Mini Rant & Major Gallery

 

WEATHER BULLETIN:  During last weekend's record-breaking deep-freeze, Central Florida was colder than Iceland! A major blueberry farm (40% of Florida's output) lost its ENTIRE crop, 300 pickers & packers out of work, no blueberries for our supermarkets. I lost a mass of vines that were impossible to protect. Major cleanup. Sigh. 

 

Mini Rant:

I keep a notebook with lists of authors I enjoy, their series, and frequently, the titles, in order, of the books within that series. Mostly, so I always have a handy-dandy list of what I've read and where to look for my next book. Also, so when I wish to re-read a series, I can do it in the right order without painstaking research on Amazon Kindle. Recently, I have been making my way through the many series of a highly prolific author I didn't discover until this past year. Light reading but enjoyable. (Eye & brain candy, if you will.) And then I started a series where the errors in grammar, even word definition, were so appalling they knocked me right out of the story. Even the college-educated characters spoke English as if they belonged to what my father called the "dese, dose, and dem boys."

I can only assume this was one of the author's early series, but Wow! Did that person not realize he/she wasn't paying attention in English class? Please, would-be DIY authors, if you know English was not your strong-point in school, do your readers the courtesy of having someone check over your book before you self-publish it.

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Below, an unusually extensive Gallery—I seem to have acquired a remarkable number of interesting pics over the last couple of weeks.

Headline news first 

 

 

By Michael F. DuBois

Florida

Panther sightings extremely rare

Monster Grouper, caught 100 miles off Sarasota

And even more amazing - in Venice, the Gulf-front town where I lived for 25 years . . . (I saw icicles once & a tornado, but SNOW . . . ?)

WOW!

 

Sunset Trailer, Flagstaff, AZ

Extra Special Deer Photo by Susan Coventry

And last for this week . . . our hope for future space exploration. Sadly, imminent crewed moon launch postponed due to a hydrogen leak & some other unacceptable event in this week's "final" test before launch. Astronauts released from quarantine, allowed to return to families. The Space Coast - and all of Central Florida - are keeping our fingers crossed. We're told, "Nothing before sometime in March." (If you still don't get it, this will be the first crewed mission around the moon in FIFTY years.)

 

Artemis II - on the launch-pad

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Featured Book of the Week

This is a mystery with really authentic background. For three of the twenty-five years I lived in Venice, FL, I ran a costume shop, call DreamWeaver. It was a truly fun time. My daughter Susie was in high school and helped out during our busy Halloween Season. The description of the Venice/Nokomis setting is also authentic. Amazing town, Venice—turned into an "island" by the building of the Intracoastal Waterway, access only over one of three bridges. 

 

 

Costume designers are not detectives. But when a customer ends up dead in Gwyn Halliday's best Santa suit and a senior friend is threatened, what's a girl to do? And besides, a bit of investigation might promote a better acquaintance with the hunky new police chief, not to mention reestablish an old acquaintance with a friend suffering from PTSD, who now needs her as much as she needs him. 

Main Street, Venice, FL

 

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For a link to Blair's website & editing info*, click here. 

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