BEACH WALKS, CHAPTERS AHEAD, CLEAR SAILING FOR WEEKS

the beaches we walked

Over the weekend, in celebration of my 76 birthday (October 20th) my wife and I spent a weekend on Camano Island, north of Seattle, walking the beaches in fog and mist with nary a sign of sunshine, except in the love in our hearts for each other. That's all sunshine. Camano Island is stuck between Whidbey Island and the Washington Coast. Hardly an island at all, a couple of dump trucks of dirt would fill in the slough and creek that separates the mainland from Camano Island. We drove to La Conner, north of Camano Island for fried oysters. In fact, I broke so free of my vegan/vegetarian regime that I put on five pounds in two days of eating, but three disappeared as soon as we returned to Vancouver. Like magic. 

Today, I roughed out ideas for the next two or three chapters of Manning, adding several mysterious deaths that will puzzle Manning and, I hope the reader too. As I've said before, I see the ending, with only one decision to be made there, but getting to that ending should be all the fun of it for the reader.