Back To Work

Well, my latest book, Ka-Bar Karma, is out and doing well on Amazon, and I’ve goofed off as long as I can so it’s time to get back to work. As I said a while back, the normal progression of my writing schedule would be to write the fourth book in my Tinder Street series next, but I needed to do some research up in Ohio, and COVID has kept us from making any trips. So rather than try to wing it and get things wrong, I will swap their positions and do the next Big Lake book now, and then Tinder Street.

I never know exactly where a book is going when I start, and more often than not, it turns out completely different than I expect it to. But I had one of those nights where it was hard to fall asleep on Tuesday, and when I finally did, I woke up with the entire plot of the book in my head. That’s always fun. Now, will the book follow that plot all the way to the end? Probably not, but since I don’t outline or anything like that ahead of time, it will give me a direction to go, and we’ll see what happens from there.

Terry had another checkup at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville yesterday, and the good news is that her doctor sees some positive results from a new therapy they’ve been trying with her. She told Terry to stay the course and keep doing what she is doing for another two months, and we’re optimistic that when we go back, we will see even more progress.

On our way back home we were headed south on I-95, somewhere between Palm Coast and Daytona Beach, when a Florida state trooper came flying past us in the left lane. After he was gone, I moved over into the left lane to get around a slow-moving small Class C camper that was following a slow-moving eighteen-wheeler. Almost immediately, the motorhome moved into the left lane right in front of me, cruising along at 70 miles per hour while people flying up behind me were doing 80 or 85, and I was stuck hoping I wouldn’t get rear-ended. Within a couple of minutes, the folks behind me started moving into the right lanes, and I could see more blue lights rushing up, so I got over to the center lane as another trooper came racing up.

But the clod in the motorhome stayed put, totally oblivious to the flashing lights and siren for at least another mile or two. As soon as I could, I had moved over another lane to give the trooper room if he needed to go around the RV on the right. He tried that, going into the center lane, and immediately the RV moved over right in front of him, and he had to hit the brakes to keep from rear-ending him. Then the RV crossed back in the left lane again as the Highway Patrol car tried to go around him that way. What an idiot!

Eventually the RV then moved into the right-hand lane, and by then there were apparently enough other emergency units on the scene ahead (which turned out to be a bad accident in the northbound lanes), so the trooper got in behind the RV in the right lane,  trying to pull him over. We watched as that continued for another mile or two before the airhead finally pulled onto the shoulder. I’m sure that by then the trooper was more than ready to give him a lesson on traffic safety and what to do when an emergency vehicle is approaching.

It reminded me of a time during our fulltime RVing days when we were southbound on Interstate 75 in Tennessee and all traffic came to a halt because of a bad accident up ahead. Everybody was squeezing into the center and right lanes to let emergency vehicles pass on the left, and there was one fool in a car sitting there stopped in the left lane with nothing ahead of her and emergency vehicles rushing up behind her. She was busy talking on her cell phone while an ambulance stopped behind her was honking the horn and blowing its siren, and she continued to ignore them. I finally got out and slapped the hood of her car with both hands, and shouted, “Wake up, idiot!” That seemed to get her attention because she put down her phone. But she still didn’t go anywhere. Finally, the ambulance backed up a few feet and squeezed between her and the guardrail, scraping on both sides and really doing a number on the driver’s side of her car so they could get to the scene up ahead where people were dying. Then, believe it or not, with even more emergency vehicles coming up from behind, instead of moving over, the fool stayed in the same place but got out to look at the damage to her car. You really wonder how some people ever pass their driver’s test.

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.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Undone, the first book in my friend Jason Deas’ Burt Bigsley mystery series. 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. 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 – Never accept a friend request from Hormel foods. It could be Spam.