Out of Print

Two of my books are going out of print: Explore Your Destiny with Runes and 10 Spriitual Lessons You Can Learn From Your Cat. I had intended to get fancy and make both titles links to Amazon, but it's late and I'm feeling a tad lazy. If you look on the right side of the page you'll see a picture of the books with links to Amazon. Much easier that way.

Get'em while you can cuz soon they will be no more. Well, except for used copies. And foreign editions. In fact, I received the letter telling me they were going out of print and two days later I received the Hungarian edition of the Rune book. One must assume the "going out of print" thing refers to the English versions only.

I'm sad to see them go, but that's publishing. They've both had a good run. Besides, they'll still be hanging around on bookshelves for awhile yet.

Yarn

I know, it's been way too long since I posted but I had to take a little time out and blog about yarn. A dear friend in Australia is going to the hospital for a tricky operation. She's a member of the writing list I'm on and we decided to do something a little special for her. She's passionate about knitting, but lives in the Outback, so doesn't have access to all the fancy-shmancy yarns that some others do. Instead of a bouquet of flowers, why not send a bouquet of yarn? There's a yarn shop where I live that has quite an amazing selection. I don't know a lot about yarn, but even I could tell this was quite a cool place (it turned out to be internationally famous).

The other writers on the list got behind the idea and gave me an enormous budget to do the shopping. This meant I could get the really, really good stuff. The store owners helped me out in a big way, giving great suggestions. They even threw in a knitting bag with their logo for free. Wonderful people. I'll call them today and let them know that the yarn got to Australia and was everything we hoped it would be.

My favorite selection were two very small skeins of hand-dyed cashmere. I was assured this was the best stuff made and I believed it. It was the most expensive in the lot and it was also the very first thing I purchased. I wanted to make sure she got something spectacular and one touch told the story. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. I learned a lot about yarn while I was there and enjoyed the experience immensely!

So to my friend, Bron, I wish you a wildly successful surgery and good health from now on. To Edith and Merrill at La Knitterie Parisienne I give you my sincere thanks for all your help. And for all the batty folks in my writer's group -- what an incredible bunch you are.

And the Music is Silenced

A couple of days ago, one of the sites where I post my music had a catastrophic failure of their back-up systems and -- okay, I don't really understand exactly what happened. I just know that the site lost all of its data. They're trying to raise the money to send the corrupted, failed drives to a data recovery place. The site is icompositions and there's a donation button on the page. I mention this because it's always possible a billionaire might be slumming and run across my blog and decide to save the day. Or maybe a millionaire. Or a thousandaire. Or someone with a spare $10. Or not.

I miss the site. I had tons of really cool comments from people who had listened to my music. The music isn't lost. I still have my copies of everything. It's the comments and the threads in the forum, and lists of favorites and well, everything that's meaningful and worthwhile about a place that's a much-loved community. I still have my music on Macjams and MacIdol but I hate to see any of the music sites disappear.

Anyway, here's to you, iComp! May your data be recovered and the music play again.

Avoidance

I gave blood again today. My least favorite part is when they prick your finger to test the hemoglobin count. Hate that. The guy took my pulse right after and it was a little high. I thought, "Duh, you just pricked my finger and made it bleed. That made me unhappy." Five minutes later he took my pulse again and it was fine. Yeah, I get over finger pricks pretty fast. Amazing, huh?

When I finished giving blood, I had four elderly volunteers hovering around me because they thought I was going to pass out. What they didn't know was that my semi-wobbly walk from the cot to the snack table was caused by arthritis in my knees plus cold, somewhat damp weather. Dry warmth is a lot kinder to me. After they plied me with water and cookies, I finally figured out why they were concerned and told them the cause. That made them all relax and they went back to work. Have to admit, it was kind of funny to see these four frail women staring at me with fearful eyes when I had absolutely no idea why. I felt fine. Still do, but don't tell me that.

Why "don't tell me?" I should be working on the next part of the Supergirl story I'm posting on my Comic Books Revisted blog, but I'm copping out with the ole "I'm a pint low" excuse. Yeah, one part of my brain is trying to snow another part of my brain. The sad thing is, it's working.

I also need to do my taxes, but I hate working with numbers. So I'm avoiding that, too.

And finally, I'm avoiding editing my novel because it's tricky and difficult. I'm turning it from Romantic Suspense into a Suspense Thriller and that means tough decisions have to be made at almost every line, especially since I need to cut nearly 20,000 words from the thing. It's a daunting task.

I guess I need to chuck this avoidance behavior and get my nose back to the grindstone. The pint low excuse has a statute of limitations. It is never allowable on any day but donor day. So tomorrow, it's back to work.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comments

I'm a big fan of Keith Olbermann, host of Countdown on MSNBC. His Special Comments are often extraordinary. He's an excellent writer, an intelligent student of history, and has an unashamed liberal slant. Last night he had a special comment that's definitely worth seeing.

The Flu

Not dead, but I came close. Last Tuesday brought on a violent attack of the flu. I can't remember the last time I was that sick. It began with projectile vomiting, then came a high fever and chills and we rounded things out with one of the flu's best buddies, diarrhea. What a lovely time.

Unlike past illnesses where I felt like heck but was never actually afraid of the darn thing, this one was different. It was virulent, vile and very violent. (Ah, alliteration! Such fun). High fevers tend to addle my mind to a frightening degree and this high fever was a terror. At one point, I woke up and found myself lying on my side in the bathtub, the water having grown cold while I slept. I did not remember getting in the tub, nor how I fell asleep in it. I count myself lucky that my tub drain leaks a bit, therefore taking the water level down just enough to keep me from drowning. Even in my my fever-addled state I realized how close I'd come.

I managed to keep myself awake long enough after that to determine I was in a safe place before nodding off again. There was a lot of sleeping (constantly interrupted by dashes to the bathroom). I called a friend and asked her to check up on me, which she did. All day long she called to make sure I was still okay. (She lives in another state so calling was her only option).

After days of battling the symptoms, it finally abated. I was left feeling weak, wrung out, but alive and on the mend. I've almost regained my strength now. I'm eating again and have been taking it easy, hoping to hasten my full recovery. I don't know what strain of the flu I had, but do whatever you can to avoid it. Get a flu shot or go live on a deserted island or something, but avoid this bad boy with everything you have. It's truly the worst case of flu I've ever experienced.

Happy New Year!

I'm back home after a trip to Wisconsin to spend Christmas with my Mom and my brothers and their families. Great trip as always. I had such a great time. As always, it was too short.

And now it's 2008, a brand new year. I won't bore you with a list of resolutions. I tend not to make actual resolutions, as a rule. It's more a sincere hope that the year will be a good one for me and everyone I know and love. I could use a good year as last year held some big disappointments in my professional life. Won't bore you with those details, either.

The past couple of days I've been working on the comic whose story I will be revisiting on my other blog. When I finish that, I'll be working on getting some projects ready to pitch, as well as polishing a query letter I'm hoping will snag a new agent (please, Lord, make it a GOOD agent this time! I've had 4 agents in my life for various things (voice acting, TV writing, and books) and so far I'm 0 for 4 as far as good ones go. I'm not giving up; I'm just hoping that this time things work out better). I'm a lot better at writing than I am at pitching and querying, but the latter is a necessary part of the profession, so I simply have to do the best I possibly can. That's as close to a resolution as I'll probably get.

Here's hoping anyone who's reading has a fantastic 2008 that surpasses all your own hopes, dreams, and resolutions! Happy New Year!