Taking the first few micro-steps toward certification as a therapeutic riding instructor, I’ve bumped up against a hint of the same frustration I felt with corporate America (three Fortune 100s and a pair of Fortune 500s way down on the resume page). By decree of the national certifying organization (not by fiat of the particular barn where I’m in training), riding lesson plans are supposed to adhere to SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound).

Example: In the course of a one-hour lesson, the student will ride a serpentine pattern of five cones at the sitting trot twice without knocking over or missing any cones. Assuming the student can manage the sitting trot and do some steering (neither is as simple as you might think), this goal probably qualifies as specific, measurable, achievable and so forth.

Criticism of the SMART goal approach usually leans toward its tendency to reward plodding and complacency. If every goal is achievable and relevant–no moonshots, no frolics, no experimental products–many opportunities for growth and positive momentum will be lost. We will tend to set goals that are “in the bag,” or nearly so, lest we risk failure (cue scary music). In reality, this spiffy management heuristic often actually undermines good performance rather than enhances its likelihood. We “successfully” aim low over and over again when asked to set SMART goals.

But Grace, you say, pie in the sky, “I  had a good time with my pony,” isn’t going to result in a lot of progress either. These are riding lessons, not riding frolics.  Oh, fair enough, but SMART goals have no basis in science when applied to physical activity. They were the brain child of a management consultant who saw that vague goals in a business context could result in wheel-spinning and lack of accountability. He meant well, he had a good point.

And now we have hundreds of peer reviewed studies proving that if the aim of his methodology was to inspire improved performance, his methodology seldom works as intended, and often has the opposite result.

We’re still using his methodology. We are still using, even insisting on, a lot of bogus methodologies.

Public school teachers are supposed to develop lesson plans that incorporate different learning styles, when in fact, the myth of learning styles (myth is the American Psychological Association’s term) can be detrimental to effective teaching. Not-for-profits are still politely handing out the Myers-Briggs personality “test” at the annual off-site when that too has no basis in science whatsoever.

I am very lucky, because the instructors and mentors at my barn clearly grasp that there are prescribed rubrics from the national organization, and we respectfully comply with them and grasp what they are trying to achieve. And then there is a child who just wants to enjoy an hour with a dear old pony, and with a little ingenuity and determination, the two agendas can be complementary. All good!

But I realize as I consider this topic, that part of the reason I never climbed corporate ladders very well–at Fortune 100s, not for profits, or anywhere in between–is my fear of the kind of collective inertia that propagates myths, fads, and out-dated models. It’s hard enough for me to give up my own biases and wrong-headed notions (what very few I have, right?). I don’t have the chops to deal with treasured ignorance of institutional proportions.

I am not the person who in a group context can say the emperor’s tushie is showing, so I just tend to avoid empires as much as I can.

How do you cope with situations where the group is on the wrong path and content to remain there? Do you leave the group, back up a few steps, mutter to your besties? Say nothing and swerve the issue?

PS: The first batch of e-ARC’s will go out/has gone out this weekend for A Gentleman of Unreliable Honor. If you’d like one, email me at graceburrowes@yahoo.com and let me know what device you read on. I can’t send files to everybody who asks, all the time, but I will get out as many as I can.

We have abruptly entered my favorite time of year–autumn. Maryland might still get some hot days, but those are likely to be outliers now that we have less sunlight. Nights are down in the fifities or cooler for the foreseeable, which suits me Just Fine.

As reliably as I lose energy and mood in summer, I get it back in the fall, and I’ve pondered why this should be. Maybe I store up enough Vitamin D by the end of summer to feel a little better? Maybe I sleep better in cooler nights. Maybe the length of daylight suits my circadian rhythm, or all of the above.

I also think a significant benefit to summer’s end is greater quiet. At least in my neighborhood, we aren’t mowing grass, bush-hogging, making hay, weed whacking, doing road work (why does this always involve jack hammers?), or blaring truck radios at nearly the rate we do in early summer. I don’t have to keep fans roaring, and if I do turn on a mini-split for some air movement or heat, it’s much quieter than a fan or AC.

I suspect I am particularly sensitive to noise, but too much of it is bad for us. Excessive noise has been linked to hearing loss (no surprise), and it also negatively impacts heart disease, Type II diabetes, sleep disturbances, stress levels, mental health, attention deficits, learning delays, and birth weight. Danish researchers have linked excessive noise to an increased likelihood of dementia, which ought to be enough to make anybody turn down the volume.

Maybe my appetite for quiet is why I’m drawn as an author to rural historical settings: They were quiet. Think of those first moments of a power outage, when you are immediately aware that the lights have gone out. You also notice–albeit fleetingly–that the fridge isn’t humming, the florescent lights aren’t buzzing, the washing machine and dryer are silent, the heater/AC/fans/streaming/playlist are all muzzled too. That’s the world Lord Julian and the Windhams live in. That much quiet.

No wonder those folks could write wonderful poems and stirring declarations and letters we still quote today. They had big, deep quiet to boost their focus and concentration, to calm their hearts, and settle their immune systems. Maybe quiet was one of their super powers, did they but know it. It’s one theory, anyway.

Of course, they also had backward medicine, backward laws, and lacked a lot of truly lovely mod cons, but if I could get me some more good old-fashioned profound quiet, I’d take it.

Is there some aspect of life 200 years ago that you wish we had more of today?

So there I am, in the passenger seat on my first ever ride-share app experience, dreading the dentist appointment that awaits me (it went fine). Within five minutes of me getting into the car, the driver and I agree the ride share business model is disgraceful. All the risk is on the the driver and the passenger, but the app is keeping at least half the revenue, if not more.

Boo, hiss, wurra-wurra. My driver soon told me that the only reason he took the ride–one way, with a pick up fifteen miles into the countryside–was because his acceptance rate would suffer if he turned it down, and he’d be penalized for not taking the crappy rides. This of course, got all my Big Brother Needs A Time Out leanings fired up, and from there the discussion went on to how my driver came to the US a little over a year ago.

He was absolutely, 100 percent legally admitted here, along with his wife and two small children, but as his country had no active US embassy, obtaining the visas he was promised by the US government meant illegal border crossings, illegally re-entering his own country, and months of living at risk, while losing his life savings and walking an unimaginable tightrope of mistrust, suspicion, and risk.

But he and his little family made it here, in large part due to sheer courage and persistence, and in some small part due to luck (speaking five languages might have helped too). He’s working his tail off, as is his wife, and they regard themselves as a success story–as do I. What is more American than overcoming the odds, starting fresh, and building a dream to hand on to your children?

Where my driver came from, I would not be allowed to read in public, much less publish books, much less go to the dentist without an adult male escort, assuming I was allowed to go to the dentist at all.

I gave that guy a mighty cash tip, because the app lies about all tips going to the drivers. Less than 80% of tips through the app go to the drivers. GRRRR (though, yes, I know, I might have fallen for the biggest serving of baloney dished out thus far in history… but I don’t think so). I got out of the car 45 minutes later having substantially revised my opinion about ride share apps.

They are a horrible business model, exploitative, invasive, blah, blah, blah…. but the experience I had with that driver was wonderful. He distracted me from my pre-appointment anxiety, delivered a swift kick in the behonkis to my vast cultural privilege, and gave me a timely re-adjustment of perspective on what even legal immigration can look like in the US.

I dealt with the dentist appointment from a humbler, less egocentric place than I would have otherwise. I was reminded that the world is full of good, kind people, who–even in the midst of adversity–are honorable, considerate, and well meaning. The ride-share-app business model still stinks in my humble, but as trips to the dentist go, that one will long remain my favorite.

Has life ever presented you with an unplanned redirection of your outlook? A detour that led to a worthy destination? I’m already building my ARC list for A Gentleman of Unreliable Honor, so do chime in with your comments.

My house is old by American standards, a log cabin that dates back at least 180 years. The upside is, the basic bones are sturdy. With reasonable care, this dwelling should still be standing in another 180 years. The downsides are legion.

Nothing is plumb, a lot is out of code. Maintenance is neverending, and replacing parts installed thirty years ago invariably results in jury-rigging what has already been Rube Goldberged three times over. My neighbor was kind enough to attempt such an operation on the wall mounted heater in my kitchen. The electrician who did the replacement work had not tended to the aesthetics at all.

My neighbor figured we could frame the heater with bead board and improve the look significantly for very little cost. He got to work and found that, welp, the general approach was valid, but the little bead board frame thickness was enough to create a gap where the juice was turned on and off, and…

As he’s describing this workaround to the jury-rig to the do-over, I about come unglued. My hamster wheel starts going at warp speed. His simple plan had been too simple, and I must have heat in the kitchen (frozen pipes no fun, burning wood no good for the planet), and why wouldn’t he anticipate that moving the contacts farther apart would be a problem, and I am going to explode with upset…

His ultimate fix was simple: Pull the whole box the heater sits in a quarter inch forward inside the wall. The contacts will touch, the appearance will be the same as if the box wasn’t pulled forward a bit, all good. But there I was, going into hyperdrive, telling him to just pack up his tools and abort, abort, abort…

Fortunately, my neighbor is a kind, patient man, and he gave me the time and space to calm down and sort myself out. I knew I was egregiously and badly mis-reacting, but the sense of upset was very real. Something was going on with me.

What in the world could be… and it hit me: I’m getting a tooth pulled this week, and that after having a major filling repair, a new crown, and a pile of “stuff in your mouth” diagnostics earlier this month. I’ve already had eight teeth pulled–four when I was a kid to “make room” for braces (which turned out to be the exact wrong thing for my mouth), and my wisdom teeth. I had braces for five years, and every single appointment resulted in significant pain. I dread the dentist (understatement font).

And I dread this tooth extraction, because it’s different. This tooth has to go, after a root canal, because it’s done. It cannot be saved. Doesn’t hurt, still works, but doc says it has to go. Evidence of intermittent infection. Warranty expired, no replacement parts available (though we might do an implant). I am scared of the procedure, scared of having to use my first ever ride share app, and scared to think my tooth is a just harbinger of a lot of changes to come.

So I nearly lost my marbles because the guy trying to do me a home improvement favor had to rethink his approach by a quarter inch.

I am that good at hiding my own upset from myself. If you’d asked me, I would have said all this dental work was a nuisance–and it’s not fun–but I would not have acknowledged that helplessness, incompetence, feebleness, dependence, and even death were thumping on my composure that hard. This is the year I qualified for Medicare, and that… Medicare is for doddering old people, isn’t it? This is the year when significant weight loss has resulted in a very wrinkled appearance in places that were never wrinkly before.

Maybe this hasn’t been such an easy year (so far), and all of that upset and anxiety got stuffed into a quarter-inch gap, and I nearly didn’t see it.

Have you ever stashed an upset almost out of sight? Gone into hyperdrive over a minor speed bump only to realize, on reflection, that you’ve been managing a roller coaster?

(PS… Lord Julian’s fourth tale, A Gentleman in Pursuit of Truth, has recently joined the audio book offerings on the web store.)

I can well recall two little pieces of paper taped to the inside of my dad’s bedroom closet door. One said, “Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp.” (This baffled me as a kid. My dad was old and bald. To whom could he have been giving fashion advice?) The other said, “Can I do without, fix what I’ve got, or use something else?”

That my smart and serious Dad had to resort to asking himself a question like that caught my interest. On the one hand, he clearly sought a dapper appearance. On the other, he disapproved of unnecessary spending. His question–Can I do without, fix what I’ve got, or use something else?–was a guardian angel defending him from the error of wasting money.

I have since kept my nose in the wind, sniffing the breeze for useful questions. “What is the problem we are trying to solve?” can cut through a lot of squabbling and subtext or illuminate mis-matched agendas in a group. “What is the smallest, easiest step I can take in the direction I want to go?” can get me off my duff when I’m feeling daunted and despairing.

I had occasion to think about my trove of useful questions when I recently attended a presentation by Adrienne Freeland about a program that combines horsemanship education with learning about grief. The pairing is unusual, but according to program participants, highly beneficial to those who’ve lost a loved one.

I wondered when I read the marketing description for Adrienne’s presentation what could have inspired her to blend these two apparently distinct circles? The answer is… a “dreadful” experience in a grief counseling situation. Adrienne had sustained yet another loss in a life overly full of bereavement, and had signed herself up for a program dealing with loss of a loved one.

The program convened in a musty courthouse basement, on rickety, mismatched chairs, gathered around a folding table. She endured the first session, then asked herself, “Could I put together something better than this?” and got a resounding yes for an answer.

Her story resonated with me for the way her deep disappointment became a catalyst for action. I can point to any number of authors whose writing careers started in disappointment. There I was, depending on one of my desert island keeper authors to take me away from a particularly stressful phase of my life, when I got out the new release I’d been saving for a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency moment.

The book was a howling dud (to me. I’m sure it sold splendidly). I was soooo disappointed.

“Can I do better than this?” My answer was not a resounding yes, but it was positive enough that within a few years, I could support myself with the results. So I now include in my collection of useful questions, “Ok, I’m disappointed. Maybe bitterly disappointed. Could I do a better job than this person did? How? What would set my mousetrap apart? What is my disappointment telling me about how to achieve a better outcome? How can my disappointment inspire me?”

Has disappointment ever inspired you to take on a challenge and get it done right?

I’ve sent out my first batch of Advanced Reader Copy files for The Mysterious Marquess (and the web store ebook and Amazon print version are already available), but if you’d like an ARC, email me at graceburrowes@yahoo.com. If I have any ARCs left, I’ll send one along.

One of the many things I love about growing older is that I occasionally stumble into situations where I can combine skills and experience gained in different parts of my life.

Fr’instance, people who ride horses competitively occasionally put together what is called a musical freestyle or kur. This involves choreographing a mounted routine to music, such that your horse performs a series of required movements, set to the music of your choosing in the pattern you devise. The results, when they go well and you are among the best in the world, can look something like this.

Well, holy Ned, Batman. I have a degree in music, I accompanied dance classes at the piano for several busy years, and I love me some horse riding. The few times I’ve taken a swing at creating a musical freestyle have been great fun.

Similarly, I love to write fiction, and I love horses. When I can build a horse and rider relationship into a story, I am having big fun. Lord Julian better be careful, because he and Atlas are buds, and I foresee a possible horse thief in their future… Oh nos!

I love languages, and flowers, and children, and beasts, and trees… and any time I can bring these loves together, I get a boost. What occurs to me at this later stage of life, though, is that to develop more than a passing fondness for my various interests, I’ve had to do some deep diving, and then move on. If I’d stayed on that piano bench chopping classical piano repertoire into eight measure phrases for the benefit of the Ballet II class, I would probably never have learned about musical freestyles.

If I’d dodged motherhood, my understanding of children might still be well informed, but it would come from a narrower perspective. If I’d never taken on flower-erizing my own property, I would not grasp quite as easily why deer who nom-nom all the sunflowers in a single night are justification for profanity (they got my first foray into grapes too, the miserable blighters).

If I’d never taken off my grant and proposal writing hat, I would not have had the time or energy to write fiction, because grant and proposal writing consumes all in its path.

To get to a place where I can enjoy combining and synergizing my skills and interests, I had to reach later life, and I had to do a fair bit of letting go and moving on. The reward for moving on is that I can resurrect my enthusiasms in a new context, and keep more of the joy without having to also take on the narrow focus and intensity of earlier life.

Has life ever given you an opportunity to combine interests and abilities? Have you ever moved on from one skill set only to call it back into active duty years later?

If you ride horses long enough, you hear the parable of the thirteenth rabbit, usually to explain why an otherwise steady, reliable mount lost his little horsey marbles over “nothing.” The story goes something like this:

You’re riding along on a familiar trail and a bunny darts across the path. Your horse, who can’t see very well at ground level, stops short, maybe hops a bit, and is reluctant to go forward. You gently convince this half-ton prey animal that what he half-saw was not a copperhead or horse-eating demon, but rather, “just” a rabbit. Your horse minces forward, but he is built by evolution to accelerate away from threats much faster than his system decelerates when the threat has been resolved.

When, five minutes later, another rabbit cuts from the undergrowth, your horse hops again, snorts again, and halts abruptly. You pat him. “Silly horse. It’s another rabbit. Stop trying to mess with me.”

Except the horse is not trying to mess with the rider. The horse never regained the “all quiet” level of functioning he enjoyed before the first rabbit disturbed his peace. Adrenaline, cortisol, and heart rate all remain elevated, and rabbit No. 2 elevates them further as does rabbit No. 3.

At some point, the same stimuli that caused only a stop and hop, if compounded, causes a full horsey meltdown.

I tell you this story not because I expect you be on horseback when the thirteenth rabbit crosses the trail, but because my house has been hopping-bunny central this summer. The well pump and tank needed replacement–both at the same time. My ancient Prius flipped me the oil light and the tire pressure sensor light the same day. I busted a tooth and in the course of getting that repaired was told I need a crown and also an extraction.

The computer died, and figuring out how to plug in the back up hard drive has a been lunar landing. Various pets have had emergent issues (RIP Gus), and for reasons known only to demented laprines, I decided to write my first holiday mystery this summer. Ho-ho, uh-oh.

Each of these challenges is manageable. This is all, as my daughter says, “life life-ing as usual.” But cram them all together, with no time in between to find my balance, and I’m about ready to start bucking and bolting.

Fortunately, this is not my first trail ride, and I know that a good dose of domestic solitude works wonders on my equilibrium. Give me a couple days at home without human interruptions (plumbers in the basement are an interruption), and I will calm way down. Hand me some good books for my end of day reading hour, and I will start to relax. Give me the authority to organize my days at home according to what I find important (not necessarily what is urgent), and my breathing slows.

These things–good books, autonomy, solitude on the one patch of ground I own–get me out of the yellow alert zone, and I can have all of them if I’ll just exhibit some patience and planning. If I cannot have them, though, my limit drops to three rabbits, and one of those is imaginary.

How do you regain your calm in the midst of overwhelm? Three commenters will go on my ARC list for The Mysterious Marquess.

I subscribe to a very few newsletters, among them Dense Discovery. This is a weekly dose of graphic design, tech skepticism, and climate awareness leavened with grace, warmth, and humor.

One feature of Dense Discovery that I particularly enjoy is the Worthy Five, which asks five questions of an individual whose biography might be “graphic design survivor and mother of twins….” or, “cartographer and bread baker.” The emphasis is not on what the contributor has accomplished, but on what they’ve learned along the way. One week’s worthy five might be an interesting quote, a worthwhile podcast, a great recipe, a light bulb concept, and a website that is truly worth a visit.

Treasures picked up along the way are shared in one or two sentences with fellow wayfarers around the digital campfire. It’s helpful, great fun, and highly personal to each contributor. I got to thinking about that notion of light bulb concepts as it applies to my own experience.

One insight that has cut across many of my domains is the distinction between expressive language skills and receptive language skills, and how the people who talk the best game might actually be deficient when it comes to the other side of the coin. What do I mean by this?

An example: I’m sitting in a big session at a writer’s conference listening to a Top Dawg expound about book marketing. She’s confident, she’s citing data, she’s poised and relentlessly articulate, even has a few funny asides. Then somebody who is just a regular dawg asks a question, and gets a beat of silence in response followed by a pivot to a pitch for the presenter’s next session or marketing book, or some other non-answer. This scenario is not unusual.

Somebody who talks a great game doesn’t necessarily have the receptive language chops that a much less flashy or “successful” person in the same field might bring to the table. The big dawg might struggle to comprehend what you’re telling her, to make sense of symbolism and metaphor, to integrate old and new information, to pick up on subtext and body language. They can send brilliantly, but they frequently drop the ball when it comes to receiving.

As glib as they are, as confident as they seem, their human insights are often limited. Precisely because they are so readily affirmed for their expressive skills, they are likely unaware of their shortcomings.

Once I caught onto this pattern, I spotted it everywhere–in publishing, in the courtroom, in the social services hierarchy (especially as you progress up that hierarchy), and in myself. I have to work hard at reflective listening, I can be impatient with people who can’t defend their opinions with facts. I do love to prose on for thousands and thousands of words, though. Ask me anything about writing a book and then try to get me to hush later the same day.

Have you collected personal insights into human nature? Relationships? Dealing with difficult people? A worthy one or two? Do share!

PS: Lord Julian’s third mystery, A Gentleman in Challenging Circumstances, is now available as an audio book.

I am putting this blog on hiatus for most of July in part because in this end of June/early July transition, I scheduled myself back-to-back weeks of (for me) high activity. This past week was five straight days of riding camp (kids on ponies, what could be more wonderful?), and next week I will be a camper on a pony. (We’d better get to paint rocks, too, just sayin’).

With a few other logistical planets refusing to conveniently leave or slow their orbits, I am in the middle of what I call a compression phrase. Life should ease up and simplify in a week or two, but I also know that I take longer to bounce back from exertion of any kind than I used to. If I was up at 5 am for nine out of ten consecutive mornings, I will need more than one day to get back to more and better sleep.

If I was out in the heat for nine out of ten days, I will be heat-zonked for more than a day, no matter how much I hydrate, use sun screen, and wear a hat. If my step count averaged 15k per day… and so forth.

But just now today–the one day out of ten when I don’t have to be anywhere or do much of anything–I am stockpiling as much rest and refreshment as I can. This has involved a day of solitude (so far, fingers crossed…). A day to stay home and not set bottom in driver’s seat or foot off home turf. A day when I can wear my jammies and flip-flops until noon (so stylish with my writing-day compression socks). A day when I can spend hours just reading my current Lord Julian work in progress (still have to write the denouement). I can drink three cups of de-caf tea to slowly, slowly get my engine turning over as I start the day at the computer.

By way of reward for a week well done and another challenging week on deck, I have busted out my stash of special occasion Highland Chocolatier’s Sao Tome dark chocolate truffles. This evening, I will probably go on a deadheading spree among the daisies, roses, and cone flowers. I should scrub the floors soon–nothing like humidity for making dirt stick to floors–but today is not that day. (Tomorrow might be.)

I could use several of these re-charging days back to back, but right now, I only get the one, and I am loving it. When I report for duty early tomorrow morning (duty I signed up for, which involves getting breakfast served to a bunch of horses), I will do so fortified by my version of a lovely day.

What is your version of a lovely, re-charging day after enduring a challenging schedule? To one commenter, I’ll send $100 Vera Bradley e-gift card.

PS: Look for my next blog post around July 20th or 27th. I’ll post about it on social and in my news feed, and send out a newsletter thereabouts. Until then, happy summer, happy reading, and may you all enjoy plenty of wonderful days!

I’m coming down the home stretch with the first draft of A Gentleman of Unreliable Honor. This will be Lord Julian’s sixth adventure and once again, our hero will be told to take his clues and get lost just as he’s growing certain more is at stake than missing ear bobs. Why am I so bent on inflicting on his lordship rejection of his sleuthing, the very thing he does best?

The answer is pretty simple: I want to hit him where it hurts, a lot.

When the last horse that I leased (dear old Santiago) went literally out to pasture, I cast around for another riding situation. Nobody I asked was interested in adding me as a student to their lesson program when I am not keen to buy another horse, I no longer have any interest in showing/competing, and I don’t care to clinic with the big names. My ambition is and was  to continue fostering a connection with a horse, period.

Buck and Grace, both of us about age 14

Barn doors were all but shut in my face as I attempted to find a way to do that, and man, that hurt. “Before I played the piano, baked brownies, or wrote in a journal, before anything else, I was a horse girl,” says me.

I practically memorized the World Book Encyclopedia article on horses. The only thing I taught myself to draw was the profile of a horse. Every year for my birthday and Christmas, I asked for a horse, and when my Barbie had no horse of her own, I stole my brother’s Johnny Quest horses for her to ride.

Horses helped me distinguish myself from a lively heap of accomplished siblings. Horses helped me move away from home as an adolescent, because to spend time with my noble steed, I bunked in with my godparents and their offspring for days at a time. Horses were how I dealt with pretty serious depression in my mid-thirties, and how I formed a lot of those middle-distance, low-stress relationships that can yet be a source of comfort and support on a bad day.

Stretch and Grace
Both of us middle-aged

Horses have been a lifeline between me and my daughter. And those… those people who gave me the bum’s rush were trying to convince me that I wasn’t a horse girl any more? That my horse girl identity had reached its expiration date?

I think not. Hence I knocked on the door of a therapeutic riding program whose motto is, “Love, Trust, Respect.” The experience of being rejected though, of being told I was surplus to requirements, not fit for duty, no longer welcome in a milieu I’d moved in for decades, stuck with me.

Lord Julian has turned to solving mysteries as a lifeline back to dignity, self-respect, and a valued place in society, however marginal. When he’s told to run along before his efforts bear fruit, he’s cut to the quick. Skills he risked his life to develop, lessons learned the hard-and-dangerous way, contributions he’s uniquely suited to making, and he’s supposed to run along?

Delray and Grace,
both of us having fun (I hope)!

He can’t. He can’t and he won’t, because he is a sleuth. It’s not a hobby, not diversion, not a job. It’s who he is.

Have you ever been told to take your hard-earned wisdom and sweat equity and just run along? Have you been tempted to take your sold gold marbles of experience and go home? To one commenter, I’ll send a $100 Amazon gift card (or Apple, Kobo, or B&N if that’s how you roll).

PS: I’ll be putting the blog on hiatus for a few weeks in July, because his lordship has some Christmas sleuthing to do, and I need to get cracking on that tale (along with a few other projects)!