And I mean that literally. My folks are building a house, and today the clearing began. I’ve just spent the past ten minutes pulling ticks off my body. If they’re in my hair, I’m sunk. I may have to pry some of the really little ones out of my thigh with a pocket knife (though someone told me today that taking a brief bath in diluted bleach will do the trick..happily, I’m not quite that desperate yet).
Despite all the work I’ve got to do (sparring with ticks, writing, staring into space and vegetating while Lou Diamond Phillips marries/saves/woos the pregnant abused runaway wife/woman/girlfriend of a coal miner/drunk/neanderthal in the Hallmark western, The Trail to Hope Rose), I finished reading another book: CHASING DARKNESS by Robert Crais. I love his Elvis Cole mysteries, and this one is just as funny and smart as the rest of them. I’ve got plenty of tests for what makes a good book, but the ultimate, the one that makes me read a story again and again, is when the characters are so compelling you wish they were real people—if nothing else but for the comfort of knowing that somewhere, somehow, those story-folk (in this case, Joe Pike and Elvis Cole) are out there in the world, doing good. If you’re interested in checking out the series, I recommend starting with the first book, The Monkey’s Raincoat.