A 9K Friday

Did you ever have one of those mornings when you get startled awake and your mind is fuzzy and you are fumble-fingered and it takes you a minute to get your wits about you? That was me yesterday morning.

I was in a deep sleep, dreaming about something, I couldn’t tell you what right now, when the phone startled me awake. I groped around over my head, trying to find it on the headboard, and for some reason, I was trying to find the handset to an old-style rotary telephone. Don’t ask me why, maybe that’s part of what I was dreaming. At any rate, I knocked the television remote control down on my head and almost strangled myself on the hose for my CPAP machine. By the time I finally got hold of my phone, the caller had hung up. A moment later I got a ding telling me I had a voicemail. It was the representative from the company that provides my CPAP supplies, checking in to see if I needed anything replaced. I think I was awake enough by then to sound at least halfway coherent when I talked to him.

After a nice light breakfast with Terry, I got online and answered my e-mail, which was rather light for a change. Then I posted a link to yesterday’s blog on Facebook and spend a half hour or so reading the news updates. By then it was time to get to work.

It was one of those days when everything was flowing just right and I made a lot of headway on my new John Lee Quarrels book. By the time I knocked off several hours later, my head was kind of aching and my eyes needed a break from the monitor, but I had written (dictated) 9,000 words. Another day or two like that and I’ll have this book wrapped up.

Then I have to give everything a read-through before I print it out for Terry to do her thing, and then send it on to my other proofreaders. Unfortunately, Roberta has been dealing with some kind of computer malfunction and she’s waiting for the Geek Squad or whoever does her tech work to get her laptop back in order for her, which will hopefully be sometime next week. But the way things are looking now, it won’t be long before I will be uploading the e-book version of Pucker Factor to Amazon.

I’m looking forward to that, and I’m also looking forward to jumping into my next project, Big Lake Drunk, the 22^nd book in that series.

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.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an autographed copy of Stillborn Armadillos, the first book in my John Lee Quarrels mystery series about a small town deputy in a rural Florida county whose life is already complicated enough, what with his estranged wife dropping in for unannounced sleepovers, her oversexed sister tempting him, his pot smoking pony-tailed grandfather growing his own stash, his Elvis obsessed grandmother, and being caught smack dab in the middle of a power struggle between the Sheriff and Chief Deputy. But when a road construction crew unearths the skeletons of three murder victims, John Lee suddenly finds himself on the trail of a killer who may well have died long before the deputy was even born. And then a mysterious sniper begins shooting at deputies…

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 and audiobooks to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.