In this issue:
- Dark & Cold?
- New Audiobook Edition in Progress
- My Appearance at the Tucson Festival of Books
Dark and Cold? What Happened?
Last Monday, doctors at Banner University Medicine in Tucson, Arizona replaced my wife Kay’s right shoulder. On Wednesday night—actually at 2AM on Thursday morning—thankfully, sleep eluded her. She shook me out of a sound slumber. “Gene, we have no power!” Oh, crap. It was thirty-nine degrees outside, and our heat, both electric and diesel, depends on either external resort (“city” or “shore”) power or our motorhome’s battery power.
I scrambled out of bed at the rear of our forty-three-foot bus and headed toward the cockpit to diagnose the problem. Stumbling out of my sleepy stupor, I noticed the panel said “low battery.” Warning lights flashed. So did an instant headache. We were likely less than an hour from draining (and probably ruining) about two-thousand-dollars worth of deep-cycle “house” batteries that power the entire coach.
That’s when I remembered the screw-up that caused this situation.
NEVER
ALLOW
THE FOLLOWING
TO HAPPEN
IF YOU LIVE IN AN RV
(OR ON A BOAT)!
The previous afternoon, I prepared a late lunch. It was chilly outside. Even though we’re in the SW Arizona desert, we’re at almost 3,000 feet of elevation here south of Tucson. So, the temps are only in the forties and fifties during the day here in January, and a lot colder at night.
Our diesel boiler (furnace) provides central heat (and hot water on demand). It is powered either by “shore” power (110VAC) or our house battery bank (12VDC). It was too cold for our two rooftop heat pumps to be effective. They’re powered by either shore power or our diesel generator, but that requires battery power to get started, too (although separate unaffected “chassis” batteries).
We often run an electric space heater, too (also driven by shore power or generator) to ease the burden on the far more costly diesel boiler. Plus, the boiler burns about a liter of diesel per hour during the coldest times, which we use instead of propane for heat.
We were nice and cozy that previous afternoon. I toasted a ciabatta bun in the kitchen’s electric toaster oven. At the same time, I reheated a wonderful vegan pasta dish in the microwave. The power flickered. Oops! I then realized I was operating three very power-hungry 110VAC appliances all at the same time. Dumb! In an RV, anyway.
But after a brief flicker, like a momentary brown-out, all appeared to be okay. I immediately turned off the space heater to finish heating my lunch. I figured our automatic (electrical) load-shedding feature on our electrical management system just did its thing with only a slight hiccup. NOPE! But on we went with our lives.
What really happened? I had blown an obscure breaker, and instead of then providing all the power in the coach (one fridge, two freezers, lights, TV, home theater system, space heater, humidifier, etc.) from resort or shore power, which is normal, all now depended on our bank of house batteries for their power! That’s fine for short durations like a few hours when necessary, when shore power isn’t available, but longer term, like last week? The bus gobbles batteries dry and sends them to the scrap heap!
Our inverter normally translates 12VDC battery power into clean 110VAC household power from either shore power or battery power. Our 110VAC (household) appliances didn’t care where the power was coming from.
It wasn’t until 2AM Thursday, when our batteries had been drawn down to dangerously low levels, did I realize my mistake. So, I trundled outside, shivering in my pajamas and slippers, with my trusty headlamp to locate the breaker on the inverter itself in the “basement” (a storage compartment underneath the motorhome), pushed the emergency breaker to reset it, and everything came back online as it was supposed to.
STUPID! I will plan to hear about my mistake from now to eternity. I deserve it.
I checked the fluid levels in the batteries the following day to ensure I did no permanent damage. They’re okay, but another hour or so of drawing them down into oblivion? That would have made for a very expensive battery replacement fiasco. As soon as I had reset the inverter’s breaker, the battery charging system automatically started pounding a recharge into the four huge depleted house batteries.
Catastrophe averted! Narrowly. Such is “la vita!”
FYI, TWO Audiobook Editions of Rogue’s Gallery Coming
I’m seriously considering something that is not business-as-usual in audiobook production.
From my last newsletter, you’ll recall I’ve just published my latest heart-pounding Aubrey Greigh Mystery, Rogue’s Gallery this summer in Kindle and paperback editions. I’m now narrating its audiobook edition, and hope to publish and distribute it to Audible, Amazon, and Apple by early this summer. But here’s the thing.
What would you think of an “enhanced” or “theatrical” version of this audiobook mystery? I envision offering such an edition separately in addition to the straight narrated version. This enhanced edition would include selected sound effects and music. I think such an edition might offer a more engaging listener experience, and would really appreciate hearing what you think of this idea.
Allow me to illustrate. Below is an audio sample of what I call a “theatrical” edition (do you have a better name for such an offering? I’m all ears!):
Enhanced audiobook track (Chapter One of Rogue’s Gallery):
I really would like to know what you think. Would an extra offering like this enhanced audiobook edition be of interest to you? To other audiobook aficionados, do you think?
Besides, I’m having an absolute blast producing this!
Personal Appearance at TFOB (Tucson Festival of Books)
If you’re not aware, the TFOB comprises:
- The 3rd or 4th largest book festival in the country (in the world, maybe?),
- Typically >100,000 attendees (free admission) over one weekend,
- Dozens of ticketed venues (presentations & moderated panels),
- Millions of dollars raised for the community (non-profit),
- More than 200 year-round volunteers.
This two-day festival takes place in the middle of March each year and sprawls across the University of Arizona campus in Tucson. This year, I am honored to have been invited to speak as part of a moderated three-member panel of mystery authors on Saturday, March 15th.
So, if you’re in the ‘hood, you’re invited. Tickets are free, but advanced reserved tickets are advised and are available one week prior. See the festival website for more and schedule info HERE.
On the next day, Sunday the sixteenth, I’ll be participating in the festival’s “Indie Pavilion,” that is, a meet and greet of independently published authors, where I’ll be selling and signing my sixteen published books for all you mystery fans and aspiring writers. This will be fun.
I’m not sure how much I’ll be speaking during the moderated panel, so I thought I’d use this forum to try out a few talking points. Care to weigh in on which ones you think I ought to prioritize?
My front line comments: “I love writing mysteries that are entertaining, authentic, and socially relevant. My mysteries are inspired by events that have occurred to me during my life. And I’ve been blessed with a pretty darn interesting one. Yes, this is most certainly driven by my passion for the allure of the obscure. I like to think I offer something in the pages of my books that readers are not likely to have personally encountered, like I have, nor maybe not have encountered in other mysteries.”
I plan to ask for a show of hands, and I ask you now:
- How many of you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and yet worked near the top of a hundred-billion-dollar multinational tech corporation for a time whose boss got indicted for insider trading?
- How many of you have had your life threatened and were stalked for months after reluctantly firing 422 of your 1,013 employees? I’m not a fan of firearms, but I borrowed a loaded shotgun from a neighbor that I kept at my bedside that summer. We moved out of state, just in case. After that, I retired at age fifty-eight after thirty-two years with a full pension. I was not the guy I had become.
- How many of you have relatives and close friends who have been members of the US intelligence community, including one high-level executive at the NSA and another who was an “air pirate” who flew “farm equipment” (wink) and “support personnel” (still winking) into third-world countries most of us have never heard of?
- How many of you have owned a live-aboard sailboat that once was used as a safe house for Soviet defectors during the cold war, one of whom was married on its foredeck in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor?
- How many of you have strolled the infamous Tokyo fish market in a $600 camel-hair overcoat at 4AM and helped a little fish monger pick up a spilled wheelbarrow of live eels after bumping into him and causing the spill? That coat was never the same!
- How many of you lived on a boat in the Florida Keys and Eastern Caribbean for years and faithfully listened to the piracy report every morning at 0700 hours on marine radio channel 69, so you knew where not to go next, or only with a buddy boat, for safety?
- How many of you lived in San Francisco’s Hashbury district in 1969 as a rebel without a clue counseling draftees during the Tet offensive in the Viet Nam war when a thousand kids my age were getting killed each week? That’s when I got my draft notice, by the way, and enlisted in the US Coast Guard.
- How many of you have had thirteen motorcycle accidents before age 18 and experienced relocating a house’s porch with a big-ass Buick, destroying an entire alley, and running that same car into a tree at 50 MPH in a drug-addled state? Unforgettable… I’m told.
- How many of you have almost died in the bowels of a shipwreck at a depth of 120 feet of seawater seven miles off Key West when your SCUBA equipment got entangled in overhead wreckage in a tight passageway?
- How many of you have experienced a free-fall skydive from 14,500 feet and seen the majestic curvature of the earth splayed out below you?
- How many of you have traveled in a forty-three foot bus for ten years, living in forty-plus states for a few weeks to a few months at a time?
- How many of you have smoked a joint with an awkward teenage Bill Cosby long before he became famous (then, infamous), and long before I became a respectable, high-functioning career alcoholic? I’ve now been sober for thirteen years.
This is just a sampling of life experiences that inspire me to write quirky mysteries with flawed characters who entertain you with believable situations that baffle, mystify, or make you laugh or cry. And you’ll wonder, “what if that were me?” I’d love to share at least a few of these anecdotes during my panel discussion, but at least I got to share them all with YOU.
One other important pearl of wisdom I’d share with you? NEVER try to out-drink your Japanese translator starting on the Shinkansen (bullet train) between Tokyo and Hamamatsu and later at the hotel, especially if you’re swilling down ninety-eight-degree (cheap) Saki. You will lose if you are “gaijin” (non-Japanese). No mystery, there.
I am growing excited to meet some new mystery fans at TFOB, and maybe also sell and sign a few books! This festival is one of the reasons we’re in Tucson this winter!
So, until later, and wherever…
Gene
