Life In the Fast Lane with Spunky Sally Berneathy

I grew up in pre-television days in a small rural town in Oklahoma. Our favorite entertainment on summer evenings was to sit outside under the stars and tell stories. When I went to bed at night, instead of a lullaby, I got a story. That could be due to the fact that everybody in my family had the singing voice of a bullfrog with a cold, but they sure could tell stories—ghost stories, funny stories, happy stories, scary stories.

For as long as I can remember I've been a storyteller. Thank goodness for computers so I can write down my stories. It's hard to make listeners sit still for the length of a book! Like my family's tales, my stories are funny, scary, dramatic, romantic, paranormal, magic.

I have sold fifteen romance novels ranging from comedy to dark suspense. For these novels, I won several awards including National Readers' Choice, Romantic Times Best Silhouette Romance and two Rita finalist slots.

About Sally's book -

Death by Chocolate, available as an e-book, is a cozy mystery with lots of humor and chocolate. My heroine, Lindsay, is a chocoholic who just wants to enjoy her brownies in peace and quiet, but her neighbor's secrets put her life in danger. I've included some of Lindsay's favorite recipes at the end of the book.

Lindsay Powell's only secret is the recipe for her chocolate chip cookies, but she is surrounded by neighbors with deadly secrets. Suddenly Lindsay finds herself battling poisoned chocolate, a dead man who doesn't seem very dead and a psycho stalker.

Her best friend and co-worker, Paula, dyes her blond hair brown, hides from everybody and insists on always having an emergency exit from any room. Secrets from Paula's past have come back to put lives in jeopardy.

Determined to help Paula and to save her own life, Lindsay enlists the reluctant aid of another neighbor, Fred, an OCD computer nerd. In spite of his mundane existence, Fred possesses tidbits of knowledge about such things as hidden microphones, guns and the inside of maximum security prisons.  

Lindsay needs more than a chocolate fix to survive all this chaos.

Amazon Kindle Link: http://amzn.com/B004LX0FYS

And now, let's read what Sally has to say about getting old -

You know you're getting old when:

You get upset with your current job and think, "I don't have to take that! I'll just go back to school and get another degree and get a different job!" And then you realize, the employment opportunities for 70-year old interns are probably slim.



Sally at the Grand Canyon

 Your doctor concludes your checkup with: "You're in really good shape…for your age."

You still come in last in a 10K race, but you win first place in your age group…because everybody else in your age group is walking with a cane.

You stop getting speeding tickets.

Okay, I haven't hit that last one yet. As long as I consistently drive 15 miles an hour over the speed limit—and more when I'm in a hurry—I think I'm okay on that one.

As a dedicated speeder, through the years my methods of squeaking out of a ticket have evolved into what I consider my best to date. I credit the wisdom of age and experience for coming up with the story, and my being over a certain age for the cop's acceptance of my story.

One day I was driving along, doing 72 in a 55. The older we get, the faster we have to go because we have less time to get there. Right?

Next thing you know, I hear a siren and see flashing lights in the rear view mirror. So I pull over and here comes gorilla cop wearing a pair of those silly mirrored sunglasses. "Going a little fast there, weren't you, ma'am?"

"A little," I admitted. "Not enough to matter."

"Oh? And just how fast do you think you were going?"

I may be old, but I'm not stupid! No way was I going to admit I was doing 72, and if I'd said 55, he'd have known I was lying. "Well, I had my cruise control set for 65."

He glared at me over the tops of those stupid sunglasses. "Ma'am, this is a 55 mile an hour zone."

I glared right back at him. "Sir, this is a 7 year old car, so deducting one mile an hour for every year, that means I was only going 58 miles an hour. Are you seriously going to give me a ticket for 3 miles over the speed limit?"

He blinked a couple of times, shoved those sunglasses back up on his nose and stepped away from my car. "What? No! You were doing 72!"

"Oh, man! You mean I got it backward? I'm supposed to add the years instead of subtracting them?"

He moved a little further away from me as if senility might be contagious. "Yeah, yeah, backward. Slow it down, okay?" Got in his car and drove away.

No ticket!

I hope that cop's not reading this blog. Is there a statute of limitations on speeding?

When I was young, I thought I'd never get old. Why on earth would I want to do something like that? It didn't look like fun, all those people with white hair tottering around, driving slow in front of me, holding up the line at the grocery checkout. Somehow, just by going to bed every night and waking up every morning, I have achieved membership in AARP and Medicare.

But I'm still in there trying. I've always been a late-bloomer. I graduated from college at the age of 43, sold my first novel at 47, learned computer programming at 56, learned to ride a motorcycle at 60, self-pubbed my first e-book at 66. Sky-diving is next on my list. After that, well, the sky's the limit! At least I don't have to worry about dying young!

However, I haven't been stopped for speeding in over three months. I wonder…

Sally Berneathyhttp://www.sallyberneathy.com