Mysteries

When I was traveling this summer I listened to books on CDs. I am fond of mysteries, but  I didn't find any that were satisfactory. Two weeks ago, I tried another and found it wanting, too.  The author wrote dialog that rambled on for no discernible reason. The murderer showed up in the final chapters with no real clues. The author had best selling mysteries so I thought I should try another of her books, thinking perhaps it was the reader that was bothering me, but the second book was worse. The heroine was cloyingly sweet.  All the characters were one dimensional. The dialog was so bad that I skipped from chapter to chapter, finding the plot was moved in the first couple of pages and the rest could be skipped. I finally stopped listening to the CD and took out the paper book instead, hoping it would be better in print. It wasn't.

When I returned the book to the library I was beginning to think about a mystery I wrote two or three years ago during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I thought it had a better plot and more interesting characters.  I e-mailed Wade in Arkansas. He had read it back then and though he said he knew "whodunnit" by the third chapter, he liked it and said I should go ahead with it.

I re-read it this afternoon and have decided I can repair some of the problems in the next two weeks. I'll devote the rest of October to it.  I figure I can at least write a less dreadful novel than the best selling author.

Then I can devote November to the other novel.

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Meanwhile, at Black Coffee Fiction, http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  Bettyann Moore has posted her latest story, about hearing and gambling.

Wade has ordered the galleys of our latest collection.  I'll have the proof copy in another week. I hope to have the mystery finished before it arrives.  One thing at a time.

The Evolution of French Road

Today Gary and I had errands to do in Appleton, just a little shopping here and there. On the way home, Gary decided to take French Road one of the longest and loveliest roads in the state. It took us up and down hills where we could look across valleys to the wooded hillsides.  The autumn colors were almost past their prime but still vibrant. We passed enormous flocks of Canada geese and found turkeys, too.

(I wish I could show my readers photos, but I have managed to break both of my cameras in the past month so am now shopping for another.)

Finally we came to the old South Osborn Grade School and along the road to North Osborn Grade School, the one room school I attended grades 1-8. That stretch held farm homes I often visited when I was a child. With memories in hand, I looked at each house.

The Kleist house caught fire long ago, burning the top floor.  The Kleists saved the ground floor and from then on it was a one story house.  It worked because by then the children had grown up and left. Now the house is beautifully painted and surrounded by a porch.

The top floor of old cheese factory is still a family home but the cheese factory ceased production years ago.

The Ganzels raised their children in a farmhouse that had seen better days. Now it has been remodeled, spiffy indeed. The same can be said of the Culbertson house, another surrounded by porches.

When I was a child, the Marcheskes lived at the next farm. By the time I was in high school, they had moved out and the Fischers had moved in with an enormous family.  They added on to the house and did some exterior work. Mrs. Fischer was an artist and the house showed it.  I don't know who lives there now, but the exterior paint is peeling.  However, it looks better than the house I grew up in which seems to have no paint whatsoever. The white house is now gray, not the house I remember.  Gary said we should buy it and turn it into a national landmark, the childhood home of Colleen Sutherland. Not likely.

Some houses have disappeared entirely. Some fields have been replaced by new houses, a small subdivision. North Osborn School was closed soon after I graduated.  It became the Osborn Town Hall for some decades but now it is a Baptist church.

So many changes, so many memories.

Women at Work

The government shut down is over, the debt ceiling bill has been approved with $2 billion in pork added. We can all take a deep breath and wait for the next big fight in February.

While negotiations were going on, the work of one group was largely ignored. If it weren't for a column by Laura Bassett for the Huffington Post, I would never have know about the women who did so much to end the stalemate: the twenty women Senators.

Susan Collins, the Republican Senator from Maine, started discussions with her female colleagues:  Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota).  They worked together to craft a budget without all the testosterone slights and barbs of the male Senators.  John McCain (R-Arizona) said that they provided the leadership that was needed.

The twenty women have found themselves at the head of important committees.  Barbara Mikulski is the head of Appropriations.  Patty Murray is the head of the Budget Committee.  These are powerful women, but they use their positions to work well with others.

I bring this up because the mainstream media seldom talk about how women are changing politics in D.C. Instead, the pundits and reporters look for sound bites from the likes of Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter, women who are good at saying startling and crazy things but never actually do anything productive. They create the impression that political women are incapable of sane and logical discourse. Death Panels? End Times? Women like that may make for interesting television, but it is women like the twenty senators who worked quietly and compromised to make good legislation who should be the real story.

Senator Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas) said, "The truth is, women in the Senate is a good thing.  We're all just glad they allowed us to tag along so we could see how it's done."

Let's elect more like politicians like them.

That's the Way it Goes

Tonight there was a big meeting at the Manawa High School because the school system received a low grade in the state report card.  Angry parents were demanding why.

And there I was at the library doing a book talk. Only four people came by to hear me. But an audience is an audience and I gave it my all.  I talked about blogging, writing, self-publishing and even storytelling.  In the end I sold two books.

Now I must move to talk in more libraries and schools about writing. Certainly the most difficult part of self-publishing is getting the word out.  I knew that going in and will continue on.

I did enjoy driving around re-visiting places in Manawa.  I looked out the senior housing development I surveyed when I was on the the Seymour city council.  I came back with a good report and now we have similar housing. The library is situated next to the Little Wolf where Gary and I did our first sturgeon guard.

I stopped at the Little Wolf Market and found wonderful foods and spices at very reasonable prices. I bought a bag of crystallized ginger slices, one of my favorite treats.

So all in all, a pleasant evening.  

Books ... and a Wart

Tomorrow night at 6:30 pm I will be at the Sturm Public Library in Manawa, Wisconsin, talking about the books I've been writing, lecturing about a writing blog, showing some travel photos.  Afterward, I expect to sell some books.  All of this is at the library's website http://www.manawalibrary.org/  There are some links there that take the readers to Amazon.com.

One book that won't be at Manawa is our new book, Black Coffee Fiction, Volume 2, 33% More Caffeine.  Wade is still working on getting the e-book on Amazon.com and the paperback is still in the future.  However, it can be purchased at Smashwords.  http://www.smashwords.com/  I downloaded a copy onto my Nook reader this afternoon, so I would have the book at the library.

I still have to make up some informational sheets for my audience and write a speech outline. I have some of this in my files already so that won't take long.  I have a case of books, a Sharpie pen for signing. I'll need to get some change at the bank, too.

Yesterday, I re-formulated the Decades of Love and Other Disasters e-book, taking out the page numbers which got in the reader's way.  Now I have to work with tech support to replace the first try.

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For the past few months I've noticed what I thought was a mole on the back of my arm. I couldn't see it but that's what I felt like. It was getting harder though and I didn't know what that was.  This morning, Gary took a look and told me it was getting red. Was it infected?

I called my doctor and got an afternoon appointment with the nurse practitioner.  I was surprised to find out I had a wart, something new for me.  She treated it, then gave me my flu shot.  While we were at it, she checked out my feet which have been bad all my life.  We set an appointment with a podiatrist. I expect there will be surgery after I get back from Hawaii.

For now, my right arm is starting to ache.  I hope that doesn't interfere with the book signing.

If you are in the area, come see me tomorrow.

Christophe and the Tea Party

When my son Christopher was in grade school, he had a complaint.  I had given him too long a name. His friends had names that worked out to twelve letters or less, but "Christopher Sutherland" was too much trouble to write on his school papers. Even worse, his teachers wouldn't let him just write "Chris".

It was when he was in high school, that computers came into our lives. Around that time, whenever we had to sign up for anything, we had to use specific forms with a box for each letter.  Chris had to write SUTHERLAND CHRISTOPHE because his full name was one letter to long for the forms. Then I started getting junk mail telling me that my son "Christophe" was perfect for the movies, was so smart he should buy such and such a set of encyclopedias, and so on.

Finally the Internet grew up and "Christophe" disappeared. Chris was grown up, married and had a child.

So imagine my surprise this morning when I had a telephone call and the caller asked to talk to "Christophe".

"Who is this?" I asked.

It was the Tea Party Patriots.  I was laughing so hard I never found out what the guy wanted.  "That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard," I said and he hung up.

What we can glean from this is that the Tea Party Patriots have very old computers or spread sheets that go back to the last century. "Christophe" has not lived at this address in almost twenty years.

The biggest advantage the Democrats have over the Republicans is volunteers who are tech savvy.  They also are intelligent enough to know that any child of mine is much too smart to want to have anything to do with a group as racist, homophobic, and downright ignorant as the Tea Party Patriots.  

Writing

The Packers had a game today. I've never been a football fan and after watching a PBS documentary last night about the incidence of brain damage in the players and the attempts of the National Football Association to cover up the effects of concussions, I doubt I will ever watch another game.

So instead of television, I worked on re-doing an e-book. When I self-published Decades of Love and Other Disasters with Create Space in the spring, the company did a superb job on the paperback, but when their website said they could do the e-book for me, I didn't realize I would still have to do the up front work. The e-book came out with some serious problems which I should have repaired by the end of this week. I was too busy over the summer to attack that project.

Once the e-book is done, I will turn my attention to Going Down From Gairloch, the novel I hope to have done by the end of the year.  This book, too, had problems. The flow was all wrong. By last November I couldn't see my way clear to finishing it so I put it aside. While camping this summer, I let the thing churn around in my head and suddenly, I found the problem.  Chapter Five belongs at the end of the book, it was that simple. It means some minor re-writes on Chapters One and Four but it should work. I hope to have it done within the next month.

I still have to write six short stories before January 1st and the second short story collection is about to come out, too.  But it will all happen.  

I have so many stories to tell, but first I needed to get these out of the way.