It feels like pub date for The Girl from Devil’s Lake was a long time ago, but it turns out I’m still doing interviews. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I’ll be doing two of them, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, which will mean my having to think and talk about THAT book while still needing to move forward with Beaumont #27, The Taken Ones. In other words, I’m back to doing mental juggling. Not only that, thanks to the reality of time zones and due to my living on the far western end of the continent, what someone else might regard as a civilized midmorning time slog can be very early for me.

I’m a confirmed night owl. My preferred bedtime is 12:30 AM and not a minute before. Just because I’ll be up at what I consider to be the crack of dawn tomorrow morning doesn’t mean my voice will be. My mother never smoked a single cigarette. Nonetheless, Evie had a daunting early morning cough. So do I. That means that most likely I’ll be on the air sounding like a gravel-voiced lifetime smoker even though I’m not.

By the way, and some Midwesterners may have already noticed this, in real life Devils Lake, North Dakota, has no apostrophe. Somehow that one got past me and past my publisher’s copy-editors, too. I’m going to claim use of my literary license on that one and trust that people will forgive me.

During the past two weeks, I’ve added a new wrinkle to my walking routine. One of my regular readers sent me an article about the benefit of walking backwards, saying that backwards walking improves both balance and the ability to concentrate. I talked it over with Dan, our physical trainer. He said that even doing a small amount of backward walking could be beneficial, so I decided to give it a try.

The first time I attempted it, I tried walking around the kitchen island. Wrong! The presence of a suddenly invisible area rug under the kitchen table made that a bad idea. So I tried the front hallway instead. It’s clear and straight, and by keeping an eye on the hardwood lines and noting passing doors and furniture, I know where I am along the way.

I’ve mentioned before that one lap from the kitchen to the master bathroom at the far end of the house and back is approximately 225 steps. The hallway from the elephant table (It’s an entryway table with an elephant on it!) to the turn into the kitchen is 17 forward strides. Walking backwards, it’s 41 steps—baby steps, much shorter than the forward ones. That distance using backward steps section is around twenty steps more and thirty-seconds longer. I only do about 160 backwards steps a day, 41 apiece.

Is it working? Let’s see. My balance has definitely improved. Concentration? I think so. I’m currently at 35.30% and counting. And I’m sleeping better because, with the book moving forward, I’m writing during the day instead of tossing and turning in bed because I’m thinking about the book when I’m supposed to be asleep.

Of course, Thanksgiving is coming at breakneck speed. I’ve already ordered some lefse. Soon it’ll be time to start thinking about baking pumpkin pies. I’m going to go way out on a limb here, but as my long ago Agency Manager, Gilbert F. Lawson, used to say: Know the score, keep the score, and report the score. The score will improve. So my goal–my official publicly announced goal—is to hit 50% on The Taken Ones before the end of Thanksgiving weekend. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know how I do.

Every week I write the blog without having any idea of how many people read it or where they live. This week I heard from a woman from Florida who stumbled upon the blog accidentally. After reading the blog, she went to the website and read my bio. Then she wrote to me and asked where she should start. I suggested she start with After the Fire so when she started reading the books she’d know where some of those characters and storylines originated.

By the way, I love having accidental readers—like the one who picked up a copy of my Paradise Lost thinking it was the ORIGINAL Paradise Lost, only to discover she was reading a murder mystery instead. Now that’s ALL she reads—murder mysteries.

Since I’ve run out of steam as far as blog writing is concerned, I need to figure out what on earth am I going to say about The Girl From Devil’s Lake, unnecessary apostrophe included, during tomorrow’s early morning interview.

Wish me luck.