2025 Bingo

As I mentioned yesterday (?), I'm avoiding writing down a list of "goals" because I've been finding that adds stress without making me more productive. But I think it's useful to think about what things might be good to do in the next year writing-wise.

So here we have it, the 2025 Writing Bingo card:

Not everything will (or even probably should) get done, but it's nice to have something to look at when deciding what to work on next.

(I was proud of writing out 15 things so I could make a 4x4 grid, and then I realized that doesn't work for a symmetric diagonal and had to come up with another nine possibilities.)

Anyhow, happy new year!

Kitten memories

I spent a couple hours today rearranging the kitten supplies and getting rid of the mountain of towels in my hallway. Now I'm ready for the next group!

Here's a picture from October of 2022:

Not Goals

I had started a sort of "goals for 2025" post, but

1. I'm trying not to overload myself, which I will absolutely do if I spend a few days coming up with a list of goals, and
2. I needed more time to think about everything.

But then I saw a post on Mastodon where a person was talking about making a bingo card of things that would be great to accomplish next year, so I think I'm going to do that and post it tomorrow.

But for today, I'll just note that I am back home, the feral cats are fine (I mean, I think they're fine. I've only seen one of them, but I'm sure the other is around somewhere...), and I'm excited to pick up my dog from the pet hotel tomorrow morning.

The cookies survived the Grapevine (because they were in the trunk), but then I stopped at a rest stop and moved them to the front seat and there are only a few left and I feel a little ill. But they tasted really great!

This house is not at a constant 100 decibels, but I'll miss everyone.

I shall sleep well tonight and expect no dreams of floating on a raft in the bayou.

Year of Cats

I was thinking earlier that I hadn't dealt with any ringworm cats this year, and then I was going through my pictures and found this one of Bluebell from February. She was so sweet (actually sweet, not like that cat I transported) and handled lime sulfur dips and staying in a bathtub quarantine without any complaint. I hope she's doing well in her adoptive home.

Sweet Kitty

I occasionally transport animals for my local shelter. My county is somewhat underfunded, but the staff is great at finding other resources. So the rabbits go off to a rescue in Richmond, and the puppies tend to go to Tahoe, and an elderly hyperthyroid cat went up to Santa Rosa.

So I got an email that they were looking for someone to transport a cat to the Bay Area. Specifically, I got an email that said, "We are hoping to find transport for a sweet adult kitty..." (bolding is mine). Since I didn't have anything going on that day, I agreed to drive the cat there and arranged a time.

When I showed up at the shelter on Monday to pick up the cat, the person who arranged it all wasn't there (she is off on Mondays), but she had impressed upon the other staff that the cat needed to be sent in a solid carrier, not one of the cardboard carriers they sometimes use.

That was my first clue.

So the front staff radioed to the cat trailer for one of the employees to bring the cat up. And I waited. And I talked with the staff and waited some more. At the 20 minute mark, an animal services officer went back to find out what was going on. I waited some more.

Ten minutes later, the front staff radioed back to find out what was going on. They were "having problems getting the cat into the carrier." I noted that nobody on the radio was referring to her as a "sweet kitty."

At the 50 minute mark, another animal services officer went back to supervise. He came back ten minutes later with a metal carrier that had a plexiglass front, the whole thing covered in a towel. Then he used duct tape to secure the front.

I was a little worried I'd be considered an accessory to some crime if I handed off this "sweet kitty", though I suppose I could argue that anyone who expected something different from a cat in the equivalent of Hannibal Lecter restraints deserved what they got. But it turned out the cat had originally been microchipped by the rescue I was taking her to, and they'd been warned.

The cat was the perfect passenger, and I passed off the towel and carrier (along with a suggestion that they not open it anywhere the cat wasn't supposed to be a permanent fixture). I'd been told not to worry about the carrier — someone from the shelter would get it back someday.

I never actually saw the cat. Or even the "sweet kitty".

Candy Bar Kittens

Another litter from back in 2022. These ones actually were sweet kitties.

Pablo Escobar's Hippos

Things we have talked about today:

• The current state of the hippos in Colombia. In case you missed it, Pablo Escobar imported four hippos to his estate in Colombia in the 1970s and they escaped after he died. There are now about 200 of them and they love it in Colombia. There is currently an aggressive TNR program to sterilize them, but as of a few months ago they were neutering 1.5 hippos/month and they need to reach 40 hippos/year (3.3 hippos/month) in order to keep the population from expanding.
  
  
• Associating the correct books with the correct author for Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Charles Dickens.
  
  
• Whether the opening line of Pride and Prejudice is more famous than the first line of Tale of Two Cities. Sure, everyone knows "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." but it doesn't end there. Dickens was paid by the word and it shows.
  
  
• The Italian guy who went to somewhere in Africa as part of an NGO, and planted tomatoes which grew better than any tomato in Italy. He was convinced he'd singlehandedly solved hunger until the week before harvest, at which point the hippos came out of the river and ate all the tomato plants. The people who lived there basically shrugged and said, "Yeah, we could have told you that would happen if you'd bothered to talk to us."
  
  
• The hilarity of trying to remember Kafka's name and searching for "dung beetle story", only to have all the results be about the children's book I Eat Poop: a dung beetle story, which I have heard read aloud twice in the past two days.
  
  

Then things headed back to politics and no amount of hippos could help us so I fled.

Elegant in Black and White

This lovely tuxedo kitten is a foster from over two years ago. So cute!

Gospel Swamp

I found out this week that the town where I spent much of my childhood was in an area once referred to as Gospel Swamp. (It's currently Fountain Valley — there is no truth in advertising since the land is completely flat and the city's fountain has been torn out and replaced multiple times based on water restrictions.)

I think I'm going to start telling people I grew up in Gospel Swamp near Tin Can Beach. That has far more character, doesn't it?

Best Toy

I have gone through many cat toys, but one of the best for kittens in the 5-8 week range is the banana box.

Raft

I'm currently sleeping on an air mattress, and I woke up laughing because in my dream I was floating in a bayou on a blow-up raft. The air mattress had seeped into my dreams.

Anyhow, can't really recommend an air mattress for anyone over 40. I may end up on the couch. (Or, given that there are now 10 people sleeping in the house and 2 are under the age of 5, a hotel. Definitely should have brought my noise-cancelling headphones!)

Better Sleep

Yeah, I'm a bit jealous of my dog in this picture.

Not Quite Empty

The purpose of driving through the California central valley is to sap my will to live enough that I can handle the traffic in Los Angeles. Otherwise, I'd have to pull over and hyperventilate at seven lanes of mayhem and I'd never make it through.

And yes, the Acura can make it on one tank of gas. With a little left over.

Preparations

I am home but my dog is at the pet hotel and that's very weird. Normally, he wanders in at 3:45 to let me know that it's dinner time. Today, it was five o'clock and I had a sudden "why hasn't my dog come into the office?" panic.

Most years, I would have used the day to make my house looked like a normal adult lived here so my pet sitter didn't trip over something or wonder why I have baby gates blocking access to the kitchen. But this year I don't really need a pet sitter. My dog is at the dog hotel, the foster kittens have all been adopted, I no longer have any birds, and the two indoor feral cats will appreciate a few days of having no humans around.

(I'd feel guilty about leaving the cats unsupervised, but when I refer to them as feral, I mean it. I literally cannot get near them. They will be fine with food and water, and since I still have seven litter boxes in the house, that will be fine, too.)

I did finally clean and disinfect the kitten room and do all that laundry, Will I have kittens the day I return? Probably not, but wouldn't that be great?

Of course I have another kitten picture!

The Kaos Kittens were adorable.

In Search of Audio

My neighbors with the perpetually running heat pump are also burning wood in their fireplace, and I'm tempted to go over there and hang out in their house because I'm pretty sure it must be up at sauna temps by now. (Yeah, I'm totally jealous, at least during the daytime. At night I love my 55 F chill.)

Long Drives

I spent the afternoon painting while I listened to an audiobook, which reminded me that I have a very long drive coming up. I no longer have an Audible subscription (because Audible has the most abusive terms around for both listeners and authors alike), so most of my audiobooks come from the library. The library has a bunch of them, which is great! But I find it hard to find ones that I enjoy, so I end up checking out five to every one that I finish listening.

Normally, that's fine, but when I'm driving I can't mess around with my phone to switch to a new one unless I stop somewhere, and I approach the 7 hour drive to SoCal by viewing stopping anywhere as a failure. The 2002 Civic didn't hold enough gas to make it without stopping somewhere, but I think the Acura does. (Note: this is not a sane way to approach the trip, but going to SoCal isn't a sane choice. And when I leave, I just want to be home.)

In any case, I need to find some reliable audiobooks in the next few days. It would be best if I didn't wait until the last minute.

Hello!

I had the best kittens this year.

Finally!

A round of applause, please — I have sent the manuscript to my critique group. And it was only one entire week late!

(That should be fine. It's a short novel.)

Anyhow, I fixed some continuity issues, added a few references where they were needed, and then split the whole thing up into chapters before sending it out. Does the manuscript need work? Undoubtedly. But it's at a stage where it will help to have other people read it and look for problems.

But why?

Maybe it's worth explaining here what my critique partners are good at pointing out?

• Plot holes. Hey, sometimes I've seen so many versions of the story that I can't remember if the bad guy stole the car in this version. Having someone read it with fresh eyes is extremely helpful.
  
  
• Character weirdness. If a character suddenly starts speaking in New Zealand slang (because I rewatched The Brokenwood Mysteries), I might or might not notice.
  
  
• Humor that doesn't work. There's a fine line between funny and a-hole. That's really all I can say.
  
  
• Dropped threads. That dog that ran off at the end of chapter two and is never mentioned again? That's a problem.
  
  
• General confusion. "I got lost in chapter four" is a valid thing to say.
  
  
• Pacing issues. Usually this takes the form of some section being waaay too slow. Slow sections lose readers. That's the kiss of death for a novel. Readers will accept confusion and weirdness and plot holes and all sorts of problems, but if you bore them? No.
  
  

Now I'm going to take a couple days off and then it will be time to pick up Dragon Fortune!

Memories of Kittens

These goobers have all been adopted, but I still have pictures.

All the News That's Fit to Send

Today is the third Saturday of the month, which is notable because that's the day I send out my monthly author newsletter.

Here it is, in case you want to see it: December 2024 author newsletter

I've written about newsletters on this blog before. At first, it was painful to come up with something to write, but over the years I've gotten reasonably comfortable with sending something out. At least 50% of my content is about foster kittens, not writing, so that makes it easier.

I'm probably doing it wrong

But would my newsletter be more effective if I followed the guidelines more closely? Here are some ways I'm doing it wrong:

• Instead of having one newsletter for each pen name, I have one for both. Does it matter? Do the cozy mystery people get sick of the SF/F content and vice versa? I have no idea.
  
  
• I send my newsletter out one time every month. Most recommendations suggest sending one out every other week or even more often than that. It doesn't really matter if that would be more effective, because I don't think I can get my act together to send out a newsletter every week.
  
  
• I haven't "cleaned" my list to get rid of the subscribers who don't bother opening it. I never have. (It affects whether the newsletter gets delivered to the rest of the list.) I guess I probably should. Maybe I'll put that on my list of things to do in the new year.
  
  
• I should probably try to put in more stuff that gets people engaged. Romance authors often have polls to come up with the dream casting for their books, or even just "which guy is hotter" type things. But I can't think of any poll that I could do that wouldn't just make me cringe, so... 
  
  

So there we are.

Reader participation time

Do you subscribe to any author newsletters? What do you like or dislike about them?

Kitten prize

All the tuxedos have been adopted! Here's a picture of Kittyenne Westwood.

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.

Noise

My next door neighbors recently installed a heat pump. Gone is the gas furnace that ran intermittently on cold nights. Now there's a super efficient machine that runs all night long. My understanding is that heat pumps blow air that is at the desired temperature, instead of heating up the house and then letting it cool back down.

I'm all for energy efficiency. But the blower running all night long is kind of a problem since it's on the other side of the fence from my bedroom. It's a constant low-frequency hum that cuts through the house. During the day, there's enough other noise that I don't notice it (and I'm usually not in the bedroom). At night... It's a frequency that sort of vibrates my skull.

Today, I was looking into acoustic panels for the walls. Maybe they would work? I'd have to spend a few hundred dollars. If my 1958 house had decent insulation and better windows, this might not be an issue, but if my house hadn't been poorly built, I probably couldn't have afforded to buy it.

It might just be easier to move to the living room for the winter.

Kitten Watch 2024

There was a little backsliding today by the smallest kitten. But she has nearly a week, so I think it will turn out in the end.

A little kitten attitude from a previous litter

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Absolutely not. It's 8pm and I'm still in my pajamas. Tomorrow is another day.

Moral Support

At the library's makerspace today, I confirmed that my cheap drawing tablet does still work. Now I need to figure out why it stopped working with my laptop. The only thing I can think of that has changed is the mouse, so I'll mess around with that a bit.

Unfortunately, the library's laptops had Corel Draw on them and I didn't feel like trying to figure out yet another drawing program, so I used my own laptop without the drawing tablet. I was also there being moral support for Teresa as she etched some mugs, so it wasn't a waste of time. It's good to get out and see friends, if nothing else.

Anyhow, here's the state of the map. It's getting there...

Kitten Watch 2024

Three out of four have reached their target weight. Everybody think heavy thoughts for the little girl...

Hello, food lady, where is the food???

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Ugh. No. But I think I've mapped out the final scenes that need to happen. And tomorrow is another day!

Failures in Advertising

Earlier this year, I ran some Facebook ads to send people toward my serials on Kindle Vella. Not because I was making much per episode read, but Amazon was still giving out black-box-generated bonuses every month.

Run ads! How hard can it be?

The first month of ads was encouraging, and I saw a 300% return. Then — of course — everything crashed and I never saw that kind of return again, though I did break even on the space opera. The SF romance — which should have had a larger audience — never got off the ground. In looking into why it tanked, I learned some interesting things.

First off, Facebook is really pushing their "Advantage+" service that automatically determines the best users to show your ads to. They certainly collect the data and they keep track of who clicks on things or probably even pauses to look at it too long. Someone who comments? Absolute gold as far as the FB algorithm is concerned.

The problem is that everything I've ever seen says serials are almost exclusively read by young people. People over 50 have no idea what the hell they are. (I'm 56. I can say these things.) And romance is almost exclusively read by women.

Advantage+ in action

So who was FB's super sophisticated automated algorithm showing my SF romance ads to?

Men over 65 years old.

Then I told it to only serve the ad to women. Two days later I looked at the stats.

Men over 65 years old.

In order to get it to limit it to women under 35, I had to turn off all the Advantage+ features. Then the problem became targeting the right group of women under 35. When FB went all in on Advantage+, they removed most of the ways to limit the audience. At one point a few years ago, you could find similar authors and then say "show this ad to people who like these authors and also read books". Now most of those author choices are gone, so you have to figure out some other way of getting the ad to the right group of people. It was a mess.

Everyone has to have the last word

But what finally tanked the ads was the comments. The number one comment I got on my Kindle Vella ads was something along the line of "I don't read serials. I'll wait until this comes out in book form." Remember what I said about comments being gold? Facebook quickly learned to serve my ads to people who commented — the group of people who absolutely refused to read serials.

Oh well. Kindle Vella is a thing of the past anyhow. I'll chalk this up to a learning experience.

Kitten Watch 2024

We didn't lose any ground yesterday, which is good. The littlest kitten didn't gain any weight, but I can be content with her not losing any weight as long as she progresses tomorrow.

The boys

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

No. I've just barely started. I definitely still have enough time, but it's gray and cold and I'm feeling pretty unmotivated today. On the other hand, I really need to get this done. Ugh.

Earworms

Caveats to the RSS reader post from yesterday:

• Leaving comments on a post requires the extra step of going to the blog post directly, instead of reading it on the RSS reader site. That's a bummer because everybody likes comments, right? (I mean, except those people who have blogs with no comment feature...)
  
  
• There was a second thing I was going to mention, but now I have completely forgotten what it was. Must have been super important, right?
  
  
• Oh wait, I remember now! If you read the blog post in the RSS reader, you don't get to see all the stuff in the sidebar LIKE ALL OF MY BOOKS THAT YOU DEFINITELY WANT TO BUY! (And I just noticed I need to update the sidebar to include Theoretical Magic. It's a great book. Very fun.)
  Anyhow, I guess it would make sense to add a two line footer to all my blog posts or something. Not that I get much traffic to this blog. Okay, I think I've successfully talked myself out of it. Whew.

The Topic — Earworms

You know how you sometimes get one line of a song stuck in your head and it just sits there for days? Sometimes I can get them unstuck by listening to the whole song and learning all the lyrics. Which means I find the video on YouTube and let it play.

Well, apparently YouTube keeps track of what I listen to. Quelle surprise! Today, I got distracted by another browser tab, so it played the previous song I'd had stuck in my head. And then the one before that. As playlists go, this isn't that bad:

1. Sam Smith - Unholy
2. Hozier - Too Sweet
3. The Weather Girls - It's Raining Men
4. Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive

After that, it moved on to remixes of "I Will Survive". I'm taking this as a sign that YouTube is trying to hype me up for the shitshow that is coming next year.

Kitten Watch 2024

As of this morning, we were on a good course, with Green and Yellow both hitting the goal weight this morning. Hopefully today's vaccines & deworming doesn't throw things off. The kittens have been pretty quiet this afternoon. The good news is the shelter had more of the same canned food (Friskies Mixed Grill), so I don't have to add a diet change on top of all that.

Four slightly grumpy kittens

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

No, but it's still early. I reached my goal yesterday.

One Idiot's Guide to an RSS Reader

Short-form social media continued its dive into the trash pit of society this year. Twitter is basically just Nazis now, Facebook's algorithm has advanced to the point that I never see anything I've asked for, and everyone is excited about Bluesky but it's just another platform waiting for its billionaire owners to turn into a right-wing hellhole. I am on Mastodon, which is truly decentralized (unlike Bluesky, which is definitely not), and I like it there, but often I long for the days when everyone just had a blog.

For years, I have checked multiple blogs by having a browser tab with twenty blogs bookmarked and just... clicking on each one in turn whenever I remember to check. Sure, that works, but it's really inefficient, especially when some only update every three months (surely not me!) and at least one blog (cough, cough, jenfullmoon, I'm looking at you here!) takes three minutes to load because it has to time out on one of the css files.

The good news is that I'm an idiot and there has always been a way to handle this more elegantly. So this year, I finally looked into RSS readers. And because I know I'm probably not the only one who hadn't figured this out, here is some very basic info.

What is an RSS Reader?

The non-technical answer: It's a website that notices when a blog you follow has a new entry. So you only have to visit one website, instead of twenty.

There are many RSS readers. I use the free version at inoreader.com.

How do I set it up?

After you create an account, you click on "Add Feed" to add each blog you want it to watch. And just like that, you have a feeds page that might look something like this:

Each square on the right has a blog post I haven't read yet. (Okay, that's not really true. I marked them unread so I could take this screenshot. Also, I haven't finished adding in all the Holidailies blogs, so they aren't all showing up here.)

Once you click on a post and read it, it disappears from the newsfeed, so you can always easily see what you haven't read. New blog posts just magically appear.

What else can you do with the RSS reader?

Honestly, I have no idea. But I think you can sort things into folders, which I could see being helpful if you only want to look at political blogs once a week or something like that.

Hey, isn't this sort of a generic version of the Holidailies page?

It really is, though of course we all love the Holidailies page. But if the Holidailies folks ever get tired of maintaining the code, there may be a way to do something like set up a public folder on inoreader that would achieve a similar thing.

Thus ends the RSS reader lesson. Seriously, it's easy to set up. Go do it now!

Kitten Watch 2024

Things continue to look promising. Two of the kittens are right around the minimum weight. The other two are on track to make it a few days before surgery. Fingers crossed their vaccine appointment tomorrow doesn't throw them off track.

(Kittens often have a day of not feeling great after getting vaccinated and dewormed. Worse, we've had a problem with kittens developing diarrhea right after they go in. I'm not sure why — the shelter staff always wear gloves when handling the kittens. Maybe it's just a stress thing.))

This is a naughty kitten (Giorgio Furmani) who escaped from the playpen this morning. He is the one whose whiskers are little nubbins, though it's less obvious in this picture. Apparently it is time for the kittens to move from my office to the (much harder to escape from) bathroom.

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

No, but it's not even noon. I reached my goal yesterday.

Social

Elisabeth came over today (as she does most Sundays) to help socialize kittens. She broke out the wand toy today — Kittyenne Westwood scampered after it and the three boys found the thing absolutely terrifying. It's good to introduce that toy early because the wand toy is key to taking good graduation pictures (which are shown on the shelter's website when the kittens are available for adoption).

I'm a terrible photographer in general, but I've learned how to take passable kitten graduation photos. In case you, too, need to take such photos, here are my tips:

1. Get all the food and eye goobers off their face first. Seriously, I don't even notice that sort of thing normally, but once immortalized in a picture, that's all I can see.
   
   
2. Get as much clutter as possible out of the background. For me, that means take the photograph aiming at a plain wall.
   
   
3. Take the picture on their level. Yes, you can crawl around on the floor with them. Or, you could make things easier on yourself and put them on your bed while you kneel on the floor.
   
   
4. Take a bunch of pictures. Eventually one will be in focus and have the entire kitten in the frame.
   
   
5. Lighting. Uh, I don't have any recommendations for this but good lighting is helpful. I never have good lighting.

Okay, so I put all those tips there and this photo uses none of them. But this is the brave and fierce Kittyenne Westwood, killer of wand toys. You can't even see the bald spots on her ear and her shoulder where her brothers have been suckling on her.

(Aren't her whiskers lovely? One of the boys has little stubs of whiskers because somebody else chewed them off! This litter, I swear!)

Kitten Watch 2024

Everyone is still on track for hitting their goal weight by the 19th.

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Not yet — I have another 700 words to write. But I hit my goal yesterday.

Lazy Saturday

Today I walked to the local coffee shop and met up with friends for a couple hours. As usual, the coffee shop got at least 25% of our orders wrong — one friend won't buy coffee drinks there anymore because she (understandably) doesn't trust them to make it with decaf. Their food and pastries are just okay, but the place itself is great to relax at. I probably shouldn't complain — if the food was any better and the drinks more reliable, we'd never be able to get a table.

Then I came home and ate too much cereal and went back to bed for a while. Not the most productive Saturday ever. That's okay. I still have time for kittens to climb all over me while I write the next chapter.

The Fore-edge Question

I've decided I'd like to do a map, in a style similar to this one, though probably a lot less busy. The book will only have one vertical slice on the fore-edge, with the idea being that the series stacked together would show the whole map. Do I have the artistic talent to achieve something like this? Well... (Obviously, the answer is no, I do not, but I'll burn that bridge when I get there.)

Kitten Watch 2024

Looking good. Also, they upgraded from cardboard litter boxes with paper pellets to actual clumping litter in a giant plastic litter box. It's much less smelly this way.

This is a picture of Kittyenne Westwood (Red) that I took yesterday. The dog bed is very large; she is very small. She had a nice long nap while her brothers were elsewhere.

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Not yet. I still have 1200 words, but I have five hours. (I reached my goal yesterday.)

Back to the Fore-edges (aka, Procrastination Station)

I needed to take a break from writing today, so I went back to my python program to create digital fore-edges. When I last wrote about it, I mentioned that I'd figured out how to add an image to the page (proof of concept!) and then I changed a bunch of stuff and broke the program.

It works! (Probably)

Today I fixed it again and cleared up a few other problems, such as... The edge of the page is only on the right side for odd pages. It's on the left side for even pages. And speaking of that, you won't be able to see the even and odd edges when you flex the book, so really the picture should be on one or the other (or duplicated to both).

Anyhow, you end up with left and right page edges that look sort of like this:

When you have all the page edges together, it should look something like this.

Time for the hard part

Now I have to figure out what image to use. That map of the book's city is too complicated and boring. I've been tossing around other possibilities with friends today, but I haven't come up with anything I really like. Maybe a better map? Maybe a stack of books? A pterodactyl? A design?

This is where I wish I had a better artistic sense. Oh well.

Kitten Watch 2024

Things are looking good... We just need to stick to this plan.

Gianni Purrsace promises!

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Not yet, but I still have time. (I reached my goal yesterday.)

All That and the Kitchen Sink

The decrepit money pit I call home...

Today, two of my brothers came over to install a new kitchen faucet. I mean, Jeff did 99% of the faucet installation — I did the other 1% by buying the faucet and holding stuff at the top so he could loosen & tighten stuff from under the sink, while Eric played with kittens — but they were both here so it counts. Then "we" (again, mostly Jeff) moved the hinges on my gate so it would open freely until the next rain.

Anyhow, a fun time was had by all, especially the kittens who were climbing all over Eric. And Jeff only accidentally left one tool behind.

But let's talk about kittens...

Speaking of kittens, I have a handy weight graph and I refuse to panic about that one kitten whose trend line doesn't intersect the goal weight until after the tentative surgery date. He's active and eating. Fingers crossed he starts packing on the pounds soon.

Science!

Blue, the current problem child

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Not yet, but dammit, I have a few hours left and I'm going to do it.

Other things I've done today

I've been rewriting the blurb for Death Trims the Tree because someone offered to set up a holiday-themed cozy page to share with their readers and I think the blurb could be better.

This is what I have at the moment. I'll probably go through it a few more times and call it good. Ugh. Writing blurbs is frustrating when they aren't going well.

Bah Humbug! Christmas is four days away and Penelope Standing is trying to find her holiday cheer.

Maybe she can't do anything about her dog eating Santa (and his reindeer) or the crabby neighbor offering visions of fiery sinners instead of sugarplums, but she can at least track down the neighborhood decorations that keep disappearing!

Join Penelope, Jake, their dog, and a cast of friends in this heartwarming holiday mystery!

Helping

So I worked it out and I need to add about 25,000 words to this book to finish the draft. I have roughly two weeks to do so. That's not impossibly fast, but it does mean I need to sit my butt in the chair and consistently write about 1700 words every day.

The tuxedos are helping.

(It's kind of a terrible picture, but there are four black & white kittens on my legs. I was stuck.)

Their names are:

Kittyenne Westwood

Giorgio Furmani

Steve Meow-Queen

Gianni Purrsace

In searching the internet for names of designers, I have successfully screwed with the advertising algorithms and now am being almost exclusively shown pictures of tuxedos (the kind you wear, not the kittens). I call that a win.

Have I reached my 1700 word goal today?

Yes.

Other exciting plans for the evening

• Grocery shopping
• Cleaning the bathroom now that the Squashes kittens are no longer in residence. At some point the tuxedos will learn how to jump out of their playpen, and they'll have to move from the office to the bathroom, but they're not close to that point yet. (I think.)

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/