Monday Madness

Re-entering the Real World

After being on a nine-day adventure to Florida, Pennsylvania, and Missouri, this is the first Monday back in California. I took the above photo in Pennsylvania, a picturesque place filled with charming homes and unique stores I wanted to move to— until I considered that thing called winter.

A few highlights of my trip:

• Having mystery author Collings MacCrae drive me around South Florida and show me many locations she uses in her Fox Argall mystery series. If you haven’t read them, two are out as books on Amazon, and she has seven available on Kindle Vella. Fox is a lawyer/doctor/detective with Asperger’s, but he’s the center of the Universe in these gripping books.

• Discovering that I have a keen sense of military tactics when visiting Valley Forge and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. I’m fairly sure I spent some past life or lives thinking about gaining the high ground because finding out George Washington’s headquarters at Valley Forge were in a valley was annoying. :)

• Hearing my uncle Jim Manley play jazz in St. Louis. He was best friends with legendary jazz trumpet player Maynard Ferguson and is also an extraordinary player.

Sure, there were glitches like getting dropped off at the wrong hotel, having a shower that wouldn’t turn off (nothing like calling for maintenance when you’re wet and in PJs) and returning early on stand-by flights, but the people I met were all nice and interesting, so the overall trip was wonderful.

Now, I’m back to staring at the words on my laptop screen of a fantasy genre novel I’m working on before diving back into Davia Glenn Book 4, Lavish and Lethal.