It is kind of cold and rainy now.  Kid 1 and I are starting to fade to our normal pale and looked for a tanning place only to be informed that she must be 16 and a half, even with parental permission, some new law.  Otherwise she has to have a note from a doctor stating that she has “tanorexia” and needs to bake in a coffin like device.  I am thinking about going without her, but she might notice and fuss at me.

Baby Trinity was dropped off at the groomer yesterday.  We have decided that even with bathing and brushing every other day her coat was just getting too tangled.  She looked a little ratty to be honest.  I was instructed, by my dread mistress,  to have her cut in the “Teddy Bear” fashion.  What came out was unlike any teddy bear I have ever seen.  It was more of a first time puppy cut.  I think she looks adorable, her owner was less pleased and Ilona could not stop laughing at the poor little thing.  Kid 2 is on my side with it and the other dogs were fascinated, they could not leave her alone, especially her big brother, who is very protective of her.

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Today we have to got to Best Buy and pick up the camera I broke, also look for phones for teens who have broken theirs.  My phone still works, but they have both managed, despite being purchased expensive cases, to crack their screens and otherwise completely destroy devices they claim to be unable to live without.  I am washing my hands of this one.  If Ilona wants to get them new ones, that’s on her.  Please excuse me for a moment whilst I slip into authentic frontier gibberish a la Blazing Saddles.  Tarnation, when I was a youngin we didn’t have not dagum fancy cellular telephones, I seen one once, it was in a bag in a rich fella’s car.  If we was away from the homestead and needed to make a call, well by God, we had dig in the pockets of our ripped and faded blue jeans and rummage around for a quarter, then hunt down a workin pay phone.  Children today is spoilt rotten with their fancy gadgets and elecetronic doohickies!  Rerrin!  Well I feel better now.

For gamers 11.11.11 is a significant date.  You see, SKYRIM comes out.  It’s a long-awaited sequel to Oblivion – yes, I know it’s geeky, so sue me – and promises to be an excellent role-playing game, where you get to hunt mammoths and dragons.

Gordon, having preordered this treasure, decided to drive to Gamespot and take advantage of their preorder promotion: the game comes out today, but if you preordered, they would give it to you at midnight.  We got a phone message from Gamespot inviting us to pick it up at 10:00 pm.

In the age of Steam and instant download, my husband went old school.

Gordon left at 10:00 pm last night, with both kids, who were unreasonably excited.  I remained on the couch, watched an episode of Criminal Investigations, tuned into ID channel, because nothing else was on, and ended up watching an episode of I (Almost) Got Away With It.  It was about a completely evil human being who had had a lot of rage toward women.  His ex-wife got a restraining order and requested police assistance with getting her possessions out of the house.  When police arrived with her, they found a life-sized replica of the woman made out of raw hamburger meat in her bed.  The meat had gone rancid and there were maggots in it.  At this point my body gave out and I fell asleep.

I woke up a little after midnight when kids and Gordon got home with Skyrim.  Apparently there were hundreds of people and although the message said to arrive at ten, which put him near the front of the line, he actually had to wait till midnight to get the game.  The kids went next door to Wal-Mart while he waited.

So then I couldn’t fall back asleep and we ended up watching the rest of the hamburger woman episode.  Some people are just evil.

This morning I didn’t have the endurance to make breakfast, so for the first time in a four weeks we had cereal, and then we did the hour long morning routine with “take your medicine” and “eat your food” from our end and “I hate you, you suck, you hate me so much” from the kid’s end.  Somehow both parties survived the battle and kids were off to school at regular time.

Now I am tired.  My head hurts and my eyes are closing, and I have to write 2700 words. Do Not Want.  When did I turn into an old lady?

You know how animals have a reflective surface behind their eyes?  It’s called tapetum lucidum and it causes their eyes to glow.  The color of the glow depends on many factors.  For example, here is Misss Salem.

A lovely yellow green glow, isn’t it?

Well, I happened to take some pictures of the Demon Dog.  The dog who poops everywhere, attacks everything that moves with sheer puppy enthusiasm, pesters the big dogs, tries to eat my plants, and snuggles to your feet every chance she gets.  The first time I tried to give her a treat, Demon Dog nearly took my fingers off.  When informed of this fact, Kid 1 immediately tried to disprove it.  It went like this.  “Who is hungry?  Baby Trinity is hungry.  Yes, she is!  Yes, she is! Ow!  She is hungry for flesh.”

Baby Trinity will need a lot of work before she is presentable.

Anyway, so I took some pictures.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Check this out:

I bought a slow cooker.  I think it’s awesome.  Found a Chicken Tortilla soup recipe that’s a total hit.  Now trying a stew.  The Chicken Tortilla Soup is surprisingly easy, it’s literally a can, a can, a can, and some chicken.  South-Western cuisine is mostly new to me, so I was happy it didn’t suck.

In an effort to make some comfort food, I searched Amazon for Adjika and found it.  So I ordered Adjika, Kmeli-Suneli, and Tkemali and made harcho, which is a spicy soup.  Kid 1 liked that one too, although not as much as she liked the tortilla one.

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Baby Trinity

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Kid 2 in an effort of not being upstaged by arrival of Baby Trinity upped the cuteness factor.

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When I pointed out that Ms. Sophie, who was bribed with chicken for her modeling, may not necessarily dig being dressed as a pumpkin, Kid 2 got a slightly evil look in her eyes and said, “I am doing it for her, not for me.  She loves it.  If my baby told me she wanted to stop , I would stop and not do any more pageants, but she just enjoys them so much.  Go glitz or go home.”

I knew my watching Toddlers in Tiaras would come back to haunt me.

And that’s my update.  I will try to post a snippet later in the week, assuming I can actually make words happen.

Almost forgot – Keely emailed and we gave her permission to put Bouda Babes shirts on Zazzle.  So shirts are coming your way and I will post a link when they are live.

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Sometimes little beasts help little humans get better.  Let’s hope it will be one of those times.

Our neighbor painted us a lovely picture for our living room.  We need to rehang that one part, but the painting itself is awesome.

The artist is Diana Ochoa.  Diana’s Facebook page and Etsy site.

He is huge now, almost as tall as Dell and maybe as heavy.  What happened to my sweet little guy who was afraid to go down the stairs.  Here he is at about 8 weeks old, he is a little bloated as I was already starting to beef him up.

He is a little canine Cartman, if he could talk, I know he would shout “Beefcake!”

Last week was exhausting.  I’m not at all well set up mentally for the rapid fire promo and bringing a self-published book to the release is a really stressful job.  Apparently there are a few typos in it, too, which weren’t caught by either the CE or us, so we will be reissuing updated versions.We are having to duplicate an entire structure of the publishing house, complete with proofreaders.  No step can be skipped.

But Silver Shark opened to an awesome reception, despite its Republic of Georgia movie ending, so it was all worth it.  Anne would have never let us get away with that ending, but I like it.  The adventure doesn’t stop, it’s just paused, and the story goes on in the reader’s head. I think that will be one of the aspects of self-publishing that’s often overlooked – the ability to try experimental things.

I am completely funned out, though.  Any sort of social discourse is beyond me.  I even hid from Twitter for a bit.  Here is how bad it was: on Tuesday, the kids were staying up way too late and I fussed at them to go to bed.  Gordon told me it was Friday.  I double checked.  He was right.

Reading

I’ve read Nalini’s novella in Angels of Darkness.  I really liked it.  There is a kind of elegance in her writing but also a hint of something exotic, a kind of texture that’s difficult to pin down.

I also snagged an ARC of Meljean’s Heart of Steel and will report on it as soon as I read it.

On a side note, how the heck do you delete samples from Kindle?

Family

Signs that we are in Texas:

• On Saturday Kid 1 and Kid 2 spent a couple of hours playing Madden NFL 11.
• Kid 2 is a cheerleader.  She is kind of violent about it.  If she elbows someone who is trying to assault her with that much precision, she will break their ribs.
• I’ve made salsa instead of getting it from a jar.  Also I made my first pot of chili.  Apparently you have to soak the beans for 24 hours, which I did, and then endure Kid 1′s every hour on the hour, “Are the beans done yet so we can make chili?”

On Transportation, Purpose of

Kid 1: I want a Hummer.

Me: They are gas-guzzling, uncomfortable, hard-to-drive, expensive armored clunkers.  Why would I get you one?

Kid 1: In case of zombie apocalypse.

***

On How Gordon Is Raising a Teenage Boy Instead of a Little Lady

Kid 2: Teeheeheeeheee!  I just found the best show ever!

Me: ?

Kid 2: South Park.

Me: Not again.

Kid 2: That’s what she said!

***

On Dog Breeds, Perceived Viciousness

Elderly neighbor: Your bulldog got out of the garage door and barked at my wife

Us, horrified: Angus? This bulldog?

Elderly neighbor: No, I like him.  I like your sweet brown one too.  I meant the vicious beige one.

***

On Apologizing, Gordon Family Style

Kid 2: We are so, so so sorry Sophie scared you.  She is harmless.  Really.

Female Elderly Neighbor: She is scary.  So what is it did you say you did?

Gordon: We have a meth lab in the garage.  We use Sophie as a watch dog to look out for the cops.

Female Elderly Neighbor: That’s nice.

***

A Moment of Adulthood

Phone rings.

Kid 2: Come pick me up, I missed the bus.

Gordon: Grump- gtrump-grump.

Gordon and Kid 2 return.

Me: What happened?

Kid 2: I missed the bus because I lost my glasses.

Gordon and Me: !!!

Kid 2:  The Lost and Found was closed, so I went into the cafeteria, and I wedged one of the roll-up shutters open, so I jumped on the counter and rolled under the shutter to get into the Lost and Found.

Gordon; Like a ninja?

Kid 2, despondent: Yep.  But they weren’t there.  Then I went to the secretary office, and I asked her very nicely and she would not even look.  I said, “Please check” and she wouldn’t.  Can you believe that?  She didn’t even check.  I was really polite and I said, “Thank you” anyway and went to the different office to call you, because I was frustrated.

Epilogue: Glasses were found – a classmate took them by mistake, because of the similar cases.

I’ve unpacked some of my clothes yesterday and realized all of them have to be boxed back up – they are all heavy hoodies and Portland-type keep-you-warm-in-the-rain clothes.  It was 107 on Tuesday.  The pool water is the temperature of a nice warm bath.  Today the weather broadcast is promising 105 for the next week.

Heh.

Next big project will be the living room.  That brown with heavy brown curtains has to go.

Being a writer

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The further a writer goes in this business, the harder it is not to become bitter.  When you start out, you know nothing.  You have no idea what should be or could be done for your book.  You don’t know how to form a relationship with your editor; you don’t know how to voice concerns about the cover art; you just hope and pray your book doesn’t tank.

As the career progresses, you begin to get some idea about what level of support your book could receive.  You learn what it’s like to miss a deadline and the catastrophic domino effect it causes. You talk to other authors and learn from their mistakes. You realize that it’s true what they say – you are only as good as your next book.

A kind of steady paranoia sets in.  What if the readers hate the book?  What if the sales numbers are lower? The stress just piles on and on, because every release become the “make it or break it” moment.  Every tiny thing becomes an enormous, insurmountable obstacle which must be conquered with a huge investment of effort and stress, and often irrational nervous breakdowns.  In retrospect, the insurmountable obstacle turns out to be unimportant and you sit there wondering why you made such a big deal out of it.

A lot of this stress is self-induced and it’s toxic to both creative and personal well-being.  A friend of mine and I had a conversation about it the other day and she mentioned that there was a moment of insanity when she considered giving up on her contracts and paying back the money.  I laughed, because I had threatened to do the same thing once or twice.

About a year ago I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to make a conscious effort to stop stressing out over things I’m unable to control.  I have to remind myself that I can’t permit myself to obsess over things to the point of craziness, because it only makes my life and the life of my family so much harder.  I hate to use words like quality of life, but the term applies to this situation.  One must be happy, if only for a few minutes every day, because otherwise what’s the point?

Holding on to that attitude, I’ve done pretty well.  We’ve had three releases in that time and I sailed through both of them with minimal wig-outs, with the exception of having a complete meltdown when the latest book was due, the bank account was nearly empty from the move, the AC broke for the second time, and the Appliance #1000 committed suicide. This morning, for whatever reason, as I sit there in my chair with a clear plan of deadlines well into the next year, I am finally back to that pre-move state of having both feet on the ground.

Life is full of stress.  It will always exist.  People get sick, work generates problems, unexpected expenses slam into you.  Staying sane is an effort, but it’s worth it in the end.

The dogs

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We’re officially competing for the title of the Worst Neighbor on the Block.  A few days ago, when Angus was recovering from surgery, we had to segregate him from outher dogs.  In an attempt to juggle him being taken out to the front yard, we accidentally left the garage door open, resulting in a wild escape of Del and Sophie.  When the breakout was discovered, I jumped in the car and me and the kids went looking for them, meeting various neighbors down the road and being told over and over that yes, the dogs did run this way and they were very cute.  Everyone had petted them.  Nobody knew where they went.

We finally gave up and came home only to discover that Del and Sophie had made a big circle, got tired, and came back to the air conditioning and water.  Later it was discovered that Del and Sophie tried to play with a miniature dachshund next door.  The poor dog, who was out in her front yard, did not want to play, and Del, who typically attributes any and all issues to collars, promptly removed the dachshund’s collar.  The little dog was unharmed, but freaked out.  The neighbors next door understandably think that our giant doberman attempted to maul their dog.

:facepalm:

We’ve are attempting to repair the relationship through apologies and doggie gifts, but yeah, we’re completely at fault here and if some giant dog ran into our front yard and put Soiphie in her mouth, I would be really put out, no matter how many assurances the dog’s owner made.  Del is not at all aggressive with dogs, but the garage door is now under strict supervision.

I told Diana across the street, who is our friend, that we’re once again the redneck neighbors from Christmas Story.  She laughed.  Her Pomeranian, Remy, who looks just like a little fox, comes over to play with our dogs.

Work Update

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I did not work that much on Friday.  We went to the movies – Rise of the Apes! Rise of the Apes! Go see! – and afterward we came home and I put about 1,000 words on Kate novella.  Today is Saturday, so I am hoping to put a few more words on it for an eventual release sometime in early fall.

A Questionable Client, the Magic Series prequel short story, previously available as a short story in Dark and Stormy Knights anthology will be released in the near future as an e-book.  We were originally planning to release it by ourselves and I even made a nice cover for it.

But Jeanine Frost and we decided to join forces to give you a bigger bang for your buck, so the release of the short will be slightly delayed until we can get all of our chapter excerpts and exclusive sneak peeks in a row.

A sequel to Silent Blade is eating my brain like some sort of Venetian Brain Leech.  I may have to knock out a scene just to be rid of it.  It will definitely use a different couple. The first one mirrored HP arranged marriage trope, this one will likely use the Millionaire Boss and His Secretary.  His unassuming secretary who can kill you with her brain.

But Kate novella has to come first, so it can be off the table.  If we work on Andrea’s book during the week and Kate novella on Fridays and a few hours here and there, it should be done.

Well, I better get on it.