Shoes

The gathering is rebounding off to other places (Mexico and then New York, Legoland and then SF, Sacramento, SF bay area, and one mile away from my mom's house), but here's evidence of what it was like today:

Question of the Day

I swapped newsletter space with another author, and a bunch of her readers bought All Gremlins Great & Small (currently $0.99), which is great! Some also bought All Basilisks Wild & Sparking, which is also great! But nobody bought the book in between (All Rocs Wise & Wonderful), which means that something has gone wrong. Either the books aren't properly added to the series at the retailer or I have the wrong link in the back of the book. I need to track that down later this week. This is the stuff they don't warn you about when you become your own publisher.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Hi, Cheese Puff and Pringles!

Should Have Given Them a Box

My youngest niece & nephew (3 & 5) got all kinds of toys for Christmas, and they have been making things with Play-Doh and LEGO, coloring, and reading. Perfectly normal stuff.

But my sister-in-law found these plastic dinosaur chopstick holders at a flea market, and sure, why not? I suspect they will get incorporated into adventures at some point, because my niece has a whole world going on with unicorns and dogs.

But the most popular toy for both the kids? The cheap pack of chopsticks that came with the dinosaurs. They can''t get enough of them. Nobody understands, but it's pretty funny.

Quote of the Day

"Just like everything in life, there's no point."

1000 Pieces

This is what I spent a significant part of the day working on. It's better to do big puzzles with a bunch of people so you can dip in and out and still have progress.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

I interrupted Pringles while she was playing.

Measure with your Heart

It is Saturday and the hotel room with no drawer pulls is an oasis of calm. When I checked in, they gave me three key cards, and I have offered to auction off the remaining two key cards to my siblings if they want to sit in a quiet room for two hours. Honestly, I could probably fund my entire stay that way if we just had another couple little kids running around.

We had the big family dinner this evening, and I was at the three-person vegetarians table with my nephew and his partner. The food was excellent and we got to catch up, so it was fun. I'm always responsible for bringing the almond-rice stuffed peppers, and every year they taste slightly different because I measure ingredients with my heart, as they say. I'm not a great chef, but this is a recipe that can't really be screwed up.

How do people with small children survive until the children are grown? I don't understand it, but I'm glad most parents seem to enjoy it (or at least pretend they do).

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Fosters from last year! Clockwise from top: Witch Hazel, Tweetie, and Taz. What an adorable bunch!

No More Beeping

It's Friday and I'm still in the hotel room with no drawer pulls. The good news is that my house is no longer beeping — two of my friends offered to go deal with the smoke detectors, and Teresa got their first. Have I ever mentioned that I have great friends? 'Cause I do.

The hotel was conducting tests of the fire alarms this morning. It really feels like the beeping has been following me around. Hopefully it's all over now.

Gin the feral cat, who would have had to deal with another couple days of complaining smoke detectors at home, is undoubtedly relieved. I have yet to catch her on the kitten cam, but I'm sure she's there somewhere. Wait, I take it back! I just looked and she is eating. Excellent. Proof of life!

Quote of the Day:

(From my 5-year-old nephew after roughhousing with his cousins): "My armpits are leaking."

Obligatory Kitten Picture:

Tarquin & Merrick! You can see Tarquin's wonky left eye a little in this photo — most of the damage looked like it was from the third eyelid adhering to the cornea, so I think the plan was to fix that when he was anesthetized for neutering. Hopefully he ended up with two good eyes. I thought for a while that he might end up with zero eyes, so I'm pleased with his progress in any case.

Beep

Remember yesterday when I said we had a non-zero chance of losing power overnight? Yeah. The power went out at 4am and hadn't come back on when I left six hours later. It did finally come back on around noon, according to the mail I got from PG&E.

But before that, my stupid smoke alarms got together and went off at 7am. Was there any smoke? No. They send each other signals, so I think maybe one of them had a low battery and that set them all off? I don't know.

Anyhow, I opened the battery compartment on two of them and the third shut up when I opened the second. But then I checked the kitten cam later, and now they are doing their "hey, my battery is low" beep every few minutes. The "smoke detectors that are tied in to the electrical system" idea makes sense in general, but in practice it's a pain in the butt. Also, the building code says there has to be one in each bedroom and one in the hall, which means I have four smoke detectors in a ten foot radius. I think I need to just remove the ones that aren't in the master bedroom.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

It's Tarquin, the most fragile vampire. He is soooo playful. I would go in to feed them, and he would just ignore the food and wait for me to throw toys for him.

Checking It Twice

Forget about Santa's list. What about my list of things I'm supposed to gather or get done before I leave?

It's 7:45 PM, and I have 18 things on the list. I have done two. I'm sure it will be fine... The important thing is that the laundry is dry because we're having heavy rain and 25 mph winds tonight, so there's a non-zero chance I will lose power overnight.

Planning

Here's my tentative bingo card for next year. I may rearrange things to stack the deck in my favor, but I probably won't come up with anything new because honestly, who has 24 different things they are planning to do in their career in the next 12 months? Actually, don't answer that. I don't want to know.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

It's Merrick from the Vampires! (Otherwise known as Stripe because his collar was yellow with red stripes. Sometimes I can't remember the names I give to kittens, which probably means I'm stunting their growth or something.) He went off to the Sacramento SPCA last Friday and I don't see him listed on their adoptable animals, so I'm hoping he's already found a home.

No Bingo

We're getting toward the end of the year, and I can comfortably say I won't get anything useful done in the next week, so let's look at the results of my 2025 author bingo card.

I outlined the squares that I accomplished — there are six (seven if you count the FREE square), but they aren't in a line, so no bingo for me. In case you can't read them:

Accomplished:

• Publish Dragon Fortune
• Publish Penelope Standing #6
• Publish Independent Flight
• Amazon Ads
• 2k net month
• Write a newsletter magnet

The ones that remain unmarked:

• In-person event
• Bookbub pay-per-click ads
• Sell a cover
• Direct sales
• Create & sell merchandise
• Newsletter hygiene
• Facebook ads
• Publish sequel to Theoretical Magic
• Publish Fighting Fate (SF Romance)
• Publish next book in The Portal Storms
• Publish a secret pen name novella
• Death Walks a Dog audiobook
• Write a holiday novella
• Publish short story collection
• Write PS #7
• Recover a series
• Apply for a Bookbub Featured Deal
• Get 2k newsletter subscribers

As you can see, there were a lot of things I didn't do this year. And to be fair, I had no plans at the beginning of the year to do some of those — I had to come up with 24 things, and that's a lot.

Next year's bingo card will be similar, but I might stack the deck by rearranging some squares. More on that later.

Gouache of the Day

I liked the jellyfish, but I think the water needed to be a little darker?

The ladybugs needed a background, but otherwise this one was fun:

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Frito!

No Comfort

Campbell's Soup is doing themselves no PR favors lately, but I've been my mom's Cream of Asparagus dealer for the last few years. The stores near her stopped carrying it a while back, but my beloved Nugget had it on the shelf pretty reliably. Until recently. They still didn't have it today, so I did a little investigation. It looks like Campbell's stopped making Cream of Asparagus a few months ago.

I could probably make a pot and freeze it in individual servings, but it wouldn't be the same. Cream of asparagus over toast is a comfort food, not a culinary triumph. So even if I made a soup that was better than the canned version, it wouldn't occupy the same niche.

Oh well.

Gouache of the Day

The bear from this tutorial is pretty cute. I'd make it again.

The acrylic border is nice but takes a really long time to dry, so I'm not sure I'll ever do that again.

Then I revisited yesterday's ocean wave disaster. My next attempt wasn't much better.

I thought maybe if I made the foam a rainbow, that would help. It did not.

Perhaps a wave is not my thing.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

It's Cool Ranch!

Write Off

I booked my hotel for the family gathering. If I spend time writing while I'm there (which I will, because I'd like to get this book done by mid-January), can I call it a writing retreat and write it off on my taxes? I may have to set a story there or something.

(Don't follow any tax advice from me. I always get at least one letter from the IRS after I file my taxes. Some years it's more than one. That's normal, right?) 

Gouache of the Day

I mean, it turned out kinda terrible — my pen work is way too uneven and I think it would probably be better without trying to make the sections different colors. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. This is the whole point of practice, right?

It's supposed to be a big wave.

I think I know what I want to change. Perhaps version two will be better.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

It's Taki!

Unexpected

Winner

Big news today: The Mysterious Murders short story contest winners were announced on a call today and I won first prize! Absolutely unexpected — I really liked the story I submitted, but I wasn't sure it qualified as a "murder mystery with a fun twist". Apparently it qualified.

The winning stories are here: https://www.mysteriousmurders.com/

The prestige of winning also comes with a hefty cash prize, so I'm riding high today. Also, I just think this contest is such a wonderful way to remember Anja Boersma — I never met her, but she was loved by a lot of great people.

Questionable architecture

There's nothing like drawing or painting something to realize you have no idea how something looks. I'm pretty sure these houses would fall down, and the wiring is especially dodgy.

Attempted to follow this tutorial: https://youtube.com/shorts/u8xhnALwc1I

Also started another dragon eye (just because) but I'll have to finish it another day.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Pringles!

Found Them!

As mentioned yesterday, the foster kittens went back to the shelter yesterday. (All five of the Snack Pack have already been adopted!) That means it's time to clean all three rooms where the kittens were.

I'm still in the early stages of cleaning — towels and soft beds get shaken out and washed, litter boxes get emptied/cleaned/bleached, and the floor gets swept to keep from tracking everything into the rest of the house. Eventually I'll get to the next stage, when I clean and disinfect the walls, floors, and furniture. It's a process.

Today when I was moving the couch in my office to sweep underneath, I found five springs, two crinkle balls, a ping pong ball, a fabric mouse, two plastic balls, and about a hundred bits of paper from when the Snack Pack toilet papered my office last week.

No wonder I can never find any toys for the kittens.

More Gouache

Two tutorials, and more blobbies with fun expressions:

Blobbies!

Dragon's eye tutorial — I followed the directions!

I almost followed directions and then got bored, so things changed a bit.

Obligatory kitten picture

Cheese Puff!

Zero

Remember yesterday when I said the plans for my foster kittens kept changing? They changed again!

Since the one kitten I was going to keep until her surgery next week (Yorkshire Pudding) is no longer sneezing or displaying upper respiratory symptoms, she went back to the shelter today along with the Snack Pack and the last two Vampires. People who are hoping to adopt a kitten will be able to see her over the weekend, and hopefully she'll have a home lined up even before surgery.

This means I currently have zero (ZERO!) foster kittens in the house. The mess is still there, of course, but I've run one load of laundry and done the first stage of cleaning the spare room.

I fully intend to laze around in bed tomorrow morning for the first time since... March? I can't remember the last time I didn't have kittens.

On Saturday there's no sleeping in because I have a virtual awards ceremony to attend for the Mysterious Murders short story competition. That should be interesting. Fingers crossed I don't make a fool of myself.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

This is from back in October — it's Akasha, the mother of the Vampires along with her brood. All six liked to pile on top of her, but only three were actually nursing by the time they came to me. The smallest three had stopped eating and I spent the next couple weeks tube feeding them every few hours until they were weaned.

Change

One of the reasons my art isn't as good as it could be is that I'm easily bored. Getting better at something requires practice, and I hate doing the same thing over and over. But I'm finding different things to try while still working on the same thing. So I started with this:

And then I wanted to try again with a better background:

But I realized partway through that I'd made all the leaves in the same direction and it just looked weird. So I tried it again today and ended up with this:

There's something I still don't like about the background, but it will have to wait for another day.

I'm also pretty happy with this one (which is straight from a tutorial):

Kinda boring, yes. But that's about the best tree I've ever managed in the foreground. I'll take it.

Obligatory Kitten Pictures

The plans for the kittens keep changing. Yesterday, the plan was for the remaining Vampires to go to a vacation foster on Monday. (They're big enough for surgery, but one needs his third eyelid snipped and reconstructed, and the regular shelter vet is on vacation so they're only doing spay/neuter surgeries until January.) But now the plan is for them to go to the SPCA in Sacramento, where they will have surgery and be adopted. So I'm taking them back to the shelter tomorrow and they'll go to Sac SPCA on Friday.

They're friendly little guys, so they'll find good homes soon.

Aliens

I've been trying different techniques with gouache, and the autumn leaf tutorial exposed some flaws in my ability to use the hair dryer without sending paint droplets skidding over the page. Again, the gel pen is my friend for making things look better.

Then, because I had a bunch of extra paint already mixed, I made some blobby aliens and they were way better than the leaves.

I especially like the one at the end of the second row who looks like it's shoving its butt out. Once you see that, you can't unsee it.

Obligatory Alien Kitten Pictures

Yorkshire Pudding went back for a recheck today, and she's doing so well that I thought they might keep her. (They didn't. She's still on the surgery schedule for next week.) Anyhow, I wanted to make sure I had pictures of her, so I took a couple on the traditional graduation backdrop.

Her pupils are so dilated that she looks like an alien. In handling her, I've noticed her irises are a lovely gold, but you have to really work to see them. I'll try for another set of pictures before I take her back on Monday, but I'm not sure how to make her not look like an alien...

She's kinda hard to photograph because she immediately walks straight toward me so she can get pets.

Blueberry Cheesecake Caramelized Croissants are Just Like Oatmeal, Right?

The only requirement on my todo list today was a trip to Costco since I was out of paper plates to feed the cats. Could I use real dishes and wash them? Yes. Would that be better for the environment? Probably. But the fewer ways of spreading cooties between groups of kittens, the better.

Anyhow, I also needed Diet Coke (which Costco conveniently keeps in the same exact spot every time, because they know the Diet Coke fanatics will hurt someone if they can't find their fix) and oatmeal. I never found the oatmeal. I know it was in there somewhere, because I saw it in someone's cart in the parking lot, but by the time I had wandered the likely aisles a few times, I lost my will to live and decided to do without.

I did get some blueberry cheesecake caramelized croissants though. Those count as breakfast food, right? Close enough.

Dollhouse

In an attempt to escape my current manuscript, I've been watching Dollhouse. The first season is actually not bad. I have vague memories of the second season stumbling into incoherence, but I haven't seen it since it was released, so maybe I'm mis-remembering.

My two main thoughts are

1. The show would be much better without Joss Whedon's creepy prostitution fetish. Weirdly, despite this being a show about attractive people who are rented out with synthetic personas, his fetish is less jarring here than it is in Firefly.  But yeah. He's a slimy guy and it comes through in his work, no matter how good some of the other parts are.
   
   
2. Someone really screwed up by leaning so heavily on the "tee hee, look, they're prostitutes!" angle in marketing, because the actual show leans into adventure and some interesting SF concepts. Would it still have disappeared without a trace if they'd chosen different theme music and opening credits? Maybe not, but I think that might have helped.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Action shots of Pringles:

Hello

That belly is a trap

She looks ridiculous, but she's just yawning

Sunday Grab Bag

Books Consumed (or not...)

First off, the good:

Maria Schneider (from Bear Mountain Books, go check out her books, they're fun!) recommended The Inheritance by Ilona Andrews, which I had been avoiding because I didn't think litRPG was for me. I enjoyed it! I think as a series it's going to run into the problem most of the Ilona Andrews series have — the main character gets so strong (physically/magically/whatever) that the antagonist has to keep getting stronger, and the battles become more and more detailed until 70% of the book is battle scenes. I tend to enjoy the first few books in every Ilona Andrews series more than later ones for that reason. But this is book one of the new series and I liked it.

Arch Allies (Starhawke Rogue Book 1) by Audrey Sharpe. I think this is an offshoot from another series, but it works well enough without having read anything else. Interesting characters and it kept things moving, like a good space opera should.

And then the others:

The next was an audiobook: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. I love T. Kingfisher. She's the only author that I'll read horror from. But the narration on the book was not good. Maybe it's just stuff only I care about? I was not impressed. Anyhow, I'll read the book later instead of listening to the audio.

Also an audiobook: In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune. I got stressed out and had to stop listening. I'll try again later.

Random Art

They aren't fat penguins, but they'll do. Adding details with a gel pen helps make up for some of my painting deficiencies.

Obligatory Kitten Photo

They have a hard life...

Pinning My Hopes on Ponazuril

Had a fun morning at Morgan's Mill (my local coffeeshop), where Jennifer did not laugh too loudly at my unfinished dragon foot. I think I'm going to finish the right leg, move to the left leg, and if the left leg is an improvement, try the right leg again. Did I get any writing done at what is ostensibly a write-in? Maybe a few sentences...

After that, I went to the shelter to pick up the ponazuril that is (fingers crossed!) going to fix the Snack Pack kittens. While I was there, we set up a surgery appointment for the two remaining Vampires. If everything comes together, all my fosters will have returned to the shelter for adoption before I leave town and we won't need to find a vacation foster. I think we have decent odds, but I'm not holding my breath.

Only after I came home did I remember that I wanted to go to the pet store (about half a mile from the shelter) to get a couple new litter boxes and some extra litter — that will make things easier when I'm bleaching everything so the Snack Pack don't reinfect themselves. So... out again to the pet story, and then I stopped at Michael's to get a gel pen for adding extra details to the paintings.

Because, yes, the gel pen is going to fix everything.

(I did set up a hair drier so I could dry things faster, though. Maybe I'm improving?)

Michael's Rant

I know this is going to make me sound like an old person, but... Seriously, Michael's, this whole self-checkout thing you have going IS NOT WORKING. There were three employees assisting customers with "self-checkout", the line was moving really slowly, the registers kept throwing error codes to make the employees log in, and it was just a mess. It would have been at least twice as fast to have those three employees check everyone out.

Training your customers to run your machines is the least efficient solution. Honestly, it's probably losing you business. Who wants to to drop by for a small item if it takes twenty minutes to get through the line?

Okay, rant over. I hate this stupid self-checkout trend.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Look, they're not getting into trouble! Sure, they're sleeping, but it's nice to know that it's possible.

Sloth Day

Sloth Day

I spent the day relaxing, taking naps, and finishing the ARC of Tammie Painter's Scales of Justice (book 6 of the Circus of Unusual Creatures series). Spoiler: the book is a lot of fun and I enjoyed it.

Having "sloth days" is an important thing to build into my schedule. I mean, sure, it's not like I'm all that busy anyhow, but I need days where I just sit around and do nothing and (crucially) don't see people at all. Is this a neurodivergence thing? Ha, I'm a 57-year-old woman, so there is zero chance I would have been diagnosed with anything in grade school so we'll never know!

Important Poop Info

We have preliminary results back on the kittens' fecal examination, and at the very least, they have Cystoisospora, which is a protozoan. It certainly fits with their symptoms, so it's probably not just an incidental finding. The version that cats get isn't transmissible to humans, but I probably should bleach my office this weekend to keep the Snack Pack from reinfecting themselves.

And who knows? Maybe the final report will have more fun things to treat. These are the kittens that had roundworms even after they'd been twice treated with antiparasitics that should have taken care of that. I think these kittens just started off with a very high parasitic load.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Frito says hello.

(I interrupted her in the middle of grooming. That's why she looks so furtive.)

Glamorous

Fellow foster-mom Jennifer and I often end conversations with "Fostering is so glamorous!" (She's the one that made me dig the 7" tapeworm from the trash and photograph it.)

Today was another of those glamorous days. I spent the morning waiting for Cheese Puff and company to poop so I could get a fresh sample to send off to the lab so we could find out why half of the Snack Pack have had diarrhea for three weeks. Glamorous!

More Fun with Gouache

The problem is that I see short instructional videos on YouTube, and I remember about 20% of the information when I go to recreate it later. (And also that I never wait for things to dry.)

Here are some penguins that are wide. Very wide. I finished this page and then actually looked at it and started laughing. I still like it, though.

Then there's the turn-off-your-brain thing that was fun to make.

And finally, I was trying to shade oranges by using the opposite color on the color wheel. In theory, it should have worked. But I failed to let it dry (shocking, I know), so it didn't quite turn out. But I added a penguin, so the page is a win anyhow.

Will I ever be competent at painting? Very likely not. But I'm having fun with my almost-daily practice.

Obligatory kitten picture

The new girl has a name: Yorkshire Pudding. Her eyes are still pretty inflamed, but she's eating and playing, so I think we're on the right track.

She'll be gorgeous when she's healthy.