NoH8

Last Tuesday, I took an impromptu vacation day and went to Los Angeles with Z.A. Maxfield. We went to a high school that was having a GLBT Fair. Yes, I heard a couple of whispers of “grannies” as I walked around so I know my gray hair didn’t go unnoticed. However, the kids weren’t exactly the reason I was there. I went to get my picture taken by celebrity fashion photographer Adam Bouska. Adam, who shares my birthday today, is the co-founder of the NoH8 Campaign. The photos he took were for NoH8. I’m sure you’ve all seen the photos. Silver duct tape on the mouth.... 

date31 Oct
comments19 Replies
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Shiny Stuff

I’ll admit to being distracted this weekend by shiny stuff. To be honest, they were photos. I was looking for one kind of photo to do a cover and found something else that would work on a different cover. And so on, and so on. Every time I’d look for something, I’d end up with something for a different project. They all had to be done, but they didn’t have to be done in the order in which I did them. Probably one good reason I got distracted so easily is this darn cold. It’s on the way out, but the lingering cough makes me feel like I’ve gone a few rounds with... 

date24 Oct
comments7 Replies
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Flu Shot

Yeah, I got one last week. The nurse wouldn’t give one to a co-worker with a cold. She said the shot lowers your immune system and if you have a cold you’ll get worse.  Well, that explains all the people who get sick after they get the shot. Their immune system must have already been low and they must have already been sickening.  The shot just hastens it. Or if your system is just weak, whoever has a bug can give it to you much easier after you have the shot. So my co-worker with his cold stood next to me and found out he couldn’t get the shot. I sat down, got the shot and... 

date17 Oct
comments2 Replies
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Planning

I’ve got a new project brewing. An online one not a book. This project should garner the interest of some very different readers for me while still satisfying most of my readers. Best of all, it doesn’t cost the readers anything, introduces them to authors they may not know, and can get me (and the other authors) new readers! We’re in the planning stage and still looking for the authors we’d like to offer this opportunity to. There are five of us currently and we’re looking to start with six to eight. Finding the right authors to fill up the roster is tough because... 

date10 Oct
comments2 Replies
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Bushed

I’m bushed. My body aches. I walked forever yesterday in West Hollywood with authors Z.A. Maxfield and James Buchanan. We went to the West Hollywood Book Fair to look around, attend a panel and meet fellow MLR Press author Haley Walsh who also writes as Jeri Westerson. The panel was on the second floor of the West Hollywood Library and the plate glass windows behind Jeri offered a view of the Pacific Design Center and the gorgeous LA day. (See photo below.) We saw Meredith Baxter Birney, Florence Henderson, Kevin Sorbo, Julie Newmar and some actors whose names we couldn’t remember.... 

date3 Oct
comments1 Reply
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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
comments1 Reply
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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
comments2 Replies
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What Can I Say?

Honestly, what can I say about yesterday that hasn’t already been said? I can’t think of a thing. I wanted to do what I’d done ten years ago and tie a flag to my car’s antenna. Unfortunately, my Honda doesn’t HAVE an antenna. Ten years ago I was driving a 280ZX and I left the power antenna partially extended so we could attach a flag to it. I flew it proudly too. Somehow, I thought I’d see more cars with flags and other signs of patriotism. I saw very few.  And then I saw something weird. I took Nikki home and there’s a fire station just outside the gates... 

date12 Sep
commentsComments Off
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Wildlife

Last week’s post about the coyotes has nothing on the stuff that’s been happening since. We haz snakes! Yep. Western rattlesnakes. Thus far, Rott has had two close encounters of the snake kind. One occurred on the side of our house where it’s all cement. Rott was out checking the outside lights and sprinklers after dusk. He was standing near our back steps (which we don’t use because the fancy new dryer is so big is partially blocks the door) and he flashed his flashlight on the ground and about a foot from his foot (in Guinness flip flops) was a snake. A two foot long rattler.... 

date5 Sep
comments1 Reply
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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
commentsComments Off
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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
comments1 Reply
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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
comments5 Replies
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