Travel Disaster

 

 It's been a stormy time lately, literally and figuratively. Below, result of a straight-line wind in Birmingham, Alabama.

Attributed to:  Grace Williams

Venice, FL, the setting of most of my mysteries

For some reason the size of the yacht motoring south just off shore in Venice provoked a lot of negative remarks on the Venice e-loop. Yes, it's bigger than the yachts that visit our harbor each winter season, but really, let's face it, some people just have so much money they can actually acquire an ocean-going yacht. 

 

Below, practical advice with a touch of humor . . .

 

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 Grace Note:  Facebook Friends have already seen bulletins about this story, as it was happening. 

 

TRAVEL DISASTER

 My son and and his wife had a long-planned cruise scheduled for mid-March, including a four-day stay here in the Orlando at the end, which would include his birthday. The delays, oddities, and utter disasters that piled up have made me wonder if it was merely Fate, or was there some kind of Grand Scheme to keep my son in the U.S. Here is what happened . . .

My son is a bargain-hunter, pleased to find a small airline with the right schedule and the right price. They were informed the terminal opened at 6:00 am for a 7:00 am flight. They arrived on the dot of 6:00. Oops. Miscalculation. Umpteen people, more aware of the current TSA problem, were already lined up at the door. They checked their luggage, got all the say to final check-in, only to be turned away a few feet short of their goal. Plane full, doors closed. That was it. Rescheduled for a flight to Orlando, arriving at noon. Son frantically called his sister in Florida—could she drive them to Fort Lauderdale? She informed him it was a 3-hour drive. There was no way he was going to make a 3:00 sailing. 

Which might have been all right for an earlier-than-planned visit to the Orlando area, EXCEPT . . . their luggage had gone to Fort Lauderdale.  So they had to take Brightline (high-speed rail) to Lauderdale, Shuttle to the airline—only to find it locked up tight. So . . . rental car, Rte. 1 motel (which was surprisingly well-appointed, the only plus for the day). Almost two hours on hold as they tried to straighten out both luggage problem and cruise problem. They made the decision, despite the additional expense, to join the cruise in Cozumel.  

Breakfast at a 1950s-style diner, off to the airport. Still locked up. I have no idea how many phone calls it took to get someone there to retrieve their luggage, but it was 3:30 pm before they had it in hand and could safely book a flight to Cozumel, which would arrive at 8:00 pm, followed by a 3-hour trip to Cancun, where their cruise ship was scheduled to arrive at 8:00 am the next morning.

They were still going for flying to Mexico, when . . .

A fire in New Haven put paid to it all. (My son manages c. 100 apartments in New Haven, and the owner really, really needed his manager to manage (in addition to the barrage of phone calls from his workmen faced with the clean-up). So, Brightline back to Orlando—a ride for which they had only praise for their last-minute seating, food, luggage handling, etc. My daughter picked them up, dropped them at my house for an hour's visit, where I learned my son had insisted on a one-day vacation (this past Tuesday). The much-traveled couple then drove up to Sanford in my car, where, with all three of my grandchildren in college, there was a ample sleeping room for guests. 

And finally, on Tuesday, something besides Brightline went right. We toured nearly every inch of Leu Gardens, which was still impressive despite considerable damage from the hard freeze a month ago. And Tuesday night, even though we were thoroughly exhausted, we had a big extended family dinner at Bahama Breeze, where we celebrated David's birthday, which is actually next week (when he planned to be here).

Oh yes, when they tried to make arrangements to fly back to NYC, Hartford, or New Haven, they were quoted a price of $1200 EACH. Fortunately, Sanford, where my daughter lives, is slightly closer to Daytona Beach than Orlando. They were able to get a flight out of Daytona late Wednesday afternoon to White Plains, NY, where a friend was waiting to pick them up. I was picturing them safely home, when my son called me at midnight, admitting that after he picked up his own car, instead of returning to the peace of his apartment and love of his two kitties, he had gone to inspect the fire damage!

I do, at least, have the satisfaction of knowing they made it safely home, even though poor David was immediately plunged into a different kind of nightmare. By the way, he agrees with me that there may have been some special twist of Fate that kept him in Florida when he should have been on the high seas on the way to Mexico when he was informed he needed to return home.

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 Featured Book of the Week

 Headlines dictate that I should feature my book that actually has a scene in Iran (not easy to research, believe me!) Limbo Man is as close to a Thriller as anything I've ever written. I am happy to say, that I have first-hand knowledge of the remainder of the many international settings in the book (yes, even Siberia!) If I show compassion for the Russian characters, it's because that is how I found the Russian people, face to face, one on one. I will never forget the excitement on our Intourist guide's face when she emerged from a Siberian woods with a basket full of blueberries to take home to her family in Moscow! I hope you'll take the time to enjoy this change of pace from Blair Bancroft Regency Gothics and SciFi Fantasy.

 

 A lost Russian nuke plunges FBI Special Agent Vee Frost into a world-wide chase, from the East Coast to the Mid-West, from Florida to Siberia, on to Iran, and back again. Her only companion, an amnesiac Russian who may have the key to the location of the lost bomb locked in his head.

Author's Note: During the chaos of the break-up of the Soviet Union (c. 1990), ten nuclear bombs went missing. Limbo Man is a tale of "what might have been."

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

For Archives, see the menu on the right. 

 For recent blogs, scroll down. 

War - Reminiscenses & Reactions

Welcome to more controversy than I've offered in a quite a while.

 

Floating Bridge, Tampa Bay, Feb., 2026 (no attribution)

Not surprising this road sign is sitting on the side of the road. Sigh.

 

Another great deer pic from Susan Coventry . . .

 

 

Tariff Opinion from Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch: 

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WAR - REMINISCENCES & REACTIONS

 

As news broke this week that we had gone to war with Iran, I was shocked into thinking back over the years to the beginnings of far too many wars I have known—from Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) to, oh horrors, just this week. And yes, I actually remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my experience at that time a caution to parents to provide gentle but accurate information to children in times of stress. My parents were both educators, but I have always felt they erred in this particular matter. Their attempt to protect me from such catastrophic news ended up with me thinking Pearl Harbor was an island not far off the East Coast. (I recalled living on Cape Cod when I was four and knew all about "coasts," even if I had mixed up East and West, imagining an imminent threat that was actually thousands of miles away.)

 

But even a child of eight could appreciate the solemnity, the sincerity, the magnificent turns of phrase of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all heard over the radio or seen in newsreels at the movies - there was no television.  

 

When V-J Day finally happened (August 14, 1945), we truly believed we had fought the war to end all wars. We had the United Nations, world peace. And then in my last year of college, for some reason I've never understood, we were suddenly engaged in a war in Korea. Nearly every male in my senior class was drafted the moment he graduated, but - oh happy day - they were all musicians, promptly assigned to various bands, thus avoiding combat. A fact that has stuck in my mind through all the years since.

Another short gap - until people's memories of the horrors of war faded a bit - and for equally mysterious reasons we found ourselves committed to war in Vietnam. Vietnam, where on God's green earth is that? And gradually, oh so gradually, the frustrations of jungle warfare and an enemy fanatically dedicated to their cause wore down the military traditions of centuries—things like honor, not killing prisoners, not using poison gas, etc., etc. A horror forever dramatized by Robert Duvall's iconic line in the movie, Apocalypse Now:  "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning!"  I was among those who supported our troops when they came home; many did not. It was one of the most disgraceful periods in American history. Until now.

We should have taken the cure, but alas . . .

On the eve of the First Iraq War (August 2, 1990), I was listening, as usual, to the nightly news from a Tampa TV station. And whoa! It was primarily an excited account of how many hundred pizzas had been ordered delivered to Central Command at McDill Air Force base outside Tampa (a 45-minute drive north of my home in Venice, FL). The obvious speculation:  the U.S. was going to war.  (I had been on that base once, delivering my Air Force middle son and his friend back from weekend leave.) Directly after, came ABC National news. I waited eagerly to hear more. And what did I get? The usual national news, not so much as a hint of a impending war. I was so shocked, I called ABC news in New York. (This was back in the days when you could do that without getting a robotic evasion of anything relevant.) And I was told by a real live person:  "We were asked to keep the news quiet." I laughed and told him, clearly, that bit of censorship hadn't made it to Florida.

I'll mention the Second Iraq War only to say it began on March 20, 2013, and seemed to be as futile as all the other wars since World War II. And ended in a frantic evacuation almost as humiliating as our evacuation from Vietnam.

So why in the name of all that's holy would ANYONE think our going all Pearl Harbor over Iran is going to have any better ending than the debacles of the previous eighty years? Except to distract our attention from the heinous crimes at home:  our convicted-criminal, Epstein-tainted president; ICE killing our citizens without justification, the gutting of Environmental Protection, Health Care, and on and on. Most importantly, the replacement of our Democracy by an Autocracy that is downright Evil, intent on enslaving the majority of Americans to the whims of oligarchs who care only about themselves.

That's it, folks—my more than two cents on the State of the Union. Not from history books, newspapers, etc., but straight out of memory. (Okay, I looked up the exact dates - except Pearl Harbor, a date that "will forever live in infamy.") May God save us all, because we're not doing a very good job of it on our own. 

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 Book of the Week:  The Sometime Bride

 My first, and all-time favorite, book. A saga of a young girl caught up in the final seven years of the Napoleonic Wars. Almost half-again as long as Historical Romances of the 1990s, it took an early e-publisher to be willing to present it to the world (in both e and print versions). FYI, it began at 140,000 words, as I recall, and then I added a Prologue! Also, although The Sometime Bride was my first book, my second, Tarleton's Wife, was published first.

A very young bride finds herself married to an enigmatic British spy "for her safety." And is plunged into a seven-year, highly personal view of the Peninsular War—ending, after years of blind devotion, in discovering a betrayal of her trust so immense she can only wonder: Is she the sometime bride of a man who never existed? A discarded mistress? Or a beloved wife whose only rival is her husband's expediency in a time of war?

Author's Note: In addition to being a saga of young lovers caught up in a war, The Sometime Bride is the history of the Peninsular War, Britain's fight against Napoleon in Portugal and Spain. The story moves from France's invasion of Portugal and British troops being driven into the sea at La Coruña to the return of British troops under General Sir Arthur Wellesley, the fortified lines at Torres Vedras, and the gradual push of French troops across Spain and back to France. Plus the chaotic times in Paris after Napoleon's surrender and the Emperor's triumph as he gathers up his old troops, only to be stopped in one of the most famous and bloody battles in history—Waterloo.

Reviews:

Reviewers Choice Award. "Sometimes a reviewer gets a book so powerful, it's hard to know where to begin to tell about it. The Sometime Bride is such a book. . . . Bride passes every criterion for a successful book that I was given as a reviewer. Ms Bancroft weaves a most unusual love story in among the threads of history that cover eight years. . . . I highly recommend both Tarleton's Wife and The Sometime Bride as companion books. They are totally independent, but together give a vastly enlightening and entertaining view of the period through use of wonderful characters and page-turner plots—definite keepers, both." Jane Bowers, Romance Communications

"The writing talent displayed by the author is wonderful . . . Ms. Bancroft's detail for historical events is phenomenal. . . ."
April Redmon, Romantic Times

 

Five Stars. "Set against the bloody Napoleonic wars, The Sometime Bride is ambitious, engrossing and absolutely wonderful."
Rickey R. Mallory, Affaire de Coeur

Five Stars. "The Sometime Bride by Blair Bancroft is a riveting and well-written story. . . . The tension between the hero and heroine sizzles. . . ." Janet Lane Walters, Scribes World

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

For Archives, see the menu on the right. 

 For recent blogs, scroll down.