Dandelyon's Worlds

To my friends here:

In general, I love it if people visit my old posts and leave comments--real ones, anyway.

If anyone sees a post they love and finds comments disabled, it's because the spammers decided it was a good place to leave lots of comments for me to delete. I have better things to do with my time--so if you want to comment on one of those entries, send a message or comment here or something, ok?

Thanks!

To the evil spammers: I'm not going to unscreen your mis-spelled advertisements and phishing attempts, so stop wasting my time (and yours)!

Now, back to house cleaning...

Deleting spam comments is NOT a satisfactory break from OMG-it's-almost-winter-heating-season cleaning.

So far, I have one finished piece for the Muse Fusion, a piece called Lizard, Lizard, which was the prompt. It's a sequel to So Many, Many Frogs, and the prompter has promised to sponsor it! Thanks Edward!



I'm very pleased with how this story turned out. Hopefully the canon board will agree!

In other news, I  have reglazed some windows, repainted some spots on the back door where the paint wore off, touched up the purple paint on the front porch, did some dishes, scraped some loose paint in a closet that needs a bit of plaster and paint, and My Angel and I resealed some spots around windows and a siding patch in the back yard.

It's not ideal interrupting the writing for paint and caulking, but the weather has finally decided to warn of winter coming, and every crack sealed should lower the heating bill a bit this winter.

So, they predicted wonderful weather until the thunderstorm hit. So, we thought, we'll clean up the yard and plant bulbs.

So, I was sitting here eating my breakfast and I hear a thump. I go into the bedroom--nothing got knocked over by a cat. Then I looked out the window--a piece of siding fell off the house. Oh, wonderful.

Once MyAngel got up, we spent the afternoon on the porch, cleaning out a squirrel's nest (plus dead squirrel), sistering or replacing damaged wood, and putting up one of the leftover pieces of siding stored in the basement. The leftover 2x4s in the basement were old hardwood--sturdy, but not the fastest things to nail t We finally used part of the piece that fell off to cover a remaining hole, temporarily, since it was getting dark and windy. We'll have to properly cut another piece of siding, as well as replacing insulation and properly sealing everything on another day.

Fun fun.

And now the storm is blowing in.

Here's hoping we did enough, at least, for today's storm.

The bulbs are all still in their packages.

On the positive side, the neighbors like the purple flowers we were too busy to go down and properly identify. Here's hoping the storm doesn't shred them before tomorrow.

So, I paid bills yesterday (oops, now the day before yesterday), after we headed off to Home Depot to find an inexpensive replacement for the sink cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. The old one is an eyesore, and probably moldy, and I'm done with it! We're also replacing the medicine cabinet, which is doubtless an antique, but was never anything special, and is not as attractive as it used to be.

The new ones are plain, and not nearly as spiffy as the $500+ set that I really really liked.  But money doesn't grow on tomato vines, more's the pity.  So I left the cool victorian-look pieces in the store and brought home stuff that will at least be clean and functional.

I'm continuing the process of attempting to declutter.  Today (really today) I went through more piles of mail to determine what I really need to keep, what to dispose of carefully, and what's just junk to put in recycling.  (I don't have much that an identity-thief could make use of, but that's no reason to be careless.  Having no money just means I can't pay someone else to try to clean up the mess if someone does get ahold of my information.)

Yesterday I reorganized the gluten-and-corn-free cabinet so it wasn't overflowing onto the kitchen table. 

Today in between tweets for #scifichat, I emptied some bags I'd taken to cons or family gatherings to put the miscellaneous stuff in them away (or get rid of it), got rid of more paper, and cleared off the 2010 anthology and magazine deadlines from my writing board, and started putting up deadlines for the new year.  In the process, I found a market with a deadline of tomorrow, that happily fit one of the stories I needed to send out again.  At least I think it fits--I hope the editor agrees.  So I also started a new logsheet for the new year for submissions, structuring this one to tell me to submit ten pieces a month.  Right now it looks all neat and orderly; I'm hoping that that will change when I  submit more than ten in a month, but even if some of the months end up shorter, I hope the incentive will help keep me keeping my stories moving.

Another thing I'm working on is setting up a proper customer/fan database.  Well, spreadsheet, to be technical.  Anyway, I'm trying to capture everyone who's hit any of my donation buttons over the last year, as well as anyone else who would want me to have their contact information for when I can do things like send out announcements of publications or the like.  If you want to be in my database, feel free to message me with your information.

I also finished off two book reviews, which I sent in yesterday.  I found it's much harder to write a review of a book that disappointed me than one I loved.  Oh, well, the book  question did have a number of good points, and if I'd known about the thing that I felt was its biggest flaw ahead of time, I'd have probably enjoyed the book more, because I would have known I should focus more on the other parts of the story.  Hopefully, my review will help the book find readers who enjoy it and avoid readers who won't.

One of my goals, in reviewing fiction, is to help people find books they will enjoy.  Even in reviewing books I love, I want to characterize the books in a way that will get people who are likely to enjoy they them to read them, without encouraging people who don't like that sort of book to read them. 

I am mindful, for instance, of  Lois McMaster Bujold's reflection on her Sharing Knife books, which are part action adventure and part romance--she got many reader comments telling her that people were disturbed that the action was interrupted by the romance--and just as many from people who felt the action was interrupting the romance.

And I am also mindful of the game seller who, at a convention, asked her customer what games they liked, then made a recommendation.  When the customer pressed, asking what the seller personally liked best about the game, the seller admitted that she thought the best part was packing up the game after the playtest.  Then why did she recommend it?  Because that game irked her in exactly the same ways as the games the customer loved.

I hope that I can emulate the successes of that game seller!

Well, I got one 1700 word story done, to the prompt of Froggy Day. It can be sponsored for $15. I'm pleased with it. Although I know it's important to have quality material for our subscribers to read, I'm hoping it gets sponsored so I can share it with all of you.

Other than that, however, I have several more things started, but am pondering the best way to finish them. It's been a while since I stopped in the middle of so many things and stared at the page.

Some of it might be that I stopped in the middle of getting set up for my new job search to do first sketchfest and then this. Oh, I've already started the search, updating my resumes online and on paper, and started sending them out. But I have a mental list of phone calls to make, letting the agencies I've worked with and people who might refer me to friends and acquaintances know I'm looking, and updating my references, and online networking...enough that it's still active in the back of my brain.

I also need to do some house-related things, including gather. the parts we didn't used to install the new boiler, putting them in a bag with the receipts, and return them. So that's active in the back of my brain too.

And this computer is getting slow as molasses. I probably should restart it.

But I'm not giving up yet!

Anyone have a suggestion about what part of Dini's past they'd like hinted at?

But today was only one day. I glued a drawer together, so I could put my t-shirts away again, and once the glue dried, did so. I went through some of my clothes, designating some that I don't wear any more to be taken to the thrift shop. I also folded and hung up clean clothes, did some sorting through mail to make sure I wasn't putting anything vital into the paper recycling bag, and did other little "get rid of clutter" tasks around the house.

In between bits of housework, I submitted an article to Torn World, learning how to do bulleted lists in html in the process. I also edited two stories in response to the Canon Board's comments, and two articles, and then changed hats to make comments on stories other people had submitted.

It's not glamorous, and certainly not as much fun to brag about as if I'd written a new story or three, like I do in the Muse Fusions, but it's a good day's work.

I've also finally finished my polar bear science fiction story. If you're willing to read it and give me some comments, let me know.

Ellen Million's sketchfest is happening today, for a little while yet: http://community.livejournal.com/emglivejournal/

And I want to be sketching. Or writing. Or alternating the two.

Instead, I'd better go clean house. *sigh*

I hate it when ordinary emergencies interfere with both holiday plans and writing plans! But I don't have to write about it because My Angel did! Here.

I spent WAY too much time finding out that no store with the older-style filter and gasket that our boiler uses was open on Saturday, January 2.  Finally resorted to calling my Fixit-Friend, who happened to be in the restaurant across the street from the Menards I was at!  Got advice and parts, but it took WAY too long.  After taking too long on Dec 31 and Jan 1 to do various things connected with figuring out why it was leaking and what to do about it. 

But the nice repairman who didn't want to interrupt his family plans on New Years Day at least told me I could make a temporary cardboard gasket.  Currently, we're checking it regularly for leakage; we want to wait until a slightly warmer day to replace it, since replacing it means turning the heat off.

And right now I'm typing in a winter coat with fingerless gloves.  If I'm moving around the house, the temperature isn't bad, but for sitting still and typing, it's COLD.

I have a beautiful old Victorian house that had been in a state of deferred maintenance when I got it, and haven't had money to fix all the things that it needs, much less bring it to a modern state of insulation. So when the temperature plummets suddenly, the furnace lags behind, and it's not warm inside. It's far from freezing, but it's not shirtsleeves-comfortable. And I'm not as far along on making the insulated drapes I've been working on as I wished, though there are pieces of warm material being cut, and cut brocade, draping the dining room table.

So I'm sitting here in sweat pants and a coat, eagerly awaiting #scifichat, which starts in about an hour. Today, the plan is to do worldbuilding for a shared-world anthology, which will be open to submissions by speculative fiction writers who use Twitter.

It's from 2-4 p.m. Eastern Standard time, which is 1-3 Chicago time.

I hope I like the world we create!

In other shared world news -- Torn World is getting closer and closer to being open, with stories and art available for reading and enjoyment. And Ellen made a comment that there will be extras for people who join before New Years; I don't know the details, but you can check out ellenmillion 's journal for links and stuff. I'd go look them up, but I want to get this reminder out in case any of my friends want to join in the chat.