WHEN YOUR AUTHOR CAN'T TAKE THE HEAT

Thanks to Lois Winston, my author, I’ll be digging my way out of debt well into my eighties. Vacations are a thing of the past for me. Although a while back Lois did surprise me with a brief excursion to Barcelona, Spain, but then, sadist that she is, ruined it by having me kidnapped within hours of my arrival.

Lois, on the other hand, has taken several vacations in the years since she created me. On a recent trip to Nashville, she and her family spent the day at the Nashville Zoo. One thing you should know about my author: unlike me, she can’t take the heat. Only for her, it’s literal heat. The heat she gets me into is more metaphoric in nature.

Anyway, Lois always says she’d rather be cold than hot because when you’re cold, you can always add another layer of clothing or pile an extra quilt onto the bed. When you’re hot, there’s just so much you can strip off before you’re arrested for indecent exposure.

Getting back to that trip to the zoo, it’s summertime in Nashville, and that means it’s sizzling hot—the type of day my author would never have left the comfort of her air-conditioned home had she been home. Even the animals didn’t feel like moving, as you can tell from these pictures.

Personally, I was quite happy that Lois was out in the hot sun all day. That meant she wasn’t sitting at her computer dreaming up some new ways to create murder and mayhem in my life. And for me, that’s a vacation!