Aug 022022
 

How’s your summer been? Bumpy, right? Between inflation, residual COVID, tangled travel plans thanks to an overwhelmed airline industry, a cruel war that drags on, and crippling heat, it hasn’t been all fun and games. The mood is as heavy as the air.

I get it. I was coping with shoulder surgery on one side, a broken wrist on the other, and a dog whose health was rapidly declining back in May. Between one thing and another, my already thin social life was reduced to few encounters unless they were sparked by an Instacart delivery.

Then I bought an Apple Watch.

I know; it’s a watch with a lot of stuff I don’t need. Although having a phone you don’t have to remember to take because it’s already strapped to your wrist is pretty cool. Now I just have to remember to put in my earbuds so I’m not talking to my wrist or straining to hear the voice at the other end.

For the most part, the watch mimics the phone, even if you’re not carrying the phone. I like seeing the time, the date and the weather right up front. If you’re using your iPhone to navigate, the watch will display the map as well. Not only that, when SIRI tells you to, say, take a right, the watch will make the sound of a turn signal. The first time I heard that, I laughed out loud.

It’s very freeing to be able to walk and keep my hands by my side, swing them freely, or furtively check my inbox for messages, which it reports with a discreet ding that doesn’t sound like marimbas or chimes.

I can’t take pictures, although I have no doubt that’s coming. Anyone remember when that level of gadgetry was only available to a member of the CIA or MI6?

While I recover from various surgeries and injuries, a fitness program suitable for a twenty-something may not be appropriate. That’s why I didn’t sign up for Apple Fitness. However, I did set up a basic health profile and some modest goals, including a lot of walking. Inside of nagging me, the watch cheers me on with, exhorting me to “keep it going” or applauding me for meeting or exceeding my target number of steps or minutes or calories or what have you. It reminds me to rise out of my chair, a task I’d previously relegated to an hourglass I kept at my desk until I accidentally broke it one day.

My watch urges me to reflect at the beginning and end of the day. It’s big on deep breathing. I’m offered a light show, but honestly, I find the color choices a bit unnerving. I’d prefer to close my eyes.

Somehow the Apple Watch acts as guru, guide, motivator, and minder. Yes, it’s a tool and a toy. Okay, it’s collecting and using a lot of data about me and my preferences. No, it can’t replace my human buddies. It’s simply a nice addition.

Excuse me, I’m told I need to stand now.

Nov 102021
 

Freeze Before Burning: A Sam Tate Mystery is the third book in the Sam Tate Mystery Series and will be released December 8th.


Ed Rizzo slid his ample body into the ornate confessional, crossed himself, and pushed a strand of thinning hair off his forehead. “Forgive me, Father,” he intoned, “for I have sinned, although I’m pretty sure God will cut me some slack even if my wife won’t, if you take my meaning.”

At ten in the morning, the sanctuary was deserted. Good. He didn’t need anyone listening to his confession, which he unloaded to the figure who sat beside him in the confessional over the next ten minutes.

Even as he talked, he considered who might be on the other side of the grate. Rizzo couldn’t make out the features of the man. He wondered if he’d landed the new priest. Maybe a younger person would make light of his transgressions, which mostly related to his perfectly legitimate reaction to his obnoxious neighbor, Frank Pagonis.

Rizzo had his justifications lined up. He hadn’t survived more than a year of enforced quarantine with three kids and a demanding wife, never mind the missing paycheck for a while, only to put up with the stolen newspapers, a lawn mower returned with a bent blade, and a television loud enough to wake the dead.

“But when his dog, which, by the way, he refuses to leash and that’s against the law, went and dug up my tomato plants, yeah, I sprayed some stuff on whatever the mutt left. Not enough to kill the animal, you understand. He can’t help it if he has a jerk for an owner. I would have sprayed his owner’s food if I could have. The point I’m making is, the dog got sick, but it didn’t die, okay?”

Rizzo cocked his head, thinking he might have heard a faint sigh.

“Now he’s coming around with a pile of vet bills and talking about suing me. I told him to take his threats and shove them. I tell you, Padre, I am this close to beating that smug face or maybe twisting that scrawny neck of his. My wife claims that kind of thinking is sinful. I don’t think it’s as bad as doing the deed. I haven’t told her about poisoning the dog, but sparing her the details isn’t the same as lying, is it?”

Nothing. The guy had probably fallen asleep. The confessional was stuffy, and Rizzo experienced a touch of claustrophobia. Time to move things along.

“If you can just suggest a penance to perform, I’ll get it covered. Then I can be on my way.”
He stopped talking, suddenly aware of the silence, how absolute and enveloping it was. The noises of the city street outside had receded. He could hear himself breathing.

“Hey, Father? You all right in there?” Rizzo scratched the grill dividing the two sides of the confessional. His head was pounding now, and he felt vaguely dizzy.

“I know I’ve been yakking a lot. How about we wrap this up, okay?” Again, no response. It occurred to Rizzo that the other man hadn’t said a word the entire time. What if the good father had suffered a heart attack?

He hoisted his bulk off the narrow bench and pushed himself out of the tiny space. The other side of the confessional had its own entrance. He rapped on the door, then tried the handle, more out of instinct than anything else. It turned in his hand, and he pulled.

The black-garbed figure sat with head bowed, hands folded in his lap as if in prayer or contemplation. Or asleep. Rizzo put a tentative hand on the man’s shoulder. With a sigh like a punctured balloon, the black-robed figure tipped sideways off the bench, fell to the floor, and rolled like a blow-up toy.

Startled, Rizzo jumped back. Stay cool, he told himself.

He bent over with an umph and put two fingers to the priest’s throat to search for a pulse. He expected to feel cold, not the scalding heat that burned his skin.

“Jesus Christ!” he yelled, forgetting for a moment where he was. He waved his blistered hand in the air and hopped around until a wave of nausea stopped.

With his foot, he nudged the body so that it rolled onto its back. He stared, speechless for once, at the face of the priest. Then he stepped farther back, pulled out his cell phone, punched in 9-1-1, and gave his report to the dispatcher in a calm, measured tone.

He agreed to wait for the police and medical authorities just outside the church. He even accepted the suggestion that he might dissuade others from entering until help arrived.

Without looking again at the body of the priest, Ed Rizzo crossed himself. He walked slowly to the front door, stepped into the fresh air, and threw up.


Information on the Sam Tate Mystery Series can be found here.

To pre-order this book, click here.

Nov 232020
 

Long away and far ago,in a time that the land forgot, a princess picked a pea from her mattress. Rolling it idly between her finger and thumb, she sighed and said aloud, “I wish I weren’t so bored.”

To her great surprise, the pea spoke. “Ouch!” was the first thing it said. “Keep rolling me around, and I’ll make sure you never get a good night’s sleep.” Then in a more soothing tone, “Here now, I can grant you three wishes except, well, I’ve already granted one by making your night less boring.”

“True,” said the princess gaily, “but I can make the best of the rest of it.”

She rose from her lumpy bed, went to the window, and gazed out upon the second star from the right.

“I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”

“Silly girl, now you’ve gone and used up another one,” grumbled the pea, whereupon the princess leaned over and kissed it, turning it instantly into a frog.

“There now, let me concentrate on my wish,” she chided gently.

“Ribbit,” responded the frog.

The princess began to imagine her fondest desire but was distracted by her image in the mirror next to the window. “Why, I really am the fairest in all the land,” she mused, admiring her reflection and fluffing her hair.

“Well, no, actually you aren’t,” replied a disembodied floating face in the mirror. “But one of these might help.”

The disembodied face, which was actually connected to a single arm in a loose-fitting gossamer sleeve, gestured behind it to a table on which appeared an apple, a lamp, and a spindle. “Take your pick,” the face offered with a sly smile.

“No!” cried the frog who had been a pea (and was doubtless something enchanted before that), but it came out “Ribbit!”

“Oh gifts, I love gifts!” cried the princess. “Let’s see, I don’t need a lamp and, even if it were enchanted, I’m not sure whether I’d get three entirely new wishes or whether the two wishes from the pea (which is now a frog) might count against my total. As for apples, I know they’re good for me, or at least that’s what my stepmother, the evil queen, keeps telling me. Honestly, though, I don’t really like them.”

“Would you make up your mind?” the disembodied face suggested, a tad querulously.

“I do love to spin,” the princess continued. “That’s a beautiful spindle, and it goes nicely with my hair.” She shook out her extra-long blond locks, pushed up a sleeve, and reached into the mirror.

“No!” cried the frog again (and again, it came out “Ribbit!”). This time, though, it leapt in front of the princess’s outstretched hand and was impaled upon the spindle.

The frog did not die, as the spindle passed through a superfluous membrane, causing nothing more than a flesh wound. It did, however, promptly fall into a deep sleep.

The princess lifted up the amphibian and gently placed it on her lumpy mattress as the disembodied face, muttering various indecipherable curses, disappeared in a puff of smoke. She picked up the spindle and was about to test it on her spinning wheel (she had been experimenting with turning hay into gold, to no avail) when she heard a cry from below.

Thinking it was the prince from next door, she began letting down her hair so he might climb up to the balcony. To her surprise, she saw a white rabbit gesturing at her to come down. In one furry arm, he held a basket, over the other was draped a hooded red cape.

“It’s your grandmother. She’s quite ill. You must go to see her. Hurry, there’s no time to waste. You’re already very, very late.”

The princess thought this quite odd, especially as her grandmother was asleep in the adjacent room. Then she recalled stories of a child being found in a pumpkin left on the steps of the castle at midnight sixteen years earlier. Was she that poor foundling after all?

Perhaps my grandmother really is ill, and I must go, she thought. She looked down into to courtyard and saw all manner of creatures crowded together besides the rabbit: knaves and ogres, a giant, a white unicorn, a black stallion, a werewolf, seven dwarves, three dragons, a dog, and two quite unattractive sisters.

Suddenly the castle walls shook, and white lightening tore through the night sky, obliterating the stars. A fierce wind blew out of the north, and an enormous funnel cloud appeared overhead. The crowd disappeared, leaving the princess alone on her balcony, save for the little black dog, who had leapt into her arms, barking furiously.

A voice boomed from within the cloud as a giant face appeared.

“I am the great and powerful . . .”

“Oh, stop it. Just stop!” The princess shouted over the screaming winds, cutting off the booming voice. “I’ve had quite enough of talking faces and deceitful rabbits and changeable skies and broken promises. I just wish I knew what was real.”

All at once, there was a clap of thunder—or perhaps it was a clapping of hands—and the princess was back in her room, which really wasn’t a long distance to go, sitting on her lumpy mattress.

“Was it all a dream then?” she wondered aloud.

“No, you stupid girl,” snapped the pea from within the folds of one of the blankets. “You used up your third wish. Now you are left with the reality of a lumpy mattress and a life of boredom.”

“But you are left without any life at all,” replied the princess, somewhat cruelly. Then she crushed the pea between her fingers, popped it in her mouth and exited her chambers in search of something to do.

A small frog jumped off the balcony, landed into the courtyard, and changed into an impossibly handsome prince. He cast a sad and longing gaze back up to the balcony, then jumped astride his white stallion and made his way home to the neighboring kingdom.

Seeing how despondent he was, his mother, the queen, asked gently, “Did you not find a suitable bride, my son?”

“I did find a princess, but as it turned out, she wasn’t sensitive to the pea, not in the least.”

His mother patted his arm. “Don’t fret, Charming. Somewhere there’s a girl for you, perhaps under the sea. Or she might be over the river or through the woods.”

“The woods!” cried the prince. “I must go to the woods in order to help the poor by robbing from the rich.”

“But darling,” exclaimed the queen. “We’re rich!”

“Don’t worry, Mother. I’ve arranged to have your assets distributed among several investment vehicles, which will maximize your profits, minimize your tax burden, and protect you from unwanted lawsuits. A designated amount, more than adequate to your current and future needs, will be deposited in a variable annuity, further shielding you from greedy sovereigns, unscrupulous sheriffs, and the predictable cycle of unpredictable market pricing. I’ve also got a little natural gas company I’d like to talk about with you.”

“Oh, son. With that kind of forward-thinking approach, you’ll find the woman of your dreams in no time.”

“Or man, Mother. I’m committed to keeping an open mind.”

The prince kissed his mother and galloped off to the forest where he won renown for his many brave and noble deeds. Eventually he did meet his life partner, for who wouldn’t be attracted to a man who is good to his mother, kind to those less fortunate, and looks fabulous astride a white horse?

Only a pea brain.