Karen and I are planning a week-long bike trip with my family in early August so today we went for a short bike ride--from our place to our nearby Home Depot to buy some suet for the woodpeckers. We live in Dallas, which is not known as an especially mountainous neighborhood (although the section of Dallas we live in, Oak Cliff, does hint at at least some hills). Anyway, we made it but Karen was not as strong as she'd hoped. I hope she'll ride a lot between now and then. We're going to have to do 40+ miles a day, which is not a huge amount, but it's non-trivial as well. My riding to go to bridge has helped me.

I posted my review of VANISHED by Joseph Finder, which I enjoyed. Finder's earlier books are thrillers based in the average workplace (a furniture company, that kind of thing). VANISHED is a bit more traditional thriller--an ex-Green Beret who works for a company doing corporate espionage. I sort of like the everyman angle, but VANISHED was still enjoyable. Here's my review: www.booksforabuck.com/mystery/mys_09/vanished.html. Now I'm reading THE RENEGADES by T. Jefferson Parker. Parker is another favorite of mine--very strong.

What with the bike ride, Karen hasn't finished the cover art to DEADLY STING, so it's looking like I won't get to publish it tomorrow. If I miss tomorrow, it'll be next week as I'm about to emerse myself into a bridge marathon. I did finish the re-publication of HOT PROPERTY (www.booksforabuck.com/rompages/rom_2004/hot_property.html) with new Mobipocket, ePub, Sony, and eReader editions as well as the existing HTML, Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Reader).

I'm going to make HOMETOWN HERO by Robyn Anders the www.booksforabuck.com book of the day. Russ Lyons is back from Iraq--injured and without a memory. He's got a beautiful fiancee--and no memory of her. He hires pretty journalist Cynthia Meadows to help him rediscover his past, but what he finds isn't as pretty as he'd hoped--and Cynthia starts looking better and better. Powerful and emotional. Only $3.99. (Available in HTML, Adobe Acrobat PDF, eReader and Microsoft Reader formats). Here's the link: http://www.booksforabuck.com/rompages/rom_2005/hometown_hero.html. Here's the cover (cover design by Jane Graves):

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