Well, the threatened heat arrived yesterday like a freight train. It hit 92 and the humidity sucked. It was all my air conditioner could do to keep up. For some of my southern readers that probably doesn’t sound so bad, but trust me, where I live, at this time of year, it’s horrible. All my outdoor work got put on hold. Happily I have a rowing machine in the basement where it was a cool 65, so at least I got a little exercise.

Since not much happened yesterday I’m going to keep this section brief. After a nice lunch and an episode of MI-5, I got to my writing desk and managed another 5 pages. The new novel has passed the 25% mark which is always a good feeling.

Today I thought I’d share a bit of trivia from my part of the country. It seems that back during prohibition, this was quite a smuggling passage. In the winter they’d zip down the frozen river carrying Canadian Whiskey bound for speakeasies.

While my grandfather was far too young to be directly involved in the smuggling, his uncle made a couple runs. On his last trip he took some shot gun pellets in the ass. Apparently they’d caught the attention of the local police then made a run for it. They didn’t get caught, but after having the pellets removed, at home, with no anesthetic, and using some of his own smuggled whiskey as a disinfectant, my great uncle decided to end his rum running career early.

Apparently the smugglers also passed though my grandfather’s farm since he used to say he remembered men giving his father a bottle of whiskey now and then, he assumed, to keep his mouth shut about who came and went. Around here it didn’t sound like anyone cared about the smuggling. Even the local police only chased them because it was their job.

In fact, not that far from where I live, there’s a big rock where the authorities used to take bottles of whiskey they captured so they could make a big show of smashing them. It’s called, not terribly imaginatively, The Whiskey Rock. But I’ll wager not all of that capture booze ended up broken. Plenty of it probably went home with the the cops.

Anyway, I thought that was a fun story to share.

Preorders are up to 290. Just ten more. We’re so close thanks to all of you.

Talk to you tomorrow.