S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 84

Sunday Update – April 29, 2018

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share News. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog.

Last week just flew right on by!

We started the week on Sunday by purchasing real, grown-up deck furniture! And then we went out to eat as a family.

Monday it was back to work and school. I finished up my read-through of FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT and went for a walk in the park. Spring has finally made it to my corner of the globe and all the trees in the park are blooming. It’s been a beautiful week around here.

Tuesday, I spent the morning at Costco, and in the afternoon, I took both my girls to get their haircuts. They both got a lot of hair chopped off and now it’s so much more manageable for them.

Wednesday was the longest day. I had the cleaning ladies here in the morning (which always requires prep work to put stuff away prior to them showing up), then chiropractor and acupuncture, then a quick parent-teacher meeting, then tennis lessons. It rained all day, and even though that was rough, it saved us from also having to go to softball practice. That gave us a small break for us to eat dinner before we left for the school Art Show that evening. By the time I got home, I was beat.

Thursday turned out to be a nice day. I went for a walk in the morning and then got some work done. FUSKUSHA MODEL EIGHT made it out to ARC Readers, and then I took my girls out for frozen yogurt in the afternoon to celebrate.

On Friday, I had another busy morning. I went and got my haircut first thing and came home to find the deck furniture we bought arrived. Then I took the afternoon off and watched some Firefly. Somedays you just need a little break. FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT went out for official pre-order and I managed to get a few sales!

Saturday turned out to be busy too. I slept horribly and then the kids had piano lessons bright and early at 9am. Then I dropped off youngest for her softball practice before her game, ran to the outdoor furniture store, picked up our cushions and umbrella base, ran back to watch the softball game, then I spent the rest of the afternoon helping my youngest with her culture country project for school. I tried to take a nap but the kids kept waking me up.

Today, I went for a walk and we finished up the culture country project. I got some more work done and now I’m here writing this post. Phew. I’m exhausted again! I need to go to bed early.

What else happened this week?

The park was super pretty and the turtles were out on their log!

I enjoyed a very yummy raspberry mojito.

The school Art Show was full of great art!

Frozen yogurt was one of my better ideas for the week.

We had geese on our roof and the next door neighbor’s roof one morning. It was really strange to see them up there.

And I really love our new deck furniture. I plan to be out there writing as much as possible this summer.

Don’t forget that you can follow me on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/spajonas/

Coming up this week on the blog: The first Teaser Tuesday for FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT, May Goals (on Wednesday), and then I’m not sure. We shall see!

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Pre-Order FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT, The Third Book Of The Hikoboshi Series!

Today is the cover reveal for FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT and I have pre-order links for you as well! I’m so excited with the direction of this series and where I plan to take it for the next two remaining books in the series after this. Really, the ideas are just flying and I’m super excited to get this story “in the books” so to speak. Lol.

I remember that before I started writing FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT, I had three ideas for it. It would be a journey story, both an internal journey for Yumi and a physical one across areas of the Southern Continent. And this story would also give me a chance to remind the reader that Yumi is not a soldier. She’s not a fighter in any traditional sense, she’s not a general or a leader, and she’s certainly not going to stop a war. She’s an observer, and she was given a data device full of riches that will be both her savior and her undoing. No worries, friends! Even though I will put my characters through the wringer in this series, I foresee a happy ending… somewhere.

Fox Watch 2018 – The Finale

Well, I knew this good thing would come to an end eventually! The foxes have moved on… right across the street! Lol. When we stopped seeing the Mama Fox out and about with her babies, I figured they moved into the undeveloped land about half a mile south of us. Especially once I started seeing the groundhog back in his usual spot, the foxes’ den. But we ran into my neighbors across the street yesterday and they said the fox moved into their backyard! I’m a little afraid for the foxes though because the woman there has said she may call animal control on them. I hope she doesn’t. These are healthy, happy foxes that run when people, even little kids, are around. They’re not going to hurt anyone.

So here’s hoping either animal control doesn’t care or doesn’t come, the woman doesn’t call them, or the foxes move on.

Here’s the last video I took of them in my backyard! If I ever see them again or catch them on video, I’ll be sure to let you know.

See you all back here tomorrow!

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How To Pronounce The Japanese Words In My Books

I had a reader recently message me via Facebook to ask me about how to pronounce some of the Japanese words in my books, and I did my best to explain it to him via text, totally realizing I was butchering the whole conversation. Lol. So, after some time thinking about it, I came up with an introduction of how to pronounce Japanese words and a list of which words I would pronounce for everyone.

If you have words that I don’t cover in this video that you’d like me to pronounce in a later video, please feel free to drop them in comments and I’ll take care of you!

Hopefully you found that helpful!

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Sunday Update – April 22, 2018

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share News. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog.

Another chaotic and busy week here! We were back on our usual schedule which meant Mondays are back at gymnastics and Wednesdays will try to kill me with both tennis and softball, but that’s the standard kind of week around here. This week will be worse! Lol.

The weather wasn’t any better either. It was still cold and windy, and several days I had to wear my winter coat again. Dear god, I can’t wait to put away the winter weather gear for good! But I better hold onto everything until May at the very least. I did make it out for a few walks this week, which was nice, so at least there’s that.

I’m sad to say the foxes are gone. I plan to post about them one more time this week with a last few videos and images I got of them. The kits were getting really big, and with five of them in that little den that’s usually used for groundhogs, I bet they just ran out of room. There’s a huge plot of land, about 20 acres, just to the south of us that I think they migrated to. I’m sad their time here is over, but I’m really glad I had that experience of seeing those babies. It was a treat I’ll never forget.

In work news, I finished principal edits on FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT and I moved onto my proofreading/listening stage. When I’m in the final edits phase, I listen to the whole book being read to me by my computer before I send out to ARC Readers and my last proofreaders. This is a critical step for me, and I never skip it. I catch tons of missing or misspelled words this way. Just yesterday I caught a paragraph that was technically and grammatically fine, but I realized I had composed three sentences in a row in the exact same manner. I didn’t notice this until the computer read it to me! So it was good to catch something like that. I should be done tomorrow!

What else happened this week?

I’ve started chewing gum again. I missed gum a lot but had given it up because aspartame didn’t agree with me. These gums have a smaller amount of aspartame than the fully sugar-free gums and I can chew them!

Spring is really trying to show its face around here, but it’s not doing so good. The cherry tree in front of our house still hasn’t bloomed and usually it blooms the first week of April.

There were bath bombs this week.

I took photos of our selection of Polar seltzer for a friend of mine. She was dismayed by how little she has to choose from in Minnesota. Here, we have a lot.

I bought a set of sushi erasers for my youngest as part of her culture project at school. She chose to study Japan!

Writing Update – FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT Dates & Other WIPs

I promised a writing update today so here it is!

Today I should be done with principal copy edits on FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT. This means I’m done with everything except: fixing a list of story inconsistencies, listening to the draft for proofreading, and formatting. Things always crop up in my final copy edits that I have to deal with. I’ll find a character say one thing in a chapter and do the opposite two chapters later. Where is my brain? I don’t know. I’m full of my own mistakes so there are bound to be mistakes in my books too. Regardless, I try to fix as many of them as possible between me and my beta readers and editors.

My plan is to finish copy edits today. Listen to the draft Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Format Tuesday and upload to retailers to get the publishing date squared away and preorder links. Off to ARC Readers and last proofreaders on Wednesday. Cover reveal and preorder links next Friday on the blog. I will be making teasers for FME for the month of May on Teaser Tuesdays, as well.

What’s next with writing?

Well, I have a very busy May ahead of me which I’ll talk about in the May Goals post on May 1st.

May 4-6th, I’ll be in Chicago for the Sell More Books Show Summit.

May 12th, I have family in town for my youngest daughter’s Communion.

The following week, I’ll be publishing FME.

May 19th, I leave for 10 days in Japan! I’m so excited about my trip to Japan. I have a feeling many days in May will be spent planning out my trip and where I’m going and what I want to see. I’ll update more on that in May, though.

So all of this is to say that writing in May will be sparse. What I’d like to do is finish the new first-in-series book I started in late February. With that under my belt, I’d like to move on to Daydreamer 5 in late May and then really write on it in June.

I have lots to do and I’m enjoying doing it which means you get a quality product from me in the end. Nothing is worse than writing under pressure or when you’re not loving or inspired by the project. Readers can always tell when an author was just not feeling it.

I hope that answers any questions about my current work schedule. If I missed something you were hoping to hear about, drop your question in the comments or use the contact form to write me privately and I’ll be sure to answer them.

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Fox Watch 2018 – Part 3

It’s been an interesting week around here with the foxes. They were very busy outdoors overnight during the weekend. My game camera was full of video of them playing and hunting. But then a major storm rolled through here on Sunday night and Monday most of the day. We got a flood of rain, more than 4 inches, which is a lot, and I worried that the foxes had been flooded out of their den.

But they came back, and I’ve seen Mama Fox out and about several times since then. The baby foxes haven’t been out as much. I don’t know what’s going on with them. Maybe they’re getting extra rest? I fear we may have lost one in the great flood.

Regardless, I continue to watch and wait! Hopefully we’ll see more of them soon. Here are a few photos from the game camera!

As you can see, Mama Fox is always on the lookout for dangers to her kits. She’s a good mama!

And here are some new videos I’ve also uploaded to YouTube.

Hopefully all of those videos will tide you over!! It’s been fun watching them so I hope they stick around for a little longer. In the meantime, I need to get back to revisions.

GDPR Compliance & What This Means For You

As someone who runs a website, there are often things that come out of left field that force me to comply with regulations or new laws. Last year, this included me updating my website to SSL and switching over to a new platform for sending emails. This year, I have GDPR to comply with.

If you haven’t heard of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) then you’re probably not in the EU. Since I have people who visit my website from the EU and I have EU citizens on my update email list, I now have to comply with GDPR rules as of May 25th. I have a few weeks to get everything up and running to compliance, but I wanted to communicate what I will be doing on this site and with my update email list.

I will be putting a cookie acceptance pop-over on the website. I hate pop-overs, honestly. I had one on my website for a long time, and I got rid of it last year because I thought it was just annoying. Hopefully, my cookie acceptance pop-over is not too intrusive and will go away once people accept.
I will be updating my privacy policy. I don’t do a lot behind the scenes here on my website, but you should know about it. I track visits with both Google Analytics and StatCounter, I use Disqus for comments, and I have the Facebook Pixel installed. Plus, I store email addresses and names with the MailPoet plugin which I use to email subscribers when I have new posts. That’s about it.
THIS IS THE BIG ONE. I will be emailing those people who I’m pretty sure are in the EU (because my old data from MailChimp is still available to me) and I will be asking their consent to stay on my list. Consent MUST be given to stay. Anyone who doesn’t give consent will be deleted. I will ALSO be sending this to people who don’t open my emails in an effort to decrease my liability for emailing them. This is because my new email plugin, MailPoet, doesn’t store IP addresses and therefore doesn’t know where you live. So, if you are the type of person who only reads my email updates in “preview” mode or doesn’t load images, you will probably hear from me. I don’t like doing this, but I have to. And from here on out, I hope to never have to re-engage my list again. MailPoet is planning on releasing tools to help me with all of this, but they aren’t ready yet. I hope to do this campaign in late April, early May.

And that’s about it. Every other experience on my website should stay the same. As you know, my website and blog are the cornerstone of my business as an author, especially now that I’m not running a traditional newsletter anymore. I don’t make a lot of money doing this gig, so making sure I comply with stuff like this is important. Please feel free to drop any questions in the comments or via my contact page if you have any concerns.

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Sunday Update – April 15, 2018

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share News. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog.

What a week!! If you missed it, my whole life was changed this week when a fox family moved into my backyard. People, my favorite animal EVER is the fox. I love them to death. Owls are a close second, but foxes are totally my thing. So early in the week, when we realized a mama fox and her babies had moved into the old groundhog den, I became obsessed with them. I barely remember doing anything else this week!

But we did do other things. The kids went back to school and I got started on my revisions and copy edits of FUKUSHA MODEL EIGHT. We didn’t have obligations after school both Monday and Tuesday, so both days were rather chill.

Then on Wednesday, everything was busy! I had my chiropractor appointment and the cleaning ladies came. Then in the afternoon, the girls had tennis, then my youngest had softball practice right after. Busy busy!

Thursday and Friday, it was back to business as usual. I went on walks outside and kept on with my edits. I watched the foxes a lot and put together videos of them.

Saturday was a busy day, too! It was so nice outside! It got up to 80ºF here and felt more like summer than spring. It was opening day for our local baseball and softball leagues. My youngest participated in the town parade and had a blast. Then we went with the older child to help her sell Girl Scout cookies at the local grocery store. Then in the afternoon, me and the oldest child attended the youngest child’s softball game. It was hot and sunny, but I was prepared with a chair, hat, and long sleeve shirt to keep the sun off of me. We enjoyed the game and then the kids played outside all afternoon and into the evening.

Today, the weather took a turn for the worse. It’s now barely 40ºF outside, cold and windy. I’ve stayed indoors all day, and I’ve been working and editing while mostly at my treadmill desk.

What else happened this week?

So, yeah, Mama Fox and her babies moved into the old groundhog den in the shed behind our yard. We love seeing them out and about playing! If you missed my posts and videos, you can check them out here.

The return to colder weather was a hard one. Oof. It made my walks in the park hard to get through!

Taco Tuesday turned into Taco Tuesday and leftover Taco Wednesday Lunch. Mmmm.

I hit a milestone in my current WIP! Passed the 30k mark and kept on going.

Here are some of the vintage items my parents collect at their house.

The turtles were out on their log near the end of the week when the weather was nicer.

I enjoyed another Blood Orange cider from Eastciders. I had this in South Carolina and then my husband saw it at Fairway and bought it for me.

And we tried a new-to-us fish for dinner, Opah. I had never seen it before but my Whole Foods had it. We really enjoyed it! And I had it on my salad today for lunch too.

Coming up this week on the blog: That writing update I never got to last week because of the foxes, a post on GDPR compliance, and I don’t know… something else, hopefully! Maybe some more foxes. Lol. I’m really playing this by the seat of my pants.

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Book Chat #38 – Faeries In Space From Pippa DaCosta & Lots Of Audiobooks Including Karen McQuestion, Gene Douchette, & Katherine Applegate

I did get around to reading some books on my Kindle in the last month or so, plus I’m really enjoying my audiobooks too.

SHOOT THE MESSENGER by Pippa DaCosta

This was a seriously well-written mix of space and sci-fi with fantasy elements like magic and fairies. I really enjoyed the world building and descriptions. This book did use a storytelling technique that I’m not a huge fan of, an unreliable narrator, but still, like love triangles (which I also don’t like), it didn’t ruin the book for me. Expect to see this author featured on the blog soon!

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen

I listened to 80% of this before I stopped it and moved on. I usually love this book but all the events felt anti-climatic and tiresome. Maybe I just wasn’t in an Austen mood. That and I realized what an ass Darcy was. It’s pretty apparent I’m never going to write P&P fanfic.

FROM A DISTANT STAR by Karen McQuestion

What a fantastic book! I really enjoyed this one, from the premise to execution and the happily ever after. It was one of those rare times when I thought the teenage heroine was a real teenager but not too stupid to live. She grows up and makes realistic decisions throughout this book and comes out stronger in the end. I need to check out more by this author.

THE SPACESHIP NEXT DOOR by Gene Douchette

I’m not sure how I ran across this book. Maybe from Bookbub? I enjoyed the audiobook, but I was thrown off when the cool science fiction of a spaceship in town became a zombie story. Look, I’m just not a fan of zombies. It’s not a trope I enjoy at all. So I thought I would mention it in case you feel the same way. This was well-written, though, so no complaints there!

WISHTREE by Katherine Applegate

I listened to this one with my daughter for her school. The whole school read this book and I was supposed to read from it aloud every night. I really don’t like reading aloud, sad to say. It makes me super tired and it’s hard to find the time. So I bought the audiobook instead and we listened to it together. It was great! And it was a great idea. It really kept my daughter engaged and she followed along in the book, learning new words along the way. We’re going to do this again this summer with another book by the same author.

And that’s it for now! I’m continuing to cut back on social media so I can read and listen while knitting or walking. So far it’s been great. Have a great weekend!

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