Making Hay While the Moon Shines

Yesterday started off with a great breakfast with Lisa and Scarlett at the Village Inn Diner in Loveland.

VILLAGE INN – Updated January 2026 – 154 Photos & 247 Reviews – 7051 Tower Rd, Denver, Colorado – American – Restaurant Reviews – Phone Number – Menu – Yelp

Good old fashion American breakfast, freshly made with huge portions. The service is excellent, the food delicious, and the price is reasonable.

For a tiny, skinny girl, Scarlett can pack it away–Belgian Waffles and fruit, followed by an ice-cream strawberry sundae dessert, washed down by two strawberry lemonades. Afterwards it was back to Casa Claire to wait for Georgie to come pick her up.

The Beagle Brothers kept Scarlett company (while serving as bodyguards). Modern day dragons.

During the wait for the hand-off, Lisa kept Scarlett company watching a Minecraft movie (A Minecraft Movie – Wikipedia) – which reportedly is a lot more amusing than expected – while I attempted to burn off some of the breakfast by shifting some hay bales, shoveling mule muffins, shuttling wheelbarrows and filling food bowls and troughs.

Chores don’t seem to make a dent in the (grand)dadbod I’ve carefully cultivated over these full six decades. I’m beginning to believe that my nocturnal preferences may be actually driven by the fact that I just look better in the dark. Black does make you look thinner.

Anyway, once Georgie and her other daughters scooped up Scarlett – who went on to a play date with her friend Tatum – I went through another 30 emails containing fine-tuning edits from Anna Hillman that were immediately applied to make Free Radical that much better. All the biggies already had been spotted by the inner circle on their daily review during its writing. These follow-ups are mostly to make sure there are no minor logic gaps in the narrative.

Thank God for my extremely loyal inner circle of readers who valiantly wrestle my prose into passable shape. A daunting task, indeed.

I am absolutely astounded – I really should have paid more attention in school – on just how badly I write. But then again, my insanity-based ability to captivate a reader with a compelling story seems to overcome my deficiencies in grammar, punctuation and spelling. I continue to thrive as the Slip Mahoney of modern-day writers:

A Boat Against the Current: Movie Quote of the Day (The Bowery Boys’ ‘Slip’ Mahoney, With One of Many Contributions to the English Language)

Spook Busters (1946) – Quotes – IMDb

I’m like the jabbering jovial madman in the town square – and some passersby enjoy the show (and toss coins in my cup).

Weirdly enough, I woke up this morning dreaming about the story and characters in Spark of Faith, which is a little surprising, given that I still need to put FR to bed and send it off to the publisher. It shows that my creative contacts in The Field are all lining up to start feeding my elves the story. Definitely starting it next month.

Well, we are back at another Sunday, which has lost all of its melancholic connotation now that Monday has surrendered to my retirement. For you fine, five(?) readers who worship the pigskin, I hope your favorite teams are play-off bound.

NFL Week 18 playoff clinching scenarios: What’s left to play for Sunday?

For those of you fine, five readers who would rather enjoy a quiet read by a warm fire, a sudden rise in my Amazon algorithm numbers for The Claire Saga may scavenge me an earlier opening for Free Radical in the BRW publishing schedule. And if you have already read any of the books, may I beg the favor of a positive 5 star and/or review posting, it really does make a difference.

Amazon.com: Tom McCaffrey: books, biography, latest update

My plans are, after some more chores, shopping and taking care of weekly food prep, I’m hoping to binge watch Season 2 of Justified. Season 1 was excellent. I will also watch this week’s episode of Landman. It’s a fantastic series.

But no matter what we are up to, let’s make today a great one.

3 Responses

  1. There is plenty to play for. Quite a few NFL teams yet to find if they qualify for the playoffs or the SB. My Chiefs are not in it this year but Seattle and Denver are. I will cheer for Denver today And hope BSU’s Jeanty (Raiders) has a good game. What is Free Radical about?

  2. What you might miss in an occasional misspelling, or grammar errors you more then make up for in story telling and the ability to make a normal three word sentence into a fifteen word sentence that lets your readers see exactly what you are seeing. You never cease to amaze me with your elaborate descriptions.
    Just keep in mind that all writers have editors! Unless of course it’s AI 🤖

    Go Birds! 🦅

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