It was funny and fun, and I loved it! Maybe because I was pretty good!  One of my many Brokers once said to me, “Brenda, you have more guts than brains!” I said, “Thank you.” I knocked on more doors, got bitten by ankle biters, and had more torn pants than most agents.

I say many Brokers, because many of them were so hard to train. They had the demented idea that they were the boss. Wrong! The lowly agents produced the listings and wrote the sales! The Brokers sat in their plush offices and assumed they were in charge.  

In my book, “Murder on Lake Haverly,” I allude to “The Bobsey Twins. They were real people; I changed their names, partly because they were real, and partly because after 50 years, I can’t remember their real names.

They were two women partners, and most people were scared of them. They each had rich new house builder husbands, and they thought they were hot shit! I fell under their clutches once, and that was enough!

I got a sweet listing in the country, and I knew I was in for it, when I presented it at our MLS meeting. The owners were really sweet and asked me not to allow “drive-bys,” and I stressed that at the meeting.

The next week, that “Nice” couple stormed into my office and demanded that we “Cancel the listing so they could list with a reputable company.” I would have said, “hell no!” but my Weiner Broker agreed and gave it to them. To say I was pissed would be an understatement!

At the next MLS meeting, they laid out “How they saved their clients from the clutches of an unscrupulous realtor.

You may think I slunk away with my tail between my legs. NOT! At every house or meeting, I snagged their card and wrote my name in big letters on the back so they wouldn’t miss it! When a person was so unqualified to purchase, I gave them one of those bitches cards and, with great enthusiasm, sold them on how wonderful those two bitches were. Their husbands were builders, so they would help them buy a brand-new house.

At every MLS meeting, I would seek them out and ask them how business was going. I hinted strongly that I was helping them get new business. I got many glaring looks, and most of my friends thought I should have sent dozens of “Drive By’s”, but I did not. What I did was not bad business.  I just gave them lots of business! And who knows, maybe they got lucky and made a sale or two! I was sure they got the message from the bitchy looks, and most of the agents hated them, and they all knew what I was doing, and I might have had some help!

Stay tuned for more funny real Estate stories! In case you thought I was mean, my motto in Real Estate was, “Do the right thing, because it is right!”

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

When you click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, you will magically go to my new Bookstore, called Booksby/BrendaColbath, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide for $5!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

You probably don’t believe how funny Real Estate really is, unless you were a buyer or seller and your sale turned out entirely different from what you imagined or needed it to.

But the people I met on the rocky road of Real Estate in the 70s and 80s were fun to observe as they attempted to succeed in a job with more failures than successes than most other professions. Anyone who became a Rock Star was incredibly LUCKY!

This is the truth of how the “Profession” really worked! And it hasn’t changed much since.

The Broker didn’t give a damn if you made a dime! His only interest was that you bring as many relatives and friends as you could in the few months you lasted before you burned out at the immense physical and mental labor.

Your basic training was to do what everyone else did. To fill out one of the single legal page contracts with several carbons, like ones in the drawer in the files, similar to your sale.

Truth: almost no two sales are alike! If you were smart, you got most of your training from the Title Companies or Mortgage Representatives. That is how I learned just about everything about real estate.

Got a listing! Now price it right! Easy right? Most Sellers think they are selling a mansion, while most buyers are paying for a shed! My favorite saying was: “Buyers are liars, Sellers are yellers!”

To find comps (comparison sales), you trekked to the County Courthouse and spent the day pulling dusty volumes of books containing the addresses and sale prices of homes within a mile of your little jewel!

Let me tell you about my fun client Tip-over Tom! A truck driver for a pulp Company. He earned the nickname by tipping his truck at least once. I listed his house, about an acre in town, with a stand of Timber on it! To say he was proud of that timber would be an understatement! Tom found a house in the country and was so in love with it that I could not talk him out of it, and I tried! The land was more swampy, and the house had so many things wrong with it that I was afraid the appraisal would be half the sale price.

The master bedroom was built higher than the rest of the house and had an impressive picture window overlooking his land. When we viewed it the first time, the seller’s agent accompanied us, not with my permission or approval. It had rained that morning, and there was a lot of moisture on the ceiling, and actually, dripping water. That hotshot seller said, “That’s just moisture because the house is built so tight!” I didn’t argue with him. Looking around, I pointed out that the faucets were not hooked up to water, and he said it would all be ‘taken care of,’ probably by closing, but not to worry because his contractor was a professional!’

He may have fooled Tom, but he didn’t fool me. I always met the Home Inspectors on my listings and my sales. The roof did not pass inspection, and there was a long list of repairs and a new roof before closing.  

Before closing, we got a sale on Tom’s house, and he hollered at me several times that he would not sell unless he was paid handsomely for the Timber. He knew it was valuable, after all, he drove a truck for a pulp company. I explained to him several times that if he wanted the proceeds from the sale, he needed to take care of it BEFORE an offer was made.  I explained more than once that if he accepted the offer minus the timber, his company doing the clearing would be responsible for ANY DAMAGE to the property.  To say he was pissed would be another understatement.

I set an appointment to show him the contract on his house and asked my hubby to come with me. His wife was afraid he might hit me or something. I was not worried. I told Shirl, “Now, when I show Tom the contract, he is going to scream and holler for about an hour! We will sit still and just let him rant. He will not hit me! Do not say a word to him, no matter how loud he gets!” Shirl promised, so off we went.

Tom did exactly what I said he would. After an hour, he calmed down and said, “I suppose I will have to sign this if I want the other house where I can go fishing and hunting on my own land, don’t I?”

I said, “Yes, you will if you want the house in the country.” I put the ballpoint pen on the contract and kept quiet. We finally agreed that the Timber was valuable, but the cost and the risk to his existing house were concerns. He signed, and on the way home, Shirl said, “Were you really sure he wouldn’t hit you?”

“Yes, he wanted that swamp land and that house, and he finally realized that in order to get what he wanted, he had to sell that house.

This is the only proof that “Buyers are liars and Sellers are Yellers!”

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

When you click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, you will magically go to my new Bookstore, called Booksby/BrendaColbath, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

In 1974, I was a Mother/Housewife and bored with 2 kids in school full-time until one day my husband suggested I look at Real Estate. I laughed until I took a good look at the current crop of Agents mucking around as professionals.

I signed up for Real Estate class, and that is the beginning of my funny career. It was a little unnerving when pop quizzes were graded, and we found that some answers were wrong according to our books. The day of our tests, we were herded into a classroom-like room, allowed only a pencil or pen, and one blank sheet of paper. No calculator, books, or magazines were allowed, and bathroom breaks were permitted with permission, and no purses could be taken with us. When we were done, we went home and WAITED for a week or more for that fateful postcard with an X to tell us we passed or failed.

Did I tell you I was in the group that was granted a Temporary Permit and allowed to work until I passed that test? I did pass and worked for the next close to 30 years. Some of my fellow realtors’ antics shouldn’t have been funny, but they were!

My first day in Real Estate (remember, it was pre-class) was so interesting that I couldn’t help but smile. I was thrilled to be “hired” by my first of many Brokers. I arrived at the office and was greeted by my fellow Agents, all of whom were male. “Well, welcome, Little Lady. We are happy to have a woman to cook us lunch. You wouldn’t believe they had a fillet of Salmon waiting on the counter in the break room.

They went Hungry that day and every day after!

The best words of wisdom by my Broker were, “Take a different route to work every day, and when you see a FISBO (for sale by owner) stop and ask them to list with you.” He was a short, stocky guy with thinning hair, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He also said,” When you get a sale or a listing, just look in the files and copy what the other guys did.  

I did what he said, and at my first FISBO, he amazingly agreed to list! Help! I had no idea how to fill out that damn form! Between a guy from the city who got approval to widen the road, the lister, and me, we filled out the listing agreement.

I grabbed the listing agreement and beat a fast trip to the office to have Sammy check it out. Sammy looked at it and screamed.  “Get your ass back out there and get the signature!”  I did that, and later I learned that most sellers and agents negotiated the percentage, and I got a full 7%.

The guys didn’t like me any more than I liked them, and after they pulled every dirty trick on me, I finally got revenge. That story is for tomorrow, and it is a beauty.

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

All my posts are on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com. 

Click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo to go to my Bookstore, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list.

Thanks for reading, and I hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

Back in the day…

In the early days of Real Estate, it was a fun experience working with and against other Realtors to get the best deal for my clients, while also doing the right thing because it was right.

Yes, it was hard, but sometimes dirty work! By dirty, I mean convincing a guy to get down on the dirty ground, sometimes in mud, and crawl under a post-and-block foundation with an Ice Pick to poke the beams, checking for dry rot. Not many people knew this, but I carried one in my fanny pack, not for protection, but for that purpose.

Most of the time, agents helped and cooperated with each other to close deals that were good for both parties.

But, not always!

My client, a new Pastor at a local church, inquired about a nice house for sale through a Big Shot Realtor who looked down on all Realtors, especially Women Realtors. He said the congregation gave him $10K as an incentive to move to Phoenix. I took him to the bank, and he told the loan officer that his down payment was a gift.

When I presented the contract of 5K less than the selling price, I attached the  $10K check to the offer. No matter the arguments the Agent presented, the seller was mesmerized by the check and the fact that my client was a preacher. They accepted the offer. To say he was mad at me would be an understatement!

A couple of weeks later, at an MLS meeting, when he glared at me, I casually told him that the check bounced at the first deposit,  but cleared the second time.

Some of the Big Time Brokers were so nasty to us lowly agents that we loved putting something over on them. For instance, when you sign on to an agency, all your listings and sales belong to that Broker! If or when you leave for greener pastures, they are all left behind. Soooo… When you leave, all sales have to be closed, and you never leave a listing behind. It requires a bit of juggling, but I did it several times.  My mamma didn’t raise no fools!

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

All my posts are on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com. 

Click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo to go to my Bookstore, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list.

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

Wouldn’t it be a surprise to have an adult human being of sound mind and body working for YOU AND ME and not for himself?

How many times, enjoying your morning coffee or tea, have you wondered, “WTF is going on in Washington?”

I didn’t vote for that fake gold, grifter! I wanted a person who actually gives a damn about this former Wonderful Country that gave a damn about EVERYONE, not just helping millionaires become trillionaires.

I promise to effectively execute the duties of the Office, even though I have such a low bar to jump over.

Here is my platform:

1. I am really easy to get along with, as long as you do exactly what I tell you to do.
2. I am a post-menopausal redhead, who happens to be a left-handed Gemini, which should tell you:” Mess with me at your own risk.”
3. Many of my appointments will be of the feminine persuasion, who believe in quality in regard to sex, education, origin of birth, and religion.
4. My one and only first Gentleman will be my husband of 64 years. There will be no dalliances by either of us!
5. I will need to read from a BIG FONT teleprompter! We wouldn’t want me to follow in the ruins of many former nitwits, and unless you have been living under a rock, you know who those fools are.
6. Let’s talk about age! I admit I am not a spring chicken, but I can still walk and chew gum.
7. We have no desire to create a dictatorship! My children, who are Senior Citizens, will only follow me if I am making Pizza.
8. I don’t come from a long-standing political family, and don’t have any worms in any part of my body. Isn’t there Worm Medicine for worms in dogs?
9. I won’t be redecorating or dismantling any part of the White House, if there is anything still standing. And all the fake gold will disappear, like magic!
10. We won’t need to redecorate the presidential living quarters; they used to look pretty damned lovely compared to the homes of most Senior Citizens.
11. We won’t need new China: what is in the cupboards hasn’t been used much. Most of the dinners were served from cardboard boxes.
12. Anyone who contributes huge donations might be allowed to sleep in one of the state rooms, but alone.
13. I will accept ALL of the PAC money, upon signing my little agreement that says “Sorry sucker, I am the screwer, and you are the screwee!
14. I expect to be a one-term President! I am old, but not stupid. Refer to #15.
15.  The tax levied on the Millionaires, Billionaires, and Trillionaires, there will be enough money to raise the minimum wage to $25.00 an hour, not that sissy $15.00.
16. No worries, they will pay the same percentage that middle-class Americans have paid for years. Medicare and Social Security will be safe forever.
17. Sorry, college graduates! You will have to pay for college. But the interest will be low and applied ONCE to the balance, AND the amount you pay each year will be a deduction on your taxes. No more amortization like a home loan!
18. All the laws designed to protect the environment that were reversed under “the previous Administration will be reinstated. Yay! Clean water, air, and undisturbed land.
19. There will be thousands of steel beams for sale! Or we could build many new schools! We need compassion for those who flee injustice, AND if we mind our own business, we will have fewer people clamoring or sneaking into our country illegally.
20. There will be NO bailouts for corporations or banks that get into trouble due to risky speculation. You are on your own! Just like your depositors have been in the past, that made you rich. No more Golden Parachutes from the taxpayers’ dime!
21. If I missed anything, feel free to express them on my website www.brendacolbathbooks.com where more than 20 Murder Mystery, YA series of 9 books, and a series of 4 Children’s books are waiting for avid readers. Just for the fun of it, here is a list of them. If I missed anything, feel free to express them on my website

The good old days were actually very good. For much of them, we didn’t have the threat of war hanging over our heads, and at least we were able to ignore much of what was going on everywhere else except in our own back yards.

In the 70s and the 80s, life was good. I felt like I was on top of the world. I had learned the basics of Real Estate and felt like I was on my way to success.

I was working at a small company in Montesano, Washington, with only 3 of us, all Women in the office, including our Broker. I will name her Sally because everyone except me will remain nameless.  We laughed a lot most days, and I choose to remember the fun times! Once, the younger gals thought it would be fun to keep a chart of our sales and listings. I cautioned them if might not be fun if your name wasn’t on it a lot. They said I needed to be a good sport, so I said okay.

When, by the third week, my name appeared on the chart the most, it was quietly put away. You see, for me, it was my only job, and I worked hard to make a living, not for rewards.

They spent much of their time crocheting and sometimes bringing their kids in because sitters were expensive. After weeks of my client tripping over strollers and playpens, I had a private talk with the Broker, “The babysitting goes or I go, take your choice. This is a business!”

The business was sometimes hysterically funny and sometimes dead serious.  Many times, we took Earnest Money in cash, and it was a big No-No to ever co-commingle it with our own money. I would open the office, go to the Broker’s office, pick a closed file, put the cash in it, and write the file name on her calendar. The next day, she could retrieve the money.  

One other thing, she could never pass the Broker’s exam. An office HAD to have a Broker! Sally had a rent-a-broker! An older retired guy who needed a little help. He had a nice, big desk, and his only responsibility was to walk to the Post Office and pick up the mail. One of us had to walk behind him and pick up the envelopes he dropped.

We had a new gal who came to work after leaving another office, could never remember our office’s name, and after weeks of messing it up, we put a big sign on her desk so she could remember it. She also had a big, ugly plant beside her desk, and I hated it. I poured my cold coffee on it every day, hoping to kill it, but it turned out the dang thing loved it and grew by leaps and bounds.

Sally announced at our meeting that she had a cabin on the lake that she wanted to (get rid of) sell! She would pay the full selling commission (7%) if we sold it. All she gave us were pictures, and it was unlocked. It needed a lot of work, but the lake was popular.

That night, I was on call (I got all walk-ins or new calls). A sexy young man in overalls and no shirt walked in, and after chatting for a few minutes, he said he wanted a cabin on a good fishing lake and just to get away.

The gal that sat next to me was looking like she wanted to jump his bones right there in the office, but remained cool!

I told him about the Broker’s cabin, and he was hot to go look at it that night. I was about 8, and I had no intention of taking him there because I wasn’t even sure it had electricity.

I asked him, “John, are you a gambling man?” He grinned and said. “Yes, why?” We will write a contract on it, subject to your inspection. If you want it, come back in tomorrow morning and finalize the contract or pass. All I need is Earnest Money. How much cash do you have?

He said,” $1000, is that enough?” I wrote the contract, told him he could go out there, and gave him the address, and that he could go inside since it was unlocked. He happily left, and the next day I learned I sold her cabin without ever seeing it.  

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

When you click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, you will magically go to my new Bookstore, called Booksby/BrendaColbath, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

Forgive me for looking back to the good old days of writing words via pen or pencil on paper!

I first got the writing bug way back when things were very different. No computers, and many of us didn’t have a typewriter. One of my high school teachers required five handwritten pages on anything every Friday. We could copy something from a book as long as we noted that fact.

To make it fun, I filled my pages with a fictional story; the last line was “Continued next week!” It originally started as a joke to see how he would react. When he asked me to continue the story, he wanted to find out what had happened. Later, before the year ended, he told me that. “I should do something about my writing.” That stuck in the back of my mind. I didn’t particularly think I had the ability, but it stayed there and prickled my brain.

My first book was “Murder on Lake Haverly” and book 1 in the May West Mysteries. I loved writing that book, as it was sort of a history of myself in Real Estate. I first got my Real Estate License in 1976. Women were not wanted or welcomed in that “man’s” business. It was the “Wild, Wild West kind of business, and the guys liked it that way. They welcomed me on my first day, saying, “Good, we have a woman to cook for us!” and they had a filet of salmon on the counter, waiting for me to cook it for them.

They went hungry! And I didn’t clean the bathroom for them either.

I was thrilled with being “hired” by my first Broker! He sat in his chair chain-smoking, and his first words of wisdom and advice were, “There’s your desk, your phone, go to work! Just look at one of the contracts in the drawer and fill in the blanks as they did.”

He told me to take a different route into the office and, if I saw a FISBO (For Sale By Owner) stop, to knock on the door and ask them to list it with you.  So I did! Amazingly, the guy said okay. I had no clue what to put in those millions of blank spaces.  Fortunately, the man who was getting an agreement to widen the road with my seller helped me fill it out.

I told Mr. Seller that I had to run it back to the office for the Broker to check it before he could sign.

I raced back to the office and breathlessly asked Broker Sam to look it over. He screamed at me, “Get your ass back there and have him sign it!” No one ever told me that realtors don’t always get 7% commission. The broker was thrilled!

I’ll bet you think Real Estate was easy in “the old days?” It was! The contract was one legal length with many carbons in between. You had to write hard so that the last copy was legible.  The selling agent presented the contract to the seller while the listing agent either helped or hindered the seller sighing.

 I worked in rural areas, and I wanted to write a contract on the Cow’s back, but it didn’t happen. Came close! I once wrote one at Chuckee Cheeses with a husband, wife, and their three kids running around, along with a million other kids.

If you ask nicely, I will tell you some of the fun pranks the “guys” played on me and my “payback!”

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

When you click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, you will magically go to my new Bookstore, called Booksby/BrendaColbath, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

A few years ago, when I was a fledgling wanna-be writer and an enthusiastic believer in “if you write something new, different, and interesting, people will like it!” Well, that it ain’t necessarily so!

There are thousands of scripts written only to be thrown in the trash or remain stored in the bottom drawer. The brave souls who had the courage to send their manuscript to a Publisher can show you that bottom drawer full of rejections.

When the phenomenon of Indie Publishing burst onto the horizon, many more writers got the courage and fortitude to dig in and learned the hard way that, although submitting stories was free, it was still not as easy as it looked. They had to learn to format their manuscript to meet a printer’s requirements!

It was a daunting task, but we dug in and learned the process! Then we were told that it should or must be professionally edited, which costs a pretty penny, actually, a lot of pennies; some could afford it, and some could not! One of the publishing companies I use will accept a doc or docx file and magically transform it into a PDF; voilà, it becomes an eBook and/or a paperback, ready for POD, and is submitted to many book sites. You can pay to have books bulk-printed, ready to sell at craft fairs. Bulk Printing isn’t terribly expensive, but shipping is horrendous, and many new companies are gaining ground.  

Many more writers are doing their own thing by staging signing events. Having their books printed in bulk makes each one less expensive, but bulk printing can be costly if you don’t sell them.

The companies that display your book on their online stores take a considerable percentage of the purchase price and do not share the purchaser’s email address. Some require you to sign a contract that grants them the rights to your work. Damn, now you have to be a lawyer, too!

One company had some of my books on a used-book site! Wait, if I wasn’t getting paid, how can someone have them as used? I finally did some digging and discovered that I needed to formally sever the contract with the Corporate Office.  After a little googling, I wrote a formal letter and severed that contract. My books are still on that site, but from another publisher, and appear accurate. Your books could appear on a used book site legitimately, and that isn’t a bad thing. I love it when someone reads one of my books.

The Indie publishing business is changing and is growing by leaps and bounds. Now, some of the Indie Book Stores will actually sell eBooks from their stores. It is an exciting time to write, so get to it! Put your words down on paper and do the best writing you can do, even if Grammarly or another program helps you. Not everyone can or will be a Million Dollar Seller, and some of us do not desire to, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t writing great books.

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

When you click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, you will magically go to my new Bookstore, called Booksby/BrendaColbath, where my paperback books can be shipped worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an adult in the White House who gets more done quietly, working behind the scenes and smiling, rather than screaming, calling everyone nasty, and downgrading nicknames!

Why didn’t the one who wanted to make things better not get elected? I know she had that one glaring deficiency! But the glaring deficiency of the Orange One is not only ignored, but praised by way too many.

Last but not least, why do we have the Secretary of Health who loves road kill, and his claim to fame is brain worms, but says he is all better now! He bears the same name as a former well-known political family, but that is as far as it goes. They are probably spinning in their graves at his use of the name without the wit or the brains.

I promise to effectively execute the complex aspects of the Office of the President of the United States. Unfortunately, I have a low bar to measure up to! I would prefer to have a majority in the House and Senate that leans toward the blue side, but I don’t care much. One way or another, I can do it with one arm tied behind my back! It is well known that women can multitask!

Here is my platform:

1. I’m really easy to get along with, as long as you do exactly what I tell you.
2. I am a post-menopausal redhead, left-handed Gemini, which should tell the head of any country that messing with me might not be in their best interests!
3. I will appoint pre- and postmenopausal women as my ambassadors. Guaranteed, they won’t tolerate backtalk from the male-dominated societies of the world.
4. I know that all the old White Men will automatically assume they are in charge and will assume that I am just a complacent woman and will do what they tell me! You do know what assume means, don’t you, guys? I can hit the toilet every time! It will be an unpleasant surprise that I am not complacent! If the old farts try to tell me to do things the tried and true way, they will be surprised at my big NO!  Unless ess they actually get one thing right!
5. My one and only first Gentleman will be my husband, of 64 years. There will be no dalliances for either of us! 
6. I will definitely need to read from a teleprompter with big fonts! We wouldn’t want me to be running off at the mouth like so many of the nitwits who think they know what this country needs. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know who! They make fools of themselves and the country! We’ve had enough of that bull puckey!
7. Let’s talk about age! I am willing to admit I am old, but I can still walk and chew gum! And being old is not a sin! I have no desire to lead forever! No worries about me planning a dictatorship! Both our Son and Daughter are old enough to live in a 55+ community, and they have no desire to follow my footsteps, unless I am making pizza.
8. I don’t come from a long-standing political family, and to the best of my knowledge, I don’t have worms in any part of my body. Don’t they have worm medicine to cure dogs?
9. And I won’t be redecorating the white house! It used to look pretty damned lovely compared to what most of us Seniors own! I might not even move in, but govern remotely! We don’t need a new China; the pattern that is in the cupboard will be good enough. However, if we do need new plates, they will be made in the USA!
10. I plan on sleeping in every bedroom for at least one night, and anyone who sends a big contribution might get to sleep in one for one night! But, by themselves!
11. I will be happy to accept ALL the PAC money from anyone, as long as they don’t mind signing my little agreement that says, “Sorry, Sucker, I will do what is right for the country! I am the screwer, and you will be the screwee, for a change!
12. I expect to be a one-term President!  I am old but not stupid!
13. With the tax I am planning on slapping on the Millionaires, Billionaires, and Trillionaires, there will be plenty of money to raise the minimum wage to $25.00 an hour, not that sissy $15.00.
14. With the money left over from the Millionaire, Billionaire, and Trillionaire tax, everyone receives full-coverage insurance, with no pre-existing conditions, and no co-pays! Don’t worry! They will only pay the same percentage that middle-class Americans have been paying for years, while they have been paying 0%. Medicare and Social Security will forever be safe and never be borrowed from ever again.
15. All laws designed to protect the environment that were reversed under the Previous Administration will be reinstated. Yay! Clean water, air, and undisturbed land!
16. Sorry, college-bound! You still have to pay for college, but the interest is low, and it is SIMPLE INTEREST. The interest percentage is figured on the balance, added to the amount owed, and never recalculated on the declining balance. You will find you can pay it back before you die. AND the full amount you pay each year will be deductible from your income tax.
17. There will be thousands of steel beams for sale! Or we can build something useful with them, like schools! We don’t need a border wall; we need compassion for those who flee injustice. If we mind our own business, no one will be clamoring to sneak into our country. The process of becoming a citizen will be less expensive and take less time than it does now. Those who wish to come here will have the opportunity to work and pay taxes. It is a fact that immigrants WANT to come here because they have a chance to make a life. Come here for any other purpose, or commit crimes, and they will be deported!
18. There will be no bailouts for corporations and Banks that get into trouble due to risky speculation. You are on your own, pals! Just like the depositors that made you rich! No golden parachutes on the taxpayer’s dime!
19. Did I miss anything? I find it interesting that I need to clarify that this post is intended just for fun and is meant to be sarcastic. No money will be accepted unless you understand and agree to #10.

My current means of support is my books. Here is how you can find them to boost my campaign funds.

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

All my posts are on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com. 

Click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo to go to my new Bookstore, where my paperback books are shipped Worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list.

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

Why do batteries come packed so tightly and securely that it takes three men and a boy to open them, and eggs are packed in flimsy Styrofoam?

Why do prescription pills come in tiny plastic bottles with a seal that requires something short of a blowtorch to open? Some of them require a child to remove the “childproof” cap.

Why do some foods, like crackers and cereal, need packaging that doesn’t open unless you cut off the top? Go ahead and try using both hands to pry it open. Keep a broom and dustpan handy to sweep cereal and crackers off the floor!

Cereal manufacturers! Have you noticed that Shrimp and some fish are packed in a re-sealable plastic envelope?

The can industry listened to consumers, and most lids can be opened fairly easily by inserting a finger in the nice round tab and (with a little strength) pulling the lid off. Well, okay, with considerable leverage and strength, but they can be removed without the old can opener.

Why, in 9 out of 10 service companies, do we have to scream and swear at AI idiots before we are connected to a real, live person who will not slow down and speak clearly to answer a simple question, instead of reading from their sales pitch? After I apologize and tell them I am not bilingual and that they should please slow down and speak clearly, they continue at the same unintelligible pace in a single breath.

The latest thing is that everything is shrink-wrapped in clear plastic.  Opening can be problematic and dangerous. I understand the need to protect the liquid, but eventually I want to open the bottle and use the product.

Another thing: Why can’t you tell me that an item is from another country and is subject to a tariff, and/or that the shipping time will be longer? Sometimes sizes made in another country are not the same as those made here in America. And why is it not proudly shouted that it is made in America?

My books are available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

All my posts are on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com. 

Click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo to go to my new Bookstore, where my paperback books are shipped Worldwide!

To read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll the list.

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

After looking into my crystal ball, I have seen the possible future if our present Wanna Be King and his hand-picked Army continue to create confusion and madness in one fell swoop. Our current wanna-be King is planning to steal the midterm elections, and we will have another Republican majority in the HOUSE AND SENATE!

If you still think “everything will be all right” because “GOD is on our side?” “Good will always triumph!” Think again!  Step back and take off those rose-colored glasses before they, and your head, are smashed under the foot of MAGA soldiers!

You need to face the truth! When was the last time people were herded into box cars and murdered by gas, just because they were “Those people”? Don’t remember or believe? I understand, they are depending on the axiom of “Out of sight, out of mind!”

 I understand I’m only one of hundreds heating up their rhetoric, and I might be a little late to the party, but what the heck! I am retired, so time is not a priority for me. I remember how incredibly poor we were after the Second World War, when we had barely won it. Our friends and allies stepped up to the plate and fought and died alongside our “best and the brightest” to stop that dual regime.

After mocking and jeering the whole world, how successful do you think our current wannabe king will be in asking for help? Just in case the Wannabe King is successful in decapitating all the other candidates’ ability to stay in the chase, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and make a run for President of the United States!

From what I have observed, the current crop of politicians continues to shoot themselves in the foot, revealing their real reason for seeking the office. They are all mistaken in thinking that they are God’s gift to humanity! And, I don’t see any change in their thinking or attitude in the very near future.

After reviewing the qualifications of those who are considering entering the ring, I believe I have a better-than-average chance of making some noise, and with any luck, I might make a strong showing.

How much worse can I be than what you’ve got to choose from so far in this up-and-coming down-and-dirty race? And make no mistake about it, they are all eyeing the Presidency. What have they got to lose? Yogi Bear would be a better leader than this motley crew that is demolishing democracy and the White House as we speak!

Take a hard look around you at the mess they have created! If the truth be known, we have all seen better days, and it has very little to do with our health.

The BIGLY old ORANGE one only wants to cheat at golf, eat his weight in Cheeseburgers and fries, and that is a damn lot of meat! They’ll have to kill a cow a day just to make him meat for a week! And ship in ketchup by the barrel! Imagine the old fool hiring a chef and eating McDonald’s and Burger King in the White House! That won’t happen with me; I don’t eat red meat, so it will have to be chicken or turkey burgers! His favorite pastime is to blame anyone else for his lack of understanding of what it takes to run a country, let alone a marriage! And he thinks he is God’s gift to all women except his wife! Someone should tell him that he missed that mark by a country mile! It doesn’t matter how much you pay for sex, it ain’t love! And last but not least, it doesn’t matter if you shit on a Gold Toidy; it is still shit, and it smells!

The Vice One appears not to give a damn if we live or not as long as he can get his supply of eyeliner, and he says he loves his “little woman,” who knows her place in his life and the world. And he will be happy to teach the rest of the American women how we must behave! He agrees with the Orange One, who loves cozying up to Billionaires! and he isn’t above pitching canned goods, pillows, and god-awful fool’s gold coins from the Oval Office!

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an adult in that office who gets more done quietly, working behind the scenes and smiling, than screaming, calling everyone nasty, and downgrading nicknames! I will never know why the one who wants to make things better is not the most popular one!  Last but not least, the guy who boasts of worms in his brain says he is all better now! He bears the same name as a former well-known political family, but that is as far as it goes. They are probably spinning in their graves at his use of the name without the wit or the brains.

I will effectively execute the complex aspects of the Office of the President of the United States. I would prefer to have a majority in the House and Senate that leans toward the blue side, but I don’t care much. One way or another, I can do it with one arm tied behind my back! It is well known that women can multitask!

Here is my platform:

1. I’m really easy to get along with, as long as you do exactly what I tell you. I am a post-menopausal former redhead and left-handed Gemini, which should tell the head of any country that messing with me would not be in their best interests!
2. I will appoint pre- and postmenopausal women as my ambassadors. Guaranteed, they won’t tolerate backtalk from the male-dominated societies of the world.
3. Since I am a woman, all the old White Men will think they are automatically in charge and will assume that I am complacent and will do as they tell me! You do know what assume means, don’t you, guys? I hit the toilet every time! It will be an unpleasant surprise that I am neither complacent, and I will do almost nothing that the old farts tell me! Unless they actually get one thing right!
4. My one and only first Gentleman and I have been married for 64 years. There will be no dalliances for either of us! 
5. I will definitely need to read from a teleprompter with big fonts! We wouldn’t want me to be running off at the mouth like so many of the nitwits who think they know what this country needs. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know who! They make fools of themselves and the country! We’ve had enough of that bull puckey!
6. Let’s talk about age! I am willing to admit I am old, but I can still walk and chew gum! And being old is not a sin; I have no desire to lead forever! No worries about me planning a dictatorship! Both our Son and Daughter are old enough to live in a 55+ community, and they have no desire to follow me unless I am making pizza.
7. I don’t come from a long-standing political family, and to the best of my knowledge, I don’t have worms in any part of my body. Don’t they have worm medicine to cure dogs?
8. And I won’t be redecorating the white house! It used to look pretty damned lovely compared to what most of us Seniors own! I might not even move in, but govern remotely! We don’t need a new China; the pattern that is in the cupboard will be good enough. However, if we do need new plates, they will be made in the USA!
9. I plan on sleeping in every bedroom for at least one night, and anyone who sends a big contribution might get to sleep in one for one night! But, by themselves!
10. I will be happy to accept ALL the PAC money from everyone, as long as they don’t mind signing my little agreement that says, “Sorry, Sucker, I will do what is right for the country! I am the screwer, and you will be the screwee, for a change!
11. I expect to be a one-term President!  I am old but not stupid!
12. With the tax I am planning on slapping on the millionaires and Billionaires, there will be plenty of money to raise the minimum wage to $25.00 an hour, not that sissy $15.00.
13. With the money left over from the millionaire and billionaire tax, everyone receives full-coverage insurance, with no pre-existing conditions, and no co-pays. Don’t worry! They will only pay the same percentage that middle-class Americans have been paying for years, while they have been paying 0%. Medicare will forever be safe and never be borrowed from ever again.
14. All laws designed to protect the environment that were reversed under the Previous Administration will be reinstated. Yay! Clean water, air, and undisturbed land!
15. Sorry, college-bound! You still have to pay for college, but the interest is low, and it is SIMPLE INTEREST. You figure the percentage on the balance once, and it is added to the amount owed and never recalculated on the declining balance. You will find you can pay it back before you die. AND the full amount you pay each year will be deductible from your income tax.
16. There will be thousands of steel beams for sale! Or we can build something useful with them, like schools! We don’t need a border wall; we need compassion for those who flee injustice. If we mind our own business, no one will be clamoring to sneak into our country. The process of becoming a citizen will be less expensive and take less time than it does now. Those who wish to come here will have the opportunity to work and pay taxes. It is a fact that immigrants WANT to come here because they have a chance to make a life. Come here for any other purpose, or commit crimes, and you will be sent home!
17. There will be no bailouts for corporations and Banks that get into trouble due to risky speculation. You are on your own, pals! Just like the depositors that made you rich! No golden parachutes on the taxpayer’s dime!
18. Did I miss anything? I find it interesting that I need to clarify that this is intended just for fun and is meant to be sarcastic. No money will be accepted unless you understand and agree to #10.

My current means of support is my books. Here is how you can find them to purchase.

 If you’re interested in my books, my publisher, D2D, distributes them through the following channels: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

My eBooks are available at Smashwords and Books2Read.  

Check out my website at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and Books.By/brendacolbath where my paperback books are available for shipping worldwide for only $5. Each and some are free shipping.

See you next time for fun and a rant…

In my old age, and hopefully with the wisdom that comes with it, some things have occurred to me that will hopefully help me become a better writer.

I start a book with an idea of what it will be about. When it is a sequel, there will be an event that has happened or could happen in the future, depending on the outcome of an event that has happened or could have happened. Understand? It doesn’t matter, because you will only be part of it if you become involved with the storyline and fall in love with the main character or characters I dreamed up, and the predicaments they’re placed.

Of course, if you write to me and challenge me with your feelings about what a certain character is doing or has done, you may change the direction I take. Unless, of course, they died, unfortunately, that can’t be reversed even in fiction.

The first thing I do is provide a very simple synopsis of the general plot and the main characters’ description, their history, and what they do for a living. I call it my “Cast of Characters.” I try to flesh out my people to the extent that they are like my friends and are personal to me. Many characters are taken from real people, but with different names. I have considered putting the list at the beginning of the book to introduce them before the story, as in old paperback books from the last century. I am old, so it might fly!

I am a Pantser writer, which means I do not outline, ever. I may change the entire direction of my story before it is half written. To help me with future books, I create a short timeline for each chapter after it is written. This is helpful in several ways. It can be several years between books, and I would not want to deviate from their traits and descriptions. Readers will catch you if you do.

The good thing is that I start writing much faster than if I took the time to outline every chapter and scene of the whole book.

From some professional advice, I have tried not to edit as I write! I slowed myself down considerably. Now, as I write, I try not to overthink what the character says or does, or where the story goes. I get my story down on paper, then let it all sit for several weeks. I hopefully write many more pages than I need because editing will put much of it in the trash can.

 I am not a big seller, and I do not desire to be. I have more good stories hidden in my mind, and I intend to get them all down on paper.

Stay tuned for more stories…

I hope you enjoyed my short fishing trip. All my posts are on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com. Click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, and you will be taken to my new Bookstore, where many of my paperback books are shipped FREE!

If you would like to read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll to read them.

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

We walked partway up the hill opposite our land to the path to Mr. Additon’s small wharf, where he allows us to tie up our boat. After loading our lunch, tackle box, and three reels into the boat, we climbed aboard.

Mom sat in the front, lit a Pall Mall Red, and Lloyd sat in the back, loaded his pipe, and off we went, with me occupying the middle seat and pushing the oars far enough to reach the water and row us out away from the shore.  Once we were far enough to give both of them a good distance to cast their line with the shiny spinner lure out close to the Cat Tails and reeds, but not in them. Almost the minute that Mom’s lure sailed right next to the reeds, a huge Black Bass leaped out of the water and grabbed her lure and disappeared in a splash, heading for the bottom and the reeds, hoping to spit out the hooks.

Bass has a tough mouth, so it was unlikely he could, but he gave her a good fight. At about the same time, Lloyd cast out close to her spot, and he was rewarded with another strike of a Bass. They both worked their catches for quite a while until the fish tired, then brought them into the boat and stored them in the bucket.

Mom said, “Bren, row up to the other end of the lake. Maybe the Pickeral are biting!” So, I rowed up to the farther end of the lake; it was a small lake compared to some in the area, but it wasn’t fished a lot. We almost always took home a good supply of fish; it was fun, and they are pretty tasty when fried over the open fire.

The fun thing about fishing is you get sunshine, fresh air, and exercise. This morning, getting my exercise on my rowing machine, I closed my eyes, and this is the adventure I dreamed, in living color, and I loved seeing Mom and Lloyd again. I suspect we will see each other again on another rowing adventure, soon.

I hope you enjoyed my short fishing trip. All my posts are on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com. My book covers, and a short description of each, are under Brenda Colbath’s Bookstore & Books caption.

Click on the Brenda’s Bookstore Logo, and you will be taken to my new Bookstore, where many of my books are shipped FREE!

If you want to read my past blogs, click on “Posts”, and you can scroll to read many of my past blogs.

Hope your day is filled with fun and love. See you next time…

It was a fun, free time. As kids, there was not a lot of trouble we could get into on the farm. Remember I told you yesterday that we had 15 acres and a 100-year-old house? Well, that house had a huge kitchen (at least it was big to me), and the big feature was a big black stove that served as a cook stove, a heat source, and a place to dry clothes. There was a rope strung across the room over it. Off the kitchen was a pantry with a long slate sink and a cold-water faucet. 

I remember times when my Saturday bath was in an army-surplus fold-up tub, with many pots heating the water. Our kitchen had a cold-water faucet when the well didn’t run dry. If that happened, we hauled water in those huge metal milk jugs from the artisan well down the road.  The first year after I graduated high school, I worked at the shoe shop, paid to have a well drilled deeper, and turned the pantry into a bathroom. And no more, dry well.

Our house had central heating from a large wood stove located in the closet between the kitchen and the living room. The upstairs bedroom was somewhat finished, and the light could be turned on from the downstairs light switch, if you remembered to switch it off upstairs in the morning.  When my two brothers moved out, I inherited that private room, Yay!  Until then, I slept on an army bed in the tiny bedroom next to my parents’ bedroom, which allowed traffic to the barn.

We spent many months exploring the attic of the building between the house and barn. Our discoveries were fascinating. An “Old Richards Almanac,” which was a reprint, so not valuable then, but now? We found many Women’s magazines, and in the barn, we found a Surry (a small wagon) with fringe. Of course, we didn’t have a horse, so we would pull it down to the lake behind our house to carry supplies for ice-fishing. One of the things we found was a huge hardback book of the railroad survey across the U.S., and a Congressional book from a congressional meeting. And if you are wondering if we kept them and what the value was, our house burned down when my little girl was about 4, so we will never know. 

Now I think I need to change the subject to one of my books. I think since every pseudo-publisher in the world wants to sucker me into allowing them to get my “book” ready to pitch to a Movie producer! Guys, lay off! The least you could do is know which of my books you are trying to pitch! Once burned, twice shy! If you do not know or care what my name is or what my book’s title is, forget it.

You can find all my books at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and at my bookstore at Books.by/brendacolbath, where you will find many books with free shipping worldwide. I publish with Draft2Digital, who distribute to the following sites: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

Happy Reading, will see you next time with a rant or more of life on the farm.

Hello, friends…

I am feeling nostalgic this morning, so I will share some of the good, bad, and the ugly of farm living. My experience was good, most of the time.

My folks “bought the farm”, so to speak, when I was around 11 years old, and the smallest, skinniest kid in my class in the city of Dexter. Two years of farm living gave me an amazing growth spurt. I grew so fast that I actually had stretch marks.

Whatever you have read about education at that time, it may or may not be true. Readin’,writin’, and rithmaatic’ was different in our 2-room country schoolhouse. Each room housed four grades: kindergarten to 4th grade and 5th to 8th grade. I taught one guy that snapping a girl’s bra was a no-no! I narrowly missed his head with a dictionary. My backhanded left arm throw was not accurate, fortunately.

He tried to make our Male teacher believe I was somehow deranged and that he was innocent, but the teacher didn’t buy it. He said, “Too bad she missed, it might have knocked some sense into your head.” Our teacher was a retired Military and did not tolerate insolence from anyone. Teachers had to teach four grades in one room, and looking back, it must have been a daunting job.

Discipline was harsh, and there were no talking-to’s; it was more like you get what you deserve. Recess was softball on a dirt field, and rules were a little loose because each team consisted of a range of ages from the lower grades to the upper grades. I was surprised that more of the little guys didn’t get run over, but most of us were used to strict parental discipline.  We knew better than to allow one of the little kids to get badly hurt! Whatever discipline we got at school, we got harsher at home.

Our fifteen-acre farm was situated halfway between Dexter and Corinna, in Maine.  Our 100-year-old farmhouse was set close to the road, with an attached two-story structure designed to store our winter’s supply of wood and machinery. Of course, we didn’t have any machinery, so it was an elaborate playhouse. That was attached to the large barn, with an outhouse. And a large chicken house faced the house. It all made a big U-shaped arrangement.

My Dad supplied us with one or two deer each year, plus we had a cow and chickens. My mother raised a whole acre garden, and it was all canned in glass jars and stored in the cellar. Life was good.

Across the road was a long row of Maple trees, and with the owner’s permission, we tapped them all. We had real maple syrup on our pancakes and made snow candy. It’s been 100 years since, and I wouldn’t use the store-bought fake maple syrup. That’s just sugar water with coloring. Yuck! We had real churned butter at home, and I cannot abide fake butter!

This is just the beginning of life on the farm. I will be back with more fun stuff about farm living. I would love to hear your stories, too. We can compare our experiences.

As you know, I am an author, and I usually post new books as they are finished and published. I publish through Draft2Digital with distribution to the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

In addition, my books are available on my website http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and on Books.By/brendacolbath

When we were kids, the only way to treat a schoolyard bully was to walk right up to HIM and punch him in the nose. When you drew blood, he usually ran to the teacher, crying about how mean you were and showing how he got hurt!

What we have in Washington is an old-fashioned Bully! The only way to treat “it” is to punch him in the nose.

CONGRESS! Listen up!

You have had so many chances to punch him that it isn’t funny anymore! He and his MAGA buddies are laughing so hard at us and planning the next disgusting thing that will shock us when it happens. But he gave us fair warning, right from the start,

He said he wanted to be KING, but we just laughed, and laughed, because it was an impossible dream, because America is so strong and smart! Right?

Who is the laughing stock now?  Remember the typing sentence? Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of our country? Where the hell are you? Are there any “good men, or women” left in America?

The only reason Trump is bombing Iran is that if he can start a full-scale war, he can gain control of Gaza and turn it into Mar-a-Lago and Trump hotels!

Since no one gives a shit about what I or anyone else believes, I will do something fun.

My latest book hit the stores, and I would love to know what you think.

Five youngsters and one stowaway boldly steal a massive flying car to rescue their friend Donzereli and the Wellers from a raging volcano, leaving everyone in awe.

Despite their triumphant rescue, the adults persist in refusing to acknowledge the young heroes’ true potential.

Could an invitation to the new Donzereli/Weller Space Exploration Ltd. Facility, the gateway to the wonders of the universe, finally open the eyes of the doubting adults?

Can you picture the adults’ disbelief when they realize their children are about to embark on a journey into the unexplored territories of space?

You will discover the pivotal role that Donzereli’s alien Angel holds for the future of space travel in this thrilling adventure.

All my books are available to purchase at the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

AND my website http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and on Books.by/brendacolbath where they are shipped worldwide for only $5, and some are free shipping, including Volcano.

Have a good day, and we will talk again soon. Wouls loveto hear your thoughts on the state of the world or about any of my books

Is there a difference? Yes. A true denturist makes dentures. That is their main business! Not like many of the Dental Offices available now.

A denturist specializes exclusively in the design, creation, fitting, and maintenance of dentures.

Now that you know what a denturist is, here is the bad news: Denturists are only allowed to practice independently in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. Those in Maine, Arizona, and Colorado can practice under the supervision of a licensed dentist.

What I have observed of the practice of the profession of dentistry is so much different from the definition.

My first set of dentures was created by a dentist in Maine! He pulled the remainder of my teeth and took impressions. I was living in Hartford, Conn. Two weeks later, my full set of dentures arrived in the mail. I wore them for one miserable month, enduring the sores in my mouth. I returned to Maine, and this miraculous dentist ground them in the places where I had sores. I went back to Hartford and within a week all the soreness was gone, and I had a perfect fit. I could bite into an apple with no pain. They lasted for close to 20 years.

Since that time, I have had many who claimed to be a “denturist” make new dentures, but alas, none fit as well or lasted as long.  

My current set has been laid to rest and replaced by an older set. This set was made by a local dentist, who shall remain nameless. I answered an ad in a local flyer for a “Family Dentist” who “specializes” in dentures and offered a $25 reward card. They had me drive across town so many times I lost count for fittings, pictures, etc. Finally, the premiere of my new teeth!

I admit they looked pretty, but they didn’t fit and were so paper-thin that I was afraid they would break the first time I bit down. BTW, they agreed to send them back to the lab for a reline. A week later, there was no change! A week later, I received a bill in the mail for an additional $200. I called my insurance company, and the office agreed to cancel the bill.

A word to advertisers: If you offer a gift card for any amount, don’t make me beg for it! AND if you advertise as being the best, do your job to match your advertising.

Now for my daily advertisement:

If you’re interested in my books, my publisher, D2D, distributes them through the following channels: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

My eBooks are available at Smashwords and Books2Read.  

Check out my website at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and Books.by/brendacolbath, where my paperback books are available for shipping worldwide for only $5.

I am really not a writer; I share my dreams and nightmares.  Some you will like, and some you will hate a little, but I hope my honesty helps you feel connected and understood in your own experiences.

Much of the blame belongs to the lovely retired teacher, Mrs. Additon, who lived at the end of the road, before I entered the bus for a ride to school.  She liked me and shared her beloved hardback books. We discussed the contents of each one after I read them. I was a voracious reader then, and as I read them, I became drawn into the love of adventure contained within those magical pages. She insisted that I protect her treasures with the same care and love she held for them, which made me feel valued and inspired to cherish those meaningful connections.

She opened up a wonderful world to me. She saved me from feeling sorry for myself while living on our little farm and attending the two-room schoolhouse.  She made me believe that there could be great things in store for me.

I may not have achieved the many great things she dreamed for me, but what I did achieve is a lifelong love of adventure and knowledge that are hidden in those pages of books. And the wonderful thing is that they are waiting patiently for you to discover, at the libraries, and it’s all free, unless you forget the due date.

Any time I found between chores and schoolwork was spent writing short stories in my trusty notebook. Until I finally got to High School, no one was interested or aware of them. My sophomore English teacher was different! He required five handwritten pages (computers had not been a household item) every week. We could copy from a book if we noted which book.

I chose to share a story, and most times I filled the five pages and had to write ‘Continued next week. ‘It drove him crazy, at least he said it did. He was one of the people who told me, “Do something about your writing!

I am a little late to the game, but I have over 20 books published. I think I tell a good story, and I either like or hate my characters, and when they have to die, I sometimes cry a little.

Will tell you more about my writing journey later; now it is time for a small commercial.  My books are available at your favorite booksellers, including Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

They are available in paperback from my bookstore Books.by/brendacolbath They are shipped free or for $5. Worldwide. They are also available as eBooks and in paperback on my website at www.brendacolbathbooks.com.

And soon they will be available in eBook for from many Book Stores!

Here is a partial list:

What I want is to hear that you actually did SOMETHING!

I receive dozens of solicitations from the DNC every day! And they are from every state, needing just $1, $7, $15 or more to help you DO YOUR JOB!

A question! Why can’t you do your job for your salary, which provides you with much better benefits than I get on Medicare?

Want to know the best part of all the emails that fill my email folder? None of them allows me to comment or return comments. Why don’t you want my opinion? Just my hard-earned $$$$$!

Are you afraid of what I would say, or do you not give a damn about my situation or opinion?

I am a writer, and I wonder why you employ the most idiotic themes for your solicitations? Some of them are so poorly written that you should be ashamed.

It appears you cannot stand up to the pressure not to vote for bills you know are wrong on so many levels for your constituents, yet you give in and vote, knowing what the results will be.

I do not expect you to win every time, but I do expect you to FIGHT! LOUD LONG AND HARD!

Here is an example of just two of the solicitations:

Republicans are finally admitting what we’ve known for months: their Senate majority is vulnerable. Growing controversies and deepening divisions with Donald Trump are exposing real cracks in their hold on power.

Another one: 

$7 so Democrats can prevent more cruelty and authoritarianism from the Trump administration. Will you chip in $7 to the DNC today to help take back control of Congress?

Those aren’t the worst of them. I love the ones that say: “Brenda, you are one of the most valuable members, and we are counting on you!

Excuse me! You don’t know me and care even less about me!

I love the one about not reaching your goal. Are you required to meet that goal every month? Week?” What happens if you can’t meet it? Why even mention it? Tell me what you did this week and this month, and maybe you will garner support more willingly.

Just asking for money without showing what you are working on and what you’re accomplishing isn’t a good start!

Here is my solicitation: I have published over 24 books, from Children’s, Sci/fi, Murder Mystery, to Young Adult! They are available in eBook and Paperback on the following sites: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

On my website www.brendacolbathbooks.com and on Books.by/brendacolbath Check them out, and by the way, you can comment.

Thanks for listening to my rant today! Let’s talk again…

When you were young and full of energy, didn’t you wonder why those old people slowed down and just “sat”?

Many people worked so damned hard to get everything they thought they needed for now, but lost sight of what they would need in their retirement.  And many worked hard to provide a future for their kids, putting their own future on the back burner! Retirement hit them in the face before they had time to secure their own future.

They, like many older folks, got stuck depending on Social Insecurity! And if they worked in low-paying jobs, they are out of luck! Their monthly check will not do much for their security. Everything goes up and up, and their check doesn’t! If the COLA is raised 2% or 3%, the cost of the Medicare Insurance Premium goes up!

BTW, that cute little card you get from your Insurance Plan to help you pay for your drugs and other things you want on your quarterly stipend, or to pay for your drugs, is a Credit Card. They will not admit it is a credit card. But the name of the Bank is on the back; it should be a giveaway, and if you do a little computer work, you can discover the interest rate.

If you are lucky and smart, you own their home free and clear! And if you are smarter, you live within your means and keep it free and clear. That may mean not a $100 dinner every week and no DoorDash dinners every night, but it will mean cooking at home. I will also mean last year’s movies, not premieres.

Here is another RED FLAG: All the Mortgage Companies advertise a HELOC as if it is the most wonderful thing ever! And it isn’t bad if you know what it is!

It is a loan secured by the equity of your house! If you treat it like an unsecured credit card, you will buy your house again soon, or lose it in foreclosure.

I just saw an ad on FB! Just for viewing your rate on a Home Equity Loan you are entered in a Home Equity Loan Sweepstakes! Guess what your chances of winning the 50K are VS the million emails and calls trying to sell you on the value of the HELOC?

Enough about the trials and tribulations of business, let’s have some fun!

My first book was written in 2016, but the inspiration was in 1975 when I started in real estate, and many of the people are characters from that time; I just changed the names to

protect the guilty!  Maye West Mysteries Book 1: Murder on Lake Haverly

This book tells the story of what it was like being a woman in the Man’s world of Real Estate in the 70s! I was met by the men with the statement, “Great, a woman to cook for us!” And this tall drink of water meant it. He had a large salmon filet on the counter waiting for this “little Woman to cook it for them.

They went hungry that day and all the other days. Read the book to find out the fun I had dealing with them and other men in the business.

It is available on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and books.by/brendacolbath, and is distributed to the following platforms: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

I got this email today!

BTW, here’s the link to getting a passport card. Mom, if you want to vote, you are gonna need one of these since you changed your name when you got married. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html

Get a Passport Card

Correction!  The State of Maine changed my name. I was not consulted!

My question to my Beloved Government is: Why now, after 85 years, are you requiring me and ALL other Women to prove that we are residents of the United States and are valid American citizens, in order to vote?

When I married, I did not ask, nor was I consulted, to have my last name discarded, and to take my husband’s last name, nor did I agree to become a non-citizen! It was not a government order to discard me! We were married in a church.

I understand that in the eyes of most businesses, I am a second-class citizen, or more accurately, a second-class human being, just because I piss sitting down!

In the eyes of every employer, I was considered and treated as such. When raises were offered, I was skipped over or told that I had a husband “to take care of me.” I’ll bet that sounds wonderful, especially for those women who were left by their” free to do what the hell they wanted to do men,” many of them had no means of support and kids to raise on their own!

I really LOVED the one where I was “given” a 25-cent an hour raise, and the MAN was given DOLLARS AN HOUR because he had a family to raise. AND he was allowed to harass me every day we were cooped up in one room. To my credit, I didn’t tell that Woman-Owned company precisely where they could insert that 25-cent raise. I was the inside salesperson, and he was the outside salesman. The fact that I was the top salesperson went unnoticed.

The week I got my Real Estate license was the last day of working for someone else! Of course, there was the Owner/Broker, but if you produced, you were left alone, and I produced! I loved, loved, loved Real Estate! For the first time in my life, I was paid what I was worth!

Of course, I still had to contend with most of the brokers being of the male persuasion, and many tried to treat me as a secretary or maid, but that was discouraged by little old me.

BTW, on that same vein: The IRS also treated me like a non-citizen! I was only credited with the earnings of the companies where I was employed and paid wages, not ANY of my Real Estate Commissions. Don’t tell me to contact and try to get anyone to listen to me! Did that, and was given a large package of printouts of wages earned from employers, and amazingly, not one of the real estate companies. 

If I sound bitter, that would be an understatement! I suspect many more women feel like me: like many modern women, I make good money and feel free. Don’t look over your shoulder, because Big Government may look at you, too!

Now, I am enjoying my life, sewing for friends and writing books! If you want to learn a little about what life was like in the earlier days of Real Estate, try “Murder on Lake Haverly” and “Option.”

Visit my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, where eBooks and paperbacks are available.

Or visit books.by/brendacolbath to purchase paperbacks, with worldwide shipping of only $5. This month on books.by/brendacolbath, my latest book “Volcano” is free shipping worldwide!

If you have been following Ruby & Nolan’s adventures from childhood, in book 1 through this book you have been there when they discovered a “pretty rock” and decided to keep it safe in their playhouse designed by their Dad to resemble an old time western fort.

They thought it would be a good scentific project. And it was! There was no need to inform their parents! It was only a pretty rock! Right?

When it became obvious their rock was growing, they became nervious about what would hatch from it! But, not enough to fess-up!

The “children” are breaking the rules again, showing young readers that daring to be different can lead to exciting adventures, or just fun!

The ‘adults’ plan their grand rescue of Ty, Robin, and Donzereli, “after” the volcano stops erupting!

Lives hang in the balance!

Nolan and Shamus shake things up a bit by stealing a car again, embarking on a secret rescue mission!

The adults are blissfully unaware that the explorer “children” have made astonishing discoveries about their world’s history and shocking truths!

New continents, islands, three new groups of people, and a fascinating group of Fairies!  

Don’t you wonder how thrilled the adults will be when their “kids” go soaring into the unknown in spaceships courtesy of Donzereli’s new best friend Angel?

This book is available at my bookstore books.by/brendacolbath and ships in 2 days and for one month FREE shipping world wide.!

Happy Reading…. We’ll talk again soon.

It is fun and exciting to go on vacation, fly away, spend quality time with friends and relatives, and meet new people.

This time we actually flew! I am not sure how or why we decided to fly from Las Vegas to Seattle for a whirlwind visit with our Daughter and friends.

We considered renting a motorhome and driving, but the time it would take to drive that distance ruled that idea out.

Then we checked into taking the train. It sounds glamorous in a Sleeper Car, and it looks wonderful until you start booking. The good thing was we could board right here in Kingman, but from there it got pretty dicey! No throughway on a train; we would have to change several times, including a bus for part of the trip. The time might have been faster than in the Motorhome, but it didn’t sound like much fun.

When we finally decided to fly, we were late as usual in booking, so we paid more than we would have if we had planned months in advance. Since we were in for a penny, we decided to go in for a pound and booked First Class from Las Vegas to Seattle. Sounds fairy tale-ish! But First Clash ain’t what it used to be! It is four rows of seats in the front, separated by a flimsy curtain, with the same seats as in coach. We did get to board first, so we could watch everyone carrying huge carry-ons down the aisle, and fortunately, none landed in our laps.

I ordered two watered-down drinks, and we were served a hot sandwich and a puffy bag of potato chips with five chips inside. I will admit it appeared as though the in-flight crew catered to us, and they did a good job with what they had to work with!.

We decided that would be our last first-class plane trip, and probably our last any kind of plane trip. It appears that the planes spit out the passengers and luggage, then, within minutes, are loaded again and off to the next location. When do they have time to clean, even a little?

The highlight of our trip was the Airbnb house we rented. It was located on Lake Washington with an amazing view day and night! We could see across the lake to the Christmas lights of Ivar’s! This was a new house, freshly decorated, and the small lighted Christmas tree was a thoughtful welcome touch. We had one glitch: the oven didn’t work properly. When we mentioned it to the owner, he immediately offered compensation and promptly sent it through Airbnb to us.

Our trip home was interesting. We paid to park our car at a Las Vegas hotel with a shuttle running every half hour to and from the Airport! Sounds great, right?

The airline changed our departure time to more than an hour later than our already late one. We also forgot the one-hour time difference between Arizona and Las Vegas, so we spent more time in airports than in the air! The hotel informed us that the shuttle ran only every hour and stopped at 11:00, so we arrived too late and had to take an Uber to our car, which was parked on the fourth floor of the parking garage. But our Uber driver drove us right to our car. He got a good tip.

We kinda wish the Airline was as considerate of our troubles as our Airbnb. We sent a letter of complaint, and so far, we have had no response.

We went to Ivar’s for dinner the first night, and my Daughter scheduled a full body massage for me, which was wonderful! I think I will look for one here in Kingman.

We played many games of Cribbage and shared meals, and laughed! Our daughter and son-in-law planned a dinner at their favorite Mexican Restaurant and invited some of our friends we hadn’t seen for 10 years or more. Lots of hugs, great food, Margaritas, and we met sweet Rosemary, too!

We spent one day driving to Elma to have lunch with relatives and to stop by the Elma RV park for many hugs and cookies from Rea!

Like most vacations, we were busier than we were at home, working, but it was a blast seeing old friends and laughing. When we finally drove into our yard in the wee hours, we sighed, dragged our luggage inside, locked the doors, and fell into bed. We spent several more days just resting.

I just read another article about an ultra-rich person who gave away an enormous amount of money to improve other people’s lives!

Starting a foundation to help him give away money to help underserved people and communities! $12 billion to reduce poverty! $23 billion to different political campaigns to beat George W. Helping start the Democracy Alliance to support progressive causes. $35 billion to New York State to be given to underprivileged children and parents. Donating to the Center for American Progress. Supposedly, he has given away $35 billion and still has $7 billion left to survive on.

My question after hearing about many billionaires who have given away an enormous amount of $$$$ is, why is there still so much poverty and famine? Is it just publicity and a lie, or is only a fraction of that $$$ actually getting to the people who need it so badly? Do you suspect that a large portion is going to those who are distributing it? And pennies get to the deserved.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but wonder why there is so much poverty, even here in the supposedly richest country in the world, when so many have and are giving so much to solve the problem?

I am not suggesting stopping giving, but we might want to look at who is in charge of dispersing those valuable funds, whether they are giving the lion’s share to those who need it, and how much is pocketed as cost or “overhead”! I’m thinking of giving closer to home, to local charities.

Enough about that kind of giving. Let’s all try to give a little love at this special time of the year! I love to see the light in those little eyes when they spot the bright lights on the tree and on those houses decorated with thousands of lights and fun holiday scenes.

Now that our children are grown up and are far away, it seems like too much to decorate for a holiday when it is just the two of us, so we celebrate in other ways, like our twice-a-month video call, which is like being in the room together.

One year, when we were going to be alone for Thanksgiving, we got creative and made a poster of all of our family we missed and set it up around our Thanksgiving table. It wasn’t quite the same, but we posted pictures of it and got a lot of kind comments.

Hope your traditions are Happy and Safe travels to all who are “Going home for Christmas!”

If you get one of my books for Christmas, please be kind and leave a review. You will never know how much an Author appreciates your kind words.

See you next time….

Just wanted to say hi and hope your morning is as good and happy as mine. I finished several sewing projects that have been cluttering my sewing room and giving me a headache.

Now on to several other projects that have been knocking around in my head, wanting to come out to play.

I have a series of children’s books that have been getting way too much attention from every “wanna-be promoter” in the world. So today I’m protecting them by copyrighting all four. I know that alone does not protect them, but it does give me a legal leg to stand on.

Sleep Travelers was conceived at the suggestion of my daughter, Dawnzella! When she was little, she had three imaginary playmates. As an adult, she couldn’t remember what they were; only their names: Ning, Dog, and Boss! She said, “Mom, why don’t you write a story about my Imaginary Playmates?”

I decided it would be fun to write about all four of them, going on sleep adventures!

The first one was written introducing ‘Little Dawnies’ playmates. Ning, a Siamese cat, meeting Dog, who is a big shaggy dog, over a delicious piece of Salmon, which they both desired for dinner. Both were willing to fight for it, but Dog decided to offer to share with her, rather than fight!

Boss was perched in a tree above the stand-off, ready to fly down to save Ning from herself. After they all met and became friends, Dog invited them to spend the night in his ‘digs’! They decided to see what his digs were like and were delighted to find it snug and next to a stream, where Dog and Boss could score a fish or two for food.

Ning wouldn’t go near the water unless it were to watch the ‘guys’ fish and from a very dry, and as clean as possible, rock.

That’s the premise of all four books in this series:

Book 1: The Story of NIng, Dog & Boss

Book 2: The Amusement Park

Book 3: The Dude Ranch

Book 4: The Train Ride!

There are more bouncing around in my head, waiting for my fingers to get better acquainted again with my keyboard.

I hope you like the premise, and I believe they would be fun to read and also to read to children, as I purposely created much dialogue between the children and the animals they meet on their adventures.

All my books are published with Draft2Digital and distributed to the following platforms: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

Gotta go now and get busy with those things that make me happy. Find something that makes you happy, too! Hope your day brings you happiness, too!

Just when you thought you knew what health care was all about, a new monkey wrench is thrown at you! This is a true experience, but it will seem like a joke. It isn’t!

After months of feeling like the Doctor that I was seeing was not listening or caring a “tinker’s damn ” about my health, I decided that something had to change. This is my story.

Some time ago, my husband decided to switch to the doctor I was seeing. After his first visit, the doctor transferred him to the nurse practitioner, and he was happy with her care.

I had a stroke and, after my rehabilitation, decided the same nurse practitioner would be a good fit for me, too!

I called the office for an appointment with the nurse practitioner and was told, “You have to call your Insurance Company and formally change and get a new card with her name on it before you call for an appointment. I was a little confused because my husband didn’t have to change his card. But I called my Insurance and had the name change. BTW, my husband did not have to make this change; he was just moved to her by the same doctor who insisted I change, before an appointment could be made.

I called to schedule an appointment and was given a new appointment at 4:20 on a Friday. When we walked up to the office, I remarked to my hubby, “It looks like they are closed. There aren’t very many lights.”

The front office was dimly lit, and when I told the woman at the front desk behind the glass that I had an appointment with the (PA ). I was told I needed to make a new appointment because I was more than 5 minutes late. I looked at the clock on the wall, and I was only 4 minutes late. But it didn’t matter. No appointment! I was turned away, and unless I am wrong, it felt like a punishment.

I have to admit I left in a huff! Without making another appointment and intending to never ever call! And I haven’t!

Here is the problem: I have only one month left on my Insurance with this company, as they do not offer the Advantage Plan. I picked a new company with the Advantage plan, but I still have one month left. I felt like I was left in the wilderness with the wolves howling at my heels!

Today I called my current Insurance Provider, and the person I spoke with was very understanding and helpful. She agreed it looked strange and asked me if I wanted to file a grievance against the Doctor. I thought about it and concluded that since nothing could or would be done, I said no.

I explained that the doctor had stopped refilling my Colostrol medication, and I felt that I should get it filled. But, of course, I needed a new doctor and an appointment to get a prescription.

She then emailed me a list of doctors and practitioners in my neighborhood to pick from. I tried to call one and got a recording. I forgot that this is Sunday! Sunday is my husband’s first day, so it felt like Monday. But I am on the way to getting some help.

If you are close to my age, take good care of yourself, because you are the ONLY one, many times, who really cares. Insurance Companies and Doctors are only doing their job! Some are better than others!

Now for my commercial! I am an author with many books available on various sites in eBook and Paperback formats. Some of those sights are; Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

You can go to my website to see the covers and a short synopsis for each.

Tomorrow I plan to put the first chapter of my latest book, which will be published soon. Thanks for visiting, and have a Great Christmas. Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful, too.

Hi, back again to say Hi, and good morning.

Today I wanted to touch on my writing skill, or lack thereof. About a year ago, I had a stroke. It was on Christmas Day. Not the present I wanted under the Christmas tree, but we don’t always get what we want.

I refuse to think of it as suffering a stroke. It was a block in my progress in life. Yes, I lost momentum, and it put me down, but not out! I lost much of the use of my left side, but with regular exercise, I got much of it back. I walk with a cane, but I can walk! The one thing I miss the most is my typing and handwriting skills. I used to have very nice handwriting, and if I slow down, it isn’t so bad.

My typing speed had slowed from 80+ wpm on the manual typewriter I had after my typing class. After the stroke, I was zero; with much work, I can type a little, but not well, and I would not want to take a typing test.

I love to write, and have created 24 books and two series that I have self-published. My “Ruby and Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space” was and is a blast to write. They are about real people and were originally written as Christmas Gifts, but evolved into books, just for the love of reading.

The second series, at my daughter’s request, was to create stories about her imaginary playmates. She had three! After much thought, the “Sleep Travelers” series was born! There are now four books in the series, and places where they might want to go are dreamed up, and they will go on more dream adventures.

I love my characters, and I clearly picture them in my mind, that they become almost real to me. I sometimes cry when I have to let them go.

I do pay attention to the writing gurus’ techniques, but I am just someone who cannot help putting characters into precarious positions and struggling to find their way out!

I admit that I am a Pantser writer! That is, I start with a written premise of my total story idea, then I go off the rails as each problem presents itself to them and help them figure a way out, hopefully in one piece. Now that you know what I do, I invite other secret or well-known writers to tell me what they do.

I just finished Book 9 of the Ruby and Nolan series, called “Volcano,” and it should hit the distribution points next month. I loved putting some good friends in the precarious position of possibly dying in a fiery furnace of an erupting volcano while trying to rescue a group of Faraies!

My next project is to copyright a series of books. I have been approached by a company that wants to promote me. I would love to do that as long as I am not obligated to finance it for them. I did the hard part by creating them.

Well, that’s all for today, hope your day is as fun as mine will be….

See you next time. All my books are available at the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Have you ever said that? You wouldn’t be alone. Did you say there are so many things I wish I had done, and wish I had done more fun things?

I can’t say that, because we did have a ton of fun in our youth. In the market crash of 2008, we were one of the couples that lost our house to greedy lenders. I won’t go into the ugly details, just our solution!

We sold everything we owned, bought an overpriced Motorhome that was way too expensive to maintain, and took off traveling the western half of the US. We took workamping jobs to keep us on the road!

Before you start feeling sorry for us, think about this! We got to see this amazing country through our huge front window, met some wonderful people, and experienced a different type of life.

We spent one summer in South Dakota working at Mount Rushmore! We saw the magnificently carved statues every day! Ate Buffalo burgers, and played slots in our laundromat, winning more than enough to pay for it!

The other workampers were wonderful, and when we needed help, they were always there to pitch in and help us, and we did the same. When one of our workampers had surgery, we worked double shifts for two weeks, until she was back. Many times when a workamper was seen working on their rig, they would look up, and two or three helpers would be there to help.

Life on the road was different and could be hard at times, but waking up to deer and wild turkeys foraging in your front yard ain’t that bad!

Any work on the motorhome was three times as expensive as a stick-built home, but being road warriors was exciting!

We are happily settled in our Home Sweet Home in Kingman, Arizona, and sometimes we think back to those travels and long to get on the road again. I have roadmaps in my veins when I dream of that time in our lives.

Many of those dreams show up in my writing. I started writing while I was on the road, with my spare time, and continued when I became a landlubber. I have somewhere around 20 self-published books.

You can find them at: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Thanks for listening, See you again, soon….

We are typical Americans who are ashamed that so many good people were fooled by the racist propaganda spewed by the media about how wonderful it would be to have Trump as president again.

We DID NOT VOTE for him and DO NOT SUPPORT any of his ridiculous policies he has rammed through his hand-picked Senators, House, and Supreme Court Members! We are appalled at the stupid Tariffs! he is indiscriminately throwing willy-nilly with no thought or concern that tariffs vs TAXES are the same thing.

He is destroying our Democratic way of life as fast as his scribbling signature can be affixed to stupid rules!

He lies every time he opens his mouth, and unfortunately, it is open ALL THE TIME!

We know every leader of every country who confronts him with his lying, boasting rants is not so secretly laughing behind his back!

We would love to be laughing too, but it is hitting a little too close to home, and our pocketbooks.

Don’t count us out, yet! Remember, we won a non-winnable war to be free from a king’s heavy hand. You saw the millions of ordinary citizens take to the streets in protest of “NO KINGS!” It could happen again and again, until we de-throne the make-believe wanna-be King!

See ya, next time…

My books are available at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

I just received a post on our local neighborhood site that our town is planning to fine anyone caught stealing shopping carts $1000. fine!

I answered: How can a poor (as former Church Mice,) devil’s be able to pay that fine for stealing a shopping cart that they will put all their worldly possessions, from a Corporate Millionaire?

She answered me with the statement of; “Stealing is stealing!”

I said, “What is wrong with our Government? When any of our citizens are starving?” And desperate enough to steal one friggen shopping cart?

Do you think that any one of our Billionaire or Trillionaire Corporate Giants will starve at the loss of one or a thousand shopping carts? Even several thousand? Do you really?

Maybe if they volunteered to pay the minuscule amount of tax dollars anyone in their high style of living, could certainly afford, more of the poorest of our people, and they are people, not statistics, could find work and live the good life! The Billionaires have the advantage of calling on any of the many benefits of the Police, Fire Department, Emergency Personnel in case of accidents, Hospitals, Air Traffic Controllers, and many more people who work harder for much less pay than they deserve, because they want to help.

Most of the above will NEVER be able to retire on their yacht and travel the world. Most of them can barely afford to save enough for their children to attend one of the major colleges. Their children will have to work to help pay the exagerated tuition to just get by.

It can never be justified to give so much to so many who do not deserve it!

Enough Ranting! I am an Author and my books are available on the following sites; Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon or you can find them on my website: http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com.

Thanks for listening and will talk again, soon!

That was the last thing I just said to a Salesperson pretending to be a Publisher. And she was calling from a pseudo-publisher that would LOVE to “help” me become a million seller!

All I have to do is the hard work and write the book and pay them upfront buckos, and they promise to “fix” my manuscript and distribute it to many outlets, and the sales will come rolling in. I know where some swampland is for sale! ONCE BURNED TWICE SHY!

I bit on an offer to include my book “Sleep Travelers” in a show in California, and it only cost me more than $700. Not one book was sold! At that point in my life, I morphed into a natural skeptic.

Since they sold my name to everyone, almost every week, I get offers from various “Publishers” that want to become my partner, and can get me a contract with and up to $80,000 for the rights to guess which book? You got it; “Sleep Travelers”.

I wonder what makes them think my self-published book needs help when they have NEVER read a word of it? It is probably my ego talking, but I am not aware that my manuscript needs fixing, and to the extent of several thousand dollars!

I love that book because it is the brainchild of my daughter. When she was young she had three imaginary playmates. Most kids have one, but she had three.

She asked me one day, “Mom, why don’t you write a book about my playmates?”

She couldn’t remember what they were, only their names, which were, Ning, Dog, and Boss! I created characters for them; Ning became a Siamese Cat, Dog became a huge shaggy dog, and Boss became an African Gray Parrot!!

The first book tells the story of when they met and became friends! They all decide to go to he Zoo, where they meet Ella Elephant, Tigger Tiger, Orchid Orca, and Harold Hippo, and more. The animal can talk and are not confined to cages. I write a lot of conversation between them and feel this book would be fun to read to children and use the voices of the animals.

In this book Daddy Shirl shows up as Ranger Shirl to help cook burgers and fries, because Little Dawnie is too little and the animals, well you get the idea! After everyone got filled they have a food fight with ketchup and mustard. They have a problem!

Daddy Shirl to the rescue! He reminds them that all they have to do is “think clean” and everything is spotless again. Remember, they merely had to “think Zoo” and they were there. When Little Dawnie is tired, everyone says goodnight, and they magically snuggle into their various beds for a good night’s sleep.

I love to write Sci/Fi because it allows my mind to take flight and imagine anything. Murder/Mystery is also fun, as I love to figure out, “Who done it?” before the end. Recently, I have delved into Sexy/love. That is fun, but at my age, I have to use my imagination. And my grown-up daughter reads what her mother writes, sexy/love it is, with her eyes closed!

I write for myself because something inside makes these stories bounce around inside my head until I can’t stand the pressure and have to let them out.

If you want to read one of my books, here are a few of the places where you will find them in eBook and/or Paperback: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

If we meet at a craft fair in Kingman, AZ, I will be happy to sign one for you. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to talking again. Check out my website at http://www.brendacolbathboooks.com where if you click on one of the books, you will magically be taken to a store where they can be purchased.

We will talk again soon…

I have been so ashamed of my country….

We are assaulting protesting citizens on the street, and those who only want to go to work! Some are only guilty of being a minority! And some who are U.S. citizens. But that doesn’t stop those well-armed, masked, and with no openly displayed signs of being authorized to arrest, handcuff, and throw into vans and other vehicles, never to be seen again! If you think you are safe being a White Male, think again!

Keep in mind that the other Despot started with hatred for Jews, but as his paranoia grew, he designated other groups of people to be rounded up and thrown into those railroad cars destined for the gas chambers.

You may think that those who are attacking our most fundamental rights will stop at only those of dark skin and hard-working people, but you are sadly mistaken.

Have you noticed that lately, those who speak openly about the many safeguards of our society that are being systemically dismantled in order to spend that money on billionaires’ tax breaks and ballrooms that all of us will never step foot in? Are you happy that this administration dug up the Rose Garden and laid a concrete slab for the President’s admirers to lap up the hundreds of lies that will be spewed forthwith?

The thing that really makes me the angriest is that we are trading our children’s lives for no restrictions on who can purchase guns! NO ONE wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens!

I am so grateful that my kids only had to contend with ice on the roads. There were no shooters of children in confined school rooms. Teachers only needed to teach them, and not to be a target to save their lives.

This is my first time contributing to a political campaign, but if you are on the fence, now is the time to join!

It is now or never!

If these elections go badly, we may never get another chance to turn it around!

I am an author and enjoy discussing my books. My latest book is nearly ready to self-publish. It will be available in eBook and paperbook on many sites here in the U.S. and Europe. Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Also, on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, you can find covers with a brief synopsis of each book. When you read a book, a review tells authors to keep writing!

Thank you for reading my blog today. We will talk again.

Do you like the cover?

I remember flying from Hartford, Conn., home to Maine for Christmas when I was 18 and working at Hartford Fire Insurance Co., and the price for the trip was $20, and I got a meal! Also, when the refreshment cart was wheeled up the aisle, there was room on either side to walk by to go to the restroom. Unlike flying today on the elegant Sardine Airlines. With the seats so close and so small that you must become good friends with your neighboring passengers, because everyone was in everyone’s business.

Oh, well, there is not a chance in hell that I would pay the ungodly price to be crushed into one of those flying crashes “waiting to happen!”

I recall that the pay was a pittance, not just at Hartford Fire, but any place that hired us “girls” compared to what it is now, and I had to room with someone to afford an apartment. Our apartment was over a liquor store. I have to admit it was fun! I was a keypunch operator, and if that sounds interesting, the most exciting thing I did was to re-create the cards that the machines mangled so that the “computer operators” could mangle them again. BTW their pay was considerable more than us “girls” pay.

I suspect that they didn’t have to go through the humiliation of the “6-month review” from the big boss with my Manager in attendance. We were told not to say anything except “yes, sir or no, sir.” My Boss Mrs. Bill usually drank her lunch and wasn’t expecting a little hick from the sticks to break the rules.

Surprise! When Big Guy told us that we hadn’t been doing good enough work to deserve a raise, I spoke up and told him how I had been put on the machine to make new cards from mangled ones and had been told by my Boss that I had several “perfect batches,” so I think I deserve a raise. As you might expect, that went over like a lead balloon. Mrs. Bill told me in very clear words that I was lucky to keep my job. The reason I had the brass to speak up for myself was because my Mother said to “always see in your mind the big boss with only his underwear on. And that was one sight I never want to see again.

That is not the last time my mouth got me in trouble, and I might share more later. Ask me about “dating” and our “apartment” conveniently located over the liquor store.

Gotta go, this week, I am trying to finish Book 8 in the Ruby & Nolan series and revise the synopses of my books on my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com. I do that every two or three months to keep them fresh.

All my books are available in eBook and or paperback on the following places here in America and Europe: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Of course, if you are perusing my website and something catches your eye, simply click on it and you will be taken on a magical carpet ride and can make it your own.

See you next time…

The Evening News was just that! Does anyone but me remember voices of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Dan Rather, Edward R. Murrow, and let’s not forget Leslie Stahl, Barbara Walters.

I remember the announcement of the end of World War 2 on September 2nd, 1945. I was 5 years old. I remember the Red Cent, and the plastic bags with the Red dot, that we pretended was butter! It was really lard, but we were grateful for anything. Everything was scarce, but nutritional food was nowhere in sight!

When we went to the Saturday afternoon movies, newsreels were shown of the newly released prisoners from the death camps in Germany. We all cringed in our seats, and many of us cried. I still cry when I see that it may be happening all over again. Did we not learn anything????

Come on, Leaders; Use your Head and Heart to stop the insanity!

Speaking of crying, if things in this country do not change direction, we will all be crying and hungry again! Don’t believe me? Well, Google and read about our Country and many others coming together to take down that despicable regime and reclaim Democracy!

Forgive me for my short lapse into my fears. If you are not afraid….

Onto more fun things: I am almost finished with my new book called “Volcano,” which is the 9th book in the “Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in my 24th book I have self-published, and they are available in eBook and Paperback at the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

Of course, if you live in Kingman, AZ, or happen to go to a craft fair, where I have a booth. I would be happy to discuss them with you and will be happy to sign your copy. My website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, has all my book covers and a short synopsis of each.

Thanks for reading and look forward to another “I remember when!”

Take care and see you later……

When, as an adult, you bought a bottle of aspirin and, after a hard day and a pounding headache, you decided to open that bottle. It took just a couple of seconds to unscrew the cap and pop a couple into your mouth. A swallow later, your headache was already better!

Not so today! Now EVERYTHING is packaged with Child-Proof caps! Now, if you want relief, you need to round up a child for help to open the Dang things. How is that saving them or me?

Go ahead and open any item and watch your blood pressure spike! A box of cereal! The glue used to close the very thick cardboard box is leftover spaceship glue! Then try to tear open the super-duper strong sealed plastic bag! How many times has it exploded in a shower of flakes covering the kitchen floor for a fun tiptoe to the broom and dust pan?

And by the way, have you noticed that the packaging is getting smaller and the price is getting higher? Happy Corporate Greed!

I know, I know, we adults and children are being protected! From what? Oh yes, I remember when one Wackadoodle poisoned a few pills in one or two bottles, and that was deadly serious and scary! But now the bandwagon is full of bottles that can’t be opened easily. Everything is sealed!

Our fate is also sealed if we do not turn around from the present path we are rushing down, with the end clearly in sight! At the end of that path is a future we should not covet! It will end badly. We will have order! But at a staggering high price that will be paid by our best and brightest! I will leave you with this thought! Freedom has a price, and it needs to be paid continuously!

Now commercial time! I am an author of around 24 books. I self-publish with Dragt2Digital, and they are distributed to Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon in eBook and Paperback here in America and Europe.

At http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, you will find covers and a short synopsis of each book. Thanks for looking, and if you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing, we could become friends.

Our trip to the grocery store was as exciting as a tooth ache. Usually Mom went alone, but on the rare times we were allowed to go with her, we knew better than to ask for ANYTHING! Her list was something like this: 25lb bag of flour (not enriched ground from wheat) bag of potatoes packed in heavy paper bag, Sugar, milk (unless we bought whole milk from a farmer), salt & pepper. No pre-packaged items to heat and eat! Everything was cooked from scratch.

We had a garden. When we bought a small 15-acre farm, Mom had a one-acre garden. I hated helping with the canning, but did it anyway. She canned EVERYTHING that grew. EVERYTHING! We had a cellar that stored all the glass containers for winter. Of course the cellar hid a big crock or home brew, which us kids never dared to try!

One of the fun things about our farm was that it was right between three lakes, all of which had pickerel and black bass, and we had a small boat with oars. At night, we could fish in the lake off the bridge and catch catfish! They were fun! They were fun to catch and a pain to clean. Another name for them is Hornpout, they got that name for the painful horns that could cause problems when stuck, and we got stuck a lot.

The owners of the land across the road permitted us to “tap” the Maple trees, and we made gallons of maple syrup. Back then, in the winter we make maple syrup candy by pouring a little on snow. Couldn’t do that now, the snow wouldn’t be good for you.

We had chickens and raised a bull for meat, too! Our only pets were one dog and cats that appeared from time to time.

Well, that’s it for today, hope your youth was as fun as mine. Today, I’d like to introduce you to one of my children’s book series called “Sleep Travelers.” Most kids have one imaginary playmate. My daughter had three! One day she said, “Mom, why don’t you write a story about them?”

So I did! She couldn’t remember what they were, just their names: Ning, Dog, and Boss. Ning became a Siamese Cat, Dog became a big shaggy dog, and Boss became an African Gray Parrot!

When they go to sleep, they go on adventures together! On these adventures, they can talk to the animals, and they can talk back to them. I love writing fiction because children can be anything they want to be! And they always win. They cannot ever be hurt, and if they find themselves in danger, they wake up snug and warm in their beds. And sometimes Daddy Shirl visits!

This series is available as eBook and Paperback. You can find them at the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon in America and in Europe.

Of course, if you live in Kingman, Arizona, and you meet with me at a craft fair, or if you are one of my sewing customers, I will sign one for you.

Let’s talk again, soon….

There was Insurance through your workplace sometimes if your company offered it, but if you weren’t lucky, you could visit a Doctor’s office for $20 or less. That “good old Doc” could put a leg or arm in a cast, put three or more stitches in a cut. Some even had X-ray machines.

And they could draw! blood. When I married my husband 64 years ago, you had to have a blood test. Don’t ask me why, Google it if you have a burning desire to know. Old Doc. Taylor tried so many times to get blood that I had bruises from my wrist to my elbow, and I finally said, “Doc, I really don’t want to get married this bad.” Then he got blood.

When our Son got his foot jammed between the front wheel of Dad’s bike wheel and the frame, we took him to the doctor’s office, no emergency room in sight. Doc cleaned the ankle, which was skinned, and said “Keep it clean, and it will form a scab. Bring him back if it becomes infected.” And it didn’t cost an arm and a leg (pun intended)!

The only time we are willing to go to the emergency room is for a life-threatening emergency, which I feel that is the normal, although I wonder if that is true.

As a kid, when we were playing outside, and we got thirsty, we drank water from the hose. We also cooked off under the sprinkler in the dog days of summer.

When we were older, we were allowed to go to Lake Sabastacook to go to the “Old swimming hole,” and our guardian was our faithful dog, Rex. There was no lifeguard! We knew we were supposed to stay in the shallow water, but of course we didn’t! our favorite place was over my head and if I gor into trouble, which I did because my brothers threw me in, yelling, “Sink or swim!”

Rex jumped in and swam to me, I held onto his tail, and he brought me to the rocky ledge the guys used as a diving board.

That’s all today. I wanted to mention the first book I wrote and self-published back in 2016, called “Murder on Lake Haverly. ” I’ve written over 20 books since.

It was a pseudo-history of the beginning of my real estate career. The main character, Maye West, might resemble me. Most of the other characters were taken from real life I met in that business, but the names were changed to protect the guilty!

Sparks start flying from her most difficult client and from bodies floating in her new buyers’ Shangri-la! to bodies showing up riddled with cross-bow bolts is just one thing after another, keeping Maye and her friend-with benefits, James, a Sheriff Deputy in hot water!

This and all my other books are available in eBook and Paperback are these sites in America and Europe: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

Let me know if you read it and liked it. Thank-you!

Being a kid was FREE! We stayed outdoors playing games until it was dark. That was a hard and fast rule. The games were kick the can, hide and seek, baseball, and basketball, if someone was lucky enough to have a store-bought net. If not, we made do with what we had available. The rules and equipment were beat up or invented by us kids.

Sometimes we fought, stayed mad for ten minutes. Rarely longer than overnight.

I lived on a street named Middlesex Ave. Honest. It was right behind the stores and next to a small river. We stole everything that wasn’t nailed down in the back of the businesses, for our games. What we didn’t know until late, it was destined for the dump. Those Refrigerator boxes made great hideouts!

We had toy guns, bows, and arrows. However, we were taught NEVER to shoot to hit anyone; you had to not hit them, ever. If you made a mistake and the kid went home crying, you had to explain and apologize in front of the parental units! Scary, and not a lot of fun.

On the hill behind our house ran a train track. And I can guarantee putting a penny on the track will not cause a train wreck! Of course, we were told NOT to play on the tracks, so that is exactly where we played as often as we could.

You could go to the Saturday afternoon movie for a quarter and get a box of popcorn, and a pop, too! Of course, quarters were few and far between, so most of us had to find enough empty bottles to turn in and get nickels for them. I remember seeing “The Wizard of Oz” when it came to our little theater. We all wanted to sing like Judy Garland and loved being scared to death by the Wicked Witch. And we breathed a sigh of relief when she finally got back to Kansas.

Stay tuned for another chapter and please if you like to read sci/fi, murder mysteries, check out my books;

Maye West Mysteries Book 1: Murder on Lake Haverly Maye West Mysteries Book 2: Options The Spirited One Book 1: The protector The Spirited One Book: 2 James The End of the Road Immortal Enemies Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 1 Science Project Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 9 Volcano coming soon Sleep Travelers Book 1: The Story of Ning, Dog, and Boss Sleep Travelers Book 2: The Amusement Park Sleep Travelers Book 3: The Dude Ranch Sleep Travelers Book 4: The Train Ride

These are available at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Let’s categorize the failings of life since the BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL! So far, it has been a raging success! The one thing it has produced, is more RAGE for the people to chew on and they are raging about being cheated, on a daily basis. Jobs ain’t there! Taxes are going up! Prices are going up so fast that it is impossible to budget at all!

Add to that the STRANGE GROUP OF INCOMPETENT BUTTHEADS THAT ARE RUNNING THIS COUNTRY! If they were only running it into the ground, it could be tolerated! From the top of the triangle of 3rd graders’ intelligence, imagining that they know what is good for us! They broadcast their lack of intelligence so loudly that one needs to plug their ears and close their eyes.

Have you noticed that more of them are sporting orange painted faces? Sorry guys, the orange paint does not disguise your actual deeds!

It is hard to make even the dumbest believe you know anything, when you shoot yourself in the foot every time you open your big mouth and try to lie so unconvincingly!

IT IS TIME FOR ALL DEMOCRATS to start FIGHTING, and I mean quit being NICE!!! I know you used to think and say, “When they go low, we go high.”

Sorry, guys, but do you finally realize how well that did for you? We now have a government? Filled with incompetent fools about ready to tear up the Constitution! Too many of the competent, intelligent leaders have been fired by the infamous DOGE, and many others have “retired” in protest of the disgusting mess the spoiled brats are making of our once great Nation!

A suggestion: Get on the Governor of California bandwagon and shout out their flaws with humor that stings them right where it hurts: THEIR EGO!

THERE IS STILL TIME TO WIN OUR GOVERNMENT BACK!

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country!

There are so many things that bug me that my mind is a little jumbled. If this is your state of mind, you could join the club?! That is the old fart’s club (unable to understand the “why”) club!”

Why are people complaining that food prices are going up every day? You voted for that buffon and his cronies, and you are surprised?

You cheered when he told you that he would bring in Trillions of dollars in Tariffs from all the countries that are cheating us, didn’t you? Well, he did bring in lots of moola into the treasury, but guess what? When your friendly car company imported those shiny new cars, they paid more $$$$at the dock for those cars, and you didn’t think the American dealers were going to take a loss, did you?

Also, in that “Big Beautiful Bill your Republicans raised the deficit to 8 trillion dollars. Do you think your tax bill will decrease? The Billionaires who are flirting with becoming trillionaires will pay one more penny in taxes than they did last year? Their Yachts are getting bigger while your hovel is getting smaller.

To really put you in the dumps, let’s talk about Healthcare, or the lack thereof. Now that the Buffon has put all of his unqualified dog catchers in charge, do you think you will have any? I would tell you to not hold your breath, but on second thought, maybe that would be a good idea.

Well, see you in the funny papers, but don’t look for the Epstein Files to be published.

Now for a commercial break! Check out my website at http://www.brendacolbathsbooks.com. When you read the synopsis and it sounds like something you want to read, click on the cover to order it. I always have several of each at craft shows to sign for you, too.

I publish with D2D and my books are available at the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon

I will be back again with more observations of age and its flaws!

Cover of the latest book that I am now in the process of editing! For most writers, this is the most grueling, time-consuming, and pure hell to do for yourself. However, allowing someone else who doesn’t know and love or hate your characters to cut and dismiss your scenes is cruel and heart-wrenching. I hate every second of it, but that is what has to be done, and I am doing, or will be doing, the minute I have finished this post.

I am a Pantser Writer! That means I write by the seat of my pants. No notes, synopsis, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, outline, or anything else. Sometimes I dream a scene or two, and when I wake up, I rush to the computer to get it typed as fast as I can.

Writing stories is my passion. I am not a million-seller, and I do not desire to be, or I would spend a lot of money hiring a professional editor, Graphic artist, and advertise a lot more than I do. I would love to have one or more Beta readers, but alas, they are hard to find. I have had several who only wanted to read stories for free and occasionally correct spelling or grammar. I have Grammarly for that; what I need is someone who can catch a timeline problem or a character flaw.

I don’t write very fast. Sometimes I have a scene forming in the back of my head for days, especially when I am busy finishing a sewing project for friends or making cute things for a craft fair. Right now, I am making witch hats and bucket hats. I don’t have time for a lot of that either, as I make lunch for my hubby, since he is still working part-time. Shirl says I try to do too many things, but what’s a gal to do when she has so many things of interest?

By the way, the book shown above will be published next month and will be available at the following locations: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, and Amazon.

All my books are available in both eBook and paperback formats. On my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com, simply click on a book cover to be directed to one of the stores that carry it.

Thanks for listening to my rambling. We will talk again soon.

In these warm (hot) days, it is hard to think of the coming cold weather! But they are coming a lot faster than you think. However, the good thing about that is that we can all look forward to the fun of Halloween and the festive holidays.

I really got involved in making costumes for my kids. I constructed many costumes over the years. The hardest was the T-Rex with a stuffed tail! It turned out great; the only problem was moving around with the rather large tail. Another was the Adam and Eve costume for my daughter and her then-current boyfriend. It was easy, just tons of fig leaves sewn strategically on bikinis. It was the talk of the party they attended.

There were many dance costumes for recitals! The one that I tried to refuse was a KKK costume. But knowing the person it was for, they would not have given up on it, so I said, “Okay, but it is a bad idea! You do know what this stands for, don’t you?” We had a lengthy discussion about that era and the potential repercussions of wearing the costume, to no avail. He wore it for about 20 minutes before it was stuffed in a backpack and never worn again. Sometimes you have to let people make up their minds about what is acceptable in polite society!

I am not a costume type of person. So if you see me in a costume, I was forced into it, or it was a big concession.

I do have shirts with some of the covers of my books. I will wear it next weekend at my table at Mohave Markets, located at 2600 Fairgrounds Blvd, in Kingman, AZ, on Sunday from 9:00 to 3:00. This is a big step for me, as I will be there alone, since my husband has to work. He will go with me on Saturday to help unload the car and set up. The owner of the Market said his sons will help me load the car on Sunday, so I am good. I will have hand-sewn grocery bags, totes, Jean purses, etc.

I will have some of my books, and will sign them if purchased at the market, or if they are from the Smashwords sale. The sale is available online at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BrendaColbath. Alternatively, you can visit my website at http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com and click on any of the book covers, which will direct you to the sale at Smashwords.

It should be fun. Hope to see you there.

When there was very little difference between the seasons, traffic congestion, and the price of renting a smidgen plot of land under a mobile home, we leaped into purchasing a stick-built, resale home in Kingman, a small town compared to Phoenix, but we are liking the small town living.

This life-style isn’t for everyone. Stores aren’t open all hours. And as my shocked kids said, ‘My God, there aren’t any street lights!’ That’s okay with me, we stay home most of the time. We only go out at night once in a while.

Much of my time is spent sewing for neighbors, reading, and writing. My writing slowed a little after the stroke at Christmas this year. However, I now have the use of my left hand for writing and typing, albeit a little slower than before, but it is still functional.

I am currently working on Book 8 of the Ruby & Nolan series, titled Volcano. It wasn’t completed in time to be included in my big sale on Smashwords, but it will be released later. All my books are priced at 50% off when you look for them at : https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BrendaColbath

I publish my books with Draft2Digital and they are distributed to the following Book sites: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

Time to get busy and complete Volcano, sewing jobs, and playing with my Roses. They are tolerating the heat and wind quite well.

We’ll talk again, soon..

Today is shaping up to be a good day! Yesterday ended up being a semi-disaster. Everything that could go wrong with my sewing went wrong. My day of sewing ended with me shutting everything down and heading to my office to write a few pages in Book 9 of the Ruby & Nolan series. It beats the hell out of fixing it with a hammer!

Today, I am going to take time to relax and recharge my batteries before I tackle anything more challenging, anything more difficult than cleaning the kitchen. I might paint the bird house. I can’t go wrong! If I look out the window and see a dozen birds laughing so hard they fall off the fence, I will know it was a success!

Well, unless a few more Republicans wake up, by the 4th, we will have the “Big Beautiful Bill passed and will start sinking into a Third World Country, and poverty for all but the already now wealthy billionaires. It is a shame that a beautiful idea like we had will go down in defeat without a whimper! If women had had a hand in writing the Constitution, it might have had a different theme. There is still time to change, but the time runs short, and it will take some strong actions, more than words, to defeat the fascist organization that has seized our once beautiful FREE Country!

I hope you all have a safe, happy Fourth of July! I am going to enjoy some family time and try to relax. The plan is to eat tons of ribs, play many cribbage games, and laugh long and hard at Dad Jokes.

Don’t forget that for the whole month of July, my books are all 50% off on Smashwords, which is part of Draft2Digital.

Draft2Digital publishes my books and distributes to: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

We will talk again, later….

I do sewing for friends for fun and to keep my hands busy.

Today, I cut about 16 inches off a dress and hemmed it for a nice lady. When I called her to tell her it was done, she was surprised, as she had brought it to me yesterday. I am not always able to complete an item, but it is always nice when they are happy with the job. I try to do the job like I am doing it for myself.

I also repaired two American Flags that the wind was making a mess out of the hems. And in between those, I worked on two pairs of pants for Hubby. He deserves a little TLC. When I came home after the stroke, he waited on me cheerfully. In addition to preparing meals for me, he did the laundry and dishes. It feels so good to be back closer to my pre-stroke self. My typing is nearly as good as it was before, of course; I wasn’t a speed typist anyway! It is good to be able go get back to my writing. I am close to finishing book 9 of the Ruby & Nolan series. I hope to get several sequels done that are knocking on my head, asking, “When??”

I was having so much fun that when Shirl came in to check on me, I realized he wasn’t on break, but had done work. Woops, what for dinner? tonight it is tacos! Shirl is cooking and I should hurry and at least shred the cheese.

Well, this was short, but you know how time flies when you are having fun.

Will talk again soon. I hope you have a good day, too!

All my books are published with Draft2Digital and distributed to the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon.

I will be posting about the 50% sale on all my books next month, which is very soon!

Take care, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

I’ve ranted enough for a day or two, so today I am introducing you to a NEW BOOK that I just published at Draft2Digital. This one is available only in eBook form. My children’s stories are fun to read to your children, as I purposely use a lot of dialogue, and they are short. I loved reading to my children, and by the time they started school, they had learned to read. Not a bad thing!

Little Dawnie has a special treat in store tonight! Daddy Shirl reads her an exciting story about a Dude Ranch with real cowboys, horses, cows, and bucking broncos. She couldn’t wait to crawl into her little bed after her bath and go to sleep, and wake up her Sleep Traveler friends. She excitedly told them about the dude ranch! They were a little skeptical, but Little Dawn was so enthusiastic, even Ning, who you remember hates to get dirty or wet, agreed it would be fun. The Dude ranch was, ‘In Yucca, Arizona!’ They put their heads together and thought, “Dude Ranch in Yucca, Arizona,” and voila, they were there. Daddy Shirl showed up for the big dinner, accompanied by entertainment from The Spin-Offs. The lead singer, Miss Dawnzella, sat with them at dinner. And Daddy Shirl sang My Funny Valentine with Dawnzella. They watched the cowboys perform. When it was time for a “night on the Prairie,” they rode on horseback until dark, then they had beans and biscuits cooked over the fire. When Little Dawnie became sleepy, she shared Miss Dawnzella’s sleeping bag.  Little Dawnie thought Mis Dawnzella’s eyes looked like hers.Little Dawnie loved that Sleep-Traveling trip so much that next time, she took her baby brother on a train ride across the country to the Grand Canyon, and California! Again, her friends were concerned with how they could care for the baby, but Little Dawnie knew Little Chris would love it, and he did!

This eBook was published with Draft2Digital and is distributed to the following sites, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

And it will be included with the 50% off sale through the month of July on Smashwords Sale!I

Check out my website http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Have a great day, will talk again…..

Well, not quite paradise, but living in a rural community in Kingman, Arizona, our little piece of land with our home, held together with love and determination.

Life would be grander if the interest rate were just two percentage points lower. To all the Mortgage Companies, I was a Realtor and can see right through your attempts to get us to refi! And a HELOC is a credit card secured by our minimal equity in our castle. Without a rate reduction, the only one that makes $$ is you! All of your offers are filed in my circular file. Thank you, Rocket Mortgage, for selling my name to EVERY MORTGAGE BROKERAGE in the God Dammed world!

My next rant is in regards to the current supply of representatives that we voted for in the silly hopes that they would give a damn about our welfare after they were elected! Really? Do you not get a salary? So, what is the donation that you are begging for that will do for me? Can you not do anything until my little $10? donation, gets into your tiny, greasy grippers? Additionally, could you please let me know why you don’t allow comments from us? The hundreds of solicitations daily from EVERY person ANYWHERE in the US are clogging my mailbox and they cannot be unsubscribed!

And please do not continue to try to make me believe that you “need 10,000 signatures by Midnight to prove the American people will fight extremism every step of the way.” Why do you need money to sue the president? Sue away! He has done it for years and NEVER pays the attorneys, and they keep coming back again and again.

My final rant is about the packaging of everyday items. I understand that you must keep them closed so that they reach their designated place on the store’s shelf thousands of miles away. But do you have to use glue to seal them so that they would pass inspection in space? How about the instruction printed in English or translated and large enough for human eyes? Add pill bottles to this rant! Is it really necessary to put those large capsules in a tiny bottle to keep the pills fresh? Many times they get stuck and to get them out you have to empty the bottle! Not fun! Enough!

Just a reminder! My books are published by Draft2Digital and are destributed to: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon or on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful day, and we’ll talk again soon.

This is scary! I should NEVER allow my brain this kind of freedom! I am a left-handed Gemini, and we all need keepers! After you read this, you might agree.

First, let me say, I abhor anachronisms! It pisses me off to have to think for 20 minutes, what they mean! My typing skills are not in the same category as a racehorse, and recovery from a stroke took my speed away, but I can still type. I will use emoji’s, but want some that can be used to show the average person’s real feelings!

And speaking of emojis! When someone takes the time to type a thoughtful piece about the world and its condition, would it take too much of your valuable time actually to type something back to them? Be it good or bad! They will appreciate a few words a hundred times more than a quick, thoughtless emoji for ‘like or love’! I will admit that sometimes, I skim read if the piece looks like a hundred pages long.

Enough of that! Does anyone want to weigh in on the latest lunacy of our pseudo-government? When did we, the people, authorize the President to start a war? Didn’t the WAR have to be approved by Congress? And why bomb places where the nuclear preparations have been moved?

Another thing is, why do we keep trying to grow our vegetables at home when we know the only way is to have an air-conditioned greenhouse or be a mega-farmer with access to mega gallons of water? At 100 degrees, everything I plant cooks before it sprouts!

My last thought for today is: read your labels on all those “ever so easy” packaged goods! If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it! Read the labels! Many of those additions are only to allow them to be shipped across the country or ocean, and be stored in a warehouse until ordered. Cooking is not a dirty word. You might want to look up “Natural” and “Organic” before you spend more for less!

Okay, commercial time! I am a writer, and I love to read other authors’ books! I publish with Draft2Digital and my books are distributed to the following: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon, and they are on my website, http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Have a wonderful day! Thank you for reading my blog, and I will talk to you again later!

I waited by the bridge for the boat to navigate the water lilies and bump against the side of the dirt road. Lloyd hopped out and secured it until I could climb in and take the middle seat.

The minute I was seated with the oars in my hands, he pushed off and hopped into the front seat, smiling, his blue eyes twinkling, as he loved the time with his two favorite women. My Mom and I! Mom occupied the back seat, wearing her usual fishing outfit: a faded blue shirt, faded blue jeans, and bare feet. Her cigarette was clasped firmly in her mouth.

She held her Zebco fishing pole ready to do battle with the waiting Black Bass and/0r Pickeral! As we slowly floated out to the middle of the pond in front of our 100-year-old house, she asked, “Row me over a little closer to Mr. Additons’ boat landing?” The minute we were in the right spot, she cast her line with the silver spoon and triple hook out and laid it in front of the stand of lilly pads and tall weeds. It had not hardly made a splash on the water when a huge Black bass shot out of the water and smacked into the ripple of the lure.

Mom loved battling with a wily fish, and in the next few minutes, Lloyd and I sat motionless, admiring this battle of wills as she was successful in landing this monster, in reality, was beautiful!

She then directed us to the very back of the pond, to the shallow end, and many tall reeds and traps for unwary anglers. Hidden underneath were dozens of anxious fish waiting for an angler to drop a juicy worm for lunch. They didn’t go hungry, and several were added to our dinner bucket.

After a leisurely day on the water, and with me getting my exercise, we called it a day.

My day is just starting, as this story is a dream that I have every time I row on my Rowing machine, part of my daily exercise routine. Today’s total was 500 pulls and a little over 20 minutes.

I am still working on my book, “Volcano” and hope to release it soon.

My books are published with Draft2Digital and are distributed to the following:

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon, they are also featured on http://www.brendacolbathbooks.com

Enjoy your day and take care of yourself on this bumpy road of life. Will see you again soon…

I mentioned that I am working on a new book in the Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space series. This one is called VOLCANO! Before I tackle the editing of the book, sharing a page or two of the first chapter might be fun.

Chapter 1. Donzereli to the rescue!

“What the heck! Donzereli is flying into the mouth of that exploding volcano! We brought everyone back, didn’t we?” Shamus shouted, too close to Nolan’s ear for comfort!

“Of course we did! Wait a minute! That’s Mom and Dad’s car right beside the opening! They’ve got to get out of there! What the heck are they waiting for? They’re way too close!”

“There are sparks and chunks of rocks shooting out of the opening right next to them!

 “OMG, now there’s fire and lava!”

“We’ve gotta go, Now!” Shamus whispered into the mic.

“I’m with you. Go!” Nolan whispered, nearly running into Shamus.

Everyone stood spellbound, watching the show, mesmerized by the explosive eruption —a spectacular display visible to the naked eye.

Shamus and Nolan were racing for the recently gifted large cars! The two stopped for a second, but their breath caught in their throats when they saw Donzereli fly out of the volcano and swoop right back down, again. The sight spurred them on, and they raced full speed for the cars.

They heard Sunset announce to the group, “Ty mentioned that Queen Tanisha said several of the older fairies who chose not to come to the dinner might be trapped in their hovel in the volcano. Ty and Robin will be bringing them here as soon as Donzereli flies them out!  We offered to fly over to help, but Donzereli just contacted me and said they were almost done and that it would be too dangerous for us to fly with or without a car, and he says they will retrieve the fairies and return safely, very soon!”

“Can you see them?” Rainbow asked.

Before Sunset could answer her, several loud bangs nearly deafened the onlookers! They were stunned, standing with their hands over their ears, as the top of the tunnel exploded, sending huge chunks of rock and lava over much of the island and igniting most of the surrounding trees. Some hot, flaming rocks were reaching as far as the beach that Shamus and Nolan had designated as the site for their beach party!

Counselor Walkegon loudly announced, “By the fierceness of this initial explosion, it looks like much of the flaming rocks might reach this continent where we are standing! We strongly suggest that you move back! The elder council members were moving the group back and setting up shelters to protect them from the possible storm of hot, flaming rocks.

The humans huddled together eyes locked on the island, waiting and hoping to see the flying car speeding toward the continent at any second.

This is an excerpt from the first chapter. If you have read any of the previous books, it will be much clearer who these people are and what Shamus and Nolan are planning to do.

When this book is completed, it will be published by Draft2Digital and will be distributed to the following places: Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Tolino OverDrive, bibliotheca, Baker & Taylor, BorrowBox, Hoopla, Vivlio, Palace  Marketplace, Odilo, Gardners, Amazon

This is the last book in this series so far, and I tried to make them easy to read as stand-alone books while also linking them together. I totally enjoyed writing them. You may not know this, but the main characters are REAL PEOPLE, who so far live in Seattle and have not gone into space, yet!.

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 2 Dragon Flight

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 3 The Keep

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 4 The Others

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 5 Wormhole

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 6 Merpeople

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 7 Decisions

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 8 Irus

Ruby & Nolan’s Great Adventures in Space Book: 9 Volcano coming soon

Have a great day and will see you later…..