Repeat?

The Ariana finalists came out yesterday and I have two this year. As a winner last year, I wonder if this year will see me repeat. Possibly not. It’s always a stiff competition. There are more than a few talented cover artists out there. I’m not up against Anne Cain who is the best cover artist on the planet in my opinion, but Reese Dante is definitely very, very stiff competition. Most artists work for one or two houses and some only do freelance stuff, preferring not to be tied to a house. And many of them work for a publisher and do a lot of covers for people who are self-publishing.... 

date26 Sep

Commute

When I think of commuting I am reminded of the time I used to drive from Huntington Beach to West LA and from Huntington Beach down to La Brea Tar Pits. Well, across the street from the tar pits actually. Those were gnarly drives. But I was younger then and didn’t think too much of the drives for quite awhile until it really started to get to be a drag because I was losing a really good chunk of my day sitting on the freeway. More recently, at least in the last 12 years that I’ve worked at the cemetery, I’ve had commutes into Santa Ana-Orange from Huntington Beach and Westminster,... 

date19 Sep

Coyote Take Out

The canyon where I live has a lot of wildlife. And cows. The neighbor next door said she had a rattlesnake in her yard recently and had to have another neighbor kill it. There’s owls and other birds of prey. And coyotes. The coyotes start singing around 11:30 each night. You can hear the older ones howl and the younger ones yip. We’ve been told not to let the babies out because of the predators. They are house cats so there’s no way we’d let them out. Although, before we got the security screen door, Neko managed to push out the bottom panel on the battered screen door that... 

date29 Aug
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Ghosthunters

Last week I had a nice whine over a simple tummy ache. Funny how the small stuff can just feel devastating sometimes. This week I’ve moved from whining to mental eye rolling. You see, I have galleys to read. For you non-authors, galleys are what authors get prior to a book going to print. You have to proof the galleys to ensure there are no mistakes. If there was a mistake in the ebook that didn’t get fixed, this is your time to fix it. So I had a nice cover flat of Tales of the Darkworld Volume Two and a big fat file of galleys. Volume Two is two novellas, each one just over 40K.... 

date22 Aug

I Want My Mommy

I’ve had some pretty painful things happen to me in the past. Broken things, twisted things, torn things. I’ve been on pain meds and rocked myself to sleep while in an incoherent daze from pain. I’ve survived some painful stuff and yet, I find myself in a horrible whiny state this morning, felled by a simple stomachache. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to do anything except eat a handful of Tums, drink a ginger ale and go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. I feel like a total six year old moaning about a tummy ache.... 

date15 Aug

Cheating Marcus

This is truly a Marcus Monday since my post is about him. Yesterday, I went to Smashwords to buy the book of a fellow Six Sentence Sunday participant, Jessica E. Subject. It was on sale at half off so I decided to hunt around and pick up another sale book while I was there. I did a search on a number of different terms and began to scroll through the titles and covers. After a few minutes, I was stopped cold in my tracks by a cover that shocked me. Yep. It was a cover with Marcus on it. You can see it HERE. There’s a link at the bottom of the book to report it. I tried to report it for copyright... 

date1 Aug

Nemesis

Some of you may have heard me talk about how one of the babies wouldn’t settle in the new house. He first hid in a recliner, tearing it up from the inside to dig his way to the center of the chair where we couldn’t get to him. He didn’t come out for weeks until he was thin and sick. We got him out and into the biggest carrier. Put him in there with food and water and a pee pad and had the chair hauled away. He did okay in the carrier for a few days and then Rott let him out. After that he hid under the futon for weeks. We’re pretty sure he came out once in awhile  to run... 

date25 Jul
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Go Shopping

I spent Sunday redoing my Cafepress store. I haven’t done anything about the template, but I have added products including a whole Lex Valentine section. This was one of the main thrusts of the store for me. I have people ask me about my cover art all the time. Now, they can go buy themselves a poster of my latest covers. Well, the covers I created anyway. Eventually, I think it would be cool to sell posters of all the covers I’ve done even the ones for other authors. I like the idea of cross promotion in this manner. The store still has the Socially Dead stuff and a couple of the original... 

date18 Jul
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Defending My Title

I’m not really. Not defending my title, I mean. In my head I sort of feel like I am, but I’m not really. See, last year I won an Ariana award. Entries close on Friday for this year’s contest and I haven’t chosen my entries yet. I asked for some help over at my good friend ZAM’s Yahoo group. As always, the gang helped tremendously and I decided to enter a cover I did for a YA book and a sci-fi book, two categories I hadn’t entered last year. In all honesty, the sci-fi cover is my first in that genre and the YA only the second in that genre.   In the contemporary... 

date11 Jul
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Independent

This Independence Day I’ve come to understand the real meaning of being independent. Rott and I are out from beneath the yoke of being renters. This house is our house and no one can tell us what do with our house or demand entrance. The sense of freedom is amazing. As much as I struggle a bit to pay that loan payment, I derive a huge sense of satisfaction from writing that check and knowing that it pays for the walls around me to belong to me…to us. This is our sanctuary and no one controls what we can and can’t do here. It feels amazing. Having a landlord feels and is oppressive.... 

date4 Jul
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I Am Mom

I spent a good portion of the past weekend putting the finishing touches on my friend David’s new WordPress blog BellaDaddy. David is a Daddy blogger and I think I was more exposed to mommy and daddy bloggers this weekend than I’ve been in the whole 3+ years that I’ve been blogging. As I copied feed links and worked on widgets and badges, it dawned on me that these people are passionate about their children and their lives as parents. And they started to make me feel that I’d missed out on something. Now, it’s pretty obvious to most people that I just don’t have... 

date26 Jun
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On Tour

I’m not writing a post today. Instead, I’m sending you on tour, a tour of my new house! I’m busy at the office today but hopefully will be able to take off Tuesday and Wednesday because we have movers scheduled and we HAVE to be out of the condo! Rott’s driving the truck but I’m supervising the mover helpers.  So I’m off to get as much work done as possible so I can have the time off. Before I go, here’s my requisite Marcus for this Monday. Wish that was my hand on him…LOL Have a great Monday everyone!  »View More

date9 May
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