We arrived at our place in San Juan on the fifteenth of January, just in time for the San Sebastian street festival, and considering that we live on San Sebastian Street, called Calle San Sebastian down here, our first weekend was riotous for sure. We had great fun, but when the festival was over it was back to work.

When we got here, I had but four or five chapters to go with Case of the Welch Avenue Wizards. Those last chapters always go fast. I’ve got most of the story told by then and I know how it is going to end. The trick is to let it end. Sometimes I push it and then when I go over it later I have to massage it. It feels better to nail it the first time through. So I finished the first draft in short order. All in all, the rewrite went pretty smoothly. There were some rough places, but that’s to be expected. Then came the first edit, some more polishing, and then we came to the point in the process where we format the manuscript and print out a copy on the printer to go over together before I upload it to the online builder where it becomes a book eventually. That’s where the woes begin.

The last time we were down here was in September, so the printer has been sitting here dormant for many months, first of all. Secondly, we don’t know how much black ink was still in the cartridge when we left, but regardless, we were not getting any ink to come out of it. No problem, they carry printer ink at the Walgreens down the hill a half dozen blocks.

So down we go to Walgreens. No problem, and we had to send a postcard from the post office on the way. Yes, Walgreens has printer ink, every cartridge it seems but the one we need. That’s too bad, but what the heck, it means a trip to Office Max, which is next to the mall. In San Juan, we live in a big city, and like most big cities parking is at a premium and public transportation rules. Between busses, taxis, Uber and walking, we get anywhere we want to go quite easily without our own car. So we Ubered to the mall, spent a couple hours there, then walked over to Office Max. Great, we got our ink cartridge, caught an Uber back, and we are in business.

Yesterday Denise got the whole book formatted, searched for some possible errors in consistency, and printed the manuscript. That’s when we learned something. We learned that the standard ink cartridge for our printer down here will print 250 pages. Welch Avenue Wizards is 295 pages. Dang, looks like another trip to the mall.
In the meantime, I started writing my next novel, Case of the Femme Fatale. I’m three chapters into it already. But for now, the Welch Avenue Wizards is on the way. We are close. All that is left is the final touches and a cover, and we are up and going. I think that if you are a fan of the G&B Detective Agency, you are going to like it. I’m excited, both to get Wizards done and available, and to sink my teeth into Femme Fatale. That one is going to be fun.