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Feb18

It occured to me this morning – at 3 a.m., whilst feeding the cats – that the difference between “oh, god, it’s only Wednesday” and “oh, good, it’s only Wednesday” is just one letter and a world of attitude.

I’ve been trying not to lose my time pushing for the weekend, so I’m thinking hard about that difference. “oh, good…” I have three more days to work on deadlines, I have more time to wrap gifts before Last Christmas, I have more time to get stuff done at work. I have more time to go to the gym.

I can work with that.

~

Speaking of gym, I’ve worked out using my tablet + the treadmill as a walking desk. Problem is, it has to be one specific treadmill (or two, if they ever fix the second one like that); the others don’t have enough of a “shelf” to support the tablet’s keyboard.

On the positive side, it’s really really fun!

~

It’s so cold out… (how cold is it, Lyn?)

So cold my hair freezes when I go to my car (that’s pretty normal, Lyn).

So cold the schools keep closing (that’s not that unusual, either).

So cold that when I took Oli outside, he lasted a minute before politely asking to go inside – and that, that is strange.

~

And… Mobbing Midnight! It’s getting there, it’s getting there.

I’m really excited about this, guys. Not just because it’ll pay me SFWA professional rates. Not just because I get to be in an anthology with some awesome authors. But because it’s outside of my normal story, and I like being challenged. I never would have written this particular story without this anthology, and I think that’s awesome.

For $12, you can not only help me get closer to two of my new years’ resolutions, you can also have a lovely anthology full of great stories. I’d call that a win-win situation.

On tumblr? Reblog this post for a chance at a free copy of all three anthologies – not just Mobbing Midnight, but Fight Like a Girl and What Follows (featuring my story “Monster Godmother!”)

Want to buy all three anthologies? ($25) Do it before Friday 2/20, and Fireun will record something – anything – for you.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/899232.html. You can comment here or there.

On Crows and Crow Cages

Feb11

Crows, the email from April said. Just crows. An anthology of crows.

Ideas started flitting through my head. The Crow (the movies(s), the comics…). No. Crow Change. Neat… but not a story. Crow Therian. Snow White with crows instead of bluebirds. The corvids in the field outside my house. Crows.

Crows, it said, and I started thinking. I knew I didn’t want to do another Fae apoc, not yet. I was pretty sure I wanted to use an urban fantasy setting I’d been bouncing around in my head, one set on a university campus much like the one where I spent most of my twenties (I had a protracted early-adulthood, okay?) And, obvious, it needed to involve crows.

And then my husband, brainstorming over croissant french toast stuffed with strawberries (we have the best diner) mentioned demons.

And Crow Cage was born.

I’ve worked with April before – on What Follows, where my Fae Apoc story Monster Godmother is published. I’m excited to be working with her again on Mobbing Midnight, and I’m excited to be working again with such a wonderful selection of writers.

Go check it out! Every little bit gets us closer to our goal. Annnd… if you you haven’t bought What Follows yet, check out the $20 and higher levels – you can kill two birds with one stone!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/896722.html. You can comment here or there.

Climbing imaginary hills whilst writing imaginary worlds (blog post)

Feb11

I’ve been watching HaikuJaguar‘s talk of her walking desk with quite a bit of interest. I have a desk job, a desk second-job (writing), and, in the winter especially, sedentary hobbies (reading, TV).

Space & money constraints mean such a thing isn’t in the cards for me right now. But I have this lovely tablet I bought for myself for Black Friday (Samsung Galaxy 4.0 Nook) and this lovely keyboard for said table my parents bought me for Christmas….

…and it works. I wouldn’t want to try balancing anything bigger on the treadmill’s magazine rack, and it only works on two treadmills at my gym (one of which is out of order perpetually), but I got on the right treadmill yesterday and wrote 569 words in 30 minutes. Not my top rate, surely, on either writing or calorie burning. But fun!

It’s a case where multi-tasking actually does good. I like it. 🙂

Now if only I could write while I drove…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/896343.html. You can comment here or there.

A New Year, some new goals (a blog post)

Jan11

2014 didn’t exactly suck for me, it just – happened. I seem to have lost large parts of it, didn’t get a lot done until the last three months, and gained a bunch of weight.

But new years are a lovely time to start fresh. So this year, I’m going to try to be more aware of lost time and of lost plans.

Of course, as I’m writing this, I’m sick as a dog, and my only plans for today are to rest, drink lots of fluids, and take a short walk out to the barn for some firewood.

But starting as soon as I’m better!

Writing:
I’d like to submit 4 stories for publication/month.
I’d like to earn $200 from writing (donations, commissions, publications, etc)/month or $2400/year: this is an arbitrary figure picked because it’s possibly-doable while being a challenge.

I want to finish a rough draft of Rin/Girey.
I want to do the first Addergoole Kickstarter
I want to draft one other novel.

Health
I would like to lose 3 pants sizes in my preferred brand/type jeans. That’s about 14lbs/pants size for me, or 42 lbs over the next year.

I’d like to exercise at least 2x every week for at least 30 minutes

Other
I’d like to have an updated author page done by end of February.
I’d like to make significant progress (finish a stage) on a house/home project for three weekends out of every four I’m home.

Very Other
I’d like to have a process in place for handling failure that is more adaptive than “man, I suck,” panicking and moping.
I would like to leave more detailed and helpful comments on others’ writing.

I think that’s enough 🙂

What about you? Any changes for the New Year?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/884171.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme Day Sixtieen – Something’s Missing

Jan4

The Meme

Today’s prompt is from [personal profile] thnidu: oops! Something’s missing!

Content warning: grief, mourning, and loss.

This year, in addition to the little tin of cookies my aunt gives me every year, she gave me something I’d asked for a while ago – three recipe cards written in my grandmother’s handwriting – and something I hadn’t – the recipe for my grandma’s Leb Kuchen cookies.

I cried.

I’m going to frame the recipes and hang them in my kitchen – I saw the idea on Pinterest, I think, but they’d been flea market finds. These are Grandma’s, and there will never be anything like them again.

My maternal grandmother passed away when I was in my early twenties; I don’t remember her last days very well, although I remember my now-husband, early in our relationship, being the lifesaver, standing behind me at that awful funeral. But I remember Grandma.

My dad worked days and my mom evenings, but the gap times, and when they were building the log cabin that was our home from 1981 on, I spent with my Grandma Dorie. She lived just around the corner – my parents’ house and my aunt and uncle’s house are built on parcels of land cut off from the family farm – within an easy walk, even for a small child.

My memories of Grandma are scattered – playing Uno, making cookies, watching Wheel of Fortune – but they are warm. And at Christmas time…

At Christmastime, something is missing, every year. I eat cookies made from her recipe and remember sitting in her lap.

“Got anything sweet, Grandma?”

“Just me.”

*sniffle* She’s what’s missing, every year.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/878050.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme Day Twenty-Two: comfort food

Dec26

The Meme

Today’s prompt is from [personal profile] lilfluff: Comfort foods

Mmm Comfort food.

I’m one of those people that has to not work to eat all their feelings… and I also tend to want to feed everyone else. “You’re sad? Here, have food. Angry? Food. Happy? Celebratory food!”

But when I really need comforting… when I’m sick, it’s broff (broth) if I’m really sick, or chicken soup if I’m just a bit sick.

I like this risotto that T. cooks, too – it’s got just a bit too much cheese in it, and sweet onions, and it’s creamy and starchy. If I’m feeling ambitious, it’s mac n’ cheese, although cauliflower and cheese works okay with the thick cheese sauce we use.

I mean… really, anything familiar is going to be good. Sometimes the comfort food I want is enchiladas Thorne, made with rice & lentils and taco sauce. Sometimes it’s pizza, bought from the take-out place down the street. And sometimes it’s chocolate chip cookies, with the recipe I’ve got memorized. It’s mostly starches, really. I like starches when I want comfort food. <.< Starches and fat.

And then there was that once, when I was feeling lousy, when I found the recipe my mom used when I was sick – vanilla custard – and made it myself. ‘Cause as much as I like being taken care of, I’m a grown-up now, and sometimes you just gotta make your own comfort.

What about you? What’s your favorite comfort food?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/871348.html. You can comment here or there.

Meeting People!

Dec22

(This icon (in DW) came up in random choice three times out of ten, and it’s the only “Lyn” icon to come up. Soooo.)

I met [personal profile] kelkyag! (and not-certain-of-user-name? <.< sauergeek)

We went hiking!

I learned a bit about geocaching!

It was awesome!

🙂

Also, on the way there and home, I contemplated details of Potential Dream home.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/869449.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme Day Twenty-One: Christmas Plans

Dec22

The Meme

Today’s prompt is from [personal profile] inventrix: Christmas plans!

Man, I was just thinking that I wanted to have enough money to fly all my friends to my place for New Year’s.

(For years, a friend hosted a holiday party on New Year’s Eve –> New Year’s Day where we all drank too much & opened presents. It was awesome. But he moved to CT, got married, & has 18 (4) kids.)

First: Christmas is more of a season than a day for me. In part because of things like the aforementioned New Year’s Eve party, in part because my Troy friends will show up sometime in… oh, maybe February or March to do Christmas, and in part because I’m so bad at this gift-buying/making thing that some of you will be getting presents in the mail well into early January!

That being said, I think I’m (we’re) (T’s plans are up in the air until about the morning of) going to visit my parents Christmas Eve morning, then probably (I should remember to send an e-mail) visiting Capriox at Tim Horton’s, as has become our new Christmas Eve tradition.

Every year I mean to find a church that does a candlelight ceremony on Christmas eve locally, and every year I forget. Maybe next year.

T. and I don’t really do “gift exchange;” so we’ve already given each other our gifts.

Oh! Christmas Day, we’re going to go see Hobbit III. We’ve seen a movie in the theatres almost every Christmas we’ve been together, some better than others. I’m hoping this counts as at least a decent one. 🙂

What about everyone else? What are your holiday plans?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/869161.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme Day Seventeen – The Cats! (@inventrix)

Dec17

The Meme

Today’s prompt is from [personal profile] inventrix: the cats

Oh, twist my arm!

Kitties kitties kitties!

T & I have three cats right now – Oligarchy, Theocracy, and Meritocracy. We got Oli & Theo about a month after Drake died, in June of 2012.

Drake was our Sugar Cat, my diabetic flesh-eating fluffy happy monster for whom I wrote Tales for the Sugar Cat (a fund-raiser). He was with us for about twelve years – not nearly long enough – and died two years after his foster-brother, the first cat Sam & I had together, Gatsby. They are both still keenly missed.

But I made it about a month before I started looking for a new cat. I wanted siblings, I wanted boys. Siblings because Gatters and Drake, not related, had never gotten along great, boys because the girl cats we’d encountered – roommates’ girlfriends’ cats – had been miserable.

The Humane Society had no sibling pairs and wanted $150/kitten.

The next shelter over had a lovely pair of marmalade brothers with extra toes, but they adopted them out while we were filling out the paperwork.

We ended up finding our boys on Criagslist, just 4 blocks away. Little poofballs – we’d been looking for shorthaired marmalade kitties; these were longhaired grey-and-white. But they were friendly, they liked being handled. And I didn’t want to live any longer without cats in the house. Home they came!! We tossed around a bunch of names for them; for a week they were Thing One and Thing Two, or Lefty and Righty (Each has one white sleeve).

They were born in March; they came home in June. A year later, T. found three kittens in our hedgerow.

A while later, the three – who wandered and came back, wandered and came back – were down to one, who liked to stand in the hedgerow and yell at T. We started feeding her kibble, and T would move a little closer every day. Eventually, she would tolerate being petted.

We named her Sullivan, because my dad had a yard cat named Gilbert who was all white, and she was all black. But as I found myself cooking meat scraps before we put them in the compost bin (which she was eating out of), we realized we were keeping her. She needed a name in trend.

Sullivan became Meritocracy o’Sullivan. And as she started getting friendlier – as it started getting colder – we very politely shoved her in a cat carrier and left her at the vets for three days before bringing her inside.

And that’s the story of my kitties.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/867065.html. You can comment here or there.

December Meme – Day Thirteen (shh)

Dec16

The Meme

Today’s prompt is from [personal profile] lilfluff: Your favorite games

Ooh!

I like games, although I am not the board game fanatic that some of my friends are. I grew up playing gin rummy with my dad, Uno with my grandmother, Yahtzee with family & Monopoly whenever I could get people to play with me. My first fiance and I played Pente a lot, and he made a stab at teaching me chess, but i have little patience for strategy.

And, of course, I’m a gamer, so there’s things like World of Darkness – Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, etc., in primarily Live-action but also tabletop forms. I’m facinated by EarthDawn/ShadowRun but have never played them. And, while we’re talking about roleplaying, I enjoy playing in my own settings most of all.

Computer games: I try not to get too involved, or I lose months. I liked Flight Rising until they were mean to Djinni, at which point I lost interest completely. I was utterly into Glitch until they folded, much sadface all around. And currently I’m into FarmVille, much to my enjoyment and consternation.

Games! I like playing Scrabble with my husband, although he almost always wins. And we’ve been playing Carcasonne lately, and I really enjoy that a lot.

I suppose “my favorite” game is the one I’m into at the moment, whatever moment that might happen to be.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/866155.html. You can comment here or there.