No book review tonight. Instead, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Or to put it another way, whatever comes into my head.

I read a good article about the semicolon today in Writer’s Digest. The author courageously defended the old s-c, and I applaud him. I myself love the semicolon. Aside from its delightful precision as a punctuation mark, when wielded skillfully, I have a happy memory of it.

The memory is fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. I was writing some kind of an essay or report in school – elementary school, I think. The “new” pale brick building on the south side of town.

I was composing, as I recall, some kind of a complex sentence. I had a complicated thought I was trying to express. I wanted to tie it all together, but it had a lot of working parts going, some of them more important than others. “What I need,” I thought to myself, “is a punctuation mark that indicates a major division in in my train of thought, but also retains a connection to the previous thought.” (Or words to that effect.)

And it occurred to me – “Hey! That’s what semicolons are for!” And I triumphantly put down a semicolon, intentionally for the first time in my life. The semicolon belonged to me now. I was its master. I had summoned it; it had not been forced on me by my teacher.

It was a moment in my evolution as a writer, though I didn’t understand it yet.

Jumping to the present, I haven’t been feeling well lately. My plan was to be doing a lot of stuff to promote the audiobook of Troll Valley right now, but I haven’t been up to the effort.

I’m embarrassed to say it’s just a cold. I see friends on Basefook and Xwitter talking about their mothers dying, or themselves being diagnosed with cancer or breaking a limb or something. And here I am, bellyaching about a common cold. So let me stipulate that I’m not competing for your sympathy. If you have only compassion enough to spare for one person today, it shouldn’t be me.

But I haven’t had a cold in years. I used to get them regularly, when I ran the bookstore at the schools. All that human contact – couldn’t avoid it. And for a while there, it seemed like every time I got that annual cold, it would settle into my chest and in the end require antibiotics.

But I don’t think I’ve had a serious cold since I retired, which is a few years now. And this one has knocked me over. Sunday was the worst day – I spent it mostly in bed, and didn’t even make popcorn for supper, which is my sacred Sunday custom. Since then I’ve been feeling a little better each day, and right now I’m actually eyeing my work load again.

I was delighted to discover I have an old stock of zinc tablets that I’d forgotten about, on a shelf. Hate the aftertaste, but they seem to help. And my ribs don’t hurt as much from coughing today.

To sum up – buy the audiobook of Troll Valley. My Norwegian accent alone is worth the price.

(And you can admire the cover – designed by Phil Wade – in both versions! Collect the whole set!)