Saturday, July 2, 2011

New book coming soon!

 Here is an excerpt from my new book, Valentine's Revenge. It should be available in print, Kindle and NookBook formats some time in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!




August 14, 1845
 

Where were you?” the pain-wracked voice rang from the wainscoted walls of the high-ceilinged room. Randolph Martin stood his ground stoically in the face of his friend’s anguished words. Lying in the stark hospital bed, covered in multiple layers of bandages, Cyrus Valentine resembled nothing so much as an Egyptian mummy-- a mummy with raging eyes flaming behind the blood-spotted linen wrappings. He had been severely burned in the tragic fire that destroyed his house and killed his family. While attempting to force his way into the fully-engulfed wreckage of his home to save his wife and infant son from the conflagration, Valentine had been struck on the head by a falling beam, slamming him to the flagstone floor of the portico before he could force his way inside.
Randolph Martin was not only an attorney who had graduated near the top of his class from Yale Law School, as had Valentine; he was also the captain of the local fire brigade. He had been across town at a dinner party when the alarm had sounded; without his leadership, the relatively untrained men of the recently established brigade had been late leaving the firehouse, and their unorganized and disjointed efforts once they arrived at Valentine’s house had been in vain. By the time Randolph arrived to bring order to the chaos, the house was a total loss. Valentine’s family was dead, and Valentine himself was in an ambulance racing to the hospital.
I’m so sorry, Cyrus; I was across town, ” Randolph tried to console his distraught friend. “I got there as quickly as I could.”
You should have been…” Cyrus began.
I’m not clairvoyant, Cyrus!” Randolph interrupted firmly. “How was I to know a fire would start in your house, or any other house for that matter? It’s summer, and you know that we rarely have such fires in this time of the year!”
So because you didn’t think there was any danger, I have lost all that was most precious to me,” the seriously injured attorney accused, his voice bitter with loss and grief.
But it is not my fault that the fire started!” his friend protested.
No, but if you had trained your men appropriately, my family might still be alive!” Cyrus raged.
The fire brigade is new, Cyrus, and the men are working hard to be prepared for any circumstance. What more would you have me do?” Randolph pleaded, his voice rising. “If I had it within my power, I would gladly undo what happened, but that is one thing I cannot do! I’m truly sorry!”
Your apologies will not restore my body, or the lives of my wife and son!” Cyrus declared, his weak, smoke-roughened voice filled with menace. “But I will have a reckoning, Randolph. Mark my words!”
Randolph Martin turned away sadly, distraught that he was unable to comfort his friend, and discounting the chilling words as the product of Cyrus’ inconsolable grief. Randolph could not know then just how deeply those few, softly-spoken syllables would affect his life one day...

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

An Interview With Linn Keller

This is the first of what I have planned to be a series of interviews with some of the unsung authors of some of today's best novels...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

An interview with Linn Keller
 
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing author Linn Keller of Lagrange, Ohio. Linn is the author of three novels: The Sheriff’s Legacy, The Sheriff’s Betrayal, and The Sheriff’s Journal. The first two are “westerns” set in modern-day Firelands County, Colorado and introduce tough-as-nails Willamina Keller, the first female sheriff of Firelands County. The Sheriff's Journal, which was just recently released through AuthorHouse, is meant as a prequel to the others in that it tells the story of Willamina's great-grandfather, who was himself the sheriff of Firelands. Please welcome Linn to our stage.
 
SCP: Good morning, Linn.
 
 Morning, Charlie!
 
              SCP: Please tell our audience a little about yourself. Your hobbies and interests, your writing background, that sort of thing. 

 Well ... there's not much to tell, really ... I grew up in Appalachian Ohio, worked in the family oilfield listening to tales told by masters of the art.
Granddad was a moonshiner and a moon runner, and he taught me all he knew.  -- hak-kaff!  I mean I listened politely to his tall tales!
(assumes innocent expression)
Most young fellows are out to whip the world.
I set out to save it.
I put 21 years of my life into being a firefighter- paramedic, with 18 of those 21 serving simultaneously as a deputy marshal in an Appalachian village. I worked water and wastewater and got my licenses, became a nurse, and my wife tells me I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. 
 
 
         SCP: What made you decide to write your first novel, The Sheriff’s Legacy?
 
A friend of mine gave me a swift kick in the pants.
There is an ongoing story currently written on Belle Alley -- Firelands, four years old and not slowing down a bit! -- one of our correspondents, Bloomin' Yankee, was carefully engineering what she wanted to write into a scene -- but by the time she got hers crafted, polished and ready to cut and paste into the story, I had added about twelve installments in two days' time and the story was well past where she wanted to inject her character.
She sent me a private messsage and chastised me, which to be perfectly honest, I richly deserved! -- then she challenged me, and I bless her for it:
"If you're so good, start a solo thread.  Write one yourself, and show us what you've got!"
I have since thanked her for that boot in the backside.  Had she not been enough of a friend to speak very frankly, I would likely have never started the thread that became The Sheriff's Legacy.
 
           SCP: How did you arrive at the idea to write the main character as a woman?
 
 (chuckles) To be real honest, that was one of those idiot ideas that flies in from who-knows-where and lands on your shoulder.  By the time I realized how bad the idea was, the story was started and was taking on a life of its own!  I wrote this as a solo thread on Belle Alley and it wasn't until the tale got its legs under it and started to stride across the Colorado landscape that a little voice knocked on the inside of my skull and said, "Hello?  Einstein?  Say, Belle Alley celebrates THE VICTORIAN ERA YOU BLOODY IDIOT NOT THE HERE AND NOW!  WHAT IN THE COTTON PICKIN' ARE YOU DOING???
Right about then the Sheriff swivel hipped her way across the Council chamber floor, seduced the Mayor without saying a word, at least until she grabbed him by the neck tie and yanked him across the table.
Why a woman?
Belle Alley was started by the Carolina Belles, ladies of the first water -- Ladies most deserving of the term -- and I wanted to write one for them.  What better way than to bring in a female character?
Maybe the biggest reason for "Why a woman?" is because I was able to use that fact to yank the rug out from under the reader in the first chapter, and use that to keep the surprises coming.
 
          SCP: Did you model Willamina Keller after a specific person?
 
 Willamina is a complex and composite character who reminds me strongly of a number of women I've known.  I can't say she is any one individual person; she draws from so many.
One, of course, is my mother, a woman of wit and of wisdom; another is Sandy Baker, with whom I worked as a firefighter, a medic and a lawman:  Sondra Mae was fond of such things as picking up the portable generator and walking across the firehouse floor with it, casually, as if it were just a basket of clothes ... a generator that normally two men would pack.
Willamina's rotten sense of grinning, good-humored achievement, though, comes from my baby sis.
 
          SCP: Where exactly is Firelands County? Is there such a place?
 
Firelands County, Colorado, was invented by another of the ladies of Belle Alley: Duzy Wales heard the name somewhere, thought it was neat, and started the Firelands thread.  Regretfully, there is no Firelands County, Colorado.
The Fire Lands are actually in Northwest Ohio and refer to the Great Black Swamp, and was so named because it seemed to be perpetually afire or smoldering from lightning strikes, or being fired by the  natives to drive out game for harvest.
 
         SCP: The Sheriff’s Legacy and The Sheriff’s Betrayal have both been in print for some time, but The Sheriff’s Journal is hot off the press. Would you like to share a little background on the new book?
 
All things have a beginning; the tallest tree has roots hidden from the common eye, yet they are there and provide for its solid foundation.
The Sheriff's Journal was alluded to very strongly in The Sheriff's Legacy, and was an actual, hand written journal kept by a fellow with an iron-grey mustache, The Old Sheriff.
I did not realize how clear a picture I had painted of this old feller until my Mama, my beautiful bride and my baby sis stood shoulder to shoulder in Mama's kitchen, after they all finished reading The Sheriff's Legacy:  with one voice the sayd "We want to know more about that old fellow, the Old Sheriff, what about him?"
... and of course, when faced with the wishes of ladies of that quality, the only correct reply is, "Yes, ma'am!"
 
          SCP: Where are your books available for sale? I’m assuming that they are available online. Do you sell them yourself? 
 
I'm selling autographed copies, yes, but my books can also be had through the publisher, Author House; Amazon, Borders, and The Sheriff's Journal is now available electronically.
 
         SCP: What projects do you have planned for the future?
 
 My baby sis is interested in the Sheriff's twin brother William, and my beautiful bride suggested a compliation of short stories about the Sheriff.  Beyond that I''m feeling the "Author's Sag," kind of a sagging of the spirits, the normal post-elation letdown that happens every time a book makes print. 
My fellow Medieval re-enactors have encouraged me to publish s book of my cartoons as well:  my character the Sneetch (no relation to the Dr. Seuss creation!) is a self portrait:  wild flyaway hair, er, feathers; big belly; perpetually wearing boots; capable of getting in trouble without getting out of the easy chair ... yes, very much a self portrait!

            SCP: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit with me, Linn. I’ve read The Sheriff’s Legacy, and it’s a great book with realistic action taken directly out of today’s headlines, and real human characters that a reader can get instantly involved with. I highly recommend it. Having co-written a long-running collaborative story with you on The Carolina Belles website, I am sure that The Sheriff’s Betrayal and The Sheriff’s Journal are both equally as readable and engrossing tales. I plan to buy them both soon. I hope those of you in the audience who enjoy losing yourself in a good book will do the same. I'm very sure you won’t regret it.

I appreciate your hospitality, and the kindness of your comments.
I can only think of one thing to add:
This has all been very much a surprise to me.
Our local library had me give a presentation on the writing of my first book.
When I finished I asked for questions or comments, and a woman in back spoke up and declared "I have a bone to pick with you!"
I spread my hands and said "Sling it right on me!" figuring she was going to chew the ears right off my head.
She shook her Mommy-finger at me and said, "I only have one complaint!  I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN!  I tried to read it in my fifteen minute breaks at work and I kept saying "Oh just one more page, one more page," and finally I stayed up until TWO IN THE MORNING READING IT!"
Matter of fact, "I Couldn't Put It Down" is the one most common comment I've gotten!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linn Keller can be reached via e-mail at LinnKeller@yahoo.com 

Happy Reading! 

Thursday, March 17, 2011

All e-readers are not created equal...

Or so I've discovered. In my last installment, I noted that I was working to get my first two novels converted for set up as e-books. Since that posting, I discovered that setting them up as KindleBooks, for the Amazon Kindle e-reader, is a whole lot simpler. I downloaded all of the necessary software from the 'Net, and now those two books are available in the Kindle Store...

As soon as I get some extra time, I'm hoping to get them converted for sale directly from here, which I think would be way cool. All anybody would need is a free download from Adobe called Digital Editions, then the reader who was in search of a western as a take-along could just buy it here, download it to ADE, then it's a matter of seconds to move it to the B&N Nook or any other of the multitude of e-readers on the market. Or just read it on your computer. I need to figure out how to do that...

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Coming soon (I hope):

I hope to do some interviews, via e-mail, with some of the authors whose books I have listed on this site. Stay tuned...

A new publishing adventure awaits...

I recently bought a Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader. I wasn't going to, as I really like books. But this is a very cool device. You can cram a truckload of books, electronically speaking, into the thing's brain and still have room left over. I'm enjoying it immensely. Which brings me to my newest publishing adventure: ePublishing...

While we were at the B&N store where I bought the Nook, my lovely wife asked me if any of my books are available as e-books. Unfortunately, I had to tell her that they are not. But all that is going to change in the relatively near future. I'm currently in the process of formatting Complications: The Deputies Book 1 as an ebook. From there, I'm planning to set it up with Borders.com, then move on to the Amazon Kindle. Then, if I can get B&N to talk to me, I'll attempt to get it set up with them as well. Once that's done, I'll start on formatting for Book 2. I'm using the same Adobe Creative Suite software that I use to format my print book blocks, so there really wasn't any new software to learn, I just had to refresh my memory as to how CS4 does things...

The whole e-book thing is quite intriguing. One buys the book online, wirelessly downloads it to the reading device, of which there are numerous permutations, then read away. We have a wireless network set up in our living room so Internet and stuff are a relative snap. We even have a wireless printer. Since I bought the Nook I've already read Tom Clancy's new book, I'm currently in the middle of Stephen Hunter's I, Sniper, and I've read the book that started the whole Reacher phenomenon (for those of you who have never heard of Reacher, he's a former Military Police major who roams the country trying to be left alone and very rarely succeeding). Lee Child is the author of the Reacher books, and I haven't read one yet that I don't like...

e-Readers seem to be all the rage nowadays. I know when we were in the B&N in Boise Christmas shopping, they were sold out of everything except the super-expensive Nook Color...

Friday, December 3, 2010

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

Actually, it's more me than the goose that's getting fat, but that's not the point of the above somewhat musically-based post title. Instead, it's the fact that it's now officially December, and there's snow on the ground (about a foot of it) and Christmas is just a skosh over three weeks away...

It seems like just yesterday that the ground was bare and it was relatively warm, then suddenly, BAM! Zero degree weather followed by snow...

Thanksgiving week was good, despite the fact that I had to work from the Sunday before Thanksgiving until yesterday. Long time without a change of pace, but on the other hand, the amount of OT I made should take a tiny bit of the sting out of it.

Last night we braved the storms and nasty roads to drive to Boise to see the Oak Ridge Boys Christmas concert. What a great show! Those guys have been around forever, but they can still put together some fantastic harmony, and they're still as good as ever. We saw them at the BSU Pavilion a zillion years ago. This show was at the Morrison Center, which is a much smaller venue than the Pavilion (or the Taco Bell Arena as it's called now), which is cool because it seems a lot more personal. They don't try to blast you out of our seat with decibels, and you can understand the words to the songs...

They did about 40 minutes of their regular stuff, had an intermission then came back for what was supposed to be another 40 minutes and ended up being about an hour and ten minutes. At one point the Joe guy announced that what we saw behind them were Christmas trees, they were singing Christmas songs, and that they were not on a Holiday Tour but a Christmas Tour. Lots of cheering for that one from the audience!


Monday, November 8, 2010

For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I spend entirely too much time on Facebook, I have let this journal of what I (other people don't always agree with me and have said so in almost those words) consider to be a spectacularly ordinary life fall by the wayside. To any loyal fans I may have out there in InterWeb land, I apologize. To the rest of you, who may have only stumbled on this blog purely by accident, what can I say? I'm a busy guy...

So what have I done lately (lately being, say, the last four months or whatever it's been since my last post) you ask? The list is long and tedious, so I'll just hit the high points:

Night shoot in Baker in July. This shoot is always fun, and shooting Goex (real black powder) in my shotgun is always good for some serious smoke and fire. I actually place halfway decent this time, for once.

Idaho State SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) Championship in August. Last year it was so rainy and wet (in Boise in August? Go figure) that every body wrinkled, and I often wonder if all contestants were accounted for when it was over, or if someone may have disappeared into the mire like quicksand in an old Tarzan movie. This year, it was somewhere in the vicinity of 100 degrees every day, which is much more normal for Ada County at that time of year. I ended up fourth place Classic Cowboy, and was probably the only one shooting black powder. I also took home a second place medal in the Long-Range Buffalo (black powder) Single Shot side match. That was fun. I need to do that again...

Cycle Oregon in September. This was my 6th CO, which actually became a Cycle Oregon/Washington, as we spent three days in Washington the middle part of the week. We had two layover days, a private wine tasting, a 64 ounce stainless steel flask filled with Pendleton Whiskey, and tickets to the Pendleton Roundup. Great trip! As usual, I sun- and wind-scorched my beak, but it was worth it, although I did get tired of wheat fields in relatively short order...

Fishtrap Writer's Retreat in October. I spent a week in a relatively isolated cabin on the banks of the Imnaha River with four other writers, all of whom were excellent housemates. My goal when I got there was to finish my third book, which had been on hiatus for about a year and a half due to motivational issues. Amazingly enough, I sat down in front of my computer on Monday morning and came up for air on Friday with a finished first draft of the book nestled snugly on the flash drive plugged into my laptop. Eureka! Now I'm waiting for my editor to finish tearing it apart so that I can put it back together again, hopefully in time to have it in print enough weeks before Christmas to be able to sell it for Christmas presents to my "fans", if such people should happen to exist. I'm now down to only two unfinished books instead of three...

PBR Finals in October. I was back from the Writer's Retreat for just about nine days before Cheryl and I left for Las Vegas to visit Clint and take in some bull riding. He had a five day hotel stay at the Silverton in his pocket, but since he lives there he didn't need it, so his momma and I took advantage of it. Nice place. It's also attached to a humongous Bass Pro Shops store, in which I spent entirely too much time, and a lot less money than I was tempted to spend...

Since then, it's mostly been a case of trying to catch up on all the stuff that we didn't have time to do this summer, what with haying and all. But things are sort of starting to wind down, now. The calves will be shipped this week, I've got five of the posts set for my new bull feeder, and the generally slightly easier pace of fall, due to the shorter days after the time change, is about to set in. Time to get back on my trainer; I'm getting fat. Gotta get ready for another Cycle Oregon...

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Training, training...

In preparation for dragging my chubby behind from Elgin, to Enterprise, to Clarkston, etc. on this year's Cycle Oregon (which I was not going to sign up for. But that's another story that I won't go into at this particular point in time...) I've been riding my very cool, very chic 2010 all-carbon Specialized Roubaix. Indoors on the trainer, unfortunately. Because of weather, time constraints, etc. that's the most accessible place. It's not the most exciting riding, but it does keep me from turning into the Goodyear blimp. I go through a lot of DVD movies...

I'm up to pedaling an hour and forty minutes, and I try to vary the routine from session to session. For example, last night I did :05 warm-up, then :30 sitting spin on big ring cog 6 at 13+ mph, then went to timed intervals. The new resistance unit on my trainer is a lot more resistive than the old one that it replaced. So I did intervals for an hour, doing :01 standing on big ring cog 10 at 17+ mph, then :04 sitting big ring cog 6 at 13+ mph. By the end of the time, I looked like somebody had hit me with a bucket of water. I think my socks were even soaked through...

Then I moved on to my weight bench. I've been slowly increasing the weight I'm lifting without changing the number of reps. I've read where that's the way to build strength rather than mass. I'm bulky enough as it is. I'm up to 75 pounds on the bench press for 15 reps, followed by 25 crunches. Next is 25 butterfly curls at 38 pounds, then another 25 crunches. From there I move on to leg lifts, 25 lifts at 45 pounds, then I do 25 situps holding the leg lift weight up with my, of course, legs. Next is 25 bicep curls with the leg lift weights, first left arm, then right, then both. Last but not least is an exercise that I have no idea of the name for. I have a small dumbbell bar with 25 pounds on it that I hang behind my head with both hands and do 25 reps with. When I'm done with the bike and the weights, I cool off with a Cytomax and whey protein smoothie. It's supposed to be good for me and help with recovery. I don't know about that, but it tastes pretty good...

So anyway, as of last night I have just a skosh over 512 miles since January 1, including the 6.85 mountain bike miles from last Sunday, and I'm the same weight that I was when I finished Cycle Oregon last year, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Last year I did Cycle Oregon on 1100 trainer miles and only about 200 road miles, which seems backwards but you do what you can, ya know?

On a side note, I'm extremely proud of my lovely wife. She's been working on exercising and watching what she eats all winter as part of the family Biggest Loser contest, and she told me the other day that she is now able to get into some clothes that she hasn't been able to wear in quite a while. YAY!!!! And even though the spring work is going on, she's still finding time to exercise!!!

Monday, April 26, 2010

In the words of Mark Twain...

or I think that's who it was anyway, "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated". Or something like that. No, I haven't dropped off the face of the planet, and no, I haven't been kidnapped by aliens or any such thing. It's just that posting on the blog has kind of fallen under the radar, as it were. 'Tis spring, and a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of, well, spring work, and a little bit of spring play-time. I've been cutting fence posts, breaking and repairing my chain saw, fixing fence, traveling to Las Vegas to go house shopping with Clint, that sort of thing...

So what has gone on in life? Lots of stuff. We did indeed go to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, looking for a house for Clint, who will be starting culinary school at the Art Institute in July. Since student housing is like $650 a month, and the housing market is extremely depressed in the Vegas area at the moment, we decided to see if we could find a house for him to buy, instead of renting, since he plans to stay down there for some five years or so. We figured that, what the hey, if he can sell the place in five years for what he paid for it now, he's lived there for free for five years, essentially...

So after looking at a bunch of places, we made an offer on his favorite one and turned the Smerf-mobile for home on that Friday, then found out the following Tuesday that he's about to become a homeowner. Even better, the deal should close in plenty of time to get the $8000 federal tax credit check as a first-time home buyer. That'll do some house fixer-uppering and make a few payments. It's about time some our tax dollars helped one of us instead of all the bums who... Never mind, I won't go there...

I started my big gun sprinkler on our field last week, just in time for the first big thunder-boomer of the year to come blitzing through, depositing a phenomenal amount of rain in a very short time and washing a ton of dirt and other assorted junk over the head box for the main line and actually plugging a 3/4" nozzle. I was truly amazed...

Branding is pretty much done. There are a few more calves from some late-calving cows yet to brand, but not many. Brett's been helping people all over the place brand calves, along with building a few leather goods...

Clint's giving up his apartment at school this coming weekend and moving home. He's going to commute to classes the rest of the school year, and save the rent money...

I think that spring may finally be sneaking up on us. I've been doing all of my biking indoors on the trainer because the weather's been so crappy, but yesterday afternoon I finally got out and did a 7 mile ride on my mountain bike, up the creek to our lower gate and back. Great day for a ride. Coming back down the road I decided that there's really very little chance of me becoming a hard-core mountain biker. I'm too chicken to really bomb the downhills, and too wimpy to hammer the climbs. And the bashing around on the downhills is hell on my wrists, so I guess I'll mainly stick to road riding, with the occasional gravel road foray on my mountain bike for leavening...

Saturday I spent adding to my collection of juniper fence posts. The cool thing about juniper is that you don't have to treat it, and it still lasts for years in the ground. Our neighbor has been doing a juniper eradication project, so all I have to do is knock off the limbs, buck the trunk to the right length, and presto! Instant post! I got nine of them in one really small area. Partway through the first pickup load, the roller in the nose of my chainsaw bar went on strike. Fortunately Cheryl was still in town, and was able to get me a new bar. I ended up with almost twenty posts for the day, and the pile behind the shop is getting pretty big. I'm thinking I may attack the homestead next. There are some cut trees over there that look about right, and some more I can knock down myself. Might as well keep going while I'm on a roll...

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Skunk Wars...

So this past November, an apparently huge population of war-like skunks decided to attack our house. The war began with an extreme hosing of the utility room area, which drifted to the rest of the house, the night before we were to leave for the PBR finals. As such, pretty much all of our clothes, our shoes, my computer case, the whole enchilada smelled strongly, and I do mean strongly, of skunk. Once we got to Vegas, we went through approximately a gallon of Extra-Strength Febreeze in a mostly vain attempt to battle the stench...

Fast forward a few days. We got home, only to discover that the house had been hosed again. Speaking of reeking! This second, totally unprovoked barrage elicited what some people might think is an extreme reaction, but I don't think so: I went on the offensive...

Out in my shop are an assortment of various sizes of traps. After a scouting expedition around the perimeter of the house, I discovered that the varmint's main means of ingress and egress to the underside of the house were two tunnels, one behind and one befront. It wasn't long before each of the two tunnels was ringed with traps, nor was it long before the first of the ninjas was captured and executed...

I'm getting ahead of myself here, just a skosh. I set the traps on a Thursday afternoon. Friday morning when I got up, there was a skunk in one of the traps behind the house. Boom. No more skunk. I went back into the house to have breakfast and my morning coffee, then ventured out to take the now defunct polecat from the trap and reset it. What to my wondering eyes should appear but another of those striped menaces, caught alongside the dead one in a trap that hadn't been tripped. Boom. Two dead varmints to get rid of. Peeww!

Over the course of the next few weeks, leading up to the end of the year, I caught a total of fourteen of the stinking beasts. Then came the big snows of January, and the threat abated. We were sure that the war was over, and that we had won, but it was not to be. I stuffed rocks in the tunnels, and proceeded to get back to some semblance of a normal life...

Then, one night in mid-February, the beasts returned, this time beginning some sort of territorial battle under the utility room, and stinking the place up a tiny bit in the process. A fresh tunnel had been dug in that area, which I promptly ringed with traps, along with setting the traps back at the tunnel in front of the house...

Like ninjas in a B-rated action movie, the smelly varmints apparently only attack one at a time, which is fortunate. Since this latest onslaught began, I've trapped eight more skunks, all at the front of the house, and two pack rats, which could actually probably be considered collateral casualties, both at the back of the house. We've now been two days skunk-less. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue...

Trapping twenty two skunks at the same house is probably some sort of record, but that's okay, I'm happy without the fame and fortune...