Moonraker by Ian Fleming
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The best of the first three Bond books. Fleming moved forward with this far better fleshed out novel and a true threat for Bond to go after the bad guy. The beginning premise is a bit flimsy as to how the bad guy and Bond get connected, but the rest of the book makes up for the contrivance.

Reading this over fifty five years since its being written makes one marvel at Flemings ability to conjure rockets so well before anyone could get very familiar with them. I urge a reader to slow down reading parts about the rockets and take in Fleming’s depiction of the machinations of the rocket involved. Can’t imagine what that was like reading the same parts in the ’50s.

I recommend this and the previous two Bond books: casino Royale and Live and Let Die.

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Here’s a bit of step by step of a painting I’m working on for 2012 Pine Castle Pioneer Days festival. Here is the prepped for painting step …

I attended the Friday luncheon of the Florida Press Association at historic The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida. During the luncheon the Florida Press Association presented awards to those of the daily papers. Also given were awards from The First Amendment Foundation. The Pete Weitzel/Friends of the First Amendment Award was given to Pat Gleason, who is an assistant to Governor Charlie Crist on many things including open government. She is a great lady. She assisted Sandra and I when visiting the Governors Library & Sandra donated many of her books. Governor Crist was at the luncheon to present the award. Below is a fuzzy photo of Pat Gleason speaking, to the right of the photo.

I was honored to receive the Sunshine Award for my editorial cartoons on the subject of Sunshine Week. Below the photo are the two Sunshine Week cartoons. My time at Orlando City Hall greatly helped my constructing these two cartoons. Director  Barbara Peterson was a big help!

To the right is a colored sketch of drapery in The Breakers.

While at the Florida Press luncheon I met Mark Mathes who once editted a ton of cartoonists when he was with Tribune Media Services. Amongst those is cartoonist and editor, Dick Kulpa. Dick was one time editor of the infamous Weekly World News.  I once penciled a week of comics strips for Dick’s comic strip ‘Ghost Story Club’ many years ago.

Anyway, Mark invited Dick over and we went to dinner. Dick and I drew each other and a photo of such is below.

More and more most of the art I draw is at a local coffee shop where I get away from the phones, internet and various other distractions. Here’s one of the tables at the Chelsea Coffee shop with the drawing board that friend Richard Menard got me years ago, along with pens and an editorial cartoon. I clip the I-pod to the side of the board and listen to political talk shows.