michael@sirois.com 
Hi, I have a vivid memory of walking alone when I was much younger, just thinking and talking to myself. I did that a lot back then. I was born a year after World War II ended, and I think I was about ten years old then, so this must have been in the mid-1950’s. …
Hi, The Final Resolution (maybe): In the previous three posts I outlined the history behind the erosion in my back yard and the steps I had taken to try to solve that problem. No matter what I did, my back fence kept falling in the ditch behind my house, but by the last post I …
Hi, The Partial Resolution: In the previous posts, I detailed the issues that had been weakening the ground underneath my back fence (and all of the other nine houses on my side of our cul-de-sac), and talked about the first three times I had the fence rebuilt. The latest (only partially successful) solution involved installing …
Hi, In the previous post, I covered some of the background about why the land is eroding under all of the back fences on my side of our cul-de-sac. This post is about what I went through to try to fix the problem permanently. In 2016, a year after we believe the ditch behind our …
Hi, I’ve mentioned the problems we have had with our back fence several times before. It looks like they might finally be resolved sometime this year. I’ll be telling this tale in three posts so it won’t end up as a single book-length screed, and I’ll spread it out over the space of three months …
Hi, Nothing lasts forever. Items like computers and cell phones become less useful over time (or become problematic as they get junked up with unnecessary files). Minay and I are typically frugal and try to make everything we own last as long as possible, but eventually we do have to repair or replace some things. …
Hi, The previous post was about my problems finishing the novella that I plan to use as a giveaway to start building an audience for my upcoming thriller, The Jagged Man. After I published If a Butterfly, I spent (wasted?) most of 2022 implementing a very time-consuming (but moderately successful) e-mail advertising campaign for both …
Hi, The previous post was about the next few novels or novel series I intend to work on this year and for several years after that. My main focus at the moment is on trying to finish my novella, Flood and Fire, but it hasn’t been as easy as I originally hoped it would be. …
Hi, The previous post, “What I’m Working On,” was about my plans for finishing and publishing my novella, Flood and Fire, and its sequel, The Jagged Man. If I can somehow manage to complete those two books and get them ready for publication this year, I will start working on Murder Between Friends, the first …
Hi, If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ve noticed that I have been (in between all of the household and medical interruptions) trying to complete two particular tasks, finishing my novella, Flood and Fire, and re-editing its sequel, The Jagged Man. Sadly, I haven’t made much progress on either of them. Flood …