A Good Weekend
It was a good weekend, but one that didn’t last quite long enough (not that they ever do). I hadn’t mentioned it here before (I don’t think, anyway – continuity is hard), but Lady Aravan and I have put our house up for sale. That means that every weekend and some weeknights, we have to scrub the house down, gather our beloved pack of pooches, and get out of sight so people can look at the house. We got an offer that we’ve been countering and going back and forth over the last few days, so we’re hopeful that it sells soon. We are looking for a rural farmette in PA, or failing that, just a private location with some acreage. Yes, I hate people that much, and yes, it will be key during a zombie invasion.
Priorities.
Some Random Things
Busy at work (my main blogging time, when waiting for printouts and email responses and whatnot), so still not keeping up here as much as I want. So, I will throw out some things that have been on my mind the last few days.
I got a rejection letter from Permuted Press for The Curse of Troius. They’d requested the manuscript in September of 2010, and they said that it made it to the “final round”, whatever that means. I like the way it sounds, anyway, that it was good enough to get that far at least. It means that I am just shy of being marked for respectability! That’s good enough for me. I mostly appreciate getting the email since it provides me with closure over the whole thing. I don’t have to worry about trying with Legacy Publishing anymore. Read the rest of this entry
The eBook Adventure Begins in Earnest
When I published The Curse of Troius through Createspace, I was excited for two things: I now had an actual printed book that I wrote in my hands, and I could look at Amazon.com and see my book for sale across the country. I felt good about it, to see all those hours and days and months that added up finally resulted in an actual tangible result. I suppose it was a shadowy imitation of the experience of having a child (I wouldn’t know for sure, but in my imagination it is): something unique that only you could have created, now in the world. All I know is, Lady Aravan probably thought I’d lost my mind as I sat holding it, giggling and shaking my head in sheer wonder. Read the rest of this entry
Some Thoughts on Self-Publishing
Recently, a friend and fellow-writer-stymied-by-the-ridiculously-impregnable-world-of-publishing sent me a link to a blog post. Since it was about self-publishing, which I have done and my friend has not, he thought it would be of interest to me.
Boy, was he right. Read the rest of this entry
Adventures in Cooking
I am not a foodie in the food snob sense, but I do love food, no question. I’ll try anything at least once – and this after a childhood so picky that my name might as well have been “No Potatoes and No Beans”, my response whenever I was asked what I wanted for dinner – and I’ve experimented a lot more in last 6 months, making hummus and homemade mayo and stuff like that. This past week, though, I did some pretty cool stuff that I ended up really happy with. Read the rest of this entry
Choose Your Own Adventure – My Gateway Drug
I just read an article on Slate about the beloved Choose Your Own Adventure series of books, and it made me think about those days of school book fairs and curling up in my room with the latest one, Forbidden Castle or Deadwood City. I was probably 8 when I got my first one, and it was like the first hit of heroin for me. I suddenly had the power to choose where a narrative went – my decisions suddenly mattered. What was going to happen to me? It was intoxicating. Read the rest of this entry
The Lure of the Apocalypse
Imagine: in an instant, all your credit card debt is wiped away. School loans? Gone. The mortgage or rent payment is no longer an issue. That job you schlep to with the boss that by rights shouldn’t be qualified to flip burgers is a thing of the past, its entire purpose dissolved and rendered meaningless. No more homework, or working nights and weekends, or being burdened with the thousand trivial idiocies that consume every second of our lives, from political bullshit to scare-tactic news to nosy neighbors and irritating phone calls. Welcome to the Apocalypse. Read the rest of this entry
Tracing My Bongo Burgers: A Day on the Farm, Part 6
This series of posts describes my recent trip to Bobolink Dairy Farm. I decided to break it into chunks because I apparently have a lot to say about it. Today’s entry finishes up the visit.
With our cheese in its molds, it was time to turn our minds to lunch. We were having pizza, cooked in Bobolink’s brick-oven (which you can monitor the temperature of and watch a webcam of from their website – which is pretty cool, and reminds me of a friend that used to have one installed in his Coke machine). In the episode of No Reservations that visited the farm, Jonathan and Nina made an amazing-looking pizza with veal and other toppings. He tells that ever since, people have come in asking for pizza. They don’t make them to sell; the cost would have to be too high, he tells us. The only way to get one is to bring a camera crew, he jokes – but luckily for us, if you take the cheese-making class, you get one as well. Read the rest of this entry
Winter in Derenemyn 