As I said a while back, April has been a busy month of birthdays for us. Our-son-in law Kenny, daughter-in-law Geli, and daughter Tiffany all had birthdays this month, and now today is granddaughter Destiny’s fifteenth birthday. It’s amazing to me how fast this young lady has grown up and how beautiful, sweet, and intelligent she is. Happy birthday, Destiny. We love you very much!
Yesterday was more of the same for Terry, working on her new loom. She got all of the heddles and cords put on, and I think all she has left to do now is to connect them to the treadles. What a project! But I know she is enjoying every bit of it and is looking forward to getting her first project on the loom.
As for me, I spent a good part of the day just loafing. I answered quite a few e-mails that had piled up, wandered into some Facebook authors’ groups to see what was going on there and made a comment or two, pasted a couple of links to my new book, The Hard Years, in those groups, and chatted with my son Travis about the upcoming closing on their house next week.
When I was done with that, I spent some time looking at our schedules and trying to get a rough idea of an itinerary for our trip to Arizona next month. We plan to go to Mesa first to see Terry’s mother and father, then up to our old hometown of Show Low for granddaughter Hailey’s high school graduation. The most direct route between Florida and Arizona is Interstate 10 across Texas, but we have driven that long stretch of highway so many times that we could do it in our sleep. Depending on whether or not we go to see Travis and Geli’s new house in Alabama before we head to Arizona, we may take Interstate 20 across Texas instead. And we may shake things up a bit on the return trip and go across New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and Arkansas before dipping south toward Alabama. I have some author friends along the way I would not mind touching base with.
With that out of the way, I started working on Pucker Factor, my next John Lee Quarrels mystery novel. I hadn’t planned on doing that for another few days, but I was bored. I get restless after a few days of not writing and have to get back at it. I’ve only got a couple of thousand words done, but I like what I see so far.
Today may be more of the same, or we might go to Port Orange and run a few errands instead. Leanh’s Chinese restaurant sounds very good about now.
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.
Congratulations Barry Simonson, winner of our drawing for an audiobook of More Than Human by my friend Heather Ashbury. It’s a blend of fantasy and paranormal romance that begins when a young woman returns to an enchanting town in New Mexico following a mysterious death, where she is unexpectedly pulled into the mystical world of gods, demons, werewolves, nymphs, and more.
We had 20 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. 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 – Your secrets are safe with me because there was a good chance I wasn’t listening anyway.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!