When I created that signup form, I forgot to mention the free gift you’ll receive. That is, if my automation worked.

The gift isn’t a book or a short story. Too much overhead goes into my fiction to give any of it away yet, considering how long it takes me to complete a story, let alone a book, and then what I pay for professional editing.

Don’t get me started on the business stuff. Yeah. You don’t want to know.

Anyway, your gift is a digital jigsaw puzzle of an original photo I took during my travels.

So, if you haven’t gone already, go sign up.

Anyway, I don’t plan to blog here, unless I change my mind.

Feel free to explore the few posts I left here.

Me with bangs. I miss them. Anyway, I had a couple of opportunities to write in the library at the Mark Twain House. This photo is from the first time in 2014.

The post Did You Get Lost on the Way to My Newsletter? first appeared on Rhonda Lane.

I broke a seam.

Once again, the size of my waistline — let alone my shoulders, hips, and arms — exceeded my taste.

But I didn’t return The Preciousss.

For most of that year, weight loss dragged and backslid. When early fall rolled around, our doctor put my husband MacGuyver and me on medically supervised diets.

We lost weight. Fast. In a month on the diet, I wondered if I could the outfit would fit for a special event in November?

The answer was YES. Here it is.

That’s IT?

“Can you direct me to the banquet?”

I’d seen the T-Rex costumes in viral videos. They made me smile. They made other people smile. I had to have one. Had to.

What’s the suit like?

The suit is listed as an Adult suit, one-size-fits-all. I’m 5’3.” MacGuyver who is 6’1″ couldn’t wear it.

My head is under T-Rex’s chin and looks out through a clear-ish plastic window, which isn’t shaded enough to prevent the determined from stepping up and peering inside.

I decided some black tulle could camouflage my face. More later about how that worked out

Even at my height, my feet and lower legs were visible, so I wore it with black slacks and shoes.

Those are my hands inside the gloves, like mittens, only T-Rex orange.

Also, see that orange circle on T-Rex’s flank? That’s the backing for a battery operated mini fan that inflates the suit.

You step into the suit with feet in the feet holes, shrug into the suit like a jumpsuit, start the fan and zip up the suit in front until the zipper ends below the viewing window. Notice I didn’t say, put your gloves on first.

The suit fills fast unless a seam splits. MacGuyver patched the original split seam with clear packing tape. I don’t leave home with the T-Rex suit without a #DinosaurFirstAidKit.

On to the New England Crime Bake, a conference for mystery writers and fans of crime fiction!

T-Rex walks again!

Crime Bake holds a themed costume banquet on Saturday night. Last year’s Guest of Honor author William Kent Krueger inspired a Minnesota-themed banquet. I figured a T-Rex had to have wandered over to Minnesota at some point in pre-history.

Besides, thanks to the diet that got me into the suit, I couldn’t eat at the banquet anyway, so I decided to swan around the hotel lobby in the suit.

“I ate author Sharon Daynard? Sor-ry! I thought that was part of hors d’ouevre service!”

As I dressed in my hotel room, I’d forgotten my occasional claustrophobia. Yikes! I clambered to unzip the suit and rip the netting away from my face. Whew! Couldn’t take much more of that.

With my room key tucked into my paw mitten, I set off, ready for adventure.

“I caught a pterodactyl. You wouldn’t believe the size of that sucker! Hahaha!”

Long Tall T-Rex

The suit inflates to more than 6 feet tall. To get out the door, I had to bend over at the waist.

Plus, there’s a fully inflated tail to manage. I had to straight-arm the door open to waddle my way out into the hall.

At intervals down the hallways, I had to bend over to duck to the exit signs, let alone sprinkler heads ready to snag the delicate suit.

My room was on the lobby level, so guests could see me coming their way, a giant T-Rex in a sea of plaid shirts.

Reactions

The T-Rex mitten paw prevented selfies, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Children beamed, so the T-Rex turned their waves as best she could.

Yukking it up and snacking with — or is it “snacking on?” — author J.A. Hennrikus/Julianne Holmes.

A hotel server cracked, “Halloween was two weeks ago.”

More professional or rather unflappable New Yorkers and Bostonians attending the conference ignored the T-Rex.

Others merrily posed for photos.

One of my other friends challenged me with the existence of T-Rexes in Minnesota.

I channeled “Spooky” Mulder. “There could’ve been.” #IWantToBelieve

No one expects T-Rex to deliver sparkling repartee.

The few steps leading to the pre-banquet party gave me pause. To see, check out this blog post by author and Crime Baker Dale T. Phillips as T-Rex considered climbing the steps with her long tail.

On the edge of the crowd, the Crime Bake Guest of Honor Kent Krueger chatted with another writer near the bar. Kent and T-Rex locked gazes (well, he spotted the giant T-Rex headed his way), so I waved at him. He returned my wave with a wry smile.

Soon, I found a point of entry allowing for me and my tail.

Hot, hot, HOT

I could only trundle around for about half an hour in the suit. The fan doesn’t circulate air but inflates the suit. Plus, long sleeves, slacks, and, well, black boots. Can you say, “Steamed T-Rex?”

So, if you get one — a Jurassic World T-Rex costume — if you’re not super-fit, forget about anything more strenuous. That said, my compliments go to the dancers , the riders , and the pro football cheerleader giving it their all while in the suit.

• For more T-Rex fun — especially active T-Rex fun — check out T-Rex Tuesdays, available on your fave social media outlet. @TRexTuesdays
• Also, Megan Nicolett on “The Verge” wrote about how the suit is the movie Jurassic World’s real legacy.
• A T Rex running the American Ninja Warrior course? You bet!

As for me, who knows where I’ll show up next as T-Rex?

Thank you to Julianne Holmes, Sharon Daynard, and Liz Mugavero for photos!

The post That Special Outfit first appeared on Rhonda Lane.

About a dozen years ago, the Hartford Courant and Poynter  cohosted an all-genre writers’ seminar day.

That was shortly after 9/11 and just before Poynter set up NewsU, to shift its educational operations to an online platform.

Morley Safer was scheduled to speak, but he didn’t show up. We were told he was on a flight to Baghdad.

Instead of disappointment rumbling through the crowd, the attendees were stoked. One, a young man, crowed:

“Morley Safer’s fxxxing seventy fxxxing years old and on a fxxxing plane to Baghdad!”

Despite his age, many of us were shocked to hear he passed, but I don’t think anyone is truly surprised, in hindsight, that he retired only a few days before he left us.

To read more about Morley:

• CNN’s obit
• From his colleagues at “60 Minutes” (BTW, he’s the lead story on the website, for the time being, but that will likely change as time passes.)

-30-

The post My Morley Safer story first appeared on Rhonda Lane.

I spent part of Election Day 2012 in a hospital waiting room. I’m okay, but doctors monitor my blood once a month to make sure I remain that way. My blood tests aren’t the usual “tap, slap, off ya go” affairs. I have to wait a while for an IV nurse, so I always take a book.

On election day, I sat on the aisle when a little family rolled up. A teenage girl in a wheelchair with her leg in a cast, a boy about 10 years old and a middle-aged woman wearing a Muslim headscarf scanned the area for a spot to sit together.

I shifted a couple of seats toward the wall from my aisle seat. That left two seats in a makeshift conversation cluster for them. I flashed a “here ya go” gesture. They sat next to me. Problem solved.

Different accents often catch my ear. The woman’s English sounded tentative as if she needed to translate inside her mind before she spoke. The boy and girl chattered away in fast American speech. I tried not to eavesdrop, but they were so close. They sounded as if they had a fun day planned, although they were new to this whole outpatient stuff. I think I added a couple of cordially supportive comments. After all, I’m an old hand at doctor doings.

I usually surprise northerners by chiming in on their conversations, so this exchange, too, ended with the usual polite discomfort. I made an exaggerated sheepish face straight out of vaudeville, muttered, “Oops. Sorry. I’ll mind my own business,” and returned to my book. They resumed their conversations. Sort of. That’s when I noticed the woman had a book open, too.

Her small pocket-sized book had a plain cover and all the text appeared to be Arabic. Or Farsi.

A nurse called the girl for her outpatient procedure. After she left, the woman turned to me. “Have you voted yet?” she said.

I have to admit, I was a little surprised when she spoke to me. “Not yet. My husband asked me to wait until he gets home from work so we can go together. That’s sort of our thing.”

With a smile, she tilted her head toward the boy and said, “He wanted to go first thing this morning. He was so disappointed, though, with the polls. He thought we should vote in the White House.”

We both smiled and nodded in one of those “kids say the darnedest things” moments. Then, I had a memory flash of news footage of Iraqi women with purple thumbs raised to celebrate  voting. That’s when an idea sparked.

“He’s got a point,” I said with a bit of aHA moment awe. “Voting should include more ceremony and ritual. It IS a big deal, and we should celebrate it more.”

The girl returned, and family day resumed. Her mom and I nodded cursory farewells, almost as if we hadn’t shared a moment, so I returned to my book. Except she’d planted a thought.

Why don’t we celebrate voting more?

We take voting for granted. Up here in Connecticut, we vote – at least in my town – in elementary schools closed for the day. We arrive down a driveway lined with political signs only to run a gantlet of pamphlet-bearing volunteers. Inside, poll workers are pleasant, even if they’ve been there since the 6 am opening. We arrive, show ID. Get in, get out. Bada bing, bada boom.

Granted, there’s much appeal to getting it over with and returning to normal life.

But we celebrate everything else. Minor holidays. Championship athletic events. The Oscars. Why not Election Day? I have to admit that the relentless negative ads batter my enthusiasm for the process.  We get enmeshed in the whole partisan politics clash.

For the first time, I noticed children much more excited about the election than the adults, even the middle-aged woman obviously born in the Middle East. When my husband and I went to vote, a father and son showed up behind us. The son wanted an “I voted” sticker, but the polling place was out. The boy left disappointed, as if he’d been dreaming of that toy for weeks but the store was out of stock.

Are children naive? Or do they have the right idea?

The post Some thoughts on voting first appeared on Rhonda Lane.