IT'S BEEN A GREAT YEAR!

Hi Folks!  Season's Greetings from all of us--Bea, Hattie, Connie and Miss Fanny.  The year 2014 has been a fantastic one for our creators, L. Barnett Evans and C.V. Rhodes.

It started with the release of our latest adventure, There's Something Wrong with Miss Zelda. Then there was the play that they wrote titled, Stake Out, that featured Hattie and Miss Fanny doing their thing.  It was produced at the 2014 Indy Fringe Theatre Festival and the play turned out to be one of the top 10 grossing plays in the festival.  Not to shabby, huh?

This year Evans and Rhodes have had the privilege of being invited to speak to numerous book clubs.  They've participated in several book festivals, all the while working on the upcoming book that will feature our next adventure.  It's called, Whose Knife Is It Anyway? 

Yes, the ladies have done well by us in 2014.  Many of our accomplishments have been chronicled right here on our blog.  You never know what we'll do next, so be sure to keep reading!

We're looking forward to new adventures and new experiences in 2015.  We hope you'll join us and continue to enjoy us!

MORE ADVENTURES AHEAD!!

Time is passing faster than a speeding car, and my girls and I are steadily busy.  I'm happy to announce that I--Bea Bell--am working on getting my private detective license, and I'm strutting around here as proud as a peacock.  I can't wait!

Last month, Miss Fanny told you about the case that Hattie was working on in the new play, Stake Out.  It's coming to the Indy Fringe Theatre Festival in August.  Stake Out was written by our creators, Evans and Rhodes, and I hear it's funny.  Shoot, I've got to give Hattie credit for her ingenuity when it comes to drumming up business for us.  I don't care what Miss Fanny says!

Let me tell you what else has been brewing out there in detective land.  Connie, Hattie and I have been invited on a retreat at a conference center, located somewhere out in the woods, with some women we don't particularly like.  Lord knows there will be fireworks between us, but the purpose of the time we'll be spending together is to end the conflicts.  We'll see what happens with us stuck out in the middle of nowhere.  All kinds of mayhem and murder could occur.  That's what happens on TV and in the movies.

Evans and Rhodes are calling our next adventure Whose Knife is it Anyway?   Who knows, I might be able to put my considerable skills to work once again, but this time as a card carrying "real" private detective.  Stay tuned.

MATRIARCH! SAYS WHO?

 

 

Hello readers, this is Connie Palmer writing the blog this month, and I’ve got a gripe a lot of folks won’t agree with, but I don’t care.  I want to know when did I become a matriarch.  According to some of my relatives that’s what I am, the family matriarch, and I don’t like it.

 I want to know where it is written that the oldest woman in a family all of a sudden becomes a “matriarch”.  What does that mean anyway?  I guess since I managed to live to be in my sixties all of a sudden everyone can come dump their problems on me?

 Oh, I guess it’s suppose to be an honor being the one who has lived so long that people come to you for your advice and wisdom.  Really?  Age and wisdom in America are hardly respected, especially when it comes to women.

 I don’t mind my four kids calling me once in a while to ask for some advice or to see what I might think about something, I call that mothering.  But all of a sudden some of my cousins are calling and telling me their problems under the guise of this matriarch mess.  Hell!  I haven’t seen some of these people in so long I don’t remember what they look like, and all of a sudden I’m the head of the extended family?  I didn’t run for that office and nobody elected me.

I’ve always been a person who minded my own business, and I expect others to do the same.  I’m not comfortable advising others about what they should do in their lives.  If my advice blows up in their faces, guess who gets the blame.  Uh huh, you guessed it—me.

I can’t do anything about my age, and I don’t want to.  I’m glad that I’m still around.  I’ve found peace in my life now and I don’t want it disturbed by being a “matriarch.’ No thank you. No matriarch for me.

 

 

COMING ALONG

Whose Knife is it Anyway? the next installment of the Grandmothers, Incorporated series by Evans and Rhodes is coming along.  While doing some research on the book they found out the most amazing thing.  In some states in the U.S.A. it doesn’t take much to get a license to become a Private Investigator. Isn’t that scary?   Can you imagine one of us ladies of Grandmothers, Incorporated—or even worse—all of us ladies—walking around with legitimate credentials to do something we’re only marginally qualified to do in the first place?  O.K., perhaps the word marginally might be stretching it, and qualified might be questionable, but our readers understand.

Anyway, the point is that with webcams, security cameras, GPS tracking and such, snooping might not be as difficult as it appears.  Everybody’s doing it.  We just prefer to do our snooping legitimately. 

Another reality is that everybody in this country knows how easy it can be to get a gun—and it didn’t take any research at all for this one.  So let’s see, the equation looks like this:  Easy access to a Private Investigators License + Easy Weapon Purchase = a possible crazy person running around with a legal right to hunt anybody down.

Oh my!  Sounds like a good premise for a book.  Whose Knife is it Anway? is coming along.

LET'S PLAY CATCH UP

Like we said last month, the ladies of Grandmothers, Incorporated are back, and in the year since our creators, L. Barnett Evans and C.V. Rhodes, tried to get serious by writing another blog titled We Write Book Reviews, a whole lot has happened.  Let's play catch up.

Bea Bell, Connie Palmer, and me, Hattie Collier, went to Las Vegas in Evans and Rhodes' second book, Saving Sin City.  Oh, and of course my mother-in-law, Miss Fanny, just had to tag along.  There have been a lot of false and malicious rumors going around about that trip, but I'd advise you not to listen to them.  Yes, it is true that I spent a little time in the slammer while I was there, but I was an innocent victim of circumstance.  But folks have it all wrong about the police "tossing" me out of town.  They simply escorted my friends and me to a private plane that they provided for us and we flew out of that devilish place with our dignity intact.  The good Lord knows that all I was trying to do in that godless city was save some souls for Jesus, but my efforts were not appreciated, even though I personally helped the authorities solve a major crime.  I'm still praying hard for those devils that trespassed against me.  I hold no malice in my heart.  Other than that I'll say no more about our time in Sin City, especially since Bea, Connie, Miss Fanny and me are under a gag order.  So that's that!

After Las Vegas, my friends and I took a long awaited vacation to Carmel, California.  It was a trip that we had been dreaming about since we were younger women.  As usual Miss Fanny had to horn in, and to make matters worse she brought one of her creepy friends along named Zelda Chambers.  I kept telling Bea and Connie that there was something wrong with that woman, but they didn't believe me until the truth couldn't be denied.  We told Evans and Rhodes every detail about that misadventure and they wrote their third book in the Grandmothers, Incorporated series about it titled There's Something Wrong with Miss Zelda.  They even managed to make the story as funny as the other two books they wrote about us.  I tell you, those two women are brilliant!

TO CURSE OR NOT TO CURSE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

I like to curse!  Yeah, I said it. If you didn’t understand what I said, I’ll repeat it. I, Connie Palmer, mother, grandmother and a woman in her sixties, like to curse.

Oh I know that it’s not supposed to be acceptable, especially in public.   It’s said that a person who curses lacks a vocabulary, or even worse lacks class.  Cursing is said to be disrespectful, offensive, unacceptable, blah, blah, blah.  I’ve heard it all.  

When I was growing up in the South, the only people that I heard who cursed in public were those who didn’t go to church, and were headed for hell anyway.  That included the people who drank liquor, especially on the weekends, and of course the “loose women” in town.  For reasons that I never understood it seemed more acceptable for men to curse than it was for women.   Females were expected to be ladies no matter their profession, and cursing was just not ladylike.

I remember that I used to watch with wonder and envy those “fast tailed women” who used to sashay around our small town cursing and smoking and drinking like men, and not caring what anybody thought. None of the good folks in town respected them; but being what they called a “spirited child” I envied the freedom they seemed to have to be themselves and I became a closet curser. Oh, I didn’t use the big “bad” words, and would have gotten the whipping of my life if I had said any of them out loud.  Yet, an occasional hell or damn might form in my mind, but I was too scared of a punishment from home and from God to let them slide from my tongue. Still, they were there ready and wanting to burst loose.

When I was in my mid teens I got married and had four children in less than eight years—you talk about wanting to curse!  Raising those kids and handling a husband stretched me to the limit. I managed to do pretty well not saying what I really wanted to say, but on rare occasions I did let loose a good one.  

I made it through those years, with my cursing vocabulary still relatively small.  How I did it I still don’t know, but as the kids left the house and after my husband died, I noticed that gradually my cursing vocabulary increased.  Presently, I’m pretty good at putting a variety of curse words together, especially for inconsiderate drivers, sanctimonious hypocrites and stupid politicians.

I find that a few good curse words express my feelings, quick and fast.  There is no misunderstanding when I make my point. I know that for some cursing is still not acceptable, but at this point in my life I just don’t care.  There are some words that I still won’t say, but in today’s society anything goes and it probably wouldn’t matter if I did.   

Maybe I should feel guilty about being a curser, especially since I still go to church.  I guess that makes me one of those hypocrites that I have a few chosen words for, but who’s going to hell first?  Cursers or killers?  Muse on that!