Music I've Been Listening to Lately

I love these ladies!

It's Officially Live!

I hit the publish button last night. The Millersburg Magick Mysteries Kickstarter campaign is officially up and running!

I really hope everyone will check out the campaign. It was nice to delve back into a world that's a lot of fun. Plus, I've got the covers for the next three books, so I'll have some fun over next summer! 

The campaign will run until 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, October 17th.

Pre-Launch Page for Kickstarter Is Live

It's happening! My campaign was approved earlier than I thought it would. I now have an active pre-launch page! Hopefully, my pink hair in the video isn't too shocking. LOL

Yes, I'm giggling gleefully! I can't wait!

New Kickstarter Coming Your Way

I was up very late (late for me anyway) finalizing a new Kickstarter. Therefore, my Monday morning didn't start until 5 p.m. But the campaign set-up is done, it's in review with the nice people at Kickstarter, and (fingers-crossed) it should go live sometime this coming weekend.

Actually, this campaign is a Witchstarter, i.e. one of Kickstarter's magic-themed campaigns for the month of October. I'm celebrating the re-release of the Millersburg Magick Mysteries.

This campaign is short and simple. You can get one or more of the three books in e-book and/or trade paperback form. And you have the option to get a beaded sugar skull bookmark handmade by yours truly. 

Short, sweet, and simple. Also a perfect All Hallows Read gift for the young person in your life!

Note: If you supported the Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse  campaign, the download links for last of your digital rewards will be sent out later this week!

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

There were a lot of ballads in the '90's, weren't there?

Roofers and Audio Recording Don't Mix

DH has been looking at solar panels for sometime, and since we needed to replace the roof (from sheer age, not any natural disaster), he deemed it time to get them, However, the shingles and vents needed to be replaced prior to installing the panels. That happened yesterday.

The roofers finished the whole project in one day, but they were cleaning up in the dark. In fear of potential missed nails, I carried Princess Bella from the house to a safe spot where she could relieve herself. DH wanted desperately to move my car back into the driveway. I even more insistently said not until daylight because I want to double-check the drive.

It's not that I didn't trust the roofers. Bless them, they were out there with metal detectors and flashlights trying to find both trash and their equipment after sundown. But being human myself, I know you miss things when you're exhausted as f*ck after a long day.

And sure enough, DH found quite a few nails on the driveway. In all fairness, a majority would have been underneath the roofers' pickup last night. Very easy to miss.

Not to mention, DH and the princess also found tin shears and an air hose for their nail guns in the back yard. He called the project coordinator about the equipment and the full pack of leftover shingles this morning.

But the dang roof is done, which means I can complete recording a bonus audiobook from the Soccer Moms Kickstarter. It's the very last thing I need to deliver, and hopefully I can finish it this weekend!

Making Progress

It's been a year and a half  since I launched my very first Kickstarter. The campaign itself went great, far better than I expected when Brandon Sanderson and his team at Dragonsteel Entertainment plugged Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse.

I really thought I'd have all the rewards out to the backers within six months. Reality conspired against me. Relatives dropped like flies in 2022. Four deaths during the pandemic, but none of causes were remotely related to COVID-19.

But I'm finally closing in on the last six digital deliveries. I just need to uploaded the last two e-books and the first two audiobooks to BookFunnel and finish recording the last audiobook. My fingers are crossed I can send out the download links by the end of this week.

It's been a long road, but I'm excited this journey is almost complete. I'm definitely ready to start on something new!

Something Old and Something New

I got up very late today, so here's a cute video while I work this evening. I saw this and was highly amused. I was in grade school when Lynda Carter debuted as Wonder Woman, and I love this little piece of nostalgia!

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

This came on the radio as Princess Bella and I made a Starbucks run this morning. She got a puppucino, I got a PSL, and we split a couple of breakfast sandwiches. Everyone has their version of a sweet fantasy come true.

When Old Things Come to the Rescue

I solved my Kickstarter picture problem by pulling out my old Windows 8 laptop. The poor thing has been heavily used since I bought it in 2014. It has its quirks, like a touchpad that doesn't always want to work right. And I broke down and ordered a new battery for it if I'm going to have to use it for the next couple of Kickstarters I'm planning.

Yes, Kickstarter does know there's some quirks with picture files and Windows 10 and 11 machines. They posted it was a known issue, which is why I dug out the old laptop.

In the meantime, I'm prepping the last of the files to go out to the backers of the Soccer Moms campaign. I'm hoping to have everything out to them next week.

In the meantime, there's a new chipmunk storing seeds and nuts in the flower bed. He's a lot smaller than Chip. I don't know if he's Chip's offspring, but it's nice to see some wildlife in the backyard again. I think I'll call him Frito.

When Things Don't Work Right

I was about ready to pull out my hair last night while setting up the Kickstarter for the Millersburg Magick Mysteries. For some reason, the darn software won't let me post pictures in the main body of my Story.

Plus, I've been having to wait until after DH and all the neighbors got to bed before I can record for Demons Run at Halloween. Almost everyone around us is retired, so they are using power tools for their automotive work, woodworking, and gardening. The vibrations come through the recording if I do it during the day.

So I'm bebopping along at night, and when I listened to the playback I hear bells. It took me a couple of tries before I realized it was Bella's collar and tags.

No, I cannot lock her out of my office. That would result in incessant crying and barking. However, taking off her collar did work. Yeah, I was seriously overthinking that one. I'm turning into my father-in-law.

I'm going to blame everything on Mercury in retrograde. The little bugger turns direct on Friday afternoon, so thing should start falling into place over the weekend.

Right?

Romance is Back, Baby!

 

Or maybe it's a lot of lust.

I officially stopped taking Tamoxifen on July 6th. My breast cancer tumor was ER+ and PR+, which means the cancer feeds on estrogen and progesterone. Tamoxifen, in computer terms, performs a hard shutdown of my ovaries.

However, the drug has also used for chemical castration of homosexuals and pedophiles for a reason. For five years, I've had no interest in sex whatsoever. I'm lucky DH is more concerned about my health than our sex life.

On the other hand, I felt like a huge part of me was missing. I discovered I couldn't write my Alter Ego romances because to tell a story, I need to feel what the characters are feeling. And that just wasn't happening for the last five years I was on Tamoxifen. I put aside all the Alter Ego stories. I was lucky the books in the Suzan Harden series over the last five years didn't deal with a lot of romance. It's also part of the reason The Books of Apep series sat on the backburner for the last five years.

While Death Goddess Walking is mainly an urban fantasy adventure, there's a subplot using the romantic amnesia trope. That's one of the reasons I waited until I was off the Tamoxifen before I started working on the novel again. I couldn't recapture the feeling Selket and Anpu had for each other in the prologue until this summer.

It's rather nice to reclaim a part of myself that's been missing for so long.

Music I've Been Listening To Lately

The One. The Only. The Sorely Missed.

Weird Week for Narrating

I'm doing something sort of new for me. I'm narrating and recording one of my own stories as an audiobook for the Soccer Moms Kickstarter backers.

It's not like I've never read aloud before. But it's a little different reading a story to my son and reading a story to my backers.

Some professional narrators act out the parts, but I'm not a SAG/AFTRA member. And I know my acting abilities suck. But I do enjoy reading to kids, and that's how I'm looking at this project.

I'm a little nervous because I don't like the sound of my own voice. But then, I don' think anyone does. But I do like the story. I hope the backers like it, too.

Life, The Movies, and Everything

Last week is the first week DH and I haven't gone to the cinema in a month. Instead, we crashed over the holiday weekend. We caught up on a few chores, but we spent most of our time as recliner potatoes and eating good food.

However, we did watch Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves on streaming. It was a rather adorable gender-bender of tropes. Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez were absolutely cute as best friends. We also plowed through the second seasons of Picard and Ted Lasso.

My crimping tool and crimp tubes arrived over the weekend. While Tacky Glue on knots works well, it's not as an attractive finish for beaded bookmarks. I'll be working on those for an hour or two every day until I can get my arts room cleaned out and arranged to my liking. I say "arts" because there's Barbie face painting and hair rerooting in addition to the sewing and beadwork. Plus the stickers I plan to design will be a wacky mix of Dia de Los Muertos and Barbenheimer.

Yes, I already bought the t-shirt above. It's available at TeeFury.com

Why am I going to all this trouble? I need something to do besides writing and crocheting during movies and TV at home in order to keep my mind active and my fingers nimble. I want to be as crochety and active as FIL and the dad of DH's best friend when I hit 90.

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

I'm still listening to SiriusXM's '90's on 9 channel. Things seemed so much more positive in life back then.

Looking Back and Forward

During the pandemic, I wasn't reading. Like a lot of people, I binged TV, but it was older favorite series: Friends, Jem and the Holograms, The Big Bang Theory, etc. All of my friends were suggesting new shows. Finally, DH and I started watching them last week.

We finished the first season of Picard last night, and we started Ted Lasso last night. Do I wish we started these before now? Yes. Do I regret waiting? No.

I don't think I would have enjoyed these shows in the middle of the pandemic. I needed comfort viewing for the emotional support. While Star Trek: The Next Generation is a favorite, I would have lost it over Picard's bittersweet ending of its first season. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I would have had trouble connecting with the characters of Ted Lasso. Not with all the fury and agony swirling around me.

What does this have with the publishing industry?

Readers are the same. They may not be in the right mood to read your stories. I know if I'm feeling down I pull out my copies of Stephanie Bond's novels. When I'm feeling nostalgic, it's my boatload of Star Trek tie-ins, my comics collection, or the Oz series. If I'm super-stressed, then it's romances.

Not everyone is going to love my stories. But more likely they haven't had time to read them yet. And I say that as someone who has roughly 3,000 books. And those aren't counting comics or GK's children's books I'd like to read to my grandchildren if I ever have them.

Otherwise, I may create a new position: rent-a-grandmother.