September, 2025

Sometimes I contemplate the nature of humor, which is…I dunno… Adaptable?

 We all grow up in different spaces. I spent my first almost four years on a farm in Maine with no people other than my mother and my sister for company. When I first met human beings, they scared the living pooh out of me. So I learned that if I could make people laugh, they'd not get mad at me (this wasn't always successful). Therefore, to this day, when I talk, people laugh.

 However, humor can be fleeting. For instance, when I was in elementary school, a question on a test bade us give a three-word label for the President of the USA. It was, of course, Commander in Chief, only I couldn't think of that, so I wrote Great White Father. That isn't funny today and never should have been, but I thought it was kind of clever at the time (hey, I was 8 or thereabouts).

 When I took a geology class at Pasadena City College back in the olden days, the teacher asked us what the state fossil of California was. It is the saber-toothed cat, but I blurted out, "Ronald Reagan!" Everybody laughed. That was when Ronnie was still alive and making a nuisance (or a godlet, depending on your point of view) of himself.

My two favorite bumper stickers are...arcane? Well, maybe. The first is: STAMP OUT ROMANIAN DANCING! Anyone who has danced Romanian dances will catch on immediately. All others will wonder what the heck is so funny about that. Ah, well.

The second is: REUNITE GONDWANALAND! Okay, so Gondwanaland was a Precambrian ice bridge that broke up around 180 million years ago. This was funny in the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s. See? Told l you humor could be fleeting.

These days I talk about my ex-husbands, the first being Evil John and the second being Old Weird Robert, and people laugh. If they only knew...

 Also, people find my books funny and/or charming. Honestly, I’m not sure why. I write about terrible things: child sex-trafficking, rape, murder, incest, domestic violence, racism, poverty, abandonment, anti-gay stereotypes, bigotry, suicide, and a bunch of other horrible topics. But people think my books are funny and charming. Go figure.

 So. I don’t understand it, but I’ve finally come to grips with that fact of what I laughing call my writing career: I write like I talk, and when I talk, people laugh. I might have mentioned that my very first book was a tender, deeply heart-wrenching historical romance. The teacher who taught me how to get a book published (and it worked, by golly) had me read the first page at a get-together at the South Pasadena Public Library. So I did. I read the first line, and the audience laughed. I was dumbfounded! This wasn’t a funny book; it was…emotional. Deeply romantic. All that stuff. I was crushed. But I got over it.

 Anyhow, all that doesn’t mean anything. Just a ramble. And I have cover art for Dancing Angels! I like the colors, but that’s about it. Not sure why, but I think the person who’s supposed to be Mercy is ugly. It does show her dancing, which is good. Oh, and the release date has been changed to November 4! So it’s earlier than I thought it would be but later than it should have been because I was so slow in turning it in. Click on the cover to buy it anywhere:

Rosy Spirits is being worked on by me too. Life has been a little weird during the past several months, so I’m not writing it as quickly as I’d like, but whatever. I’m having my right shoulder joint replaced on or about October 1. Not precisely looking forward to it, but if this shoulder replacement goes like the left shoulder replacement did four or so years ago, I’ll be in a lot less pain after I recover. Joey, Daisy and Sam’s son, is only eight months old, but he’s got a personality already. He’s also a little uncanny, but he’s a sweetheart.

At present Daisy and Harold are working on costumes for a production of Hay Fever by Noel Coward at the Pasadena Playhouse, and people keep being murdered. Daisy will figure it out eventually. The Pasadena Playhouse opened in 1925, and is not merely still there, but it’s been named the State Theatre of California. Here’s a pic of the Pasadena Playhouse, outside and inside, in the early days:

Pasadena Playhouse

There’s no cover art yet for Rosy Spirits, but please feel free to pre-order it. If you click on the cover art, it'll take you to 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:

Alice Duncan - ePublishingWorks

As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, writing isn’t fun any longer. I do it to make money, and that’s becoming more and more difficult. I stink at self-promotion, and nobody else does it for me, dang it. So if you’d like to help an elderly, crippled, poverty-stricken author who’s been struggling to make a living at writing for more than thirty years, please buy my books! And if you can, review them. What with AI taking over everything, I expect authors to go extinct any old day now, so maybe you can get in on the last legs of a dying art!

How dramatic, huh? Ah well…

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), continues to grow. I suspect that’s because people are finally 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!