A new book and other stuff…
So, the blog has been a bit quiet, as you might expect. Weather shifting is making unstable Zoe highly unstable, and I'm keeping to myself to avoid spreading the misery. I keep myself distracted from my emotions with Portal 2 for now. When I'm not distracted or drugged, I go from happy to angry to depressed in cycles so fast, I'm not even sure what's going on. I just need stable weather to stabilize, but we still don't have it. We get warm weather for a day or two, and then back to cold for the rest of the week.
But despite my crappy mood swings and constant sense of distraction, I worked a few hours per day to convert Haunting Sins for Smashwords. I uploaded it like 2 days ago, but I was in the processing queue for a long, long time. Like, I started out at something like 3,858. Yeesh. But okay, so now the ebook is online, and being a novella of 32K, I felt $1.99 was a relatively fair price. Already some people have bought copies (and thanks very much for that!), so it seems like the price isn't too steep. I did clean it up a bit and get rid of a few more typos in this pass, including one scene where David suddenly becomes Daniel for one line. (Daniel's story was actually written one year before, but I was editing the second draft for Books of Daniel while writing Haunting Sins…so, had a brain fart.) Oh, as Haunting Sins is up on Smashwords now, I must take it down from the blog. Just FYI.
In other sales news, someone bought five of my Mystical World Wars books and a copy of The Sole Survivors' Club. So, thank you very much to whoever bought those books. And to the folks who bought copies of Haunting Sins as soon as it was released. You rock! (^_^)
[image error]In gardening news, the cold weather has made it all but impossible to do anything. All the plants already sprouted are in a kind of stunted stasis, and none of the new seeds I've planted will germinate. I'm just about ready to lodge a formal complain with Mother Nature over this. About the only plants that look great are the weeds in my zombie tree pot. But then the big weed (possibly yellow dock) in that pot sprouted during the winter, and it survived two snow flurries, bouncing back from a withered and near dead condition. It's been joined by a patch of clover, which looks fantastic. So my weeds are lush and gorgeous. I really do wish I could grow weed as well as I grow weeds. Alas…
Language classes are frustrating. I wish I could explain without devolving into a three page long rant about gender and "well it's the way we've always done it." Also, it doesn't help that my lesson book was written badly in English AND Italian. I complain about the lack of commas or other basic punctuation in the English writing, and then hubby points to the Italian phrases and says "Actually, that's not the best way to write that. It's more common to see…" So I think I'm going to swap books and try something else.
Guitar lessons proceed at a slow but reasonable pace. I still need more calluses on both hands, so instead of relying on the hand exerciser, I'm forming chords with both hands. I turn the neck over and press the "wrong" strings to form the chords and work grooves into the fingertips on my left hand. My right hand is almost ready for me to hold chords for a full minute, but my left hand still needs a lot of help.
Just to be cute, I formed the major chords on my left hand using altered finger positions. And let me tell you, that F chord is a real bitch to pull off upside down. If I can learn to play upside down with my left hand reliably, I'm thinking of turning it into a gimmick where I play one part of a song with the right hand fretting, and then partway through I flip the guitar. Hubby was just impressed that I could strum the chords, but it really will be more impressive when I can strum my way through a song, even if it's a slow song.
My last attempt to play 3:16 was better, but still not fast enough to be right. Same goes for Finish What You started. (A song I can't finish yet…ironic.) Mostly practice these days is chord strums and chords pairs. When I'm not playing or working the hand exerciser, I've come up with some new hand exercises to build hand strength. In one, I touch my thumbs to my finger tips, but I start on my pinky on my right hand and on my index finger on my left. I know I've messed up when both thumbs end up back on the index finger. X^D In another, I touch my index and ring fingers over the middle finger, and then I move them down and around to connect under. After a few passes (which hurt and look really shaky at first) I switch and touch my pink to my middle finger over and under my ring finger. THEN, while holding my pink and middle finger together, I fold in my ring finger while keeping the knuckles straight.
And I do this with both hands. Loads of fun, can't begin to describe the pain. But, it does seem to be helping with finger independence. Which is a bit of a problem, still. My middle finger likes to stand alone and pretend to be a leader, but task it with some real work, and it can't be independent. Typical sheep finger, really. Tragic.
But so, yeah, that's the full update. No, wait. Did you buy Portal 2 yet? Because if you haven't, you're probably a soulless minion of the machine. You may even take joy in strangling kittens. In front of their mother, no less. I've played it through three times, and now I'm playing through different parts just because I really liked those levels. I've done the whole thing with director's commentary, and I've got most of the single player achievements. I've only played one co-op game so far, but I liked it a lot and hope I will be able to tackle the rest with a friend soon.
And yeah that's…now, wait, have you heard of the band I Blame Coco? Their album The Constant is very addicting. Like, they finally knocked MGMT from the top of my daily playlist. I love the song Quicker, though I'm not sure if the original or the remix is better. Both are really good. Playwrite Fate is also really good, and I find myself busting out and singing the chorus even though it's not even close to my vocal range.
Yeah, okay, that's everything for this update. Oh, wait, I'm on a lot of sinus meds right now. Can you tell? Bet you can. Okay, see you later…
