A horseback riding concept that some students struggle with is the “return to neutral.” The idea here is that once you’ve asked your horse to do something–trot, turn, stop–and the horse shows an intent to comply with the request, stop asking. Go quiet. If you were nudging with your calves or tugging on the reins, cease. Cease applying pressure on the horse’s sides, on his mouth, on his mind. He did what you told him to, now reward him with peace and quiet (or a bit of praise) while he does his job.

For riders who have problems maintaining focus, or who have abundant physical energy, or who deal with sensory processing issues, the concept of a listening, physically passive state is hard to grasp and harder to find. Neutral is not something you can get to by “achieving.” The road to neutral has more to do with allowing, pausing, silencing, and trusting.

I can’t get to neutral on a horse who is scaring me. Nopity-nope. If Thunderbolt is dancing around, snorting, propping, and muttering bad-horsey words with his back feet, I will probably be sawing on the reins, thwopping him sideways with my leg, and muttering a few words of my own. A really accomplished rider can transcend the tantrum of the moment and ride chilly–ride without getting into a power struggle–even as they chide, discuss, or suggest to the horse that this behavior gets us nowhere.

The accomplished rider is always one instant away from neutral.

I used to find that commuting to and from the law office helped me get to neutral. The drive was familiar, mostly rural, and just long enough that I could settle my nerves and breathe. I drove in silence, without companions, and that suited me splendidly.

Now, I need time by myself at home to get to neutral, preferably entire days of it. I can be plenty busy on these days (looking at you, Joshua Penrose), but intrusions are few and quiet, and usually by email rather than a text or call. The only expectations on me are my own. Give me a few of these days every week, and I can sally forth to volunteer at the barn, tag the errands-and-appointments bases, and even (!!!) do some social meals.

Deprive me of my back-to-neutral days, though, and I am progressively easier to upset, increasingly negative, and less and less fun to be around. My mother found her back-to-neutral in long walks by the sea. Other people seek it by putting their hands in the dirt, and still others just need a good, meaty crossword puzzle. None of this makes the “official list of self-care activities” that some expert can charge us for, and that’s probably wonderful.

How do you get back to neutral, and has your strategy changed over time?

During my month off, it was my unhappy privilege to attend the funeral of friend’s father. I’d known Thomas for years, and when I bought this house, Thomas was my first yard guy. He’d show up every spring, bring order to chaos, and gently argue Mother Nature into semi-submission year after year.

And all the while, I was raising my kid, running my law practice, and trying to keep house, with indifferent success on all fronts. As I was reflecting on Thomas’s role in my life, it occurred to me that he wasn’t like all those other guys.

The well guy, the firewood guy, the roof guy, the exterminator guy, the window guy, the painter guy, the yard guys who came after him… they all sized me up as a single working mom with a decent income but too much on her plate, and they adjusted their pitches accordingly. I came to expect it.

Before we talked price, the guy of the moment would assure me that Johnson grass will be the death of civilization and the harbinger of enormous fines from the weed control officer (whom I have never once seen, much less met in 35 years at this location). The barn roof was about to collapse. That Norway maple was due to fall on the house (and on my  bedroom in particular) after the next heavy rain. The well pump was so far out of warranty (because I don’t buy warranties in the usual case) that oh, geez, lady. You’d better fill the bathtub  now.

First, they’d try to scare me. Then they’d start dancing around the price, looking for any excuse to prep me for extortion. The Johnson grass was growing along the road (where it has more sunshine and irrigation than in the yard, duh). Always tricky, mowing along the road, because you have to–you know–look where you’re going. And firewood is getting harder to find despite all the windfall in recent years and the fact that fewer people even want firewood, because… well it just is.

Then they’d quote me some exorbitant number, and start adding to it. Well, if you want us to take the brush and logs away after we cut down the tree, that’s going to be extra. If you want weed whacking in addition to mowing, extra. Windows that are sealed, extra…

Maybe these guys treated all of their customers to the same song and dance, maybe women plying these trades are twice as sly about it, but I doubt it. I was fair game, and these tradesmen were happy to intimidate, mislead, do crappy work, and expect cash (though a check would be acceptable for the deposit), because they knew my back was to the wall.

And I bet you every one would mournfully shake is his head about all the angry woman out there these days.

And part of the reason I was so angry (and maybe am so angry?) is because Thomas, my first yard guy, was not like that at all. He was hard-working, took pride in what he did, asked a reasonable price, never shirked, never tried to make routine property maintenance into a grand opera, and was happy with sincere thanks and timely payment.

Thomas was, in a quiet, dependable, humble way, a good guy and my tribute to him will be to carp less about all the shysters and buffoons I’ve crossed paths with, and to more vocally celebrate the good guys. They are a little harder to see because they don’t make a constant, inner-toddler-channeling fuss, but they are there, they are bodaciously important to world peace, and I am grateful for them.

Come across any good guys in your travels?

I had been writing for a few years when I crossed paths with an old hand at the published author game, and she warned me: Don’t be too quick to quit that day job. You might find your productivity actually drops when you do.

I wanted to dismiss this as the sour grapes of somebody who lacked the self-discipline to stay focused on the writing, except nope. This warning reflected how a day job toggles the conscious writing on/off switch. From 5 am to 7 am, you write, then you head off to the day job, where all you can do for your work in progress is think about the writing, or–more helpfully–banish the writing from your awareness. The day job also provides a thousand little pings of inspiration, such as a peculiar word picked up in a meeting, or forced immobility in traffic that reminds you how easy it would be to send tempers flaring if a coach horse turned up lame.

My writing productivity didn’t drop when I closed the law office, but it didn’t go up either. About that time, I ran across another old hand at the writing game, and their lament was, “I have picked all the low hanging fruit. I wrote all the clever openings and brilliant twists I’d stored up ten books ago. My inner critic has become more and more discerning, and with every book, I use up fascinating factoids or little character quirks that I can’t use again. This is getting harder, not easier!”

And I had to agree. Yes, I am a better writer 100 books on, but I’m also a fussier writer, and a writer who is less likely to break the rules out of sheer exuberant ignorance. I’ve unconsciously absorbed reader preferences and reactions, I’ve attended a zillion “Top Ten Mistakes” workshops, and my imagination is constrained by what I’ve learned about “good writing.”

That said, a hard writing day is better than almost any lawyering day, by my lights. Even so, I think about how to keep the joy percolating, how to entertain readers with the best yet, how to twist the twists and the tropes.

I was pondering that quandary when I received my first “Images from Maine” newsletter from photographer Peter Ralston. I can’t find a web link for that particular newsletter (#235), but he recounts popping out of bed early one recent summer morning, putting his canoe into the creek, and just paddling out into the day. Lovely phlox growing along the bank, friends ambling around the dog park, a new acquaintance made on the green… Peter makes the point that when he is open–a term he does not define–he doesn’t have to seek inspiration. The images, stories, and inspirations come to him.

I have a hunch that his version of open has nothing to do with knowing all the writer rules, meeting all the deadlines, and racking up the pre-orders. Openness might instead involve NOT writing, even when I can, because it’s a beautiful morning to walk down to the highway. Or maybe openness is going to the farmer’s market, just for a look see. Or sitting on the porch with the cats for that first cuppa tea, even though it’s a writing day and I’m burning daylight.

I’m fuzzy on of the specifics, but the concept of openness landed in my ever-questing imagination like a klieg light sweeping through a moonless night. Oh, yeah. THAT feeling. That curious, trusting, exploring feeling that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Maybe I need more of that, if the next hundred books are to be as joyful and interesting to write as the last hundred have been. Yeah. Maybe that.

So while the blog is on hiatus for the month of July, I will be enjoying more unstructured time, more rambles just because, and fewer games of cribbage and solitaire which are so comfy, and so, so deadly dead end.

Does the openness concept resonate with you? Is it something you’ve seen in others, or enjoyed from time to time?

This week was rough. I bit off a lot in terms of time and energy commitments, and while I wasn’t physically overtaxed, my zest for the day took a progressive hit as the week went on. By Friday, my humor, detachment, perspective, and other coping mechanisms were flagging.

And then, as I was hurrying to get set up for the morning task, somebody said the wrong thing, not to me, but to somebody I care about. Oh, that frosted my cookie and I started to go into Grace’s Supreme Court Closing Argument mode (I have never been licensed to practice before SCOTUS, of course).. The person who mis-spoke apologized to me, but then somebody else said another wrong thing, and I wasn’t done being huffy about the first exchange. I eventually tried to sort that second interaction out with the other party, “I did not appreciate when you said…” but ended up resolving nothing and probably making things worse.

The day was not done with me, because yet a third interaction went widdershins. Regarding this incident, I have some apologizing to do. I went about solving what I thought was a problem, but nope. I was barging in without authority–anybody viewing the evidence objectively would come to that conclusion–and I need to do what I can to mend fences. The road to hell and all that.

So now it’s the weekend, but the whole time I’m riding about the barnyard on my spiffy electric mower (the deck of which, I have already seriously bonked), that bad day is riding with me. I’m full of what the French call ‘the wisdom of the stairs,’ meaning all the things we woulda coulda shoulda said, that only occur to us as we’re going up to bed. I”m full of, “and another things!” and, “Why couldn’t he just admit…?” and, “They had no call to go there…”

One quality of a slower, more relaxed pace of life is that my emotional buffers aren’t as frequently cleared simply because the next thing on the agenda has rolled onto center stage. I can fret and stew more, and this is not good. My mom would say to simply put the bad day behind me, and then my dad would make her one of his universal remedy double martinis.

I don’t like martinis. So I’m left to ask myself: How can I hit re-set? How can I put that day aside, even though the issues raised are not resolved, and might not be to my satisfaction, ever? Time will help, some, but geez, I wish I could just shower off the day, take two doses of philosophical acceptance and wash them down with a humorous observation, but so far… my bad day and I are still roaring around the barn yard, mowing down all in our path, and leaving an uneven swath of chopped grass, whacked tree roots, and flying sticks in our wake.

How do you detach from an upset or disappointment? How do you convince yourself to give up, let go, or move on, or at least stop fretting?

PS: Happy to announce that Lord Julian’s fifth mystery, A Gentleman in Search of a Wife, is now available from the web store as an audio book!

I am reading a lovely little book, Your Brain on Altruism, which examines our impulse to aid and support one another. This noble urge arises in some of us (many of us) in the aftermath of disasters, when a reversion to amoral survival functioning might be more understandable.

The author, Nicole Karliss, is a health and science journalist who has had intimate and sometimes harrowing experience with California’s wildfires. As she covered one disaster after another, she was struck by the generosity of spirit that many of the fire’s victims displayed in the immediate wake of the devastation. A few turned their altruism into a vocation, because they found the sheer joy of making a meaningful contribution too fulfilling to put aside.

I dunno about wild fires–lucky me–but I know that at the horse barn, I have had a taste of group volunteering and to my shock, it has been wonderful. My basic attitude toward most groups is, they are troublesome at best and dangerous at worst. Groups make noise and commotion and intrude on one’s solitude. They go careening over the sides of cliffs on the strength of ideological inertia or because there’s a blue light special on plasma TVs in aisle four. When it comes to groups, for the most part, I’d rather not.

Clearly, I have some issues, or maybe some biases rooted in experience. In any case, at Loudoun Therapeutic Riding, one morning every week is devoted to an adaptive riding session for kids consigned to a local residential treatment facility (aka foster children). They have to earn the privilege of joining the equine program, but in truth it is a privilege to work with them. The volunteers who sign on know they are expected to make a continuing commitment, because these children have had enough of adults disappearing from their lives without notice.

So we show up, and whether staff is delayed by traffic or on hand early, we know what’s expected of us. Get out the mandala board, fill water bottles, assemble tack for the assigned horses, if there’s time we might do a pre-groom for any equines who indulged in a recent mud bath. The kids show up and we move into the next phase of the morning. We have protocols to follow unique to our program, along with inside jokes, informal routines, and a little check out ritual that can turn into an interesting postmortem,

Much of the work is something of a slog, but the bigger picture is a chance to make a real difference that I alone could not effect. A chance to develop relationships with stout-hearted people I would never have met otherwise. A chance to do collaborative problem-solving with a diverse and friendly gang who share at least some of my values. A chance to learn from others, some of whom have been at the horse game or the volunteer game or the dodgy-hip game for a very long and interesting time.

And then there’s the plain old sense of camaraderie.

I came across this wonderful experience of a group pulling together for a good cause much earlier in life–in college–but I thought that was maybe rose-colored hindsight on my part, a fluke of youth and optimism and the wonderful freedom of my pre-full-time employment years. But here I am again, enjoying a sense of community, purpose, and joy, and these are apparently very common experiences in group volunteer situations.

Have you enjoyed some overwhelmingly positive group experiences? What made them so special? What inspired you to give that group a try?

I am now the proud owner of two spendy little hearing aids that actually fit. This took some doing. When the nice man passed me over the first pair and showed me how to put them in, I told him immediately that they were uncomfortable.

“That’s like my glasses,” he said. “I hated the idea of wearing glasses and resisted and resisted, and at first, they were annoying. But now, I forget I’m wearing them.”

I’ve worn glasses since I was three years old. And part of me wanted to tell him, “This is different. I’m NOT saying the hearing aids are annoying or distracting, though they are both. I’m saying that wearing them hurts me.” Except I didn’t say that. I walked out of the shop with two smarting ears, determined not to be that whiny old bat who’s ungrateful for miraculous tech and can’t deal with an acclimation curve.

Four days later, I was a cussin’ old bat. The nice lady from the hearing aid shop front desk texted to see how things were going, and she got an earful. Both ears were seriously sore, to the point that I could not wear the dratted things at all. The scheduler got me back in there, pronto, and the same nice man explained that I had very small, twisty ear canals (the same ear canals I’d had the other six times he’d looked at them), and I needed smaller equipment.

Well, duh and a half, my dude. His cluelessness is not the point. The point is…

I know that beyond any scintilla of doubt, women’s pain is dismissed by medical professionals. If you’re a woman of color, it’s even worse. Women are frequently prescribed sedatives for the same painful symptoms in men that routinely merit analgesics. I’d told this guy I was uncomfortable and he went off on his little riff about getting used to wearing glasses. GAH.

Why did I wait for those people to call me? Why didn’t I A) straighten the man in the lab coat out on the spot, or B) call the shop 24 hours later and report a failed fitting? I know better. Any interaction with a medical professional has the potential to end with me in un-managed pain. And yet there I was, trying not to be whiny.

So I am humbled to find that I’m just another easily dismissed, hurting female–dismissed in this case, at least initially, by myself to some extent. I’m also hopeful that this very minor, easily addressed incident is instructive enough that I am not fooled again in a more serious context.

Have you been in the fool-me-once penalty box? Maybe even fool me twice but not three times? Have there been times when you had to admit, “I KNEW better!”

I’m sending out ARC files for the novella A Kiss for the Ages on Tuesday, June 10. If you don’t have a file by then, and you’d like one, email me at graceburrowes@yahoo.com and let me know which device you read on.

Buck and Grace, both of us about age 14

One of the programs at Loudoun Therapeutic Riding is called Silver Spurs. It involves bringing seniors out to the barn to enjoy time with the horses. Some of the participants are in wheelchairs, many don’t hear or see well, but they all appreciate the pleasure of time on the farm. This program has inspired me to change the prime directive given to my daughter.

Instead of finding me a nursing home that has cats when the fateful day arrives, she must find me one (with cats) that also has something like a Silver Spurs outing every so often.

I was reminded of that directive when I watched this video from Daniel Pink, in which he poses seven questions to help (young?) people find their purpose in life. One of the questions is, “What made you weird as a kid?” He’s asking after that childhood quirk or obsession that set us apart, made us lose track of time, and gave us great joy. Acing every spelling test, learning forty different tree leaves, or in my case, gobbling up everything remotely related to horses.

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

I wore saddle shoes because they were saddle shoes without having any notion where the name came from (talk about weird). I still remember my first lesson horse (Strawberry) who I rode when I was eight years old and spending a summer in Fort Collins, CO. My sister rode Sue, a pretty bay, and my brother rode Amber, the palomino (or maybe Tuffy, another bay). The first equine I owned was an old style Quarter Horse named Buck.

And all throughout my life, horses have been a good, big thing. When I hit the Slough of Despond in my mid-thirties, horses pulled me out of it. When my daughter and I had nothing else in common, we shared a love of horses. We still do!

Horses bring me joy. When I was a kid, books brought me joy too. I was always reading (easier to do when there’s no TV, and in later years, no TV on school nights). I was also outside in nature a very great deal, and much given to solitude because the only other girl near my age in that neighborhood–my sister–kinda got tired of playing Barbies with me by the time I hit elementary school (I was tired of her too, though even my Barbie was usually on a horse borrowed from my brother’s Johnny Quest).

I loved to bring my mom wildflower bouquets, and flowers still mean a lot to me (just ask the Bad Heirs). Flowers are so magical, with their bright colors, heady scents, and blend of tenaciousness (there are daffodil patches in my neighborhood that go back at least a century) and transience.

I am dwelling on these joys lately with some purpose, because early summer often sees my mood and energy take a dip. When I think about the joys that have worked for me all my life, I am reassured that the summertime blues can be dealt with (again), and that even the later stages of senescence can admit of much pleasure and delight.

What did you love to do as a kid that still brings you happiness now?

PS: Print edition of the novella A Kiss for the Ages is already on sale in anticipation of Amazon’s print price hike starting June 10.

I know a lady who has a one month old daughter and an eighteen month old son. She has her groceries delivered, though it costs a little more. No meltdowns in the produce section, no fussing with car seats in the pouring down rain. No having to pull over and produce a bottle or two lest the heavens be sundered by audible evidence of infantile hunger pangs.

Another friend reads a lot of library books but hasn’t been inside the actual library building since “before the pandemic.”

As a warp nine introvert, I need a lot of solitude. Being around people, even my favorite people in the whole world, saps my energy. And yet, solitude can become isolation, and that–for me–has downsides. When I don’t have to make small talk at the post office, when I no longer know the check-out staff at my fave grocery store by name, when the simple courtesy of holding the door for somebody carrying packages isn’t part of my day… I lose both a sense of connection to my local community and opportunities to casually accommodate that community.

If the postal clerk speaks with an accent, I have to exert myself to listen more carefully. If the checkout lady wants to maunder on about her son in Alaska, I expect myself to offer some empathy for a parent whose only child is so far away. If I let the door slam on somebody carrying too many packages, I will feel remorse for my obliviousness to a stranger’s situation. I must, in other words, accommodate agendas other than my own, and  do so as graciously as possible, because I need those people to be gracious toward me as well.

To the extent screens preserve us from the inconvenience of in-person encounters in our various village squares, screens might also be making it easier for us to dehumanize, ignore, and resent one another. Screen addiction might make it very easy to divide us from people with whom we really have much in common. This has been one of my pet theories, at least, when confronted with one of my siblings foghorning about how technology keeps us all so wonderfully connected.

I read this issue of Dense Discovery and got some insight into how my sibling and I might both be right. The jist of the newsletter and the article it cites is: Screens make it possible to stay in touch with the people we’re already close to–friends and family–and to feel connected to genuine strangers (Taylor Swift, Benedict Cumberbatch), but screens cut out that middle orbital of neighbors, casual acquaintances, and “repetitive strangers,” like the checkout ladies and Tuesday morning library patrons.

That middle band of acquaintance is where we learn tolerance, and where we get a sense of belonging not to a family or a gym, but to a society. It’s where we turn for our next good friends, and where we sometimes must turn in emergencies. The middle ground matters, in other words, and we might well be losing it to screens.

So this is me, thinking about ways to put down the screens and go for a walk, shop in person, or visit the actual, wonderful library. Are there activities you could do on a screen but prefer to handle in person? Activities you will NEVER allow into the virtual realm?

PS: For those out weeding the geraniums, enjoying the fresh air, or planning that summer vacay… Lord Julian’s ninth mystery, A Gentleman of Questionable Judgment, has officially hit the shelves!

As I was growing up, my family did not take vacations. Logistics were an issue. How do you get nine people and all their luggage into one car? How do you stop World War III from breaking out in the way-back of the station wagon? Once the big kids peeled out of formation, we did spend some summers in San Diego while my dad took sabbatical leave at UCSD or Scripps.

Those excursions were my idea of purgatory. I suspect my sainted mother would echo my sentiment. You try driving for five days each way with all those kids….

My parents did not go out on date nights either. They entertained plenty, and accepted reciprocal invitations, but the idea of indulging in personal wish list activities for a few hours with a spouse… nah. And babysitting was not an issue by the time I came along. The older kids got stuck with that chore.

Why is this on my mind? Because I am happy to report that Lord Julian’s tenth tale, A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets, is complete in draft. Yay, yippee, yahoo, and gaudeamus igitur! This moment in the writing process, when the manuscript is complete in draft, is nonetheless always a little fraught for me. On the one hand, I feel great relief. I know once I have the first draft, I can make a book out of it. Phew!

But on the other hand… now what I am supposed to write? I am not an author who has stories ideas coming out my ears. Every time I stare at a blank screen, I fret that I’ve written my last book, and the house is not paid off. (I also want to see Alaska.) I need to come up with a really juicy premise immediately so I can get back to work!

That maybe, for a couple of weeks or so, I am NOT supposed to write, strikes me as preposterous. Writing is what I do. I am a writer. I love to write. The idea that I will create better books if I focus instead on my flower beds right now feels like blasphemy and darned risky. To suggest that I will come up with a really interesting pair of protagonists if I test ride some lease horses. (Did I just write that!?) feels absurd.

What is really absurd is not knowing how to take a break, Grace Ann.

I’m pretty good a micro-indulgences, like the perfect cup of tea, a bouquet of yard flowers, or  good book, but I have fallen out of the habit of travel to Scotland or Ireland, big writing retreats, or transcontinental road trips. The pandemic has something to do with my narrowed appetite for rejuvenation, but looking at my parents, I suspect the Depression, the Potato Famine and even the Siege of Derry (1689) might figure into the mix too. (Uncle Henry was a royalist.)

So I went flower shopping, and tonight I put in my whole bed of impatiens. It’s a start. The next big idea hasn’t come to me yet, but I still have the blue salvia, perennial lavender, rosemary, and sunflowers to go.

Who showed you that it’s good to take breaks, to go on the occasional frolic, to have fun on purpose? Or is the value of goofing off a premise you’re still testing?

I thought the songbirds were swerving my property because I have a lot of cats. Or maybe bird flu got here a while ago and we’re only just noticing it. Maybe I stopped hearing the birdies first thing in the day because migration patterns are changing due to light pollution and loss of habitat.

But this week, I got a pair of hearing aids, and… the birds are still here! They are still singing, they are still out in the trees by the stream, greeting the day. I cried about halfway to the barn ,just because I could once again hear the birdies, and because they never left me after all. Their little arias are so good for my mood, and such an affirmation that we haven’t screwed up the planet beyond all recall just yet. What do you know, there are birdies singing at the horse barn too. I never knew…

The hearing aids are an adjustment–they make my own voice louder, so I’m tending to speak too softly. I’ll get over that, and I’ll learn which settings work best for which environments. They are uncomfortable, but I’m assured the discomfort fades with regular use. I might need child-sized devices, which we can sort out if necessary.

My hearing loss is following the most common pattern–the higher frequencies and the speech frequencies are hit the worst. I can still hear the washer and dryer, can still hear all the lawn mowers, even at a great distance (just my luck). I no longer detect the stream babbling when I sit on my porch in the evening. I cannot distinguish conversational speech clearly against a noisy background either, and that’s a life skill I still need. I also need to be able to think, and there is a scary-straight line correlation between loss of hearing and cognitive decline.

Recent studies posit that up to 32% of dementia cases could be prevented if those of us with poor hearing had the devices we needed to address the problem.

Untreated hearing loss means we lose the link between a sound and its meaning. In the nanoseconds while we’re sorting possibilities (“Did she say death and taxes or debt and taxes?”) we miss what else is being said, as well as context for what has been said already. Then we stop going out to lunch with friends, because we get tired of having to say, “I didn’t catch that. I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I missed what you said about your dog…” So we isolate ourselves socially, and cognition takes yet another hit. Untreated hearing loss is also linked to a much higher risk of depression, and you can just imagine your brain cells moaning over that news…

I need every possible neuron on the job at full strength for as long as possible, so I betook myself to the audiologist.

I bash for-greed medicine all the time, and these hearing aids were very, very expensive. But they work reasonably well, they are not obvious to the casual observer, and they gave me back the time of the singing birds and the music of my little rural stream. I am beyond grateful that I could afford them (for now), and every time I step outside–to take out the trash, to fetch the groceries from the car–I hear the birds singing, and I have a reason to stop and simply rejoice.

In the midst of these trying days, what gives you even the smallest reason to rejoice?

PS: I sent out the first batch of Advanced Reader Copies for A Gentleman of Questionable Judgment. I still have some open slots, so if you’d like an ARC file, just email me at graceburrowes@yahoo.com and let me know what device you read on.