The sale of the real estate in California went through – with a momentary hiccup now and again. The buyer was eager to take possession, I was ready to let it go, as I had so much of my personal wealth tied up in it and too little time, means, interest,  or inclination to do anything useful with it. So, ave, California, howdy, Texas! I’ve broken more or less even on the sale, which may be a rare and fortunate occurrence these days. I have spent some of the sale money on a new HVAC system in my current house, which was rather badly needed. The local company came and installed it all in one long sustained blitz of a job, which had four of their trucks parked on the street and in my driveway. They got it all done – the rusty and tattered remains of the old units torn out, and the new installed and hooked up and blissfully functioning in the course of one long day, from about 9:00 AM to wrapping up at 6:30 PM. When it was all done, I think we were nearly as tired as the install crew.  But we have been reveling in the improved condition inside the house ever since. It is alas, still in the high eighties and low nineties at the hottest time of the day here in South Texas. With luck, we should get a whopping big credit from CPS on the electric bill, too.

I was working away all this week on the final stretch of The Quivera Trail, hiding from all the HVAC disruption in my office/room on the day that the HVAC crew was here. A number of edits to be incorporated, a good few searches of certain words to ensure that I was not over-using certain of them, another couple of searches to make sure of consistency in personal and place names, and some other stuff only of interest to other writers and editors … that’s the trouble with writing something over the space of a eighteen months or more. One looses track of minor character’s names, and place names which appear only rarely. If consistency is the hobgoblin of tiny minds, it is also the pet hobgoblin of writers and editors. I added a couple of book references to the notes, enlarged on the backgrounds of a couple characters based on or in part on real people. Quivera Trail is on track to be available in early November and officially rolled out at Weinachsmarkt in New Braunfels – and if my daughter’s car does not need extensive work in the next few days, we may be able to get a table at the Cowboy Market in New Braunfels in that same month.