The color of these images is just SO disappointing. HERE’S what happened: My scanner was giving me problems, so I decided to have a dedicated thumb drive on which a professional printer/copier person could load my works, like squared-up, with colors that matched the originals, and then I could, just, so easily, put them on… here, AND I could get copies made, later; perfect copies.

BECAUSE I WAS IN A HURRY and was working in the neighborhood, rather than going to COHO PRINTING, I took them to a print shop I’ve not used since the super knowledgeable technician, Steven, under bizarre and unclear circumstances, left. THE NEW printer operator took my originals and my thumb drive, called me up a while later. Like, five scans for ten bucks or so, plus tax. OKAY.

BECAUSE printing stuff, with the new staff, has become more complicated AND there’s a five dollar service fee if they actually help a client, AND my trying to use their scanner/printers, even with my asking for a quick explanation (not like, real service) on how to self-print, was just too daunting, AND when the color on my copies, from the thumb drive, were washed out, the operator explained that, sure, yes; it was because the scanner is like a big ass light. “Oh… sure.”

STILL, the color on the thumb drive (and I didn’t know this when I picked it up) is, on the computer screen, pretty accurate. ASSUMING everything was cool, I sold two of the originals to a friend, money to be paid at some unspecified future date. No, not worried about that.

WHAT I am worried about is that the thumb drive is JPEG and I can’t seem to get it to work here and don’t know how to convert it to PDF. NOW, I will meet with my daughter, Dru, tomorrow, to convert the images, or I can get the originals back and take them to COHO, BUT, impatient me, I want to post stuff NOW. NOW. So, I printed the images, then scanned them, and, well, this is the result.

Imagine them with, you know, more color.

Meanwhile, trying to recover any sense of confidence after my recent shaming, I continue to work on the final polish on “Swamis.” The manuscript keeps hovering around the 102,000 word mark; and my moving key clues up and condensing where I can, with the hope of being able to eliminate chunks of stuff later, isn’t really working out… word count-wise. AND, THOUGH I’m pretty determined to kill off one of the suspects (and there are several) in the murder of Chulo in the final chapter; thinking how brilliant it would be if the actual murderer isn’t that person; I haven’t chosen which of them to do in.

BUT WAIT, it’s winter; whoa; always a shock when the water isn’t the coldest part of surfing. Good luck1