rlfj: Blog

We take break from the Watson family. Instead, we focus on a crime on Long Island. Is there a connection? We’ll just have to find out. Special thanks to grynslvr2, an experienced police officer, for information on police and FBI procedures. I can’t do this without expert editors. Many thanks to all of them over the years.

I’ve had a number of readers over the years ask if I live in the South. Several of my stories have taken place in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, or other southern locales. Quick answer - no. I have lived in either New Jersey (4 years) or upstate New York (42 years). I was born in northern Maryland, which is south of the Mason-Dixon Line, though only by about twenty miles. Still, they had to draw the line somewhere. I lived there for my first 17 years, and we visit my family several times a year. When I was living at home, we always vacationed in the south, and I have traveled there frequently since then. Still, much of my supposed expertise is the result of a diligent usage of Google and Wikipedia. It’s amazing the amount of information you can find on the Internet.

Anyway, Chapter 3 is up. Enjoy!

In Chapter 2, I commented on the fact that ADUs, auxiliary dwelling units, don’t do well in sales. This is 100% true. I sold modular and manufactured homes for 35 years and pretty much every year I would get middle-aged couples coming in and asking about them. Most of our manufacturers had designs for them, but in all that time, I never sold one, and I sold millions of dollars of homes otherwise. The reasons are the same as I mentioned. The designs are brilliant, but the average zoning or building code simply won’t allow multiple residences on the same property. Likewise, whenever I would ask the buyers interested in a granny pod if they had discussed it yet with the grandparent involved, they would often say that they were just checking out options. When I called them back, if they answered at all, I would get a sheepish response that Granny wasn’t interested and had told them to mind their own business.

Jack Watson is a successful novelist, with a beautiful wife and two wonderful children. So why is a madman chasing him, and what will happen when they meet?

This is the start of a new story, The Novelist. It is longer than my last one, but still not one of the mammoth stories I’ve written in the past. Not sure if or when I will be doing one of those again, but you never know. A Fresh Start took me three years to write, which would take me into my seventies.

My publishing schedule will be the same as always, a chapter every Tuesday and Friday. Enjoy!

I have updated the bookapy version of Harper Valley PTA with all the fixes needed. If you bought it on bookapy, many thanks; my wife likes it when you put money in the checking account You should be able to download an updated version at no added cost. I have been working hard on my next story, and that I should be able to begin posting by mid-May at the latest.

And so we come to the end of this little story. I hope you had as much fun with it as I did. This was an example of hearing an old song or reading an old story and thinking, there has to be more to this than what they are saying. Enjoy!

To a certain extent, I am moving past my writer’s block and am writing again. I am closing in on the finish of another story to be called The Novelist. I expect it to be ready in another couple of months. It is going to be somewhat longer than the current one, but nowhere near the length of many of my stories. Curiously, my productivity has plummeted since retirement. It was okay when I was home alone, but when my wife retired, I suddenly found myself doing chores for her, remodeling the house, and not writing. Even worse, I find it difficult to write anything remotely pornographic with her sitting in the La-Z-Boy next to me. I am working through it.