I was missing in action last month, or rather my electricity was. So I must apologize for not posting on my scheduled day. A severe wind storm--what meteorologists called a land hurricane--blew through Virginia. We were without power for six days. Six days of hundred-degree heat. Here in Lynchburg, over eleven-hundred trees were felled, blocking roads, knocking out power lines and damaging buildings. We soon learned how much we rely on electricity and how disjointed we feel when we aren't connected to the Internet.
Like most everyone else, we were wilting from the heat and needed to recharge our phone, laptop and iPad batteries. Calvin called every motel in our area, but there were no rooms to be had. Everyone, it seemed, was looking for a cool place to stay.
The third night of no power, someone pounded on our door at eleven. Calvin reached for the flashlight on his nightstand. "Who would have the audacity to come knocking at our door at this time of night?" He was almost to the front door when someone pounded on our back door. Potential thieves looking to see if our house was empty and available for ransacking.
We lost our freezer full of food and the contents of our refrigerator; the food didn't take long to smell to high heaven. We used our supply of candles and kerosene for our antique lantern. We learned to take cold showers. But, still, we survived, and that's the important thing.
My novella Those Violet Eyes had released five days prior to the storm, so I was in the middle of a blog tour. We hunted for businesses with WiFi access that were open so I could log on to read comments and reply. Or write posts and email them to blog hosts. Through all that, I forgot about blogging here. Thank goodness the power is back on and life is back to normal. There should be a germ of a story idea in all of this, don't you think? 