Happy Halloween, everyone! It’s been an extraordinary autumn, filled with creativity and destruction. More about the destruction stuff in a bit. For now, please enjoy this Halloween photo of Dulcinea.

I’ve been really happy about the reviews for my new novel, especially this review by author Jeanne Griggs, who has a passion for dark sorcerers like my character Henrik Paulsen. (Necromancy never pays, you guys! When are you ever going to learn?)

We had a book launch party for Wooden Stake Press at the Book Bar in Denver, and there was much drinking of wine and reading of words. I managed to get through the opening scene of my novel without panicking or mispronouncing any Spanish words, so I’m calling that a win.

On a whim, I entered Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold contest, and while I was vacationing in Utah, Requiem in La Paz made the finals in the Young Adult category. My kitty Snowy has claimed this award certificate—for Gondor!

So much for my creative endeavors. Now for the destruction part. I went back to Fargo for a reunion in October, just in time to see this bulldozer destroying my childhood home.

Goodbye, happy childhood. That heap of dirt is all that’s left of the riverside home where I played violin and wrote stories and dreamed dreams for many years. The site will now become a flood channel protecting the city of Moorhead from the unpredictable Red River of the North.

I should probably mention that this is the second childhood home of mine that has been replaced by a flood channel. I grew up on a farm outside of town, and that house has been gone for years. When I was in my early teens, we moved to the lovely house in town, which is now gone, gone, gone…

One of these days, I’m going to have to write a novel about the flooding in Fargo/Moorhead. But for now, I’ve been dealing with my anguish in other ways:

Pastries! After seeing what had become of my childhood, we went to Nichole’s and bought four desserts and ate them all.

Knit-bombing! (A very lovely term for creative destruction.) We may or may not have been responsible for giving this Van Gogh bison a new knitted bandage for his ear.

Oh, and the “Chocolate Man” at Concordia College has somehow been dressed up in his school colors, just in time for Homecoming.