Random ramblings

Earlier this week, when we were under the assumption that Countertop Trends would be doing the job right the second time, and that we would be getting our counter finally installed yesterday morning, we made arrangements for the imp to spend Friday with his grandparents to keep him out from under foot. 

Except...Countertop Trends didn't get the job done right the second time.  Seems an inability to follow written instructions isn't unique to students.  I'm just hoping they'll get it right the third time. 

So, Thursday and Friday, I only had the pixie.  The upside?  No fighting.  The downside?  I have a lonely little pixie, and all of us miss the imp. 

Grandma and Grandpa found a toy grill for the pixie at the flea market, recently.  She's played with it pretty non-stop since Daddy set it up for her.  Since it's a noisy toy, it has to stay in her room. 

I'm going to need to bathe the dog, soon.  She badly needs a haircut, since the weather is sort of steadily warming up. 

I say "sort of" because we keep getting these storms coming through, like last night's, that cool us back off for a couple of days.  And that keep the dog inside (and in her crate because I can't keep the dog from eating kids' toys, and can't keep the kids' toys up out of the dog's reach) because it's either storming, or has turned her yard into a mud swamp.

Cricket, our black and white cat, was really scared, last night, and restless.  The pixie went to try to comfort her by petting her, but the cat wasn't expecting it, shot straight up in the air, and accidentally came down on the pixie's hand with her cleats out. 

Shadow and Cricket are both just a bit over a year old.  I think I remember reading that cats don't hit their full growth until they're between fifteen and eighteen months, but Shadow is about ten pounds and Cricket is about twelve.  Shadow's kind of normal-sized, but Cricket?  I've had tomcats that big, but never a fixed female.  And she's still growing, a bit.  Both cats are very affectionate, and love the kids.  Cricket, in particular, adores the pixie, and tries to climb into her lap at every opportunity.  Kinda funny, since the cat weighs almost half as much as the pixie.

I've been working on...hmm...I think Road Trip to Tartarus might well work for a title.  Highway just doesn't feel right to me.  I've got it about two-thirds done on rough drafts of the planned story-chapters.  I've had one or two just jump out and demand to be written, too.  It's going pretty well--writing pretty fast.  There's a total of 31,000 words, right now, with probably another 15-25,000 words to go.  And most of those stories will probably be expanded upon before publication.  I'm betting it's going to end up somewhere around the 75-85,000 word mark--or about 225-250 pages in a paperback edition like The Godshead.  And after I finish this one, I've got three more in the same world set up, and may branch out into other pantheons after I finish these. 

But those are for other summers.  For this summer, my other planned book will be the sequel to The Last Pendragon.

I think, though, that I'm going to have to rewrite my textbook before I write Resurgent (sequel to The Last Pendragon).  The deadline for inserting it into my Blackboard site for my class (it is going to be on campus, but will have to be Blackboard enhanced because I want the textbook to be free to my students) is mid-July, and it needs to be done, edited, and posted long before then.  This will be the last book in the series.

I sold twelve more copies of The Last Pendragon, this past week, putting me at forty-nine Kindle copies, and two paperback copies for May.  I also sold six Kindle copies of The Godshead, and one Kindle copy and one paperback copy of Survivors.  So, a total of fifty-six books sold in May--which, I think, is actually a little bit more than I've sold total of both of my other books.  I hope those of you  that bought my stories enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.