August 2025
- Lyndele von Schill
- Aug 6
- 5 min read
Whew! It’s been a rough few months, and this one started out worse than most.
My last remaining dachshund, Bam-Bam, had to be put down on August 2nd. I’ve had wiener dogs since I was in the fourth grade. Because I’m so freaking old, I won’t be getting any more dogs. Fortunately, I still have Cookie and Peanut. But Bammie’s gone. He was a rescue (all my dogs are rescues). He came from a puppy mill in Big Spring, Texas, and he never learned how to be a dog. He came to me with a bonded partner, Bella, who might have been his mother. Bella was sweet and timid and plump. Bam-Bam was traumatized, terrified, and about as skinny as a dog can get and still be living. I’m the only human he’s ever had. He was afraid of every human who wasn’t me, and that includes a whole lot of people. After the Roswell flood last October, he, Cookie, and I were separated for five months. He was very happy to get home, and I was very happy to have him with me. He remained with me until Saturday, August 2. I’ll miss him for however long I last.
Also (my life seems to be a non-stop string of catastrophes) I have to have my right shoulder joint replaced. I’ve already had my left shoulder joint replaced, along with both hips. I wouldn’t mind having all replacement parts if I turned into the Bionic Woman, but I just keep getting more disabled. Gah. Not sure how long I’ll be incapacitated by the shoulder replacement and PT, but I expect everything will work out all right eventually.
There is actually news on the book front! I turned in Dancing Angels (way late, but it’s finished). Dancing Angels will be published in January of 2026. My fault. It was supposed to be out in June, but I hadn’t finished it yet. No cover art at this point, but feel free to pre-order it if you wish. Here is the Amazon Kindle link:
The second book news item (which I’ve mentioned before) is that I participated in a charity anthology to benefit the Altadena and Pacific Palisades Public Libraries, both of which were either damaged or destroyed in the January wildfires. The title of the anthology is To L.A. with Love, a Charity Anthology, and a whole bunch of folks contributed stories to it. I submitted a Daisy story. Most of my story takes place in the home my aunt owned in Altadena, California, which was destroyed by the fire. My family lived in that house when I was born, and over the years I stayed there about a billion times. Every home in which I grew up was burned to the ground. I’ll never get over the loss, and am glad I’m old and won’t have to witness many more climate-change catastrophes. The destruction of Altadena by fire hit me harder than last October’s flood in Roswell, New Mexico. If you’d like to contribute to help the two libraries, here’s a picture of the cover. Click on the cover to purchase it.
The third item of book news is that I’m writing Rosy Spirits in between visits to various doctors and medical facilities for MRIs and CT-scans. Rosy Spirits features the full regular cast with the addition of Daisy and Sam’s first child, Joseph Louis Rotondo. Joey’s an adorable baby, but he seems to have inherited some of Daisy’s formerly nonexistent spiritualist abilities. No one quite believes Daisy when she asserts that it was Joey who pointed out the dead body on the grounds of Busch Gardens in Pasadena. Daisy, slightly befuddled, decides to keep her baby boy’s special skills a secret for a while. She fears that if she doesn’t, her family will send her to an alienist or a lunatic asylum.
Again, I have no cover art for Rosy Spirits, but please feel free to pre-order it. Here’s the Amazon Kindle link:
If you’re interested in purchasing a copy (or copies) for other ebook platforms, check out my author page at ePublishingWorks:
These days it’s even more difficult than it used to be to make money writing books. Unless an author is Stephen King or Nora Roberts, and so few of us are, our books languish. If an author is adept at self-promotion, which I’m definitely not, s/he might get noticed. Otherwise, we get lost in the crowd of (I hate to use this description, but it’s apt) bottom-feeders. I’m of two minds (or maybe more; perhaps I’m totally schizoid) about continuing to pour so much time and effort into what appears to be a losing cause.
An example of this is the middling success of Spirits Adopted, which was published in February of this year. So far, it has received 200 reviews on Amazon.com. Big deal? Well, other books set in the 1920s are getting thousands of reviews. Perhaps they’re all better books than Spirits Adopted, but I tend to think that’s not the case. The main problem with my books is that I don’t know how to promote them, don’t want to learn, and no one else does it for me. So that’s on me, but it still makes me reluctant to carry on writing books. Writing books used to be fun. Now it’s a burden.
Been a little down lately; can you tell? The truth, however, is that my home has still not recovered from last October’s flood, all the FEMA money is gone (and maybe FEMA is, too), and I feel well and truly stuck. Not a pleasant feeling.
If you’d like to help, please buy my books. And review them! You don’t even need to write anything; just give the book a number online somewhere. Thanks. Also, if you can think of any great promotional ideas that don’t require money or much attention from me, please share them with me. Thank you.
Oddly enough, Daisy Daze, the Facebook page Iris Evans and Leon Fundenberger created as a tribute to Daisy Gumm Majesty (and Mercy Allcutt, although she came later), is growing. I suspect that’s because people are interested in the 1920s and the “roaring twenties.” It’s a fun group. We post lots of pictures and information, mostly relating to Los Angeles and/or Pasadena, California, in the 1920s and 1930s. Not sure about anyone else, but I learn a lot on Daisy Daze. If you’d like to join, just click on this link: (20+) DAISY DAZE | Facebook
If you’d like to check out my own Facebook page, click here: (20+) Facebook
If you’d like to visit my web site, click here: Home | Alice Duncan
Thanks!
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