Sorry for the short post this week. It’s Girl Scout cookie season and I’ve got two daughters selling cookies. One of them is in a travel troop, so we’ve been busy!

What’s a travel troop? Glad you asked (you did ask, didn’t you?). Normally when a Girl Scout sells cookies, a portion goes to her as “Cookie Credits,” and another portion goes to the troop. Some also goes to the local council and to national, but that doesn’t matter for a travel troop. Travel troops are set up with girls from different troops who want to go on some of the trips that a council plans. When they sell cookies (or fall product), the funds that would go to the troop still go to the troop, but they get applied toward trip expenses, reducing the personal funds the girls have to spend. Travel troop members still participate in functions with their regular troop. Olivia has sold door-to-door, and those funds go to her local troop. Anything she sells in a booth for the travel troop goes to her travel expenses.

Because the council is based in Tulsa, as is the travel troop leader, most of the booths she sets up are in Tulsa. We’ve done booths at Bass Pro, a Tulsa Oilers game, a TU men’s basketball game, as well as the typical Walmart and Sam’s Club booths, and it’s been a good season so far. The only catch is that we live about 40 miles outside of Tulsa, so each booth in town is a 90-mile round trip. So I’ve done lots of driving and lots of cookie selling, but not as much writing as I might have liked.

But my daughter is going to be visiting New York City and Washington D. C. this fall, and Scotland and Ireland next year. That’s going to make all of this worth it.

And because I’m a shameless Girl Scout Dad, I’m linking to her Digital Cookie page. She’s sold quite a few boxes, so don’t feel like you have to buy all 1,745 boxes of her goal. Although if you want to, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. If you’d like to split your purchases between my girls, here’s a link to Abigail’s Digital Cookie page.

I’m told the S’Mores taste really good if you microwave the cookies for about five seconds. Enjoy! Sales end March 18^th.

February Reading

What did I read this month?

I went back to my military fiction and thriller roots for the first two. I’ve always been a big fan of the TEOTWAWKI genre, no matter the cause of the end of the world. A good writer doesn’t focus so much on the means of the end, but rather the story surrounding the end. It doesn’t matter if it’s zombies, a killer virus, nukes, or the weather: the story is about the people.

Given the amount of military fiction I used to read, I’m surprised I haven’t read David Poyer sooner. His Dan Lenson series sounds like something I’d really enjoy, and I’m going to work on catching up on it.

Hunter-Killer is the 17th book in the series, exploring a shooting war in the Pacific with China and the Associated Powers. The conflict began back in book 15, as I understand the Goodreads list of the series. I didn’t realize when I picked it up that it was that far along in the series, but I don’t feel like I missed out on that much. Poyer does a great job of sprinkling in the important information from the last book or two. I definitely want to work my way through this series. It’s a good thing my library seems to have most of them. Five stars.

Brad Thor’s Use of Force looked interesting the day I picked it up in the library and I wasn’t disappointed.  It’s also a series book, this one about Scot Harvath, a SEAL turned Secret Service Agent turned covert operative. It felt like this series was a little less linear than Poyer’s Lenson series, and that I could jump around a bit in sequence without too much trouble.  Use of Force is fast paced, jumping from the Mediterranean to Burning Man to Spain, Rome and all over the Middle East. It’s got plenty of action: car chases, gunfights in hotels, and midnight raids against terrorist compounds. Four stars.

Word Count

My February word count was 25,970 words over 21 writing days. I only count a day as a writing day if I work on the blog or any of my fiction.

• 2,542 in the blog (3 posts)
• 3,839 in fiction
• 2,366 in emails (wow, but I’m wordy!)
• 17,233 on social media.

That’s about 19 percent less than last February, and puts me on track to hit 92 percent of my target. I’m not in bad shape when it comes to word count so far, but I’m not quite where I want to be. We’ll see how things go after cookie season.

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