On my morning walk, I saw this little blue flower peeking out from a tangle of brush in an empty lot. Getting a good shot was a bit of a challenge as it was fairly deep in the tangle, but I managed and was pleased with the result. As a professional photographer once told me, you take hundreds and hundreds of shots and maybe one of them turns into a terrific photograph. Thank goodness we now have digital, so we don’t have to look through spools and spools of film to find that perfect picture.
When I was managing editor of the online community magazine, WinnsboroToday.com, one of my Monday morning duties was to check out news headlines and share snippets with our readers. I had world, national, and local news sections, and I liked the idea of letting our readers know what was going on. Some days I feel the urge to do that again, so I’m sharing a brief version of that today.
Sad new out of Louisiana yesterday as Leslie Obregon reported on CBS News about three African American churches burned in a span of 10 days in St. Landry Parish. On Sunday the 145-year-old Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas was set ablaze.
St. Mary’s Baptist Church was the first reported church fire on March 26. Then, just 10 miles down the road, Greater Union Baptist Church went up in flames a week later. All three churches were well over a hundred years old.
A 17-foot python was captured in a south Florida national park. It was a female, carrying 73 eggs and weighed 140 pounds. You can see a picture of the snake, if you want to, on the Facebook page for Big Cypress National Preserve .
More unrest in the Middle East as Libya faces a possible full-scale civil war. The conflict centers on fighting between the Libyan National Army, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter, and Fayez Sarraj, who heads the government in the capital city of Tripoli. Hifter launched a surprise offensive against the capital last week, and tensions have escalated, prompting other countries, including the U.S. to pull troops out of the country.
The U.S. troops have been in Libya to help local forces combat Islamic State and al-Qaida militants, as well as protecting diplomatic facilities.
Now for some personal news. Obviously, I didn’t share personal news on the community magazine. There were professional boundaries that couldn’t be stepped over, but a personal blog is only bounded by good taste and ethics. 🙂
I’m so excited to announce that the novel I wrote about my mother’s life, EVELYN EVOLVING, is now available for pre-order at Amazon. This book was three years in the writing and two years in the marketing, and it finally found a home with a small publisher, Creativia.
The story is part biography, part historical novel, and very different from the mysteries I’ve written before – closer to mainstream novel than genre.
While my mother was anything but a perfect mother, as I matured, I came to see her as a very strong woman, and for years I wanted to share her story. I had snippets scribbled in various notebooks from the time I first started writing novels, and it all started to come together not long after she died. I’m not sure why it took so long, but it did, and now the story is out there.
The official release date is May 19th, and all the pre-launch orders will help the book rise in the rankings at Amazon, who will then start some promoting. It would be so wonderful if this could happen, so if you have a Kindle or Kindle app, I’d love for you to order the book and help an author out. Thanks so much in advance.
That’s all for me for today. I have a class in a little while at the local community college, so I need to get out of my pjs and dressed to face the public. Whatever you have on your agenda for today and the rest of the week, I hope they are things that bring you satisfaction and joy. Be safe. Be happy.