Sunday Synopsis

Sunday Synopsis, , , , , , , , ,

This is the first Sunday Synopsis in a couple of weeks. It has been a busy and a not so busy couple of weeks.

Past two weeks:

  • I am not doing any promos/ads in particular anywhere, but my Kirkus review and my Reader’s Favorite reviews posted. I am picking up new readers every day or two, which is WAAAY cool. It is so very exciting to me to think of folk passing on my writing through word of mouth. That’s the nicest compliment ever!
  • I am finally satisfied with my chapter one in my WIP. So I feel like I can now move forward. I have the first five chapters done already, but kept going back to the first one. That has resulted in a couple of edits with subsequent chapters. Who knows, maybe I will change it again after a beta reading? We will see. For now, I am leaving it alone.
  • My Writers’ Group has added a daytime meeting that gives me more options.
  • I am seriously reading much more than usual. Got a couple of book reviews done. Reading for another couple of authors. I put my writing on hold when I am reading because the styles, in my mind, sometimes conflict.  I also concentrate and focus better if I am not trying to do both reading and writing at the same time.
  • My grandson had his first birthday party! He is also just taking his first steps. It is an odd thing that he was born on my mother’s birthday and my granddaughter was born on the anniversary of my mother’s death. Do you have any weird dates like that in your family? It’s quite common.
  • Along with his first birthday celebration came a gathering that included the outlaws. I say outlaws instead of in-laws because they are not in-laws anymore. They are the former spouse’s family, whom I divorced eighteen years ago. These are folk I have not been in the company of for eighteen more years. Aunt Leann and Uncle Phil were fun.  I am glad the baby had his Great Oma and Opa there, and his Pappy. Sorry that my son, the baby’s Uncle Daniel, could not join us, but somebody had to hold down the farm. Glad my husband braved the crowd with me.
Allamanda is blooming!
Allamanda is blooming!
Colorful Pentas are always pretty. They bloom all year, unless it freezes.
Colorful Pentas are always pretty. They bloom all year, unless it freezes.
Happy Birthday Sebastian!
Happy Birthday Sebastian!
Had to slip this one in of the grandson with his smash cake.
Had to slip this one in of the grandson with his smash cake.
This is a thirty year old hibiscus tree (not bush). few leaves yet, but just started putting out blooms. It will be covered in leaves and blooms in a couple of weeks.
This is a thirty year old hibiscus tree (not bush). Few leaves yet, but just started putting out blooms. It will be covered in leaves and blooms in a couple of weeks. The blossoms are doubled.
Bright red double hibiscus blossom. I love how frilly they are.
Bright red double hibiscus blossom. I love how frilly they are.

Next two weeks:

  • I have work days scheduled. I don’t work often anymore, but when old nursing friends call with assignments they need help with I can’t say no. So I have a couple of days scheduled for wellness clinics the end of this month and a few scheduled for the first of next month.
  • Writing, writing and more writing. I am at a point with my WIP where things can really begin to move quickly, I think. Excited about that. We will see how things pan out over the next few weeks.
  • The rocket scientist has to be out of town this upcoming week on business, so I won’t be obliged to have meals or laundry prepared…lots of “me time”.
  • Some of our snowbird friends will be heading north soon, so trying to enjoy their company while we can.
  • Black algae appeared in little spots in the pool, so that has to be treated immediately or we will get into serious trouble fast…so I already have the chemicals to deal with that.

What are you up to?

64 thoughts on “Sunday Synopsis”

    1. Thanks Rosie, and thank you so much for the review and interview on your blog. I noticed a few sales in the UK and Canada, which aren’t audiences that I have previously reached to my knowledge.

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    1. It will come 🙂 . My son in Michigan and his wife are thinking seriously about moving here to Orlando. Bryan just can’t get work in his field up there in the UP.

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  3. I went to St. Augustine this weekend and the traffic was CRAZY with northerners trying to get a break from the cold. I know this state can be sweltering in the summer, but I’ll take the heat over the cold anytime!

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    1. I get so frustrated with how rapid the weeds grow here. I can spray and pull weeds and have the yard looking lovely…it rains and BLAM…a knee high weed outbreak overnight.

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  5. Oh it sounds like your WIP is progressing! That’s so neat to hear. Keep at it! I know what you mean about reading and writing, I tend to do the same thing so keeping it separate sounds smart to me. Lovely pictures, I like the cake mash one. 🙂

    Hope the sales keep on coming. 🙂

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  6. That cake looks fabulous. I want a piece! 🙂

    I’m trying to really crack down on my outline. I’ll probably take it easy with social media this week so I can hit it even harder. (Of course, I always say that…)

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    1. Mama did good. The party decorations were so cute with the fishy theme.

      I have put social media on hold in some ways. I am only blogging if I get a notion to, but not looking for topics. I still get my emails, and read a bit and comment…I am staying out of my reader (I can get lost in there for hours). I stop in on Facebook from time to very short time. Not doing much with twitter either. My outline, which I only use roughly, was done awhile back. Now I am getting into the core of the story.

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      4. The outlaws had a couple of condos there. They are members of some condo club timeshare deal. My daughter, her aunt, and a cousin helped with all of the decorations and food at the condo. All of the outlaw family came down for their semi annual visit, which they planned along with Sebastian’s birthday. There wasn’t much for me to do but show up with a gift, eat, enjoy, and take pictures. Pretty nice deal for me.

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  9. I agree with Marian! You are doing great on all fronts. I will be back to beach cave soon and hope some of your discipline will rub off on me. I discovered that all this traveling is not that great for my writing/publishing aspirations. Carry on 🙂

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  10. Some day I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether the Kirkus review was worth it. I’ve wanted to go that route, but the cost is hard to swallow.

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    1. One of my hobbies is making jewelry. The cost of the metal work; bracelet & necklace clasps, earring frames, silver beads & tubes, marcasite, stones, gems, woods and tools of the trade is rarely, if ever, recoverable.

      I know people are always writing articles about treating your publications as a business. I suppose that is necessary for the career writer, but I can’t profess to be one.

      My husband has a cabin cruiser, anyone with a boat will tell you it is like pitching money into the water…so I justify.

      Even though I was extremely nervous about the Kirkus review, and it did have its share of criticisms, I gave them permission to publish anyway. One, by agreeing to publish the review, I was able to pull excerpts, and people DO notice the name and associate it with quality. Two, I was curious enough about my own talent for their opinion of it to be worth it to me. Three, so it has its faults and its flaws, if people read that in the review and are still interested all the better. I like the places Kirkus publishes and know that some who look to Kirkus for unique works with merit can find it. I am not sure if it is residual fallout from the last ENT promo or the reviews from Reader’s Favorite and Kirkus being published, but I seem to have developed a steady readership that did not exist before the reviews were posted. Reader’s Favorite keeps it posted for five months and Kirkus indefinitely. It is just another way to reach potential readers in my mind…and that’s always worth it to me.

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      1. Yep. The next book I publish. Not Northville probably, but my next full novel, I’m probably going to exercise more patience and get a Kirkus Review pre-publication so it can be part of the roll out. Although who knows, if I decide to add another book or two to the Northville story line, I may go with Kirkus on those as well.

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      2. I’ve always said if I write a series, I am going to force myself to have the patience to write at least three before I publish the first, so I can just roll them out one behind the other. One thing I hate about series and sequels as a reader is having to wait for the next to be written. I would rather wait until it is finished to learn about a series. If you go to Kirkus and type in the title of my book you can see the full review. In some ways I feel it is rather deceitful to post only excerpts…but I have been told not to think that way about it. It is standard practice. I didn’t like the word melodrama and it did point to “nearly fatal flaw”, and “perplexing narrative” but I accepted that and published it anyway. Reading IS a subjective experience and what one person might regard as atrocious, may be the very thing another most enjoys. I knew it was not written in a standard novel format when I put it out there.

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      3. Regarding the series … I’m really thinking more and more about this and I’m not happy about it. Writing a story this way is not easy and it took a lot of time to be able to do it. It feels weird to say it this way, but it also took a lot out of me. It’s because of my difficulties with Northville over the past couple of months that I thought seriously about taking a real break from writing.

        But, I’m already thinking about how the first chapter of book 2 might start. Sigh.

        I’m with you, though, I wouldn’t publish the first until I had at least the second draft finished and knew a lot about what book 3 might look like.

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      4. I feel your pain. We love writing, but it is work to do it right. Some readers have no clue what is required to mold the right words around a concept…it is a craft. Anybody can build a table out of cinder blocks and a board, but what sort of table do you want in your dining room?

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  11. We had black algae one year. Filled the pool with chemicals and haven’t had it since. I’m just annoyed with the tenacity showed by green algae.

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    1. We changed over from chlorine to a salt generator when we bought this house and have NEVER had green algae issues since the switch. One of the best investments we have ever made. Rarely have to treat anything with any chemicals.

      Black algae is a different story. seems the salt doesn’t affect it. We get a patch here and there, and it takes the big guns to kill it…if not put in check right away, there will be splotches all over the pool in a season and it is a bitch to scrub off. We had it one year real bad, took hours and hours of scrubbing and two chemical treatments to finally get rid of it. We got all confident and did not follow through on the maintenance program, and it’s back. I am hoping we caught it early enough this time.

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      1. My wife has discussed switching over to salt, but it’s just one of those things I don’t want to deal with.

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      2. We only add salt to the pool a couple of times a year (even with all of our rain), where we used to add chemicals weekly. Once installed, it’s sort of forget about it and let it work.

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      4. The salt generator was just under a grand. Greg installed it though. Pretty simple if you are used to building with PVC and plumbing. In the six years we have had it. We have saved that much again in chemicals. I add a little muriatic acid and cyanuric acid at the beginning of the year.

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      7. Our pool is about 15,000 gallons. Not sure if we’re going to be here long enough for it to pay for itself. My goal, not shared by my wife, is to move in 1 1/2 years.

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    1. We really lucked out this year as severe as things were everywhere else. Just didn’t quite make it this far south.

      I am glad you had some time off. Sometimes it is hard to get restarted after some much needed down time.

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  15. I love the name Sebastian! So glad things seem to be going well for you on the book front. I wanted to follow up with you — did you ever get that email from kickstarter?
    If not, just send me an email with your contact info and I’ll fill it in.

    Thanks,
    Helena

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      4. I wonder what happened there — and I’m glad you brought it up — so we can contact people directly in a while if we haven’t heard back from them.

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      6. One last question (sorry!) did you receive any other of the Kickstarter emails — ie. UPDATES, etc..? I’m wondering if maybe if you didn’t, that they’re all in your SPAM folder or something.

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  18. The flowers are gorgeous and your grandson is adorable. I’m just beginning to think about what it means to be post-treatment. I’m going to be very deliberate about adding things back into my routine.

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  19. Sounds like things are rolling along with your book. That’s great! Also, I wanted to mention I have Out Laws too, and enjoy my continued friendship with them despite my sister’s divorce. It’s good to balance good relationships with difficult situations.

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    1. Seemed to work out okay. I never really had many issues with the former spouse. His parents…another story. But it’s all good. The baby got to have all his grandparents there.

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