Howdy!

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The weather's been a bit wild lately.

The weather’s been a bit wild lately.

So I’ve been away for a while (yes, I know, a week isn’t exactly an eternity, but since I usually try to pop in here every couple of days, it is a while).  I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather lately, so I haven’t been overly active anywhere.

But!  I can say that within the next week, I’ll have a couple of bookish-type posts going up, as I’m currently reading Snort and Wobbles by the talented Will Macmillan Jones.  Tadpole and Bubbles will be helping me craft a review, which I’ll post here as soon as we’ve finished.  Then on Monday, I’m hosting the lovely Joleene Naylor as part of a blog tour for her recently-released book Children of Shadows, the sixth offering in her Amaranthine series.

And as our weather has given us no end of crazy lately, I hope to be back to posting some more lousy haiku in the near future.  It’s not the only thing that’s crazy around here, but hopefully I’ll be back to my old self in no time, now that I’ve been to my doctor (again).  So, in the meantime, I hope you’re all lovely and that you have a fabulous week, and I’ll see you when I see you! 🙂

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

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How Star Trek improved my confidence in my writing skills

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Seymour and I have been rewatching all things Star Trek since we were dating; we’ve taken care of the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and all the movies (although we’re not big fans of the reboot and I haven’t yet seen Into Darkness).  We’re halfway through our Enterprise rewatch at the moment (which is great because it means I’m that much closer to a rewatch of my beloved Voyager), having started Season 3 the other night.  Seymour’s been telling me about how awful the third season is; he’s not a big fan of the temporal cold war story arc or the Xindi story arc and frankly, I kind of agree with him on the temporal cold war thing.

Anyway, the point of this is that the season premiere of Season 3 had me laughing.  And facepalming.  The words, “What the hell?!” kept running through my head.  Sure, it started off okay – recap of the season finale, Xindi council meeting, theme song (which sucks now – they completely ruined it by jazzing it up).  But then they unveil the new command center, and that’s where it all went wrong:

And now…

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Full sprawl. How feline. :)

Full sprawl. How feline. 🙂

…further proof that my son is a bipedal cat:

This morning I was awakened by the sound of Thumper taking down the baby gate from his bedroom doorway.  (I really don’t know why I bother putting it up anymore since he knows how to take it down, but I do.  Maybe it’s for those extra few seconds I gain in which to prepare myself for battle with a two-year-old.)  He tiptoed through the hall, barged into our room, and climbed into bed next to me, where he sat on all fours and stared at me, grinning from ear to ear, his nose about an inch from mine.

When I finally opened my eyes to acknowledge his presence, he whispered, “Time to get up!”

If cats could talk, surely they’d say something similar.  And this, my friends, is why I am on my second 2L bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper.  The first one was gone by noon.

If you’ve got a cute kid story, share it below!  I could use a little cuteness on this dreary Friday afternoon.

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

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Toddlers are like cats

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And now, a change of pace.  I spent my weekend taking care of two sick guys, and Monday night was little different.  But Monday night was when we discovered that sick toddlers are a lot like cats, and if you read on, you’ll find out why.

Cricket came home from daycare Friday night feeling pretty rough.  Thirty-six hours of feverish cuddles had him on the mend, but by Saturday night, he’d managed to share the mystery fever with Thumper.

Time and Tylenol seemed to do the trick, but by the time Monday night rolled around…

Camera skills

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IMG_20140301_104334Apparently, I’m not too shabby with a camera.  I’ve been an amateur photographer for a good decade and a half now (a little over that, actually), ever since I got my first camera for Christmas, and it’s something I love.  Most of the pictures that accompany my poems are ones that I’ve taken (unless otherwise noted).  It’s so much fun; I can’t imagine not having a camera to play around with.  And, while I do miss my old film cameras, it’s nice that with my DSLR, I can take as many pictures as I want without having to worry about paying to have bad pictures developed.  Of course, this has also made me a little more careless, I think, in my composition, but such is life.

But I digress.  When I post something new here, I usually head over to Facebook and share the link in a couple of groups I’m in.  Last week, my post “Lonesome Call” gathered a bit of attention there, as someone found my photo of a lone tree in a field near my hometown particularly inspiring.  She crafted a whole poem around the image, which I was quite flattered to read.  Apparently it’s been making its way around the web via Facebook, from what I can tell.  If you’d like to take a look for yourself, you can find it here.

If you decide to check it out, I hope you’ll enjoy. 🙂

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

How to keep things straight (or maybe not-so-straight)

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Today I’m excited to have Jim Webster here with a guest post.  His book, Justice 4.1, releases today from Safkhet Publishing, and it sounds like a fantastic read.  But don’t take my word for it – here’s the blurb:

When a journalist is shot down in a backward area of Tsarina, Haldar Drom of the Governor’s Investigation Office is sent to investigate.  He uncovers a hidden medical facility dedicated to the production of Abate, a drug used for population control, as well as evidence of the implantation of pre-created embryos in women brought to Tsarina for the purpose.  He also discovers a deeper plot with far-reaching political ramifications.  A senior member of the Governor’s family, Doran Stilan, is running a personal feud with the major pirate/Starmancer Wayland Strang.  Indeed, he begins to suspect that Stilan may even be angling to take Strang’s place.

The medical facility is destroyed after it is attacked by mercenaries hired by Strang, and Drom has to travel off world to untangle the threads of the conspiracy.

Arriving back on Tsarina, he has to deal with a failed Starmancer attack, punish the guilty, and arrange for Doran Stilan to get what’s coming without undermining the position of the Governor.  To do this, he’ll need skill, know-how, and a whole lot of luck to ensure that the guilty face justice.

Talk about an action-packed book!  That’s a lot of things to keep track of.  With that in mind, here’s Jim to tell us a bit about how he keeps everything straight (or not-so-straight) while writing:

Off the grid

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My computer died last week.  It’s my own fault; I left it out where Thumper could reach it and he finally succumbed to temptation and decided that Mommy’s computer needed playing with.  When Daddy busted him, he dropped it and broke the charger cord.  But since my husband is the handy sort, he patched it up with some electrical tape and it was good as new.

For a while.

Last week, my computer decided it no longer wanted to recognize my adapter and instructed me to use the correct adapter for my computer because, until I did as it suggested, my computer was no longer going to charge.  I scrambled to get some things printed for our taxes and get my photos backed up to my external hard drive, but my last-second backup failed as my computer finally lost power. *sigh*

So now I’m in the market for either a new power cord or a new computer.  The new cord is clearly the cheaper of the two options, but my computer really needs replacing.  It’s five years old and showing its age, but I’m not holding my breath on getting a new one any time in the near future.  At any rate, my posts may be a bit sporadic until I get one or the other (new cord or new computer).  While WordPress has some fantastic mobile apps, I much prefer an actual computer to mobile posting.  It’s just easier, at least at the moment.  Maybe one day I’ll be so used to mobile computing that it won’t be an issue, but for the time being, I’ll stick to mobile posting as a last resort.

And who knows?  Maybe I’ll actually get some writing done! 😀

How do you handle techno-glitches?

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

An interview for the ages

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Today I’m excited to be interviewing Irene Soldatos, author of the wonderful book, Bad Bishop.  It really is a fabulous read, and I jumped at the chance to learn more about it.  Share my curiosity?  Then pull up a chair, relax, and get ready for a little fun with history!

KK: What inspired you to write this story?

IS: That’s a difficult question. There was no one moment of inspiration, rather an idea that slowly developed. I read a lot of history. And there are three historians in my family, so I’ve grown up steeped in it, and I suppose I am more conscious than most of the enormous differences, cultural, social, ideological, technological between the people of one historical period and those of another, but also the very many similarities. I found myself often wondering what someone who was born and grew up in classical antiquity would make of the middle ages, for example, if he or she could somehow see it. I suppose this book is a thought experiment on that concept. I wanted to bring together and juxtapose people from various different time periods, in one story. One way to do that would be time travel.  But I didn’t like that idea, because it would mean they would have missed the process of history. And the process is even more important than the time period they would arrive at, i.e. the one I set the story in.

KK: The amount of research needed for this book must have been incredible.  What did that process involve?

Review time!

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Today I’m reviewing Bad Bishop by Irene Soldatos.  But first, the blurb:

August A.D. 1120
Dijon. A headless corpse is found in a room with shuttered windows and the door locked from the inside. The man’s name was Salonius and he was the Duke. His young heir’s grasp on the throne is precarious, yet a new alliance is made to safeguard his position.

November A.D. 1120
Barcelona. Alexander, the Prince, learns that the emperor Enmerkar is looking to add Barcelona to his territories.

January A.D. 1121
London. Julian, the Governor, finds that Enmerkar has turned his hungry gaze toward England.

April A.D. 1121
York. Medb, the Queen, discovers that Enmerkar hungers for the whole Isle.

Many now recognize the threat posed by Enmerkar’s continued expansion, so a game of politics begins…