Evaluate Your Budget at the End of the Month

August 31, 2022
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Do you have money left over at the end of your month or month left over at the end of your money?

Have an end-of-the-month budget balance evaluation that works for you.

In every area of your life, it is a good idea to evaluate how you did during the previous month and to plan for the next. Your financial situation is no exception.

The first question you must ask yourself is, did you have money left over at the end of your month or did you have month left over at the end of your money?

I hope you took a percentage of around ten percent off the top of your income for savings. You want at least $1000 (or equivalent in your area) in easily accessible savings that you can use in case of an emergency.

Give yourself a pat on the back if you still have money in your bank account at the beginning of the month. You are doing better than 64% of people living in the United States. If you find yourself short however and your bank account is empty at the end of the month, now is a great time to evaluate what happened that made you short. If you cut into the 10% that you took off the top for savings, you’re still not where you need to be, so if you come up short, ask yourself these questions. Was there an illness, or was there some other emergency that came up? Did you have a major unexpected car repair? Did you go on a shopping spree or out with friends on an unplanned event? Look at all possibilities and then strategize how you might be able to avoid that next month.  If you had an emergency, then be sure to put money back into your savings account next month.

Look at how it is that you have money left over at the end of the month. Did you work overtime? Did you make an unexpected windfall from your business? Did you do that well in saving money? By determining how you were able to have money left over at the end of the month will help you determine if you can continue doing that or if you might want to change things so that you don’t have to work so hard.

If you paid off one of your credit cards or loans, celebrate in some way. You have increased your financial situation considerably and have more money each month to invest in yourself instead of someone else. It’s like money that you no longer have to work so hard to get because that bill is no longer part of your financial equation.

If you find that you’ll have more money next month, designate as much as possible to your emergency fund as necessary. If you already have a solid $1000 in your emergency fund, I suggest that you consider investing your savings into food, especially in the autumn months.

Take Advantage of Fall Harvests

Food is one of those expenses that each of us needs to invest in every day and you’ll get the biggest return on the money you invest when you invest in food in the fall.

During the fall months, especially this year, it will be important to make certain that you have a sizable amount of food to last several months. Farm and garden harvests come in during the late summer and early fall so getting food in bulk during this time and preserving it to last for the next several months is an excellent way to make your savings work for you—big time.

Many kinds of fruit and vegetables can be bought during this time. I remember when my eldest son was a baby I went to an auction and bought a bushel of pears for about $4. I canned it and had it for several months. Around here there are a number of these auctions that occur every year. If canning is your thing, this might be a good way to invest any money you can spare during the next few months.

Also, a lot of ranchers are cutting back on stock right now and meat is apt to cost less in the autumn than it will be in late winter and into the spring so if you have freezer space, invest in meat if possible. We talked to someone this week who has beef for sale for $4 per pound and we’re buying 20 pounds.

The same is true for grains. Grains have also been recently harvested and are more likely now to be more available than they will be later in the winter and in the spring. Grains can be bought in bulk which can then be used for making bread and breakfasts. A fifty-pound bag of oatmeal at half a cup per meal and be used for 571 meals for one person. A fifty-pound bulk bag of oatmeal costs me about $30 dollars where I live.

Six Months’ Worth of Food

I like to keep six months’ worth of food available in my home at any one time. I would suggest to anyone that getting extra food to last for six months should be the next step after having established an emergency fund.

And Beyond

If you have six months’ worth of food, then you can go ahead and either work to pay off debt, invest in your business, or increase your savings so that you have six months of relatively liquid assets to use to pay expenses for that long.

Basic Skills to Improve Flow in Your Writing

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When we learn to do anything, it is hard at first. When we learned to walk, we fell down a lot. Then we got good at walking and now we can get up and walk across a room without consciously thinking about what we do. We were walking in flow.

When you learned to drive, you had to think through each move you made. You thought out every move we had to make. Think about what it was like when you came up to your first traffic sign. You had to know when to let off the gas when to put on the brake, and when and how to put on the blinker. You needed to remind yourself to look both ways before crossing an intersection. You had to think about how to turn the steering wheel. After practicing those driving skills over several weeks and months, you no longer had to think about what you were doing. The actions became automatic. You were driving in flow.

When you learned to read, you had to learn the alphabet, the sounds the letters made, and the words that the sounds produced. You had to string the words together to make sentences and then those sentences to make paragraphs. Soon you were reading and not even thinking about the words that you were reading instead, you were picturing the scene and feeling the emotions of the characters. You read in a flow state.

The same thing can happen with writing. You can develop writing skills that make writing flow just as easy as walking. You can learn to write in such a way that all you need is an idea and a few subtopics, and you can write a scene or an article very quickly because you learned how to write in flow.

Here are a few skills that every writer needs to learn so that they can best write in flow.

Learning Spelling and Grammar

Knowing how to spell words and knowing how to put a sentence together is the backbone of writing in flow. If you don’t know how to spell or how to put words down into a meaningful pattern, it’s difficult to write anything that makes sense.

Reading and reading a lot of good contemporary literature can help you in this skill.

Making a game of learning “spelling words” that you are likely to use regularly is a good practice if spelling is difficult for you.

Writing and writing regularly will help you over time develop this skill as well.

Learn Touch Typing

Years ago, I was in school, I had to write a lot of essays about the subject matter. In one class we had to write something that was due every Friday. The assignments took me about an hour to write, however, another student complained that the assignment took her over five hours to complete.

It wasn’t that I was smarter than she was. It was that I could type faster than she could because I had learned touch typing. QUERTY touch typing is a skill that helps me think of a word that magically comes out of my fingers onto the screen. I hadn’t learned touch typing until after I was out of high school, but it really came in handy when I was in college and for me as a writer of both articles and fiction. I don’t have to think about the individual words because I learned the fingering on the keyboard to the point that it is automatic. Yes, it took time to learn but it saves me so much time now.

Learn to Compose on the Computer

Right along with learning QUERTY keyboard fingering, I learned to compose on the computer. This is probably a skill that younger people know because they grew up writing on screens, but we old folks had to learn after the fact. Back in the old days, I wrote things out on paper and then had to transpose them to the computer screen. Now it is as simple as thinking the word and letting my fingers do the rest.

Journaling

Getting into the practice of sitting down to write every day is another critical skill that writers should do. Not knowing what to write is probably more crippling to a writer than not knowing how to write. Therefore, journaling is the next skill I recommend developing for learning to get into the flow.

Journaling is simply sitting down and writing your thoughts on the screen. Unlike many people, I don’t journal on paper, but I journal on my computer as a document in Microsoft Word. I type the date and then start typing. If I don’t know what to write, I write I don’t know what to write but. . . and then write whatever comes into my mind next. Often, when I don’t know what to write,  I will set a timer for fifteen minutes before journalling and then just keep typing until the timer goes off. Sometimes nothing of any value comes out of the journalling experience, but most of the time I find something that I can use.

Gathering Ideas

Writer’s block happens when you don’t have any ideas or ideas that you think are good for moving forward in a project. Writing a list of ideas that you can go to when you need an idea is one of the ways that you can avoid writer’s block and find your way into the flow.

Creating an Outline

Some people seem to think that there’s something constricting about writing using an outline, but I find that I get into the flow better when I have an outline. Writing an article or a story without an outline is like driving a car to a place where there are no signs indicating where to go. It’s easy to get lost.

I remember one time a co-worker of mine invited me to his house. He lived down a dirt road where there were no signs. He told me that if I just kept bearing to the right, I would eventually find his place. Instead, I ended up coming out where I started. I never did find his place.

The same happens when writing. Without an outline, it’s easy to go down a lot of rabbit holes that end up needing to be deleted or where I realize that the storyline isn’t going anywhere, and I must start over.

Putting it All Together

Any one of these skills will help you improve the flow of your writing but putting them all together will exponentially help improve your ability to get into the writing flow.

If getting into the flow of writing is difficult for you, which skill do you think would help you the most?

I’m Writing For Medium and So Can You!

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I am making money selling articles online! I have been writing a lot on a platform called Medium lately. I wrote almost every day in June last year and now as of July 27, 2022, I have started my own publication on the platform!

Medium Reader Program

The Medium Reader Program is a paid reader-supported platform where readers support writers on the site by reading articles on subjects that they want to read.

The cost is five dollars per month or fifty dollars per year and you can read as much or as little as you like. You can allow yourself to be put on the email list of your favorite authors on Medium so that you are able to read what they wrote. Once an individual subscribes to Medium and has paid for their month or year, the individual becomes a Medium Member, and they get access to every article or story that Medium carries. Click this link to become a Medium member.

To find topics or stories that you’re interested in, you can type a subject into the search bar in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. A drop-down bar will bring up people, publications, and tags based on that topic. Click on a person, publication, or tag, and the articles will display on your screen.

Medium Partner Program

Medium offers an online money-making program to writers called Medium Partner Program. These authors write articles or stories on their own profiles and many also include their articles in publications. These publications include stories by other authors that are related to the author’s story that is included in that publication.

In your profile, you can write on any subject, niche, or genre you prefer. You can also request a publication to take you on as a writer so that your article has the exposure of that publication.

Getting Paid to Write

Authors start getting paid once they have 100 followers and getting 100 followers on Medium is easy. I even wrote an article on Medium about that subject. Here is a FREE friends’ link to an article How I got Over 100 Followers in a Month.

Create Your Own Publication

One thing I just started on Medium on July 27, 2022, was creating my own publication which I call Tightening the Belt. It is about how to save money every day. For a FREE taste of the articles on Tightening the Belt one of my articles is Eat Less Meat for a Healthier Body and a Healthier Wallet

 Once you’re a writer on Medium, If you would like to write for my publication, I would love to have you. Check out Submitting to Tightening the Belt.

I really enjoy writing for Medium. It is a great way to start writing to make money.

Would you consider supporting me and other writers on Medium? For $5 a month ($50 per year), you get unlimited access to all the fantastic articles by the writers on Medium. Click this link to become a Medium member. https://donnabrown-18232.medium.com/membership

To read my future posts on Medium, feel free to follow me. I look forward to keeping in touch with you there!

Extention to the Ultimate Keystone Habit

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Starting your week on the previous Friday, your month during the last week of the previous month, your year in December will make your business more productive. (Public Domain Photo)

In my book The Ultimate Keystone Habit, I wrote about ways that I like to start the day the night before. On the days that I incorporate this habit, the following day goes so much better, and I am so much more productive. On the other hand, on those days that I don’t start my day the night before, things don’t go as well the following day.

I like starting my day the night before. I set out my clothes, set up the coffee maker, have the dishes done, make up my plan for the next day, and journal what I am grateful for. Then I go to bed and in the morning because I know what I need to do, there’s no room for procrastination. I begin my morning routine and then get to work doing what I planned for the day.

I recently realized that prepping for the next step isn’t limited to the next day. I can prep for the next week on the Friday before.  I can start then next month the last week of the previous month. I can even start the year at the end of the year before. It is something that no one talks about, but it is a surefire way to 10x a life or a business.

Setting up a plan for the next week would be something that any of us can do. What do you plan to do next week? What are your priorities? Prioritize your week so that you are doing things that move your goals forward and don’t just keep your wheels spinning. Even fifteen minutes working on your goals on Friday for the upcoming week move the “progress can down the road” in a good way.

Getting Ahead for the Week on Friday

As a writer, I like to go over the ideas that I gained during the week on Friday mornings. That’s what I am doing this morning. I am writing down this idea for a story for a publication on Medium called Tightening the Belt. I also have an idea for next Wednesday’s blog and several for my Medium stories.  I am trying to write a new article every day for the entire month of August. What’s amazing is that doing this also gives me time to work on my latest novel Two Rivers each day.

This doesn’t only apply to me as a writer either. Different people can use this system in different ways. If you’re a salesman, you could start your calls the Friday before-when you call if someone says, “Call me next week”, say ‘well, I have you on the phone right now, how about if we scheduled to meet up early next week. Which would you prefer Monday morning or afternoon?” If they say Monday morning works good for them, after your call give a ‘hallelujah’! If you normally have a boring Monday morning meeting, this might be your ‘get out of meeting’ free card because you have a potential sale in front of you. Ask to be excused and ask for minutes to the meeting so that you don’t miss out on any important information. Later in the week you can talk to a colleague about any questions you have about that meeting. You’re following up on a lead, missing a meeting that is a waste of your time, and you already have a great start to your week. You’ll also have a potential sale on a Monday morning where you would have had to use the morning and the afternoon setting up for future sales. Now, you can still do that in the afternoon, but you’ll also already have momentum for a good week ahead of you.

Getting a Head Start on Next Month

As a writer, I can get ahead for the next month first by setting up the plan for the month. I can do this the last week of the month. It only takes a few minutes each day.  The first thing to do during the week is to revisit my goals and determine what I have accomplished and what I want to accomplish toward my master goals that month. Once that’s done, I can assign a specific project for each week to accomplish thereby purposely scheduling those projects to take action on and make headway on my long-term goals.

In addition, I schedule in appointments and other activities that I already have planned for the month and plans. I can also brainstorm ideas that improve how I handle different aspects of my writing business.  

Getting Ahead for the Next Year

Many people start the new year in January and end up getting started with the new year either late in the month or in February and don’t really get the year in full swing until March. I have found that when I get started with the new year in December, I able to get more done in January and February than I would if I had started in the first week of January.

With everything else, it starts with revisiting the long-term goals and creating the annual plan. Every December, between the holiday festivities, I plan the next year. I determine what I would like to get done during each month of the year. I schedule and plan out launches for the year. I plan what January will look like. They don’t have to be detailed, and they will often change over the course of the year, but the plan is there because it is true that if I fail to plan, I plan to fail.

This system of organization can easily be adapted to a team or an organization. Fewer Fridays are wasted, and Mondays are less dreaded when people in your team or organization are encouraged to start at the end of the last period. It may seem like more work in the beginning, but soon you’ll realize that work gains momentum and you’re much more productive than you ever thought possible.

The Blacksmiths of the Corps of Discovery

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Cultural Influence, Historical Background, The Locket Saga
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A man using blacksmithing tools
Blacksmithing became a barter skill on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

As I was doing my research on the Lewis and Clark Expedition (also known as the Corps of Discovery) Most of the information I am using for this blog comes from archives of the actual journals of the explorers themselves.

In my research, I have discovered that these men didn’t take most of the food or supplies that they needed with them. They either procured or built what they needed. Though Captain Lewis bought surveying equipment, medicine, and trinkets to trade to the Indians in Philadelphia and had the original boat built in Pittsburgh, some of the boats were built in Camp Wood (Dubois). They hunted, hunted fished and foraged for much of their food. If something broke, they either fixed it or replaced it. The men got good at making tow ropes on their trek upriver.

They didn’t simply hunt and fish to supply them with all their food and other supplies. Nor did they just trade trinkets to the Indians for what they needed. They also bartered their skills with the Native Americans.

The skill that proved to be best for bartering with the indigenous people was blacksmithing.

Two blacksmiths accompanied the expedition. One was Private Alexander Willard, and the other was Private John Shields.

Private John Willard

Willard was recruited at Fort Kaskaskia from Captain Amos Stoddard’s artillery company, He was convicted of sleeping while on guard duty, which was punishable by death. He was given 100 lashes instead.

In the Mandan village, both blacksmiths set up shop and spent the entire winter of 1804-05 fixing Mandan tools and weapons in trade for the corn they ate that winter and the corn they took with them on their continued trek west.

Willard often assisted Shields in his work during the first year of the expedition. Because of his misconduct, he was detailed to the return party in 1805. He later served during the War of 1812.Willard later served during the War of 1812.

Private John Shields

Shields was such an invaluable blacksmith that Captains Lewis and Clark broke one of their own rules and allowed him, a married man, to go on the trip with them. (Only unmarried young men were wanted for the expedition.)

During their winter on the Pacific coast, Shields demonstrated his talents to repair their weapons including Captain Clark’s favorite gun.

Shields proved so valuable that Lewis requested that Shields be given more than the salary given to most privates in the Army at that time.

I am enjoying learning about people behind the scenes of this great adventure by the Corps of Discovery. If you enjoy this series about these amazing explorers, let me know in the comments section below.

Ten Powerful Ways to Save on Groceries this Fall

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Having Trouble Hanging onto these because of food costs?

With the price of food cutting into our purchasing power, here are some ways that I am not only able to make ends meet but can store some food away for this winter.

  1. Shop using Sales flyers, Coupons, and grocery-saving apps, but buy only what you normally eat.
  2. Use a Weekly Menu Plan-Even a simple meal plan helps. A simple meal plan that I used was one where I decided that I determined that I would eat beef one day, pork the next, and chicken the next and continue that rotation. If I had leftovers of specific meat, incorporate the leftovers into a casserole or pasta dish.
  3. Buy in Bulk (a pound of flour equals 3 ½ cups of bread flour, 3 2/3 cup of all-purpose flour, 4 cups of cake flour, or 4 ¼ cups of pastry flour. A fifty-pound bag of all-purpose flour equals 183 cups of flour.)
  4. Avoid eating out-Think about it. For the cost of a single meal that your family eats out, you can buy a bag of rice and other food items that will last you a month. With the money that you save by not buying your coffee at Starbucks, and instead making your coffee and taking it with you every morning you can purchase all the bulk foods you will need this winter.
  5. Making food from Scratch-Bread that I make myself costs me (using bulk ingredients) about fifty cents per loaf of whole wheat bread and is much more flavorful than the bread that I purchase at the store for two dollars or more per loaf.
  6. Utilize Leftovers-Get creative with leftovers. Plan what you’ll do with your leftovers when you make the original meal. Leftover rice from today’s meal can be used in a casserole for tomorrow’s meal.
  7. Grow at least some of your vegetables in a fall garden-plant leafy greens and root crops like carrots, turnips, parsnips, and beets this fall for vegetables that you can eat well into the winter months and in some cases use in the spring.
  8. Use season extenders in your garden-drag out the cold frames and row covers to help conserve heat when temperatures drop to below freezing. If nothing else, use old sheets and blankets when the danger of frost threatens your garden.
  9. Make meals with fewer meat-discover casseroles and pasta dishes that your family enjoys.
  10. Use what you purchase- food that rots in the refrigerator costs you money, even if you purchased it on sale. Forty percent of what Americans purchase for groceries end up in landfills. Don’t play into this statistic. If you find something that your family has never eaten, but you’d like to try, purchase one and try it.  

What To Do If Your Refrigerator Fails

July 19, 2022
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We had to buy a new fridge and bought an 18.3 inch Frigidare

Unplanned problems usually occur at the worst times. Last week my refrigerator gave out during some of the hottest weather of the season, but it was a whole week before the new one was delivered. Monday, the new refrigerator arrived.

It all started on Friday night over a week ago after I had baked the cookies for the farmers’ market when my husband commented that the light in the refrigerator wasn’t working. We soon realized that it wasn’t just the refrigerator light, but the refrigerator wasn’t cooling either.

Because we were going to the farmers’ market, I made sure to take all the vegetables that we had grown to the market because we wouldn’t have any place to store them where it would be cool. Fortunately, all the vegetables we had to sell were sold.

Cleaning Out the Old Refrigerator

After the farmers’ market, we picked up a bag of ice and some individual drinks from the store as well as a half-gallon of milk instead of our usual gallon. We put the ice in the coolers and then I sorted out all of the food in the refrigerator. I stored certain condiments on the counter that really didn’t need to be refrigerated, but we preferred to keep it cold when we used them. These were things like catsup and mustard. I had just used up the last of the mayonnaise so I didn’t have any of that to put in the cooler, but I did put Miracle Whip salad dressing and the ranch dressing in the cooler.

I threw out the stuff that I thought wasn’t worth keeping like old salsa, pizza sauce, pickles that no one was going to eat anyway, and old applesauce. I put it all in the compost bucket and emptied the compost bucket in the flower garden where the chickens had a feast.

The Freezer

The refrigerator freezer was another challenge that I had to overcome. It was packed with food that I had to do something with and our chest freezer was already filled with meat and berries that we had just obtained. I took a few minutes and determined what I didn’t need in there. There were some frozen, freezer-burned vegetables that I donated to the chickens. I had two pounds of butter that I decided to store in the cooler rather. We ate the frozen potato wedges and hamburgers that night to make room for some of the other foods that were in the refrigerator freezer. There were some things that I had kept in the refrigerator freezer that I decided didn’t need to be frozen at all. For instance, I had just bought two pounds of granulated yeast that was still in mylar bags that I just stored in a container in the freezer. I also had been storing the chocolate chips and butterscotch chips in there. I decided they could stay on a shelf in a cupboard rather than let them get waterlogged in the cooler. It was easier to feed the bread scraps that I stored in the freezer to the chickens rather than trying to dry them in the dehydrator during this hot weather. Sometimes you just got to do what you’ve got to do.

Buying the New Refrigerator

Last Tuesday we bought our new refrigerator. We called several places before we ever left home and with that information in hand, we went shopping.

We started out by going to one of those 90-day same as cash places, where we found a refrigerator that was not only the size we wanted but was also on clearance. It looked like quite the deal, however, when we talked to the salesperson, he expected us to pay a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar delivery fee and since the only available refrigerator of that model was the floor model, we would have to purchase a three-year extended warranty too for another one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar price tag. We decided we would look elsewhere.

The second place we went was a place that was locally-family owned and had been in business for more than fifty years. They were known for their customer service. The refrigerator that they had for sale was $150 more than the one we saw before, but we didn’t have to purchase an extended warranty and they required only an additional thirty dollars for delivery. That’s $120 less than the other place. We purchased that refrigerator. The only problem was that we would need to wait a week for delivery.

The Waiting Week

Since we knew that we had to wait a week, we devised a plan to pick up ice every day along with anything that we might need for that day. We purchased our milk in half-gallon jugs rather than whole gallons and ate a lot of lunch meat because the weather was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day. When we did cook, we cooked meals outside.

A Lot of Canning

Since I didn’t have refrigerator space and my garden is in harvest mode, I have done a lot of canning during the past week and because it was so hot, I limited this activity to the morning hours. We pulled up our bush green beans and canned the green beans that the plants had produced. I canned tomato products every time I had enough tomatoes to make anything. I canned tomato sauce, whole tomatoes, tomato juice, and salsa. Because I had the peppers, I also made hot pepper jelly. Because I didn’t want to store too much in the refrigerator at any time, I decided to can foods in jars of specific sizes to my husband’s and my needs. For instance, I canned tomato juice and canned tomatoes in quart jars because that is how we are likely to use them. I canned tomato sauce in jars in pints because I believe that is how much sauce we are likely to need for a single meal. I canned the salsa and jelly in ½ pint jars because that’s the size we’re likely to use for them. If I had a bigger family to feed, I would use larger jars, but since it’s just my husband and me, these smaller sizes are perfect for us.

Final Preparations for the New Refrigerator

The refrigerator arrived Monday afternoon, but before it arrived, we had to move the old refrigerator so that I could clean behind it before the new one arrived. I had stuff stored on top of it that I decided needed a new home. I rearranged my canning lids and rings so that I only had to get into a small number of them at a time. The bulk of it I put away so that it wasn’t in the way. The casserole dishes I had stored there I moved to another location in the kitchen so that I had better access to them when I needed them. The massive number of paper plates that I had stored up there I decided would go back on the new refrigerator. Once the old refrigerator was moved forward, I swept out the cobwebs and washed the walls, and then swept and mopped the floor. The refrigerator arrived when they said it would, they put it in place, and they hauled off the old model.

Lessons Learned

  • I learned long ago that it is always a good idea to have a contingency plan for potential disasters. The worst always seems to happen at the worst possible times. Therefore, it makes sense to be prepared for whatever may come.
  • Refrigerators (and freezers) seem to break down at the worst possible times, therefore, canning as much as possible makes sense. (For more on this subject, here are another article that I wrote Using a Deep Freezer Shouldn’t Be the Only Home Preserving Method https://hubpages.com/food/What-I-did-When-My-Freezer-Failed
  • Because we have an emergency fund, we were able to purchase the refrigerator with cash
  • We decided to purchase a new refrigerator because it is likely to last longer than another used unit would. (The old one had been used and lasted us about two years.)
  • Shop around for the right deal and don’t take what looks like the cheapest price. Pay attention to the price of add-ons.
  • Customer service is often worth more than you realize until you see what poor customer service looks like.

What could you do in our situation?

Who was the Only Person to Die During the Lewis and Clark Expedition?

July 6, 2022
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The Sergeant Floyd Monument commemorates Charles Floyd, the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during the expedition.

My most recent book, the one that I am currently working on I am calling Two Rivers. It is about Isaac Thorton, a young man who leaves behind his family and the girl everyone expected he would marry and goes up the Missouri River with the Lewis and Clark expedition.

This book has led me to research the Lewis and Clark expedition including specific members of the expedition. One of them was Sergeant Charles Floyd.

Sergeant Charles Floyd’s Life

He was the son of Robert Clark Floyd and born in Kentucky in 1782. He was the nephew of James John Floyd, a cousin of Virginia governor John Floyd. His middle name indicates that he was possibly a relative of William Clark.

He was one of the first men to join the expedition. He was a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, and the quartermaster of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He was the only member of the expedition to die during the expedition.

The Circumstances of His Death

Floyd probably died of a ruptured appendix and consequent peritonitis. The ailment was not even recognized by medical science until twenty years after the expedition, and the first successful surgical treatment came in 1884. Probably no physician of the time could have done much more for Floyd than the captains did. A purgative like Rush’s pills, their usual remedy for digestive disorders, could only have hastened Floyd’s death, but this is probably what Dr. Benjamin Rush himself would have prescribed if he had been present—along with bleeding, which would have accomplished nothing. 

Floyd was buried near Sergeant Bluff on the Iowa side of the river, near the present town of Sergeant Bluff, Woodbury County, Iowa.

Floyd’s Legacy

Later travelers often remarked about the site, and George Catlin painted it in 1832. By 1857 the Missouri had undercut the bluff and the grave was opened and some of the bones lost. Citizens of Sioux City moved the bones to a new burial site., and a concrete slab and a one-hundred-foot monument was erected in 1901.

After Floyd’s expedition journal was published in 1894, new interest was taken in his life. In 1895 thieves stole his grave marker and the bones were examined. He was re-buried on August 20, 1895, with a monument. A marble cornerstone three feet wide and seven feet long was placed in 1900. When the obelisk of white sandstone was completed on May 30, 1901, Floyd’s grave was moved for the fourth time to rest nearby.

The Sergeant Floyd Monument was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark on June 30, 1960. This monument is now located in a 23-acre park that offers visitors a view of the Missouri River valley. Floyd’s final resting place is located on old U.S. Highway 75, in the southern part of Sioux City, Iowa, in the United States.

The Floyd River still bears his name. He is the namesake of Floyd County, Iowa. The Interstate 129 bridge between Sioux City and South Sioux City, Nebraska is named the Sergeant Floyd Memorial Bridge in his honor.

I Read His Journal

In reading his journal, my main thoughts throughout were that I knew he was going to die early in the book and that I felt sad because I knew that he wouldn’t see the expedition beyond the first few months of the expedition.

 I read his while I was also reading the journal entries of the other members of the expedition and I will be sharing from those journal entries as I continue writing their stories not only in my book but here on my blog as well.

If you would like to read his journal and the journals of other members of the expedition, here’s a link https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/journals.

The Locket Saga

Two Rivers will be the seventh book in The Locket Saga. If you would like to read the first six books of The Locket Saga, here’s a link to my Amazon Author Page. https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B007SM23IK

The Month of June 2022 in Review

June 30, 2022
Best Books
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What did I do this month? Well, first, I did do the writing for all the books throughout the month, but I didn’t do many of the other social media that I had planned to do because I was busy with the garden this month. Early in the month, I was planting and later started harvesting a lot of the earlier crops. We weeded and have been watering because we are currently in a drought and excessive wave.

In addition, I processed the garlic for storage, and canned green beans as well as having prepped for and attended the farmer’s market.

Book Sales, Mixed Results

Book sales haven’t yet been what I have been looking for online yet, but in-person book sales at the farmer’s market have been doing well. If I could sell as many books online as I do in person, it would be great. I guess the issue is that I don’t have the online presence that I need to make the sales. I haven’t yet been able to connect with the right readers. I think perhaps what I need to do is to focus each month on the readership of the different genres I am writing rather than trying to do them all at the same time. I think that the best genre to work on right now during the summer would be my historical fiction series, The Locket Saga. In addition, I need to focus more time on the latest of that series Two Rivers. Probably the best idea right now is to connect with other writers in the genre too. I really do think that where I am having the most difficulty is in the aspect of connecting with individuals online. Connecting with other writers and supporting one another would be a great place to put my focus for the next several months or even the next year.

What sales I have made online have been mostly by chance, not by design. One way that I think I received purchases was when I commented on a YouTube page and left a link to my relevant book, and another was from a bookmark that I gave away at Farmer’s market and the person purchased The Locket Saga on Kindle.

There are several other things that I need to do to make my books more accessible too, but that is going to require some work that I have been putting off. Perhaps that will also need to be the focus of my work in the next month as well. I will discuss this more during the next few weeks.

Writing Two Rivers

This month I have done some work on Two Rivers, Book VII of The Locket Saga, Of course, I still have a lot of editing to complete. I currently have written 75520 which is 4480 words less than I planned to get written. However it is still progress.

Looking ahead to July

Now that I have had a successful June, I have a new month to plan for. It already looks to be a very busy month. Farmers Market and blog post writing for both this blog and my other blog The Perpetual Homesteader are given, but here are other priorities I have for July.

My writing and book marketing projects for July will be to (1) Update several books to put them into more distribution. (2) Do a complete second draft of Two Rivers by working on one chapter per day. (3) Developing contacts with other authors. (I plan to share more about how I am developing these contacts throughout the month).

In gardening, my plans are to (1) plant fall beans and late corn. As well as plant cabbage and broccoli indoors. (2) harvest beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, and zucchini. (3) eat fresh, can, or sell beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, and zucchini.

How about you? What are your plans for July? Feel free to share in the comments below.

If you haven’t checked out my Author Page on Amazon and check out the look inside feature on every book of interest.

Returning to Northwestern Pennsylvania

June 29, 2022
Historical Background, The Locket Saga, Uncategorized
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Not the end of The Locket Saga series, just the most recent.

For the entire month of June, I am sharing my books in the first annual Cygnet Brown Book Club Month! All throughout the month, I will be featuring not one, but all the books that I have written to date. I am continuing book club with my most recent published book in the Locket Saga Series: The Anvil

Book Six of the Locket Saga finally takes us full circle in 1800, not back to Boston, but to the wilds of Northwestern Pennsylvania. Robert McCray, the eldest son of Phillip and Elizabeth McCray is a young blacksmith who is missing one of the most important tools of his trade after his employer cheated him. At the same time, the girl of his affection shuns him for another man. He builds a house on his mother’s land and hopes to get his own property only to discover that the land that he desires was purchased by the Campbells.

Robert McCray makes the best of a bad situation and allows the Campbell family to live in the cabin that he built on his mother’s land next to the land that he had wanted and where the Campbell’s land was.

Though he thinks that he has lost everything, over the upcoming months he learns that everything he needs and wants is right in front of him.

Writing The Anvil had been on my mind from the day that I wrote the first line of Soldiers Don’t Cry. I had wanted to bring the family back to northwestern Pennsylvania because that was where the story began between Elizabeth and Phillip. It was also where I grew up and where most of my ancestors live. The Anvil does that. It brings them back to the land where, well, if you haven’t read any of the series, I won’t give a spoiler here. You’ll have to read the book.

I hope you take this opportunity to read the free sample of The Anvil on Amazon and the rest of the Locket Saga. Remember also to follow Cygnet Brown on my Amazon Author Page so you don’t miss the next book in the series: Two Rivers and other subsequent books when they come out.  

When you love it, you can purchase a kindle copy or get it (at no extra charge) on KindleUnlimited

If you prefer paperback, you can purchase your copy on Lulu.com

When God Turned His Head

Soldiers Don’t Cry, The Locket Saga Continues

A Coward’s Solace

Sailing Under the Black Flag

In the Shadow of the Mill Pond

The Anvil

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