The Dahlias are coming!

Well, it's Tuesday.  This is my last day off, tomorrow I go back to work.  I'm not excited.
My sister, brother and I are having breakfast this morning.  They're getting their copies of The Body in the Tower.  Yippee!
I do believe it rained most of the night.  My lawn's going to be too wet this afternoon to mow, and I'm not off again for 5 days... that's right, I get to work for 5 days before celebrating with 1 day off.  Then I work 5 more days.  This shitty schedule is my fault.  I did a request off believing the scheduler would be generous.  She wasn't.  Damn.
I saw this interesting tidbit from The Hill.  The Republican base truly is shrinking.  It looks like the Grand Old Part is really old... and white... and more than a little dumb, no doubt because of those silly red hats they wear.
I took a snap of some of my dahlias yesterday... in the drizzle.

There are more on the way.  Next year I think I'll put a bed of the out front among the roses.
And finally, Kaiser Chiefs are coming out with a new album on or around July 26.  The date is already on my calendar.  Here's the explicit version of their first release.

And, as always, the work continues.

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Oh, dear me... the Idiot Jerk's approval rating is dropping... among Independent voters.  Now, isn't that a surprise.  And this was before he waved a piece of paper touting a 'secret' deal with Mexico.  People in Washington are whispering among themselves "what secret deal... what secret deal?"  In case you didn't know, his base believes him.  They're ecstatic.  This is better than the secret sauce used on your Big Mac!  Tasty!  They are on the verge of foaming at the mouth.  And the icing on the cake is the "nice" letter he got from Kim Dumb Shit... on their anniversary.  The only problem is that the Independents are saying "wait a minute, this guy's an asshole."  Believe me, this does not bode well for the Idiot Jerk in the White House.
Anyway, Don, one my other readers, received his copy of The Body in the Tower yesterday.  He has a degree in English and is the closest thing I have to an actual editor.  When I got his copy of the manuscript back there was red ink all over it.  He wrote things like 'vague,' and 'confusing,' and 'what happened to the yellow sock hat?'  Here is Don.

Don did not appreciate the way the narrative switches between  1st person and 3rd person.  Well, I fixed the 'vague,' and the 'confusing,' and answered the questions about 'the yellow sock hat,' and left the narrative switching as I had originally written it.
I'm off tomorrow and they're forecasting rain.   That's fine.  I don't mind as long as I don't have to go to work.  In 2.5 years my car will be paid off.  Then I'm going to go part-time.
And Biggie just gave me a purple, squeaky squirrel.

The Armature

I am way past my Hump Day in this 6 day stretch - only 2 more to go before I have my weekend!... and then it's on to another 6 day stretch.  Business in the flooring department is not exactly cracking.I suspect corporate is probably sitting in their offices holding their breaths since much of what we sell is made in China.  Oh, sure, we may carry a number of products that say "made in America," but that's a bit inaccurate.  People don't seem to understand that 'made' means 'assembled.'  So, yeah, the product is 'made in America' with parts made in China.

And it looks like, at least according to the news media, Boris Johnson will take over for Theresa May in that political death spiral called Brexit.  His was one of the loudest voices arguing for this divorce from the EU.  The people of the UK need to prepare themselves.  Once again his pumped up buffoonery is going to take the main stage.  He is going to get brutally stupid, a normal process in minor minds like his.

And, as publication day approaches, I thought I'd write a little about the creative process for the next book.  Initially, while I found the idea of using the Tour de France as a framework for a mystery novel intriguing, I realized the difficulty in juxtaposing the the building suspense of the race with the mystery of a murder.  There needed to be a balance between the two.  The first draft had way too much of the race.  I was told that "if you're an avid cycling fan it's great, however if you're an average person it's..."  well, the word used was 'boring.'  People became more important, more personal as the race became secondary, a constant prodding finger reminding you how quickly time was moving.

Anyway, I thought I'd post a clip from last year's Tour to give you a visual armature.

Allez!  Allez!