A new year, a new home, and renewed hope
I hadn’t been posting here too much because there’s been a lot of behind the scenes doings going on at Casa de Paolinelli.
Namely, there’s a new Casa. In a new state at that. Oh yes, we moved. Again. But it was something of a homecoming for me.
My wife took advantage of her employer cutting departments and decided to retire two years ahead of schedule. Were we ready for that?
Nope.
So things got, shall we say, interesting. But its been a good interesting as it turns out. We’ve relocated to North Dakota for what we plan on being our final move.
No, you didn’t have a stroke. You read that right. We’ve retired to North Dakota.
Trust me, we’ve been getting that reaction a lot from the locals up here. “You mean, you wanted to retire here???”
Our criteria was a small midwestern town, where it snowed a lot. Here we are. Better still, I lived in this town for nearly four years back in the 1970s, so it was kind of a homecoming. I even got the same PO Box that my family had back then.
Dropping about 3,000 feet in elevation has proven to be a godsend for our own health as well as one of our dogs, who was having some elevation-related health issues. Those seems to have gone away since we got up here.
So yes, I’ll put up with a weekend with a forecast of -50 below wind chill just for that reason alone.
In addition to the boys, we apparently have adopted a scurry of squirrels. There are three of the critters that hang out in one of the many evergreens that form a western windbreak on our property near the house.
The other day I saw them dragging some old dried out corn husks from a nearby field to eat. We had a bag of walnut pieces that I emptied out at the base of their tree.
The pile lasted less than five minutes. A week later I put another pile out there and they lasted about as long. We’ve read they love sunflower seeds so we’ll probably get them a bag a week to get through the winter.
Hey, its my rule: If you’re a critter on my land, I take care of you. Just don’t tell the State of New York about this. I don’t want them raiding the place to whack the squirrels.
Writing wise I have four books I am hoping to have wrapped up and released by the end of the year. One under one of my pen names. Yes, I have one or two of those. Consider it my cancellation insurance.
I also have two movie scripts and a streaming series pitch with the pilot episode script finished and with my IP agent.
I’m also overseeing new book trailer production for Tuscany Bay Books: https://www.youtube.com/@TuscanyBayBooks and we’re exploring the possibility of converting some, if not all, of the Dreams of the Storyteller series into some type of animated short films.
And finally I’m uploading the old A Scribe’s Journey podcast episodes to a YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Richard_Paolinelli_Scribe and I’m entertaining the idea of restarting it with a new format. I’ll keep you updated on that.
In short, 2025 is lining up to be a busy, productive, and I hope successful, year. May your year be so as well.
