bits and pieces – where have I been edition

Yes, I’m still around. Not sure why it’s been a few weeks since I last posted. Perhaps just the tedium of my life with little to report. I can report that the phoebe has returned to build her mud nest on the side of my cabin. We’d had a nest in this same spot (as shown above) for years, but last summer no one returned to it, and we found it fallen on one of our visits.

Then last weekend when we went, there was a new nest. And the phoebe was flitting about the trees in front of the cabin, not happy about our coming and going in her space. There were no eggs in the nest then, but I would not be surprised if there were by our next visit.

I first noted a phoebe nest on the side of our cabin in 2012. No individual phoebe lives that long, so this must be a generational phenomenon. Some offspring seems to have returned to the same spot to build a new nest. I like to think that anyway.

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I’m still getting accustomed to the life of hustle an author must have. Getting publicity for One-Match Fire can be a full-time job of its own if I let it. I’ve had some success, but I think there is always opportunity for more (if the spirit is willing, that is). I’ve had the novel reviewed on a couple of websites, and I’ve recorded interviews with four podcasts so far with three more scheduled. Only one, episode 305 of This Podcast Will Change Your Life, is available, but as the others come online, I’ll post links for them.

I’m also having some success getting my novel placed in libraries, but that requires just as much hustle. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the arcane logic that governs how selections are made for a library’s collection.

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Someday I will see One-Match Fire in the wild. Someone in the seat next to me on a plane or at a coffee shop will be reading it. I’ll see it on someone’s bookshelf. In a library I didn’t pester.

I did look for it on ABE Books, the online used bookstore, and found thirteen copies for sale, nearly all of them for a price greater than the list price. I suppose I should be flattered by this.

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I’m not sure if I updated you on this, but 2023 will see the arrival of THREE new grandchildren. I was in New York a couple of weeks ago to be the third adult in the room should my daughter and her husband have to dash to the hospital a few weeks early for the delivery of a daughter. Fortunately for all, that did not happen on my watch, but if it had, I would have gotten the siblings to school and more or less fed and to bed and such. My wife will be going up there next week, and we all hope that’s when the baby will come.

At the end of June, my grandson Small Paul in St. Louis is expecting a new brother. Once again, my wife will have grandmother duties there.

And finally, in late August my two granddaughters in Seattle will see the arrival of a little sister.

In total, I will have eleven grandchildren, which is big but not as big as the cohort I am in. I am one of fifty grandchildren my paternal grandmother had.

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