Ups and Downs

I teach math when I’m not wrangling cats, directing my family, or trying to control what my characters do on page. Though I don’t teach trigonometry, one of the first things you learn in trig, is the sine wave:

What does this fun little graph, which isn’t negative cosine, thank you very much, have to do with anything? Well, that’s what the temperatures around here have been like week by week. Warm one week, cold, wet and snowy the next. Since I work a battery heated coat this week, I’m looking forward to all my students wearing shorts next week!

This semester, wanting to get a class I teach to have a better pass rate, I’ve implemented a few new policies. One of them is points for coming to class every day. Now, I know we’re in the midst of a lot of different illnesses, and teaching at a university, when one student is sick, they’re all sick. I do have ways students can earn points back if they miss.

That said, my policy for making up points for missing is not a way to turn my class into an online class. I’ll discuss online class in another newsletter. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a student email me when she hasn’t attended, not with her reason for not being there, but just with the words like, what pages do I need to do? There hasn’t even been a subject, greeting, or salutation to the emails.

They continued like this. Nothing explaining her reason for missing class, just her obvious absence and this type of message. Ironically, the other thing I added to class was a warm-up that focused everyone for the weekly quizzes.

I’ll be honest, both these changes do seem to be helping.

Anyway, I did email the student explaining that the playlists, copies of the lessons with links to my youtube videos that mimic what I do in class, were for the few times students missed, not to replace class. She replied she had no idea that had been my plan.

Though I am skeptical, I still await her return to class.

And wait…

And wait…

As I wait, I write!

My new book is just over 30k. I would love to say that is the halfway point. I may be beyond the halfway point. I may post bits of chapter one to my facebook author page. Also, until pi-day, March 14th, if you join that page, or get a friend to join and name you as their inspiration on a post, you or they could win all three of the Ember Savita eBooks or audiobooks free! If you want to check it out, here is a link to the post!

The ARCs for Xenagogue have gone out, and three people have left reviews on goodreads. Though I’d LOVE to say everyone has given the book 5-star reviews, I know that isn’t ever going to happen. Despite two 4-star reviews, I’m not unhappy with them.

Xenagogue comes out on April 11th, pre-orders for the eBooks are up now.

If you’re looking for other books, don’t forget iheartsapphic always has deals available, as well as weekly giveaways and challenges. Check out their website and reader page on facebook. You could always nominate any of my books as your favorite for the year! I would not be completely unhappy with that.

If you’re worried about all the talk on boycotting Amazon, I’m with you. However, KU supports authors more than Amazon. And, honestly, there isn’t many other places for indie authors to sell out books. You can wait a week to pre-order or read my books, but for many authors, not buying books on amazon means they won’t be able to make ends meet.

That’s just my two-cents, for all it’s worth…

Happy March, y’all!

Huckle