12 September 2017

We are already 12 days into September. I have been keeping busy sorting Poser file in my computer, making a few pictures with Poser, making short trips to Springfield for Dr. appointments (For my boyfriend's father), and even a weekend trip up to Hannibal Missouri for a Steampunk Festival. Been feeling tired from all the things going on and napping a lot and watching things on Netflix. I have not been much inspired to write because of all the other things I have been doing.

I watched a couple of documentaries on Netflix yesterday and today, first was Ken Burn's The Big Burn, about the wildfire along the Montana/Idaho border in 1910. Was a very sad yet informative documentary. Apparently President Taft was quite an ass and until the press made things hard on him, he was content to do nothing about the fires or to help the fledgling Department of Forestry.

The other documentary I watched was on Otzi, the Iceman (Nova). The scientists in charge of tending him hired an artist from Missouri to recreate Otzi in detail so others could see him and study him without causing damage to the original. They also discovered that his DNA placed him in Sardinia and that he came from farming people. They still do not know why he was killed or why he was in the alps. It was very interesting to watch and informative. I always did like history. I got ideas from both documentaries to add into some of my novels.

I have decided I am going to finish my novels and rather than try to publish via a large company, I want to self-publish them as ebooks. I love my ereader (Nook) and many of our friends and family have either Nooks or Kindles. I am still trying to decide if I will charge for them or just give them away. If I do charge for them, it won't be for very much. I think I will most likely give away the first novel in my trilogy about my bard caught up in war and politics, and maybe give away my novel about the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612. The remainder of my books, I might try to sell for $1.99. I can always lower the price if they don't sell well.

I might even start adding parts of the first novel here, just to see if anyone likes what I have so far. I am still trying to decide on titles for most of my novels. I am not sure why that is such a difficult part of the writing process for me. Titles and dialogue, and love interests. I am not a fan of romance novels and I don't like that novels are now expected to have love interest for the main characters. I know far too many single people who are happy begin single for it to be believable in my mind.

Sure it's nice ot be in love and have someone love you back, but to have them be an integral part of each and every novel? I think I will stick to the older way of writing. I prefer to write what I enjoy reading and not cater to the sometimes silly demands of millennials who don't even bother reading real novels these days.

(This was supposed to have been posted on 12 September 2017, but Blogger was having issues for several days and I was unable to post for a while.)

16 January 2018

Much has been happening since my last blog post. We have had some personal ups and downs in the past several months, but things are well. The weather has been weird; much warmer than usual, only to drop to record lows this month. They are predicting we will get back up into the 60s by this weekend, even tho we are hovering around 1 degree at the moment.

I participated in NaNoWriMo 2017 and am an official winner, even tho it took me three short stories to accumulate my 50,000+ words. Usually I can whip out long, epic tales with a bit of planning, but last November, I just couldn't come up with enough details in any of the stories to keep them going for 50,000 words on their own. Perhaps my writing styles are changing along with my tastes in books.

I am learning to expand my reading genres and it has opened my mind to new writing ideas, besides epic dark fantasy. I am now finding myself drawn to historic writing, horror, and even urban fantasy. A few days ago I was watching Murder Maps on Nextflix and I had an intriguing idea (to me) to write about a serial killer. So now i am doing a bit of research to learn what makes this killer tick, why and how the victims are selected, as well as who is involved in the story (main and supporting characters, as well as victims).

Unfortunately, my allergies have declared war on my sinuses and it makes researching difficult when fighting off a sinus headache and constant sneezing. At least it isn't influenza or my asthma flaring. I have taken to keeping a notebook and pencil within reach of the bed as well as my Nook to look things up on. I can stay in bed and brainstorm then doze off when my mind finally wears out and sleep overtakes me.

The cats tend to keep me company as I try to write, often to the point of distraction. But they are sweet and cuddly, and rather hard to resist when they want pettings or to play. At times, however, I think they just want to steal warms from my electric blanket.

Anyhow, I should get back to writing before I crash for the night. Until next time, peace and be safe.

We have had a lot going on here this month so far, not leaving me much time to write. Two cats died, we have had to run out to the VA to pick up hearing aides, we have an eye appointment in the city tomorrow, I have been organizing all my Poser files (3D animation program, I have 2.5 TB or so of Poser items), trying to get ready for a Steampunk Festival in Hannibal MO over Labor Day weekend, and now we have my boyfriend's stepbrother coming out in a couple weeks to present us a list of items he wants from the house (things that are/were his mother's).

Not sure how I feel about this last one. I don't know the man coming out in a couple weeks to come and turn things in the house upside down. He better be polite to Brad's dad or I will likely lose my temper on him. I hate people who are greedy and materialistic. I know that "hate" is a strong word and I haven't met this person yet, but I am a bit stressed about it. We all are, really. I am not opposed to him having things that are his mother's, I just don't want him digging through everything, upsetting my father-in-law, or trying to take anything he shouldn't be taking (like our things).

I remember when my mother-in-law from my one and only marriage passed away. How everyone swooped in on her daughter and made ridiculous demands for things. Even her brothers (my now ex-husband and the other one) deciding what they wanted without discussion and all the arguing over THINGS. Material THINGS. As if the items a dead person leaves behind are more important than the person themselves. The dividing of my maternal grandmother's things were a bit more civil, but we still had the vultures swooping with dollar signs in their eyes as they tried to pick over her belongings.

I am just grateful that my boyfriend's father is an only child and that my boyfriend has only one brother. His brother is a good and sensible man with a wonderful wife and two daughters. I don't foresee any fighting and bickering on their part or ours. Maybe this visit will be a good thing. We are a bit crowded with items in the house and it would make some space. I will try to keep my thoughts positive and do my best to make sure everything is handled fairly and none of my father-in-law's possessions walk out of the house.

I am a bit of a hypocrite, I know. I value my things, the things of my boyfriend, and the things of my father-in-law. I don't any of our stuff being taken away by someone from the outside thinking they can come in our home and make demands of us. I do agree that he (and his sister) are entitled to have items of their mother's. They are close to her even if they aren't close to any of us. But I kind of fear he might be like the vultures that seem to appear whenever someone's estate needs parting out. Taking everything he thinks he can get away with for himself, not caring whether his stepfather or step brother actual own the items, and I don't know that his sister (who cannot make it out here) will get her fair share of things.

Too many things to worry over. I can only wait and see how the matter will be resolved. Until then, I need to get my costumes ready for the Steampunk Festival, keep the house tidy, and go bake some lemon zucchini bread. Until next time, peace and be safe.

It has been a tough week, losing two of our cats eight days apart. I have been spending a lot of time reminiscing about them and all the adventures we have had in the caring for them. I had a good hard cry a few nights ago and have been sleeping poorly for nearly two weeks, Today it all caught up with me and I stayed in bed reading and sleeping until 5:30 P.M.. I am blessed with a wonderful, compassionate and understanding boyfriend who let be have my time to recuperate from all the stress. He took great care of his dad, did the grocery shopping and even made a fantastic lunch and sent me back to bed for several hours.

It is almost eight P.M. now and I am still feeling very tired. I have had a Bagheera on my desk, rubbing under my chin with his head and pawing at the various items on my desk. I finally gave in and served him (and the other cats) his treats. Now he will let me write in peace for a while. I have been neglectful of nearly all my writing since putting Sceadwe down Monday morning. I need to get into the habit of writing so I can finish my novel by the end of this year (my writing goal). I have several others I need to finish up as well, but this particular one has a few people waiting to read it, all eager to give me feedback and let me know what works and what needs changing.

I have also decided that starting next week, I will pull prompts from my writing journal and work on them as well, starting with one per week and writing them up here on my blog. As of now, I have one thousand two hundred and nine prompts. Plenty to keep me busy for a very long time. I may eventually do more than once per week with them, as I am hoping to do one every day to help get the creative juices flowing. Who knows, I might even get to the point where I do more than one per day, but for now I think I will work on one per week.

As for my novel, I am still trying to decide its title. It is basically an epic high fantasy story about a young woman caught up in war and politic in a medieval/fantasy setting. I am planning for it to be the first book of a trilogy, the first being about her late childhood, growing into womanhood and becoming an exile of her homelands. The second novel will be about how she matures and hones herself while in exile; the various adventures she has. The last book will be about her return home, ten years after being exiled, facing up to the actions that got her exiled and atoning for her past. She will have to make peace with her king and the nobles and help them with the war.

There is quite a bit more to the story, but that is the jist of what I am writing. I created the character when I was about fourteen and have been slowly filling in and altering the story of her life ever since. It is time to get it all out on paper and share her story with my friends. Once I finish the first book in the trilogy, I plan to work on something completely different. Last year when I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I began to write a historic novel about the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612.

I am hardly the first to write about this topic, but there aren't that many books written about it just yet. Most I have read reviews for focus on either the young woman Alizon Device or her grandmother Elizabeth "Demdike" Southerns. They want to show how innocent people were tired and hung for the crimes of witchcraft and make the magistrates out to be the villains. I have researched much of the history and the trial (it was documented by the court clerk a year after the hangings), about King James I & VI, the laws of witchcraft, etc. and have come to the conclusion that while the people weren't exactly guilty of witchcraft, they weren't all the nicest of people and some of them did believe they had indeed used dark arts to kill others. So I decided to to make these people a bit more human, with good and bad in each of them (just like all the rest of us in the real world).

I will need to finish my fantasy novel before I can go much further in my historic novel. I have five other novels in the works as well, including another epic high fantasy, another historic novel, a modern fantasy, a pirate tale, a steampunk novel, and one set in Arthurian England. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so imaginative! On top of all this, I still work on crafts and digital art as well. Good hing I have the time to work on all of these projects. I just need to discipline myself and get to it.

Until next time, peace and be safe.

It has been a difficult day already, even though it isn't quite 9:30 in the morning. We made a hard decision last night, my boyfriend, his father, and myself. For seventeen and a half years, we have had the joy (and stress) of being owned by a beautiful Russian Blue named Sceadwe (Sed-way). He was quite a talker and always interested in showing and receiving affection. He thought mostly with his belly, but also with his heart, begin there for me many times when I was sick in bed. Sadly, the past few were not very kind to our Sceadwe. He got a respiratory infection a few years ago that caused him to lose a lot of weight. He got over the infection, but never gained his weight back.

He grew thinner and thinner, and within the past several months he became completely emaciated. We started feeding him wet cat food, hoping it would put some weight back on our sweet boy, but it didn't work. Instead, he lost most of his teeth rather rapidly. Just this year, he started having difficulty walking due to arthritis and controlling his bowels. He would get bad bouts of diarrhea that would last for days and dehydrate him. So last night, we made the very painful decision that today we would put him down. I keep telling myself that he has had seventeen and a half very good years of being loved and spoiled, and loving us back. He lived almost five years past his life expectancy and outlived his brother from the same litter by just over four years. (Icteric died from a sudden seizure, possibly a stroke). It was an act of mercy; heartbreaking, guilt-ridden mercy.

I feel terrible, as I was the one who finally made the decision to let him go. I feel like a villain, even though I know this was the right thing to do. He was suffering from numerous ailments and so fragile that he would literally fall over when one of the other cats would brush up affectionately against him. I will miss my Sceadwe who has been my shadow for nearly two decades. He is at peace pain free now and hopefully with his brother Icteric. He will always be in my heart.

Until next time, peace and be safe.

Today should be a busy but fun day. I am going into the city to run a few errands and hang out with my bestie as we start preparing for two events coming up. The first will be over Labor Day weekend up in Hannibal, Missouri. We will be going to the Steampunk Fair. There is little we will need to do for preparation as my bestie is taking care of the sleeping arrangements. I just have to get my costume(s) together. Good thing I already have a few corsets and lots of other items I can piece together. The other event takes place in mid-late October (20-22). We shall be hanging out at Persimmon's Days.

I need to fill out my application as a vendor and pay my booth fee this coming week. Today, I shall swing by Hobby Lobby and see what they have in wooden boxes and maybe a few scrapbook elements as well. I have plenty of paper, paints, glue, etc. I only have 10-12 boxes made at the moment and around 35 journals/sketchbooks made. I would like to have at least 20-25 boxes to take. I might even make a few more journals and bring the number up to 50, as the festival will last 3 days and I will need enough goods to last that long. Once I have everything made, I will have to get pictures taken and posted up on Facebook and maybe even here as well.

In between all this crafting and running about, I also need to get some writing in each day. To help with that, I made myself a writing journal of sorts, but only putting writing prompts and names for characters inside it. As of this morning, I have 1202 writing prompts in my journal. So I have no more excuses to write SOMETHING each day to help spark my writing creativity.

I also decided I will use my blog as part of my writing journal. So on the days I am not working specifically on one of my novels, I will pull a random prompt from my journal and write it here. When I am working on my novels specifically, I will post an update on that journal and include word count and maybe a passage or two that I am particularly proud of. I have never been very good at keeping a writing journal, so this will be a good way to learn and to help keep me disciplined.

Other than my my blog, I don't anticipate doing any other writing today as there will not be much time for it. I might surprise myself and get in another 500 words on my current novel project this evening, but I don't know yet when I will be coming home or how tired I will be after walking around the city for much of the morning and afternoon. I am planning on going to Hobby Lobby and then strolling and browsing shops downtown and having lunch somewhere. I have a lot of fun with my bestie, we make each other laugh so much that sometimes people think we have had a bit too much to drink! Truth is, we just really enjoy each other's company and we like to laugh a lot and loudly.

Until next time, peace and be safe.

I have decided to redo my blog today. It has been a few years since I have posted anything and there have been many changes in my life recently. We are now living on a farm in a a very small town in southwest Missouri. We have 110-120 acres of land, I can never quite remember just how much exactly. It is very peaceful and beautiful here, our view from the back porch includes fields of grass, cows, wooded sections of the land, rolling hills, an occasional bald eagle, deer, wild turkey, coyotes, a roadrunner, a great horned owl, rabbits, hawks, and many other creatures.

In the evening, I can sit on the back porch to watch the sun go down and listen to the frogs in the pond as well as all the insects singing. Fireflies flash and sparkle all across the fields, and the sky fills with so many stars (when we don't have clouds). There is almost no light pollution out here and the night skies fascinate me. It is so perfect out here after living for decades in cities. It is not quiet in the country, but there are no traffic sounds, no listening to fighting neighbors or crappy music blasted on car stereos. There are gunshots heard, and often, but it is usually either farmers protecting livestock, hunters, or simply gun enthusiasts practicing their skills.

We moved out here last year (2016) in between June and July to help with my boyfriend's father. I am now his caregiver. Lucky for me he is a very sweet and intelligent man who at this time can still do many things for himself. It leaves me with a lot of time to work on my writing and other crafts. I just need to be a bit more disciplined when it comes to my writing.

We have six cats (five are mine!) who are always distracting me, particularly my black cat, Bagheera. He is a beautiful short haired, big-boned boyo who is very much a typical cat. He is all attitude and and very spoiled. Bags, as we like to call him, enjoys his O.D.D. (oppositional defiance disorder), affluenza, and god-complex. He also likes to get on the desk and demand my attention and affections when the other cats are napping. He likes to head-but my chin, paw at my shirt, and lay down on my keyboard while I am trying to work on the computer.

Bags as a a pretty little girlfriend named Odin. She is grey tabby with only one eye. She was born with microcephaly and her left eye did not grow with the rest of her. We rescued her from a cruel woman who let Odin's eye socket go infected and who has clipped off the tip of her left ear. We rescued her back in March of 2016, got her to a vet, and she is now a fat and happy addition to our home. When we first rescued Odin, we thought she was male and felt she needed a strong name. By the time we learned her true gender, she had grown used to being Odin and so the name has stuck.

Odin is playful, kittenish, and very loving. She is getting more and more comfortable with us and her new environment, and even starting to show some sass. Thankfully the other cats like as well. Because she has just the one eye, Odin is strictly an indoor cat now, and she seems quite content with that. Having just one eye doesn't seem to hinder her much; she is quite a stealthy hunter of balls, strings, yarn, and even spiders. We have our hands full with all the fur babies and they like to be involved anytime I am crafting with paper or breads.

Odin and Bagheera (a.k.a. Bags)

As for my writing, I have not written any new poems in years. I have been participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)for the last five or six years (I lost count) and now have several partially completed novels underway. This year I will not be participating because I really need to finish up all the other novels I have started. So now, I am trying to focus on the first NaNo novel set in a medieval/fantasy world about a young girl caught up in war and politics. Once that is finished, I shall finish up last year's historic novel about the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612. I have twelve chapters of the first book drafted out, still need to write the last few chapters then edit. So far, each chapter is between 7,000 and 8,000 words and I anticipate there being 17 chapters total in the first book. This means I have roughly 37,500 words to go.

Having participated in NaNoWriMo for several years now and having even won at least three times (to win you need to write a minimum of 50,000 words in 30 days --in the month of November), I am certain if I just make myself sit down and write, I will finish the first draft in less than a month. I will then have to set it aside for a few months to work on the next novel before I go back and edit. I edit better when I can look at things with a fresh mind. Once the editing is finished, I will have a select few folks read through it, seeking out any errors or dull portions, basically looking for anything that needs fixing, removed, or added. After that, I will see about publishing my novel, either as an e-book at smashwords.com or maybe even as a physical book.

Until next time, peace and be safe.