I thought I was going to work on The Agonizing Alibi Day, but it just didn’t feel right in my head. For a while there, I was wondering what this book was going to be about. The first book, The Dreaded Day Job, was about a typical assignment. I was tossing the plot around for the second book. I wanted to do something more than a look at his work life, so after a few minutes I realized that we don’t know that much about his life outside of work, and how he manages his whammy during the off-hours.

Now that, that’s done, I’m letting my mind come up with other things, and in the meantime, I’m working on a book that feels far more done in my head: Resurrectionist’s Blues: One and Done. This one doesn’t have the tight deadline the other two have (almost done!), so I can kinda take my time with it. I might even – time permitting – go on ahead and work on the second one to give Alibi Day some more time to ferment. I have a good feeling about this particular novel.

I’ve been working on photography, and I wish I had a good picture to show…but I discovered the usefulness of the correct ISO (sensitivity to light) in pictures. I had a very well composed shot and what I got was a very dark square. Still well composed, mind you, but also still a dark square. I’m going to re-try it later with what I hope is going to be the right set up.

There isn’t a whole lot of new things going on. Still editing down Valentina’s Feast and waiting for the beta readers to finish Romance with Advantage. I heard good news about the Black Widow movie – July 9^th is the release date on both Disney+ (with a premium charge, of course) and in theaters. YES! Phase 4 looks interesting from what I’ve seen. I can only hope that nothing else catastrophic happens to get in the way.

It’s looking like my August deadline can remain intact, and that pleases me greatly. The one thing that really stresses me out is setting a deadline, even a realistic one and not following through. Both books (Valentina’s Feast and Romance with Advantage) are nearing completion with the last major hurtle will be getting the covers set up…please see my prior paragraph concerning my photographic prowess. Thankfully, I found a website that allows you to buy royalty, free-use pictures for covers and I found one that works perfectly with Valentina’s Feast. Well – it would be even more perfect if I could get Melissa Benoist on the cover.

That’s it for now. Things are delightfully converging for me and I hope to keep it going through the halfway point in the year. Feel free to donate some coffee to the cause, buy a book or just drop a line to say hi.

Until next week.