January in Bishop Hill

On a day that promised NO SNOW, I left for a quick drive to Bishop Hill and Galva. I was on a mission. I needed to touch base with the manager of the Colony Store, Glenda Wallace, and the editor of the Galva News, Doug Boock.

Doug Boock helped me get started writing. He offered encouragement, an outlet, an editor’s perspective on how to write—better—and I got to see my name in print. Bonus, I had the opportunity to make a new start—reinvent myself. The response to my writing went from, “Who does she think she is?” to “I’ve got a story for you.” A pretty good deal at the time.

On my current trip back I was interested in getting names of potential book reviewers. He was very helpful and gave me a nice list of possibles to get started.

From Glenda Wallace I got information on how to get books, my books, into the Colony Store and how the pricing would work. She was friendly, helpful, and also encouraging.

All that made for a successful trip. Everything else fell apart.

After living in Bishop Hill for twenty-four years you’d think I’d have remembered how hard it would be to catch anyone at home or with their shops open in January. The pickings were pretty slim. All my friends were unavailable and I wasn’t in the mood to buy anything more than a bag of Swedish Löfbergs coffee.

Before leaving the village, I stopped for a nice lunch at The Filling Station. I was lucky enough to share a table with a former neighbor, Crystal. We got to catch up a bit. Fortunately, I remembered to show her how I came up with the name of one of my characters, Talli Walters. Talli came from a mash up of two names: crystallinda. Walters came from Walter, the namesake of the Wally burger, a delicious hamburger smothered with grilled onions. Add some cheese and it’s pretty close to prairie heaven.

I was well stuffed by the time I headed back to the Quad Cities. A shorter day than I’d expected, but still worth the price of admission.