Julie's Web Journal at Stately Barrett Manor

You Need A Cat!

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:19:54 GMT

Caught Midnight hanging out on the couch, enjoying the afternoon. She does NOT like having her picture taken.

But hey, now you have a cat for today.

Tags: Pictures Cats

Sign of Spring

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:03:24 GMT

It's nice to know the snow didn't kill the buds...

Tags: Pictures

Monday Mumblings, Tuesday-Style

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:34:33 GMT

Well. I didn't mean to be gone for the better part of a week, but such is life. Or lack thereof, in my case.

No, I lie. I had a life over the weekend. Paul and I went out with some friends to watch Alice in Wonderland. The operative word, of course, is "out." As in "away from the computer."

The WIP is cracking along. I should start shaming myself by offering up a daily word count. Nothint on it so far today other than some scribbled notes, but I did pop out about 500 words on the New Super Sekkrit Project. No, I can't tell you lest someone breaks my fingers in retaliation. The only thing I can say is that this may be going on for some time, and it looks like it will be a fun project. I can do with fun.

Somewhat related to a recent post regarding civility and politics, C. E. Petit weighs in one aspect of free speech. (See his fourth bullet point.) One quote: "...misuse of free speech rights cannot be allowed to lead to their forfeiture, else "misuse" enlarges to swallow the rights themselves." Yes, I know: This is a different situation, but the outcome is the same. The shouters are ruining it for the rest of us.

Alrighty. I have some real work to get done today. Not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.

Tags: Life

How to Get Rich in Self-Publishing ... Or Not

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:26:15 GMT

J. A. Konrath has a word of caution for folks hoping to make the kind of money he's hauling via Kindle: It doesn't work for everyone.

Konrath is making very good money off of his backlist, which he has formatted for the Kindle and offered for sale on Amazon. Here's his money graf:

I'm not out to crush anyone's dreams here. But writing a good book is hard to do, and not everyone can do it. There's a learning curve. We're all eager to get read. We all want to get published. But before you let the hard-to-please masses read your work, you really have to make sure it's good enough. Readers don't care about you, or your dreams, or how hard you worked on a book. They want to be entertained. Period. If they buy your book and don't like it, they'll let you and others know.

In other words, if you put it out there, the readers won't necessarily come. He makes a very good case for the gatekeeper system as it exists now.

(Via Lee Goldberg.)

Tags: Publishing Writing

Fastening the Election Season Seat Belts

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:05:47 GMT

Now we're through the second of what looks to be FIVE elections the first half of this year.

Five. Freaking five. Can't these entities get their acts together?

First, it was a special election for a vacant city council seat. One of the council members left (as required by city charter) to run for Texas House District 66. (As ugly as that race has turned, I'm starting to wonder if there's a third 6 hiding somewhere.) Three candidates filed for that seat and no one got 50% of the vote. That leaves a runoff on March 27. Early voting starts next Thursday.

The aforementioned District 666 race ended in a runoff between two candidates. I think there are a couple of other primary races that went to runoff. That election is April 15 with early voting kicking off on April 5.

But wait, there's more! We have three seats open on the school board. That election is scheduled for May 8 with early voting starting April 26. Hope we don't have a runoff on one of those seats.

This means a spring filled with robocalls and nastiness on blog comment threads. The fur continues to fly over at the Plano DMN blog. Those people look like a bunch of little kids screaming at each other on the playground. Two freaking months of this stuff. As if the last month hasn't been nasty enough.

The big news? The Tea Party candidates, for the most part, got nowhere.

Tags: Politics