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/

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!