December 2023
Another year has come and is darned near gone. Years seem to fly by faster the older I get. 2024 should be about 20 minutes long. It’s difficult to write an entire book, must less two entire books, in 20 minutes but I’ll strive to achieve the goal. The times have finally caught up with our local newspaper, the Roswell Daily Record. Truth to tell, it’s not much of a newspaper being light on local news and rife with typos, etc. Still, it was delivered five days/week, and it contained a crossword puzzle, a jumble puzzle and a word-search. Those three things are the reason I subscribed to the paper when I moved here 26 years (aaaarrrrgh!) ago. I used to do the Pasadena Star News and the Los Angeles Times crossword every morning before work, but that was then. This is now, and the Roswell Daily Rag is changing its delivery to Sunday, Wednesday and Friday only. And there will be no more Sunday funnies! That last part is just cruel. From the time I was old enough to sit on the arm of an easy chair and listen, my father read the funnies to us. And I still read the funnies. The Record is not changing their subscription rates, either. We’re supposed to go online to read the news. I don’t want to go online to read the news, dang it. However, the newspaper kerfuffle brought to mind an interesting family story. My mother was the youngest kid in her family. She was born in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1913, which was one year after New Mexico was admitted to the Union. That means she was the only one of her family to have been born in the state of New Mexico. All the others were born in New Mexico Territory. That’s not the interesting family story. Sorry. Got distracted. Anyway, my uncle Jesse Lee Wilson (everybody called him Red) had a newspaper delivery route when he was a little kid. He’d ride his bike to the RDR offices, fold his papers in the prescribed manner (which made a little square out of them) and proceed to heave newspapers at subscribers on his route. One day, when the big headline of the day was about Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Red noticed an error in one of the more prominent ads. He raced his bicycle back to the RDR HQ, ran into the office and hollered, “Stop the presses!” This happened in 1922, and it tickled Red until the day he died. The ad was for a laundry in town, and it was supposed to say TEN SHIRTS FOR A DOLLAR. Unfortunately, the typesetter left out the R in shirts. I really liked my uncle Red, although he was kind of a holy terror from all the accounts I’ve heard of him. I only saw him a few times in my life and he was funny. And how many kids do you know who have had a legitimate reason to shout “Stop the Presses”? By the way, the editorial prowess of the Roswell Daily Record hasn’t changed a whole lot since 1922. In dog news, Scrappy (who was offered to me about 14 years ago as an emaciated dachshund puppy and who turned out to be an emaciated Chihuahua puppy, making them two-thirds correct) fell out of bed and hurt himself. I was hoping he’d only strained or sprained something (although I know from personal experience there’s no such thing as just as sprain) and that he’d get better. When he was still limping the following day, I took him to the vet. I was quite worried because Scrappy is old, spindly and looks incredibly fragile. The vet determined he had broken a metacarpal in his right front paw. So the vet, who is a wonderful person and whom I hope never retires (Dr. Charles Smith, DVM, Roswell, NM), created a splint made of folded-over cloth bandages. Then he taped the splint to Scrappy’s leg. That didn’t make Scrappy very happy, but he couldn’t put any weight on that leg anyway. Here’s Scraps. He gets his splint off next Tuesday, and I’m sure he’ll be all well and happy again, even if he is still old, frail and spindly (I can relate).
In other almost-news, a woman from Sullivan Entertainment in Ontario, Canada, got in touch with me to ask who owned the film and TV rights to my Daisy Gumm Majesty books because they had “caught our attention.” Whelp, after I recovered from my faint, I looked up Sullivan Entertainment and discovered they were a legitimate media company. I tried not to get my hopes up because what I laughingly call my writing career hasn’t been chock-a-block with good news and money. Still, she got in touch with me, you know? My luck, however, ran true to form, and I got another email about a week and a half later in which she wrote: “I just wanted to reach out to say, thank you again and we're grateful for the chance to read your Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery Series! Unfortunately, after careful review, the team decided the Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery Series is not the right fit for what we're looking for right now. We truly appreciate your time and talent and wish you all of the best.” Even though I’d expected it, it was a blow. Sniffle. I’ll try to survive. By the way, Sullivan’s rejection letter reads precisely like the rejection letters one gets from book publishers. I should have saved all of mine and wallpapered the bathroom with them. But no. Doing that would be surrounding myself with negativity and I have plenty of that on my own without any help from others. Okey-dokey, now’s the time to see whose names Bam-Bam has plucked from his special contest doggie dish. Have I ever told you guys about Bammie? You know he was a rescue, right? Well, he came from a puppy mill in Big Spring, Texas, and he never quite learned how to be a dog. He’s still scared to death of men and, while he likes being petted, he’s terrified of being picked up. Bammie has lived with me for probably 13 years now, and he still can’t bear being picked up. So he’s not a lap dog unless I force the issue, which I don’t generally do. You might recall that I had a scare with Bam-Bam a couple of months ago when he was sick. Turned out his liver wasn’t functioning properly. I was scared to death he’d have to be put down, but (again) Dr. Smith saved the day and the dog. Now Bammers eats Royal Canin Hepatic dog food (at $120/case from Chewy) and gets a Prednisolone tablet every other day. He’s now fit and healthy, although he too is elderly. I realized not long ago that my youngest dogs (Jazzy and Cookie) are both nine years old. Where does the time go??? Sorry. Got distracted again. I’d blame it on old age, but I’ve always been like this. Anyway, the winners of Hollywood Angels are Carol Wright (Kindle copy) and Jeanne Sheats and Vickie Shaw, both of whom will receive paperbacks. I’ll get them to you as soon as I can, ladies. I actually cleaned out my office closet, primarily because I knew I’d bought a box of envelopes for books a while back, and I was right. The box of envelopes was buried under two dead printers and who knows what-all else? Whew! Um… I have no idea what to give away at the end of December, but if you’d like to have one of my books, lemme know and I’ll toss your name into Bam-Bam’s special contest doggie dish. I can easily give away Kindle and Nook copies, and I have quite a few paperbacks here, but not all of them. I have two bookcases full of books I’ve written. There are zillions of them! So why ain’t I rich? Never mind. Okay, so I’m working on Mercy’s next adventure, Celluloid Angels. I’ve been writing at it pretty steadily, but I couldn’t figure out who the villain should be. Thanks to Mimi Riser, who lives in Spur, Texas, with her husband, I now know! Thanks, Mimi! Mimi and I used to write for the same publisher, Dorchester (now defunct), and we’ve kept in touch. Her Kitchen Witch booklets are superb, so go buy them, okay? And buy a few of my books while you’re at it. If you’d like to pre-order a copy of Celluloid Angels, feel free to do so. Here’s the Kindle link:
Library Spirits, Daisy’s next romp will be published in February of 2024. Here’s a Kindle link if you’d like to pre-order it:
Please remember that most authors are fragile and neurotic and live close to the edge of… Well, I don’t know what, but we truly need people to like our work. So if you do like one of my books (or one of anyone else’s except James Patterson who doesn’t need any help), it would be extremely kind of you to leave a review (or even a number) on Amazon, GoodReads, Barnes & Noble or wherever else books can be reviewed. I’d appreciate it. Thank you. If you’re on Facebook, join Daisy Daze! We have fun there. We share fashions from the 1920s, gossip from the 1920s, movie stars from the 1920s, menus from the 1920s and all sorts of other stuff. For instance, both Daisy and Mercy have dined at Mijares, a 103-year-old Mexican restaurant in Pasadena. Mijares is still there, it’s still good, and that’s where my 60th high school reunion was held! Musso and Franks Grill also appears in the Mercy books, and it’s still around too. So are the Pantry and Philippe’s. They’re in Los Angeles, so Mercy and Ernie will go to those places occasionally. Oh! And I shouldn’t forget the Ambassador Hotel where the Cocoanut Grove was. Was, because Los Angeles in its infinite wisdom had the hotel demolished. Sheesh. Anyway, Daisy knows a kid who plays the horn in the Cocoanut Grove, but because he’s Black, he has to enter through the kitchen. You know who decided it was a sucky thing for the hotel to demand of Black entertainers? Marilyn Monroe! She said she wouldn’t go there if they made Ella Fitzgerald and other Black entertainers enter through the kitchen. Good old Marilyn. She had her problems (who doesn’t) but her heart was in the right place. Robert Kennedy was assassinated there, too, which is a rather large blot on U.S. history. He was murdered by a guy who used to be a friend of my first ex-husband’s and mine! I mean, Sirhan is the most famous graduate of John Muir High School’s class of 1963. Not something to boast about, but an interesting informational tidbit. My life seems so freaking boring when I’m living it but when I write about it, it almost sounds interesting! How weird is that? Never mind again. At any rate, the Daisy Daze Facebook page was founded by Iris Evans and Leon Fundenberger, both of whom like Daisy and Mercy. Daisy Daze is a great place for Daisy Gumm Majesty (now Daisy Gumm Majesty Rotondo) and Mercy Allcutt fans to hang out, as well as anyone who is interested in the “Roaring Twenties.” We concentrate pretty closely on the Pasadena and Los Angeles areas, because the books are set there. Daisy Daze is fun, it’s educational and if you’d like to be a member, check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/905100189878318/ If you’d like to visit my web page, here’s the link (thanks to Lyndele von Schill): Home | Alice Duncan . If you’d like to be Facebook friends, please go here: (20+) Alice Duncan | Facebook . Here’s a link to my author page at ePublishingWorks: Alice Duncan Author Page (ebookdiscovery.com) Thank you!
