Thankful

I was going to tweet this stuff, but it is too much for tweeting. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. If you're not in America, Happy Thanksgiving anyway. It's never a bad thing to be thanked. So thanks to you, too. :D

Here's some stuff I'm thankful for today. If I forgot something you think I should be thankful for, please let me know in the comments. I welcome the chance to feel even MORE thankful, at least as long as the egg nog holds out.

I'm Thankful for my family. They accept that I'm not quite right, and love me anyway.

Helper Monkey is thankful I didn't use the ambush photo I took of him.

Thanks, Tim, for putting up with me for the last almost 17 years. Love.

Lulu is not as thankful, since I used her ambush photo. Morning, hon.

I am thankful for Lulu, who is helping me cook today. I'm thankful she's growing up to be an awesome person. I'm thankful she hasn't yet devolved into rebellious teenagerhood. *fingers crossed*

Morgan. High on catnip.

I'm thankful for the fuzzy lumpkin.

I'm thankful for this pie.

Okay. This post seems to be devolving quickly. I have to go make stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, biscuits, mashed potatoes, and probably other things that I forgot about completely.

But I wanted to also thank everyone I've met on my writing and publishing journey. To everyone who read my manuscript(s), THANK YOU. You have given me insight, advice, and encouragement. To everyone whose manuscript I read or critiqued, THANK YOU! You have given me hours of entertainment, and none of you have actually stabbed me yet! *fingers crossed*

Thank you all for being who you are. Now go enjoy some pie.

Untweetworthy, Part Deux

The second in a continuing series of bizarre little snippets that proved too long, too silly, or too irrelevant for Twitter, but needed to be written down somewhere (if only to get them out of my overcrowded thinker).










 Without further ado, here we go:

1. Facebook calls it a timeline. Why? It's not even linear. I wish there were a way to make the posts reflect the accurate passing of time. The same handful of posts seem to stick to the top, and interesting things get buried deep in the pile. This is why I like Twitter better. At least it uses linear time to post updates instead of the mish-mosh method FB uses.

2. Rape jokes: NEVER FUNNY. Rape APOLOGIST jokes: BAZINGA!

3. Oh, Florida. I thought I left you because I was sick of hurricanes. Turns out, you were too disorganized even for me to tolerate living there. Someday you will learn how to hold an election at least as well as Washington, D.C. can (and DC was woefully underequipped, but still managed to get everyone to the polls and tally up their votes on election night).

4. Just when I thought I was done with political ads, I remember how far behind I am on the TiVo. Just watched a show from two weeks ago, and realized every show for the next few weeks will be progressively more stuffed with campaign ads. At least I'll be fast-forwarding through all of them.

5. I'm starting to get distracted from my WIP by the first novel I ever wrote (and then imprisoned under the bed with an armed battalion of dust bunnies to prevent its escape). I am SO TEMPTED to rewrite it, you know, without all the adverbs this time...

6. Why was this blog so lacking in funny .gif images before?

 

7. I love the people of Twitter. I think I got kinda lucky in the imaginary friend lottery.

8. Having manuscripts on submission during election season was awful. I reflexively answered the phone every time it rang, JUST IN CASE IT WAS AN AGENT. I can't tell you how many political robocalls I hung up on, but I think the number was in the kajillions*.
*In the interest of mathematical accuracy, this is a number larger than a berjillion, but smaller than a squintillion.

9. I'm not the first person to say this, but WHY is it always the tweet with the typo that gets the most retweet love?

So there you go, the random overflowings of my sad little mind. To make up for it, please enjoy this gif of a slow loris having its little armpits tickled. Thank you.

Not Tweetworthy (the first in an occasional series)

I constantly think thoughts. Obvious, right? It's kinda hard not to. I am not unique.

Some of those thoughts send my fingers dashing toward Twitter to inform the world of my quirky insight, my spot of humor, or my share-worthy pain. But what happens when a random thought just doesn't translate into a well-crafted tweet? Until yesterday, I was stumped.

I had some mildly interesting things to say, but no place to say them. The next best thing to sharing them with the world, in my mind, was to at least write them down for myself. In retrospect, it's been a strange and eye-opening experiment. I'd like to share my random un-tweet-worthy thoughts with y'all. I also plan to continue my experiment, and will share my results on occasion. Likely that means I'll be sharing them when I don't have anything else to blog about for more than a few days in a row.

Enjoy the crumbs of my overactive imagination!

Carl Approves This Message.

• Why are the Thompson Twins three people?
• I bet there is a fireplace app for cell phones that fills the screen with tiny flames. It might be more effective to just set the phone on fire.
   
• I was in the mood for cheese, but the only cheese in the house was either unnaturally orange squares or unnaturally orange glop. I went with the glop, because CORN CHIPS.
   
• Eva Longoria called me today. It was a recording for a state ballot question. But now I can say that Eva Longoria called me today, and not be lying about it.
   
• The thing about NCIS that bothers me the most is that their coffee cups are always empty. You can tell because they SOUND empty when they put them down, yet they keep pretending to drink. At least put some water in there. Something!
   
• How the hell did Wang Chung get stuck in my head?
   
• You know it's getting bad when you stop muting the political ads and start heckling them, and not in your "inside voice."
   
• Addendum to the above: The name of my next band is Reckless Agenda.
   
• WHY do I keep getting robo calls that begin, "If you are a senior citizen..."? I SWEAR I AM 38 DAMN YEARS OLD! I do not need whatever the hell you are selling!
   
• I think I've developed an ellipsis problem...

OH! And I actually have Progress to report on the Progress-o-Meter! Yes! Despite using my brain to think up the dubious brilliance above, I still had time to write a bunch of new words! Woo hoo! And I'm headed back to the WIP right now, so...Look out crazy bad guys, my MC's are hot on your tails.

Words: 58,072
Pages: 181

I keep forgetting I'm influential about amnesia.

I'm sure you've all heard of Klout, even if you haven't bothered to check out your own "score." If you haven't, then google it. I'll wait right here...

Ok, then. We all know what I'm talking about now. But can anyone explain what the point is? I get access to "perks" once in a while, but most of them aren't worth my time. I'm not big on giving free ad space in my social media to companies just to get a free product. I have to really like a thing to talk about it. Which is the most puzzling aspect of Klout, in my mind.

They track topics, you are "influential" about through your social media interactions. I can understand that. If you talk about something a lot, people might come to see you as a source of reliable information on that topic. What I'm most interested in today is how the hell Klout decides which topics a person is influential about. Get ready for the surreality, because here's my list:

• Jeans
• Chocolate
• Sushi
• Pork
• Cookies
• Horror
• Pudding
• Bacon
• Yogurt
• Books
• Writing
• Amnesia
• Shoes
• Conferences
• Justin Bieber
• Video
• Tumblr
• Cats

Quite a list, right? I mean, Bacon AND Pork? Wow. And what's up with Justin Bieber? Maybe it's the amnesia talking, but I don't ever remember saying anything (other than possibly a joke somewhere or other) about the Biebs.

Some of these I get. Like chocolate. And shoes. I like those things. But then why am I not influential about coffee, too? I mean, I write about coffee all the time! And sure, I post some things about my cat, so I get that, to an extent. But Conferences? Really? Is this because I tweeted something to Backspace a few times? I have no clue.

Do you have an equally bizarre and unsettling list of things that Klout has assigned to you? Post them below so we can all have a puzzled laugh about it.

In the mean time, enjoy this delicious pudding.

Buccaneers: On the Reading List

Ahoy again, mateys! This week's Blogfest is all about reading! This is a big deal to most writers. We love to read, or we wouldn't bother creating books to spread our love of the printed (or electronic) word to others. That being said, like a lot of other writers, I'm hopelessly backlogged on the list of books I'd like to read. There are just too many to keep up with!

The first part of today's post is supposed to mention the last three books we've read. That's an easier question to answer than the second part, which is to discuss our to-be-read list. Entering that list on a single post has the potential to crash Blogger, so I think I'll stick to the first part of the question for now...

Recent Reads:

The book I'm reading currently is Gail Carriger's Timeless. I pre-ordered this book, and started reading it the day it was released, back in March. Life conspired against me, and I had to put it aside. It got buried under a pile of blankets, and I only found it when I finally put the blankets away in the closet, a few weeks ago. I restarted it from the beginning, and read most of it while I was camping last week. I swore I'd finish it this week. Wish me luck. Side note: I adore the Parasol Protectorate series. I devoured the first four books, and this is the final installment in the series. I've decided that my procrastination on finishing it is a desire to keep the series alive. Either that, or I'm just being lazy.

Before Timeless, I read Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder. It's a great mystery story, with a believable, messy protagonist. I've been trying to get my mitts on the sequel, The Whole Lie, but I've sworn not to buy any more books until I finish the books in my physical TBR pile before ordering more...

I also recently read Unraveling, by Liz Norris. It's an imaginative, fast-paced race to stop the whole world from falling apart. I can't wait for the sequel!

I know I've read other things between reading these three, but I can't remember the order I read them in, and these were the first three that popped into my head. I guess that says something about them?

As for the TBR pile/list:

I have a lot of series finale type books to read, including the last book in the Kane Chronicles (The Serpent's Shadow) and the last of Michael Scott's Nicholas Flammel series (The Enchantress).

I also have a ton of books that I would like to re-read. I usually go through and take a week in July to reread Harry Potter, but I haven't had time this summer. I've been wanting to reread the Decameron by Boccaccio for a while. I absolutely love that book. If you've never read it, you must. It's free for Kindle. It's definitely beyond copyright protection, since it was written in 1350. I'll talk about it more in my next post...

And all this is in addition to the reading I do for crit partners and as a beta reader, and re-reading my own work either for editing or to make sure I still like what I wrote. If only there were another two hours in a day. I might finally make a dent in the list....

Something Fun

Thanks to T.Z. Wallace, I have something fun to do while my feet recover. Well, something fun other than work on my writing... which I swear I'm getting to soon. I got my ice cream, the house is quiet (other than the tv) since Lulu is at a friend's for the night, and I swore I would get writing tonight. It will happen, just as soon as I fulfill my obligations here.

I'm not sure I follow seven blogs that haven't already participated in this award, but if you follow me and you haven't already done this, feel free to take the mantle upon yourselves with my blessing.

The first duty of the Versatile Blogger is to list seven things about themselves you might not have known before. This will be difficult, because I basically spew everything that comes into my head out on to paper or pixels somewhere or another. I'll take a stab at it anyway... here goes.

1. I'm hopelessly addicted to Dr. Pepper.

2. I'm also hopelessly addicted to any tv show about crime and the solving of said crime.

3. I tend to go on book buying binges, downloading or otherwise ordering about ten books at a time. Then it takes me six months to read them all before I repeat the craziness.

4. I love to cook, but between Helper Monkey and Lulu, I'm limited to about three things that everyone in the house actually likes, so I end up making a lot of spaghetti.

5. There is a bear on the loose in my neighborhood over the last day or two. I hope they don't shoot it, but this is not a normal occurrence. It's been freaking me out.

6. I tend to say whatever comes into my head. And I have a strange, snarky sense of humor that I've recently discovered is not appreciated as widely as I thought it was.

7. I'm not good at holding my tongue. It regularly gets me into trouble.

So there you have it. My second duty was to forward this on to seven other bloggers, but as I've said, I'm not sure anyone I follow hasn't already participated. If you want to participate, please leave a link in the comments below to your post of seven fabulous facts about yourself! Enjoy!