Good morning to all. There's going to be big changes to this blogsite, as Kurt Maxxon takes over to share his advesntures as an amatuer sleuth in the Kurt Maxxon mysteriy series. Kurt will be coming alive in this blog, doing periodic updates on various subjects. In "Through the Windshield" Kurt will discuss his life as a stockcar race driver with his many fans and friiends.

Kurt will also talk about "How Cars Work." Stuff like engines, transmissions, drive trains, etc, and will be including tips on keeping your own car running efficiently. There are many things everyone can do to save money by getting better gas mileage. The first tip is to keep yoiur tires properly inflated to the manufacturer's recommendataions. The second tip is to keep your car tuned up. Kurt has plenty of tips for this and he will be sharing these here, so come back frequently.

Kurt also wants to keep all of you safe on the highways and byeways, so he will be giving you driving safety tips. The first safety tip is: Contrary to what we all were taught when we learned to drive, you should not hold the steering wheel at the 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock postions. With the advent of airbags in the steering wheel, you should grip the steering wheel at the 4 o'clock and 8 o'clock positions in case you have an airbag deployment, in order to avoid injuries to your arms caused by the deployment.

Watch for Jim Overturf's new web site, and blog, that should be up and running in the next few weeks at JimOverturf.com. I'm planning to do a series of blogs on what I do while writing the series of novels. How to keep track of characters, settings, events, etc. It's been a nightmare at times, but I think I've come up with a reasonable system. We can hope.

Come back often.

Jim Overturf
The Kurt Maxxon series

Well, we're home from Mahyhem in the Midlands. What a great conference. Already signed up for next year. Met a lot of wonderful writers.

Two are really memorable and worth your attention: Beth Groundwater is in the middle of her blog tour with her book "To Hell In a Handbasket", and Ann Parker, who will begin her "Leaden Skies" blog tour in July. Beth's book is set in Colorado, my adopted favorite state. And, guess what, Ann's book is set in Leadville, Colorado. Good luck to those two girls. To keep up with these two young ladies, go to http://www.blogbooktours.com and follow their posts, or www.bethgroundwater.com and www.annparker.net.

My second book in the Kurt Maxxon series, Kings Rapids, is officially released. It and Masonville, the first book, are available from BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com. If you want a signed copy of either for the regular price go to www.Authorsden.com/bookstore.

In the future I will be plugging "Books for babies" on my site. This is a program developed by the Friends of Libraries USA (FOLUSA). I'll get a web address for them and have it on the site. I also am a shriner, so I ardently support the Shriner's Hospitals. I'll be putting their address on my site.

This is the Memorial Day weekend and the official start of summer travel. I hope each of you will travel safely to wherever you are going, use seatbelts, buckle your children in securely, drive the speed limit, or less (to save gas). Can you save time speeding? In a daily drive of 400 miles the difference between driving 60 mph and 70 mph is less than an hour, but much safer.

Always be aware of your surroundings: weather, highway conditions, and especially of the other drivers around you. Yield the right-of-way, or better yet, just let the other guy go. You could be dead right, but if the other guy doesn't obey the rules of the road, you wind up just dead.

I want you all back safely to read my books next fall. So have a great vacation trip and when you get back, check www.KurtMaxxonRacing.com for your reading entertainment.

If you carry your computers with you and use the motel's wi fi, then keep dialing in. I'm on Twitter (most of the time) and this blog (I hope to do better in the future).

The reason I'm posting this at this time, is there is a rain-delay at Lowes Motor Speedway in the NASCAR race. I watched the Indy 500 and was extremely happy with the results. I never believed the US government should try to destroy a driver like they tried to do, just because he made some big bucks. Class warfare! Don't get me started.

Jim

We're winding down the New York, New Jersey tour. We've had a great time, met dozens of nice people, and seen a lot of beautiful countryside. Visited several relatives and will have my mother-in-law's memorial service tomorrow (Saturday, May 16) in Hackettstown, NJ. Then Sunday we return to Newark, overnight at Marriott Airport, then catch the Amtrak train to Washington, D.C. Monday morning, heading back to Lincoln.

We get to Lincoln about 1:00 am, Wednesday, and then leave for Omaha Thursday afternoon for Mayhem in the Midlands. I'm on three panels this year. Don't recall what they're about, right now, but will have fun. Mayhem is one of the best writer's conferences in the nation. I proposed to my wife there last year, and we got married a couple of weeks later. Looking forward to it again this year, especially the Mystery Dinner Theatre Saturday night.

Only been keeping up with the NASCAR races by reading newspapers after-the-fact. Will be glad to be home and have the Speed Channel again, and the ability to record night races and watch them at a decent hour. (Us older folks need our sleep.)

Kings Rapids is coming, slowly but surely. Should be released in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned to http://www.kurtmaxxonracing.com/ for details.

Be safe as you travel this summer. Drive defensively and watch the other drivers around you. Gasoline is going up in price, but should not be a problem. (Of course, in New Jersey, they don't allow self service, so gas is always high here.) Hope you enjoy getting away for awhile, even if for just a weekend. Just make sure you make it back in one piece so you can read Kings Rapids.

Jim

A lot has happened since last I blogged, and a lot will probably happen before I blog again. But, life happens. Happines in my life comes from the racing season being underway, and loads of fresh vegetables to cook with.

Kings Rapids, number two in the Kurt Maxxon series of amateur sleuth mysteries, is ready for release and will be available soon from BarnesAndNoble.com and Amazon.com, as well as on Kindle and Sony Reader ebook.

We'll be traveling to New Jersey for two weeks next week to do memorial service for my wife's late mother and do a few book store visits. Taking Amtrak from Lincoln to Newark and back. That will give me plenty of time to work on Carpentier Falls, the third book in the series. It is well underway and moving along nicely at this stage.

We are starting the recipe contest in earnest, looking for dishes to use in future Kurt Maxxon books, as well as eateries around the country we could include. Kurt Maxxon loves to eat, as do my wife and I. And we like unique foods with a lot of taste, texture and flavor. We've already received a couple dozen recipes that look tasty. Anyone can enter reicpes they love at www.KurtMaxxonRacing.com . We're also looking for eateries we can visit and evaluate.

As you get ready to drive to vacations or visits this summer, remember to use seat belts, and check the pressure in your tires. Proper tire pressure can save you money. On long drives use the cruise control to save about 3-5% on gas (depending on your engine size, etc.). Be safety aware all the time. Drive as if the other guy next to you is drunk. After 9:00 p.m. odds are about 1 in 14 that he (or she) is, if its a weeknight. Friday and Saturday nights the odds are more like 1 in 11.

Come back soon.

Jim

Three good things about this time of year are: one, NASCAR racing is back; two, avocados are in seasson; and three, spring is going to happen sometime.

Which brings to mind that spring is the season or rebirth. Around town I see daffodills poking up through the ground. They represent promise, of course, next will be tulips, then iris and then my favorites--peonies. Being a farm boy, raised on a dryland farm in Nebraska, spring means lilac bushes and peonies. Any roses we had were wild, blown in on the wind, a natural phenomena of Nebraska.

I moved away from Nebraska in the middle fifties, when I was a teenager. Since then I've experience springs all around the world. Some places I've lived, like Southern California and Florida, it's difficult to tell when spring starts. Other places, like Alaska and Finland, you know exactly when spring starts because you've been sitting around waiting for it to happen.

We're just past the vernal equinox, when moderation is supposed to be the rule. Equal light and dark. Modrating temperatures. Quite a few people shivering in frigid North and South Dakota question the Global Warming buzz. But come September, we'll be wishing for days like today. Our short memories forget how cold we were in March.

That's why our great land is so interesting. NASCAR can start racing in Florida in February, then move north as the weather permits. Eventually, next November, NASCAR will move back down to Homestead, Florida for the last race of the season. But, I get ahead of myself. I need to enjoy the arrival of spring, summer, and then the fall. Or better yet, maybe, I should just focus on enjoying the good weather we're supposed to have next week.

With regard to avocados, I prefer California avocados. When I visit my brothers in Whittier, I get off Amtrak in Fullerton, California. When you walk out of the train station, there is a giant old avocado tree in the traffic circle of the station. I have to resist temptaton not to go over and pick one. But, being California, I suspect that may be a capital crime punishable by death. So I wait for the car rental person to arrive to pick me up and ignore that damn avocado tree.

With regard to www.KurtMaxxonRaxing.com, we're working hard to set up a equitable recipe contest. That's the next priority, now that we have the remodeled Web site up and running. Kurt loves to eat. (Well, so do I, but Kurt has much better taste than I do.) In the mean time, I'll just cook my avocado, spinach and goat cheese omelet tomorrow morning; have my avocado, cucumber and spinach BLT for lunch; bake some kind of avocado, spinach, and beef casserole for supper tomorrow night, and get ready for my angiogram Thursday morning.

Cheers, Jim

Recipe Contest?

For my post today, I'm going to kind of think out loud, hoping maybe some of you have had experience with Recipe Contests. We want to get winning recipes to incorporate in the Kurt Maxxon series of amateur sleuth novels. Since my wife, Karen, and I, as well as Kurt Maxxon, like to eat good food--food with varying texture and flavors and cooked to perfiection--we decided to go out looking for great recipes. We would incorporate the dish into the storyline by having Kurt order it for a meal. Then we would append the recipe to the back of the book, with proper credit to the person who submitted it. If three, or more, winning recipes were submitted by the same person, we would award that person the right to name a "Hangout" eatery in the book. A "hangout" place is where Kurt eats the majority of his meals while in town for the Sunday race. In Masonville the hangout place was Lucy's Cafe. In Kings Rapids it was Birty's Diner. In Carpentier Falls it will be the Trattoria, with renowned Cuban cuisine, because the owner Carlos Guerrero is the victim whose dead body Kurt discovers. The next book in the series will be Maplewood.

Our thinking originally was to simply run contests--one for each book and a parallel contest for the "Kurt Maxxon Cookbook" planned for two years down the road. The contest we proposed on the web site has been criticized for not having an end-date, which is a valid criticism, although I'm not sure how to set up an end date.

Maybe some of you can suggest a solution.Again, our original idea was to decide which recipes to incorporate as we neared the completion of the manuscript; then go back and retrofit them into the storyline and add them to the back of the manuscript. That would maximize the time of the contest. But, it is extremely difficult to predict when we will "near the completion." Writing a book is like living with a black hole that consumes time at an ever increasing rate.If we end the contest too early, then write on the book for several more months, we'll mistreated those who entered tne contest hoping to see their name in print. If we let the contest drive the schedule, we might wind up delaying production of the book until the contest ends.

What to do?

My only experience with contests has been with writing contests. In the publishing business "time" is just another passive verb that flitters by each day. I've never heard either way whether I won or lost a writing contest. So I quit entering them. I don't want that to happen to people who enter our recipe contest

NEW LOOK for MY WEBSITE!

We posted a new website today, and I must say it looks a heckuva lot better than the last one. There are a few things I still have to learn, after sitting through the dreamweaver class at the community college last week. I still had to email the instructor and say "What in the Universe is the FTP?"

LOL! "Well, we didn't cover that part..."

My wife was patient enough with me, but I am feeling like I accomplished something today!

Go to KurtMaxxonRacing.com and tell me what you think!

I've got to go fix my wonderful bride some supper... She lost two pounds after a spinach omelet yesterday, and maybe - she says - spinach will turn out to be a miracle weight loss food...

She loves my cooking!