Drunken Owls and Other Delights

 It felt wonderful to sleep in until 8:30am, something I haven't done in ages! Granted, I was up until 11pm last night finishing off Shannon Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, which I'd realized early on was in fact a 'let's get the gang back together for one last heist' caper film, complete with bonkers action and wait-what plot twists, and just enough humor to make it a super fun ride. This new series is a lot less serious than her Daevabad trilogy, that's for sure, but it you loved that, you'll love this one as well.

Meanwhile, we walked to the park today and spent a little bit of time in the botanical garden, harvested some more of the red lettuce (there's still a ton of it left), then had a late lunch at the Richmond Republic, where I had a 10% APV beer that was super tasty and left me slightly spinny for at least two and a half hours. All in all a lovely day to be outside!

I'll admit I've been allowing myself to relax over the last couple of days, partly because my setting up Queen Ophelia's War for Thursday's drop date went so smoothly and quickly. I've earned it, dang it! I'm not entirely sure how I'll go about promoting this one but I'll give it the old college try, I suppose. That's something I'll be working on in the next six months anyway: figuring out productive ways to attract attention to my novels!

As for the day job, I'm doing a few midshifts this week (one as a register jockey, the other as a front end babysitter) with a midweek day off, which I've come to enjoy. the 1-2-1-3 variation on the day job schedule breaks it up so I'm not going full out for five days.


Hope everyone has a lovely week!

It seems our weekend entertainment usually falls on Saturdays, leaving Sunday to be the Errand Day.  In this case, we went to see Alita: Battle Angel at the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission last night.  Having been a fan of the original 90s manga, I'm quite happy to say they did a fine job of remaining close to it (I read later that it's based on the first four tankobon of the original series) and that they kept the theme that it's most definitely NOT a male-gazey female-cyborg story.  I would totally go see it again, and yes, I will definitely get the blu-ray for it when it comes out.

Today's errand excitement was a walk to the farmer's market down the other end of Clement, then a drive down to Fort Mason to drop off book donations at the SF Library store and clothing donations at the Goodwill up the street.  (Why do I drive down there when I could easily use the Goodwill up the way on Clement? Parking, you see. As in There Ain't None Close By On Clement. Heh.)  I usually use that as my excuse to get out of the house and the neighborhood. Sometimes when I'm down there I'll also stop at the Flax Art Supply store and pick up some things -- I bought a smallish sketch book down there that I desperately need to start filling in.

I'm slowly cleaning everything up here in Spare Oom so I go ahead and buy a replacement for the loveseat that's in here. It's old and lumpy (it was A's and dates back to the late 90s by her reckoning) and desperately needs to go. We're planning on ordering from the same place we bought our living room couch (which came in two big boxes as a build-it-yourself thing). I'm sort of playing a long game here, planning out each step with the final goal of getting my papers, books, music and personal effects in order in this room.  Getting a new mini-couch in here is one of the biggest steps and will make things a lot easier once it's purchased and installed. 

Anyhoo!  Good news on the writing front!  IN MY BLUE WORLD IS OUT NEXT SATURDAY!!!  Woohoo!  It'll be available as an e-book at Smashwords if you follow this here link:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/925076

It's a long time coming, but I'm quite proud of this one.  I took a lot of chances with this story...it's definitely different from the other novels I've written over the years and heading more in a direction I want and need to go in with my writing. I'm seeing it as the first of a new path for my writing, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it'll lead.


Hope everyone has a lovely week! 

 Things I Did This Weekend:

--Learned how to rip DVDs onto my external hard drive.  I may start doing this to get rid of some of the older DVDs I rarely watch.
--Visited the in-laws in Petaluma for lunch, had a tasty pizza at one of the tiny hip restaurants in the Theater District
--Did a quick overview of the electric guitars at Tall Toad Music (in the same city), as I'm contemplating trading in my rarely-used 12-string guitar for a second electric 6-string.  Fell in love with a Gretsch that I hope is there when I return next.
--Went to the gym for the first time in a week or so.
--Had a very tasty brunch at the new Turkish/Mediterranean bistro up the street (Lokma), deemed it quite excellent.
--Three loads of laundry, surprised that no one else was using it at the moment.
--Started to prepare for FogCon, which starts this Friday.  I have a reading and I'm on a panel about self-publishing!

Oh-- and I FINALLY released Meet the Lidwells!  WOOHOO!  It's now available at Smashwords, and it's on sale this week, for only $1.50!  Go check it out! :D

So yeah, that's been my weekend.  How's yours been? :)

Another lazy Sunday morning, in which I'm up and awake and watching the local news cycles while enjoying a cup of coffee. It's a bit chilly this morning but the rain seems to have abated somewhat. Not much going on today, although I'm going to need to do a bit of writing work later. Due to other plans I wasn't able to update the A to Z Challenge post yesterday, so I'll have to do that today.

FINALLY got around to updating the ebook for A Division of Souls...the odd typos and weird word choices are getting fixed so they're in line with the physical copy of the book. This will be the official 'second edition' of the ebook in that respect (and yes, I am in fact labeling it such on the copyright page). And yes, I have had some thoughts about giving the entire trilogy another 'remaster' once all three are out, but that's quite some time down the road, so I'm not going to worry about that. Still...I'm about 2/3 of the way through, so hopefully I'll be done by end of week. Just in time for the new book release!

This week is going to be kind of busy for me, between my writing projects and other things, including needing to head into Concord on Tuesday. I see no rain in the forecast for that day, so hopefully the drive there will be uneventful. But really, I'll be focusing mostly on this Friday, when the new book comes out. I really need to start pushing it in various places just to get some airtime. [Doing the current A to Z meme is actually helping, heh!] Even though it's longer than ADoS, I chose to give it the $4.99 price (a dollar cheaper than the first book originally), plus I'm offering Book 1 for free.

Going to be quite the busy week...here's to hoping I'll be able to keep on top of it!

Wow. I can finally call myself a published author now.

It's still sinking in. How many years did it take me to get to this point? And compared to that, how few months did it take for me to go from making the decision to reality? I'm still amazed by it all.

But yeah...it's official, A Division of Souls is now available for sale! :D

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/565782