I was in the middle of printing my World War II spy novel, Assignment Prague, when my black ink cartridge gave out. I'm really happy with my printer - Canon Pixma MP 280, $29.00 at Walmart - but I wasn't so happy when I went to buy an ink cartridge for it. I paid $21.00 for one black cartridge! Almost as much as the printer. I'm going to follow my son's advice and start buying ink and filling my own cartridges.

I was printing Assignment Prague for two reasons. First, I like to have a hard copy of everything I write, just in case. Second, I have a good friend who loves spy novels as much as I do, and I'm having him critique it for me. He's not a writer, but people who read a lot are usually good at evaluating books.

Now that I got my ink and got my spy novel printed, I'm starting another project - assembling a collection of short stories set in Appalachia to offer on Amazon.