What's Up?

Hello to all of you who read this Blog!

Our little town had managed to squeak by without too many cases of COVID hitting us, but now we have close to a thousand, and around a score of deaths.  But still more cases than in some lucky localities.  Anyhow, the Stay Home is not being enforced very heavily.   Meanwhile, we hear from friends and relatives living abroad that Stay Homes are being enforced a lot more stringently in those countries, and not all at the same level.  In some places, you need special permission to go anywhere, such as to the drugstore, for instance.  If you run out of antihistamines, you're out of luck; you gotta live with your inflamed sinuses.

I can't resist checking in Smashwords, to see how my stories are selling.  Almost all the stories are selling in a steady trickle, which is nice.  But, as before, I suspect that some of them are just being downloaded, and not read at all.  For instance, my latest book: Helen at Westfield, which describes the first semester-and-a-half of Helen's life at Westfield, did not get enrolled in the promotional effort of Smashwords.  (Most of my books were enrolled, and I made them free to download.)  And Westfield has not sold a single copy.  Maybe any readers who have taken a liking to Helen haven't yet noticed that . . . Oh, wait; it does not get released until April 30.  Silly me; of course it isn't selling!  (I mean, it can; you have to make an advanced purchase of it.  Nobody would bother, and I wouldn't expect you to!)

Westfield is a book still with a lot of rough corners in it.  There is no central plot in it; it would read very much like an episode from the middle of a book, which is what it really is.  I falls chronologically after Helen On the Run, where baby James is born, and Helen and Sharon, where Helen sneaks off to make those three movies.

Almost all these books that I write have rough patches, or even entire rough sections, which I have to heavily edit, to give them whatever bit of polish I can.

I see with regret that all the Democratic candidates have dropped out, and finally all of them have endorsed Joe Biden.  If Joe Biden actually takes the campaign seriously, and all the new policies that he has adopted, we could have an excellent four years.  These four years coming up could really be four of the very best; better than the Obama years.  Especially so if Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez combine to make some of the more far-reaching ideas a reality, and showing the anxious Wall Street types that, well, their free and easy tinkering with stocks might no longer be possible, but it isn't the end of the world.  I remember being told that Lyndon Johnson, who picked up the presidency much like Biden is doing, did more for minority rights than anyone else, though he had never thought to do so until he was in the White House.

With a long sigh, I have started writing a new story about Helen.  I hope against hope that there are people who are not heartily sick of the character of Helen Nordstrom.  What is her chief charm, to my mind is not Helen at all, but the kids, and Helen's long-suffering friends.  And I want to make this last book all about what happens after Concerto ends (which is a perfectly good ending, so don't worry), but I wanted Helen and her sweetheart, and the kids, to grapple with the Stay At Home instructions.  I may not succeed.

Most of all, not living in Philadelphia myself, I really can't describe what happens there too accurately; to I have to move them out to one of the smaller towns on some excuse, and maroon them there.

At any rate, I had put up an illegal cover for Westfield; it had some images stolen from the Web.  Our cover artist, HALCHROMA (Sreya Halder) has promised to paint us a nice cover for Westfield, and until then I'm going to give it a cover with no artwork at all.

Until I have more news to report, this is bye for now,

Kay