“Cottonwood Hotel” is 241 pages. I find that life, my own, sometimes gets in the way of my characters resolving their mysteries in a timely fashion. Such is, well… life.

Tomorrow is Em’s first day of 7th grade. This year she won’t ride the bus. She’ll walk to school, instead. I hope it isn’t too much for her. The game room is down the hall from her room, after all. It could be all of fifteen steps. It’s a lot to ask. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it in the morning when I wake her up, and tell her to get to work.

Lest that paragraph make no sense whatsoever, in the words of Luther Heggs in “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” let me clarify this. We’re homeschooling this year, through Bridgeway Academy’s online program. After much discussion, it was a unanimous decision that this is best for our family right now. We’ll reassess at the end of the year, and decide then which direction to go.

I’m hoping to get a lot of writing done while she’s busy learning. It won’t be too hard to sit on the couch and focus on writing, while keeping one eye on her, to make sure she’s on task, right?

We shall see.