Vintage Monday: Lifeguards

Continuing with the beach theme, here are a couple of lovely lifeguards. This was a Pinterest find. On a side note: apparently, in 1949 lifeguard was two words. Just comes to show you that language is a living thing.

Wednesday Word: Phlegmatic

phlegmatic |flegˈmatik|adjective(of a person) having an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition.DERIVATIVESphlegmatically |-ik(ə)lē| adverbORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [relating to the humor phlegm] ): from Old French fleumatique, viaLatin from Greek phlegmatikos, from phlegma‘inflammation’ (see phlegm ).Not a word I ever use, although I'm familiar with it. It reminds me of mucus too much.

Random Update

I have had health and other issues lately and my mood took a nose dive. Let me just say, anxiety attacks are the suck. Everyone reacts differently to crisis. Some people share every little detail of their problems. I withdraw. I suspect the first approach is healthier, but I am who I am. I'm starting to feel better now, but I'm still wobbly. Fuck it.

The MS of Secrets and Charms is off to my editor. Remember Jem's friend, Olly, from Secrets and Ink? Well, it's his story. There are more Hollywood shenanigans, romance, and mystery. Bran's mother (Dead Man books), Layla makes a guest appearance.

I also wrote a holiday-ish short story, but it still needs some edits. I put aside for now.

Dead Man and the Army of Frogs have been edited, formatted, and ready for the August 5 release.

I joined twitter at last, but I have to say the whole thing befuddles me. Lots of links to reviews, promo, and not particularly exciting status updates. And I have no idea about the etiquette. If someone follows me, am I supposed to follow them back? What if I don't want to?

On the home front: my balcony garden is a mixed success. The available sun is not enough for most plants I have. However, the parsley and cat grass are doing fine, and the Boston fern is very happy. At fall I'll have to divide it up and replant it.

My neighbor has sunflowers growing between the curb and sidewalk in front of her house. They look pretty cool.

Vintage Monday: On the Beach

This old photo was a rare find--it's such a perfect representation of a bygone beach-going experience, it almost looks fake. But it is real. I feel sorry for those people for having to wear so much clothes on a warm summer day.

Wednesday Word: Tittle

tittle [tit-l]

noun

1. a dot or other small mark in writing or printing, used as a diacritic, punctuation, etc.

2. a very small part or quantity; a particle, jot, or whit: He said he didn't care a tittle.

Origin: before 900; Middle English titel, Old English titul  < Medieval Latin titulus  mark over letter or word.

Wednesday Word: Rote

rote |rōt|nounmechanical or habitual repetition of something to be learned : a poem learned by rote in childhood.ORIGIN Middle English (also in the sense [habit, custom] ): of unknown origin.

Such a simple, straightforward word, yet I don't think I've ever used it. I'll have to make an effort to include it in my active vocabulary.

Vintage Monday: Men out of Uniform

I know, I missed Memorial Day. My wrong.

Apple is a Poopy Head and Other Self-publishing Dribbles

I'm just about to publish Hanging Loose to vendors other than Amazon, and slowly getting ready for the publication of Dead Man and the Army of Frogs in August. The busy work brought to mind a self-pubbing tip I thought I'd share.

When you are putting out your own book you have more control and more options, and you should take advantage of them. At the barest minimum, you should put a bio with link to your web site and/or blog at the end. You can also add links to your Goodreads page, twitter, Pinterest, Tumbler, etc. pages.

I like to add blurbs to a couple of my other books as well. It's like the candy bars at the checkout lane—they are there to encourage impulse buying. Once you add a blurb, you should also provide a link to the actual book. The easiest is way is to link to the book's page on your own web site. You should have a page for your book, with blurb, excerpt, and prominently placed buy-links to all the major vendors selling your book, anyway.

Having secret masochistic tendencies, I like to further complicate things by providing buy-links to individual retailers. This means creating separate ebook files for each. The file I upload to Nook Press has link to my book on Barnes & Noble, while the file for All Romance eBooks has link to the ARe store. Smashword is an aggregator, so it gets a generic link to my web site.

Stuff gets complicated with Amazon, because a couple of years ago they decided not to allow direct buy links from their apps. I can't say they did it specifically to stick it to Amazon, but I bet it was part of the motivation. Amazon had no choice but comply. In the old days, if you were reading a sample of a book on your Kindle app (on iPad or iPhone), there was a link at the end allowing you to buy the full version with one click. Not anymore. However, direct linking is still possible from actual Kindle device.

Because I'm a stubborn bastard, I'm starting to double-link from my mobi files intended for Amazon. One direct link and another to the book page on my web site.

I know, this all sounds nuts, but ain't so bad. To publish to three vendors I need only seven files. Three for Are, two for Smashwords, and one each for Amazon and B&N. Ta-da!

Wednesday Word: Vociferous

vociferous |vəˈsifərəs; vō-|adjective(esp. of a person or speech) vehement or clamorous : he was a vociferous opponent of the takeover.DERIVATIVESvociferously adverbvociferousness noun

Sounds like a good word to describe football fans (on either side of the pond).

A-Cute Attack

Vampire plot bunny, curtesy of the lovely and talented Catherine.

Release Day Goodies

It's Temper Sanguine's release day at last! It feels such a long time in the making—I submitted the MS to my Samhain editor last December. If patience is a virtue, I'm a wicked tart of impatience. But the book is out and the moment is almost anticlimactic. I should probably be beating pots and pans, figuratively speaking, but I hate author spam when others do it. Maybe I'll just clink some glasses instead.

I just made Temper Sanguine's Pinterest board public. Being highly visual, during writing I do a lot of research for visual representations of the places and things that appear in my books. It makes sense to share some of them with whoever is interested. This board contains a few snippets some might consider spoilerish, so peruse at your own risk!

Temper Sanguine available:

Samhain Publishing +++ Amazon +++ Amazon UK  +++ Barnes & Noble