Got You!

The major news in my life is that after months of attempting to trap this little scamp, I finally succeeded!

Probably already pregnant again...

I'm glad I got her when I did because it's no fun sitting around for hours in this heat. (It was over 100 F today.)

She has a spay appointment on Wednesday. Until then, she is staying in a huge dog crate in my bedroom.

I've kept other feral cats using this arrangement. Normally, I can clean the litter box and swap in fresh food and water while the cat stays as far away from me as possible. This girl ran toward me and almost made it out the cage door this evening. I might have to work on adding a mid-cage barrier so I can safely block her in the back while I clean.

Six more days. I can handle six more days.

Other Foster Stuff

Rooster, the black kitten I trapped in the alley a couple weeks ago (and the feral girl's son), has gone back to the shelter to get neutered and adopted. He's a good boy.

Rooster, the alarm clock with no snooze button

Eight of the remaining 13 kittens should be going back next week. Theoretically, that should mean the bathroom will be free, but the shelter is overflowing with kittens who need fostered at the moment, so I'll probably end up coming home with a new bunch. The other five kittens have a date two weeks after that. But plans often shift

Nimbus is technically done with his FIP treatment, but he's going to be a difficult adoption and — as mentioned previously — there's no space at the shelter. So he'll stay here and babysit kittens for a while.

Francis Noodle has figured out how to get into the recording booth, which I'm not super happy about since he poops involuntarily and that closet has a yoga mat to keep the floor from echoing. But if I lock him in the big dog crate when he's not being watched, he has a tantrum and spills his food and water. It's a good thing he's so cute. (As I write this, he's trying to catch a fly in the office and I'm probably going to hell for laughing at the cat who can't walk very well throwing himself around the room.)

Writing Stuff

I have finished the initial draft of the starfish-shifter murder mystery short story ("Sleeping with the Fishes") that will be going out to my Patreon supporters in the next day or two. I have written the plan for revisions for the next Penelope Standing book, and I'll set up the pre-order this week so I can put a link in the next newsletter. And then I'll get back to writing the next Floodmouth book.

BUT ALSO! The 2026 Mysterious Murders Contest is open for submissions! This year, they are looking for locked room murder mysteries. Stories need to be in English, under 3k words, and not produced by AI. There's no entry fee and the prize amounts are huge. Seriously. I won first prize last year. It's an amazing event.

Writing to Market... or Not

Okay, so one of my critique partners is writing a wolf-shifter romance series (under a pen name) and all that marketing advice just... works... when you're writing in a popular genre. I am happy for her and I can't wait for her income to skyrocket.

I'll probably never see that kind of monetary success. I like the books I write and there are more than a few people who buy every book the second I release it, but I'm unlikely to ever make it onto the bestseller lists. That's because the Venn diagram of books the majority of people want to read and books that I want to write are two separate circles. Even when I try, things go completely off the rails.

For example: Instead of a wolf-shifter romance, I'm writing a murder mystery involving a starfish-shifter. Because the idea of chopping up a starfish shifter and throwing the pieces overboard only to have multiple clones of the shifter come out of the ocean later is hilarious! But it's not really what the wolf-shifter romance crowd is looking for.

It's okay. I may have to find a day job at some point, but at least I keep myself amused.

In other writing/marketing news, Jeanne over on the Necromancy Never Pays blog (great name!) wrote a lovely review of The Portal Storms series.

Foster Updates

I finally trapped the black kitten in the alley over the weekend. Yay! His mom remains at large, but I have plans... Anyhow, I have named the little boy Rooster because he is an alarm clock with no snooze button. He starts crying about being alone the minute the sky lightens. He has another week of quarantine, so apparently I'm getting up at 5:30 AM every day now.

The eight elemental kittens moved into the room with Nimbus (who loves the kittens), and they are all on the kitten cam. So now I have a new office cat, Francis Noodle. He, like Nimbus and Lulu, has presumptive FIP and has difficulty walking. Hopefully he will improve during his stay here.

Isn't he a gorgeous boy?

Another Battalion in the Kitten Army

Before I forget!

I uploaded the final segment of season one of the Witches Advice Column that Maria Schneider and I did. Enjoy!

(I'll update the graphics when I start working on season two.)

Bursting at the Seams

There's one more reason the shelter calls me directly to take kittens — I only live a few miles away. There are foster homes all over the county, but for some that means a 45 minute drive.

Anyhow, that explains why I picked up kittens #9-13 on Saturday. They came in right before the shelter closed for a holiday weekend, and I was nearby. Luckily, these guys are easy. They're weaned, and their upper respiratory gunk is mild. The biggest issue is going to be socialization — three of the five run and hide when I appear — but my secret weapon (Elisabeth) is making extra trips to my house to help.

The other problem is that I need to come up with five more names. I really need to start making lists when it's not kitten season. Sleep deprivation makes it hard to be creative.

Also present in the house:

Little blind kitten Sunburst, who is almost finished with quarantine. She is now eating solid food with the aid of the emotional support spoon, so maybe she'll be completely weaned in the next week.

The seven elementals who are eating some food but also going through eight bottles of formula every day. They might also be weaned within a week.

Raindrop and Foghorn

Skylark, Cloudberry, Stardew, Moonshine, and Mistbow

And finally, Nimbus. He's sad because Lulu went back to the shelter for adoption last week. I may let him hang out with the elementals because he shouldn't be infectious and he loves being around other cats.

And now? 

With a house full of foster kittens, what am I doing at this very moment in time?

Yes, that's right, I'm trying to get MORE kittens. Or rather, one kitten and its mom.

After not seeing any kittens for five weeks, I'd come to the conclusion that none of the babies had survived. But then last night I saw a little black kitten when I was returning from a walk. And this morning mom and that black kitten walked by while I was sitting here. So it's back to hanging out in the alley watching the trap. At least the weather is nice enough.

"Sleep is for the Weak"

(The title is a direct quote from fellow foster mom Jennifer. Yes, it was sarcasm.)

Life stuff

What's better than two tiny kittens? Seven tiny kittens!

(Note: this does not actually scale.)

Here are the other five. They all still need names.

Yes, after a sleep-deprived weekend with the previously mentioned duo (code names: Stardew and Moonshine), I picked up another five who are just a couple days younger. Everyone is now about two weeks old, so feedings have moved from every two hours to every three hours, which is a huge improvement.

Would I still kill someone to get an uninterrupted night's sleep? On the advice of my lawyer, I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that it might incriminate me.

Writing stuff

I have a new book coming out on the 16th! Woohoo!

The Dragon's Librarian and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that I've written for my Patreon supporters over the last few years. What kind of stories, you ask?

• A Treasure of Stars (retired space pirates save the day!)
• Watching Blue Skies with the Parcheesi Gang (be careful of the Fae)
• Gestures (a Cupid murder mystery)
• The Dragon's Librarian (it's not wise to steal anything from a dragon)
• Butterflies (sometimes bad luck is just a clue there's a problem)
• Ten Clues Your Rice Cooker is Haunted by Your Great-Grandmother's Ghost
• Mayday (paranormal plants!)
• Guerrilla Gardening with the Ancient Oak Protection Society (fighting back against the HOA)
• Seeking Pemberley (Perhaps Pride & Prejudice might save your life)
• Game of Crones: an Advice Column for Spellcasters
• Preparing for Winter with Special Guest Baba Yaga
• Aunt Hazel’s Notes to the Bride on the Occasion of the First Hydran-Human Wedding
• Working the Night Shift at Lucky Eddie's 24-Hour Laundromat (Knitting and aliens!)
• and a whole bunch more!

It's in Kobo Plus and should also be available from libraries. Or, you can order it here: https://books.tmbaumgartner.com/DragonsLibrarian

More Fun Writing Stuff

Maria Schneider and I did an audio collaboration of the Witches Advice Column recently, and I've chopped things up and made them into YouTube shorts. I'll add more to the playlist as I have time, but here is the first one:

These columns are a lot of fun — give it a listen!

Yeah, It's My Life Now

What have I been up to lately? Not sleeping, that's for sure!

The disaster kittens went off to the SPCA, and then I picked up this baby:

His front legs were messed up — I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but I suspect trauma, maybe caused by the placenta getting tangled up. So I had him for a couple of days until he went off to a rescue group that has cats with wonky legs. (Yes, there's a rescue niche for everything.)

He was almost immediately replaced by these two:

They were about two days old when I got them, which means I've been feeding them every two hours (give or take) around the clock. After latching onto the bottle beautifully for the first day, the tabby girl has since decided she doesn't like the bottle anymore, so now she's getting tube-fed. Because not eating isn't an option when you're a few days old.

And, of course, I have already splattered formula everywhere when the tube came off the syringe while I was feeding her.

Anyhow... Have I released the fun audio that Maria Schneider and I did recently? No. Have I uploaded my short story collection to all the retailers yet? No. Have I even finished writing the second digital bonus for my Patreon supporters? Also no.

But someday soon I'm going to get a full night of sleep, and then — watch out world!

Disaster Kittens

Usually, fostering for the county shelter means that during kitten season (roughly March - November), the foster coordinator will send out an email to the group possibly multiple times during the day with a list of kittens that need foster homes. If you have space and energy, you respond to the email and that's how you end up with kittens.

In addition to those messages, I also get emails sent just to me when:

1. They have a kitten that is very sick and they want to give it a chance but there's a high likelihood it will not make it, or
2. They have a kitten with injuries/illness that people viscerally react to.

It's usually the former, but every once in a while it's the latter.

Saying my current fosters have eye issues is an understatement of epic proportions. The girls are about four weeks old and they have one good eye between the two of them. The other three eyes are kind of horrifying. Obviously they need surgery to remove them, but that will have to wait until they are big enough to withstand it.

They will be transferred to the SPCA (which is set up to handle such cases) on Thursday, but in the meantime I have given them temporary names. The little one is Titanic (it's aspirational!) and her big sister is Hindenburg.

(This is probably the only picture I'll ever have of them, and even this required some editing with the clone tool to hide Hindenburg's right eye which really shouldn't be visible from this angle but absolutely was.) 

It's Two Traps!

As mentioned before, I borrowed a drop trap to catch the pregnant feral in order to get her spayed and stop the kitten factory in the alley. (The cat my neighbors had trapped Thursday night — born late last year — was spayed on Wednesday, and she had an early pregnancy with five fetuses, so one disaster averted!)

So for a week, I sat out in the alley a few hours around dawn and dusk, waiting for her to show up. Her Wednesday appointment came and went without me seeing her at all. The shelter said I could bring her in Friday if I could catch her.

And I sat and waited. And sat and waited.

(I did get an inexpensive Adirondack-style chair which has a cup/phone/glasses holders and is pretty comfortable, so at least there's that. I've been getting a lot of writing done while sitting there.)

Thursday morning, I was on the phone with a friend, not even paying attention to the trap when I happened to glance over and there was something inside. (I wasn't wearing my glasses. Everything was fuzzy.)

Lo and behold...

Except... she wasn't pregnant. I thought I'd caught a different cat, but then I realized she was lactating. So right cat, wrong time to catch her. Since I had no idea where her kittens were, I had to let her go again.

Sigh.

Later that morning, I was kicking myself for not knocking on a few doors to see if I could find her kittens while I had her in the trap. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Anyhow, I'll wait a month and then work on trapping the entire family. The kittens will get socialized and adopted out and mom will get spayed.

Foster Updates

No changes in the house. Gnocchi is regrowing hair, Lulu is doing great, and Nimbus still can't decide whether to hiss or purr. 

It's a Trap!

 Foster Updates

Gnocchi is still here, but I haven't noticed any new bald spots in a week and she's regrowing hair on the old ones. We've started the long process of running weekly cultures until she's had two negative results in a row, at which point she will be declared cured.

Lulu is doing great! She is just here to finish the full 84 days of FIP medication. Look how high she can jump now:

I also have a second FIP cat, Nimbus, in my bedroom. He is both afraid of people and loves to be brushed and stroked, so there is often a 30-second transition from hissing to purring. We'll be working on socialization while waiting for his meds to work.

Those are the cats currently in the house.

But outside...

It's a Trap!

On Wednesday, I noticed a suspiciously rotund cat squeeze through the fence into my neighbor's yard, so I texted her the "fat or pregnant?" question and she responded "pregnant".

(All the cats that hang out in my yard are fixed. I don't feed any outside cats. The neighbor behind me feeds, but she's been working on getting everyone fixed for the last four years. I thought we had gotten everyone spayed last fall, but apparently there are still two — the one I saw and her daughter.)

I asked the foster coordinator if I could get the soon-to-arrive kittens into the foster program, and she offered me a spot on the spay schedule Friday (if I could catch her by then) or Wednesday (if I had better luck over the weekend).

So last night I was sitting in my car, avoiding the mosquitos, while I watched the baited trap in the alley. No luck, though I started documenting the other cats so I know who is around. But my neighbors trapped the younger female cat, who is almost certainly pregnant even if she's not as big yet.

I had to bring the trapped cat to the shelter at 8am this morning, so I decided to try one more time to catch the super-pregnant cat. The trap was baited, the sun was rising, and I was sitting in my car watching.

Super-pregnant mom walked over the the trap, sat down next to it, and proceeded to stare at me for 30 minutes. Then she stood up and waddled away.

I am borrowing a drop trap.

That's a Wrap

We have survived Thingadailies 2026!

This episode brought to you by Hot Zotz

On my way home from the writing/reading/knitting group at the local coffee shop, I stopped by Ye Old Time Pharmacy to see if they had hypertonic saline. They did not, but they did have some fascinating candy that I'd never had before.

Hot Zotz Fiery Cinnamon Fizz. They aren't all that hot (maybe they are for Italians?), but they do fizz. They're pretty tasty and interesting.

Foster kitten update

Gnocchi just made her bald spot bigger. Ugh!

Lulu seems to be weaker in the hind end this evening. She's playing and running around, but she looks like a low rider with her back legs bent. I stopped the B-vitamins two days ago because I can think of no reason she would still be deficient, but I swear I'm going to restart them tomorrow if she's not better. At this point, it may just be magic.

The Maggot Muffins (Lucy & Nova) are doing great. They got to be the star of the show tonight. I fear there is not much going on in Nova's head, but she's very sweet.

AITA for my response after my parents destroyed my handmade Christmas presents to my siblings?

What did I learn during Thingadailies?

Mostly I learned how to use iMovie, which is useful. I also learned a bit about the vector side of Affinity. And I learned my foster cats are trying to make me tear my hair out.

My goals for February March (ha, good catch, Maria!) are to increase my writing output to 700+ words per day and maybe join a gym. We shall see...

Technically Not Spring

It's the penultimate day of Thingadailies! Woohoo!

Everything is growing

I spent a chunk of the day weeding, and I cleared space along the fence line of the neighbors who will complain if I don't. I still have a bunch of that horrible sticky weed in the back, and some of it is flowering, so I need to get rid of the rest of it in the next couple days or it's going to reseed. (On the other hand, it does seem to crowd out the bindweed, so I have to decide which one I hate more.)

I also helped my other neighbor upload a new copy of his novel, with an important typo fixed. I suspect I will be doing that every so often, but I don't think he has the computer skills to do this without help.

Between that and trying to finish this short story (which is almost done), I forgot to go to the shelter to pick up the special food the Maggot Muffins are eating. Tomorrow is another day.

Foster updates

Gnocchi remains herself. She kneaded my thigh so hard she left a bruise.

Lulu is about the same. I think she may have some pain in her hind end when she does certain moves, because she jumped down from my lap this morning and then hid behind the door. Later, she played with all her toys, so the pain seems to have been temporary.

Lucy & Nova continue to get into things they shouldn't. Nova's butt seems better maybe? I haven't needed to change the towels in the last 24 hours, which is a win. With any luck, she'll heal all the way and the girls can go off to be adopted before the wave of small kittens blows into town.

AITA for refusing to wear the engagement ring my fiancé made?

I cropped myself out entirely. Lulu deserves to be the star of the show.

Against the Rules

It's day 26 of Thingadailies!

That's against the rules

Lucy & Nova (aka, the Maggot Muffins) realized they could jump on the counter in the bathroom where they are staying, so nothing is safe anymore. I came back from the library makerspace this afternoon and they had knocked the scissors on the floor. No playing with scissors! Bad kittens!

AITA for taking advantage of confusion in cafe names to attract business?

Today's AITA question was a long one and I had to speed up the video a bit. Meh. If I had to do it again, I'd cut some text out of the question. It doesn't sound terrible, but it's obviously sped up. Live and learn.

Daal, Daal as Far as the Eye Can See

It's day 25 of Thingadailies! (That's great, but that also means I only have three days to finish writing, edit, and post a short story for my Patreon supporters. I guess I should figure out how it ends...)

So Much Daal

As you can guess, I made daal this evening. A lot of daal. I'll be eating this for a week, which would be fine if it tasted better, but it's just sort of okay. My only hope is that it will improve after spending a day in the refrigerator. It might. Some food is better the next day.

Foster Updates

We're in a holding pattern. I'm waiting on the results for Gnocchi, Lulu is about the same, and the Maggot Muffins are adorable and slightly less poopy. I need to run a load of laundry for them.

AITA for refusing to pay for an exterminator when a spooky spell attracted spiders to my friend's house?

It's weird that creating a YouTube short is the easiest of all options...

When in Doubt, Add a Cat

It's day 24 of Thingadailies, and I'm feeling a little tapped out. So tonight's thing is just a minor modification of what I had before. And that's okay.

But first, the foster updates

Gnocchi went in today to have the shelter vet look at her bald spot. The good news is that everyone agrees that it does not look like ringworm. But just in case, they sent of samples to the lab. With any luck, this won't scare the adopters away. Oh, and the funniest thing was she was perfectly behaved during her exam after I warned them she would probably require sedation.

Lulu seems a little better today. I need to find the second camera and put it in that room because every time I open the door I see her sitting on the heating pad, but when I'm in my office next door, I keep hearing her bang on the closet door. The ping pong ball has mysteriously moved behind the couch a couple times today. Fingers crossed she keeps improving.

The Maggot Muffins remain ridiculously cute while generating piles of laundry.

When in doubt, add a cat

I wanted to see what adding an animal to the cover would do, so I used the cat brush. (Yes, it's an actual brush type in Affinity that adds a cat and a ball of yarn.)

It not the right thing, but it adds a needed touch of chaos to the picture. I'll keep looking at ways to add animals to the vector covers...

Puppy

It's day 23 of Thingadailies!

Foster Updates

Not much change from yesterday for anyone. I did convince Lulu to eat a little tonight, but there's still something not right about her. If she's not doing well in the morning, I'll see if I can bring her in with Gnocchi for an expert opinion (or at least drugs to make her comfortable while we figure out what's going on...)

Puppy Vectors

Today I wanted to see how hard it would be to convert a real life image into vectors. That way I wouldn't have to either create or purchase vector images, especially for things I already have pictures of. I don't mind purchasing vector assets, but it becomes a problem when they aren't all in the same style. If I create the vector assets, I can control that.

This was the picture I was playing with, a puppy named Taylor that I drove over to Sacramento last year:

So, how hard is it to vectorize an image? Not hard at all, but... It defaults to breaking it down to so many tiny vectors that it looks like a raster image, so if you put it in a book cover with a bunch of vector objects, it looks like a bad photoshop job. The image below is technically a vector, but it might as well be a raster image.

What I really wanted was a more simplified version of the puppy. I feel like there's probably an easy way to do this, but I haven't quite figured it out.

I ended up going over to GIMP and choosing Image->Mode->Indexed..., which will create a palette with however many colors you specify. Then I pulled that image with fewer colors into Affinity and vectorized it using Vector->Image Trace...

There are two settings in Image Trace which control how exact a copy it will try to make. I tweaked the dials until I could get something recognizable while also being simplified. I also didn't try to clean anything up afterward, so they could probably be improved.

Results

10-color palette:

12-color palette:

16-color palette:

32-color palette:

I think 10 lost definition of the nose, and 32 looked too close to a photo. I could probably live with either 12 (after some cleanup) or 16.

Anyhow, it was an interesting exercise, and probably the real message is that you should pay artists. But this is fun, too, and I can probably get reasonably results if I spend some time on it.

More Vector Fun

It's day 22 of Thingadailies!

More Vector Fun

I didn't feel like recording another video, so I went back to playing with covers.

I copied book one to use as the template and then started changing things for book two. There are still things I want to tweak, and I need more objects of the table, but the branding is strong.

This is where I'm at right now:

It's a work in progress...

Foster Updates

Gnocchi met with the people interested in adopting her — it went about as well as it could, given that we had five people crammed in my office. She hung out on the edges and allowed herself to be brushed, and then after thirty minutes deliberately walked over and climbed into her cave bed. I think they're going to adopt her as long as the vet appoint on Tuesday (because of her weird bald spot) doesn't turn up anything strange.

Lucy and Nova, the Maggot Muffins, are doing well. Nova is still kind of leaking poop, which isn't great, but hopefully things will go back to normal at some point soon. In the meantime, they're eating and playing and just generally being cute.

Lulu has seemed a bit off for the last day, and I'm trying not to panic. She got vaccinated Thursday afternoon, so maybe that's part of it? I don't think she ate anything today. This cat! I need her to be healthy, dangit!

Saturday Morning

It's day 21 of Thingadailies! (We may make it to the end of the month after all...)

Saturday morning is reserved for hanging out with friends at Morgan's Mill, my local coffee shop. They have a heated patio, which is great. This group started as a writing group, and I (and a few other people) still write, but some mornings the knitters outnumber us. It's a really nice way to finish up the week.

On the walk there and back, I started the audiobook of Null Witch by Maria Schneider. I've read the book before, so I knew I'd like it, but the narrator absolutely knocked it out of the park. Well done!

Oh, and it was newsletter day! If you aren't into signing up for newsletters (which I totally get), here's what it looked like: https://eomail5.com/web-version?p=cdab30d2-0aea-11f1-8a77-635443846407&pt=campaign&t=1771689994&s=32b53c6c72c167519018601532aed5af4848646abc19a13038168417283962a2

(Yes, it's technically my author newsletter, but the fosters tend to get more space than book stuff. We all know I'm terrible at marketing my books, but look at the kittens!)

Speaking of kittens, it's time for me to go clean up the poop twins and start another load of laundry, so I'll leave you with yet another AITA.

AITA for telling my in-laws to get over it when they complained about my vampire hunter Halloween costume?

I figured out how to fix some of the volume issues I've been having. I guess I really ought to record the AITA in the audio booth and edit with the real editing software, but that's a pain.

I Think It Was a Cabbage

It's day 20 of Thingadailies!

First, some silliness

My Mastodon feed is 80% cat pictures, but of the text, a significant portion is in Spanish (a language I'd like to speak) or German (a language I spoke 37 years ago and would like to refresh). Occasionally, other things get boosted onto my feed by people I follow.

(Mastodon has no algorithm — it shows you exactly what you asked to see, in chronological order, which seems like it shouldn't be as innovative as it apparently is.)

Today, I saw a post in French with a picture of bird legs coming out of a hole in a metal sheet. I was curious, so I clicked on the handy LibreTranslate link, and it included this section:

Original: 

Elle était trapue avec une tête ronde donc je pense que c'était une chouette, je sais pas si quelqu'un qui s'y connait en rapaces aurait une idée plus précise ?

Translation:

She was a trap with a round head so I think it was a cabbage, I don't know if anyone who knows about it in raptors would have a more accurate idea?

That's just a great sentence. She was a trap with a round head so I think it was a cabbage! That image will set your mind free.

(In case you're curious, it was a tawny owl.)

Foster news

Lucy is doing great. Nova is doing well except for her poopiness, which led to both Nova and Lucy getting bathed this morning. I did one load of laundry today and I'll probably run another in the morning.

Lulu climbed or jumped up on the couch today. Amazing girl!

Gnocchi continues to have a bald spot. It really doesn't look like ringworm — maybe she had a mosquito bite? Why couldn't this have happened two weeks ago? Oh well.

AITA for refusing to give up my job at a vampire club?

Geography

It's day 19 of Thingadailies! That means we have less than ten left. Woohoo!

As usual with the foster duties, there was a plan and then the plan changed. (That isn't a criticism of any shelter employee — there are a zillion things happening every day and plans need to be flexible.)

Nova's spay incision didn't need surgery, so she was ready to come home earlier than originally stated. So I dropped off Lulu along with enough meds to get her to Saturday afternoon, which was when I was supposed to pick her up. But that turned into Sunday afternoon, which was okay because they had enough of her drugs at the shelter. But then, someone decided that Lulu actually didn't need x-rays after all (which was kind of what I was hinting at yesterday when I sent video of her playing), so I drove back and picked her up again.

To recap: Gnocchi is here, Lulu is here, and Nova and Lucy are together again. (Also, Gnocchi has a bald spot on her forehead and it looks more like she scraped her head on something and not ringworm, but I will lose my mind if I'm wrong. I'm not sure how she would have picked up ringworm in the past six weeks though, so I'm thinking good thoughts and moving on with my life.)

Today I realized something about screen geography on YouTube shorts: The bottom 15% of the screen is covered by the video title/description and the controls, so if you put a title down there, it's impossible to read. Did I go back and fix it and re-upload? No, I did not. That's a lesson for future Theresa.

Anyhow, yes, it's another AITA Floodmouth Edition.

Now it's time to finish up my newsletter!

Just Keep Swimming

Welcome to day 18 of Thingadailies!

Yes, it's time for another episode of AITA, because this is quick and easy (the questions have already been written) and I haven't had the time to mess around with covers again.

Apparently I shall just keep banging my head against this until I improve.

But first, foster updates!

Gnocchi is still in my office and you can hear her purring as I was reading the AITA question.

Lulu is doing really well. She goes back to the shelter tomorrow for a couple days for x-rays that they scheduled last week. (The shelter can't take x-rays, so Lulu will be going home with a vet tech on Thursday evening, going with the tech to her other job where the x-rays will be taken, and then come back to the shelter on Saturday at which point I will pick her up again. Lots of traveling.)

Only one of the new foster kittens (Lucy) came home with me today. The other kitten (Nova) was spayed yesterday and her incision didn't look great today, so they are going to fix that tomorrow and I'll pick her up in the afternoon. In the meantime, poor Lucy has spent most of the afternoon crying because she's never been alone before.

And now onto the video!

(Once again, the foster kitten is the star of the show.)

Tada!

Welcome to day 17 of Thingadailies.

I'm tempted to say that these videos will continue until I'm comfortable speaking on camera, but clearly that is not on the horizon and I don't really want to extend Thingadailies into next year. Maybe I should write out a script or something. I don't know.

Anyhow, my breakthrough of the day was adding an image of my book in the editing stage. So now I don't have to hold it up and actually get it on screen. Progress!

Lulu is obviously the star of the show.

Now that Lulu is in the spare room, I took the time today to disinfect the bathroom where she'd been staying previously because... two more teenage cats are supposed to show up tomorrow! They just need to fix their GI issues and then they'll be off for adoption.

(I didn't take the 1-day-old kittens in terrible shape — I don't have an incubator, so other fosters are better equipped to give those guys the best shot at survival.)

Comfortable

Welcome back to day 16 of Thingadailies!

Today I did another AITA episode. Production went faster this time because things always go faster the second time. Someday I will be comfortable talking on camera, but today was not that day.

The good news is that Lulu looks really good. She moved into the larger room today, so she has more room to move around and play.

Tomorrow may be another short like today, or I might get back to book covers. We shall see!

Shorts

Welcome to day 15 of Thingadailies!

My goal today was to figure out how to create a YouTube short — without having to install an app on my phone. Luckily, it wasn't hard. You just need two things: the video has to be vertical (not landscape), and it has to be under three minutes.

The Mighty Gnocchi helped me out and we managed to produce a short. As always, there was a learning curve, and I had to do a couple things twice, but the whole thing is less than three minutes, so it still didn't take terribly long.

Do I want to become a YouTube star? Absolutely not. (Unless it will sell a bunch of books — then maybe, but there are easier ways to market.) I am trying to get a little more comfortable on camera. (Amazing lack of eye contact, T!)

Anyhow, enjoy.

Lulu is doing well, and I'm actually going to go clean the spare room (which has ear cleaner all over the walls from when Mister was there) so she can move into a bigger space.

Click!

Welcome to day 14 of Thingadailies!

Remember back on day 2 when I created a video that was definitely not going to convince anyone to adopt my foster cat Gnocchi? Back then I said I'd create a real Gnocchi video someday.

Today is that day. Gnocchi currently has three tricks (touch, kennel, and sit). During my first attempt at filming, I screwed up and filmed all the spaces in between when I wanted to film. Yeah, one of us in this video is competent, and it ain't me.

Therefore, much of this footage is the second time I was asking Gnocchi to do these things within 15 minutes. Luckily, she really likes treats.

She has potential adopters coming to see her next weekend. Fingers crossed that works out!

Ephemera

Welcome to day 13 of Thingadailies.

Call Him Mister Adopted!

Yes, Mister has been adopted from the shelter. It took one day longer than I thought it would, but that can only be because nobody walked through the adoption center yesterday. How could someone not love this goofball?

In other news, potential adopters may be coming by to meet Gnocchi! I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high since we haven't yet scheduled a time, but it's still exciting.

Ephemera

The thing for the day is an audio recording of my short story, Ephemera.

I haven't touched my recording equipment since I finished the Shift Happens audiobook. So it took a bit to get back into the swing of things when recording this short story. (Yes, I read almost half the story before I noticed it was recording from the wrong input. It defaults to my laptop's built-in microphone, which is never the one I want to use. I really wish Audacity had a way of disabling input and output choices.)

Anyhow, now I remember how many irritating noises I make when speaking. How does anyone ever talk to me? Also, I couldn't get Audacity to talk to my Bose headphones when I was editing. I remember having that problem before, but I think I could sometimes get them working again. Not today, though.

It wasn't until I finished throwing an image onto it in iMovie that I remembered Jamie saying she creates a short clip in Canva and has it repeat. Oh well. It's late and I still need to add words to the current cozy, so this will have to do.

Onward!

Names

It's day...(checks calendar) 12 of Thingadailies!

Foster Updates

Gnocchi remains her lovely, obnoxious self. Lulu has continued to improve and was playing quite a bit this morning. You can still see the extra effort when she needs to use her hind end, but she's throwing herself around with a lot of energy!

Yay, Lulu!

Names

Today is Thursday, which is the day to spend a couple hours at the library's makerspace with my friend Teresa. I decided to make name cards for my longer term fosters using the Silhouette Cameo. The cards will go on the doors to their rooms as soon as I find my tape.

The angle I used to take the pictures is weird because I used reflective cardstock and it is hard to photograph.

I like how they turned out.

Maybe there will be audio work tomorrow...

Moving On

It's day 11 of Thingadailies!

Playing

Not the greatest video, but Lulu has been playing with her toys today. Here she is playing with a ping pong ball. She's still a little wobbly, but she gets stronger every day.

Moving On

You can tell I'm getting bored with the tutorial because now I'm all "yeah, yeah, add a butterfly, make it glow, whatever." That's about as much effort as I was willing to put into it. So I'm calling the tutorial finished, even though I skipped a bunch of stuff.

Tomorrow will be... something different. Possibly something of even lower effort because I'm taking care of a friend's cats and I have a critique group meeting in the evening. (Plus caring for my two fosters.)

Speaking of critiques... I have about 10k left to read, and then I need to come up with something coherent to say that is potentially helpful to the author. That can be challenging when we're outside of genres I normally read, so I'll probably focus on pacing and world building.

Leaves

Oh hey, it's already day 10 of Thingadailies!

Kitten Cam

Much of my day was spent driving to the shelter. Lovable goofball Mister has gone back to be neutered and adopted.

Lulu had a vet appointment and the current recommendation is to stay the course. I moved the kitten cam to her room this evening, which makes it easier for me to monitor her.

Will I regret having the kitten cam on the ill cat? Probably. I sometimes get those people who are leaving comments in the chat in the middle of the night telling me that some (absolutely healthy) kitten is dying. (They've always been fine.) It's that weird internet stranger thing where people with no qualifications love to diagnose animals. Very odd. Those people will probably lose their minds when they see Lulu staggering around.

Anyhow, here's another picture of handsome Mister and his Resting Astonished Face.

Leaves

Today I added the leaves around the base of the bubble. I'm skipping some of the background trees, though I may add the flowers towering over the bubble to give it a sense of size. Or I might just call it quits because I've learned the things I need to learn.

There's one thing I've run into a few times and I suspect it's a feature, but I don't know what it does or why it sometimes appears. I also don't know how to describe it, so I may never learn unless I run across someone who really knows Affinity.

Anyhow, I still need to read 34k of this 60k gothic horror manuscript that we're critiquing on Thursday, so I should go. I may actually record a video tomorrow...

Selections

Welcome to day 9 of Thingadailies

Mister Graduates!

Mister is going back to the shelter tomorrow for surgery and adoption, so I took pictures this afternoon. This cat is ridiculously photogenic and sweet.

In other foster news, Lulu went into a nosedive yesterday afternoon, and honestly, if it hadn't been Sunday night, I probably would have called the shelter and told them it was time to let her go. She could no longer walk, and she was trying to eat but couldn't stay upright long enough to do so. She dragged herself next to the litter box to pee, but couldn't get inside the box so she went on the pee pad next to it.

But it was Sunday night and I didn't think she was in so much pain that it was worth driving to the university, so I gave her some B vitamins just in case her neuro signs and weakness were related to that, and then left her to relax on the heating pad for the night.

When I woke up this morning, I half expected her to have passed away during the night, but nope! She was able to get up and walk again, and she ate most of the food I'd left for her.

Was it the B vitamins? Are the meds finally kicking in? Or was it just random luck? I honestly have no idea. I'm still not super optimistic about her long-term outcome, but she looks a lot better today. (And yes, I will be continuing the B vitamin supplementation — if her problem is thiamine deficiency, that's fixable.)

Selections

I continued the tutorial today.

Key learnings in Affinity 3:

• Hit z to zoom in and out with the mouse, and z again to return to what you were doing
• Hit h to pan with the mouse, and h again to return to the previous task
• Once you've used the pen tool to mark all the nodes when you are cutting something out, there's a button at the top to actually make the selection. (We won't talk about how long it took me to figure this out...)
• But before you hit that button, holding command will switch the tool into node-edit mode and you can refine your selection.

I'm still getting used to the dynamic layer adjustments. GIMP doesn't have that (I think?), so I'm having to change how I think about things.

All this is to say I cut out the girl and added her to the bubble and then added some highlights and shadows. My version isn't as good as the tutorial, but I don't have that level of patience.

That gets me to about 7:30 minutes in the 20 minute tutorial.

Other Stuff

I added 600+ words to the cozy today (which is my current daily goal). And now it's time to medicate everyone and also read this 60k gothic horror for my critique group on Thursday. See you tomorrow!

Bubble

Welcome to day 8 of Thingadailies!

Short one today because Lulu's neurological symptoms seem to be worse this evening and I need to go see what I can do for her.

I'm about 4:25 minutes into the tutorial I started yesterday, and the big thing I've learned is that when you add a filter, you have to move it into the layer or it applies it to the whole project. (I think? I feel like I'm missing something with the way things default.)

Anyhow, I added a bubble and then added ground inside, except it looks like it's a continuation of the background because I didn't place it in a good spot. Meh. Live and learn.

I could do this a lot easier with GIMP, but the point here is to learn Affinity, so I will keep plugging along.

Learning Curve

Welcome to day seven of Thingadailies!

As I was writing a note about Affinity having quite the learning curve, I realized that it was time to just sit down and force myself to use the pixel mode (similar to Photoshop) so I don't have to switch to GIMP if I want to change one little thing while creating a cover that has images instead of vectors.

But first...

More Gnocchi!

I don't often get pictures of her sleeping. She does relax enough to snore while I'm working, but she usually wakes up when I move to a spot where I can get a picture. So this is a rarity.

Learning Curve

I'm working through a tutorial: Fantasy Photo Manipulation Speed Art | Photoshop Tutorial

You'll notice it has Photoshop in the name. There are a bunch of Affinity tutorials that explain how to use various tools, but I wanted a speedrun through the creation of an image. That means I need to translate the actions into Affinity. The options are pretty similar, so it's been pretty straightforward so far.

Anyhow, this is my image so far. I'm about 1 minute, 25 seconds into the tutorial.

That's two images and another hand-drawn layer, plus some color adjustment and warping of the forest image.

And now it's time to medicate Lulu and clean Mister's ears. More tomorrow!

Pretend

Welcome to day six of Thingadailies!

Today I continue to pretend that I know what I'm doing with book cover design. But first!

Gnocchi

I'm in my office and I hadn't taken any other pictures today, so Gnocchi gets to be my foster cat of the day. She was stretching when I caught this photo and I wish I'd managed to get her tail in the frame. Oh well. She's a great cat.

Back to the Thing

I learned how to curve text in Affinity, so that's what I did with the first part of the title. Then I decided it needed an extra pop of color, so I added the frame under the series name. Again, I'm trying to make a template of sorts so the books all look like they belong together, and I think that will help.

I need to check the centering — I find that it's harder to center things correctly in Affinity than it was in InDesign, but I'll add some guides and fix it.

And now it's time to do a bunch of medical stuff for Lulu, so I'll leave this here. My plan is to create a couple more in the series before I finalize any of them so I can figure out what works and what doesn't.

Old School

Welcome back to Thingadailies!

Today we're kicking it old school. But first, the foster of the day!

Lulu

Remember yesterday when I said I was using a bunch of pictures of Mister the Amazingly Scruffy because after he went back to the shelter it was going to just be Gnocchi all the time? Well, it's 24 hours later and things have changed again!

I took Mister for a vaccine appointment this morning, and the foster coordinator said, hey, while you're here, can I show you another cat? Then I got the "we don't know if this cat is going to make it, but would you be interested in fostering her?" speech. (I get that a lot. It's my specialty, probably because they know I won't freak out and quit fostering if the cat dies.)

So now I have Lulu. She probably has FIP. She also tested positive for calicivirus and chlamydia. Fingers crossed the meds help her. She's a sweetheart.

Aaand... she's actually modeling the thing of the day.

Old School

Thursdays I spend a few hours at the local library's makerspace with my friend Teresa. The makerspace has a ton of stuff, from woodworking tools to sewing machines, but I wasn't feeling particularly creative, so I converted a bunch of my old cardboard into a scratcher for Lulu.

Could I go to the pet store and buy this? Yes, but they're like $20 and I'll have to discard it after Lulu leaves. So there we go. It's my thing of the day.

Typography

Welcome back to day four of Thingadailies!

Mister

Mister is once again the model for the day, mostly because he's leaving next Tuesday and then it's going to be all Gnocchi, all the time. But in the meantime, look at his ridiculous whiskers!

Typography

I wanted to see how the vector cover would look with the title, so I threw some stuff together. I also added paw prints, which I think helps it look more like a mystery. Affinity 3 still has some quirks I haven't quite figured out, but I'm getting more comfortable with it.

Tomorrow I may learn how to curve text and see what that does. Or maybe I'll finally get around to recording audio, though that may have to wait until Friday since I have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow.

Vectors

Welcome to day 3 of Thingadailies!

I'm sort of cheating today because I didn't finish the thing, but... <shrug>.

But first, here's more Mister

Professional scruffy boy Mister is still here. And honestly, that's fine because he is absolutely adorable and he's really easy to take care of. The only reason I'm laughing about it is that when I was asked to take him, the email contained the line "...will be out of town Friday 1/23 until Saturday 1/31 and I'm looking for someone who can care for him during that time."

So today (the 3rd of February) I finally sent mail that was just sort of "hey, do you want me to bring him back?" and apparently I'm keeping him until he goes in to be neutered next week.

He is perhaps not the sharpest tool in the shed. I put all his toys into a small (open) box this morning, and when I left the room he was meowing at the box. He eventually figured it out!

Drawing with vectors

I'm reasonably comfortable doing photomanipulation with GIMP (similar to Photoshop), but my cozy mystery covers are created using vectors. I've been thinking about recovering the cozies for a while, and this is giving me a chance to get used to the new version of Affinity.

Here is what I have so far. It will look more like a book cover once it has the typography, but it needs a lot more work before I get to that point.

I'm not sold on the background color and I think it just generally needs more stuff, and specifically more stuff that says "mystery!", but it's a decent start.

My goal is to get something that gives me a template so I can modify the background and a few things on the table. That will make the series cohesive and make it easy to create a cover for the next book.

At least I'm figuring out Affinity, so even if I end up scrapping this, I've learned something.

Advertising

Good news: I figured out how to get iMovie working for me. If my phone isn't plugged into my monitor, iMovie doesn't keep popping up the stupid import window. Easy workaround is to just not charge my phone when I'm editing. No problem.

I didn't have the energy to do my own audio today and I couldn't find good trailer music for another book trailer (partially because I'm looking for free things and partially because I don't know how to effectively limit my searches).

Was I going to give up on Thingadailies on day 2?

Then I remembered that I have a foster cat who needed an adoption advertisement.

This will probably not encourage anyone to adopt her. But it's still funny.