POWERBALL 33 ON THE LIST.
Just found out from a friend's email that POWERBALL 33 appeared in the Omaha World Herald Booknotes column, Sunday, Dec 16th. My novel was 5th on the list of 10 books by local authors, no reason given for which book was placed where, but it made me happy and it was a surprise.
AND BY THE WAY, OUT THE WINDOW
Yesterday we looked out at the frozen pond and a mink was skating across, then he disappeared into the melted water at the edge. Neighbors told me there were mink on the premises and I wanted to see them, but didn't know enough about their habits to go at the right time to the pond where they were said to hang out.  So this year, I got a mink for Christmas.  

OKAY, MY PROOFREADING IS ABYSMAL
When I posted the authors blog sites on The Next Big
Thing, my fingers went astray.
Here are the corrections
http://marilyncoffey.blogspot.com/
and
http://elenadiazbjorkquist.wordpress.com/

So sorry, Marilyn & Elena

Where do authors get the names for their characters? Here's one example from my cast of characters. Ed Frink is the hero of my novel POWERBALL 33. Years ago, when Bob and I were on our honeymoon in Colorado, in my folks's travel trailer, we prepared breakfast parked out in the wilds. On the table was the cardboard milk carton with the top folded down to pour. When we looked at the carton, it said "Sput Frink", which tickled ...

us no end and we laughed every time we said the words. Actually it said "fold spout to drink and the letters just got folded out of place, but we thought it was a great name. So decades later I almost called my hero Sput Frink, but that seemed over the top, so I chose Ed. Nice and short, easy to type and I could change later with "change all". When I went to change it, all the "ed" verbs also added my new name Victor to the stem. smiled became smilvictor. sped became spvictor. You get the idea. I tried "Ed" and "ed", but it didn't work. I know there's a way to deal with this, but I just settled on good old Ed. Now I love the character and his name. And hope readers do too