Lea Wait's Blog, page 65

Win a Book Wednesday!

Maggie Robinson here, feeling flush with money. Last of the big-time spenders, that’s me. I have a whole ten-dollar bill burning a hole in my handbag, ready to take advantage of the sale of Nobody’s Sweetheart Now. It’s the first volume in the cozy Lady Adelaide Mysteries, and is currently only $1.99 through the end of February. If you’d like a free download, just contact me at maggie@maggierobinson.net. The first five folks will win a book for their Kindle from Amazon. And don’t worry, I will not add you to any list or use your address for any nefarious purpose, or any purpose, period. Cross my heart and hope to die.

To pique your interest, here’s the first chapter and information from its book page. If you don’t think this is quite your cup of tea (contrary to Rhys Bowen), or have read it already (bless you) I can send a friend or family member a book if you prefer. Ready, set, go!

The Roaring ‘20s by Matt Cost

The Roaring ‘20s was quite arguably the most exciting time in the history of the US. It was a time just after the Great War, women recently having got the right to vote, Prohibition, speakeasies, rum runners, gangsters, baseball, jazz, moving pictures, and a period of fantastic writers producing books.

Paris has always been spoken of as a hot spot in this time period for all of this, but New York City was filled with legendary figures and events like no other place and time in the entire world. Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the start of The Great Gatsby, Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees VS the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, Coleman Hawkins, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong and so many other monumental jazz musicians; these are just the tip of the iceberg that was New York City in the 1920’s.

When I decided to combine my love of history with my passion for mystery, thus, I needed to look no further than a setting of Brooklyn in the ‘20s. It didn’t hurt that I have a daughter living in Bed-Stuy there in the city, giving me the opportunity to research as well as visit. I decided to base my PI, 8 Ballo, in the next neighborhood over in Bushwick, based off a graffiti tour I participated in, and Velma Gone Awry; a Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery, set in 1923, was born.

The starting point is a German businessman coming into the dingy PI office of 8 Ballo and hiring him to find his missing flapper daughter. 8 will learn through the course of the search that the twenty-five-year-old Velma is an incredibly talented young lady. And perhaps she is missing on her own volition, hiding from something in her past. It is also possible she’s been abducted by the Jewish gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Mayer Lansky.

The investigation leads 8 to befriending Dottie Parker, conversation with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, meeting with Coleman Hawkins and Smack Henderson, and being threatened by Siegel and Lansky. And that is just the first day. In the days that follow, other legendary figures such as Babe Ruth, Ethel Waters, and Mae West will be encountered in the search, all having connections to the intriguing Velma.

8 Ballo got his curious moniker when his mother was certain that he was going to be born a girl that she had the name Margrit picked out, but no male name. When he was born a boy, and his dad was out to sea, she merely wrote the number 8 down on the birth record, meant as a placeholder to be changed later, but never was. He is college educated, a veteran of the Great War, is in his mid-30’s, and has relationship issues.

He is aided in his investigation by a colorful group who represent the melting pot that is 1920s Brooklyn. His best is Pearle Hill, a business entrepreneur he has known since they were boys playing stickball on the streets around the turn of the century. Marty Feldman is a journalist for the Brooklyn Eagle and Stephen McGee is a cop in Bushwick. 8 occasionally sees a woman by the name of Asta Holm, until the mysterious Velma complicates things.

Where is Velma and why has she gone awry? Follow 8 Ballo through the streets of New York City in the Roaring ‘20s to find the answers to these questions. Velma Gone Awry is publishing on April 12th. Read on. Write on.

[image error]

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, due out in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, Pirate Trap, due out in December of 2023.

For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. In April of 2023, Cost will combine his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

And Don’t Forget the Dog!

Kate Flora: I have finally struggled my way into the end zone on a first draft of the eighth Joe Burgess procedural, Such a Good Man. It has truly been a struggle. The book is six months overdue to my publisher, something I never do. And unlike when I finish most books, I can’t tell whether it works or not.

So what does all that have to do with a dog? Well, regular readers of the series will remember than in A Child Shall Lead Them, one of the bad guys had a dog named Fideau. When the bad guy went to jail, Fideau needed a new home, and somehow he ended up with Burgess. Probably because Burgess’s kids needed a dog. Instead, it appeared that in Fideau’s opinion, it was Joe Burgess who needed a dog. At the beginning of the seventh book, A World of Deceit, Burgess is on vacation, resting in a hammock and guarded by his dog, when a young girl appears, declares that her father is in trouble, and smashes that restful vacation to smithereens.

Over the course of the book, Burgess discovers that his new dog is very good at finding people. He also concludes that his dog can understand much of what he says and is sometimes able to speak. Evidently there is some serious bonding going on between man and dog.

Fast forward to Book Eight. I am deeply into the book before I realize that I’ve forgotten to include Fideau. There are rules in the mystery writing community about this. Along with the never kill a cat or abuse a dog, there’s the rule that if you put an animal in a series, you can’t suddenly forget about it. The animal, like other recurring characters, has become not only a part of the writer’s repetoire, it has become another character readers have come to expect. At this point, I can no more leave Fideau out than I can leave out Terry Kyle or Stan Perry or Chris or Captain Cote or Burgess’s kids.

I suppose that Fideau is my aspirational dog. I don’t have a dog. We’ve always traveled too much to get one. But at this point, I have six granddogs, all of them rescues. I’ve spent a good deal of time in the world of dogs and dog training researching my nonfiction books Finding Amy, Death Dealer, and A Good Man with a Dog. As a result of this, I’ve come to see dogs, their personalities, their abilities, their training, and the way they can enhance life differently than I did before. Now I get to vicariously enjoy having a dog through Burgess’s experience.

So, back to book eight. It was already late in the book, and Fideau had barely made an appearance. Now it was time to find a way to include him. That way was to help Burgess locate a missing girl who might be being threatened by a killer because of something she’d witnessed. Once again, Fideau didn’t let Burgess–or me–down, but was a perfect assistant first to help find the girl and then to comfort her while Burgess dealt with the killer.

No, Fideau, you were not forgotten. But there’s a lesson here, and its one I learned long ago in my first Joe Burgess book, Playing God. In my early drafts, I opened the book with a rookie cop on patrol on an icy February night finding a body in a parked car. I realized, through feedback from my beta readers, that by opening the book with Remy Aucoin instead of Burgess, I gave readers the impression that the book was going to be about Remi. I had to fix it so the book opened with Burgess.

There are so many things to consider, juggle, and keep track of when plotting and writing a book. If you are more of a pantser, like me, who has sketched out the book in her head but discovers much of the story while writing, it is vitally important to keep notes as you write and as you edit, so your timeline and your cast of characters and what you’ve revealed about them, makes sense. And so you don’t forget the dog.

Weekend Update: February 18-19, 2023

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Matt Cost (Tuesday), Maureen Milliken (Thursday), and Dick Cass (Friday). On Wednesday there will be a special giveaway from Maggie Robinson.

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

 

What a Great Cast

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today musing about something both books and movies have in common. When a new movie’s promo starts up, it produces various reactions, but the one that I have most often (besides “Who would pay good money to see that?) is “What a great cast!”

In books, especially novels in a series, a continuing cast of interesting characters is one of the most important elements of the whole. When relationships click, they keep readers coming back. The characters make the stories more memorable. Readers have even been known to complain if a favorite secondary character doesn’t appear in the newest entry in the series. The residents of my fictional towns of Moosetookalook and Lenape Hollow are “real” to a lot of Kaitlyn Dunnett fans.

Some writers “cast” the parts in their novels by imagining real life actors in them. I rarely do this. In fact, I can only think of two occasions. The first was when I created the character of Sir Robert Appleton, my heroine’s dastardly husband in the Face Down mysteries I wrote as Kathy Lynn Emerson. I’d recently seen Shakespeare in Love and Colin Firth’s villainous earl was exactly what I had in mind for Robert. So was making Robert the victim in the fourth book in the series.

In The Scottie Barked at Midnight, one of the Liss MacCrimmon mysteries written as Kaitlyn Dunnett, I was faced with having to create a whole flock of one-off characters to compete in a fictional television show being filmed at an equally fictional Maine ski resort. To make things easier on myself, I printed photos of the contestants and judges from a recent season of Dancing with the Stars and used those for inspiration.

Turning back to movies and that “what a great cast!” reaction, I have to confess that although I’m not a moviegoer in the sense of seeing current films in theaters, I do stream a lot of movies, some of them recent and some not. I pick what to watch as much because of a good ensemble cast as for the plot. Sometimes the plot turns out to be pretty thin but watching seasoned actors work together makes up for a lot. When both the actors and the writing are good, watching is pure pleasure.

Most recently I had the “what a great cast” reaction to the promos for 80 for Brady and will stream it as soon as it is available. What’s not to like about Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, and Rita Moreno? Aside from the casting, I have admit to having been a Tom Brady fan . . . until he turned traitor and left the Patriots. Fortunately the film takes place during the time he was still playing for the Pats.

What other movies have grabbed my attention on the basis of a great cast? There are too many to name them all, but here, in no particular order, is a sampling:

First Wives Club: Goldie Hawn, Bette Milder, Diane Keaton

Calendar Girls: Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Annette Crosbie, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Celie Imrie, Penelope Wilton

Ocean’s 8: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham-Carter, Sarah Paulson

Tea with Mussolini: Judi Dench, Cher, Maggie Smith, Lily Tomlin, Joan Plowright

Love, Actually: Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Martin Freeman, Chjwetel Ejiofor, and more

Book Club: Jane Fonda, Candace Bergen, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen

These Old Broads: Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine, Joan Collins (written by Carrie Fisher)

Great plots? Great writing? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Great casts? Definitely.

So, readers—what movies have provoked the “what a great cast” reaction from you. Please share.

 

 

 

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others, including several children’s books. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Her most recent publications are The Valentine Veilleux Mysteries (a collection of three short stories and a novella, written as Kaitlyn) and I Kill People for a Living: A Collection of Essays by a Writer of Cozy Mysteries (written as Kathy). She maintains websites at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

 

Pithy. Pithy. Pithy! (am so eager for more of it …)

 

Sandra Neily here:

Are you, like me, pining for the world to get a bit more … Pithy?

A pithy phrase or statement is brief but full of substance and meaning. It often feels like a shot of truth.

(I don’t mean a hit of social media that assumes humans’ attention spans are shorter than a cream shot hitting expresso.)

Can a fiction writer be pithy? Use the pithy phrase successfully and not lose readers? Avoid that moment when readers feel an author reaching through to lecture … or (I’m cringing) hector them?

Wow them with that arresting moment that might define a character and have us thinking about a possible truth long after a page is turned?

Yes! Of course. But, like me, it might be surprising.

I’ve been listening to Agatha Christie’s short stories as I drive. The pithy is jumping out at me in the midst of bodies and more bodies, and even more bodies (and lots of stolen jewels).

So here she is.

 

  From Agatha Christie’s fiction:

I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.” Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorseless.” Agatha Christie, The Hound of Death and Other Stories

“As a matter of fact it wouldn’t be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife! Funnily enough, I’d trust most women with the truth about their husbands. Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.” Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia

“If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it – often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.” Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

“Everybody always knows something,” said Adam, “even if it’s something they don’t know they know.” Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons

And a few more from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels:

If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” Sirius Black, The Goblet of Fire

Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.” Dumbledore, Deathly Hallows: part 2“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Dumbledore, Chanmber of Secrets.What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.” Hagrid, The Goblet of Fire*********

I went back to look for pithy, truth-sounding moments in my novels and found them, but I think they should be Agatha-short. Or shorter. I thank her for being a pithy role model!

From my Deadly Trespass:

“… wild animal health depends on our setting up the outdoors as a zoo—a zoo without bars. I know it’s a contradiction, but today no animal can be free until we accept responsibility for its freedom.” (Patton)

It helped that I knew real conservation started in the human heart, not out where animals actually lived.

I replayed my mother’s message three times just to hear her voice, because a mother’s voice is a mother’s voice no matter what.

From my Deadly Turn:

I thought I might understand his caution—his hard-learned silence. Sometimes I thought there was a whole tribe of men who’d forced women onto smaller, meaner plots of ground where we were also supposed to be content and silent. I knew the scale of intimidation was different, even if the pain was real for both of us. My relatives had never been hunted down and slaughtered …

[about moose] “Maintaining the fiction that they are usually solitary and hard to locate in winter may save them from becoming easy targets. Remote locations often seduce lawful people into criminal behavior.”

…  the girl-be-silent disease. It was often a secret disease—not visible as it worked its way through our deepest selves. After enough messages telling us we weren’t acceptable, we took over the infection process. We helped the disease metastasize to our brains so no one had to remind us that our words and voices needed careful pruning to get and hold jobs—get and hold most men we met. We carried scalpels inside to accomplish our own voice reduction surgery.

*********

A fav pithy of mine: The president of the U.S. Senate thought he’d insult Senator Elizabeth Warren by saying this as he tried to gavel her down. Nope! The phrase was immediately seen as a compliment and went viral. My mug arrived the next day.

Please, while enjoying your cocoa, send me a comment with a favorite pithy phrase, either yours or a favorite of yours! Thanks….

The second Mystery in Maine, Deadly Turn, was published in 2021. Her debut novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

Island Hopping

Happy Valentine’s Day! At this stage of the winter, who hasn’t wanted to run away to a beautiful, private island with a sweetheart? I can’t supply the companion*, and this island may not be tropical, but at least it’s close to home—Islesboro, in Penobscot Bay.

My daughter Jessie is the caretaker of a large waterfront estate there, and lives in a nineteenth century farmhouse on the property with her son, Ryder, a rescue dog named Georgia (who is the star of several of the pictures below), and two rescue cats. This sounds like the perfect set-up for a cozy mystery series to me. Alert the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel. Jessie could even act in it as she has a degree in Theater from USM, although I don’t guess she’d like to dig up any dead bodies on the grounds for real.

Islesboro is a twenty-minute ferry ride from the mainland (“America”), but even if you’re from Maine, you may not have visited it in all its glory. The island is well-known as a discreet destination for the rich and famous; I once spotted Teddy Kennedy at the ferry terminal, and I sold two angel food cakes to Kirstie Alley at the preschool fair when we lived out there. John Travolta’s house,( John Travolta Lists Resort-Sized Maine Estate for $5 Million – Mansion Global )the former Drexel compound, would be the perfect location for a crazy Clue 2 movie. It was Miss Scarlett in the conservatory with a candlestick! It’s been on the market for only $5 million. We can all chip in and have an amazing writers’ retreat.

If you’re not familiar with the area, Jessie will take care of that with her unfiltered photos of one of the most spectacular places in Maine, or, in fact, America. Soon enough, her garden will be in bloom, as will mine. In the meantime, enjoy the armchair travel and dream of spring!

*For a sweetheart you can curl up with on a cold winter’s night, the first book in the cozy, 1920s-set Lady Adelaide Mysteries, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now, is only $1.99 during the month of February. You can read the first chapter and access buy links here: Nobody’s Sweetheart Now | Maggie Robinson

For more info about Islesboro: Islesboro | Maine: An Encyclopedia (maineanencyclopedia.com)

 

 

Characters

Vaughn C. Hardacker

One of the things that will turn me off on a book is Tom Swift style characters, you know the hero who excels at everything they have ever done. You know The Great Leslie Gallant character of the Warner Brothers 1965 movie THE GREAT RACE. The movie is one of my all time favorites and it is great satire. However the characters are all shallow. Tony Curtis as Great Leslie is the protagonist and Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate Leslie’s nemesis and antagonist. Are satirical illustrations of the heroes and villains of silent films. The problem is they are one dimensional (albeit I believe intentionally so).
As writers we must never forget that people are not one or even two dimensional, they are multi-faceted.  They have hopes and fears, hates, likes and failures.  Yet, when we think

of their personalities, we tend to key on one or two dominant traits.  We describe someone we know to another person as, “He’s the pushy one.”  Or “She’s so sweet, but a bit ditsy.”  It’s what, in our minds, makes these people individuals to us.

So, too, the characters we write are multi-faceted.  When we write them as such, they all blend one into another, with no personality distinctions.  Their physical attributes are different, but you could probably swap around and notice little difference.  The most recent rejection letter says, “Your characters are cookie cutter.”  Of course, in your mind, you (as the writer) see all these “people” as distinct.
Remember the way we describe people?  Define your characters the same way.  Give your hero two or three traits.  That’s all.  Give him two good and one bad (or two bad and one good, if your character is evil).  Lesser characters get fewer traits.
I’m currently working on a novel where my protagonist is moral (good) and long-suffering in patience (good), but when he’s had enough, he’s brutal (bad).  My antagonist, by necessity is almost the opposite:  arrogant (bad) and insecure (bad), which makes him a bully.

Released January 25, 2023

I try to make all of my writing character driven (we sort of have to, after all virtually every plot today is derived from Shakespeare), so even though there’s a “bad guy” in my Bouchard and Houston novels one of my readers’ favorite characters is an anti-hero. Jimmy O could easily be the antagonist.  However, as interesting as many of my readers have found him, he’s a supporting character (they get only two traits, in Jimmy O’s case he can be brutal and violent while on the other hand uses that trait to help people less fortunate as he). He is as a member of one of my writing groups said: a gangster with morals.
It’s important to remember that sometimes stories change as we write them.  A minor character (Jimmy O) could suddenly become important and move into a supporting character role.  If this happens, give that character one more trait.  But only one; you don’t want to interfere with the importance of the primary characters.
Likewise, a supporting character may fall back to supporting status.  In that case, focus on just one of his chosen traits.
The most important thing to remember is what is your character’s role in the story…does his or her presence move the story forward?  If you don’t know that, then your characters will have too many traits and once again, they’ll become cookie cutter people with different roles.

Weekend Update: February 11-12, 2023

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Vaughn Hardacker (Monday), Maggie Robinson (Tuesday), Sandra Neily (Thursday), and Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

If you’re in the mood for a good Valentine’s Day romance, Kate Flora reminds you to pick up a copy of her romance, Wedding Bell Ruse.

https://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Bell-Ruse-Kate-Flora-ebook/dp/B086K46QHX/ref=sr_1_2?crid=E0I16ENI9G4U&keywords=Wedding+Bell+Ruse&qid=1676059119&sprefix=wedding+bell+rose%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-2

 

What could be more Maine than this?

 

And a question for you: What is your favorite Maine product? We’d love our giveaways to include some of your faves.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

 

I got them steadily depressin’, low down mind messin’ February in winter blues.

John Clark echoing others who have posted about darkness, bleak feelings, and being stuck in a rut. It’s been a number of years since winter in general, and February in specific bit me in the backside. This year, cumulative ‘stuff’ has conspired to make the evil spirit of Doldrums reside on my shoulder.

Remember the fall off the wall back in October? That has turned into the gift that keeps on giving. Its most recent iteration is an inflamed TMJ on my left side that makes opening my mouth wide enough to eat, akin to a roulette wheel. Come up red, intense pain, come up black, chew carefully.

I’ve been on a very effective anti-depressant for years that has built a reliable floor under my darker moods. Unfortunately, fate left the door open and a prickle (I had to look this one up) of porcupines snuck in and chewed multiple holes in said floor, making emotional navigation a tricky business.

My blood pressure has chosen to spike after being well behaved for years. I walk around wondering what invisible damage it’s doing to my cardiovascular system. I’m checking it three times a week per my PCP’s orders and have to resist calling in panic at the more dire numbers.

Don’t get me started on how much other drivers’ behavior has deteriorated. Whether from watching the news, COVID, mental degradation, or a bad astrological sign, it seems nobody considers the consequences of running yellow or red lights, texting while driving, or being so close to my bumper they can count individual paint molecules. It’s at a point where I don’t dare stop for a yellow light because there’s no way to be sure what the driver behind me will do. I’m tempted to buy a pound of loose buckshot pellets and toss a handful out the window to deter tailgaters.

Then there’s the winter edition of Whack-A-Mole we call black ice. Any driving after dark these days on back roads is an adventure, particularly on sharp curves. Makes me wanna buy a Sherman Tank.

My energy level has me yearning to be horizontal with a book more often than vertical, so I can keep writing my current one. A disturbed sleep pattern probably doesn’t help, although I’d love to capture my dreams on DVR so I could re-watch them and make sense of what transpires.

Right in the middle of all this, reality stalked in, wearing steel-toed boots and sporting the mother of bad attitudes. Beth’s laptop decided her PIN was expired and she needed to create a new one. Sounds like a simple process, but it became anything but. In order to get a new one, she was required to have it sent to an expired email account, then texted to our landline, and finally could only be reset if she admitted to buying a Microsoft product, providing them with the last four numbers of the credit card used for the purchase, as well as the zip code where we lived at the time. RIGHT.

She bought MS Office at least 8 years ago with who knows what credit card, her TDS. Email is long gone and there was no way to change the phone # so she could have something texted to her cell phone. Wait, it gets better. I did some digging as did she and we found a potential work around involving creating a boot program on a USB drive. I went ahead, downloaded the files and reformatted what I thought was an old thumb drive…WRONG. I managed to format my 4 terrabyte SSD that I store all my programs and written work on. First off, the workaround failed and when I went to open up my current book I’m writing…Nothing.

I went and lay on the bed, giving serious thought to getting drunk for the first time in ages. Instead, I did some breathing exercises, went and researched recovery after formatting a SSD drive. The first program wasn’t worth buying, but the second one was…after it took 24 hours to churn through all the mashed data. I ended up spending $120 for the full version and have most of my written work recovered, but you can bet I’m double copying everything from now on.

Thanks to our very talented friend Clif Graves, and a linux boot disk, we have retrieved all Beth’s documents and photos. I immediately ordered her a new HP laptop with an SSD hard drive so her frustration level when starting up will diminish. Naturally that success was immediately offset when I searched for the $150 BJs wholesale card I won and it refused to be found and remains in hiding following a thorough search of the house. (I did come across a $50 Amazon card I got for a birthday present in the course of looking for it, though—spent it immediately, just in case).

Let’s not get started on the disaster we call congress. I’m afraid to blow my nose for fear someone there will call for an investigation on which way I blew, right or left.

I’ve provided the whine, but the cheese is on you.