Fell while walking the dogs

I accidentally mis-stepped off the edge of a sidewalk and went down. Boogered up my knee. Opposite ankle hurts too, but mostly my knee. So much for aerobics tonight.

Almost done sewing

I completed the outer portion of the bag yesterday, so today it's making the lining and handles, and finishing binding on the remaining quilt. I think Bill *might* want to get some landscaping stuff at Menards and there's no telling what Laura will have planned, so it looks like a pretty good Saturday in the making!

Beagles have no concept of time

Today's Bill's day off and, since he was awake, he took Laura to work this morning so I could sleep. Apparently, Stewie decided that this Would Not Do and he ran through the house bah-wooing frantically. I informed Stewie that it was early, too early, and I was trying to sleep, but he didn't care. (bahwhooo!) So I had to get up and put him out with Gozer (who was already in his pen outside).

The cats, being their opportunistic selves, are all excited that I'm available to pet them and to show them that the food dish is indeed full and to open the door so they can consider going outside and, oh, have you cuddled me yet?

And now I'm awake. I think.

I feel a rant coming on

CNN.com has an article today about how some fast food chains are making super-high-calorie menu items.  While the article itself didn't bother me all that much - it was a bit condescending and sprinkled with hyperbolic words like 'waddle' and 'food coma' - the comments made me grind my teeth.

Apparently, it's perfectly acceptable to despise fat people, particularly poor, uneducated fat people. Oink oink fatties, I hope y'all die!

This article about fast food isn't the only place to spew venom toward fat folks. Anything about airlines gets a lot of responses about having to sit beside stinky, sprawling slugs. Health care. Heart disease. Beauty. Fashion. Urban blight. Gabourey Sidibe, the gal who played Precious in the movie by the same name (and was nominated for an Oscar). Midwesterners. Americans. Video games. Technology. Parenting. It seems like almost any news item delivers an excuse to rail against fatties. The hatred is immense and vicious.

Happy Easter, everyone!

May you and yours enjoy this lovely holiday!  {{huggs}}

Crazy busy day

It seems like I've been running since I got up this morning. None of it was exciting - unless you consider putting double-borders on a quilt 'exciting' since that was one of the major highlights of my day ;) - but just been BUSY. And I'm very tired, yet awake. Which sucks. Body wants to go to bed, brainz spinning a million miles an hour. Tomorrow I'm working at the quilt shop cutting a mountain of fat quarters. Yay! Tanya got some gorgeous stuff in this week and I'm very excited to get to play with it. Plus, sometime tomorrow, I need to stretch and baste at least one of these baby quilts I've pieced. They're starting to pile up. lol

A Lars eBook

While driving around the wide open spaces of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, Bill and I talked. A lot. And one of the things we talked about was my writing and all of the stuff on my hard drive. I have partial scenes and snips and brain dumps and short bits and vignettes, some from other worlds and works, but most from what I call The Dubricverse. There are parallel to the timeline-of-the-books things (like Aswin, who readers have never met), stuff about what happened during (and before) the War, what happens with characters and/or their children in the future, various potential paths different characters might take, alternate timelines/dimensions/storylines. Stuff like that.

Anyway, Bill and I discussed some of these story bits and partial novels and things that are just gathering digital dust on my computer and we thought that, maybe, someone would like to read them. A bit of research, and a few conversations with my writing buddies sent me to Smashwords.com. One finished short story later, I have an official ebook that will, hopefully, soon be available everywhere ebooks are sold.

It's called Fire and it's Lars's first case when he's nine summers old, right after he arrives in Faldorrah. Some of you may have read it - it was one of many .pdfs PaperbackWriter gave away during some freebie promotion she did back in 2006. Since Fire was finished and entirely self contained, I thought it'd be a good ebook story to start with. It's short, only about 28 pages of actual story, and it is not available in paper-book form.

I've decided to price it for 99 cents through Smashwords (and Amazon and Fictionwise and other venues when it arrives in their listing) mostly because Smashwords can create all the available formats for kindles and nooks and iphones and whatnot, while *I* can only make .pdf. I do not want to charge for things I've already made myself, so if ANYONE wants a .pdf instead of a pricier format, email me at tambowrites AT gmail DOT com and I will send you a free copy.

If I epublish other things, I think I shall have a pricing structure of 99¢ for anything under 10k words or so, $1.99 for under 25k words ish, and $2.99 for longer works. Does that sound reasonable to you all? Also, I don't at this point intend to epublish any book length fiction that might work better as a traditionally published book.

Anyway, it's mostly just something I'm considering.