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This is Public Safety Telecommunicator Week, and it turns out I'm a PST! And here you thought PST was one of those diseases they advertise pills for on late night TV.

My full time job is as a 911 dispatcher, which is, shall we say, stressful. Mentally, emotionally, and even physically stressful, but at least we don't have to work outside. Personally ( Read more... )

It's been kind of a rough year, and especially a rough last month or so. But as an author I have to get back on the horse, because gift giving season is coming (I don't use an actual holiday name until November), and it turns out promotion is part of an author's job.

It's helpful for that effort that Arcadia Publishing has our Images Of America ( Read more... )

Apparently they do this periodic special thing in the Pokemon Go world where you can catch these very special, extra-shiny Pokemon, shove them into tiny prisons, then force them to battle each other to the death. Or something like that.

I don't do Pokemon, because I'd rather be writing about tiny beings fighting to the death in tiny prisons, which ( Read more... )

If you're in northeast Indiana, you probably heard of the fire at the old McCray factory in Kendallville, which took half a day to control and came closer than most people realize to taking out part of the city's historic downtown. The fire burned so hot that it was actually visible on local weather radars, and eighteen fire departments were called ( Read more... )

Several area fire departments responded at around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday to a fire at the Wolf Lake Bar and Grill, along US 33 in Wolf Lake. One firefighter reportedly received minor injuries in a fall; the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Units of the Albion, Churubusco (Smith Township), Cromwell (Sparta Township), Noble Township, and ( Read more... )

I made a mistake that I need to correct: I assumed the flowers we got after my mother-in-law's death (see my last post) were from both the Sheriff Department and the Fire Department, mostly because we have employees of one that are members of the other, and vice-versa. But the day after I posted about the flowers from the Noble County Sheriff ( Read more... )

We stopped at the Glenbrook Square Barnes & Noble on the north side of Fort Wayne last week, and I was very surprised to find they still have our book in stock:


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Here's the news release I sent out earlier this month for our appearance at the Avilla Freedom Festival. It might be a good template for other authors to use, if you get set up for a book signing of your own. Or ... it may not be, since I came up with this myself. I have questionable confidence in my self-promotion ability. As usual, if you should ( Read more... )

In all the fuss that this winter has been so far, I haven't mentioned the fact that December 13th was the 25th anniversary of my employment at the Noble County Sheriff Department.

I started out as a jail officer, and after a few years moved to dispatch: first on second shift, then on a swing, and finally to thirds, where I've worked ever since. In ( Read more... )