Monthly Archives: June 2023
And So It Begins
When it’s 89°F out but the humidity is 72% and you have a heat index of 107°F, yeah, you might need to sit down with some water after going to the store.
On the plus side, we have cookies because last night I had a huge craving for something sweet but wasn’t in the mood to get dressed, put on a bra and head over to the supermarket. Instead, I remembered that we had the makings for cookies, including some rather tasty Nestle Toll House Frosted Cinnamon Roll Baking Truffles in the freezer, and whomped everything together into some yummy, yummy snickerdoodles.
Now I just have to hide the bulk of them from Ramón because he is not supposed to have that much processed sugar (I’m not greedy or cruel—I’ll put out two a day for him).
Happy Juneteenth
Crystal Blade Episode 31: Happily Ever After? is live at Kindle Vella. I also realized last night that I am currently at 61,569 words and according to my outline I’m eight chapters away from finishing. If I knock out a chapter a day I could have everything wrapped up by midnight next Monday. Huh.
In other news, Happy Juneteenth to all Americans, and maybe if Gavin Newsome gets the constitutional convention rolling and we add a gun control amendment we can tweak the 13th amendment and remove the bit that allows slavery “as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convincted.” Just a thought.
Locally, it’s going to get hot here this week in the clavicle of Texas. And yes, we’re used to hot weather, but we’ve had so much rain recently that it feels like Florida when you step outside. The humidity is going to drop back down to normal levels on Saturday, thank Cthulhu, but in the meantime the heat index is going to be miserable and my heart will be in my mouth every time the AC units go off (which they do periodically. That’s normal. But now I’m wondering if they’re going to start up again). Don’t even get me started on the Texas grid.
But I’m in a privileged position. My heart goes out to all the lawn people, pool cleaners, and construction workers who are going to have to deal with this nasty weather while they’re working (and my governor, good Christian that he is, just signed a law repealing mandatory water breaks for construction workers. What a peach).
Emerging From the Muck
*rubs face* At least I’m well enough to work and Ep 31 of Crystal Blade will be published tomorrow on schedule. Huzzah for that.
Now that I’m getting closer to the end of the book I need to finish the detailed outline of High Tide so that I can get started on that ASAP once Crystal Blade is done. I know the main triad (human with a Dryad mom, satyr, and mer), I know the general arc of the book and what they’re trying to achieve, but I need to break it down chapter by chapter so that 1) I get a better idea of the plot beats, and 2) I can put chapters up on Kindle Vella as I write so that people can read along if they like. (looking at you, Peter).
If I can get High Tide and Hurricane Warning knocked out this year that means I’ll have two finished series under my belt. That will leave me with Hidden Empire (open ended), Two Thrones (four more books), Paladins of Crystal (three more books), and Pacifica Rising (five more books, although Degree of Resistance really reads like more like a Melanie book than a Nicola book because it goes so heavy on worldbuilding and tech. I’m not sure of how I want to proceed on that. I may republish Degree as “Melanie Fletcher writing as Nicola M. Cameron” and write the rest of the books as Melanie books).
After that, who knows? I can keep writing books in the Hidden Empire universe as long as I like, I could do at least two additional series and a standalone in the Paladins of Crystal universe, and I have a MF partial set in the Olympic Cove universe with Hephaestus and a female blacksmith. I could literally write until I drop dead over the keyboard, which is something.
I Am Not a Well Clown
I have had better days.
I had great plans for the weekend—I was going to continue getting the office closet cleaned out and organized, I’d work on formatting books and get them uploaded to Smashwords and Google Play, and I’d get an episode of Crystal Blade ready for Monday.
Best-laid plans and all that. I woke up feeling like someone had pulled the plug on me. No energy whatsoever, I didn’t feel extremely sick but I definitely wasn’t well, and Ramón (he of the bionic nose) said that I smelled a little off and should go back to bed.
Which I did. I pretty much spent the day dozing, watching Journey to the Center of the Earth (which I had only seen in the edited for TV version), and reading. Between Earthquake last week and Journey this week I realized that there are an absolute buttload of movies out there that I have never seen the theatrical releases of, only the TV edits. Now that we have access to All The Streaming Services, I think I’m going to make a point of working my way through the various movies I’ve only ever seen on TV. I mean, hell, I didn’t even know there was a topless scene in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie until a couple of years ago. Who knows what I’ll discover in the next movie I watch.
We Apologize For This Interruption In Your Regularly Scheduled Program
I am not posing an episode of Crystal Blade today. I’ve been feeling increasingly crappy all day and the only thing I really want to do is crawl into bed at a reasonable hour and go to sleep.
On the plus side, blargh as I’m feeling, I did achieve something today. So I have a 500 GB backup external drive for my antique 2012 MacBook pro (don’t laugh, it still runs like a champ and I loathed the changes Apple made to the MBP until last year). Like any properly paranoid writer I like to leave the external drive plugged in and Time Machine running. That way, everything can be backed up daily in case of lightning strike, cat pee, or what have you knocking out the laptop.
Except that the backup drive stopped working about a month ago. I would plug it in, it would light up, I’d hear the drive start to run, then boom. Nothing. Couldn’t find it as an external drive or anything.
As I’ve been what you might call “busy” for the last month I kept thinking, “Yeah, I really need to take the backup drive to Ramón and have him troubleshoot it, see if he can get it working again.” And five minutes later an emergency would erupt and the thought would go clear out of my mind for days on end. My laptop, bless its heart, kept putting up reminder messages that I hadn’t backed it up for X amount of days and I really should do that, I’d remember that I needed to ask Ramón to look at the backup drive, and yet another emergency would crop up and I’d promptly forget about it.
Until today, when I was browsing through a friend’s FB page and she mentioned that she was having problems with her MacBook Air. A number of people offered helpful advice, chief among them, “Back up the machine and take it to a Genius Bar.”
Which reminded me that gosh, I really really really needed to have Ramón take a look at the backup drive. And then I thought, “Well, hell, I’m a capable techy woman and he’s sleeping right now—why don’t I take a look at it myself?”
So I did. Opened up the case—the connection between the drive proper and the plug was a little loose. Tightened that up, plugged it in … nothing.
While it was connected I opened Disk Utility to see if it could find the drive. Boom, it could, which meant that the mechanics of the drive were functional. I ran First Aid and found out that some of the settings had gotten embuggered in a way that couldn’t be repaired.
I thought about it, decided that there was nothing on the drive that I couldn’t live without, and erased and reformatted it. Set it up as the Time Machine drive for the laptop, told Time Machine to do its thing and voila. Everything is backing up again properly. So I’ve got that going for me.
It’s Quarterly Tax Day
If you’re a small businessperson like me, remember to send your quarterly payment off to the IRS.
So I picked a new winner for my giveaway, and it turned out to be a member of my reader group. Posted on the group and sent an email to Winner #2. You guessed it—she has also not responded yet. I figure I’ll give her until midnight tonight and if I don’t hear from her I’ll pick winner #3.
This is not making me feel very confident about future giveaways. I’m not sure if people just don’t want the pendant (which I can understand, but it’s worth $137—they can always give it to someone else if it’s not to their taste) or they’re just not checking their emails. Next month I’m giving away an Anime Tarot Deck—maybe that will elicit more interest.
Anyway, back to work.
Please Go Away
Crystal Blade Episode 30: Family Feud is live at Kindle Vella. Things are getting good now, heh.
Or at least they would be if roofers would stop knocking on my door asking if I want to get my roof inspected. Since the big hailstorm last week we’ve been getting door-to-door roofers knocking on the door daily to ask if we would like a free inspection (we checked, everything looks good and we don’t have leaks, and if any do pop up we’ll call the roofing company that installed the roof in 2012). It’s to the point where I don’t bother answering the doorbell anymore.
Except that apparently today’s roofing company rep decided that if he rang the doorbell and knocked and there was no response, he should continue to knock until someone came to the door. I was upstairs hip-deep in a scene when I heard the doorbell and ignored it. Then heard the knock and ignored it. A good minute later I heard another knock and stormed downstairs with the wrath of an author disturbed. I’m afraid I opened the door, glared at him as he said, “Hello, ma’am—” snapped that we weren’t interested and closed the door forcefully. I don’t like being rude but dude, read the lack of response.
What I wanted to do was put up a No Soliciting sign after that, but apparently Plano changed their rules last year and those won’t stop someone from knocking on your door (the solicitor can claim that they’re not soliciting, they just want to tell you all about their church/service/what have you). I need to put up a sign that says NO TRESPASSING (unless you’re a Girl Scout, Boy Scout, or under 16 and selling something for your school). For them, I will answer the door.
I’m a Little Boggled
Last week I held a giveaway for this really pretty golden rutilated quartz pendant set in sterling silver (made it myself so you know it’s good) and advertised it all over social media. To get a chance to win it, all you had to do was subscribe to my newsletter or join my reader group on Facebook. Current NL subscribers and RG members were automatically entered to win.
I got a new subscriber and a new group member, which made me happy, and ran the giveaway last Friday. For any giveaway I compile a list of people who are entered, then use a random number generator to select the winner. And lo, Number 25 was my winner. Sent her an email on Friday aying that she’d won and to let me know where to send the pendant.
Never heard back from her. Yesterday I sent out a newsletter telling everyone about the giveaway and asking her again to get in contact with me. As of today I have heard nothing. So I’m going to roll the random numbers again and pick a new winner.
But this illustrates an inherent problem with building newsletters by using NL swaps, free stories, or giveaways. You wind up with a lot of people who signed up for the freebie and have no real interest in your books or your work. I’d rather have a small but absolutely devoted group of subscribers who are actively reading my books (and newsletter) and looking forward to my next release than a large group of subscribers who immediately delete my newsletter when it lands in their inbox. Big numbers are only accurate when they reflect people who are genuinely interested in your books—otherwise it’s just padding.
Anyway, let’s hope that the new winner gets in contact with me!
Oh, Look, It’s Monday Again
Crystal Blade Episode 29: Hello, Grandmother is live at Kindle Vella. No, don’t thank me—noblesse oblige, don’t you know.
Oh, I am tired as hell. We had quite the loud storm roll through around 4 AM, so loud that neither Ramón nor I could sleep through it. He gave up and went into his office to do a little work while I kept the J Crew company and reassured them that they were safe, Thor didn’t hate them, and the sky was just growling.
Net result: no damage, no hail, some rain but that was about it. Unfortunately, in the process of opening the door to check on things I must have let some mosquitos in because I have been bitten in at least six places, all on my right thigh and, ahem, bikini area.
Ow. Did I mention ow?
I don’t even know how the hell the mosquitos accessed one particular spot, but they did. Luckily we have a really great anti-itch gel but still, not the most enjoyable place for skeeter bites. And I’m tired, and my left leg is still experiencing a bit of sciatica pain, and it’s going to be humid as hell here this week. Whee.
I Am Confused
According to Weather Underground we were supposed to get thunderstorms this evening, then it was changed to tomorrow. About an hour ago the sky got Very Interesting and I moved the truck behind the garage (car’s already in the garage). Tornado siren’s gone off once, most likely due to the tornado in Lewisville, and I’m keeping an eye on radar for round two which should hit us in a half hour or so.
Could be so much worse—looks like Richardson and south Dallas got hammered. Late spring in Texas, whee!
In the meantime I decided I also wanted to relax a bit (yeah, I know—relaxing while watching the radar? I am nothing if not an engima wrapped up in a contradiction smothered in creamy sauce), so I cued up the theatrical release version of Earthquake on Netflix.
*blink*blink*
Up until now the only version I’d ever seen was the one edited for TV. I’m not going to pick on the SFX—they were state of the art at the time, and as the animated blood zooming out at the screen when an elevator plummets to the bottom of its shaft, well, it probably made sense at the time.
But what I found truly hilarious was the idea that Lorne Greene (born in 1915) could play the father of Ava Gardner (born in 1922). Ava played Charlton Heston’s wife and they were similar ages so that worked, but why not hire something a little more appropriate in age to play her dad? I understand the need for suspension of disbelief but kids, that stretched it to the snapping point.
Also, if someone could explain why Geneviève Bujold was hired as Chuck’s young widowed love interest I would really appreciate it because 1) she seemed bored out of her mind most of the time and 2) I’ve seen more chemistry in a salt solution than between Chuck and her.
Nicola Cameron Writes 