Mondays

More ranch pictures. Top left, in order, are Edie, Jacob, Kegan, and Morgan. Next, my two Houston grandchildren in their TCU T-shirts, and bottom the three younger ones are sitting on the tractor. You can imagine what fun that was for them--Jacob's mom tells me he is still talking about Pony Romo. Not sure why Morgan and Kegan are wearing rain boots, but they are!

The dentist's office, even just for a cleaning, is not my favorite way to start the day but I did, bright and early. The people there, especially Stephanie, the hygeneist, are so pleasnt that it makes it more pleasant, but I once fell coming out of that office (after a three-hour stretch in the chair) and am now spooked about it. Stephanie walked me out, and I was home by ten.

Lunch with a friend, an evening visit with Charles at Trinity Terrace, some research and writing for that nonfiction proposal, and that was my uneventful Monday. No deep thoughts, though I have some political thoughts I'll refrain from sharing. (I can hear my brother breathing a sigh of relief.)

The Star-Telegram reviewed Stieg Larsson's third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornest's Nest on Sunday but I deliberately refrained from reading the review since I'm in the middle of the book. Fred tells me it was a fairly negative review, but I don't care--I'm really hooked on it.

Trying to write after reading Stieg Larsson

Last night I finished the second in Stieg Larsson's trilogy--The Girl Who Played with Fire. And today I resolved to get back to my own novel, after a weekend of dilly-dallying. Do you know how hard it is to write a cozy after reading the compellingly noir Larsson books? I felt like a ninny, and in truth I wrote almost 600 uninspired words and quit. I know the story needs to be more than dialogue, even if I am fairly comfortable writing dialog and moving the action along that way--maybe it's time for another rewrite to insert more description. But anyway I gave up, worked on paying bills, all the kinds of things you do to avoid writing. I always remember Erma Bombech, who said she would rather scrub floors than face a blank sheet of paper in her typewriter--that was her day. Today it's a blank computer screen.
Took a nap and went to visit Charles at Trinity Terrace, told him about my uninspired writing, and he said, "Tomorrow is another day." Later when I said I was going home to eat supper and try to write some more, he said, "I'll inspire you." Well, I don't know if he did or not, but I erased part of what I had written earlier, changed the scene, and ended up writing 1200 words. Inspired? No idea until I read it tomorrow.
I ordered the third Stieg Larsson book today for my Kindle--The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Amazon always sends  you a thank you and says you can begin reading immediately, but that was at 11:00 this morning; by seven tonight, I still didn't have it, though I checked my bank account, and it had been charged. Finally I turned the Kindle off and back on, but I still didn't see it, so I called. Well--red face--by the time I got the technician he said they showed it had been delivered ten minutes earlier and suggested that if I ever had that trouble again to turn it off and back on. At first I thought since these books are so intense I'd take a rest before reading the third one but I'm afraid I'm irresistibly hooked. And unlike many sequels that jump to new action, this one takes up right where the last one ended--in fact, the very same evening. Okay, I have to go read now.