novels into the blog. No, they are all true, believe it or not. I know many former newspaper people who have just as many stories, if not more. You know what they say, truth is stranger than fiction. My daughter still lives in our old hometown of Show Low, Arizona, and tells me the people east of Snowflake are just as weird now as they ever were.

But if you think the stories I have already shared with you from that time in my life are way out there, just wait. I haven’t written about the self-described wolfman yet, or the man who was planning to do his own sex change operation, or the one who lynched his mule, or the man who showed up in town claiming to be Billy Jack, a character from an early 1970s movie, and how so many people were thrilled to meet him. Have you ever seen the movie Fire in the Sky, about a man who was supposedly abducted by aliens? He lived in that area and I knew him all too well. I will admit that some of the people I knew in my newspaper days do make it into my books. But not the other way around.

Speaking of weird people, I sent myself an email yesterday. At least it said the email was from me, with a warning not to let Terry see it. Apparently, while I have been telling everybody I have been staying home as much as possible due to COVID-19, in truth I have been a bad boy. Here is the email I received: “Nick I have video and pictures of us having sex in my car and in a hotel room in Daytona Beach and you using illegal drug. To avoid any unnecessary embarrassment and the losses of your reputation and marry wait for me to contact you regarding payment for this all to go away. DO NOT ignore this message or your life will be ruined.”

I don’t know what motel room we were in, but I do know that if we had sex in a car, it definitely was not my Mustang. A  fat guy having sex in a car that small just isn’t going to happen. In spite of the dire warning, I showed the email to Terry and she got a laugh out of it. So I guess my “marry” is safe for now, at least.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. When I saw this one, I assumed the name of the business was the Cannibal Café.

Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an audiobook of Dog’s Run, my mystery set in a small Ohio town in 1951. I have 29 mystery novels out, as well as 12 other books, and I have to say that Dog’s Run is my favorite. It’s a gritty tale that is loosely based upon an actual crime that took place in that part of the country when my father was a young police officer there, and I warn you in advance that there’s some rough language, but it’s appropriate to the time and place. To enter, all you have to do is 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 this evening.

Thought For The Day – I picked up a hitchhiker and he asked if I wasn’t afraid he might be a serial killer. I laughed and told him that the odds of two serial killers being in the same car was extremely unlikely.