free read

Hi all -- Dreamspinner is making some books free for those who are finding it challenging in these challenging times, and I volunteered for Pyresnakes to be one of those books. So please take a hop over there and find a free read, if you're so inclined.

Stay safe out there, the world has been upended and some quiet reading time can be good for the soul.

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/pyresnakes-by-tray-ellis-8608-b

Friday night tedium

Friday night and...I'm backing up files. Ah. I'm pretty sure I'm making a good run at the title of Truly Dull. (And that suddenly seems like a most excellent character name for a piece of humorous fiction.)

Back to my peppermint tea (no caffeine this late at night, horrors!) and moving files around.

raining, raining, raining

It's going to be a long day of rain, making the skies gray and cloudy. I'm already on my third cup of coffee. But caffeine can only last so long against the dreary sight outside my window. A perfect day for curling up with a book. I can imagine better weather between the pages of something fantastical. I do find I reach for a lot of comfort-fic these days.

keeping the windows shut

It is getting cold enough out at night that I'm no longer opening the windows for the fresh air. That air is so fresh it turns me into an icicle!

mid-August

The nights are actually starting to stay cool and it is noticeably getting darker earlier. Seems like summer is drifting to a close. I've seen Halloween stuff for sale in the stores (and may have bought a few decorations). Even if I didn't keep an eye on the calendar, the stores would let me know what holiday was coming up. Everyone's gardens are finally coming in -- there's a lot of zucchini showing up lately! I finally figured out how to make those zucchini noodles that were so popular a few years ago. They're really good. Now is the time to enjoy the noodles.

garlic!

Here's my garlic crop for the summer, drying out. It's my first year trying garlic, so I'm sort of stumbling forward with this, but it seems easy enough. I'll be planting again in the late autumn, and cooking with some of it in the meantime. Garlic is delicious and quite healthy. Although perhaps not the best on your breath for romantic encounters.

bees love my orgeano

I have a little (well, maybe not so little) clump of oregano in one corner and I don't use it very often for cooking, but it is supremely popular with the local bees. This past week it was flowering and I noticed at least two types of bees -- lots of bees, it was like a bee convention with free pollen milkshakes -- one type looked like a honeybee and I think the others were probably sweat bees.

There are definitely some local beekeepers, so I'm not surprised about the honeybees. But I was so glad to see the sweat bees. These are smaller and native/local, so that means someone isn't actively keeping a hive of them like with honeybees. Seeing them means they're doing well in the local area. I know with all the lawns and such that there are probably a lot of pesticides and herbicides around, but I try my best not to use those unless absolutely necessary (a paper wasp nest last year did get dosed, but that was it) so that the good insects have a chance to do their thing.

rec: The Poet X

The Poet X (Audiobook)
by Elizabeth Acevedo (Author/Narrator)

I had to wait about 4 months for this book to become available through my library, and it was worth the wait.

This book was fabulous -- and listening to the audio version was intense. The whole thing is told with the energy of slam poetry and it feels so true and real, and covers a lot of topics that don't often get touched on because they might be uncomfortable or unpopular. The only thing that seemed the tiniest bit off-pitch was the ending. After the harshness experienced in the previous chapters, even getting to the point that the characters got to at the end seemed like a minor miracle. But it offered a lot of hope and healing, so I'm glad that was where it went.

I don't know about the paper version of the book, because I listened to the audio version, which is what I really recommend because it is so much about hearing the poetry spoken.

Happy 4th

Got up early to water my garden (this year: garlic! Because everything else gets nibbled) and work on paying bills. Later there will be a cook-out BBQ thing. I hope everyone else is having a good holiday. Went to see the fireworks last night and was surprised to see a real brass band playing while the fireworks went off. That was really awesome. I was surprised to see so many people brought their dogs to the display because I know animals can be very sensitive to the loudness, but I didn't see any animals in distress (I watched one dog nap through the entire thing) so that was good.

starting my weekend at 4:30 on a Sunday

This was a weekend of cleaning.

It isn't that I need my place to be spotless before I can settle down and write, but I really need it to be in a mostly cleaned and picked-up state before i can focus. And my place had gotten pretty cluttered and disheveled, with many tasks needing to be done, and some of the underlying cleaning really needing attention. So this weekend, I tackled those projects. I finally put away my winter clothes! I had them washed and half folded, but not boxed away, and that project was just looming over me because it involves finding room to put away those boxes, which the space they were in previously always seems to vanish.

So, now, I am tired but triumphant. And I probably won't do much more than noodle about with some stories, but the weight is lifted.

baking cookies

Baking some oatmeal raisin cookies tonight for a pot luck tomorrow. I go a little light on the cinnamon and heavier on the nutmeg. It's a nice excuse to indulge in some cookies, and I'm really glad that the temps outside aren't too awful. It's never fun to turn on the oven when it's warm! If it had been hot, I definitely would have chosen something like gelatin mold!

NineStar Press -- 40% off code

NineStar Press has a special for Pride Month! And I have a story there that is part of an anthology:
https://ninestarpress.com/p…/once-upon-a-rainbow-volume-two/

Once Upon a Rainbow, Vol. II

The True Love Curse by Tray Ellis – True Love would be wonderful, but the curse keeps getting in the way.

Definitely take advantage of this! (Even if it's not my story, there's so much good stuff there, you'll find something that floats your boat!)

new weekend, new energy

Last weekend I got skunked and ended up doing everything for everyone else and did not get any writing time at all. This weekend, there are still a substantial number of things on the To Do list but I have much better odds at finding time to do some writing. Now I have only to figure out which draft will spark the most energy for me.

Simmer, don't wait

I definitely had a very good stretch where I had a lot of short stories accepted for anthologies, but now time has passed and the anthologies are going to be retired. This is another of those.

Simmer, with Dreamspinner Press

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/simmer-5594-b

My contribution was 'Operation Wild Thumb":


Zucchini and squash have sprouted at the home Heath shares with his divorced sister, Sara, and are growing in abundance. Never one to pass up the opportunity for a prank, Heath decides to leave the vegetables on his neighbors’ doorsteps. One neighbor catches him in the act, but luckily Alex seems as into the humor as he is into Heath. When the night comes to an end, there might be more on the burner than zucchini pancakes.

The thing I really loved about this anthology were the recipes that came with the stories! Each was associated in some way with the story that had been told. So, for mine, I have a zucchini pancake recipe -- which was a lot of fun developing. I made the pancakes several times, trying different variations of the recipe until I had something I thought worked really well. (My first try had everything way too soggy, and it wasn't as delicious as I wanted it to be.)

So, if you were waiting to grab this particular anthology, grab soon.

Purple Potatoes

Got these at the local Farmer's Market this weekend and turned them into delicious homemade chips. They don't taste different from other potatoes, but they're very pretty.

catching up on rest

It was a busy winter, and I finally hit a wall. I haven't done much of anything today except nap, but I think I needed to work off some sleep debt. I've definitely been working a lot lately. I'm eyeing later spring for a return to writing more regularly, and storing up ideas of things to work on. I keep having daydreams of opening the windows to let in the soft, warm, fresh air.

waiting for the weekend

Worknights just seem too short to get anything done. A few rounds of laundry, trying to balance the checkbook, and dirty dishes and there's not a lot of time left afterward to much of anything else. It always seems worse in the Spring, though. The long winter has dragged on, and we're all waiting to burst into life again, like flowers finally pushing upwards. I can feel that there's energy on the horizon. But it isn't quite there yet....

Love Wins, don't wait

My understanding is that the charity anthology Love Wins, won't be available for very much longer. If you were thinking of grabbing this excellent set of stories (with my humorous and romantic "Prevailing Zzz's" as part of it), then you should do so very soon, before it is no longer available!

Here's the link:

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/love-wins-7898-b

loosing steam, watching tv

It's a busy week, so I've lost some steam with writing. But I have caught some of Patriot Act on Netflix. Funny, sharp, and smart. Anyone else watch it?
(I should clarify -- by 'some', I mean I have now watched all of the episodes.)

review: Hello, Universe

Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly

This book was captivating. Usually I listen to audiobooks while I'm doing something else. So, I finished the something else I was doing and didn't want to move on to the next thing where I'd have to stop listening, so I stayed put and found something to do with my fingers--untangling knots in the fringe of a blanket, for goodness sake--and kept right on listening. The characters in this book are interesting and varied, and even though you know the author is really the 'universe', the way everything resolves is satisfying. It is a story about friendship, and of children feeling isolated because of their own personal attributes, and still finding that friendship.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2709922707?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1