Did some hiking earlier in Circle B Bar Reserve. Much more now and to come over at Swampy’s Florida.

Many thanks to my pals of many years, Russell and Alice Sue Noell for their hospitality this weekend. Great vittles and socializing! Another dear pal, Debbie Schafer, called while I was there exclaiming, “You’re socializing!!??!” It is an unusual occurrence.

Right now dashing off some artwork before I get home!

Been doin’ that interactive illustrative life coaching thing this evening! A return visit for this family event. Great folks that included fellow civil servants, educators and an opportunity to get some nifty photos of a really cool historic home, now hair salon, I’ve wanted to get closeup photos of in St. Cloud!

An update to the video earlier today! Here’s what the two former white boards look like now… Lots to do, but got lots done this evening!

Had a blast today “signing” (drawing in) Swampy’s Florida books during the Florida SpringsFest. Here are a few photos. The stories behind most of the photos can be found on the Swampy’s Florida page.

Interesting what a father sets aside. Found a few decades of my artwork in a box of his. Newspaper art, comics strips, advertising pieces, comic books and personal artwork.

Spent weekend moving my father’s things to my house. Great thanks to brother Jeff Smith, his friend Steve and old pal James Goddard for the enormous amount of help! James even found a 40th birthday comic book I had done for him and his twin brother.

This is a mosaic of some of the sketches I did during the Democrat debate tonight. I’ll have to do more of this for more debates and the like. There are captions involved, but my working hard to get in no political debates or discussions here, I omitted those.

Top Producer: A Novel by Norb Vonnegut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Norb is light years away in mindset from family member Kurt Vonnegut, of who I know too much. ‘Top Producer’ is a top producer of detailed, yet understandable, words of how Wall Street works. To tie such a complex subject in with an involved case of murcer is more than admirable.

However, this book is struck by what I find in the bulk of contemporary novels: Massive excess. For me a quarter of this book could be cut loose and work so much better. Vonneguts asides of bicycling and food and over focus of a victim is, at times, ridiculous. Asides should be a paragraph or two. Not pages and pages.

With all of the excess a reader will learn far more than needed of each character. A better writer could have scaled the character development down to far, far fewer words. The settings are very well depicted. Excess here may have helped a bit.

Still this is a very good book with a rather simple mystery that is decked out in Wall street trimmings.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 7 out of ten points.

View all my reviews

I’m working on a ‪#‎cartoon‬ ‪#‎illustration‬ with angry ‪#‎elephants‬!

The Coconut Killings by Patricia Moyes
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here is another Tibbetts tale with massive holes. Despite an otherwise good story, the holes in the novel cannot be ignored. The worse is the use of a machete on a human with no apparent problem of the resulting blood being everywhere after the action. Apparently this was a clean machete murder. Seems Moyes didn’t learn about what happens when violently hacking a machete. She did learn about how it should have been done.

This problem makes the rest of the book impossible. Seems to me Moyes had an ending in mind, built and outline and then filled in the blanks. This would explain how few seem concerned about the violence of the murder involved and what happens later. Especially the Tibbetts, who are not even on their home turf. Moyes writes Henry Tibbett as nearly a superman who barges around with no fear of death and flies long distances in record time.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 4 out of ten points.

View all my reviews