Better Late Than Never

Well, it took longer than expected, but I woke up to a message yesterday morning that the printed edition of The Hard Years, the fourth book in my Tinder Street family saga, is now available on Amazon. Better late than never, right?

Meanwhile, I sent four more chapters of Pucker Factor, my next John Lee Quarrels book, to my second proofreader, Judy Rinehimer, the other day, and got them back from her yesterday. I made her corrections, then sent those chapters on to my third proofreader, Roberta, for her to go through them.

I’ve got another chapter almost done but I won’t be able to finish it today because I have a follow-up appointment in Orlando in the early afternoon with Doctor Creamer, who performed my recent RF nerve ablations. I hate driving in Orlando because the traffic just seems to be crazy all the time. I can’t remember a trip down there that we have ever made when we haven’t seen somebody cutting across multiple lanes of traffic without signaling to get to an exit or turn, or weaving through traffic, going from lane to lane just so they can get to the same stop light as everybody else at the same time.

Speaking of Pucker Factor, in a blog post a while back, I previewed the cover for the book, even though it won’t be out until sometime around the end of July. I received an e-mail yesterday from somebody who was very upset with the picture of a shotgun being pointed out the window of a truck, which is central to the story. The person told me they hate guns, and I should put a trigger warning on anything that’s going to refer to guns or violence, especially after all of the recent shootings that have been in the news. She said that just seeing that picture left her jittery and uncomfortable all day long. She added that she was also offended by the cover of my last John Lee book, Ka-Bar Karma, because of the picture of a knife and a bloody badge on the cover.

The smart-alec part of me wanted to reply that it’s a gun, so of course it has a trigger, but I didn’t. Here’s the thing. I write small town murder mysteries. That means that people are going to die in them. And while I don’t mean to be insensitive, if you are so traumatized that everything you encounter in life is going to send you into a tailspin, you should probably stay home, get rid of your TV and radio, cancel the internet, and don’t read books. Or at least not my books.

I’ve never bought into the whole trigger warning thing in the first place. We’ve all had tragedies in our lives and have been exposed to terrible things. But the world doesn’t stop because of that, and it’s not the world’s responsibility to anticipate what might upset us or to protect us from whatever has occurred previously. As my daughter Tiffany would say, sometimes you’ve just gotta put on your big girl panties and deal with it.

Okay, so much for me being Mr. Sensitivity. 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. Seriously, has this actually become an issue? Another Tik-Tok challenge?

Thought For The Day – Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Every day is a special occasion.