personal

Video Blog: What I’m Reading and Other Blather

annabowling 4 Comments

Hi, all. Super busy week this week, which means I’m only getting to Monday’s post on Thursday. Could be worse. Still learning the new electronics, we’ve had a full house, and the city is redoing the sidewalks in front of our house as I write this. I found out that they were doing major things (HIMYM fans may salute with me here) which meant no leaving the house when I’d planned to hop down the block to the coffee house. Instead, I hopped into my office, and recorded this:

Still pretty basic with the video blogs, as I’m only learning the whole process, but it’s fun to blather on from time to time. We’ll see how that goes. What do you think of video blogs, dear readers? Love them? Hate them? Never watch them? Real Life Romance Hero is the one who convinced me to give it a go, so if I’m totally belly flopping here, blame him.

This week, I sold my first article to XOJane.com, which has me excited. Not romance related (though adult situations are referenced, ahem) but still an interesting experience, and one I hope to repeat. The submission package required a new author photo, with specific background requirements and bio (have I mentioned how much I hate bios?) I think the photo turned out okay. I vacillate between describing it as “thoughtful writer on a good hair day” and “Appalachian folk singer reminisces over her whiskey-soaked youth.” This whole picture thing takes practice. Videos, too.

Now that summer, my least favorite season, is winding down, and we are about to enter my beloved autumn, when the leaves put on a Technicolor show every day, the air smells amazing, everything is pumpkin flavored, and the days get cooler and darker, I’m looking forward to these changes. When my regular coffee house order slips from iced tea to hot, I’ll know we’ve turned the corner.

Her Last First Kiss continues to show me new things, some of which require the ripping out of previous things, but I think it’s going to be worth it. Sometimes, we think progress should be a straight line, like the monorail at an amusement park, where it’s more like a giant roller coaster with loop de loops and ups and downs and maybe a tunnel or water slide or two. Does this mean the book is going to be perfect? Nope, but it will be worth the journey.

It’s easy for a writer to get down on themselves after a laughably low royalty check or bad review, or realizing exactly how long it’s been since the last (or first) release, but dwelling on those things doesn’t help. Acknowledge the fact, do something different and move forward. Yes, you will fall on your face. Probably more than once. The thing is to get back up and keep going. Even if that means banging out some babble for a blog post when you don’t have the slightest idea what to write.

Hey, showing readers random stuff near my desk is still content, and it’s more than I would have had if I never opened the file. One step at a time, liebchens, that’s what it’s all about.

Typing With Wet Claws: Neccessary Electronic Evils Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, coming to you in the evening of this Feline Friday. It has been an interesting week here. Not only is the construction still going on (Anty says there is a Hellmouth outside our house. Uncle says it is only gravel, which is not scary, but will not allow Anty to walk in heels, which is kind of scary. She trips more in flats than heels, which I do not understand, but then again, I have never worn shoes of any kind.) and it was hot all week long (if you think dealing with heat is hard as a human, try going through it with a built in full length fur coat. Do not worry, though, Anty and Uncle make sure  my water bowls -I have  more than one- are always full of cool water. Sometimes, Anty puts an ice cube in my bowl.) but there are New Developments.

Anty, Uncle and Mama went to a glowy box store to learn more about glowy boxes, and they came home with a bunch of them. Anty says the robot invasion has begun. I do not know about that. She says the robots have been rising up for some time now, so maybe she meant continued. Whatever the robots are doing, there are now new phones for everybody, which means everybody wants to take more pictures of me. I do not blame them for that, but it does mean that I now know the sound that comes with the cameras hidden in those phones. Anty tells me when people on Instagram say I am a pretty girl. They do that a lot. It is good for the ego. Maybe Anty should put her book covers on Instagram. I think they are pretty, even if they are from a time before me (and do not have any cats on them. What’s with that?)

IMG_20150731_085225

who could resist this face?

Some of you may know that Anty really really really does not like phones. That is from a time, before me, when she had to keep the old ringy kind of phone with her all the time. Even in the litterbox. She may not want me saying that last part, so keep it between us if that is okay. Thank you. Anyway, that was a time when she had to talk to people vets about her papa, her own anty, and about Uncle. None of them had the same people vets because they were all sick in different ways, and so the phone rang. A lot. This was not only before me, when Olivia was Anty’s mews, but when I first came into the family, too, and I was really really scared of everything. If you knew where I came from, you would understand why, but I prefer not to talk about that. I was taking my cues from her, and if she got scared, I got scared, so when the phone rang, usually with an emergency, often one emergency interrupting another emergency, we both got scared. Sometimes, I got so scared that I would lick the fur off my tail. I do not do that anymore, because I am not scared anymore.

Anty was scared to be in a phone store (the glowy box store was really a phone store) because she does not like phones, but Mama and Uncle were there for her. She knew that she had to be there because she needs to be able to communicate with the rest of the family even when she is not at her laptop. That is a very big step. Apart from one time on Sunday (that she has asked me not to talk about) where she decided she had too many electronics (whoops, looks like I did. Sorry, Anty.) she has been pretty much okay. She likes to organize things, and organizing her electronics falls under that umbrella. That is a turn of phrase. She is not keeping her electronics under an umbrella. She mostly keeps them on a tray that is next to her comfy chair in the living room. It is not an ideal setup, but she is still researching the way that will work the best for her. For one thing, apart from her minicamp (what Mama calls the phone instead of calling it a phone; Anty likes that term, so she uses it, too) all of her electronics are pink. She did not plan it that way, but that is how it is. The minicamp is black, but it may get a pink case. She does not know about that yet.

I do not think that the new phones have anything to do with it, but Anty’s laptop got sick twice this week. Maybe more than that. I have lost count. Uncle fixed it some of the time, and then Anty fixed it herself and it has been fine since then. We did not have to go to the computer vet, which is a good thing. Anty has had to reinstall Scrivener three times already, but she did not mind, because it is something she has to do to get these books written. She still does most of her initial writing in longhand, in notebooks and on differently colored legal pads, but if she wants the books to be published (and she does; that is how she helps pay for my cat food) then she has to put them on the computer. She was so scared of Scrivener at first that she shut it down during the tutorial because it was too overwhelming. I can relate. The day I came home from the shelter, I did not know I was home and did not come out of the carrier for four hours. I came out of the carrier right away when we moved here, though, because I knew I was still with my family.

my sunbeam

my sunbeam

That is how it is with writing as well. Anty can get scared sometimes, whether it is using a new kind of glowy box or trying something new with a story, but as long as she is where she needs to be, it is worth being a little scared, so it all works out. Sometimes, something that looks scary can  be the best thing in the world after spending some time with it.

Speaking of time, Anty says I have had enough time on the glowy box, so that is going to have to be it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

This Rambling Is Going Somewhere, I Promise

annabowling Leave a comment

We were trapped in the limbo between where we were and where we wanted to be.

–David Levithan

My brain is mush today.  I don’t do well in high heat, and we are in one of those over ninety degrees for several days heat waves. There is a giant hole in the ground outside our house (city doing things to stuff under where the sidewalk used to be.) I have an ice pack at the base of my spine, to stay cool, and ingesting enough water to fill a small swimming pool. I would like to be in a swimming pool, actually, preferably an indoor one, but that would require leaving the house, so I refer to temperature and giant hole above.

There originally was a topic for this post, when I’d planned to post it, on Monday. That ship has sailed, and it is not coming back, so I am going to ramble. I have no idea whether the post I’d planned had anything to do with the quote above, which I love dearly, or if I have any chance of staying on topic, but I have a goal of blogging  three times a week, dagnabit, and I am going to stick to that. I had a writing teacher once (she would correct me that she was a group facilitator, not a teacher, but I learned stuff, Julia, so it counts. I will probably have a heroine named Julia someday, and That Julia will never know, because she doesn’t read romance. Ah, but you did, Julia. You read -okay, listened to- my stuff in group, so that counts, too.) who said that the practice of writing would bring the product of writing. In short, put pen on paper when she said “go” and then keep it moving until she called time.

It’s kind of like that with blogging. If I start blabbering on the paper, or screen, in this case, I’ll wind up talking about something, so there really are no wasted entries. It’s all going somewhere, even if that somewhere is priming the pump for other writing. I usually do need to prime. This morning, I’ve been filling the pages of a neon green legal pad with swoopy handwritten notes for one project, and, all things being equal, that’s where I’d like to stay. Commitment, though. If I don’t post today, then I’ll let it slide until tomorrow, which is my day away from the house (but not from computers, but more on that later) so that would run into Skye’s posting, and weekend posting would not be the most convenient thing, so it had to be today.

Today’s quote, taken from one of the stories in How They Met And Other Stories, fits the way I’m feeling. Real Life Romance Hero, greatly improved from  his own challenges, suggested I take today to rest, but how can I when I am literally years behind where I wanted to be? Years. Oh, and I suppose I’m going to fix that all in one day? Um, no. That’s not realistic or even possible, butbutbutbutbutbutbut….yeah. That’s the thing, that limbo of being between where we are and where we want to be.

Where I am now is not where I would have thought I’d be  years ago, before I got the phone call from my dad’s neighbor, before that first time Real Life Romance Hero and I waited on the front porch of where we used to  live for the ambulance to arrive after that first asthma attack. A book a year, that was the plan, maybe two if I really got into my groove, but it’s been long enough since a release that I could count as a new author under certain criteria. That’s neither good nor bad, merely is, and I need to be okay with that. it’s a fact. Life happens. I can’t control that.

What I can control is what I do with it. I can write the best story I can, and put everything I have into it. That neon green legal pad and I were up past midnight and up again before six, because my hero and heroine needed me. Bless their poor broken hearts, and my poor scrambled brain. I can’t do everything. I can’t write x years worth of books in one day, but I can write this scene. I can get the first of three blog entries posted. Julia was right. The practice brings forth the product.

I wrote some crap in those sessions, but I also wrote the opening of My Outcast Heart, a good deal of Orphans in the Storm, and a good deal, if not all, of “Never Too Late” in those sessions, too. So there is some precedent. Here I am, a good deal (yes, I did just use that phrase in the line above, but it’s my blog and I’ll repeat if I want to) farther down the page than I’d intended, so that’s good. I’d thought about doing a video blog for today, but my one rule about video blogging (so far) is that I only make videos when my makeup does not melt off my face while I am applying it. Kind of important, that one. I’m sure there will be others, but for today, that’s enough.

So that’s it for today. It’s hot. I’m cranky. I don’t like summer, and I don’t like being denied my coffee house time or the accompanying iced tea. All the more reason to go back into story world until it’s time to meet Housemate for soft serve in the evening, DJ-ing the soundtrack for the drive on the new smartphone RLRH and Housemate (and the very persuasive Shawn D at the phone store) talked me into. We’re all a little disoriented on that one, but I am utterly delighted that there is an office program on the actual phone, so new writing toy. Rather makes that trip to where I want to be shorter, and with a better soundtrack.

Typing With Wet Claws: Anty is Under the Bed Edition

annabowling 4 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here for another Feline Friday. I am not under the bed this week, because Anty is there and she says she is not coming out.  There are a few reasons for this.

First, she is cranky to have missed RWA Nationals for another year, but she still tried to get some of the experience as best she could. Please forgive the video blogs. She was going to make another one today, but there was a problem, which is the second thing. Well, really the third.

View out our living room window. Nothing to do with RWA. The machines are loud.

View out our living room window. Nothing to do with RWA. The machines are loud.

The second thing is that Uncle is waiting for something in the mail that should have been here yesterday and could come tomorrow or could come Monday. Yesterday really would have been best. Anty stresses about things like this, but Uncle assures her all will be fine. Anty thinks that is all very well and good, but she likes to have a Plan B and Plan C in case Plan A does not work out after all.

The third thing is why Anty has not made a video blog for today. Last night, she could not sleep, so she got up to listen to some special music on Spotify that helps her get to sleep. She did not get to sleep, because she did not hear her music. Instead, she got some malware. Malware is a very bad kind of program that gets into computers to do things that are not nice. Anty had to wait until Uncle got up so he could help her with tech support. Uncle is very calm about things like this, where Anty is not, so they balance here.

The human on tech support was not very helpful and wanted a lot of money before they would fix Anty’s computer. Uncle told them that was not going to happen. It took him some time and a lot of passwords, but Uncle was able to  take Anty’s computer back in time so that it would work again. This did mean that Anty will have to reinstall things like Scrivener and Spotify, but she is okay with that, as long as she can have her computer back and write on it. It is very interesting that the Scrivener files stayed even though Scrivener did not. I am impressed. Puzzled, but impressed.

Since Anty is not coming out from under the bed, I will tell her news for her. She had two posts at Heroes and Heartbreakers this week. On Monday, she talked about the new book by Meredith Duran, Luck Be a Lady, which she liked very much. You can read that post here. I do not know where pictures go on this computer now that it can time travel, so I cannot show you a picture of that post right now. Instead, you get another picture of me.

you cannot tell, but I am thinking about that book.

you cannot tell, but I am thinking about that book.

Anty’s other Heroes and Heartbreakers post is about Robin Hood and Maid Marian, a timeless romance. You can read about it here. I still do not know where the pictures go, so you get me again.

I wonder if there were any cats in Sherwood Forest. I think there were.

I wonder if there were any cats in Sherwood Forest. I think there were.

Wait, I think I can find a picture that is kind of appropriate.

Anty talks about the book in the middle in her Robin and Marian post.

Anty talks about the book in the middle in her Robin and Marian post.

My Mama is coming home tomorrow, because Grandma is doing really really well. I do not know if Anty will have to take her computer to the computer vet after all, because Uncle did a good job. He is also making Anty dinner, and he should be able to go out and hunt again this week ahead. I do not know if Anty will know what to do with  a quiet house. She will probably write, once she gets Scrivener installed again, but that will probably be tomorrow. She will come out when she is hungry, or when she wants to check her email.

I think that is about it for now, so, until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: Post-People Vet Editiom

annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. It has been a week of changes here, and the humans are still figuring out what some of them mean. If they are not sure, you can only imagine how it is for a kitty, but here is what I  know so far.

  1. Uncle is going to be home all the time for  a little while, while he gets better. This is good because I get to be with him all the time (I like that a lot) and he does not smell as sick as he used to smell. Kitties pick up on these things. Uncle’s regular people vet helped him figure out some of the things that made him feel really really bad, and he is doing a lot better already. It will take a little more time, but not very much, as he is learning how to take care of himself and Anty is making sure that he does.
  2. This also means that Uncle is home during Anty’s writing time. She says she can feel it when people are breathing her air. She loves Uncle and she loves the stories she is writing, and sometimes, it is a lot to juggle, so she is figuring out how to do that, especially when she is getting used to new technology.
    new computer in action

    new computer in action

    Merely because her tablet and new laptop are both pink does not mean they automatically share everything, and some files are still on the old laptop, like her Sims. It is complicated, but she is learning. The fact that the tablet and new computer are very portable is a big help. The fact that she cannot pick up Wi-Fi in the park is not that helpful, but there are ducks.

  3. Grandma’s people vets say that Grandma can go home this week, so my Mama is going back to where we used to live so that she can help Grandma get settled. Anty says she is turning Mama’s room into an art studio. That is fine by me, as long as my food bowl stays in the same place. (Sorry, Mama..) Anty could really use a room for her art, but I think she will miss Mama while she is gone.
  4. There are a lot of outside noises, and they are scary. Uncle says the city is making the street nicer, but all I can tell, because I am an indoor kitty, is that there is a lot of noise all day. Lots of loud machines and the ground shakes sometimes, and they took out all the trees on our street. Uncle says the city will put in new trees, and the birds will come back (I really like to watch birds in the morning) but that changes the light that comes in the living room window when I hang out with Anty and Mama at breakfast time.
  5.  Here is a picture of Anty’s latest library haul, except for the bottom book.
    one of these things is not like the others

    one of these things is not like the others

    That one is on the bottom because the cover curled back on itself during the really humid days last week, and she wants it to be flat. You will note that all of the books, apart from the bottom one, are YA, not historical. Anty would really like to be reading historical, but she says her brain will not go there right now, and that bothers her. She likes these books, but misses historicals. She has had a sneak peek at an upcoming historical by Kate Rothwell, whose books she really likes, so that is one thing. Anty thinks there should be more historical romances set in New York. Maybe she should write some. Well, some more. She already wrote one, My Outcast Heart. It was her first book, and there are kitties in it. I was not born yet, so none of them area based on me. The cover is not on Goodreads, which Anty will need to fix, but it does have one.

  6. Anty has discovered a new site for writers, called The Fearless Writer. They have also discovered Anty, and include some of these blog entries (not mine, so far, but maybe they are waiting for The Fearless Writer’s Cat to start, but then again, I am not exactly fearless) in their newsletter so that more people can find this blog. There are other things in it, too, but none of those people feed me, so I do not have to mention them. Put some treats in my bowl, and we’ll talk.
  7. It seems like there should be a seventh entry, because there are seven days in a week, and I blog once  a week, unless Anty needs my help more often, which she might, because of above reasons. Anty is hoping to get to watch Poldark this weekend, because it is set in the same era as Her Last First Kiss and she would like to soak in some atmosphere. If any of you know of other movie set in the 1780s, please leave them in the comments and I will tell Anty to watch them. That might help her not be so cranky about having to give season two of Game of Thrones back to the library before she has seen all the episodes.

That is about it for this week, so until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

On Jumping Through Flaming Hoops

annabowling Leave a comment

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

E. L. Doctorow

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/writing.html#p4fWBLssxDJjokCS.99

Today, I am borrowing Housemate’s laptop, which is also currently Real Life Romance Hero’s laptop, as his gave up the ghost before mine did. I am writing this at Real Life Romance Hero’s desk, with the earbuds from my tablet, which is really more like earbud, singular, as only one works, because RLRH needed my laptop earbuds for his smartphone. His earbuds died before my earbuds became earbud, so I was happy to share the wealth.

On the way to the desk, I dropped the camera I needed to take today’s picture. The battery compartment sprang open, and I thought, for a minute, that the camera had breathed its last. Thankfully, I’d only put the batteries in again backwards. I have no idea how to use the camera on my tablet, so most of my use of that now consists of chasing Skye around the living room, asking her, “where’s your face?” Okay, question is really for the tablet, so that I can figure out where the darned camera actually is aimed. I have room for vast improvement in that area. So far, I am really good at getting blank walls in my view. I don’t think that’s exactly how it works.

I have one of two jump drives stuck in the USB port, the other one soon to go in alongside it, providing they fit. This excites me more than the average bear, because I can’t use them both on my own laptop, as one port is permanently occupied by the external keyboard that I am still convinced had some role in shutting off my internet from that particular computer, and if this is an easily fixable thing, I am going to have words for  myself, and not the fictional kind. New laptop has, according to tracking, left the warehouse and is on the way to a local big box store for pickup. Could be there as soon as tomorrow, could be as late as the weekend. Until then, it’s jumping through flaming hoops to do things that ought to be easier.

To write a long overdue post for another blog, I need to do some research on this computer, then write that down longhand and take it to my office at the other end of the house and write it on the desktop that has Word (this laptop does not, as it does not belong to a writer) then save to jump drive. Then jump drive comes back to this laptop so I can send it in at long last. Similar hoop jumping needs to happen for critting two friends’ manuscripts and work on one of my own, so I can send pages to this project’s critique partner.

Working on the desktop, which is older than Skye, and probably still has Olivia hair in the keyboard somewhere, means that I need to bring the tablet into the office as well, since I write best with music playing. I still have not yet found the ideal configuration of working at my desk with the current machines. Working on manuscript will mean working on non-internet laptop, as that’s the one that has Scrivener on it, which I am only now learning how to use for my particular purposes (as a kinesthetic learner, my best route is to jump in, muck about and find my own way; this is usually messy and results in a lot of things that don’t work, along my way to finding what does.) Using my current laptop at my desk means either having the external keyboard in my lap and head tilted at an interesting angle because earbud cord and charger cord for tablet are only so long, or having tablet ,in my lap and balancing external keyboard over laptop keyboard. That second option means that the external keyboard will randomly turn my laptop’s sound off and on, remind me I have no bluetooth devices (thanks, I knew that already) and/or that I am not connected to the internet. (Again, got that.)

This is not my ideal working environment, especially on a day that is so hot and sticky that the only thing I actually want to do is take a nap, which would make up for the too-humid-to-sleep night. Still, there is nothing that I would rather do than write in and about my favorite genre (time for reading it later) so, if jumping through the flaming hoops listed above is what I have to do to get there, then fine. I will do that. That’s the best thing to come out of the robot uprising attaching itself to multiple family medical emergencies in the last two months.

After two months of hands on caregiving, things are looking different. The theoretical schoolbus has dropped me off again, in front of whatever institute of learning is involved in this whole writing thing. As with improving one’s physical self, I’m going to consider that resistance builds stregnth. I’m inspired by a former student of mine, from my From Fanfiction to Fantastic Fiction course, a session a couple years back now, who wrote of how she would dismantle her entire desktop system, back when this was a Big Deal, load it in the back of her car, every weekend, so she could drive two hundred miles to the house where her collaborator lived. Once there, she’d put the darned thing back together, they’d spend the entire weekend writing, only to dismantle it, make the long haul back home and do it all over again the next week. I am still in awe of that sort of dedication, and, now that I do have to jump through hoops, I get it. It’s worth it.

Typing With Wet Claws: Back on Our Feet Edition

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Hello all, Skye here for another Feline Friday. I am blogging on my computer today, with Anty’s brand new stylus. It is tricky to use if you have paws, which I do. Still, it leaves fewer prints on the screen, so I thought I would give it a try. If I make a lot of mistakes, please remember I do have paws. Also, I am very cute.

This has been a challenging week. Uncle had to go back to the people vet, this time because his paws were sick. He had to get some rest and take different pills that would not hurt his paws. Uncle was very brave, and did not have to wear the cone of shame. We are all very proud of him. He is much better now and can go out to hunt for cat food and other necessary things.

This means that Any does not have to spend as much time taking care of people vet things and can focus more on her writing. This is good news because she tends to get crabby when she does not get to write. Also when she does not get to sleep. She has not been doing a lot of either his week, come to think of it. She has been pretty crabby. That is all about to change, though, since Uncle has gone back to hunt. His paws are better, he is in a good mood, and they had a nice time together after he helped Anty put away her hunting (she hunted a lot of groceries with Mama, who had to go out and hunt some more.) With Mama and Uncle both out of the house, that means that Anty can use the internet computer all she wants.

She first thought she could be okay using only her tablet, Robin Sparkles, and sending files from there to other computers, but it did not work out as easily as she had hoped. Also, one computer shared among three humans takes more planning than a tired brain can handle without somebody’s schedule colliding with somebody else’s. Then there is the fact that three people using one computer all that much means it is getting pounded on far more than one computer should. This means that a new computer will probably come into the house soon. That means change. Have I mentioned kitties do not like change? Maybe the box will be nice. I do not climb, so I will probably not get inside it, but I might like to lean against it. I like leaning.

Anty does like working with Robin Sparkles, though, because they can go to the mall lots of different places. One thing Anty had always wanted to do with a tablet is get on Instagram, and, today, she did. Right now, all there is, is a picture of me, but that is a very good start. If you are on Instagram, Anty is annacarrascobowling on there. She will probably have lots of pictures of me and ducks, but not in the same picture, because the ducks are in the park and I am at home.

Anyway, Anty is getting ready to move files onto the new computer when it arrives. She can still use her old laptop for writing and playing The Sims 3 (she does not have 4 yet, but tried the demo and thought it was fun, so someday, she will get that game also) but it cannot use the internet any longer. Maybe the computer vet can help it do that again, but we will not know that for a while. If the computer vet is really good, maybe they can even fix the H key. Uncle knows a good computer vet and we will take Anty’s and Uncle’s old laptops to them soon. I expect there may be bad words, but on the other paw, that might mean more working computers. I do not know how it works when there are more computers than humans. Maybe they will need to get another human? I like the humans we already have and do not need any more. No offense.

Anty likes the idea of starting over with a brand new machine, even though that will mean a lot of work getting things set up. The new computer will probably not have Word, but she can put Scrivener on it, and also Zen Writer.  She likes Zen Writer because it is pretty and she can hear typewriter key sounds while she works. I think those key sounds are very interesting. She knows that it will take a long time to install Sims 3 on a new computer, but the up side of that is that it will be able to handle the expansions she has and maybe a new world or two. Then she can actually play instead of sigh when the drivers fail and the screen goes black. She is much less crabby when she can play Sims. If she can write, sleep and play Sims, she is a lot easier to live with; take my word on that one. I could tell you stories, but then she might not let me use the computer as much as she does now, so I will not do that.

Not all of the files will make it to the new computer, and that is all right. Stories that she has decided she will not be writing after all (we will not talk about the vampire historical, for example) can stay where they are. She will probably not delete them, but maybe save them to disk instead, where they cannot hurt anybody. Keeping only stories she is currently writing on the new computer will cut down on mental clutter and help keep her focused. I could point out that inspirational picture files take up a lot of space, but I also know where my treats come from, so I will not do that, either. She can look at me and Uncle. That should be enough.

This week, the coming soon announcement is mine. I have lined up my very first Posting Playdate guest, Bailey. Bailey lives with my Anty Sue Ann, who blogs at SueAnnPorter.com. That is very exciting. I have never had a guest before, but I have read Anty’s interviews, so I think I have a good grasp on how that goes. Watch this space for more details.

That is about it for this week, so, until next week, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: Direcat Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for a slightly later than usual Feline Friday. Anty has been busy this week, as we get things with Uncle and people vets sorted out. I am happy to report that he still does not have to wear the cone of shame and does not have to take as many pills after we saw the most recent people vet. I imagine Anty is relieved, but mostly, right now, she is tired.

I am writing this post on Mama’s laptop, because Anty’s has decided it does not like the internet anymore, or maybe it thinks that now the tablet can do all that internet stuff. Either way, this means that Mama’s laptop is now everybody’s laptop, and the humans have to work out a schedule to share it so that everybody gets their fair shot at things. I am glad the tablet is kitty sized, though touch screens can be tricky if you have paws instead of fingers. Anty is looking at other laptops that might be better to use than trying to navigate among several computers that can each do part of the job. We will keep you updated on that search. It is going to take a lot of hunting, but things will calm down when that is settled.

One good thing that has happened in all of this is that Anty has discovered Game of Thrones. That is the TV series, not the books, at least not yet. She and Mama have started calling me their direcat. I do not know exactly what that entails, (hah, see what I did there? Entails? Because I have a tail.) but I did find this sigil generator, and I made my own sigil:

JoinTheRealm_sigil

If you want to make your own sigil, too, the generator I used is here. If you do make your own sigil, for yourself, or your pet, or maybe your characters, if you write, please feel free to share a link to what they look like in the comments. Anty would love to see them.

My favorite episode so far is “The Pointy End,” because that is the episode where a kitty got away from a young human who was chasing him. I am very proud of that kitty. That was some good running. I should note that this is not a show for gentle viewers who do not like to see Bad Things happen, or Very Private Things, either. Anty is not phased. She knows it is pretend, and she likes stories with very high stakes. She says she knows this show is in the fantasy genre, but it feels more like historical fiction to her. I can see where she gets that. She did not like what happened to Lady, and she would really like to see more romance (and not between siblings, thank you) but it is still a very good story so far, and makes her want to see more of an epic feel in historical romances, because she would very much like to write something like that in historical romance.

First, though, she would like to take a nap. That will probably not happen for a while, since she has a lot of writing to do. That is not always easy when the machines on which she writes are giving her guff, as Uncle calls it. Anty says that having notebooks helps her a lot in this regard, because they only crash if they fall off the table. The worst that can happen then is that she will lose her place, but that is usually easy to fix, because that is usually where the writing stops. Unless she was transcribing, and then it might get trickier, but she does like to change ink colors for every session, so if she knows she was on pages written in red ink, that narrows things down when she needs to find her place again. That is very useful when she has to stop to tend to domestic tornadoes or feed me or other important stuff like that.

One good thing about technology is that the camera cord came in the mail today. That means that there will be new pictures of me, and probably also of ducks (Anty says that the ducklings are teenagers now; the girls have blue stripes under their wings and the boys have green heads. There are more girls than boys, if you are counting.) and probably notebooks, too. Anty has a stack of Picadilly notebooks she would like to hack, but she needs to do some more writing first. When a writer has been dealing with other things, even if they are very important,then the writer will miss writing, and they may get grumpy and short tempered. In those cases, it is best to tread carefully and let them do what they need to do. Giving kitties treats also helps, I have found. At least it helps me.  People snacks probably will help the writer, too.

Sharing one laptop  among three humans and one kitty means that we only get a certain amount of time to use it, and that is about it for my time right now. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: Learning Curve Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. We are closing in here on the first full week of Anty being able to use her office. So far, so good. She still has some things left to do, like see if the printer will work with her tablet (I suspect that will be noisy, if it does, so part of me hopes it does not. On the one paw, Anty would be happy that she could print things, but on the other paw, she would be able to print things. I am not yet sure what I think about this possibility.) The camera cable remains missing, so I had to put up one of my greatest hits pictures today. I will enjoy this reprieve as much as I can, because once she does have a camera cable agin, she will be back at taking pictures.

She has tried taking my picture with the tablet camera, but that did not turn out very well. Part of that is the fact that Anty has trouble with depth perception. Part of it is that Anty has trouble with technology. Part of it is that the camera is in the front of the tablet, and it is difficult for Anty to see what she is trying to photograph unless she is trying to photograph herself. Even then, she generally gets pictures where her face is very big or she only gets the top of her (or my) head. She did manage to get all of Mama’s head in one picture, but she was not trying to take a picture of Mama, and Mama did not want her picture taken, so that did not turn out well for anybody.

This coming week, Mama will be going to where we used to live, to help Grandma at the people vet. This means that I will stay home with Uncle and Anty. I am still not sure I want to go into Anty’s office, even though that is where she is spending most of her weekdays now. This is a dilemma for a kitty. On the one paw, I want to be near Anty. On the other paw, there is carpet. Did I mention that the carpet is rather me-colored? I have to take that into consideration, especially combined with Anty’s lack of depth perception. I am sure we will figure something out. For now, she is working in the office with the door open (except when Uncle is around and she really needs to concentrate; then it is closed) and hoping that I will get curious as to what she is doing in there.

I think she is curious about what she is doing in there, too, but it seems to be working so far. Some humans say it takes twenty-eight days to make a habit, other humans say it is more like sixty, and still others say that it is best to take it one day at a time. What Anty is doing is remembering the way she knows works best for her – jump in and figure it out from there, then start mushing everything into order. Mama has started asking Anty to make lists for her, which is probably a good thing. Making lists makes Anty very happy, and making sure that I could post my blog today was part of Anty’s list for the day.

Most days are starting to work something like this:  Anty has breakfast with Mama (Uncle gets up later, because he works later and goes to sleep later) and then goes into her office. She will usually do some free writing in her notebook with the vampire on the cover. This does not mean she is writing about vampires (she tried to once; it did not go well.) She likes the picture on the cover, the paper inside is smooth and has roses on the corners, and she can use a fountain pen on it. Free writing means she puts down whatever is on her mind at the time, usually two to four pages, and then she makes her list for the day.

this sign goes on the door when Anty *really* does not want to be disturbed.

this sign goes on the door when Anty *really* does not want to be disturbed.

Writing tasks have to go on the list first, as writing is her job and she has to treat it that way. She used to put things like “write” on the list, but that was too vague, so now it is more like “outline the scene in Her Last First Kiss where Heroine first meets Hero.” Now that she knows what she was missing from this story, that means she needs to rip apart the outline she already had and make a new one but it will work out better (though I do not think there are any cats in this version, either, and the dog gets a bigger part. Hmph. Maybe there will be cats in the next book.) She has her plot board and sticky notes out, so I know what she is going to do tomorrow, when Mama and Uncle are both out hunting. She is making noises about printing pictures if she can get the tablet and printer to talk to each other. It is a good thing the office is on the other end of the house.

Anty also puts down when she has to read books that she has to write about for Heroes and Heartbreakers, and sets a specific time or amount of chapters she has to read. Sometimes it takes her a little while to get into the rythym. of reading a particular story, but once she does, then she can read it faster. She likes to read fast. Reading that she has to write about counts as writing, too, so that is also important.

After that, is reading things written by humans she knows, and telling them what she thinks about it. Humans call this critiquing or beta reading. There is a difference, but it is hard to explain to kitties. Anty is currently doing that for two writers friends, and needs to send one of them something that she is writing. She should probably do that soon, before she talks herself out of it. That is what she does when she gets nervous. That is probably because she cannot fit under the bed, like I do.

Well, that is about it for this week. Anty needs to write more about the dog part, so she will need the computer back. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Juggling Chainsaws

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“Running, always you have to keep going. You need to die running.”
-Hyvon Ngetich

My morning pages today began with “I have a lot of reasons to not like this day.” It’s true. One, I am not a summer person. June is unaguably summer, though the calendar says we’re still in spring for nineteen more days. Today is gray and cool and rainy, though, so that is one thing in today’s favor. Pictures may be greatest hits for a while, unless I can master the art of the front facing tablet camera, or you may need to settle for views of what my work area is looking at (aka me) instead of the other way around. We’ll see how that goes. Domestic tornadoes continue to blow through our family, and I am adding another phrase to the ever-expanding lexicon: juggling chainsaws.

That’s what it feels like at times, one disaster or irritation (and some things can be both at the same time) piling up and me wondering how I’m going to get everything done. This weekend brought a few of those, and since my track record of getting through interesting times seems to be one hundred percent so far, I can only assume it’s going to continue, and so the best thing to do is carry on.

Those who know me well know that the only thing better than making a list is prioritizing the list, and the only thing better than prioritzing the list is checking things off the list, and the only thing better than checking things off the list is checking the last thing off the list. So, that’s how I started my day. For some things, the only way to handle them (maybe these would be the chainsaws with the safety gaurd on) is to haul out my favorite Polish proverb: Not my circus, not my monkeys, and carry on. Those are the things I can’t control, or that are somebody else’s job. Not worth my time and energy, because I am needed elsewhere. The things on my list are the things that I can make a difference on, and, thankfully, most of those have to do with writing.

After a stretch of years (longer than I would care to count) when the thing I love most, writing, was the hardest thing in the world to do, it’s good to love writing again, and that’s where I want my time and energy to go. There’s a note torn from a pocket Moleskine on my fallen bulletin boad in my getting-a-lot-more-comfortable office, that says “You’re in the factory. Make the product.” This comes to me from somebody else, through somebody else, rephrased by me, because the original thing had something about making words and “making words” puts me in a mental muscle cramp, so I don’t do that. I tell stories. Yes, because I write books and blog posts, words are involved, but the focus for me isn’t the individual words, but the stories, and the characters who live in them.

In Anne Lamott’s classic Bird by Bird, she talks about using a one inch picture frame to focus on one aspect of a big job at one time. The whole thing doesn’t matter right now, only this one thing. I find that useful, because making order out of chaos is A) something I’ve found I am suprisngly good at doing, and B) it’s fun for me. So, lists. Notebooks. Sticky notes. Even now, my blood pumps a little faster at the thought of taking down the bulletin board that’s been there for months, with the same “I don’t know what I’m doing right now” stuff tacked up on it, because, well, writers should have stuff tacked on their bulletin boards, right?

Eh, maybe. Maybe I need to look at the blank space and the order will present itself. What I do know is that the frame around my time has gone into place. From nine to five, I am at work. Today’s quote comes from Hyvon Ngetich, not a writer, but a runner. Her body gave out during the Austin marathon, with two tenths of a mile yet to go. She was offered a wheelchair by medical personnell, but refused it and crawled, yes, crawled, to the finish line on her own. She came in third. Not too shabby there, madam.

Running and I are not friends (gals who are, um, bountifully endowed, as well as non-athletic people, you know what I mean) but I admire the heck out of this woman for her perseverence. I want that. I need that. I take that. I put it in a one inch picture frame and focus on that to get the job done. Wriitng is a curious combination of fancy and practicality, which I find more curious by the day, and that only makes me want it more.

Today, I get to dip into several worlds in turn. I get to write a review of a book I got to read before it goes on sale, which already feels like a special privilege, and share why it’s awesome. I get to make concrete plans to begin work on my first collaboration in years, with a writer friend I’ve wanted to work with for over a decade. I get to push everything else aside and spend time in Georgian England with a hero and heroine I love like crazycakes, and I get to research romance novels that tap into the legendary romance of Robin Hood and Maid Marian (any favorites, guys and gals?) Not bad for a day’s work, I’d say.

See you later, because office hours have begun.