The first thing I want to do today is thank Miss Terry, Judy Rinehimer, and Roberta Jensen for all of their hours of hard work editing and proofreading my newest book, Big Lake Assault. Without you dedicated ladies, no book project would ever get done. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all three […]
I’m a little too young to have taken part in panty raids, which were a popular pastime during the 1950s and early ’60s when young men, usually college students, would descend on female students’ dormitories to steal their underwear. Like other youthful pranks such as swallowing goldfish or stuffing as many people as possible into […]
Several people have asked me how our new dog Alli is settling into life with us and about the kitten Terry got last week when we were at the veterinarian’s. So I thought I would give you an update today. Alli is doing just fine. She is energetic but not at all hyper like the […]
I think our bodies have pretty much recovered from the beating we gave them the other day when planting the garden. If our son Travis and his wife Geli hadn’t been here helping us, I think Terry and I would both be in traction. But, of course, you know that nothing slows my bride down […]
Thank you to everyone who sent emails and messages asking if we were safe from the storms that tore through our part of the country Friday night. We dodged a bullet because they changed course and went north of us, so all we got was some wind and rain. Unfortunately, there was a lot of […]
Yesterday was a good day for writing, even if it was frustrating. I had narrated a full chapter in my new Tinder Street book, using Microsoft Word’s narration feature, and I thought I was saving all along. But for some reason, all of a sudden the entire chapter, over 2,300 words, disappeared. It was just […]
I have been busy trying to make up for lost time, and I hit the ground running yesterday and didn’t stop until about 7:30, when Terry couldn’t hold dinner any longer. But it was worth it because it was a good writing day for me. After a light breakfast of an asiago cheese bagel and […]
Anybody who has been reading the blog for very long knows that there’s not much that Miss Terry can’t do. From building all the cabinets and doing all of the interior work on our MCI bus conversion to replacing a window in a friend’s truck, to maintenance around the house, if it needs done, Terry […]
The Artemis rocket launch scheduled for yesterday afternoon was scrubbed again, to the disappointment of hundreds of thousands of people who came to see the historic event. NASA said it was due to more fuel leaks, the same issue they had earlier in the week. As of last night, they didn’t know when they were […]
I said in yesterday’s blog that I had written 9,000 words and if I could do the same thing for the next day or two, I would finish my new John Lee book. Well, I had another good writing day, but not quite that good. By the end of the day, I had knocked out […]
I am still at it, cranking away on my next book, which I had hoped to get out by the end of the month. In the last couple of days, I wrote three more chapters numbering between 2,500 and 3,000 words each, which puts me about at the three-quarter mark for the story. I’m hoping […]
Thank you to the folks who sent texts or e-mails after reading yesterday’s blog about the frustrating day I had, telling me they hoped Friday would be a better day. Overall it was. I managed to knock out another 3,500 words or so in my new book, and even though my neighbor didn’t make it […]
While Terry had a couple of dental appointments this last week, I don’t believe I had been out of the house except to check the mail or check on our citrus trees all week. This allowed me a lot of writing time on my new book, but sometimes I reach the point where I just […]
Terry had a dentist appointment yesterday morning, and she was up and out the door early. After she left I spent some time answering e-mails, checking the news online to see who we were at war with today, and then settled down to work. I needed to clarify some dates for different incidents in the […]
Don’t let the title of today’s blog fool you. I didn’t run a 7K marathon or do any other kind of running yesterday. Trust me, if you ever see me running, you had better run, too, because there’s something really big and mean behind me! But I did have kind of a marathon writing day, […]
In response to questions about my writing, I posted a blog titled A Day In The Life a while back describing a typical day in my life as an author. That blog led to other questions about the process that goes into it all, getting a book from concept to finished and available for my […]
Yesterday afternoon my second proofreader finished Dead Romeos, and this morning I will make her corrections, then send it on to my last proofreader. With any luck at all, the book should be out by the end of this coming week. I know many writers who seem to agonize over every page of a manuscript […]
We’ve all heard somebody say you can’t make this stuff up when they come across something that seems so bizarre it can’t be real, but it happens all the time. Sometimes it’s not the things that happen, but the things you hear. Things that make you say, huh? Here are some examples we have heard […]
I keep hearing from people asking us if we are safe and out of harm’s way from Hurricane Florence. Thank you for your concern, and yes, we are fine. The hurricane made landfall about 550 miles north of us, so except for some high surf it was a nonevent for us. We didn’t even get […]
After taking care of the morning’s email, I spent part of the day writing and got in another 3,000 or so words in my new John Lee Quarrels book. Fans of the series keep asking me when it will be ready, and all I can say is that I’m working on it. Books are like […]