[As usual, three weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]
Got a small part of the elk herd in the yard today, including at least one two-year-old buck (tall spike horns with a single branching into two points on each side) and a calf born this last spring. About a dozen head, mowing the yard.
Got to listen to the owl last night. She sits up in a tall evergreen right by the driveway and announces her general pique at the universe on nice nights. Or that she’s horny. I don’t speak owl and rarely see her during the day except when she’d pouncing on snakes to feed younglings in the spring.
Living room is full of boxes.
Background: The Fabulous Publisher Babe™ (and me, but I’m the mascot these days) host the Rainier Writers group. Due to circumstances, the name, date, and location have changed, so we’ve moved First Tuesday to First Wednesday and meet at the library these days, but it’s a group of mostly young writers learning what they need to know about Indie.
Last fall, I challenged them all to write for an anthology. Seasonal for Winter, but not Christmas. I would edit it. For most of them, their first ever professional publication, so they had to learn about websites, emails, pen names, and all those other things that go with it.
Eventually, we settled on A Sprinkling of Holiday Magic as the title and it is now available everywhere. More importantly, many of the folks involved either do in-person sales events or want to start, so the group ordered 175 copies. That came out to nine boxes of 20 each. The Babe, of course, is in Portland this week, so I got to go pick them up at the post office yesterday. And tomorrow, I’ll go get all of her copies of How To Wake a Sleeping Princess (Green for less spicy, there is also a Red cover edition.)
Then I get to reload the car with Holiday Magic to deliver those to the group Wednesday. Gonna get my workout this week lifting things.
Finished writing Harri 4 last week. It went dark, but that was by design, as I was in a dark and foul mood and needed something to go with it. As previously noted, goal is dropping all of these spring and now summer next year. All run around 22-24k, so novellas that run hard and fast and don’t sidequest anywhere. Still working on other projects, but my humor has been a bit shitty lately and I figure that it’s easier to just run with it than fight, so put aside bright and cheery things to go slaughter shit (on paper, of course).
Back to Emmett this week. Second book about a professional burglar and his Marxist goat partner, facing off against mobster wizards and greek gods.
As one does.
Will generate a third Belle at some point, so I can drop those as well. Then I don’t know. Don’t have to know. Have to write. Don’t know how to not write at this point.
Dunno what other things to cover, so will wrap this and get back to whatever the hell it was I was doing.
Y’all enjoy October and don’t get sacrificed by any witch covens, ya hear?
shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
—————————-
Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!
If you’re reading the free version (which is published three weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.