Did Not Finish

There was a time when I finished every book I started, which was helpful when I had to read all the dead white dude classics in high school and college. I would power through like I was running a marathon, and the only goal was to reach the end.

But now that I only read books because I want to, I've learned the fine art of just... not finishing a book if I'm not enjoying it. And I'll admit, some of my reasons for putting a book down and never picking it up again are just kinda stupid. But I don't really have to justify my decision to someone else — if I'm not enjoying it, why waste more of my life on it?

Having said that, I don't review indie books that I've DNF'd. (DNF = Did Not Finish) But traditionally published books? Those suckers had every opportunity to be better, so they're fair game.

Here are the last couple books I've DNF'd:

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

I wanted to like this. And parts of it I did like. But the main character consistently made the stupidest possible choices, to the point that I was just anxious every time there was a new plot point.

Maybe I just don't vibe with cozy fantasy? Or maybe I'm just not a Travis Baldree fan? I read Legends & Lattes and thought it was just kind of okay, but I did finish it, so I was hoping I'd enjoy this one more than I did.

I don't know. But I gave up on this book well after the 50% mark.

Assassin's Anonymous by Rob Hart

I will freely admit my reasons for giving up on this one are stupid, but hear me out.

The premise of this book is kinda silly. The main character is a retired assassin (code name: Pale Horse) who is attending a 12-step program for assassins. At the start of the book, an unknown Russian guy tries to kill him, so he's trying to stay alive while figuring out who is trying to kill him and also start step nine, making amends.

So the premise is ridiculous, but I was absolutely okay with that. The only female character in the book could have successfully been replaced by a cardboard cutout — she's an NPC who disappears when the main character isn't around, and the book doesn't really try to disguise that. So... not ideal, but when you read thrillers by male authors, you know what you're getting into.

But things really fell apart for me with the cat. This assassin has a cat. Great. But I'm not sure the author has ever spent much time around cats. And similar to the woman, this cat disappears when the main character isn't around or when the author forgets about him. The main character's apartment burns, and his cat escapes. Instead of boarding the cat somewhere safe, this guy decides to take the cat with him to Singapore. Just... hops on a plane with his cat in a carrier so he can talk to his old handler.

This was the point when I really started side-eyeing the book.

1. If you keep a cat in a regular carrier for over 17 hours, where is the cat supposed to go to the bathroom?
   
   
2. You can't just take your cat to Singapore. Heck, you're not even supposed to cross state lines in the US without a veterinarian-signed health certificate. For Singapore, you have to arrange things at least five days in advance, and then there's a quarantine on the other end.
   
   
3. In reality, this owner would have faced a huge fine when he landed in Singapore, and they might have euthanized his cat on the spot.
   
   
4. Why would he bring his cat with him? I have traveled with animals. In fact, I drove from California to Louisiana with six cats, a dog, and three birds. Everyone was miserable. And I had a good reason to make that trip. If people are actively trying to assassinate you, bringing a cat along seems like a terrible idea.

Is this a stupid reason for DNF-ing a ridiculous book about a killer who is going through an assassin's 12-step program? Probably. But it threw me out of the book so hard that it was all I could think about even as the guy was running around trying not to set his recovery back by accidentally killing any of the people trying to kill him.

What hill have you been willing to die on?

So there we have it. Those are my reasons. Have you DNF'd a book recently for reasons that might not be easy to explain?

Room at the Inn

Good news!

No, not new kittens. (Sad face emoji here.)

Today's good news is that my dog has a spot at the boarding kennel for the holidays, so he won't have to come with me to visit relatives. I've owned dogs who loved car trips and loved having crowds of people around — but that's not this dog. Georgie refuses to settle in the car, and he doesn't even like me touching him. When anyone else tries, he shies away and his tail gets tucked up so far it touches his belly.

As a bonus, the boarding facility will cut his (overly long) nails and I won't have to be the bad guy who touches his feet.

To celebrate, I ate a bunch of cheese & crackers and egg nog, and now I feel ill.

T, aren't you supposed to be writing a book or something?

Ugh. I've written the climax, the murderer has been unmasked and arrested, and now I need to add the wrap-up scene at the end. I'll finish that tonight, and then take a day or two to read through and fill in gaps or fix things like the murder which occurred 15 years ago at the start of the book and then had to switch to 25 years ago when I realized I'd specified in a previous book how long one character had been retired.

Oh, and I also need to send out a newsletter on Saturday, so I need to finish that, too.

But after that, it will be time to relax a bit before working on the book I abandoned in the summer.

Memories of Kittens

In looking at the cat adoption page, it appears that I am the only foster who follows directions and sends pictures to use on the website. Does it matter? Probably not. In fact, the pitiful intake pictures of kittens being dangled in the air by someone wearing blue gloves might get adopters coming through the door more reliably. Everybody wants to be the one to save an animal.

But I still like pictures of fluffy kittens, so here, give Steve MeowQueen a smile.

Weirdly Quiet

Kitten Watch 2024 has been successfully concluded! The tuxedos went back to the shelter this afternoon and all four were big enough for surgery tomorrow.

The house has not been truly foster-kitten-free for many months — at some point during the summer, the shelter ran out of foster homes, so I was doubling and tripling up, so even when I took one litter back to the shelter for surgery, I still had more kittens in reserve. Bottle feeding ten kittens is exhausting. All of my fosters this year survived (thank you luck, metronidazole, and subcutaneous fluids!), so I'm calling the year a kitten raising success.

Anyhow, I celebrated by going to the craft store. I'd intended to just buy one thing, but then I saw they had cardstock on sale. Glitter cardstock! Foil cardstock! I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but now I own it.

Stats

This morning I looked at the stats for this blog for the first time in years. My all-time most-viewed post is this one: The Only Middle Grade Fiction I'll Ever Write

Frankly, it deserves to be. It's hilarious. That book, written in 7th grade, was the first encouragement I'd had for a while in English class. Middle grade English was not my subject. Yes, I read a lot. Yes, I had a great vocabulary. But diagramming sentences was introduced in an earlier year by a teacher who was a human chalk board scrape — to this day, my brain swerves away. My handwriting (graded!) was never going to be better than legible. Most of our grades were based on homework and I was terrible at organization, so I was failing or close to failing in English for years.

Then I got an A on the book and a handwritten note saying it was really good. Now I'm a full-time author. Amazing how that works, isn't it?

Another Kitten Picture

This is Gianni Purrsace's graduation picture. I feel like I could have taken a better picture, but he decided he would rather jump off the bed and explore under it. So this is what we have. Hopefully it's enough to get people to go to the shelter so he can win them over in person. He is an excellent velcro kitten who has no understanding of personal space, so I doubt it will take long for him to find a forever home.

Rampant or Passant

I'm going to be sad when the internet goes away because I have offloaded most of my brain storage to the rest of the world. The enshittification of the search engines is already affecting me.

Things I have looked up recently:

• "Harold Holt" (Someone mentioned it was "Harold Holt went Swimming Day!" and I was pretty sure I knew who he was, but I needed to double-check.)
  
  
• "Books disbelief" (I was trying to remember the phrase "suspension of disbelief". Some days are like that.)
  
  
• "Shyest or shiest" (Both technically correct, but the best answer was someone who said "Just use 'most shy'.")
  
  
• "Heraldry rampant" (Writing alt text for a kitten picture and I got a little fancy when describing his pose, but I wanted to make sure it was correct.) (Not correct. I wanted "passant" instead.)
  
  
• "Would the VIN have been stamped on a 1972 Mustang?" (Yes, it's for the book I'm writing.)
  
  
• "Fender apron" (That's one place the VIN was stamped on a 1972 Mustang. Still not totally sure what it is, but you can buy them pretty cheaply.)
  
  
• "What is a fender apron?" (Maybe if I tell it I'm looking for a definition...? No. It gave me another list of parts stores.)
  
  
• "Solitaire" (Sometimes you just have to accept that you'll never know what a fender apron is and move on with your life. Or start another game of solitaire.)

Here, have a kitten (Giorgio Furmani) who is "passant" not "rampant":

Kitten Watch 2024

It's tongues out Tuesday for Gianni Purrsace!

At 8am, all four kittens had reached their minimum weight. Will they stay above the line for at least the next two days? My fingers are crossed!

I'm Good

It was raining when I woke up this morning. When I went to let the dog outside — as I always do first thing in the morning — he looked through the open door and backed up, in a clear "Nah fam, I'm good" sort of motion. My attempts to convince him that he needed to go outside to pee failed. He just waited until I went off to the maker's space and then peed near the cats' litter boxes. But... I can't really fault him. Who wants to go outside when it's raining?

Anyhow, I made some stickers at the library and did not hog tie the 10-year-old boy-child who, in attempting to prove to his father that he was bored while his father learned how to use the 3D printer, played one chord on the ukulele loudly, tunelessly, and with zero rhythm for half an hour. If the world needed further validation of my decision to never have children, that's it.

The good news is that I've figured out a solution for parents who blithely ignore their offspring: woodworking. All the woodworking tools are in a separate room that you have to be cleared for. Also, you have to wear ear protection, and I think those things can muffle even a ukulele strum-whacked by a child for long periods of time.

Kitten Watch 2024

Once again, Kittyenne Westwood is toying with me and gained almost but not quite enough. She has two days to hit her goal weight. And Giorgio Furmani (the next smallest kitten) has decided to add to the suspense by losing weight. I suspect I'll be holding my breath on Wednesday afternoon while waiting for the staff to weigh the kittens and decide if they are all big enough.

When I was taking pictures yesterday, I ended up with this motion artifact that makes it look like she has fangs. I swear this hasn't been retouched. Maybe she's a vampire?

Precedent

Yesterday, it was suddenly 1:30am and I remembered that I hadn't written a blog post. As much as I like to be a completionist (huh, turns out that's a gaming term, but I'm stealing it for the Holidailies challenge), I started a day late and wrote two entries on Dec. 2nd. So there's precedent!

(I'm going to get all my law jokes in during the next month while they still have a bit of meaning.)

Anyhow, E and L came over to play with kittens. Steve MeowQueen decided he was going to be shy, Gianni Purrsace was like an obsessed boyfriend and snuggled hard, Giorgio Furmani was somewhere between the two, and Kittyenne Westwood spent most of the time dragging the wand toy around the room.

Then I somehow spent multiple hours watching videos of a wedding planner reacting to Reddit posts about weddings. Will I ever need to plan a wedding? No. Will I even ever go to another wedding? Again, no. I have done my duty. On the way home from my sister's wedding, I even sang a song about how I was done with weddings for good. I am absolutely committed to never going to another wedding. So why did I blow off everything I was supposed to be doing for the rest of the day?

I blame the lack of light. I think we should develop stasis pods so I can climb in with all my animals and wake up when it's spring.

Or maybe the next century.

Kitten Watch 2024

Kittyenne Westwood is messing with me. At least she's cute!

The problem child, complete with non-ringworm bald spot on her ear

Not the Best Plans

My favorite coffee shop spent the last year building a cover over the front patio, and it's delightful during summer and when it's raining. They also added curtains that can be closed to protect from the wind, but

1. The curtains are only attached at the top, and
2. They are solid dark fabric.

So this morning, when we had rain along with 25+ mph winds — which is growing more common as the years progress — the curtains blew straight into the patio. And when they weren't trying to smother people, they blocked all the light.

So... The coffee shop owner tried. But the patio really needs clear plastic curtains that are attached above and below.

Oh well. Maybe next winter.

Kitten Watch 2024

A mug shot from Steve MeowQueen. I tried to convince him he was in charge of getting his little sister to gain weight.

(Look at his lovely whiskers. Giorgio Furmani only wishes he had such style.)

I'm not panicking, you're panicking. Seriously, though, Kittyenne Westwood just needs to gain 40 grams in the next few days. That's absolutely possible.

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Dangit, no.