Another big day for me!

My mother would turn up one eye if she knew I was doing this but I am going to do it anyway. So there.

It's another big day for me in an already busy month. I just published The Rooming House Murder on Kindle and it is the second book I have published in the last month or so. The other one is The Co-pilot and both are related because they are a two of a three part series about the life of my ordinary hero, Chance Mikelson. Both are budget-busters at $1.99 each. Isn't Kindle great?

The Rooming House Murder is based on some of the darkest times in my life. No, there was no murder but there was a rooming house. It was pay-by-the-week living and the landlord would put your things on the porch if you didn't pay on time. My room was just a few square feet bigger than a walk in closet and the mattress was covered in plastic to keep bums from, well you know. Maybe I was a bum looking back.

I am mindful of the struggles others have living their lives and that has become a trademark of my books. There is one challenged character in each of them.

In The Co-pilot that character is Angles. He was a teenage boy who actually lived in a tree outside of my hotel. He was not a dark-skinned African. He was the result of a union between a white father who was a very drunken sailor one night in Monrovia, and an African mother who had no plans to take care of him.

Since he was brown and not black, he was an outcast. He also had a large dark area in his right cheek. That area would move because it was filled with worms. Can you imagine?

In The Rooming House Murder, the character is Double D. He is overweight, under-educated, under-toothed, but he roams around with a smile on his face and a great attitude. He uses the system to get by and frankly, that is fine with me. Some folks need the help.

I mope. My mom would be the first to tell you that. She would also tell you I could carry a grudge into the next two generations. 

But life is all about experience and that time was an experience. The house did not have any air conditioning and summer in Nebraska is hot and humid. There were some tough characters who came and went during my time there. Most were drunks too far gone. I minded my business and tried to get by on the things I knew how to do.

As a former advertising copywriter, I knew how to write. I just wasn't  doing a very good job of selling myself and since money was tight, I took what I could get. One of the things I could get was a sales job at Best Buy selling computers. Looking back, that was a bit of divine luck. My Best Buy days have served me well when it comes to tech stuff.

Anyway, you will find a lot of those days in my new book. You will see Lincoln come alive. And, you will see sadness. That's what a good book is all about, isn't it?

Mom would feel a little better about me telling you this. After all, I never had a day when I wasn't wearing clean underwear or had dirty ears.