Catching up

I took a couple of days off so Rebecca and I could spend some time together, and now I'm playing a desperate game of catch-up.

During those days, we took a lot of walks, and while passing a stream, I caught a picture of this guy...



Since he's in shadow, it's kind of hard to see, but this little guy had more red in his fur than I've ever seen in a raccoon.

Now that I've been back to work over the last couple of days, I've updated The Genre Mall and the Sam's Dot website.

I'm not expecting things to ease up any time soon as tomorrow marks the official start of the Ephemeris pre-release sale...so there will be a lot of promoting to do throughout the day. Tomorrow I'll have the actual link to the pre-sale site, and I'll post it here so those of you interested in ordering a copy at a discount can do so.

A day of nothing

In all the time Rebecca and I have been together, we've never had a day where we didn't have something (or several somethings) to do. Tomorrow will be the first time that we are completely free...so we are going to relax.

If we get up early enough in the morning, we'll probably take a walk...probably to the little river that runs through the field behind us. After that, we're going to come home and watch all three Lord of the Rings movies (the Director's Cuts)...only taking breaks to call the kids and order take out.

I don't know if either of us will be able to handle not having anything to do...but we are certainly going to try!

Featured Anthology at Anthology Builder

The featured anthology at Anthology Builder contains one of my stories, "The Twin Sorceresses." This is my one, and so far only, story that would be categorized as a children's story. Yes, I know it's kind of scary that I might actually be writing stuff that could influence children, but there it is...

If you're interested in the anthology, which looks like it has some other great stuff in it, you can find it at http://www.anthologybuilder.com/view_template.php?template_id=381.

Tranquility in Tales of the Talisman

My short story "Tranquility" is in the current issue of Tales of the Talisman. A much older version of this story was the first story I wrote after making the "decision" to become a science fiction writer. This story has some of the same elements as that original, but I made a lot of changes to it...which it desperately needed. Gone are the three pages of exposition at the very beginning of the story that explain the war...like I implied, I was a rookie.

The basic premise of the story is that there's a disgruntled main character who is in the military, serving on the moon. When war breaks out on Earth, he helps to put an end to it...but at what cost to his psyche?

If you're interested in reading the story, you can order a copy from The Genre Mall at http://www.genremall.com/zinesr.htm#talisman.

A very productive couple of days

I've been keeping myself very busy over the last couple of days, and as a result, I've gotten a lot done, including finishing up two major projects.

I finished re-working the main Flying Pen Press page. You can check that out at http://www.flyingpenpress.com.

Even more impressive, I finished the final revisions on the Ephemeris RPG. There's still formatting to do, and a lot of other work to be done, but it looks like we should be able to start the pre-sale during the first week of June.

On a more personal note, I found out yesterday that my dad will be coming out for a KMGH reunion, so this will be Rebecca's first chance to meet someone in my family. For the most part, I think she's excited, but since I told her that I get a lot of my weirdness from him...I think she's a little worried.

We also think we may have found the site for our wedding next year...but it's in a public park, so we'll have to look into the rules for that. It's kind of interesting because I had mentioned the place a few times, and she never seemed to enthused. But on Friday we were over by there, and I told her how I envisioned the wedding happening...now she loves the idea.

Memorial Day Weekend update

Things have been crazy around the homestead. Yesterday was the last day of second grade for our oldest, and now both kids have gone to Texas to visit Grandma...and they won't be back until July. Things are sadly quiet around here.

The revisions on Ephemeris are coming along. With a little luck, I will actually have the final revisions done over this long weekend.

Over at Flying Pen we're talking about something that I think will be a great idea...but I can't really say anything about it right now...but we're putting together a team that might be creating some very fun stuff.

Feeling extremely sleep deprived at the moment, but hopefully I'll catch up on sleep soon.

In the meantime, enjoy a picture of one of our newest neighbors...

Nobody's Home to Aoife's Kiss

My short short "Nobody's Home" has been picked up for the March 2010 issue of Aoife's Kiss. It's kind of hard to believe, but this is the last science fiction short story that I have circulating. Most of the last few years have been taken up with novel writing and game creation, so I've run out of short stories.

There are still a few in my collection, but they're so bad, they never deserve to see the light of day again...

I said I wasn't going to do it...

...but I did it anyway. I've now joined the masses at Twitter. If you're interested in following me there, feel free to drop by https://twitter.com/jalanerwine.

Keeping the family on their toes

For those of you who actually know me, you're probably well aware that I'm basically a disaster in the kitchen, but this is more because I just don't really care about cooking...as opposed to actually being incompetent.

Apparently my family seems to think that I don't know my way around the kitchen. I told the kids that we were going to make breakfast in bed for Rebecca, so when I got up, the oldest had a bowl and a box of cereal out. Both of them were quite surprised that I planned on actually cooking breakfast...and Rebecca was equally surprised when we brought it in for her.

Later in the day I made a traditional Chickasaw fry bread. It was the first time I'd ever made anything like this, and I'm pretty sure it was the first time that I've every actually made something from scratch. Even to my surprise, it turned out really good. The girls seemed to like it at first, but I think they changed their minds the more they ate it...but I liked it, and that's what matters.

I do so like to keep people on their toes.

A Spring Walk

The oldest and I took a walk yesterday, exploring some of the "wild" around us that we hadn't seen before. On Thursday, we noticed that the prairie dog babies were starting to come out of their holes...so, the first shot I got was of one of them on its hole. He's kind of hard to see, but he's the off-colored spot on the fresher looking hole...



Normally, this field is very brown and sparse, but since we've gotten a few inches of rain in the last month, the field has really greened up. So, I had to get a shot of it...



Having prairie dogs around is a pretty cool thing, and I've been reading up on them, trying to understand why they do the things they do, and I've found that they have a complicated society, and actually seem to be fairly bright. Not only that, but they aren't the nuisance that most people claim they are...in fact, they're an important part of the ecosystem in this part of the country. There are hundreds of these guys in the field, and with the green, they stand out a lot more. So if you look at the other side of the river in this shot, all the little brown splotches are prairie dogs...



The most surprising part of the walk was when we came upon this young lady. I had no idea we had these so close to our place. This picture was actually taken within half a mile of our door...

For Goodreads followers

I'm now cross posting this blog on my Goodreads site, so now you can read my entries here, or over there...your choice.

If there's anything specific that you'd like for me to talk about, please let me know...