Hi All,

How is everyone today/tonight? I hope you are all doing very well. I am!

Yes, I am. I was a bit ticked off this weekend. I got some very upsetting mail. I've known all along there would be two court dates for garnishment for medical bills. I went to one in October and the garnishment started in with the last paycheck in December. Then on Saturday I received, not the court summons, but the final judgment. It seems they failed to send me the summons to appear on February 1. According to the letter I had 15 days from the date the judgment was filed to send in the information for garnishment. I received that judgment letter on Saturday, 11 February, giving me 4 days, and not even, three really, and with the 12th being a Sunday, really only 2 days, considering the mail. If I didn't comply with the judgment it would mean I would be in contempt of court and facing 6 months in jail. By the way, the penned date on the letter was February 6. The letter wasn't sent out until after that date, and I'm supposed to get all this taken care of in 2 days???? Not likely. However, good things have happened recently that came to my aide. I received my Income Tax Refund, so I just went to my online bill pay and set up the bill. No garnishment - paid in full, thanks to Uncle Sam. I also sent a 'kind' letter to the lawyer, which went in today's mail. I told my son I wasn't recanting one word of the letter. Actually, I did. I misused one word in the letter and had to put in the correct word, hit print and it is now sitting in my mailbox waiting for the mailman to take it.

By the way, my son approved the letter. He said it was business only as he read it. I didn't get sarcastic as I did in one other letter I had to re-write several times to the other lawyer for the first garnishment. That letter proved fruitless. If you are under the misbegotten notion that lawyers care about your circumstances, or that they will work with you, think again. They care about nothing except their pockets, and as long as you fill them with your hard-earned money, they are happy.

On another note, today I had to take Pip to the vet. It was all good until it was time to leave. He got into a dog fight as we were leaving. You could call it Dogfight at the Okay Corral. I was very happy she didn't bite them, the other dog owner had two dogs, and she got into it with both of them. Needless to say, we were ushered out the side door. Pip did NOT get a treat when we got home.

Now for the good news. I got the first section of Scarred back from the proofreaders. One has finished reading it, and given the rest of the manuscript to the other, while I came away with the first 198 pages. Both people love the manuscript, and I got the first tweaking done this morning when I got up. It wasn't bad, just some punctuation, and in a couple areas, finding the right era terms. So all is good as I also work through the submission process. I have most of the pre-work done. I'm still working on the front cover picture. I know what I want for the picture, it's coming up with it that's proving difficult. I did come up with the back cover copy, and am quite happy with it. Now I just have to find out what the editors will say about it and what I need to change for it to be alluring so people will want to buy it.

All in all, it is a very good Monday, as I work towards getting Scarred ready for publishing. So while I get more work done on Scarred, edit and revise Manifest Destiny and other manuscripts, you all

Keep on writing
Valerie