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Coming Attractions: Free Book in July

From July 1st until July 31st we're once again participating in the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale!

Because it's summer up here and winter down under, you see. I'd imagine it made sense at the time. And let's face it: For most people, July is either too hot or too cold to go out anyway, so you might as well read a good book.

Since Coming Attractions is a romantic comedy set, yes, during summer, you can read it, then tell people you've experienced summer. You don't have to be specific. Oh, and it's Indiana summer, not Australia summer. If you live in southern Chile, you can read it to get your mind off winter.


 
Coming Attractions is the only one of our books that's Smashwords affiliated at the moment. I'm happy when someone buys a print copy, but in July you can get it on e-book for free, which is almost a dollar less than its normal 99 cent cost.
 
I do math. I do, too.
 
The catch: It's part of the Smashwords promotion, which means, let's face it, that you have to get it on Smashwords. But that can be on epub, mobi, and pdf formats, or as an original document. It should be readable to anyone with an e-reader, cell phone, or computer. (Due to recent air quality problems, Smashwords has canceled their smoke signal program.)
 
All the participating authors can be found here: https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos
 starting July 1st. If you want to go directly to my account, it's at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914. There you'll also find the two fiction anthologies I have stories in, also at the attractive cost of zero.
 
It's the ultimate beach read! Don't get water on it.


This is indie author territory, and indie authors could always use the help (and reviews!) So please, check it out and share the promo with your friends and family, and anyone looking for their next favorite book.

 Happy reading!
 
 


 
 
As usual, all our books can be found at: 
 
 
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A Hot Time In Every Town

 I realized while going through old blogs that I write about winter way more often than summer. Like most humor writers, my work is usually about stuff I'd be complaining about anyway, so there you go. But after our two hour air conditioner home maintenance job last week I wanted to complain about summer a bit, so I dredged up this 2016 blog I wrote after helping my in-laws move in southeast Missouri ... in July.


They had to get moved faster than planned, after a car crashed into their old home. For one thing, the bedroom was now the width of a bathtub. It had huge holes in the former walls ... and Missouri mosquitos can punch through walls without help. And finally, the electricity had to be cut off to the home. See above about southeast Missouri—in July.

Here's the difference between that area and where I live, in northeast Indiana. Hoosier weather gets just as hot and humid ... from time to time. It seems like our heat waves last forever, but in reality they rarely go more than a few days. (This week excepted.) In Missouri the humidity pops up to 114% in May, and the temperature doesn't drop below 90 until October. Yes, the humidity's actually more than 100%. It’s a head-scratcher, or maybe that’s the mosquitos.

Flowers still came out in the morning, but in the afternoon they burst into flames.


Their winters are wonderful. I mean, compared to Indiana.

So that led to a few bumps in moving, such as my difficulty seeing because my glasses melted. Going into that trailer was like sticking your head into the stove to see how the all-day Thanksgiving turkey is doing. Leaving the trailer was like going into the kitchen where the turkey's been cooking all day.

It was so hot they had to open the fire hydrants to let steam out.

It was so hot even the politicians stopped talking.

It was so hot we had to put the beverage coolers into cooler coolers.

It was hot, I tell ya'.

Reel-mounted fire extinguishers were mounted by each mailbox, in case the postal delivery arrived in flames.


None of this bothered the mosquitos. The first day we soaked ourselves in bug spray, which also cooled us down until later, when it started boiling off our skin. But I was wearing jeans at first, and when I got the bright idea to try shorts an hour later, I forgot to reapply. By the end of the day my legs looked like an overhead photo of a heavily shelled World War I battleground. I couldn't get more bites touring a doughnut factory.

In the end it was worth it. The in-laws had a nice little place, we visited with some friends, and after regaining consciousness we even got to do some traveling. There's something to be said for helping people out. If I could, I'd go back down there and embrace the whole community with a great big, loving cloud of DDT.

It would still be hot, though.

 

Remember to check your back seat for kids, pets, and ghosts.


 

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Haunted by a Haunted Book Project

 Well, I finally finished the first draft of Haunted Noble County, Indiana, which is all well and good, but would be better if the whole thing was done.

Especially after a year. A whole year.

I love researching, and I love history. I'm not a big fan of doing interviews, being what they used to call shy, and then antisocial, and now call introverted. (I'm sure there are differences between the three, but I don't like asking people.) Still, the interviewing hasn't taken as long as I thought, and the researching has taken way longer, so I can't complain.

What I can complain about are the numerous delays in the project that had nothing to do with the project. Don't get me started on Covid.

This is the face of Covid. It's pretty much the same as my tired face, except with a fever.

 

Anyway, my goal was to be finished by April, and it's now June. I still haven't added photos, or even captioned the photos. I don't have the project finished enough for Emily to go through and show me all the mistakes I've made. I haven't heard back from some of the people I reached out to, which is understandable because they probably haven't heard back from me since August of last year.

As a result, sadly, once again, I have no one to blame but myself. And Covid. Hey, the Chinese planned this whole pandemic to delay my writing career!

No? No, I guess not.

History! Photographed by John A. Harkless, who was responsible for many now-historical Albion photos.

This is the part where I apologize to everyone--and yes, I mean you--who I may have forgotten to get back in touch with in the past year. If anyone reads this who had a story, photograph or other information for me and may have gotten lost along the way, please contact me here, or on the book of faces, or wherever discerning patrons of history may haunt. Yes, I am trying to wrap it up, but there's still time to throw in more information.

On a related note, for anyone I have talked to, please let me know if it's okay to use your name in the book (if you haven't already said). If I made contact with someone but didn't get consent to use their name, they'll go down in Noble County history as "anonymous". After that, if you sign anything you have to remember how to spell anonymous, and no one wants that.

Finally, yes, the project has been pushed back, almost certainly until next year. The traditional publishing industry is a lot of things, some good and some bad, but above all else the wheels grind slowly.

The original Ligonier City Jail. Very cool, especially if you got stuck there during winter.

Remember: Ghost are always looking for new books to read over your shoulder.


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