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Month: December 2023

Meandering in Not-My House

I am a good provider. I don’t know exactly when it became a big deal to me. Well, yes. I do. It was probably hanging around before the pandemic, but when COVID hit and nothing could be counted on, when I couldn’t even reliably find toilet paper—that brought it to the front. I needed to make sure I was providing for my family. And I have, I do. Probably more than I really should, but hey. We all have our hangups, and there are worse ones. For instance, Christmas dinner. Child 1 wanted ham. Child 2 cannot eat ham. Did I override child 1? Did I just get something small for child 2? No. No, dear reader. I got a ten pound ham, and an eight pound rib roast. For four people. And dessert? I love pumpkin pie. It’s necessary. If it’s available, I’m having it. In order to take it easy on us in a strange house and awkward kitchen, we decided we’d get dessert from Costco. But child did not want pumpkin pie. They wanted Costco’s wonderful tuxedo cake. Fine, then—I would get both. Only when I got there, all the tuxedo cakes were gone. So I got a cheesecake along with the pumpkin pie. And a chicken pot pie for Christmas Eve dinner. Can you say “leftovers?” One advantage of this house is that the fourth bedroom is part of a mother-in-law suite. So it has its own refrigerator. Thank goodness. It’s been such a plus that…

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2024 is Coming

To piggyback off Kit’s post (because I have no creativity whatsoever this week), I’ve been doing some noodling about 2024 and what I want to accomplish. This year has been a bit of a mixed bag writing-wise, some good, some not-so-good, and I’d like to ramp it up a bit, assuming there are no horrific crises or emergencies or general ongoing unpleasantness that makes things, well, unpleasant. So let’s talk about how things went this year first, shall we? I had a few goals. They were: To publish an erotic contemporary romance novella on Radish (similar to Kindle Vella), which was a pivot/experiment to see how readers would respond to my writing in a different genre. Result: The novella, BAV, as I am calling it, is about 1/3rd done. It’s on hold a bit while I figure some stuff out. It ended up being a bit deeper than I’d intended, delving into subjects like parental control, religious cults, and BDSM. Sooo I am deciding if I want to go all in, or if I want to rein it in some. To finish my anthology story. Result: I rewrote it twice, and started yet another rewrite which I believe will be the last. It just wasn’t working the first two times. It’s about 5,000 words now. Again, on hold, but I have full intentions of finishing. This antho has had a floating deadline, so I’ve been sort of waiting for the muse to get back on board with this one. To…

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2024 Looms

Good afternoon, friends. It is so cold in my house that it’s hard to type, so that may be my cue to go elsewhere (and get coffee). I had such grand ideas for today, my friends. And then I got distracted by…I don’t even know. I went to the gym, came home and took a shower, read forty pages of a book (Guards! Guards! at the moment), and then…who knows. Something. Being cold, perhaps. I have a to do list app on my computer called Today, which is lovely because you put what you want to do on it, just for the day, and then it deletes everything so you start each day with a clean slate. I use it in conjunction with Todoist, which is my main to do program, because sometimes seeing what you’re behind on is only discouraging. HOWEVER I am getting ready to retire this particular computer because it’s ancient, so I did spend some time looking for a Today-like app to download onto my phone. Which didn’t work, I don’t think. I’m trying Microsoft To Do which in theory should only show me things due on the day I’m on, but we will have to wait until tomorrow to know for sure. If you know of one, let me know. All this is a very roundabout way of saying, oh my god, it’s almost the end of the year, when the hell did this happen, and how do I get it to stop. At this…

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Things You Didn’t Know About Me

I’m a collector of lists. I used to keep a list on lined paper of every movie I’d seen; I still keep an equivalent list for books, although now it’s on GoodReads. My TBR list is fearsome to behold. My browser tabs are equally fearsome, on more than one device. I’ve got long lists of things to watch on all my TV/film streaming services, and things to listen to on my podcast app. Sadly, all the lists are growing. It might be that I like making lists more than actually consuming the media, the way people (ahem) buy books faster than they read… Funny thing about podcasts. I always swore I was a visual learner, couldn’t do audiobooks, much preferred transcripts over training videos and online newspapers over radio or TV news. Then…well, things changed, I needed to rest my eyes more and had to get my story fix somehow. I started out with a queer SF audio drama (Moonbase Theta Out) and have been really enjoying a short-story podcast (LeVar Burton Reads…yep, I’m a child of the 80s and have been a fan since Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I will listen to that man read anything). Most recently, I’ve added a couple of non-fiction/self-help shows about neurodivergent self-care and housekeeping (Struggle Care) and decluttering (A Slob Comes Clean). Maybe I’ll finally end up hooked on Welcome to Night Vale. An early adopter I am not! Speaking of being a late adopter, after some 7…

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Across Worlds with You, Part 7 by Kit Campbell

Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5 Part 6 Across Worlds with You, Part 7Kit Campbell Despite being hyperfocused on listening, Will heard no sign of the dragging, hissing sound he associated with the Deathcrawlers. Of course, he’d always come across them in built-up areas—areas made of concrete, and stone, and asphalt. They probably didn’t make the same sound if they were crawling through flowers. Despite that, they made it to the town across the field without being eaten or whatever a Deathcrawler actually did when they caught you. Theo, once again, sped up as they approached the amulet. This one ended up being embedded in the back wall of an inn. Destia distracted the innkeeper with questions about the safety of her establishment while Theo plunged his hand into the wall. This amulet was silver with a deep blue gem. It, like the last one, went into Theo’s bag. “Are you going to stay or not?” said a particularly frustrated innkeeper. “I’ll have to check with my employer,” Destia replied. “Come on, boys, duty awaits.” Back outside, the fog was more obvious. And definitely getting closer. “Does it normally move so quickly?” Will asked. Theo had gone pale, though that could have been the drain of the spell. “I’m not sure. We had it mostly contained by the time either you or I were born. I don’t know what it was like at the beginning.” “It swept in from nowhere,” Destia said, her gaze distant, remembering. “It liked wooded areas…

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