Schrödinger's Novel

Today was once again "bathe the kittens and bleach the bathroom" day, so at least I got one thing done.

I also wrote up some notes on what I need to fix in the cozy mystery. Overall, I like how it turned out, but I need to make the first chapter stronger and fix some inconsistencies.

One thing I still need to do is write up a family tree for both sides of the wedding party. I got partway through drafting the novel when I realized I'd accidentally made the victim related to one of the suspects, which was bad because he shows up to start an affair with her. That absolutely was not where I wanted to go with that. So there's a note in the original draft that says "Make Ashley one of Brian's relatives." I have to go back through and change earlier references.

I also realized that I named a new character "Brian" and then brought in a recurring character, also named Brian. All the names in the world, and I have two people with the same name in this novel. Clearly new-Brian needs a different name, but I can't just do a search/replace on all instances of Brian without screwing up the places talking about old-Brian. Ugh.

My margin notes always make me laugh, because they range from the obvious ("Fix this sentence.") to the irritated ("Be consistent with the periods and then document it somewhere dammit."). Sometimes I can't describe what needs to be fixed, so it gets a "Meh".

Anyhow, it's mostly good and I think I know what I need to do to improve the beginning. After I write a story and before I read over the first draft, it's Schrödinger's novel — it might be good or it might be terrible. This time the novel gets to live.

Obligatory Photo

Let's hear it for this brave sunflower which has made it through multiple nights below freezing and is hanging on until the winter solstice. We salute you, messed up flower!

Garrigue

I was watching a new show today ("Perfect Murders", aka "Crimes Parfaits") with subtitles because I only have three words of French.

The description of this show is "Quirky investigators team up to solve impossible crimes in this fun French mystery series." Every episode starts out with an extended scene (~5 minutes) of someone getting murdered. I'm not sure they really nailed the vibe of the show in that description.

Anyhow, at the end of one episode, the word "garrigue" showed up in the subtitles and I wondered why they had left that one word in French. But then I looked it up and found out we have conscripted it for use in English. Collins defines it as "open shrubby vegetation of dry Mediterranean regions, consisting of spiny or aromatic dwarf shrubs interspersed with colourful ephemeral species". Apparently, it's a thing that comes up a lot when people talk about wine.

Wine Enthusiast says "Garrigue is a classic example of terroir, the notion that aromas and flavors in wine are influenced by the environment in which wine is produced."

I know almost nothing about wine, and it's always interesting to run into stuff like this — one new word leads to a glimpse into a subculture that opens up into a whole new vista. My #4 Learner is all about this sort of thing. Maybe I'll figure out a way to put this in a book so I have an excuse to learn more about it.

Obligatory Photo

Look at the bark on this tree I found today while walking the dog. How wild is that?

It's Not My Fault

Okay, I know I make jokes about my inability to follow directions all the time, and I've always assumed my baking disasters are due to that. And honestly, they probably are.

BUT

When the butternut squash was still nearly raw after 45 minutes, I put the digital thermometer on the tray.

This is the oven dial. Note the preheated light is on, which means it thinks it has hit the temperature I set (425° F).

Ignore the protective coating of broth splatter

And now look at the digital thermometer. (Ignore the bottom number — that's for the alarm.) 242° F! It's barely half the temperature it should be. No wonder things always take longer than the recipe says.

I thought I was running into problems with different areas of the oven being hotter than others, but this says there's more going on.

I will just add here that it's entirely possible it's not working because something needs to be cleaned. I mean, I don't think anything has ever spilled in my oven and it looks clean to me, but I haven't run the cleaning cycle... maybe ever? I don't remember the last time anyhow.

Anyhow, I guess I need to google some stuff...

Tabs

There's a workflow style that almost everyone I know follows, though I don't think anyone teaches it: the ebb and flow of browser tabs.

It starts when you bring up a browser window to look up something, or order take-out, or do one of a hundred things. But then you see a useful link and you bring that up in a new tab so you can come back to it later. And then another. And another.

Soon, you have so many browser tabs, it's hard to find the ones you need. You have tabs open for things you can't remember. Half of them are requests for a password because your session has expired. My old boss, H., used to have hundreds open at a time and every time he wanted to show me something, I had to wait as he clicked through the most likely candidates until he found the one he wanted or gave up and opened it again.

Eventually, it ends. Either the browser or your brain crashes — you realize you're never going to get around to looking at them all, and if they're that important you'll look them up again.

So you go through and close everything you don't recognize, close fourteen tabs that are showing the same login request, and maybe even close that second window that has all the overflow tabs. And you breathe a sigh of relief because suddenly your browser and your entire life seem manageable again.

But then you see a useful link, and you bring it up in another tab so you can come back to it later...

Obligatory Photo

This birdbath in my neighborhood is often red. I looked up why that might be happening, and now I have three tabs open with information on bird baths and Haematococcus pluvialis.

I'm a Pro at Crastinating

I have a monthly newsletter for my author business. It's not all that complicated — just a way to share a bit of personal news and maintain a connection to people who might enjoy my books. I usually follow the same format every month: 

• hello, here's what's in the newsletter,
• a bit about my foster kittens or whatever else is going on,
• something related to my Tess Baytree cozy mysteries,
• something related to the T.M. Baumgartner SF/F novels,
• some indie books to check out
• a closing question (sometimes with a picture of the dog)

Here's the November newsletter as an example: https://mailchi.mp/a28b799206a4/november2022-news.

Each section is a few hundred words at most, and it really doesn't take long to write. But every time, I put it off for days. It's not like I don't have a deadline; the indie books are usually author swaps, where I get together with another author and we boost each other's books in our newsletters. As part of that, I agree to send out my newsletter on a specific day.

I timed it today, and it took me almost exactly two hours to put it all together. That's a lot of procrastination for no real reason.

(It's a little more than that, of course. I have to set up author swaps and take pictures and think of something to write. But still. It's not much more than two hours.)

Anyhow, I currently have about 800 subscribers, which seems like a lot to me except the fact that I'm still using the free tier on MailChimp reveals how relatively tiny my list is. But still, 800 people signed up for this thing?

Obligatory Photo

Look at this handsome dog!

Solitaire

I had one of those weirdly good days today, and while I didn't get everything checked off on my todo list, I made a dent in it.

The kittens went off to the shelter for the day for their latest ringworm tests. (Since Lemontina has recently lost almost all the hair on both ears, I'm not sure why we're bothering, but I guess it's good for the kittens to get out and see other people.) When I picked up the kittens in the afternoon, the local turkey flock was hanging around the shelter parking lot as usual. I swear there are more turkeys every time I'm there. One even jumped onto my car, but my car has a protective layer of dirt so I wasn't worried.

I finished the second half of a short story that is going out to my Patreon supporters today tomorrow and then played three hours of solitaire.

I used to think playing solitaire was just a way to waste time, but there's something about the simplicity and monotony that allows me to think about stuff. Which is to say: I'm counting those three hours as work time.

Hey, I'm my own boss. I sign my own timesheet. I can do that sort of thing.

Self-Promo Time!

For the Smashwords End of Year Sale (going on until January 1, 2023), I made the first book in three different series FREE (with the checkout code SW100), so if you were ever curious about the stuff I write, now's the time to check it out without risking your hard-earned cash. 

(In case you've never heard of Smashwords — they are an ebook retailer, like Amazon but 100% less evil. If you get a book through Smashwords, you can either read it on your phone/computer through an app, or you can send it to your Kindle or other e-reader. You can also buy ebooks for other people as a gift, which is not easy to do on Amazon.)

In any case, now is your chance to grab these books for free:

Cozy mystery: Death Walks a Dog by Tess Baytree (me in disguise!) Death Walks a Dog

SF / Space Opera: The Chaos Job by T.M. Baumgartner The Chaos Job

SF / Science Fantasy: All Gremlins Great & Small by T.M. Baumgartner All Gremlins Great & Small

If you enjoy them, maybe tell a friend or write a review.

Obligatory Picture

There's a bunch of stuff going on with this tree trunk. I thought it was interesting.

Pose

One of the problems I have in making covers for my books is the lack of non-sexualized female figures available in stock images. You can get a male mage of any age in 150 different poses, but if you want a woman on the cover... well, you can probably get an 18-year-old woman in a thigh-high robe pouting for the camera. (Finding images of people of color is another issue, but other people are probably better suited to address that shortcoming.)

So I've been looking into DAZ 3D off and on for a while. It's a program that allows you to create objects (including humans, animals, and background buildings, etc), dress & pose them, set up multiple light sources, and then render the final image. A lot of covers are created this way, though the good ones usually have some overpainting done on them before they get to the final image.

In some ways, DAZ is kind of amazing — it's free, and it comes with a basic male and female human form, plus a few pieces of clothing, and some basic poses. (You can buy extras at the DAZ store — everything from different hair to intricate clothing to yoga poses to animal forms to...) There's definitely a learning curve, but the fact that I can get anything on the screen is truly amazing.

But it does have just a wee bit of sexism in the defaults. Here's what you start with:

(I should point out: These are not the final rendered images. These are just the mock-ups on the screen so you can get everything the way you want it before spending the time to generate the detailed image.)

The forms are about what you'd expect if you'd looked at Barbie or Ken dolls growing up. So far, so good.

But Barbie comes with a sports bra and panties as her only clothes. Ken comes with shorts and a t-shirt. You can put Ken's clothes on Barbie, but you have to know a little of what you're doing. The shorts worked, but Ken's t-shirt led to this:

Not gonna lie — I thought this was hilarious and I sent it to at least three people.

I was able to fix it, mostly...

Then we get to the poses, and... Ken walks and sits and plays air guitar (I think? I'm not sure what else that's supposed to be.)

Meanwhile, Barbie breasts boobily*

It's all stuff that can be changed if you know what you're doing, but the defaults tell an interesting story...

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* In case you don't recognize the reference: https://www.themarysue.com/describe-yourself-like-a-male-author-would/