Here’s a page from the upcoming ‘Swampy’s Florida: Melbourne’ of Swampy and friends along the Indian River Lagoon. The book should be available in two months through The Knowledge Exchange.

Sanford As I Knew It 1912-1935 by Peter Schaal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Author Schaal has done a tremendous job of encapsulating the history of Sanford and Seminole County between 1912 through 1935 in this book just full of history. Each chapter is one of the 23 years written about. There’s plenty to chew through here. Everything from the rise of the Florida Boom to the crash to the effects of the Depression.

Schaal often notes something that most miss in their city biographies and that is of the sports in the area. Schaal is obviously quite a sports fan and notes football, baseball, golf, etc players and the games and scores.

The book is well written with a very personal style. Schaal’s newspaper experience really helps this volume shine.

Bottom line: I recommend it.

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This is one of the drawings being proposed for a set of Swampy’s Florida Valentine cards. I’ll post the color version as it comes along.

The Daily Inks concept has given me thought that I could add a new picture to my social media spots each month. Here’s one I inked and digitally colored for January.

This is the painting my father got for his birthday this year. Each year the painting involves a frog and some other subject matter. This year it’s frogs and Weeki Wachee mermaids..

The Weeki Wachee mermaids are legendary in Florida. It all goes back to over fifty years ago when young ladies donned some hand made fins to promote Weeki Wachee Springs, a tourist attraction featuring the natural springs that flow out to supply the Weeki Wachee River. The ladies used an underwater breathing apparatus developed by, inventor, Newt Perry, to be able to perform swimming routines underwater that visitors could watch in a specially made theater.

The theater is still there today as are the mermaids. The park is now part of the Florida Park system and visitors still travel there today to watch mermaids dance and swim :

The Swampy Machine decided to take a break from it’s operating procedures Monday as I made my way to a meeting in a Palm Bay, Florida , with Tim Reynolds of The Knowledge Exchange. That had me staying at my friend Jim Fern’s house during the time it took to fix the catalytic converter.

Was I surprised when I drove the car a mere few miles away and it kinked out again in a Publix parking lot. Tim Reynolds and his wife were too kind to drive out to the stilled vehicle during New Years Eve. But not before a number of Publix customers gathered around the car trying to figure the trouble. A group consensus was that the starter had gotten clogged with oil that had gotten loose under the hood.

The crowd dispersed and Tim had the real answer to my trouble and that’s what we did. I bought a new starter and Tom and his son inserted the replacement.

To do this meant doing it at Jin Fern’s house, where I was staying. Thus I drew the drawing above as Jim’s home became a mechanic’s den.

Gonna get back to Daily Inks in a couple days and thought I’d add this of the Swampy’s Florida cartoon I inked today. I’ll post the Swampy’s Florida cartoon in a couple days.

The Christmas Garden Affair by Ann Ripley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A standard mystery that probably goes a bit far describing the garden business. Certainly overblowing it’s importance. Though it needs to balance the book.

The writing is fine. Wish there were more descriptions of the setting of scenes. Also, though the characters were well defined, somehow I was getting confused as to who was who. It could be that my not being a fan of landscaping had me a bit detached.

I read this because there is an indication by the title and the cover that Christmas was somehow involved. Christmas is barely mentioned until page 218 and then the reference continues. All culminating in an epilogue involving the holiday. This book could have been set at anytime and Christmas was just a tool to sell the book.

A big pet peeve involves a detail that is just wrong – PBS leaves their programming to the individual stations across the country. Especially since the time this book came about. Some prime time programming is consistent with stations, but a garden show could fall at anytime anywhere during a time period. That throws off a conflict in the story that is noted early on.

Bottom line: i recommend this book as an average mystery.

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Inked next month’s Buck Wilde comic page. This is an ongoing mystery created by Lari Thaw and me, with my writing the story. It’s setting is New York and Florida involving a group of aging rock musicians and one’s son, Buck Wilde, who solves crimes and also plays in a rock band.

When I woke this morning I had no idea the day would take so many sudden turns in so many directions! First I answered the call for a last minute caricature by changing plans and meeting the client and doing the artwork. While I was working on the caricature with the client, I got a call about a last minute caricature gig about an hours drive from where I was. Decided to meet that challenge and head in the opposite direction of home and drew at that event for a few hours. Now I’m staying overnight nearby and plan to see home tomorrow afternoon….. Depending on last minute requests! 🙂

I’ve been on the road most of the day doing Florida research in Brevard County, Florida, and have nearly no time to put pen to paper.

Needing to do something to keep me artistically acomplishing something today, which this Daily Inks helps me to do, I turned to the need for a Facebook “avatar”.Been planning to do a Santa and kitty drawing to represent my image in social media this month. So I whipped this up tonight.

I’ll get it home, scan and add color using Photoshop later this week.