Real Summer Is Here!

I got spoiled with last week's super-pleasant, super-sunny mid-70's weather. Mother Nature ratcheted the temps back to the 80's today. The A/C has been running most of this afternoon. Tomorrow morning's rain front will cool things back down to the 70's for a couple days. And then...

It'll be in the 90's, baby! With lots of fireworks in the neighborhood!

I'm glad I grabbed a bottle of calming chews for the Princess Pup and the Grandpuppy during last month's dog supply run! Neither of them shake in sheer terror like poor Haley did decades ago, but they feel the need to reply to every little crack and boom with three times the barking. Honestly, the calming chews are for mine and DH's sanity, not the dog's.

In the meantime, I finished proofing the paperback of A Barrel of Vintner in the wee hours of this morning. My lovely formatter has already sent the final files back to me by the time I rolled out of bed and grabbed my first cup of coffee. Now, it's just a matter of getting everything uploaded and letting the retailer process roll through.

Which means paperbacks should be available for order late next week. Not in time for the July 4th festivities, but definitely for any other vacations for this summer.

In the meantime, I'm trying to wrap up edits on Death Goddess Fighting and getting words in on Death Goddess Redeeming while taking occasional forays into A Sprout of Wild for a palate cleanser.

I hope the rest of you are enjoying a lovely slice of summer sun and fun!

It's a Monday

I did not get all the proofing and editing done over the weekend that I'd planned. But I made DH happy by taking him to Dietsch's, a hometown shop where the ice cream is made on the premises! It's amazing what a caramel cashew sundae do for a man's mood. I also made scallops and spaghetti in a lemon garlic cream sauce for Father's Day/Litha.

Today, I'm trying to finish the final proofing for the paperback version of A Barrel of Vintner. I thought I had a fairly clean manuscript when the ebook was published in April. Alas, I was wrong! But I'm trying to make things right!

Unfortunately, today was also the semi-annual dental exam. I'm always paranoid that the dentist will find something expensively wrong. But it was an observation that I had a LOT of caffeine staining on my teeth.

Hey, I admit I have addiction, but sometimes, I also need something to sip on when I'm going through a manuscript for the umpteenth time. Not even my own action-adventure stories can keep the eyelids open when the entire text is nearly memorized. And there in lies the reason for the caffeine. I need to be awake to smash the typos with my shoe!

(Not literally, but I view them as the spiders I do not want crawling into my mouth while I'm sound asleep.)

At least, I don't have to cook tonight since there's plenty of leftover scallops and spaghetti for dinner tonight.

Now, back to the proofing!

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

Thirty years ago, I was told I wasn't allowed to listen to Melissa Etheridge because I was straight.

Busy Summer Day

I don't remember having a lazy summer since my sister was born. Then came my brother. The summer after kindergarten, we moved to the family farm. Fifty-four years later, I still haven't had the proverbial lazy summer day.

This morning started with mailing bills and a 90-day notice to the storage unit place. We're getting the last of our boxes out, come hell or high water.

I then went to Starbucks for two hours to get words in on Death Goddess Redeeming.

Got home for DH to point out I forgot to drop off the Grandpuppy's stool sample at the vet's. Which was still sitting in the fridge. Don't worry. It was double-sealed.

On the way home again, I stopped for gas so DH can drive to the stadium up in Toledo for the Flag City Phantoms last home game. I also bought a lime to make the pico de gallo for tonight's dinner.

Seriously, there's nothing like fresh, homemade pico de gallo!

The rest of tonight will be spent editing Death Goddess Fighting and proofing the paperback of A Barrel of Vintner around dinner and catsitting. A visit with the Niece's cat Miss M with require allergy and decongestant meds a half hour prior to attending the Dark Queen.

When we get home, I'll probably spend the rest of the evening working on beaded bookmarks for the upcoming Kickstarter while a movie plays in the background.

I hope the rest of you can enjoy a lazy summer weekend!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's been raining for the last couple of days. The dark clouds do not help my waking in the morning. In fact, my alarm went off at its proper time, I turned it off, and I laid back thinking about my to-do list.

Next thing I knew, it was an hour later. Oops!

Not even a shower and a cup of peppermint coffee has helped. I'm still yawning.And yes, I followed my nighttime rituals of cutting off caffeine and reading before bed.

However, writing and editing must be done. Plus, I need to finalize my campaign page for next month's Kickstarter.

Maybe starting some cinnamon rolls would help. 

I'm F**king Depressed

I got an e-mail last week from the owner of the yoga studio I go to. They're closing at the end of the month.

 @*$@(*@*#)!&#$#&*@(*!!!

I've got my meds balanced, I'm eating better, and I've been exercising regularly between walking dogs and this class. Should I be taking the closing of the studio personally? No, I should not. The owner's in the same boat as everyone else, including me. Food prices and gas have doubled, and there's no end to the bullshit in sight.

It's still disappointing as fuck. I'm one of those people who needs a push to reach my exercise goals. Even the gentle nudge of the instructors of this particular studio helped me tremendously.

Why? Frankly, I'd prefer to sit all day and write, but that's not healthy for your body in the long run. The Public Service Announcements that sitting for long periods being as bad for humans as smoking aren't joking. My back and hips are aching just from the writing I've done over the last two weeks.

So I need to find a way, and the emotional push, to continue practicing yoga at home.

*sigh*

This totally sucks! 

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

Could anyone beat the soundtrack music Queen did for the original Highlander?

Throwing Away the Joy of Writing

I don't read too many other blogs these days. Simply because so few people write them.

But the subject of AI-written books has come up repeatedly in the handful of blogs I still read from people in the publishing industry. The problem with AI-generated things is they have no soul. No creativity. Nothing new. AI follows a trope outline so everything sounds exactly the same.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a trope. Genres are based on tropes. You read a romance for a happy ending. You read fantasy for an exciting adventure with imaginary beings. You read a mystery, knowing justice will be served in the end.

But AI takes the trope and dulls it down to the basic elements. There are no surprises. No revelations. Basically, there's no fun.

 But there's so many new writers out there who think AI is the end-all, be-all to writing books. And that's their big mistake. Because those writers think that book is their "creation". It's not. A machine created it. And guess what? You can't copyright something YOU did not create.

Which is why Ingram rejected 4.5 million (yes, 4,5000,000) books from their system over the last five and a half years. Why? Because the legal copyright owner or licensee did not give them permission.

You may tell a machine or even a person what to do, but that doesn't mean it's your creation.

Want some examples?

1) I go to a bakery and order a cake. I tell the baker I want a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. Now, do I own the recipes for the cake and the frosting? Hell, no!

2) Meryl Streep is heading to the Oscars and gets a custom-made dress from Designer X. Meryl might make some suggestions like wanting full-length sleeves and lots of sequins. Does Meryl own the copyright to the dress? Nope, Designer X does.

So if I tell ChatGPT to write a romance with two characters named Ginger and Fred, do I own the copyright? Nope! I didn't create the story itself.

And that's not even getting into the legal peccadillo about creation by a non-human! (Go look up Naruto v. David Slater, et al., also known as the Monkey Selfie Case)

And most of all, here's my part of my thought I left on another writer's comment section after he was blasted for being anti-AI:

AI robs people of the joy of storytelling. And I love being in the "Zone" as my Hubby calls it--when you're so deep in the story you're living your main character's experience and the words flow from your fingertips. 

What Happened to Monday Movie Mania?

DH and I haven't been going to the movies for the last several months.

The firs part of it is that money has been tight due to the 2022-2025 life rolls.

The second part of it is the movies we want to see are on the paid streaming services a month or two after they're released in the cinemas. And then they end up on the free services with ads about a year later.

The third part is we've been re-watching our favorite TV shows that came out twenty-thirty years ago. Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Farscape, The Dresden Files, Highlander, etc.

The fourth part is we've been busy. While I've been writing or editing in the evenings, DH has been getting certified in an accounting software package. With the current economic situation, we're trying to find little ways to improve our income. I mean I'm spending twice as much in groceries right now than I did when Genius Kid was a teenager! We don't drive much because gasoline is roughly two times what we were paying before Tribblehead attacked Iran for no real reason after promising no new wars.

Liar, liar. Pants on fire!

Anyway, I need something a little positive in my day. I think I'll go rewatch the newest Superman. David Corenswet is a cutie! 

Someone's Temper Tantrum

I had my head down all of last week, working on Death Goddess Redeeming (Book 3 of The Books of Apep) and A Sprout of Wild (Book 12 of Justice). If I react to every single thing in the chaotic news cycle, no books would ever be written so I'm learning to be selective.

However, I am truly glad we stayed home this weekend. For an introduction, DH loves a show on the REELZ channel called On Patrol Live ("OPL"). It's the successor to A&E's very popular Live PD. About the time we clipped the cable cord, REELZ introduced their own streaming service, so a subscription to REELSZ+ was DH's joint birthday/Christmas present.

Last season, the Toledo Police Department ("TPD") joined the series. Unfortunately, nearly every case on with TPD starts with the call "shots fired".

*facepalm*

Northwest Ohio is actually a fairly quiet region. Yes, we have our problems like a sinking economy and opioid addiction. And there was one case on the show where a drunk woman climbed a tree and peed on the officer trying to get her down, which sad to say is more typical. Part of me wondered if things on the show were overblown.

Until Saturday.

There was a mass shooting at the Old West End street festival. Twelve people were injured, but thankfully, there were no fatalities. But TPD is still looking for the perpetrators.

I have to wonder about people like this. What the hell goes through their brains to make them hurt innocent people on this scale? 

This morning, I breached briefly to check headlines to see if there were any updates. There wasn't to the Toledo shooting, but apparently, Tribblehead had a major meltdown on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday.

So, two temper tantrums in two days because some yahoos aren't getting their way. And they don't fucking care who they hurt in the process.

*sigh*

I'm hunkering down, disconnecting my wifi, and focusing on my stories. Because there, kickass women protect the people being shit on, and they don't put up with temper tantrums.