Sunday Update - Week 33

This week... Well, it was HOT.  And I was a toad.  Okay, I wasn't entirely a toad all week.

I wrote Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for 3182 words.  Then I lost track of where I was going next and turned back into a toad.  I'll try to get untoaded today.

Marketing was done.  Rumor Has It was free and I moved 57 copies - 40 of which went on Friday.  Not sure why the spike that day, but there it is.  Also, someone read Unequal this week and someone else is working on Dying Embers, so I am seeing some fundage for this month.  Not sure which book will be up for free this week.  Stay tuned.

Reading occurred.  I didn't bother doing a post yesterday because TOAD.  We'll see what I can accomplish next Saturday.  

No baking because HOT.

No activity because HOT.  Weight: 172.0

I'm still watering my deck garden.  My first tomato got picked.  We had it sliced up on hamburgers and it was yummy.  My second tomato got some kind of funk and turned gray from the bottom.  (It's not touching anything, so not sure what the hell happened there.)  In happier news, I have a third tomato.  It's tiny yet, but it's there.  And one of the tomato plants is still flowering, so there's hope for more.  Something ate all the leaves off one of my dogwood trees.  I think it was a grasshopper, because a discarded grasshopper exoskeleton is laying in the pot.  Did I ever mention how much I hate grasshoppers?  Filthy little bastards.  The rest of the trees are doing okay.  So are the green peppers, but those will never make it to big enough for fruit before the end of the growing season.  :shrug:  They were an experiment anyway, so no big loss.

The fawns are growing.  Sissy's fawn is a pretty big little guy.  (Assuming buck fawn because it's big, but I haven't seen nubs yet, so not sure.)  The twins are thriving.  Life is good.  Hubs is making sure they have fresh water once, if not twice, a day.

In family news, one of my extended family was attacked by a pitbull.  He was out running - he does marathons, so he was training - minding his own business, and some numbnuts was walking his pit without a leash.  He saw the dog and gave it a wide berth.  It didn't matter.  The pit went after him anyway, ruinating his left hand and then, after the owner and the guy got the dog off, it came back for more and attached to his right arm.  He's had surgery to repair the damage, so now it's a waiting game to see how much function he'll regain.  I'm pissed, to say the least.  Poor dude can't work now and who knows when he'll be able to work again.  He's freakin' IT, so all his work is hands.  And he's the nicest guy ever.

Okay, I think that's all the excitement I can take for one day.  Have a great day, wherever you are.  (And if you're walking/running, watch out for dogs with stupid owners.)  

Thursday This n That

Finn looks like a little-bitty kitty until he's not next to Sawyer.  It's only then that you realize he's a big cat.  Sawyer, however, is a BIG cat.  Which works for me.  I like big cats.  Kira was big.  Max was big.  I'm not sure how I'd handle an actual little kitty.

Today's bird is a red-headed woodpecker with an acorn.  Neat birds, but we rarely get them in our yard.  They prefer to hang out by the river.  Not sure why.

I sat down yesterday to watch Much Ado About Nothing (the Kenneth Branagh version) by myself because Hubs really wasn't that interested.  Within about ten minutes, he showed up and sat down, and we watched it together.  I'm sneaky that way.

Yes, I actually do love Shakespeare.  

I'm getting the urge to go thrifting to buy used books again.  No, I haven't read all the used books I already own, and I don't care.  =op

I picked my one good tomato yesterday.  The other tomato would be almost ready to pick if it wasn't already going bad.  Not sure what happened there, but it's turning gray from the bottom up.  Eww. Oh, and I have a third tomato now.  It's about double the size of a kidney bean.  Fingers crossed it doesn't catch the creeping crud and it grows big enough to eat.  Growing food ain't easy, lemme tell ya.  Anyway, I'll slice up that one tomato and we'll have it on sandwiches.  Yay.

If your post to a book group is not book related, I will block you. Just sayin'.  Also, if you're an insufferable turd, I'll block you.  Needless to say, I've been blocking a lot of people. LOL

Okay, I think that's enough out of me this morning.  What's up with you?

At the Movies with B.E.

Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) - This is THE definitive Sherlock Holmes movie.  So good, even after all these years.  

Bookworm (2024) - a weird little movie with Elijah Wood as an absentee father who suddenly shows up and takes his daughter on an adventure.  It's set in New Zealand, so there are some amazing scenes, but yeah, the story was definitely weird.  Good weird, but weird nonetheless.

A Month in the Country (1987) - starring a young Colin Firth and young Kenneth Branagh.  Plus, Natasha Richardson (who died way too early, in my opinion).  It was just a nice movie.  Not much to it, but nice.  Two men after WWI, struggling with their own horrific memories of war and striving to accomplish their own goals.  Set in the beautiful English countryside.

And Then There Were None (1945) - I thought I'd found a later version of this with Oliver Reed that I remembered enjoying, but it ended up being in another language with subtitles, so I searched again and found this.  I don't remember ever seeing this one.  It was pretty good.  It had a bunch of lesser actors I remember from several other old movies (the maid from Rebecca, Uncle Willie from Philadelphia Story, etc.) and Barry Fitzgerald (he was the matchmaker in Quiet Man, among other fine roles).  Definitely an enjoyable adaptation.

In the hopper are a WWII movie and a veterinarian movie set in Devonshire, plus we still have a couple Sherlock Holmes movies to watch.

Marketing Monday - Rumor Has It

Good morning and welcome to another fine addition of Marketing Monday.  Today, RUMOR HAS IT is on the block and it's free.  Woot.

Hearken back to the old days in this nod to Spillane, Stout, and Gardner.  DUKE NOBLE, P.I.: RUMOR HAS IT - a crime noir novel - is free.  (It's always free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.)  Get your copy today!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZNXQKPC

Sunday Update - Week 32

Here we are at Week 32 and I don't really have much to show for it.

I did not write this week, despite every encouragement and a little poking in the ass.  Let's see if we can change that this week.  It goes without saying that AuGoWriMo is a bust for me so far.  I can salvage it if I get off my ass starting today.  START TODAY!  Part of the problem is the last words I wrote were such dreck, I'm having a crisis of confidence.  Derp.

Marketing was done.  It wasn't exactly productive.  I only moved 40 copies of WIOH, which is usually my best mover.  :shrug:  Not much I can do about it without paying for advertising.  I don't have a problem paying, but usually by the time I think about doing a freebie or a sale, it's too late to put an ad anywhere.  I need to plan ahead, which I am HORRIBLE at.

I did read this week, but I ended up DNFing most of it.

Cinnamon rolls were made.  They aren't the best rolls I ever made, but they're edible.  I halved the recipe, but while I was putting everything together, I used the whole measurement for the oil.  I tried to salvage it by adding more flour.  The result is a little weird.  We'll eat them and I'll try not to make the same mistake in the future.

On the activity front, I started out the week really well.  I walked three times for 3.5 miles.  Then it got hot again and I stayed inside.  Those miles put me at 50 miles even for the year, so far.  We won't talk about weight.  Heat makes me blow up like a water balloon, so even if I had weighed myself, it wouldn't really count.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The fawns are getting bigger and their spots are getting less defined.  I saw an opossum.  We also had several baby nuthatches in the redbud tree.  Yay.

Speaking of trees, my baby redbuds are doing well.  I still only have two tomatoes.  Those are getting closer to ripe, so yay.  Everything else is holding steady and not too big, but not dead.  Dang heat.

I think that's it for me.  How are things with you?

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 8/9/25

 Hello!  Sorry I forgot to post last week.  You didn't miss much. Trust me.  Unfortunately, not much has gone on since the last wrap-up either.

I did pick up one new ebook. It's a fantasy I saw on a FB group and it sounded interesting, so I downloaded it.  We'll see.  Due to DNFs, I only have two unread ebooks left. One is an SF and the other is a fantasy.

No Books Read.  That's right, folks, I haven't actually finished reading anything since the last update.  Derp.

DNFs:

8/8/25 - legal thriller - free.  Maybe I was just so irritated after the previous DNF that this one irritated me more than it would've otherwise, but it did irritate me, so there ya are.

8/8/25 - YA Action/Adventure/?? - free.  It was going along fine, introducing all the hero characters and the general premise, but then the scenes with the villains started and meh.  I actually got about a quarter of the way into this one, which cheesed me off.  I hate wasting time on books I won't finish.  Bleh.

8/1/25 -  YA UF - free.  It made me remember why I hated high school.

Currently reading... I think I'll start the next Hercule Poirot story so I can finish that omnibus.  We'll see.

Have you been reading anything good lately?

Thursday This n That

Earlier, I saw some silly ditz 'digital content creator' saying that you don't have to be a writer to be an author.  Wuh?

Yesterday, I read a headline that went something like 'law students think tests are discriminatory' because they're too hard.  Like the person who posted the link said 'tests are supposed to help discriminate between the capable and the incapable', so yeah.

What is with all these words that people are putting asterisks into now?  I write a bunch of crime fiction, but words like rape, murder, killer, etc. are forbidden?  I don't even like putting asterisks in when I type fuck, I'm sure as hell not going to do it when I talk about rape or murder or killers.  Pardon me, but fuck that shit.

I wrote a note to FB in answer to their limiting my number of marketing posts.  Now, I don't seem to be getting the block, but I'm also not getting any reach.  Brilliant.  Wish in One Hand has traditionally flown out the door when I run a freebie.  I got 21 downloads the first day, then I wrote FB that note and the next day I got 4.  :eyeroll: :facepalm: :headdesk: 

Just got our Brightspeed 'final bill' thing.  They owe us $24.  It would've been nice if they'd just put in a check.  But no.  I'll most likely have to call them and struggle to get my credit back.  Fun.

I've been watching The IT Crowd.  It's pretty funny.  If you're a nerd, which I am.

I'm up to 50 miles walked for the year.  I posted that to FB and one of my friends (someone I've 'known' since like 2006 when I got my first blog) said something like 'well, you better turn around and go home'.  This is why we're friends.  LOL

If I wore jeans, I'd be buying myself a pair of American Eagle right now.  Sometimes I miss wearing jeans.  :shrug:

Dollar General has the best ice cream.  It's Caramel Swirl.  Caramel flavored ice cream with a ribbon of smooth caramel.  No chunks.  It's awesome.  I'm not a fan of chunks in my ice cream.

Got anything to add today?