Snowdrop hasn’t been hanging around much lately but about a week ago we ran into him on one of the walking trails in our neighborhood. Wisp seemed happy to see him too. Plushie was bemused.
We’re guessing he’s found someone in the area who’s putting out food for him, knowingly or not. Or maybe they don’t have dogs and he feels safer. I hope he comes back though — we’ve grown fond of him.
At least Wisp still comes in and snoozes.
#SFWApro.
Filed under Personal, The Dog Ate My Homework
As I mentioned last week, Wisp showed up Friday after two days away, but without Snowdrop. When he didn’t show up Saturday or Sunday, I reluctantly concluded we’d lost him, whether to coyote, car or sickness.
Monday, he showed up with Wisp. As TYG quipped, “Easter cat has risen!”
We are incredibly relieved, though I doubt we’ll worry any less next time. While Snowdrop was initially a littel cautious coming in, Tuesday he sat down next to me on the couch, snuggled against my leg and accepted much petting.
Oh, here’s a shot of Wisp when TYG calls to her from the upstairs window.
#SFWApro.
Filed under Personal
Tuesday evening Snowdrop and Wisp showed up for breakfast. That was the last we saw of either cat until Wisp showed up this morning. This didn’t surprise me — we got several days of warm weather, when they’re more likely to roam — but after the second day I admit it worried me a little, and TYG a lot. Even though it’s unlikely something could have killed both cats simultaneously, it’s hard not to conjure up scenarios. And even if they’d found someone wonderful to adopt them instead (given how skittish they were, that’s unlikely too), we’d never know it.
Wisp showed and man, was she hungry. Scarfed a couple of bowls of food, then scarfed more after coming inside, then she napped on the couch. No sign of Snowdrop but if she made it, I think he probably did too. Hopefully he’ll show soon. TYG would be heartbroken if she never saw him again; I’d be disappointed too, though not as much.
(Below, a shot of Wisp cuddling a toy — technically TYG just stuck it under her paws while she slept but it’s still adorable, isn’t it?)
Other than that panic, this was a good week for writing, though putting in 30 hours on personal projects is really exhausting by this time on Friday. Taking scheduled breaks would help but I continue to have a bad habit of forging ahead when things are going well, then wondering why I’m losing steam later.
I was on the backup list to read at my Zoom writing group this week but I lucked out and two writers ahead of me dropped out. I finally read the ending of Obolus to the group and to my surprise, they loved it — I’d been feeling much less confident in the twists of the story. Their critique did, however, point out some problems which was good too: I knew something was off but couldn’t quite pin it down. I rewrote the story Wednesday and I think it’s done, except for a final hard-copy edit later this month.
I finished rewriting the first five chapters of Impossible Takes a Little Longer and I’m delighted how much they’ve improved. Of course, this is the part of the book I’ve worked on most; we’ll see how I do once I get into the newer sections. I also got a little over 3,000 words done on Let No Man Put Asunder. That’s definitely becoming harder going as I continue the shift from “protagonists run, fight when they have to” to something different.
I spent a lot of time looking at local bookstores that might consider doing some sort of event for when 19-
Infinity comes out and I’m not sure I’m a good fit for any of them. More frustratingly, I’d gathered a long list of book blogs to ask for reviews of the book, plus a few to solicit for Undead Sexist Cliches. All but a couple are “too busy, no new reviews!” and the ones that didn’t flatly rule it out are “maybe, possibly, sort of” at best. Come to think of it, I had similar problems with Questionable Minds; I wonder how other authors manage it?
I read a couple more Doc Savage novels, The Polar Treasure and Pirate of the Pacific for my Doc Savage reference book (tentatively titled Savage Adventures or something of the sort). I don’t think I’ll be blogging about them, though I might change my mind on the second book.
Not a bad week of work, even if it was unproductive on the PR front. Oh, I also submitted a story and had two more posts on Atomic Junk Shop, one on DC’s Human Target and one on some interesting DC issues of late 1966.
Oh, and today while TYG was at the hair salon I had to walk the pups in a drenching downpour. You can tell how drenching it was by looking at Plushie.
#SFWApro. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with me.
“My foot is on you, human! You belong to me now!”
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Filed under Uncategorized
When Wisp and Snowdrop explore, they seem to like the dining room. We use it primarily to store stuff and the dogs don’t spend much time there so perhaps it smells like peace and safety?
Plus it’s a more defensible fortress than any space we have in the living room.
#SFWApro.
Filed under Personal
As I mentioned a week ago, TYG spent last weekend out of town. Taking care of the dogs solo went fine, though giving them individual walks in freezing weather (ever since Trixie’s leg injury, we walk them separately) was, well, freezing. Handling them and Wisp when she came in was a bit more complicated — I have to make sure they don’t steal Wisp’s food or crowd her into a corner — and sometimes we had Snowdrop as well.
Still, it was a relaxed weekend overall. Lots of movie watching, some reading, and a final sourdough recipe from Bread Head. But then came Sunday night.
Normally when Wisp sleeps in the spare bedroom I join her eventually — I wake briefly (if I’m lucky) at midnight, change rooms, she gets company. When TYG is away, however, I stay in the master bedroom with the dogs. Wisp apparently sensed things would not go her way because around 9ish she began meowing plaintively outside the bedroom door. I let her in and after sniffing around, she joined me and the dogs on the bed.
TYG and I have always wondered how this would work, and it turns out it works fine. Neither dog felt the need for a turf war, though when Wisp later moved to lie by one side of me, Trixie squished on the other side. I belong to her, cat better recognize the fact.
That would all have been fine except Plushie, having vomited a couple of times in the early evening, got up a couple more times to vomit on the floor (good boy! Much better than on the bed clothes). His claws on the hardwood floor woke me up both times and with a pet on either side of me I couldn’t get back to sleep. I”d hoped for a solid night of sleep to start the work week, but …
The Wisp thing was still very cool, though i don’t know if it’ll work as well when TYG’s in the bed too. Plushie stopped vomiting by early afternoon but I took him to the vet later, just in case. A day of bland food and he seems back to normal, so yay!
#SFWApro.
Filed under Personal, The Dog Ate My Homework
So last week, when the bomb cyclone plunged temperatures here into the single digits, TYG decided we needed to keep Snowdrop in, even though it freaks him out to be inside with the door closed. It wasn’t easy — he’s very wary of anyone getting near the door — but we succeeded. He was not happy.
TYG suggested I go to bed and take an Ambien rather than endure his high-pitched panic whines. I did, and so missed Snowdrop’s eventual freak-out, including pissing on one of the couches and climbing out of reach.
On the plus side he let TYG brush some mats out of his fur and snuggled next to her on the couch. That made her very happy. And he’s come back inside since so we know a)he’s forgiven us and b)he can survive the cold. We still want to get him adjusted to at least short periods with the closed door — it’s a lot more practical for us not to endure the cold (or later in the year, the heat) but obviously we’re not going to turn him into an indoor cat.
Despite the freezing weather, Christmas was great. Last year, TYG had a lot of work and felt way stressed; this year, she was more relaxed, so I felt the same. I made German apple pancake (a tradition) and Dutch cheese and potato soup (not a tradition but a favorite of hers) and, of course, we exchanged gifts. Mine was much heavier on books than usual — TYG picked several items off my Amazon wish list — but that suits me fine. And she had several specific asks so I bought her more stuff than usual, which I loved doing.
And we even put a ribbon on Wisp.
A Merry Christmas, as they say, was had by all.
#SFWApro.
Filed under Miscellanea, Personal, Reading
Yes, I know, the name doesn’t click like “snowpocalypse.” Maybe I’ll run it by some beta-readers.
Temperatures plummeted like a stone in late morning. Even a brief hail.
Then the power went off about 2.5 hours ago. So in about 90 minutes all the food in our fridge (cheese, kefir, veggie sausage) ups and dies. Our freezer has until late morning tomorrow. Given they have yet to assign a crew, I suspect a lot of food will die. And of course we can’t cook anything. I do have some dry cereal and dried fruit but that’s not the best fare. And if the power’s not on tomorrow, no tea!
And the cats are out in the freezing cold, which worries us. They’ve survived nasty weather before but it gets down to 10-12 degrees tonight. And the power is also off to our heated shelter. At least we and the dogs are indoors and can pile on blankets. Hopefully they’ll show up before night falls, though Snowdrop may refuse to come in.
Don’t get me wrong, this is more a pain in the butt for us than a crisis. But it’s quite a large pain in the butt. Even so, it’s Christmas weekend and while I’m feeling annoyed, I’m here with TYG and the dogs and I’m definitely not feeling miserable.
I’d blog about writing but I’m using my phone as a mobile hot-spot and don’t want to drain it too much. So I’ll just say it went well and leave it at that.
{UPDATE: Power came back in the nick of time to save the food! Merry Christmas to us!)
#SFWApro.
Filed under Personal, The Dog Ate My Homework, Writing
First the good news: Snowdrop is coming in early mornings and sitting on the couch. He’s come up on the couch before, when Wisp was settled on her pillow, but he’s always been wary. Not any more.
Yep, he’s now cool with me giving him belly scritches, though sometimes I have to sit on the floor to preserve his personal space. I think this is a big advance in our relationship.
The bad news? He still freaks out if we close the door on him. That’s not so good when the temperature’s in the low thirties. I tolerate it as long as I can — an hour or so this morning — but eventually no. However he’s not panicking quite as fast as he did so just possibly we’re making progress there too.
The other bad news is that dealing with cats in the morning really throws my schedule off. As I’ve mentioned before, early morning’s the best time for exercise, a little reading over a cup of tea, and some yoga or stretching. The more fussing I do over the cats, the less time I have for any of that. I’ll always let them in — they are our cats now — so I don’t know there’s any solution beyond “suck it up.”
My sleep-maintenance insomnia plays a role in this too. I had a couple of nights where I woke up around midnight. Normally I’d get up for a bit and go back to sleep or failing that, write and then nap during the day. Both nights, however, Snowdrop and Wisp detected someone was up and sat on the deck waiting … so I let them in and got much less done than normal.
And then this morning the battery failed when TYG went off on an errand. We called AAA, they came out, found the battery was fine, but the dashboard computer warned us something else was off. I made an appointment to deal with it next week, but the whole experience sucked up much more time than I wanted and threw me off my game the rest of the day.
Despite which, the week was really productive. I finished another draft of Paying the Ferryman; I still don’t have the problem part nailed down but I can feel I’m getting closer. I reread Love That Moves the Sun, an older short story, and it needs much less work than I thought to fix it. I also reread Oh the Places You’ll Go! with feedback from the last editor I sent it to in mind and I don’t think I agree with their diagnosis (no disrespect intended).
I read Bleeding Blue to the writer’s group and the feedback was much more positive than I expected. They did point out several problems and I rewrote and improved the story yesterday, based on their suggestions. The big action scene at the climax still needs the most work, though — it’s better, but still doesn’t work.
I got several thousand words done on The Impossible Takes a Little Longer, much of it by refitting some of the last draft into a new position in the book. It worked there, too. It’s now up to 54,000 words though I suspect it may come in a little short compared to what novels run these days.
Oh, and my Con-Tinual panel on favorite Christmas Carol versions is now live. It’ll be up on the Con-Tinual YouTube channel in a few days.
So yeah, pleased with my week. Have a great weekend everyone.
#SFWApro. Please credit me if you use my photos.
So I wrapped up November with somewhere under 50 percent of my goals completed … I think.
One of the errors I keep making is that when things get hectic I stop tracking my progress. I don’t record how many hours I’ve spent on writing projects or whether I remembered to wipe the kitchen counters every day. So I don’t know if I achieved them or not. So I’m working to consistently report metrics at the end of the day, before walking the dog (afterwards I’m usually off the computer for too long). We’ll see how I do.
This week was uneven but overall productive. A large part of the unevenness is that my insomnia the past couple of months has been exceptionally consistent. Some of that may be the warm weather — even in a heated house, winter usually makes a difference — and some of it’s definitely psychological. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I psych myself out about “Well, if I try to get to sleep and don’t succeed I’ll have to take naps during the day so I should definitely get up and write because then I won’t need the time but then again I really need sleep …” That kind of chatter makes it impossible to get to sleep.
So Wednesday became a waste. I was tired plus I had my second checkup of the year. Overall good, and a couple of things I was worried might be serious are just me getting older. My doctor is way more reliable than the Crime Surgeon on Bob Kane’s cover above.
Today was productive but choppy. I was sitting with the dogs most of the day and they were often barky, plus Wisp came in which meant having to keep three pets happy. I can write and pet Wisp in my lap but if Trixie gets on the couch too, she demands petting too and then I have no hands left to type. And yesterday I walked to a nearby dispensary to pick up Plushie’s meds. It’s close to a mile further away than I anticipated so that was more time lost. The exercise was good, however.
So what got done?
First, I finished a rewrite of Bleeding Blue on Monday. It’s much improved. This may be the next piece I read to my writers’ group as menstruation is important in the story and I need women’s feedback.
I reread Paying the Ferryman and I was dismayed how much the energy and tension drop once we move from New York to a fairy-tale setting. I spent most of my writing time today working to fix that but between naps and pets I didn’t get finished. It’s already improved, though, and shorter.
I wrote 4,000 words on Impossible Takes a Little Longer. The book’s definitely improving, though I still wonder about length.
And I started to think about what I want to do next year.
All totaled, I made my hours for the week.
Over at Atomic Junkshop I looked at the time Iron Man deliberately killed his opponent, a drastic thing in the Silver Age. You can see in Gene Colan’s (under his Adam Austin synonym) panels above that Iron Man’s throwing the Black Knight (not the one from Eternals) off his flying horse to his death.
Over at ConTinual I participated in a panel on worldbuilding in small towns and one discussing my two new releases. They’re on FB but they’ll be on ConTinual’s YouTube channel soon.
And speaking of my new books, I sold some copies of Questionable Minds this week! That feels very cool.
And needless to say, our Christmas tree is up.
#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.
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