Guest Blogger: Alice Duncan

It’s August!

Does anything exciting happen in August? Around here, school begins in August. When I lived in California, kids went from September to June, but here it’s August to May. Not sure why. And I really don’t much care, either, so I’m not sure why I mentioned it. Maybe because August is otherwise such a dull month? Oh, never mind.

Anyway, Bam-Bam, my winner-picking wiener dog, has selected the winners of July’s book, SPIRITS UNITED (he’s such a good dog, even though he did just bark madly at a huge scorpion his mommy had to squash for him. I hate doing that). The winners are: Lisa Brooks, Paula Adams, Brenda Winslow and Sandra Miller. Congratulations, ladies! I’ll send your books to you as soon as I can make it to the post office.

All sixteen of my regular readers will probably be delighted to know I finished writing SHAKEN SPIRITS, the next Daisy Gumm Majesty book. I’m hoping it will be published in October, but I have to go through it one last time and take out the boring bits. After Peter Brandvold gave me his character, Lou Prophet, to play with, there were no more boring parts. Even if Mean Pete did wait to share until Lou was old, broken-down and one-legged. But that’s okay. Daisy, Sam and I had a lot of fun with poor old Lou, even in his elderly guise. Daisy is even learning a new language: Old Westish.

Regarding carpal-tunnel surgery on my left wrist: It went perfectly! So few things do, you know? But the surgeon knocked me out (he used drugs, thank heavens), went snip-snip, and voila (or viola, as Julia Child sometimes said when she was in a funning mood), the wrist was fixed. It didn’t take long to heal, and I’m hoping to get the right wrist operated on before I head to California in mid-October. I’m right-handed, so this upcoming surgery might take a little longer to mend, but I was really happy the surgery was so trouble-free. People I know who had carpal-tunnel surgery some years back didn’t get off so easily. The surgery had improved lately, for which I’m grateful.

Any other news? Other than being a bit wobbly on my pins and taking the occasional fall in front of hordes of spectators in Cahoon Park (Roswell, New Mexico) as the hounds take me for our daily drag every morning, all is just swell. It’s really stupid for a crippled little old lady to walk four (sometimes five) dogs, as my younger daughter is always telling me, but if I walked them one at a time or in bunches, I’d be walking dogs all day long. And If I didn’t walk the dogs, I’d feel guilty. So. There we are.

Regarding August’s contest… Why don’t I give away copies of BRUISED SPIRITS, Daisy’s tenth adventure? All righty then, I will.

In the meantime, please feel free to pre-order SHAKEN SPIRITS:

Link: Shaken Spirits on Amazon

If you’d like to enter August’s contest, just send me an email (alice@aliceduncan.net) and give me your name and home address. If you’d like to be added to my mailing list, you may do so on my web site (http://aliceduncan.net/) or email me (you won’t be smothered in e-mails, because I only write one newsletter a month, and that’s an effort). If you’d like to be friends on Facebook, visit my page at https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925.

Thank you!