Eye-Level on the Mainstream Shelf

We got some great news tonight. The Special Edition of Lynette's So Faithful A Heart is now for sale at the Stillwater Hastings. But that's not the best part. The best part is that the woman who selects the books for the store read it and liked it so much—the story, the composition, the cover, everything—she didn't shelve it in the Local Authors or Self-Published section, but with the mainstream novels (famous authors, and legacy published books). We went down there this evening and took some pictures. She also has a book signing scheduled there for February 11th. Big-huge thank yous to DB, who fronted NLynette the money for the copies that the bookstore required. You really made this happen, and you're an angel!

On my end of things, I finally finished the final edit of the second book in my trilogy and will probably—hopefully—be sending it to print over the weekend. It's been a long, hard trip, but it's finally finished. Almost. There's still formatting and all that, as well as the cover to build. And I'm still editing the Russian epic, so we'll see.

There is thunder outside and it's quite warm for this time of year. Much too warm for the glass of red wine that's been sitting here beside me for the past three hours.

Middle Earth

What's this? A door in Rivendell? The gates of Moria? No, these are the doors of  St. Edward in Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds, Gloucester. It's pretty plain to see where J. R. R. Tolkien got a lot of his inspiration. Britain is a fabulously ancient and enchanting land! I think I could look at this all day and one day, when I can ever get back to England, I plan to sit and look at the real thing for a long time.

These photos were taken by Liz Ringrose and are used with her kind and generous permission.

At Brill on the hill
The wind blows shrill,
The cook no meat can dress;
At Stow-in-the-Wold
The wind blows cold,
I know no more than this.

My Perfect 36-Hour Day

I know precious little about astronomy, but I do know that Earth got it wrong when it set itself into orbit around old Sol. We should have 36-hour days instead of 24.

I can easily put in a 12-hour work day and not even feel it--something my former bosses and my bank account both enjoyed. And, although I need very little sleep to get by, I wake up feeling much better if I can somehow manage (always with the help of Tylenol-PM) 12 hours. That leaves 12 hours left over for other things like enjoying off-time with family and friends, writing music, going places, etc.

I suppose I need to find myself an alternate universe, but then, a whole lot more than the hours would change. I'd have to rethink exactly what "work" is, and that just gets too complicated. Even after 12-hours of sleep.

Live, Don't Muddle

‎"Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body." Joseph Addison

I was doing some math this morning and I realized that I might still have 40 years left on this planet. A lot of people are living to 100 these days, and there's no reason to believe that I couldn't do so as well. I have my health issues, but none of them are organ-related, or life-threatening. 40 years is the same amount of time it's been since I was 20. That's a long time ago and I've done a lot of living in that 40 years. In fact, I've done most of my living in that time.

I remember my mom's obsession with how she "felt". Every moment of her life was spent analyzing and then complaining about her back, her sinuses, her this, her that, and I used to think, "If you'd quit thinking about how you "feel" so much, you might be happier. You might live life a little more fully." Of course, I could never tell her that without waking up to find myself in the middle of my next lifetime. She was Irish and unpredictable.

It's no secret that I live with chronic pain, and I have done for the past 15 years, but that's no reason to get so fixated on it that I make myself even more miserable. There are people who have it a lot worse than I do; I just need to buck up and decide to LIVE instead of MUDDLE THROUGH. It's not easy, certainly, but it's not impossible. And I believe that by not giving pain so much of my waking attention, I'll actually feel better.

Take Thursday, for example. I got up to go into the kitchen and I realized that I was walking like someone in their 80s. It didn't make me feel any better to do so--it was just a lazy habit. And when I stood up straight, pulled my shoulders back, and walked normally, I did feel better. A lot of how we feel is in our minds.

So here's what I'm going to do. Whenever I feel the urge to write about how I "feel" physically, I'm going to post a funny picture. In Facebook, I'm posting dog pictures; not sure what I'll post here. Eventually, I'll break the habit of being so fixated on my body that my emotional well-being suffers. Enough of this crap.
_________
NAR: (from the La Boheme lexicon, coined in 1985) Not All Right, "Don't be NAR", "That was NAR", etc.

Olio

Google image searching has become quite a sport. A hit-and-miss sport. Do you remember when you could type in a search word and the pictures that came back actually had something to do with that word? Just now, when I typed in "olio", I'd already predicted what they would send back to me, so I added, "-oleo -oil" and still, I got pages of olive oil.

Olio: A miscellaneous mixture or collection.


Does anyone even use this word anymore? I mean, apart from crossword puzzles and Scrabble? Eh, well. Here's my olio:

• I really don't understand groupies. I especially don't understand 60+ year-old women with bleached blonde hair who think they're still 18, and act like groupies with all the jealousy, gossip, and backbiting. Especially when they're abusive bitches, and crazy as a March Hare besides. That filtered, blurry, Photoshopped profile picture doesn't fool anybody, chickie. Grow the feck up. Or maybe you should see a shrink, or get hormone replacement.
• Mondays are no longer a usual work day for me. Since Nettl has begun to get voice students again, Monday will now be spent dusting and vacuuming. Might as well make this my housework day. I never feel like editing on Monday, anyway.
• I'm loving Keith Richards' autobiography, Life, so much. I especially love his long dissertations about music, and how he plays certain things the way he does, and how he discovered those things. I guess a lot of readers just want to read the dirt, but I appreciate that he's kept his musician's slant in the forefront where it belongs.
• We had nearly two solid days of rain over the weekend. It was lovely! Because the temps lingered in the high-70s, we could leave the doors and windows open. So fresh and so perfect for reading! And today is a beautiful, sunny day. I could live with these weather patterns forever.
• At this very moment, Nettl is giving a lecture about her book at the local chapter of the Twentieth Century Women's Club. Go Nettl!
• I have Book Three (With A Song) of my trilogy outlined. I know who all the characters are. I know the plot. Somehow, though, I can't seem to get the nuts up to start writing it, I'm so burned out. So I'm giving myself until January 1st to start writing. Meantime, I'm working on the supplemental eBook, Enharmonic Intervals, which is Gordon's memoirs. That's coming out very well. Book Two will be published just as soon as I get it back from my "second pair of eyes".

That's it from me. I'm all olioed out and I have stuff to do. Have a great Monday!

It's Safe to Come Back

Of course, I want to believe that my declining comments was the result of some malware in the code of one of the third-party widgets I'd recently install in my sidebar. Of COURSE that's what I want to believe. And it's true, right? RIGHT?

Thanks to Jaq at Byzantium's Shores for alerting me to a download popup he was getting when he clicked "Comment". I mean, really, big thanks! I removed the widgets, ran the URL through two site scans, and the problem seems to be resolved.

If you see anything like that, email me and let me know, okay?

Now, go to this page, read, and be sure to watch the video at the bottom. Really cool stuff!