The Orphan Scrivener -- Issue # One Hundred and Fifty-Five -- 15 October 2025

In a couple of weeks, as elsewhere, the ancient horologes at Maywrite Towers will be set back an hour. It always seems five minutes after this annual rite that the tinsel-draped festive season comes knocking at the door, reminding us of the classic Christmas cracker squib asking what flies but has no wings? The answer of course is time and enough has passed for another issue of Orphan Scrivener to be sent winging off to subscribers. So here it is...

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ERIC'S BIT or THAT TIME BATMAN DANCED IN A DISCO

Have you been appreciating bats the past couple of weeks? If not there's still plenty of time. October is Bat Appreciation Month according to Bat Conservation International, which urges us to celebrate the importance to our ecosystems of those furry flying mice.

To me bats are a mixed bag. On the plus side they eat flying insects and I don't like flying insects. They are scarier than bats. On the other side of the ledger Dracula flies around as a bat and they get in your hair. The bat, that is, not Dracula. He just raises your hair.

This might be a good time to watch some old Christopher Lee movies. He is to Dracula what Basil Rathbone is to Sherlock Holmes. Mystery readers might want to read The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, the novelization of the stage play which was based loosely on Rinehart's novel The Circular Staircase, or watch one of the three movies adapted from the stage play. It's all very complicated.

I hate it when people pose as experts by spouting Wikipedia so I will admit that along with the information above it was from Wikipedia I learned that comic-book creator Bob Kane stated that the villain of The Bat Whispers (the 1930 film adaptation of The Bat) was an inspiration for his character Batman.

Now there is something I can celebrate. Batman was my favorite superhero back when comic books were badly printed and cost a dime. Unlike most superheroes he didn't possess magical powers. He depended on technological gadgetry and athletic prowess. Being more human, he was more interesting.

That Batman wasn't as grim as the modern version. He was a lighter shade of noir but still darker than other costumed crime fighters of the era. I liked the idea of a spookily attired avenger prowling dark alleys at night. I guess it appealed to something dark inside me, just as the novels of writers like Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and James M. Cain do.

Imagine my horror when I tuned in to the first episode of the Batman television series and found him portrayed as a campy buffoon! Never mind the black little corner of my personality that enjoys murder mysteries and the like, when I saw Batman busting a few awkward dance moves in a disco * I felt like I had a Thompsonesque Killer Inside Me ready to burst out!

I suppose at the time mature minds were thinking you couldn't actually depict a cartoon character seriously. Movie makers since than have proved them wrong.

Although bats are associated artistically with darkness and fear I don't find them frightening in real life. They are too much like mice with wings. At least the sort we have in the northeastern United States.

At the end of the street where Mary and I once lived there was a barn. In the evening bats would pour out into the twilight like spilled ink. On summer nights, living at the family cottage, I'd stand in the yard, in the middle of a maelstrom of swooping, diving, tumbling bats and chiropteran chirping. Hey, if I run across a new word I have to use it. They flew so close I could almost feel the draft from their wings but they never blundered into me. I found the creatures fascinating rather than frightening.

The mother of a friend of mine was terrified of bats. She didn't trust their "radar" or their intentions. Forget about the importance of bats to ecosystems, to her bats existed for no reason except to fly into her hair. Which was unfortunate since the family house had a huge attic filled with bats and they often found their way downstairs.

As soon as a winged intruder got loose in the house, my friend's mother would put her hands on top of her head and run screaming from room to room, much to the amusement of my friend and I. (Let's face it, kids find the spectacle of adults acting like children hilarious.) Not being, as we put it, "scaredy cats", let alone "yellow bellied sap suckers", we rushed to the rescue. Our method? We chased the bat with a vacuum sweeper until we were able suck it up. It might sound cruel but when we took the vacuum outside and opened it up the bat invariably flew off, apparently unscathed, and no doubt ready to return to the attic.

So there is my Bat Appreciation Month tribute to bats (without even mentioning that I liked the Bat Masterson television show). Not that I can tell you what gives Bat Conservation International the right to declare such a month. I suppose anyone can declare a month or a week or a day or anything they like. I could call today International Orphan Scrivener Day or how about Name Your Own Day Day?

* Batman dancing the Batusi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsYA8Gr5NTY

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

We're happy to report after last month's mushy knob problem the ticker's been repaired and has a news item to pass along.

CHILDREN AT PLAY or SWINGING ON A LAMP POST AT THE CORNER OF THE STREET

When The Street Lights Came On is Mary's nostalgic look at childhood street games, illustrated by a marvellous photo that could have been taken in her street. Point your clicker to author Christina Waldman's blog:

https://christinagwaldman.com/2025/08/29/when-the-street-lights-came-on/

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MARY'S BIT or THE FATE OF DOCTOR FOSTER

Before Mr Maywrite and I took to tramping down the dark and dangerous alleys and hidden courtyards of fiction featuring murder, mayhem, and malfeasance we both wrote non-fiction. His field was legal articles while mine were often devoted to such off-beat topics as Doctor Merryweather's leech-powered Tempest Prognosticator, swan upping, cheese-rolling, weather forecasting goats, and the disappearance of Doctor Foster.

Years later and with more experience in unravelling mystery plots I've decided to revisit the case of Doctor Foster to speculate further on what happened that rainy day in Gloucestershire. Let us examine the information we have as preserved in the nursery rhyme:

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain
He stepped in a puddle
Right up to his middle
And never came home again

I put it to the jury that, as I shall demonstrate, Doctor Foster was not on his way to attend to a patient in crisis even though he was out walking in what was obviously a downpour.

This demonstrates he did not have a wealthy practice, indicating he resided in the country. To argue the point we must consider if he possessed a carriage. Given he did and he was not riding in it the day he disappeared strongly indicates it must have been at the blacksmith's smithy for repairs to a broken spring or axle. Further, the presence and depth of the puddle clearly demonstrates the local council was not doing much of a job keeping roads in good repair and safe for the passage of carriages, carts, and other conveyances lends weight to his walking to Gloucester. It also supports his being a rural practitioner on the grounds if he lived in town there'd be transportation methods other than shank's pony available to him.

Why didn't he see the fatal puddle? Was his eyesight not all it should be? Doubtful, considering his profession. However, given the puddle was half his height, flooding from the downpour must have been high enough to conceal a pothole deep enough to engulf him to the waist, another indication of the parlous state of the thoroughfare he was travelling.

The cautious investigator should not rule out the role his umbrella played in the tragedy. What do we do with our gamp when it's stotting down? We position it to keep rain off our head and shoulders. Was his umbrella tilted at such an angle as to obscure his view of the tell-tale indication of a pothole by a dip in the flow of the current?

The next question is why was he going to Gloucester in the first place? It is large enough to be the home of numerous doctors so his travel there in such foul weather is intriguing. But consider: Gloucestershire is known for its cheeses. I posit he'd developed a fancy for toasted cheese sandwiches after a discussion at his local hostelry the previous evening concerning the annual cheese-rolling race held each spring at Cooper's Hill, about five miles from Gloucester.

Alas, both his larder and the village grocer were bereft of this particular dairy product so, next morning, Doctor Foster, a true turophile, braved the weather and started off to town to purchase the necessary amount of Double Gloucester cheese with which to cook this excellent snack. It may not have been raining when he got up but his tempest prognosticator indicated an imminent storm so he naturally took his umbrella.

Mystery readers would be inclined to deduce from these points that the good doctor met his end by foul play. Given known weather conditions, it's unlikely there'd be anyone out and about to give him a lift or help him out of the pothole. But somebody reported his dilemma as otherwise it would not be documented in the nursery rhyme. Could it be the road was in such bad condition that Doctor Foster was rescued from one pothole only to step into another just as deep after his good Samaritan left the scene? Was there a gentleman of the road, one of evil intent, passing along the road to Gloucester that fateful day? Sadly, history has shown there are those who would drown a trapped man for the sake of a pocket watch and an umbrella.

We now have motive, method, and opportunity. Based on this conclusion, Mr Maywrite is of the opinion the authorities should have been on the lookout for a tramp with a gamp, to which I add one in possession of a pawnbroker's ticket for a handsome timepiece.

Since the record does not show any arrests related to this case, the jury would be justified in bringing in a verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown.

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AND FINALLY

As we conclude this email an occasional breeze is blowing stray leaves about, each one marking another moment bringing us closer to the next Orphan Scrivener flapping into your inboxes on December 15th. Since it is the same date as the Atlanta premiere of one of the most famous movies of all time, we can fittingly say that until next issue we are Gone With the Wind.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter ilk. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our names on the social site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time! To unsubscribe jot a line to maywrite@earthlink.net and we'll take care of it.

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The Orphan Scrivener -- Issue # One Hundred and Fifty-Four -- 15 August 2025

As with much of the country we continue to cope as best we may with the ongoing heatwave. Fortunately we have yet to reach the type of high temperatures Mark Twain experienced in India where, according to the locals, he'd arrived in what they described as cold weather. In his opinion it was a phrase invented for use when it was necessary to distinguish between temperatures that would melt a brass door knob and those that would only make it mushy. On the other hand, proverbially we're advised to strike while the iron is hot, so we ask subscribers to steel themselves and leap into this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener....

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MARY'S BIT or I ALWAYS WORE MY SCHOOL BERET AT A TRULY RAKISH ANGLE

A couple of years before I left England I went to a fancy dress party disguised as a penguin, complete with beak hastily constructed from orange cardboard and string. A colleague from work was the hit of the evening when she sauntered in dressed in a gymslip, white shirt, striped tie, and black stockings, an ensemble immediately identifying her as a sixth-former attending St Trinian's School For Girls.

Not being certain if the series is as well-known in this country I shall scribble a line or two about their content. Here I am talking about the original films, not the remakes, so if you know the former, talk among yourselves until the next couple of paragraphs end.

Why does the British public have such affection for the St Trinian's films? Inspired by Ronald Searle's cartoons, they are set in a boarding school where anarchy rules and pupils run wild, tormenting teachers, each other, the residents of a nearby town or indeed anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with them Perhaps the appeal is to that little bit of wildness in all of us when we see chaos let loose in an educational setting, where traditionally (To Sir With Love notwithstanding) all is expected to be orderly and quiet and fourth-formers do not concoct spirituous liquors and create explosives in the lab, not to mention constructing deadly traps for the headmistress and staff. Drinking, smoking, and gambling are routine and so are melees during hockey matches. Indeed, the school song brazenly celebrates trampling on the weakest and declares might is always right. Whichever form was involved, however, there was some hope of reform -- none of the girls ever swore.

Every member of staff is depicted as not on the up and up and almost certainly involved in shady doings past and present while the fourth-formers (aged around fourteen) are spectacularly untidy with holes in their stockings, wild hair, and disreputable straw hats. They are capable of and glory in criminal behaviour -- one of Searle's cartoons shows a teacher grilling her class on who had burned the school's east wing down the previous night. Pupils are violent, their weapons of choice being various types of sports equipment, with hockey sticks a particular favourite. On the other hand, the seventeen or eighteen year old sixth-formers are more interested in higher matters, especially the opposite sex, having bloomed into bosomy young women wearing thigh-length gymslips, revealing glimpses of their suspenders. Note to young 'uns: you should know suspender belts and stocking tops were considered as racy as all get when the original films were made.

By contrast, the all-girl grammar school I attended had a strict dress code. Gymslips had to reach our knees and the hem of shorts worn for sports were required to touch the ground when we knelt. Observed on public byways eating or not wearing a school hat or beret while in uniform merited punishment. Urchins at a school lower down the hill from ours had discovered this and attempted to grab one or the other off our heads and run away with it on many occasions. Worse transgressions while abroad in uniform were smoking or talking to a boy. One year a rumour swept the lower forms claiming a pupil had been seen in one such conversation on the street and was punished for it. Even though the fellow in question was her brother -- or so it was said.

The only thing we had in common with St Trinian's were prefects, sixth-formers with the power to hand out penalties for breaking the rules of conduct. Generally they were tasks such as learning an extract from Shakespeare or writing a hundred lines declaring the miscreant must not do whatever it was they'd done. The only time I had to submit lines was because of running in the corridor. I still claim I was just walking fast and everyone else was slow-poking along. A touch of irony enters the picture at this point, given when I took my lines up to the sixth-formers' common room under the eaves of the Victorian building in which the school was housed, the opened door revealed a haze of cigarette smoke.

However, at this remove I feel it is safe to reveal I was guilty of a little bit of wildness myself since I always wore my school beret at a truly rakish angle. Provided of course one of the young hellions from down the hill had not made off with it.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

We're sorry to report our lengthy run of above average temperatures has resulted in the ticker developing mushy knobs. We expect to have it fitted with new ones by the next tune we're in touch.

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ERIC'S BIT or THE CAT WHO SAVED A LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S LIFE

I'm reading a book by Georges Simenon, author of the Inspector Maigret mysteries. The Cat, however, isn't a mystery. It's one of Simenon's psychological novels. I'm pretty sure Maigret never had a cat (unlike so many modern detectives) although he might have seen a feral feline or two slinking through the alleys in the dark underbelly of Paris. He encountered stray dogs certainly, as evidenced by his novel Maigret and the Yellow Dog.

Our own detective, John the Lord Chamberlain, didn't own a cat either but our two cats, Rachel and Sabrina, made cameo appearances in our Byzantine mysteries. Both are gone now, having lived to ripe old cat ages.

I took Rachel in when he came to my door one bitterly cold November day. Yes -- Rachel was a he. My two children named him. I could never be sure of his age but he was a glutton until the end, thanks to his having nearly starved out in the wild. How could I forget the time he stole a pork chop off the kitchen counter? (In One for Sorrow "Rachel's" tendency to pounce frantically on food saves John's life...you'll have to read the book...)

Sabrina, our final cat, lived to be twenty-two. (Final because at some point you don't want to take responsibility for pets who might outlive you.) There's no doubt about her age. I rescued her as a kitten from a neighbor's garage during my first marriage and she stayed with me after the divorce. She bridged two very different phases of my life. A new marriage, new work, a move to another state. During twenty years of change, Sabrina was the only connecting thread so it was particularly upsetting when she died.

Unlike "final girls" in movies, our final cat didn't spend her life battling homicidal maniacs. Quite the contrary. She was a coddled house-cat. During her last few years she stuck to me like a barnacle. Well, a warm, furry barnacle. I suppose I was the only constant thing in her life and she became more clinging as she aged. She wouldn't let me out of her sight. She insisted on curling up on my lap when I sat at the computer. Which was a real show of loyalty since skinny as I am I offer very little in the way of a lap. I altered my way of sitting to accommodate her. When I got up to go downstairs for a cup of coffee she'd wait for me at the top of the stairs.

Eventually it got to the point that she couldn't make the leap from floor to lap and would sit by my chair and meow piteously until I lifted her up. Weirdly, this attachment was solely to me, and not to Mary although Sabrina had lived with her for nearly twenty years. "Sabrina's a one person cat," Mary said. "If I passed out and was lying on the floor she'd walk over me to get to you."

As the end approached, Sabrina found it difficult to walk so before going to bed we'd put her in the little nest we'd made from a fuzzy toilet seat cover placed on the bottom shelf of a bookcase. We daily expected she'd be gone overnight but instead one morning we found her sprawled part way out of it on the floor. I carried her the rest of the way to my chair and put her on my lap. It wasn't long before she gave a quiet sigh and died there.

It seems as if she managed to get through the night so she could die where she wanted to be. I can't say I am deserving of that kind of devotion.

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AND FINALLY

We've been from hats to cats and now it's on to our last bit of chat this time around, reminding subscribers the next Orphan Scrivener will track into their in-boxes on 15th October

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter ilk. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our handles on the site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time!

To unsubscribe jot a line to maywrite@earthlink.net and we'll take care of it.

The Orphan Scrivener -- Issue # One Hundred and Fifty-Three -- 15 June 2025

We hear June is National Lemon Month, according to Those Who Know, Who, being knowledgeable, are doubtless also aware lemon is rhyming slang for time via the popular refreshing drink lemon and lime. Enough yellow citrus has rolled past Maywrite Towers for this latest edition of Orphan Scrivener to be published. We trust subscribers will not recall common colloquialisms concerning lemons as they read on...

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ERIC'S BIT or AUTHOR AS HISTORY

A generally accepted rule of thumb is that a novel can be considered historical if it is set at least fifty years in the past.  That seems quite recent.  I've always felt that "history" was what happened before I was born.  On the other hand, in the news these days I read about things I can't imagine happening even twenty or thirty years ago. We are indeed, by some measures, living in a different era.

Mary and I have never had a problem classifying our fiction.  The Eastern Roman Empire during the sixth century when John tackles murders amidst the intrigues of Justinian's court is far removed from the present day and our two Grace Baxter books take place during World War II which while fairly recent is commonly accepted as historical.

But fifty years ago? I have T-shirts that old. Well. almost. You think I'm kidding?  Mary recently dug out from some deep geological strata of clothing, my Entertainment Law T-shirt dating back to the late seventies. At the end of his course each year -- which focused on recording artist contracts -- our professor gave out the equivalent of the traditional tour T-shirt. The highlight of that course was a visit from Debbie Harry, one of the prof's clients, who railed against the iniquities of the music industry. Is she a historical figure now like Empress Theodora?

I can remember the 1950s and they are well into accepted historical novel territory. What I remember best, though, are not for the most part earthshaking events but little ways in which everyday life and my state of mind differed. For example, as a child who gorged on Tom Swift Jr books and science fiction juveniles by Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein, a moon landing was a dream of the future to look forward to, not something that happened a long time ago, and didn't lead to moon colonies or change the world as the books I read imagined.

Okay, so a dream of the future that is now obsolete is sort of tenuous, but there were plenty more concrete things that have vanished from our lives since then. Important things. Fizzies. Don't laugh, being able to drop a tablet into a glass of water and have instant bubbly soda was magic, or like something from a science fiction novel.  As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Sure, Fizzies tasted like flavored Alka-Seltzer but I kind of liked Alka-Seltzer.

Then there was chewing gum. This may be personal to me. As far as I know, people still chew gum but I don't notice it as much as I used to.  When I was a kid it was a big part of my life. My friends and I all chewed gum all the time.  We wouldn't be without a pack of gum in our pockets any more than adults would be without a pack of cigarettes. There were flavors that aren't generally available today: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans, Teaberry. You weren't supposed to chew gum in school but funnily enough the undersides of our desks were covered with fossilized gum. And this isn't even mentioning Bazooka bubble gum, which came wrapped up with a Bazooka Joe comic execrably printed and never slightly funny even if you could decipher it. And why did Joe have a patch over his eye? Had that bubble he was blowing burst violently? Still worse were the hard sticks of gum packed with baseball and other trading cards. Now you can just buy the cards. You don't have to endure that gum. Kids today have it so easy.

There are many more important changes of course: instantaneous communication between all parts of the earth, the home computer, the Internet. It is a wonderful thing to have the largest library in history available on your desk top. When my computer crashes the loss of knowledge is magnitudes greater than happened when the Library at Alexandria burned but luckily it can all be restored again by reconnecting to the Internet. No longer does answering a question require a hike to the local library to consult its Encyclopedia Britannica. Unfortunately modern technology comes with a price. The Internet has spawned mobs of angry loudmouths who spread hatred and divisiveness. Would society be better and kinder without the Internet?

So, I'm not sure the world has changed enough in fifty years for 1975 to be considered historical. But the fifties...yes, that was another world.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker has returned from its annual recalibration and is happily tapping out our news.

FURTHER PROJECTS or IT'S A SHAME ABOUT THE ELECTRIC CORSET

We're currently seeking a publisher for a murder mystery with a supernatural element. Set in late Victorian London, the necessary research was fascinating. Much of the info we discovered was used though we still regret we could not find a way to include a reference to Dr Scott’s Electric Corset. We've also mapped out another WWII mystery set in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne but with a different cast than our Grace Baxter novels.

SPEAKING OF THE SUPERNATURAL or MORE READING MATTER

We've just added the recently discovered Weird Tales Magazine archives to our library of links to free classic supernatural stories. However,  presumably for copyright or other reasons, some content is not present though included in individual issue content listings. Still, if like us, readers enjoy the genre there's plenty of choice reading matter there.

https://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/p/stories-of-supernatural.html

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MARY'S BIT or A TRIO OF TEAS

During the last couple of weeks my eye was drawn to three stories with a common though unlikely element linking crime, WWII, and funeral catering.

Tea.

Last month I read about a scam whereby victims were tricked into purchasing Scottish-grown tea. The culprit made over £500,000 by selling foreign-grown tea under such names as Highland Green and Scottish Antlers plus other blends supposedly grown on the Wee Tea Plantation, located on a former sheep farm in Perthshire. As a sideline he also sold tea plants said to have been grown in Scotland to entrepreneurs who fancied trying their hands at growing materials for the cup that cheers but does not inebriate.

Scotland's Food Crime Unit brought him to justice last month. I'm now wondering if before too long we'll see an investigator from a similar unit as the protagonist in a mystery series. After all, with the current raging popularity of mysteries involving shops offering various kinds of comestibles it would seem a natural pairing, like a cuppa with a ginger bikky to dunk in it, Especially if it turned out the edibles were poisoned. We could call it Tart Noir.

Not long afterwards I stumbled over an unusual story from 1941. In occupied Holland RAF planes arrived one night and dropped hundreds of miniature parachutes carrying unexpected but most welcome cargoes -- small bags of tea. 75,000 of them, each containing an ounce of tea, a gift to the populace from unoccupied plantations in the Dutch East Indies. The message on their labels: "The Netherlands will rise again. Greetings from the free Dutch East Indies. Have courage." *

The third leaf of my tea-related trio of articles is my discovery of the what appears to be the newish custom -- at least to me -- of giving teabags in decorative envelopes to mourners at post-funeral gatherings. The minions of the Maywrite Research Bureau tell me traditional blends such as Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe are popular choices for these occasions, while special blends or herbal teas are also available if preferred. We'd have liked to include such remembrances for the funeral tea in Ruined Stones, had such offerings been practised at the time. However, even if it had, it would have been difficult to mention in that particular chapter due to wartime rationing. The novel is set in 1941 and the adult allowance per week at the time was two ounces, reckoned to be enough for 30 cuppas.

Speaking as a long time javaphile I was happy to subsequently learn that coffee, though sometimes difficult to obtain, was one of the few items not rationed in the UK at one time or another during the war.

* Photo of a parachute with a (presumably empty) teabag at https://x.com/PotteriesMuseum/status/962667786999910401

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AND FINALLY

We'll close with a reminder the next Orphan Scrivener will parachute into subscribers' in-boxes on 15th August. However, the technical limitations of communication by the Internet will, alas, mean it cannot carry teabags with it.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at https://reed-mayer-mysteries.blogspot.com/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays on a wide variety of topics, a bibliography of our novels and short stories, and libraries of links to free e-texts of classic mysteries and tales of the supernatural, not to mention a couple of our short stories of the latter ilk. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Meantime, just for the heck of it, we'll also mention our handles on the site formerly known as Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in any time!

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