On Facebook, I saw that Joshua Chase/Dodge Merrin was going to have a five-hour-long book signing at a coffee and ice cream shop in Houston, Missouri, home of the Houston Herald which I no longer receive because I’m between contracts. But being between contracts means I can take off on a Friday morning for a two hour drive to a distant town to get books from an author I haven’t seen in person in almost a decade. But I did tell him, probably at LibraryCon 2019, that I would buy his later books when I read the first three (Triumphant Empire, Revolution, and Total War). I had kinda planned this to be an excursion to yank my youngest away from video games, but he already had plans to go to the waterpark with a friend, so I made the journey alone with my audiocourse on ancient Egypt.
So I met the author again:
And I got his four latest books.
I got:
- Brink of Extinction, the fourth book in the series formerly known as “The S.T.A.R. Chronicles” but now renamed “Embers of Hope” and Embers in the Dark which is a collection of short stories in the same series, some prequels.
- Rising Shadows, an urban fantasy book where the cats are the good guys.
- Quiet Valor which an omnibus edition of his two fantasy novels Humble Glory and Gentle Fury. It’s a hardback, and it’s the first he sold.
Undoubtedly, I will put them in the Nogglestead stacks and lose them for several years. But I might actually lose them together, so when I rediscover them, I can read them in proper order. I did tell him about ABC Books, though, and if he has a book signing there sometime, I might see him before another near-decade elapses. So maybe I should read these first. But I have started another novel, well, the same novel with a different title by a local author with a newer pseudonym, but I guess I will tell you about that by-and-by.
As to the trip to Houston, I took I-44 to US 38 in Marshfield–the same route to the Independence Day parade, but then rolled east on 38 through rolling hills and hay fields through Hartville (although north of the White Hart Renaissance Festival) and into Houston which is not quite as big as some of the Springfield suburbs but is not exactly a small town. On the way home, I rode down US 63 which is a bigger road that runs through Cabool and down to West Plains, although I got onto US 60 (the Stepmother Road according to the current Citizens Bank of Rogersville radio ads I hear whilst cutting the grass).
So, suddenly, this summer, I have the urge to drive around the area like I did in 2012 when I dragged one or more of my then-very-young children on trips to little towns around the area. I guess I do have time in between all the martial arts classes I’m taking (or dodging on alternating weeks) until I get a new contract. I guess that’s my new plan: Have so much fun this summer that actual income would be a bummer.
