A common piece of advice that many authors get is to stick to one genre. If you write science fiction, romance, westerns, or mysteries, those are the books your readers are going to be looking for. Authors are told it will only confuse readers if they suddenly start writing in a different genre than what […]
I doubt that anyone who has spent much time in the southwestern United States isn’t familiar with Hatch chile. While New Mexico is home to several popular varieties of chiles, Hatch chile refers to those that are grown in the Hatch Valley, along the Rio Grande River. Chili connoisseurs say that the soil and growing […]
Okay, our son-in-law Kenny wasn’t really fiddling while he was up on our roof yesterday, but this picture of him made me think of my favorite Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof. Kenny came over after work yesterday and we went to Ace Hardware and bought some roof patching tar. When we got back to […]
In the days before highways and railroads, boats brought supplies to the small towns scattered along Chesapeake Bay and carried local products to markets as far away as Baltimore. For centuries, boats depended on the wind to get where they were going, but steam power revolutionized the world. No longer did a boat’s captain have to […]
We were on the go all day yesterday, from the time we got out of bed until sometime close to 8 PM, when we finally managed to settle into our recliners and relax in front of the boob tube for a while. I started the day with an appointment with Doctor Rob Kent at Coastal […]
Not every story we have come across in our travels is a happy one. Some of them are downright tragic. Such was the case of Steven Stayner, a young boy from Merced, California who was kidnapped on his way home from school in 1972, at the age of seven. For seven long years the poor […]
We love exploring America’s back roads because you never know what hidden gem, lost in history, you’re going to find. At the intersection of State Routes 3 and 14 near Gloucester, Virginia, I spotted this cannon and the sign for Fort Nonsense Historical Park. Really? A fort named Nonsense? How could we not stop? During […]
Before I do anything else today, I want to wish my daughter Tiffany a very happy birthday. This is a special birthday to us because early last July Tiffany’s heart stopped beating and she collapsed. She was out for quite a while before she was resuscitated. Then she crashed again at least once, and maybe […]
It looks like we’re in for some more bad weather this weekend, with the possibility of severe storms and very strong winds on Sunday. No problem, we don’t have anywhere we have to be. The larder is stocked, I’ve got a book almost finished that Miss Terry can proof and edit, and she’s got lots […]
Note: This story is from the May – June 2016 issue of the Gypsy Journal. Long before movie theaters, cable television, and satellites that beam entertainment right into our living rooms, people enjoyed live entertainment. During the early days of the 20th century vaudeville acts performed at just about every large and small city in […]
Note: This story is from the January-February 2011 issue of the Gypsy Journal. On a visit to Yorktown, Virginia we discovered the charming little Watermen’s Museum, located on the bank of the York River, almost in the shadow of the George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge. We love small town museums, and this one was a […]
I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. I’m going to die. And so are you. And your best friend, and your spouse, and sadly, even your kids. It’s going to happen sooner or later. We can’t avoid it. But we can make the most of whatever time we have left here on earth. […]
Before I do anything else, I want to wish our dear friend Jan White a happy birthday. I know there must be a special place in heaven for a woman like Jan, because she’s a saint. I mean, not only does she put up with her hubby Greg, she even tolerates the two of us […]
When you have a problem with a product, they say the first thing to do is RTFM. If you’re not familiar with that technical acronym, it means Read The F*****g Manual. Yeah, like a guy’s going to do that, right? Hell, we usually throw the manual away with the box the product came in, along […]
It’s been cold and rainy here in northern Arizona. In fact, they had snow in Pinetop-Lakeside, about 10 miles from us. I highly disapprove. Besides a fair amount of sniveling, I’ve been spending the time working on my next book, Big Lake Reckoning. I wrote a little over 3,200 words yesterday, which takes me about […]
After five weeks exploring Virginia, it’s time to reluctantly move on. But there is no doubt in our minds that we’ll be back again and again. This trip we confined our visit to the state’s Middle Peninsula, what locals call the Rivah Country, on the western side of Chesapeake Bay. There is so much to […]
We woke up to partly cloudy skies yesterday, but at least it had stopped raining. We were glad to see that since we really needed to get out for a while to shake off our cabin fever after two days cooped up inside. After stopping for gas, we started the day by dropping off bundles […]
Terry and I spent yesterday on the go, covering a lot of territory and getting a lot done. It was a fun day. We started out meeting longtime Gypsy Journal readers Ron and Verdis Knight for lunch at the Island Café, located in the Duke of York Motel on the waterfront in Yorktown. They have […]
An idling diesel engine woke me up about 7 yesterday morning, and though I tried to roll over and get back to sleep it kept running for a long time before finally pulling out. I guess the guy owns stock in an oil company and didn’t mind sitting there burning up money. We got up […]
Even though it was still bloody hot yesterday we had cabin fever and needed to get out of the motorhome for a while. So we took a road trip about 55 miles south to Reedville, a tiny little fishing town on the Chesapeake Bay whose claim to fame is that it is second only to […]