I found this as I was shuffling through old posts. It was a fun Cozy Critter day. Remember this, Critters? I enjoyed reading it again and I hope you do too.
“Go with what you’ve got” is one of those folks sayings Jane, Carolyn, Peg, and I grew up with. Jane brought a long list of others: I really don’t want to get into it now; If I agree with you, we’d both be wrong; I’m supposed to respect my elders but it’s getting harder and harder to find one; Just let it slide off like water off a duck’s back; I lived so far out in the woods, I had to walk toward town to go hunting. How many of these do you remember?
Yesterday’s critique day was sunny but nippy. The fireplace felt good. Although it was cold outside, lively conversation and hot coffee cozied things up. We welcomed Carolyn back after a terrible bout with the flu. And, feeling good again, she started writing and drawing. She is finishing a picture for a greeting card, an engaging sketch of a little girl and a cat sitting on a wood fence. One of her poems was about their cat who came to them at Christmas time, A Lap Full of Scratch. Her second poem, My Buddy, was about her friend, Callie the Collie, who helps her as she rounds up cattle on her four-wheeler.
Jane read a poem in progress that brought tears to our eyes, The Heavenly Clue. It’s about a toothpick, where she found it, and how it got there.
When Jane and Mark visited Philadelphia, Jane was especially impressed with the horses who pulled carriages that took tourists to view the Liberty Bell in Independence Hall. She wrote a story about these freedom horses, Liberty, Napoleon, and Blueberry.
“What is something that turns you off from reading a mystery?” I asked Peg.
“If the murderer is obvious from the beginning of the book, I find it hard to finish,” Peg answered.
Some of the books she is reading and enjoying are War and Peach by Susan Furlong, Death in Advertising by Laura Bradford, and the Fixer-Upper series by Kate Carlisle. This series is going to be on the Hallmark channel.
Just for fun, I passed around the last two pages of By the Fright of the Silvery Moon. We took turns reading parts in this last scene: Cade, Ned, Gerald, Pat, and Jackie were all present. I’ll let you guess which Cozy Critter was which character.
This creative and fun group of ladies also gave me some good ideas for a possible cover picture for Fright. And, they had thoughts on a title for the third book in the Moonlight series which, by the way, is already in the works.
So, lest you ask What in the Sam Hill were you doing? at yesterday’s critique, that pretty well sums it up. I can’t seem to stop writing homey colloquialisms. They are as fun for me as it is for a duck to go barefoot. So now, I’ll write more on that new and amazing Ned McNeil mystery. The coffee is hot, the computer is ready, and You can’t keep a squirrel on the ground in timber country.
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