Sunday Update - 2026 Week 39

 Hey All.  Yet another week has gone by.  Let's see what I've got to show for it...

Writing.  I added 4965 words to the WIP. (Old Magic is the working title, but I'm working on changing that.)  It now sits at 63805 words and I'm getting close to wrapping it up.  I've promised myself that I'll type THE END by the end of the month.  

I didn't market last week.  Thus, I moved zilch.  Dying Embers went on freebie yesterday, though, and will be free through Wednesday in hopes I'll finish out September with something besides zeroes in the $ column.  Zeroes are always disheartening and make me feel bad about myself, which never helps with writing.

On the baking front, I did another batch of OCC cookies.  Hubs likes them and they're easy, so there ya go.  I'll be making a cake this week.  And maybe some bread.  We'll see.

In activity news, I walked a couple times.  The plan is to start walking regularly again - like every day or every other day - but sometimes my legs won't cooperate.  We'll see how that goes, too.  I'm also still watering my greenhouse plants.  And I did some repotting of trees.  Weight: give me a minute... Ugh... 180.6

Speaking of gardening, the two cedars - Courtney and Chelsea - got bigger pots and should be ready to go in the ground later this fall.  The buckthorns are awesome.  The persimmon and the black cherry are okay.  I now have volunteer sycamores that are shooting up, so there's that.  In food plants: The Early Girl tomato died.  I tried to rescue a couple of the shoots that were still green and looked like they had roots, but I think those gave up the ghost, too.  The potatoes are toast.  My peppers are all looking awesome, though, and so are the beefsteak tomatoes.  We'll see if any of those flower and fruit now that it's getting cooler.  All of my garden beds are toast.  Between the heat and the critters, everything looks like crap.  I'm hoping I'll still have some things come back in the spring, but the hope is slim.

Nothing much else going on.  Like I said, it's finally cooler here.  It was like Autumn hit and nature went 'oh, okay, so we're doing this now' and the temps dropped.  Oh, and we're finally getting rain, which helps.  The fawns are pretty much spotless now.  I'm starting to hear geese migrating.  Life is good.

How's life in your neck of the woods?

Thursday This n That

What the hell is wrong with people lately?  Just skimming through FB makes me nauseous. I won't tell exactly you what brought this on, because no one else needs to hear that, but seriously...

And now I haz a sad.  I just found out another dog I knew had to be put down.  That's 4 dogs in the past two weeks.  They were all old, but still...  I'm keeping my fingers crossed for our neighbor's dog now because he's a 13-yr-old coonhound, and the bigger the dog, the shorter the lifespan.  If they lose Copper, I'll be a little bereft.

I'm not really in the mood now to finish this post, so I'll leave it short today.  Have a great day wherever you are and hug your pets.  :hugs:

Librarian No More

I received an email from Goodreads this week that my librarian status has been rescinded. (Which was weird because we were just talking about whether I was still a librarian and the next day, POOF, I wasn't.) Apparently, they're going through their librarians and weeding people out.  And I can't reapply because authors and publishers are no longer allowed to be librarians.  If we need help, we need to contact the librarian community.  

Okay, so I haven't been really active on Goodreads this year - or the years before that, come to think of it.  I get it, really I do.  It's kind of a bummer, but it is what it is.  

I was a little surprised to see that authors and publishers are no longer allowed to be librarians.  One would think that those were the most skilled at being librarians, so... :shrug:

I think that ever since Goodreads was taken over by Amazon, it hasn't been as good a tool as it used to be.  I know people seem to be reviewing books less there, like they're reviewing less on Amazon.  Maybe that's just a correlation that has no basis in fact, or maybe it's causation.  I don't really know.  

Anyway, to those I've helped in the past, sorry.  I can't help you anymore.  Hell, I'm not even sure I can help myself.  Time will tell whether it let's me do all the things with my own books that I used to, or if I'll have to bother someone else to do it for me.  That would suck.

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 38

 Okay, so I was sleeping really good this morning when I went to roll over and pulled a muscle in my back.  Talk about going from snoozing to wide awake in .001 seconds.  That'll get ya up if nothing else does, but I don't recommend it.

Anyway, this week...

I wrote on 4 of the 7 nights for a total of 5863 words.  Unfortunately, I had to snip out 1558 of those words because they were in the wrong place.  I set them aside to be worked into a place closer to the end, so it's not a total loss.  The book is at 58840 words total.  I think I worked out a crinkle in the ultimate solution to who did what and why, and how to save the day, but it will involve weaving in some stuff earlier on.  Eh, that's what edits are for.  I'm not sure if this book will be awesome or not, but I'm enjoying the creation of it, so yay.

Marketing...  Ugh.  I did move more books than usual, but that was still only 28 books.  No sales at all yet this month and it's the freakin' 20th.  Blerg.

So, baking... I did a batch of Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies and a pizza - both on the same day.  That'll make you remember your arm muscles, lemme tell ya.  I also made a vat of chicken noodle soup.  Yeah, it's hotter than blue-billy blazes and I made soup.  Wanna make somethin' of it?

On the activity front, there was the usual watering the plants thing - picture me lugging gallon jugs back and forth between the greenhouse and the garage sink.  I also went for a couple walks.  AND I did some sweeping.  Then I scrubbed the front porch.  (Is it any wonder my back muscle went sproing this morning?)  Going from sedentary to active should be a slow process, I guess LOL. Weight: 180.4

The greenhouse is doing it's thing.  I lost the grape tomato and, as of yesterday, the early girl tomato was looking like it's on its last legs.  The original beefsteak is getting roached by the heat, but the offshoot beefsteak appears to be doing fine. (The offshoot is in a pot that has a water basin attached, so it was bound to do better in this heat.) This may not be a good tomato harvest year for me.  Derp.  The peppers are all doing well.  In fact, I think I might've seen buds on one of the pepper plants. Time will tell on that.  The trees are all doing fine.  The potatoes are toast and so are most of the carrots.  Better luck next year, I guess.  I'm still watching gardening videos.  They aren't helping right now, but I'm looking toward the future.

The fawns are almost totally spotless now.  A few of them have a few spots left on their hindquarters, but otherwise, they're just brown.  The does are all turning gray for the fall.  

And I think that's it for me for the week.  Time to go veg out and let my squonky back muscle chill out so I can do things later.  Have a great day and an awesome week!

Thursday This n That

 I'm up early and I remembered to write a post. That's one for me. You can thank the cats, darling little turds that they are, for getting me up.

Ut oh.  It looks like Sawyer is stalking my desk chair.  He thinks it's his kitty bed and he's more than prepared to oust me from it whenever the mood strikes him.  His standard operating procedure is to jump onto the back of the chair and then pat at my shoulders until I move.  If I don't move quick enough, he slides down the back of the chair behind me and thunder-butts his way onto the chair.  I usually give up and switch to my back up chair.  Life's easier when you just let him have his way.  Spoiled brat cat.

I haven't weighed the brats in a while, but I'm pretty sure Finn finally caught up to Sawyer.  I like big cats and I cannot lie.

I'm pretty close to the end of Old Magic.  (Not final title.)  I just need to scrap the last 1300 words I wrote and re-do that scene, then write the ending and the denouement.  I'm not going to try to guess how many more words.  It'll be what it'll be.  Maybe when I finish the first draft of this, I'll finally edit DN3.

The fawns are losing their spots.  :sadface:

This heat has got to go.  It's the middle of September, for pitysakes.  I mean, this is getting a little ridiculous.

And I walked away from the computer and forgot I was writing this, so an hour has gone by.  Derp.  I'm like that all the time.

Which reminds me, I've been watching Steven Wright videos.  He slays me.  If you don't know who he is, go forth and find him.  Watch the videos of him.  If you don't laugh, you're probably not going to get me either.  :shrug:

I've also been finding videos made from old footage of people doing things in the old way - an 80-year-old guy in Kentucky making a chair, a group of dudes in Finland building a log home.  Those two were made in the 1970s and they're pretty awesome.  Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.

Okay, I know I thought of other things to put on this post this week, but I can't remember them now, so they'll have to wait or remain lost to the recesses of my addled brain.  Have a great week, wherever you are.  :hugs:

Marketing Monday - Wish in One Hand

 Well, it's Monday again, and I decided last night that I would keep pushing the free books in hopes that I would then sell books.  I mean, it's worked before, so don't fix what ain't broken, right?  To that end, this week, I'm putting Wish in One Hand out there again.  It's the book with the most sequels and all told, the whole series equals roughly 1500 pages, which works out to some nice moolah if read in KU.  It's also nice moolah if someone gets the first one free and then buys the other 3, so there ya are.  There is a method to my madness.

Anyway...

Starting today, WISH IN ONE HAND is free. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.) Get a copy of this fun and snarky, paranormal mystery now! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013RVEF0Y

Here's hoping I move some books this week.

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 37

Okay, I think last week was Week 37, but it's hard to tell.  Don't ask.  Anyway, here's how the week, whatever number it was, went for me.

I wrote some stuff.  Actually, I added 4656 words to my WIP, bringing the total to 54535.  Yep, that's right, I crossed the 50K barrier.  Go, me.  Yay.  I'm this > < close to the end.  Of course, then comes the editing, which I dread, but there ya are.  I still don't know the ultimate answer to the main question, so gah.

I did some marketing.  It didn't go very well.  And then Friday, I decided not to market at all because it just felt wrong.  I did move 18 copies of Fertile Ground, which sucks but is still better than previous weeks' numbers.  This week?  Well, I don't know.  I've given away 30 books this month and don't have a single cent sold to balance that in any way.  :sad trombone noise:  

Baking was done.  I made a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies and then two loaves of chocolate banana bread.  My ever-widening ass doesn't need the carbs, but there ya are.

Speaking of EWA, my activity level sucked this week.  I watered the greenhouse like 3 times, went grocery shopping, and vacuumed.  I haven't stepped on the scale because the baked goods ingested more than made up for the exercise accomplished.  I'm hoping to get more active as the weather cools, but you know what they say... hope in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one gets full faster.  (Okay, I paraphrased that, but you get what I'm saying.)

In greenhouse news, my two little potato plants died.  One day they were fine and growing along, and two days later when I watered again, they were gone.  Not just dead, but so dead, I had a tough time finding their little corpses laying on the dirt.  No clue what happened there.  The tomatoes and peppers are okay, but still not throwing blooms or fruit.  In happier news, the cedars have added to their heights by a couple inches each, so yay.  All the other trees seem to be holding their own.  They'll go into the yard/woods as soon as it's cool enough to do yard work again.

I'm not sure why I'm still blogging.  Only one person really comments anymore.  (Waves at Silver.)  I mean, it's cool to have a record of events, because my memory is so bad it helps me to figure out what happened when, if I have to look back.  But my memory is so bad, I forget to post most days, and that doesn't help keep fans in the seats, so to speak.  Hell, most days, I forget to comment on other people's blogs, too.  It doesn't bode well for my social levels.

Anyway, I'm still here.  Feel free to comment.  Or if you just want to stop by and read without commenting, that's okay, too.  I'll still be here.  Until I'm not.  

Have a great day wherever you are.  :hugs: