A Day in the Life of Procrastination

What was I supposed to be doing today?

Writing. I have a manuscript due to my critique group in a week, and it's not anywhere close to being finished.

What did I actually do today?

Two very important things, neither of which was writing...

1. Took the Squashes back to the shelter. They're having surgery tomorrow, and then they'll be available for adoption. It's always kind of sad to leave my foster kittens at the shelter, but they're usually adopted within a couple days. And if I don't clear out space at home, I can't help the next litter!
   
   Here are their graduation photos (taken by Lori). Aren't they adorable?
   
   

   

   Sugar Pie

   
   

   

   Spaghetti

   
   

   

   Delicata

   
   

   

   Butternut

   
   

   

   Acorn

   
   
   
2. Set up a "free books" page on my website for other authors to share.
   
   Anything I can do to get my books in the hands of readers is a good thing. If people like the first book, they'll probably enjoy the whole series.
   
   https://tmbaumgartner.com/free-books/

Random Programming Project

I used to write software for a living, and every once in a while I pick a fun project and mess around with it a bit. My current project is a program that will create a digital fore-edge image.

What's a fore-edge?

It's the surface of a book opposite the spine, where the red arrow is pointing.

What's a digital fore-edge?

Okay, so there are a couple ways to put a picture on the fore-edge. The most common way is to literally hold the pages closed and paint it. That gives you the best results, but it's expensive and only some printers offer it.

The other way is to print a slice of the image at the very edge of the page when you're printing the text of the book. When all the slices are put together, you have something like the original image.

For example, if I wanted to put this b&w dragon on my fore-edge (green background added for clarity):

First, I would slice the picture up sort of like this:

Then I would put one slice at the margin of each page of the book and when the book is held closed (or maybe with the pages slightly flexed), you would see the dragon.

That sounds easy

I mean, yeah, it's not that hard in concept. But the way they print books adds a few complications. Basically, they start with a larger page, print the words, and then chop off the edges.

Except...

There's a margin of error when cutting off the edges. So I need to account for that.

Anyhow, it's not really all that complicated. I'm using Python and I was able to quickly create a program that adds an image to a page on a pdf, so I know it can be done. (Then I changed a bunch of stuff in my program and broke it completely. This is how we code.)

How do you test it?

Yeah. This is one of the drawbacks. I won't know for sure if my program works until I load the paperback and buy a copy. (I'll probably use Barnes & Noble, because they allow authors to load a book and not make it public.)

If it works, great! If it doesn't... this could get expensive to debug.

Anyhow. This is what I do for fun.

Belated Holidailies

Hey, did you know that December started yesterday? It wasn't until KarenD left a comment on an old blog entry that I remembered it's time for Holidailies, the blog every day challenge for December (plus January 1st, if you're following the rules).

So, a quick introduction: Hi, I'm Theresa! I raise kittens and write books. I also dabble in other crafts that I am pretty terrible at, which makes them fun. I live in California with a dog and two feral cats.

I can't actually remember how many kittens I've raised this year, but I haven't had less than two litters at a time for the last four months, so it's a lot. (It's been a bad kitten season.) I currently have nine kittens in the house, though these five are leaving tomorrow to go find their forever homes.

(The Squashes: l-r Butternut, Sugar Pie, Spaghetti, Delicata, Acorn)

That leaves me with four tuxedo kittens who have a tentative surgery appointment in seventeen days, so I will be stuffing them with food at every opportunity to maximize their chances of being big enough by then.

My publishing schedule has been a little bare this year, with just one omnibus (Penelope Standing Unleashed) and one new book (Theoretical Magic). But I'll have a couple of books out in the first quarter of next year, so it will even out.

One of the reasons I only had one new book out this year is that I narrated an audiobook (Shift Happens — that's the Audible link since that's what most people use, but it's also available from Kobo and Spotify and maybe even your library), which was a monumental undertaking. Now that it's done, I'm really happy with it and I learned a ton, both about narrating and writing. But it took me a lot more time and effort than I had planned.

Anyhow, hello, and welcome back! I can't wait to see what everyone else is blogging about this year!