In May I threw in the towel with my hobby as a beekeeper when my bees swarmed to parts unknown the first day after I placed them in my backyard bee box.  My beekeeper friend had the same thing happen after just a week.

We still had the hive we nursed through the Wisconsin winter.  We checked the bee boxes several times during the summer and each time the verdict was tenuous at best.  We moved the boxes several times to fool the bees into producing “brood” baby worker bees.

Without much hope we added the “super” to the hive in early July.  The super is a smaller box designed to hold just ten frames and it put at the top of the brood boxes.   The purpose of the “super” is to have the bees fill it with honey to use through the winter while the bees live in the brood boxes below.

A week ago we noticed the bees were working hard to fill the “super” with honey – we could only hope they would create enough honey by the end of August to allow us to harvest some.  When you harvest honey the amount of water in the honey is critical – it is best to be 18% or below.  We tested two weeks ago and the honey was about 21% water and we decided to bide our time.

Finally, this past Sunday decided the moment had arrived.  We pulled six frames that were full of honey and left four frames for the bees to continue to fill up.  Those six frames gave us 15 pounds of honey.  A miracle!
​
We’ve decided to limit our harvest to this single event.  The bees need time to replace the honey in the six frames and to continue to fill the remaining four frames.  That will give them a supply for our harsh Wisconsin winter.
There’s nothing better than a dollop of fresh honey on hot oatmeal on a frosty Wisconsin winter morning.
 

I have been fortunate to have book sell outs three times.  The first was at the Irish Book and Music Celebration in Chicago when I had one book to sell.  In Chicago the crowd was good and a high percentage of book readers.  Plus I had a book review from Frank West in the Irish American News which I displayed on my table.  Everybody at the Chicago Irish American Heritage Center knows Frank and having his book review helped.

The second time was at the Oshkosh Irish Festival and again I had one book to sell.  That Saturday the heavens opened and it rained very hard.  The result was the festival goes flocked to the Cultural Tent where I was selling books.  I was also the only author at the event.  I made up order forms on the spot, people paid up front and the Monday following the Festival I mailed books from my stock at home.

This past weekend (Aug. 17-19) I attended the Milwaukee Irish Fest who boasts having 100,000 attendees.  In many ways the weekend was fraught with frustration beginning with a two hour drive to Milwaukee in a torrential downpour often driving 50 mpg.

Arriving at the hotel the Festival registration desk had no idea I was to participate.  There was no packet and no hotel reservation.  The Hyatt Regency hotel staff was excellent and found me a room in minutes.  The registration staff gave me a parking passes and a generic nametag.  I learned that another author named Sexton had cancelled and they confused me with him.  Owens and Sexton are obviously very similar surnames.

At the Cultural Tent the wrong book covers were posted.  The organizer explained she didn’t know how to print the images I had sent her two months previously.  She also had recorded the wrong pricing for my books.
What was different about this SELL OUT was that it was the first time I was selling the three book Irish Troubles Series.  Even priced at 3 books for $30 I worried customers wouldn’t take a risk of buying three books from an unknown author.  Friday night of the Festival my fears came true.

Saturday morning my fears were shattered.  I had four sales of all three books in the series to start off my day.  By Sunday morning I had only 10 books remaining with the first book sold out on Saturday.  Would customers buy just books 2 & 3?  They did.

At 2:00 pm Sunday afternoon the bells rang – I SOLD OUT.
​
I learned a lot of lessons about the strategy of selling books this past weekend.  I put in 21 hours over three days sitting in the Cultural Tent.  It’s a hard way to sell books. 

Just yesterday I posted that my second novel, Out of Darkness, had not arrived from the printer.  This morning before 7:00 am my publisher, HenschelHAUS Publishing emailed me that books were delivered to their office.  I learned that delivery to my home would have taken another two days.

Kira Henschel is meeting me tomorrow in Milwaukee to give me a full case of Out of Darkness and I will now have plenty of books of the Ian Murphy Irish Troubles Series to sell at the Milwaukee Irish Fest on August 17-18-19.

You can't imagine how relieved I am.

My publisher, HenschelHAUS Publishing, offered to re-publish my first two books – Murphy’s Troubles and Out of Darkness to improve their appearance and create the Irish Trouble Series.  The third book in the series, Dead Reckoning, was under separate contract (published April 2018).

At the time we signed the contracts in January 2018 I had already accepted an invitation to attend the Milwaukee Irish Fest August 17-19 – the largest Irish Fest in the Midwest.  I will be in the Cultural Tent during the Fest selling my books.  The organizers of the Cultural Tent suggest bringing a minimum of 50 books to sell during the weekend.  A friend of mine participated in the Cultural Tent last year and sold 135 books.

The contract calls for the books to be published by June 30 or no later than 6 months after contract signing – or July 24,2018.  I received one box of Murphy’s Troubles on August 8th.  As of August 15th I have not received any copies of Out of Darkness. 
​
That means I will not have the complete Irish Troubles Series available to sell at the largest Irish Fest in the Midwest.

The LaCrosse Irish Fest will be held on the bank of the Mississippi River at 615 2nd Street – North .  Friday August 10 at 3:00 pm to Sunday August 12 at 5:00 pm. I will be speaking twice:
 
                                               Art Tent
 
                                       Saturday August 11
               12:45 pm  Where Art & History Meet – Historical Fiction
 
                                        Sunday August 12
                1:15 pm   Where Art & History Meet – Historical Fiction
 
                                             Cultural Tent
I will be selling books from my Irish Troubles Series, stop by for a chat and buy a book(s).  I will autograph all books and write a personal message for the buyer.

So far I’ve had six book events to launch the third book, Dead Reckoning, in the Irish Troubles series.  One of the most common questions I receive is – what are you going to write your fourth book about?

I understand people would be curious.  All writers are different; some have the next book plotted out in their imagination and are ready to write.  I am not that writer.  I honestly explain to the audience that I have no idea what my next book will be, I don’t even know the genre for sure.

Audience members are satisfied with my response, even if disappointed.  However, the question nagged at me.  I want to write the draft and have it edited next year with a goal of publishing again in 2020.  I have a publisher so the challenge of sending out query letters and searching for a publisher is, thankfully, completely gone.

I toyed with the idea of changing genres.  I’ve had a great notion of writing mystery – not the thriller version – the brainy, quirky detective type – Poirot.  Of course that’s been done so I dropped that idea.  Next I considered writing a political thriller – there’s just so much raw material available now.  Then Paterson and Clinton released their book, The President is Missing.  I could never compete with that.

I really wanted to get away from another Irish story but I decided to return to the tried and true.  A friend once suggested I write a novel about William Butler Yeats and his unsuccessful love life.  I did a little research and didn’t find it interesting myself.  The Irish American News had a story about a mass grave of children found in a small village in West Ireland.  The story is intriguing but too dark.
​
Finally I returned to IRA history.  There is one larger than life character that has had a number of biographies – but not fiction.  Michael Collins was the father of the modern Republic of Ireland.  Now there is a story.