OK, so the eclipse was pretty cool.
As I watched my friends post their photos, I regretted not traveling to southeast Oklahoma to get closer to totality. We hit 97% or so up here, and it was not all that different from what we experienced in 2017. But lots of friends in other parts of the country were in the totality path, and the photos and videos they posted were just stunning.
One local friend drove down to Broken Bow, about 190 miles south, and the experience was completely different. At totality, the lights came on at the parking lot he was hanging out in. It never got that dark up here. I saw one time-lapse on Reddit where when it hit totality, it looked like someone flipped a switch to turn the sun off.
At Wayfarer’s Refuge, the temp dropped three or four degrees as things maxed out, and my solar production took a pretty major hit. But it never got as dark as it did elsewhere. Number Three Son got some impressive photos in Ohio, as did Oldest Son. Mine were just so-so.
I’d say I’ll catch the next one, but “the next one” for Oklahoma isn’t for another twenty-one years. I can only hope I’ll be around that long.
Reading
More reading this week!
I continued making my way through Ardoin’s Fenway Stevenson series.m finishing The Incumbent Coroner as well as The Candidate Coroner. I like the way the character and story arcs are continuing through the series. The background characters come across as people with lives outside the story, which is hard to do sometimes. 4/5 stars for both.
I’ve really only got two gripes about the series at this point. The first is that Ardoin seems to refer to sheriff’s deputies as “Officer.” That’s just not done. Sheriff’s deputies get the title “Deputy.” “Officer” should be restricted to police officers, and there’s a difference between a deputy and a police officer. Yes, lots of times both groups are called “cops” or “law enforcement officers.” But if you’re talking to one of the guys who works for the sheriff, you’d call him “Deputy.”
The second gripe is a bigger deal, and I don’t want to make it seem like I’m bashing on Ardoin here, because I’m not. He brings in a three-letter federal agency in The Candidate Coroner to investigate a drug ring, and it’s the wrong agency. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms doesn’t investigate drug rings. There’s nothing about the conspiracy in the story that would fall under the purview of the ATF. Drugs belong to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The ATF handles gun crimes and fires and explosions.
There is one incident in the book that could warrant assistance by the ATF, which they would freely give in situations like the one in the story. But the DEA should have been the one doing the work on the drug scheme in the book, not the ATF. The feds don’t generally cross turf lines like that.
I’m going to keep reading the series, though. There are some arcs I want to see finished out. The first three books really read like TV shows the way Ardoin keeps nursing the arcs along. Hoopla has the next three novels available in one download, so that’ll give me something to do for a few days.
Writing
Ardoin’s series has given me a good nudge as far as plotting. It’s clear he spent some time plotting the series out. I’ve said in the past that The Sad Girl series was an accidental one at best. I never intended for it to be a series; I didn’t even plan on a sequel when I finished the first book. But as I make my way through the series (I’m finishing up book six), I feel like I’m getting a better grip on plotting big character/story arcs. While that’s not the reason I’m trying to read more, it’s a nice benefit.
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