Marketing: Step 1

I rallied enough brain cells last night to start my Facebook fan site. Please click here and join my group so that when I get ready to pitch a book this fall I can say I have a following. Thanks!

Oh, I guess I should probably 'out' myself here and let anyone here who doesn't already know (maybe there are one or two of you) that Wendy Blanton and Elizabeth Joy are the same person. Turns out the pen name created a marketing nightmare, so the Dragons Roost books will be the only books published under that name.

Contrary, or hopeful?

What is it about snow that makes me think about gardening? We got 4" of snow last night (the largest single snowfall this year, if you can believe that), and a little while ago I ordered seeds for my garden. En route shortly are lettuce, spinach, carrots, cucumbers, and Stevia. I'm expanding production of potatoes and onions, trying pinto beans for the first time, and of course I'll have a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs. I just have to decide how I'm going to fit everything into two raised beds. I have to rethink letting the flowerbeds go back to the wild; I might need the space for herbs.

One thing I will not be cultivating this year is tomatoes. I was unhappy with the performance of the larger variety last summer, and the cherry tomatoes are going to do whatever they please regardless of my preference. I'll just let them do their thing, and when I get a bunch ripe, I'll throw them in the crock pot and cook them down into sauce. (Thanks for that tip, Valerie!) If I decide I want to can whole tomatoes, the farmers market is a few miles from here. I'm pretty sure someone there will have some I can buy.

Advice for the New Year

My pastor likes acronyms, which is good because as a veteran, I like them too. I haven't made any resolutions, other than to continue modifying my attitude by blessing those who tick me the heck off. Today's sermon built on that, which makes me wonder if Pastor is reading my blog? Hmm.

Acronym for the day/year: START

Stop dwelling on the past. There's a reason the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror.
Take responsibility for your life and actions. Repent if necessary and move on.
Accept God's forgiveness for your past mistakes.
Re-vision your life. Figure out what you are being led by God to do and then do it.
Trust God with the future; He's got a better handle on it than you do.

I'm bad about beating myself up for my short-comings. Looking back regretfully is often easier than pressing ahead, especially for someone as easily overwhelmed as I am. It's something I've been working on for four or five years, and it's such an incredibly slow process. It's almost like an addiction; you never really get over it, you just learn to manage it.

I know I need more structure in my life. I need to free myself from a lot of clutter. I need to put in a lot more time in my office, working and studying. Transitioning into Historical fiction takes a lot more research than Fantasy, plus I still haven't finished my herbalist certification. Looks like I just talked myself into another resolution. For my own edification (so I can print them, and find them later when I lose the printed copy), they are to bless those who curse me*, and develop more structure and discipline in my life.



*"Cursing me", in this case, has a different context than usual. For my purposes, cursing includes unintentionally irritating me, because negative feelings toward another person are a curse. Feeling angry or bitter toward someone does not affect them; it affects me. Life is too short to feel negatively toward anyone else. In a nutshell, curse is the opposite of Zen.

Here After Syndrome*

Nope, it has nothing to do with The Here After. It's when you walk into a room, look around, and say, "What was I here after?"

I've been doing that a lot today. I didn't sleep well last night, so I've spent more time than usual staring into space. Usually when that happens it's because plot bunnies are stirring. Today, not so much. I can report that I have another 21 lbs. of clothing ready to donate, bringing my total for the year to an even 200 lbs. That's not including the junk mail I've tossed.

Plans for tonight include backing up my hard drive. Living on the edge, I know, but I'll try to restrain myself.


*It's more or less the opposite of But First Syndrome, when you have to do this, But First you have to do that. I do that a lot, too.

40 lbs.

I have another 40 lbs. of stuff to go to charity. I figure I'll take it over tomorrow; that gives me today to add stuff.

We have family coming in this week for graduation, so of course I'm busy cleaning. I realized this morning that it's not cleaning I dislike. In fact, it's rather satisfying. I like walking into a room and having things in order; it helps keep my brain in focus. Based on today's work so far, I could even venture to say that I like cleaning. I took pitchers and fiddly bits off the tops of my kitchen cupboards and washed them (ick--so nasty), dusted, and cleaned the staircase. I could not believe how dirty the handrail was. The only trouble is once I put the stuff back up on top of the cupboard, my work will be invisible to everyone but me. What chaps my hide isn't the cleaning; it's having to move other people's stuff to be able to clean. It's bad enough that I have my own clutter, but the living room was clean last Friday, and now it's got kids' stuff scattered all over the place. I should really be taking pictures of this stuff. I should have prints made and put them in a photo album so when they're gone and I miss them and I only remember the good things, I can get it out and look at how things really are right now. Great. Another thing to do.

Fa-RREEEEEE!!!!

Eric made the last payment to the last credit card today. We are officially debt-free except the mortgage.

We've been dinking around with this for about six years, but three years ago we took Dave Ramsey's 'Financial Peace University' class. That really lit the fire. We've paid off three cars, half a dozen credit cards, and tutoring tuition. I've lost track of how much it actually amounts to, but it's in excess of $50,000. Eric says it's closer to 60 or 70, but that just seems like a huge number to me. Next up is saving up next year's tuition and building up the emergency fund.

This is going to feel really great when it finally sinks in!

Happy Birthday and other stuff

My baby is Sweet 16 today. She'll appreciate my calling her that in front of the whole world, but she knows it could be much, much worse! It will be, too, because Grandpa is coming this weekend and his favorite hobby is picking on Vicky. He only picks on those he loves, but there's a reason his nickname is Spoon (always stirring the pot).

I think I'm all ready for Christmas except for figuring out where I put the stockings last year. They're in a safe place. Somewhere. I know they're not in the van with the 54 lbs. of stuff going to Goodwill on my way to work, so that's something at least.

The weather here has been particularly bizarre. It's starting to remind me of Michigan. On Monday schools were closed because the roads were iced over. Tuesday it thawed just enough that the icy patches had a little water on top, making them even more slippery. Wednesday the roads finally thawed and dried. Yesterday evening it rained and I almost took a header in the parking lot leaving work at 9:30 because the puddles were slushy. Today it's 50* and we have a wind advisory this morning. Of course it's trash day, so my neighbor's beer cans are blowing into my yard. Why they can't put them in bags is beyond me.

So that's pretty much it here. I need to vacuum and straighten the downstairs a little more before I go to work but I'm in better shape than I thought I was.

Happy or confused? Or stubborn?

I haven't quite figured out which best describes my garden. We're supposed to have a freeze tonight, so I bundled up and went outside to harvest my sweet potatoes.




I was expecting this. I just thought I'd have a lot more of them.












I wasn't expecting this. They were coiled all around the bottom of the pot.

Lesson learned: Next year, all the potatoes go in a raised bed, not a pot.

At least the flowers were pretty.







This is a little more confusing: a tomato blossom. If my makeshift greenhouse remains standing, it will eventually become a tomato. They did this last year, too, by the way. That's a second generation plant.









This baffles me. It's a new zucchini blossom. The zucchini has not been sheltered at all, and it's been pretty cold at night. I'll have to go out tomorrow and see what happens here. BTW, this is also a second generation plant.

Would that I were as stubborn about my writing as my garden is.

Crack Mouse

I bought a package of catnip mice for the cats the other day. Of course they've been a little more twitchy than usual. What I didn't expect was to walk into the kitchen the other day to hear Vicky in the living room telling Ryan to get the crack mouse. I had to ask if I'd heard right! I never really thought of catnip as kitty crack, but I guess it works. If I can get decent pictures, I'll post them.

In other news, I took another 30 lbs. of stuff to Goodwill.

55 lbs.

I gathered up 55 pounds of stuff which my guys sweetly took to Goodwill for me. They even kept their grumbling to a minimum, especially after I explained that by having them do it, I knew it would get done. If I did it, I'd get sidetracked and it would take me two weeks, even though I drive through that part of town a couple times a week. I'm posting it here more for my own edification; this is more or less a permanent record, unlike the piece of paper I used to tally up the weight. I'm hoping that this will serve as motivation if nothing else.

Space: The Final Frontier

It's no secret that, as a family, we like books. We have our own darn library. We also have three large cherry bookcases that Eric and I bought in our first year of marriage. When I say large, I mean 7' tall, and about 3 1/2' wide and deep. The depth has been an issue for me in the last several years. Clutter has also been an issue. I come from two long lines of savers, and I have a lot of odds and ends that have been in the family for three or four generations. Most of it is not stuff that I'm particularly attached to; I just don't know what to do with it. Taking it to an antique store to try and sell it is too much for me to consider right now.

Don't ask me why I didn't think of it sooner. I was staring at the piles of books in the loft, thinking how awful it looked, and it dawned on me that the books on the cherry bookcase were pushed all the way back. I just happened to have a plastic storage box in reach, so I filled it up with my inherited oddments, pulled the books forward, and stuck it behind them. Voila! Increased storage space! In a fit of efficiency, I even got the camera and snapped a few pictures.


I was part-way into the task when I thought about taking pictures. It looked worse when I started.




















Of course, when I finished the cherry bookcase, the pine one looked even more pitiful, and I did have stacks of books just sitting around, so I kept going.













I think I might be on to something.

I know some of you are thinking, "Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, the stuff is put away, but now you're going to forget where it is."

That's probably true, but hopefully this post will be a trail of breadcrumbs for me. Besides, it's all in the same room it was in originally.

Regardless of future consequences, I'm rather pleased with myself and may even look at doing this with the downstairs book cases.