In June, I picked up a paperback book at Meijer's by John Sandford. The title of the book was Stolen Prey. It's part of a series of books that Sandford wrote about a main character called Lucas Davenport. Davenport is a cop and the story was very suspenseful. When I finished it, I turned back to the first page and realized that there were 22 books in this series before Stolen Prey. I loved the character so much, I decided to find them all and read them all.
Now the question was, what was the best way to do this? I looked on Amazon at the Kindle versions and realized it would cost me a small fortune to buy and download them. I searched Amazon and then found a used book seller who had all 22 of the books for sale as a set and for less than buying each of them as Kindle versions. They arrived in late June and I started reading them.
As of yesterday, I was on book 16, Broken Prey.
These books have strong, likable characters and have some very scary bad guys. I always admire the great imaginations of fiction writers. How do they think of this stuff? It's like Stephen King, one of my all time favorite writers. Their talent for creating characters and circumstances just amazes me. I have this blog to keep folks up to date when we travel but also to practice my writing skills. My skills plain old stink compared to fiction writers. Over the years, I've had a few ideas for books. My friend, Wayne, has written a book which will be published soon. It's not fiction, it's about some real life events that happened to him. Seems like real life stuff would be easier to write than fiction, but he's been working on his book a long time. Maybe some day I will give it a try.
Late in the afternoon, a mobile RV repair man showed up at the park to fix an air conditioning unit for a guy two spots down. One of our AC's isn't working right, so Doug went and talked to him. We made an appointment for today. He said he would call first thing in the morning to let us know when he could be here.
By about 10:00 (which for me is not first thing in the morning) we hadn't heard anything, so I called him. He said he would be here around 3:00. Okay, perfect. That gives us time to go to the beach for 2 hours to eat lunch and charge up the batteries in the sun. It was a perfect day at the beach although the red flags were up. Heavy undertow because of the storm way down in southwestern Texas. We got our feet wet and kept cool, but didn't venture far into the water.
We headed back to the RV park so that we would be on-time for the repair guy. 3:00 came and went. 4:00 came and went. 5:00 came and went. Florida sometimes is on what they call "island time". 3:00 means maybe 3:00 but likely within a couple of hours of 3:00. The problem is that if you happen to get a person who is timely, you better be there or they'll be gone. Just as I was about to call him, he pulled in the park. It was 5:20. No explanation, just "here I am".
He went up on the roof and Doug followed him up to watch so that perhaps the next time it happens, Doug can fix it instead of calling a repair service. 30 minutes later he was done and out of here. But guess what? The AC is not really fixed. It runs for like 10 minutes or so and then shuts off. I called him back and got his boss. Says he'll call "first thing in the morning". I said, "hey, we're early risers so call as soon as you can". We'll see. Who wants to bet that we will need a new AC unit? The AC unit in the back is working fine and it keeps the main area cool enough, but it's noisy and keeps me awake.
After he leaves, Doug says "Hey look at that!" I turn and see an ultra light kind of thing with pontoons on it. It was crazy. We watched him in the air, we watched him land on the water, watched him scoot across the water pretty fast and then watched him take off again. I couldn't get a very good shot because I only had my phone nearby but this is it.
You can just barely see him. I have to look this up. What in the world is this called?
A little while later, I see this cloud forming to the east.
I posted this on Facebook asking what kind of cloud it was. I looked it up myself and decided that it was cumulonimbus. I didn't read about them until a short time ago. About 30 minutes after I shot this photo, I took the dogs for a walk all the way to the end of the RV park. While walking back, all of sudden the wind really picked up and the sky got dark. Turns out that cumulonimbus clouds are associated with powerful thunderstorms known as...what else...SUPERCELLS. Had I known this, I would never have headed that far from the RV. When I got back we picked up everything quickly. The awning was almost blowing over the roof. It was very weird in that while we could hear thunder and see lightning, it hardly rained a drop. But it was blowing very hard. Next time I see this cloud, I will know what's coming next.
It's been a good day. I finished Broken Prey and started on Invisible Prey. Now before it gets too late, it's time for that last cup of coffee.
No comments:
Post a Comment