A Drowned Rat

I started the day yesterday by sending out my free authors’ newsletter announcing the release of Big Lake Shootout to my subscribers. The new book is off to a good start, and I appreciate all of you who bought a copy and are telling your friends and family members about it. You guys are the best.

Terry and I had our regular checkups at Island Doctors in New Smyrna Beach yesterday, and according to our lab results, everything is looking good for both of us so I guess I’ll be around to bother you for a while longer.

We try to only go to the grocery store every three or four weeks and it was getting to that point. On the way home, we stopped at Gary’s Custom Meats in Edgewater, which is a small mom and pop butcher shop that we try to patronize as much as possible. Their meat is always good and their prices are always reasonable.

Back at home, we put all the meat away, and then Terry left to go to Publix for the rest of the things we needed. I offered to go with her but she told me to stay home and keep working on promoting the new book. I don’t know if that’s because she wants me to sell a lot of copies or if she just didn’t want me bothering her at the grocery store. I suspect it was a little bit of both.

While she was gone, I sent information about the new book to several book blogs, promoted it on some Facebook authors and readers groups, and things like that. This is all part of what happens when I release a new book.

As I worked I started hearing a lot of thunder rumbling and checked the weather radar app on my phone. It showed a system moving toward us, but as I have told you so many times here in the blog, the storms always seem to split just before they get to us and go north and south while we stay dry. As it turned out, it didn’t happen that way this time around. Just as Terry pulled in with a carload of groceries, the sky opened up and it poured. She said it was raining hard at Publix when she loaded the groceries up and she was already soaked to the skin, so there was no reason for me to go outside and help carry things in. She set them inside the door and I carried them into the kitchen while she went back for more. By the time she got done, the poor lady looked like a drowned rat. But a beautiful drowned rat to be sure.

And wouldn’t you know it? Just about the time she had everything inside and we finished putting the groceries away, the rain stopped! Go figure.

While I appreciate everybody who reads my books, I want to tell you about a book by an author friend of mine whose work I greatly admire and enjoy. Ben Rehder is currently offering the e-book of Gone The Next, the first book in his Roy Ballard mystery series, free on Amazon. Do yourself a favor and get a copy now. I think once you start reading Ben’s books, you’ll be a fan, just like I am!

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is a USB drive loaded with all of the digital back issues of the Gypsy Journal RV travel newspaper for the years 2003 through 2017. They are in PDF format and will provide you with weeks of great reading about places to visit from coast to coast and our adventures as fulltime RVers. The normal cost of the back issue collection is $75. 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 Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – We stare out a window to see what is going on inside our heads.