We’re winding down to the last few letters of the alphabet in the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge. We’ll do a reflections post next week, but I’ll have to say, it will be a relief. I’ve enjoyed the daily check-ins and writing challenge, but I have a lot going on right now, so the break will feel good. Today, we have performances for my theatre workshops. My son Zach is in our high school’s production of Guys and Dolls this weekend, and I’m having my Spring Recital for my piano students on Sunday! 

XX ended up being an easy letter, although I didn’t think of it until this past weekend. My favorite mystery author is Sue Grafton. Now, here’s an author all of us AtoZ’ers can appreciate. She took the A to Z Challenge to the extreme and wrote a novel for each letter of the alphabet. A is for Alibi. B is for Burglar, and so on. She’s up to X, now, which I received for my birthday from my boys. They’ve at least noticed that collection of her books that I have on the downstairs bookshelf. I seem to be missing a few. I’m not sure if I have the complete set, but I know there are more, somewhere.

Here’s what Sue Grafton has to say about X: The number ten. An unknown quantity. A mistake. A cross. A kiss.20160427_193509_resized

X: The briefest entry in Webster’s Unabridged. The most graphically dramatic letter. Notoriously tricky to pronounce: think xylophone.

X: The twenty-fourth letter in the English alphabet. (Thank God for that.)

Another quote from the front flap of the jacket cover: Grafton’s Millhone books are among the five or six best series any American has ever written. Patrick Anderson

A came out in 1983. She still has two more letters to go. Decades after she first appeared to readers, PI Kinsey Millhoune is still in her 30’s, doesn’t have a cell phone, and continues to rent a garage apartment from Henry. I love it that the setting remains in the 80’s and that Henry, who is in his 80’s, hasn’t aged much. I’d miss him too much if he weren’t in the books. Although, I do worry about what will happen to him when she finishes Z. 

I enjoyed reading X. There’s something about reading a series like this, where you wait almost two years for the next book to come out. You crack the cover, read the words, hear Kinsey’s voice, and you’re back home, visiting an old friend. I started reading/listening to the books about 18 years ago. They got me through my twin pregnancy, and have been gifts in hardcover from about letter Q on. X was good, but it didn’t beat W. W is for Wasted. Here’s the beginning of the blurb on the jacket cover: Two dead men changed the entire course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue. The dead men are a local PI and a homeless man who had her name on a slip of paper in his pocket when he was found dead. She gives a little insight into homelessness, who might be out there, and gave a story to one of them. I really like Kinsey Millhoune. She’s strong, independent, loves her landlord Henry, and dresses and eats the way she wants, no apologies.

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I can’t wait for Y to come out, and yet, I dread Z because then it will be over.

Go. Create. Inspire!

Journaling Prompt: Have you read any of Grafton’s alphabet series? Would you be up for that kind of A to Z Challenge? How are you doing with the daily posting challenge? Are you looking forward to Z, and May’s blogging reprieve?