Never Look A Gift Mule . . . .

Tuesday’s are naturally great because it means Monday is behind you. And normally that’s all it takes to put a smile on my face.

But every once in a while I get that cherry on my ice cream.

This morning that cherry was TWA hitting no. 1 again in Dark Humor on Amazon.

Now, as I explain, these rankings change hour to hour, so if you don’t happen to be checking your web pages at just the right moment you can miss it. And that’s okay. But it is a whole different level of nice when you click on the page and see that red ribbon. And I always grab the screenshot, the way I would if I saw Bigfoot. Because if I cannot believe the luck I have had, who else will believe it?

Now, let me put this in perspective. This ranking is not a testament to my writing. I remain the Slip Mahoney of the literary set. I tend to write and spell phonetically because I don’t give the actual writing a lot of thought because I’m too busy trying to capture the story I see playing out in my head. I also talk as I type, and my mind thinks I’ve typed all of the words it hears coming from my lips, so there will sometimes be a missing word here or there. I try to clean it all up during the editing phase, but we live in an imperfect world. And I am the poster boy for imperfect.

But I do spend a lot of thought on the story I’m telling. I’ll think about a story for months and months without ever typing a word. And then I sit down and bang out what I’ve been watching as a film in my head. I’ve been blessed by being surrounded by real characters my entire life, so I steal heavily from them. And those characters have shared some amazing experiences with me along the way. Again, I borrow generously from those experiences.

I try to share with the reader the love I feel for my characters, which is just incorporating the feelings I have for the real characters I base them on. It’s that simple. My friends and family are as crazy and funny and loyal as the characters you have met in The Claire Trilogy, and will meet in Finding Jimmy Moran. And I love each and every one of them.

But there is always a catalyst which draws everything together in a good book. My catalyst is my mule Claire. She is every bit as magical as I make her out to be, and then some. If I hadn’t met her, I would never have started this story.

So thank you family and friends for being who you are and giving me a wealth of source material to draw upon. Thank you my fine, five readers for taking a chance on TWA and all of my books. And thank you Claire for coming along at just the right moment to spark the story. You all rock.

But now, Tuesday awaits.

I have Smokey to cuddle, my rounds to make and that damn treadmill to punish me.

You fine, five readers go out there and take care of business before mid-week. Get it done.

And have a great day.