I had a Zoom meeting with a Hollywood producer this morning.
Which is a very cool sentence to type out, but not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. I’d love to say I was pitching the screenplay for my novel to some big-time movie studio, but alas, I was merely interviewing a guy for a CenturyCo newsletter article. And he’s not even the main subject, but instead, a sidebar.
Still: a producer’s a producer, and Sean Covel is no slouch. He’s best known for a little film called Napoleon Dynamite. I first met him in 2019, when I worked at Ye Olde Publishing Company. Sean and my former boss are friends, though I have no idea how or why. One day, he dropped off an autographed Napoleon Dynamite poster at the office. I shook his hand and we chatted briefly. Sean’s a South Dakota native and, up until a few months ago, lived in Deadwood. He recently relocated to Boulder, Colorado. Super nice guy. If he ever did want to turn No Time for Kings into a motion picture, I wouldn’t be against the idea.
Just sayin’.
Anyhoo. Sean’s been writing a series of popular children’s books called Porter the Hoarder. There are seven now and counting. The illustrator for the books, Rebecca Swift, lives in Bridgewater, South Dakota and is a CenturyCo customer. She’s the focus of my article. And a very interesting person in her own regard. Rebecca’s a makeup artist who works on feature films and, just for fun, does herself up to look like famous people. Check out her Jack Sparrow!
She’s also a musician who auditioned for American Idol and made it as far as Hollywood Week. Who knew such talent existed in rural South Dakota, amirite? Because Sean grew up in Edgemont, which is also in our service territory, I’m including a sidebar on what that experience was like and how in the heck he managed to bust out of Small Town, USA, and become a movie producer.
I’m telling you: my job does not suck.
The weather, on the other hand? Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of suck. Let’s just say we went from summer to winter in the span of 24 hours. Y’all know how much I love snow, so I was in heaven!
And even though this happens every year—seriously, this is our fourth October in Rapid City, and the fourth October in which it has snowed—it still catches me off guard. Especially this time, because they were forecasting rain in town, with snow confined to the Black Hills.
Tell that to the heavy, wet 3.2″ that covered the ground and nearly destroyed our lilac.
Just last week, it was 90° in Rapid City. Yesterday, it barely got out of the 30s.
Our weather here is nuts.
We ended up with about 2″ of liquid precipitation, which was sorely needed as we’ve been in a drought for a year and a half. Some places in the Hills ended up with close to two feet of snow.
Naturally, it’ll be pushing 70° this weekend, so this was just a brief taste of what is to come.
Brief but welcome. Bring it on!
Mark My Words 
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