Day 5. How can it only be five days?

Is time intentionally slowing? Are we facing not only viruses but eddies in the space-time continuum? (h/t to Douglas Adams)

Has everyone been getting 1000s of emails from the companies where you do business on how ON TOP OF IT they are vis-a-vis the coronavirus? I got an email from one of my fave authors* referencing the “200 e-mails from the shop you bought a futon from a decade ago assuring you they’re all washing their hands” – and that’s about the size of it. Hertz, for pity’s sake, has written like nine times. Who on earth is renting cars right now?

And alllllllllllll the banks. They want us to know they’re taking every precaution. Great! Yeah! Can you do a little more, banks, like by pumping a bunch of money into food banks and homeless shelters? If I need to know which branches are open, I will go to your website. Spend your resources on something more helpful, thankyouverymuch.

SQUIRREL!

*Speaking of fave authors…

Do you like funny detective stories? Irish settings? (As opposed to Irish Setters, which you may also like, or not like. I like ’em just fine, myself. Annywayyy…) Suspense and silliness together? Here’s a FREE ONE. That’s right, FREE on Kindle. It’s by Caimh McDonnell, and called Angels in the Moonlight.

US Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07562D1YS/

UK link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07562D1YS/

It’s the third in his Dublin Trilogy series but it’s actually a prequel, so it does no harm to read it first. That gives you a chance to see, for FREE, if you like his work, and THEN (and only then!) buy all of them and inhale them within the next two weeks like they were the last bottle of hand sanitizer at CVS. That’s what I would do, if I hadn’t bought and read them all myself already.

The author’s name is @Caimh, but pronounced Queeve. Is that an Irish thing? Should I have known that? It’s not, in and of itself, particularly funny, but it lets you know that stepping into this writer’s world will throw you back on your heels.

Angels in the Moonlight stars Bunny McGarry, a ridiculous and twisted hero with a lazy left eye. He eats lunch on a ledge while a guy contemplates suicide; coaches a youth sports team using at least 20% clean vocabulary; fears nothing but nuns; and is known to dangle people off of balconies – and even drop them, taking Otto’s A Fish Called Wanda gambit a step further.

McDonnell’s latest just came out and I’m rationing it out to myself (in a way that I’m not capable of rationing the chocolate I bought yesterday) so that no aerosolized despair can settle on my furniture.

When I get done reading it, I will need your help for more fun novels.

What are you all reading?

I’ve got five books going at the mo’:

1. The Final Game, by Caimh McDonnell (aforementioned)
2. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte. First try at this. It’s not what I expected – it’s so dark!
3. La Sombra del Viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – perennial favorite. This is a re-read.
4. D-Day Girls: The Spies who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II, by Sarah Rose (I’ve been on a WWII reading and documentary-watching frenzy lately)
5. Another re-read: Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. If you don’t know about Alobar and Kudra, Bingo Pajama, Pan the Goat God, and Marcel LeFever’s Whale Mask, I can’t help you.

(I would put links in for the books but… link to Amazon? Naah. Try your library first, or the newest online indie-related seller, Bookshop, which will be perfect as soon as it has ebooks as well as hard- and soft-cover.)

LUNCH!

You cannot beet my salad.

Seriously. When all this blows over, I’m going to package this up, sell it, and make millions. I’m gonna be the Mrs. Field of beets.