The Camaraderie of Living in a Small Town

I was reminded of this today when a bad storm blew through downing trees and power lines and ripping roofs off of houses all over town. For almost an hour my street was like a deserted island, you couldn’t come or go because trees blocked the street in both directions. Soon after the storm I looked out and saw my neighbor lady across the street with her kids trying to clear a path toward my end of the street so she could get her car out to go to work. I went out to lend a hand and it wasn’t but a few seconds and half the block was pitching in to help clear what we could. There is still part of the street blocked by a huge tree the city will have to clear once a bucket truck is free. But there is so much damage through town it will take days maybe even weeks to clean up the mess. We were very fortunate though. It could have been a lot worse and thankfully no one was hurt. Since we don’t have electricity I’m not sure if it was micro bursts or straight line winds but it sure did a whole lot of damage in only a matter of minutes.

It was cool however how all the neighbors got out and helped one another cleanup each other’s yards. It has been awhile since I’ve seen that kind of camaraderie. I have to admit I’m a horrible neighbor. As a writer I’m very much a hermit. I know my neighbors on both sides of me but that’s it. Today changed that. And I was reminded that some good always comes out of the bad.

I do hope they get the electricity on soon—it is hot! And I’m having internet withdraw something fierce. I only turned on my laptop long enough to charge my MP3 player—I’ve gotta at least have my tunes.

Since I don’t have internet I won’t be posting this until—who knows—hopefully tomorrow. But since I didn’t have anything better to do I thought I’d run the battery down on my laptop. I’m down to about 10% so I guess I better shut up. It’s going to be a loooong night!

UPDATE: I have internet and TV at home now. YEAH! It’s been six days since the storm and clean up is well underway. Fortunately I was only without electricity a day and half but internet and cable was out until today. I’m counting my blessings though, my home didn’t sustain any damage—no apparent damage anyway—other than a huge limb on my roof. In town there are mostly trees down and damaged roofs; out in the county it was worse in some places. Yesterday, group of us from church went out to one of the farms that got hit bad and helped in the continuing cleanup. The damage they received was amazing. They had this one huge silo that had been cemented in the ground that is now lying on its side. And their barn was lifted completely from its foundation (nothing inside was disturbed) and the lumber and metal scattered all over the farm. Officially it hasn’t been classified as a tornado but it sure had the characteristics of one. Growing up in Tornado Alley in Oklahoma I’ve seen this type of damage many times—even worse. Thank God no one was hurt!

I received word that the official release date of Road to Redemption is September 15. I got the final edit from my editor on Friday and I’m making last minute changes this week. She passed on some wonderful comments about the book and only suggested a few minor changes so I won’t have any problem meeting my deadline. I was real impressed with her edits and am very pleased with the outcome. Hopefully the reviewers will enjoy it as much as my editor did.

The Sweetest Romance Chat with our friends over at Sweet and Sensual Romances was a hoot. I think we shocked them with our work. Just because we write G rated romance doesn’t mean our books are boring. Far from it.

Well I better get off here and get some work done. Take care friends.