Guest Blogger - Alice Duncan

Oy. July came and went so fast, I have a feeling I missed most of it. However, I didn’t miss the demise of my beloved Daisy, former winner-picking wiener dog, who left this life and crossed the Rainbow Bridge on July 6. Bad start to the month.

Then I had to spend most of the following week in Albuquerque, prepping for various surgeries. On August 15 I’ll have the stupid cataract that developed after surgery to reattach my retina removed. It’ll be a pleasure to be able to see again. Since that blasted retina decided to detach itself last December, my left eye has been totally blurry. Everyone I know who’s had cataract surgery has told me it’s a breeze, so I’m looking forward to having the surgery performed.

On the not-so-breezy side, I’m going to have spinal surgery on September 11 (an ominous date if I’ve ever heard of one). Don’t yet know if it’ll be on my cervical (neck) spine or my lumbar (lower back) spine, but it’ll be one or the other. If it’s cervical surgery, I get to have the lumbar surgery another date. I can’t really say I’m looking forward to either of those surgeries, but if they’ll help take the constant pain away, I’ll be very happy. I also hope to regain one or two of the four inches my blasted spine has crunched from my overall height. Heck, I looked at the video of my daughter’s June wedding, and my noticed that my body’s now shaped a garden gnome! I swear, it didn’t used to look like that.

Better news on the book front. I self-published ANGELS OF MERCY in July! This is the fourth book in the Mercy Allcutt historical cozy mystery series. ANGELS OF MERCY is so darned cozy, you never even see a body, because the dastardly deeds occur off the pages. However, lots of other kinds of mayhem are reported by Mercy, who’s turned her home into a haven for young women working to support themselves in Los Angeles in 1926. She considers she’s performing a public service. Her boss, Ernie Templeton, doesn’t share her Pollyanna attitude. But everything turns out all right in the end. You can check out the first chapter of the book (and even click on links to buy it in either trade paperback or e-book format) on my web site: www.aliceduncan.net

Also, I managed to get HEAVEN SENT, a sugary-sweet historical romance I’d totally overlooked when I was generating e-books from my backlist, up on Kindle, Nook, Sony and whatever. This is actually a good book, and it features my late mother’s late cat, Monster. Again, you can check it out on my web site: www.aliceduncan.net  

And I’ve fostered two dogs! Freckles, an adorable speckled (dappled) dachshund, and Billie Burke, a terrier mix, who was adopted by a New Jersey couple from the Roswell Humane Society (still not entirely sure how that happened). Billie flew to her new home on July 31 (coach class. No cargo for her). Freckles is still with me, and it’ll hurt to let her go. Sigh. I don’t know why I do this to myself. Oh, yeah. I remember. It’s for the dogs.

Hmm. Maybe July wasn’t as boring as I’d originally thought. It was definitely full of mayhem, if not much magic.