Monthly Archives: October 2016

Heartbeat Braves Release Day

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Pamela

This is the current state of the garden. I have some more apples to compost and I need to dig trenches for the compost bin. It’s been so rainy and muddy this month, it’s been hard to get out there. Unless there is a dry spell in November, that might not get done.

eBook is ready for purchase at all your favorite booksellers. Unless you buy books from Google. It’s not there. I have to do some homework before tackling that seller.

All the relevant information is on pen name’s webpage.

This one is urban Indian romance which is a point of view that is completely absent from romance. Hopefully, it will find some readers. Thanks for your support.

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The Look That Never Grows Old

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Pamela

In 1999 I was in the Meier & Frank downtown when I spotted these Star Wars men’s boxers on clearance. I was mad for Star Wars and thought they would be perfect shorts for me. I think I actually wore them as regular clothes a few times.

They eventually made their way in my pajama drawer for the summer. And I have been wearing them ever since. (Only in summer. In winter I’m all fleece or flannel.)

If you have a rudimentary understanding of how elastic ages then you won’t be surprised to learn that for the last several years, they wouldn’t stay up. I tried sewing the waistbands smaller. I tried safety pins. I tried rubberbanding a clump. Basically I have been walking around with my summer pajamas half off because I did not want to give up my Darth Maul pajama shorts.

Yesterday I walked into Fred Meyer and look what was on sale:

They didn’t have a very good selection and I still hate the idea of throwing Darth Maul away, but I have wearable summer pjs for next year.

PUBLISHING NEWS:

The ebook should be available tomorrow. Large online bookseller controls everything and there are steps where they just make you wait and you can’t do anything else until they say okay. I’m in the last phase of waiting. Hopefully I can click “GO” soon. I still need to look at a proof for paperback before I click go on that one.

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The Great Pumpkin

Posted on October 23, 2016 by Pamela

This is the pumpkin crop. At first glance, it’s impressive. But when you look more carefully, it’s not. There are a lot of pumpkins but they aren’t very big. The small ones are cute to look at but worthless for producing edible pumpkin product.

And if you look even more closely, you can see that some of them already need to be composted.

There is enough there to get my Thanksgiving pie and probably a pot of pumpkin chili later this winter but that’s about it.

For almost all of the past 10 years I’ve done a post a day in the month of November. I don’t think I can manage a written post but I’m going to aim to at least have a photo a day.

I’m trying to get started on romance book #2 and I still need to get my story collection done. Romance book #1 is getting closer. There’s a photo of the bookmark/sticker on pen name’s website.

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Fun with Sales People

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Pamela

I was all organized and updated pen name’s website but I forgot to mention it here. There’s an excerpt from Chapter 1 here. You can read a fun story about me and caulk here.

Everything is more or less under control except I decided to add one teeny bit. This weekend I should be able to final-final everything. Then I’m on standby until the cover art is finalized. Still hoping for first of November.

Remember when we needed a new copier at the office? Here’s the post about the cold-call from a company we will call “Won’t give you a proposal.” We ended up going with a company who we will call “Screw Me Once Shame on You, Screw Me Twice Shame on Me.” Here’s a post about the hassles with installation and delivery. For that occasion I invented a tag “clusterfukatonia” which I only used that one time but now that I remember I have it, I can use more often. Here’s one more short post about dealing with their online system.

You’ll never guess what happened.

A guy from a third competitor came here on a cold call and I said, “Yeah. Give me a proposal.” And he did. And he only asked to see the old lease once and when I said that wasn’t possible, he was good. And then he had a proposal to me in 2 days. And we like it. We especially like that the machine is easy to use. It has like three buttons. Bless any person in tech right now who is making things simpler.

But first I had to find out what was going on with the lease from the Screw Me company. You see, I had contacted them in APRIL, asking for a clarification of the end date of our lease. I believed the end date was October but it wasn’t clear. My new rep returned my call while I was out, didn’t give me the end date of my lease and left a bunch of numbers to call. I did not follow up. In May the rep came by and we talked about swapping out the current machine for a newer one for less money.

I never heard from him again.

So now that it was October and I had new guy’s proposal, I thought I’d get this party started. We have a procurement policy so we need to try for at least 3 bids. I contacted the We Won’t Give You A Proposal company using the form on their website that guarantees I will hear from someone in 4 hours. That was last Thursday. I haven’t heard from them.

I contacted the Screw Me company via email and heard nothing so I dug around and found my rep’s info and both his office phone and cellphone had “out of office on vacation, I will be back in June” messages. He included a manager’s phone number “if you need to talk to someone right away” so I called that guy–who answered the phone. A live body. Wow! He recognized the company name, told me he’d forwarded my email to my new rep and said he would let the new rep know to follow up with me.

I haven’t heard from him.

I finally called the bank that administers the lease and that’s when I learned that the lease ends in December. The Screw Me company has a deceptive lease and this is the SECOND time we’ve been caught up in it. I’m sure the minute the lease expires they will be all over us. That’s what they did last time.

Stay tuned for more fun with copier salespeople in the new year.

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Size Matters

Posted on October 8, 2016 by Pamela

During the dark months I like to have string of xmas lights in my room. Sometimes I can get away without using the overhead light and it’s cheery.

If you’ve used these lights, you know they are super crappy and don’t last long. The string I had up developed a short and would blink on and off so it was like living in a David Lynch movie.

The store doesn’t sell lights year round so I’ve been keeping an eye out. I didn’t think they would be here in October, but I was poking around the Halloween stuff in case there was something I could use.

The holiday lights are out now.

We went to Bob’s Red Mill this morning, and I picked up another giant bag of flour, even though I still had flour left from my last bag.

I had a lot of trouble moving the last bag around, and obviously, the most logical conclusion was that my aging body isn’t as strong as it used to be. I was also surprised that I hadn’t managed to use it up yet.

I brought home a new giant bag today (the one on the left) and I noticed the problem:

I still don’t have new romance novel news. Unfortunately, there are forces beyond my control causing delays. Trust me, if they were in my control I would be controlling them. I will update the minute I have something to update.

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Pat the Pumpkin

Posted on October 2, 2016 by Pamela

I asked Bob to take some pictures of me to see if I could find something to use for my author photo on pen name’s website.

I already had the giggles from the great mattress flipping incident. When I switch the sheets in the spring and fall, I like to flip the mattress. I can’t do it by myself. Bob and I are good at being married but bad at all other forms of teamwork. We spent about 15 minutes trying to explain to the other the best way to flip it. I think we both had the same idea but completely different ways of communicating.

Back to the photo session – I have a photo that I like where I’m petting one of the neighbor cats. I said I wanted something like that so Bob told me to do the same thing only with the pumpkins. I squatted down next to them and he said, look at the pumpkin. I started laughing and asked if he wanted me to pet it. Hence, this photo.

The only update is that the blurb is up on pen name’s website. No cover or sample chapter yet. We are getting closer. I updated the website, too.

Meanwhile, I used this weekend to catch up on domestic stuff. I partially put the garden to bed and raked up Round 1 of the Apple-pocolypse. I dug what I think is the last of the potatoes. Got another bunch of beets. A nice bowl of roma tomatoes. I collected apples to make applesauce but ran out of steam. I had tons of green beans from Orleans so I cleaned two giant bags and composted some, cooked a batch, and canned dilly beans. My dilly beans came out doodoo. My learning style is to do everything wrong the first time I try it. I’m sure they’ll taste fine but they shriveled and I guess I need to learn how to stuff them in there better. They look like someone started to fill the jars and then got bored and gave up.

I did a bunch of other household things that I’ve been putting off. Next weekend I should be back to book stuff. I’m not going to make any more promises since there are too many things that can come up and derail the schedule.

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