Have you ever thought about what makes a neighborhood? I'm naturally introverted, so this is something I don't think about a whole lot--for me, more than one person is a croud (unless I'm in my on-teacher mode in which case the more the merrier). But tonight, Karen, my mother and I went to our neighborhood happy hour at the Nodding Dog coffee shop (which has turned into a full bar in the evenings). We've been to enough of these to recognize many of the people who attend, and are beginning to really feel like we know them. Not that they're necessarily close friends or anything, but at least people we'd stop and chat with on the street. It got me thinking about what makes a neighborhood and why some areas never really become neighborhoods.

When I lived in Plano (a suburb north of Dallas that's become one of the largest 'cities' in Texas), the only people we knew were people with kids around Nick's age. Of course, we also had an attached garage with remote control. I don't remember ever passing another pedestrian in the years I lived there. What a difference--although many of the pedestrians I pass in our current neighborhood are out from their halfway house and talking on their cellphone without the need to actually have a cellphone (if you know what I mean). Still, having people rather than just cars on the streets makes a difference.

I wonder how much of this I reflect in my books? In today's work, Sophia and Ryan are up in McKinney (a suburb even north of Plano where I also used to live). When I lived there, McKinney was small-town but it's become affluent suburb in the years since (once again, my timing was perfect--I actually lost money on my house).

I got 82 pages of editing done in A FULL ENGLISH PROBLEM. Nearing the halfway point. I did a bit of reading in ATHENA FORCE: VENDETTA by Meredith Fletcher. And in a traumatic moment, Da Vinci, our bird, took a trip to the vet. We've been feeding him too much seed and need to be better parents.

I'm going to make A TEXAS BOUNTY by Cathy Richard Dodson the www.BooksForABuck.com book of the day. When his 'uncle' flips out and offers a million dollar reward for a lost wallabee, Noah Francis knows it's time to head home--even though the woman he left behind is now Sheriff in the small town where he grew up. She's never forgotten him, or forgiven him for leaving. She knows he'll never forgive her for the secret she's hidden from him. Emotional, sexy and funny--and only $3.99. Learn more, read the excerpt, or buy the entire eNovel here (available in HTML, Adobe Acrobat PDF, Mobipocket, Palm DOC, or Microsoft Reader formats): www.booksforabuck.com/rompages/rom_2007/texas_bounty.html. Here's the cover (cover design by Jim Dodson):

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