As I enter my mature years, only two things propel me to the top of the cat tree. One is my sworn enemy, the vacuum cleaner. The other is the Can-Opener, when she is attempting (and usually failing) to do something with a mechanical object. Most particularly the computer. Whenever she attempts something new and inevitably screws it up, her language demonstrates that she is the daughter of career navy man. Oh, my delicate ears.
Truly, she has missed her calling. If tech inventors and purveyors test their manuals and ‘Help’ files on her, they would discover every possible way a customer can misinterpret a simple instruction.
Fortunately, the C-O has friends. Long-suffering friends, most particularly Alicia Rasley, who spend much valuable time sorting out the CO’s messes and salvaging her projects. And my sanity. Their names should be inscribed on the rolls of saints and martyrs.

The two empty spaces are reserved for Yvette and Lucinda, whose stories will be told at a future date.
It was Alicia, her co-author on several excellent (or so I’m told) stories, who guided her through the process of making those stories available to readers machines called Kindle and Nook and Kobo and also on computers. Much of this process took place when the C-O ought to have been writing her Friday blog. And now she has bribed me to cover her patootie in that regard. Instead of napping, I am earning my bits of leftover salmon.
I’ve only had time to skim this book, but one brief portion captured my attention and approval. It appears at the top of the C-O’s story:
Dedication
To Thea Gurns and John Blocker
Great friends and wonderful neighbors.
It is Thea who will see to my well-being while the C-O is gallivanting around Spain and Portugal, doing research for Lucinda’s story and for a new book, Dangerous Betrayals. I will credit the C-O with this much: she has excellent taste in friends.

