Not quite so busy, but productive

BlogPad Pro finally updated their app after six months. They waited this long to accommodate iOS 8. I have no idea why it took that long, but I’m trying the new version tonight. This always was my favorite blogging app.

 I busted out my long suffering novel today, The Playground. Getting Will O’ the Wisp out took some effort on my part, and the current project had to take a back seat. I added a whole chapter today, and it was the last one to get through the middle slog.

I have to confess a love for one character in this story. It seems like every story has one, and it’s rarely the main character. I stopped when it was time for him to pick up the story. This was on purpose. When I pick it back up the words will fly off my fingertips.

Speaking of Wisp, sales have slowed down. This was expected, but I would have preferred June or so. On the Wisp front, I got it added to the Rave Reviews Book Club catalog. I asked to place it in the Young Adult section, but they placed it under Paranormal, Science Fiction, and Fantasy. This is correct too, so I won’t complain. Now I can use their hashtags to promote the book on Twitter, and have been. The retweet response has been phenomenal.

When I finished writing, I made a sandwich. Old What’s Her Face* bought some kind of Hippy bread. This stuff has every kind of seed, nut, or kernel you can imagine. It reminded me of the horse bread from Pillars of the Earth. It tasted fine, but it was really dry.

 I need to book my blog tour, but there are a couple of people who offered to host me, and I want to hit them up first. These are loyal readers, and deserve first crack. I’ll probably send out some email inquiries tomorrow.

I upgraded my “about me” page. It includes links to my new book baby, and I mention the current projects and what status they are in.

I started reading the first Windemere book last night. This has been on my list for a long time, and I need to get on with it. Charles has been a great supporter, and has become a friend. I’m enjoying it so far. He’s doing a Twubs chat tonight, and I’m going to see if I can catch part of it after I get this posted. It’s supposed to last until 11:00 PM EST, so he ought to still be there.

Tonight was date night, but we started early. Maybe this is what old timers do, but we avoided the long lines at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

Do any of you guys fall in love with your supporting characters? Do you use BlogPad Pro? Did you make the horse bread from Pillars of the Earth? (I tried) Are you heading for Charles’ Twubs chat, maybe I’ll see you there.

* Entertaining Stories, protecting my wife’s online identity since 2013.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Getting a Little Work Done

I didn’t gat a lot of time to write today. I forgot to track my word count for a few days and I’m afraid this includes a day of quick edits. I don’t know whether I added or subtracted more words last Wednesday. All I know is The Playground now has 23,037 words. Most of them are from today and it’s 3328 combined with Wednesday.

I’m tracking three separate characters in this story, and may not have the word count woes I usually do. Something tells me I’m going to have too many this time.

My heroine has some idea what’s going on, and what the parasite is doing to her. She got in the Christmas mood and narrowly avoided killing her new friend in a firearms accident. She still hasn’t taken up the mantle of what’s happened to her. This means she’s still in act one mode.

My anti hero learned a bit about the job he was asked to do. He’s going to learn a bit more by debasing himself with a less than beautiful woman. He hasn’t accepted the job yet, so he’s still clearly within act one. I think I’ll have him tear through gang land just to let him learn a bit more before he gets started. Must remember to get back to the butt licking dog.

My next move is to let my victim character, a little girl named Chloe, enjoy her Christmas. Then I’m going to wreck her life even further. She doesn’t get to decide what act we’re involved in. The adults make that decision.

I wrote this post with the WordPress app. I don’t like it as much as BlogPad, but they haven’t updated BlogPad Pro for iOS 8 yet. Fingers crossed.

iOS H8te

Yeah, I wrote the title that way on purpose. It’s supposed to be clever.

Today’s post is intended to provide a place for iOS users to commiserate about the new operating system, and possibly offer some hints if you have any. Let’s hear them, God knows we need them.

I spent most of two nights ago watching my iPad and iPhone fail at getting the latest operating system. I wound up checking the internet for a solution. I had to hook up to the Mac (which also needed an update) and go through the iTunes store.

I finally got everything up and running, but my initial opinion is this iSucks. My photos are scattered from Hell to breakfast now, with no obvious way to change things around. They are organized by date, or location. Then there’s an option of seeing them pinned onto a map based on where the photo was taken or downloaded. That’s about as handy as a chapped ass. What if I want to organize by topic; cover art, sourdough photos, etc.?

Someone online suggested making folders and organizing things the way I like them. Great idea.

I grab artwork off the internet. Some of it gets pinned to my outlines, some of it becomes wallpaper on my phone that I change every day, then I delete it never to be used again. It varies from science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal, to quite a few pinups. (the painted kind, not the photo kind.) I made an artwork folder on my iPad and dragged everything into it. Everything is duplicated not moved. Delete one = delete both.

The sales pitch was that iCloud syncs everything up really well now. This morning I tried to change my phone background. No artwork folder, it’s only on the iPad. Looks like iCloud isn’t delivering on its promise.

I went to my RSS reader, Feeddler Pro. Every page I open crashes the app. I finally read a couple archaeology articles and two comics by telling it to open the pages in my Safari browser. I decided to look for an update to Feeddler. This was app of the year or something last year. The app store says it no longer exists – at all.

The app store found a little used app and said it has an upgrade available. What the iHell? I told it to upgrade. It said we can no longer find this app in the iTunes store. This is the same system that told me to upgrade the stupid thing. I tried it a day later and it upgraded. Color me iConfused.

The new iOS says I can send an audio text now. All I have to do is hold down the microphone icon and speak. I tried it out on my wife. I entered her contact information, and the microphone icon disappeared. Not an option. (We both have iPhones and upgraded software.) I tried the microphone icon on the keyboard. It produced a wonderful speech to text, but no audio text.

Worst of all is WordPress in the Safari Browser. I use the Reader to read all of your blogs. Keep in mind that I am frequently away from my computer, and I sleep sometimes too. When I wake up, I may have eight to ten hours of blogs to catch up on. Bedtime for me could be breakfast time for some of the blogs I read. (Ali in Ireland, Jo in South Africa, etc.) We aren’t all on Mountain Daylight time here.

When I open a post it always does so in a new page, and I like that. When I close that page now, my WordPress Reader is a sheet of grey. I have to hit refresh to get it back. That means I start at the top and read southward all over again. I have a temporary work around, in that if I’m really quick, I can open a post and immediately return to reader. I can’t read the post until later, so I open a few dozen posts and finish with Reader. I can read each post after that and close the page when I’m finished. Then I only have to croak and restart Reader once.

This gives me an idea. Sorry for the aside. Reader ought to have a filtering option. I could scroll through it and tag all the posts I want to read. Filter everything down and let me read the entire post in filtered view. Sorry, back to my tantrum…

I use Blogpad Pro for my posts. I really like it, but they posted two days ago that it has glitches with iOS 8. They expected an upgrade soon. I give them credit for warning me, and am certain they’ll do just what they said.

Apple always has an update out relatively soon after release. I really hope they address some of these issues. It sounds like the app store has some problems going on too.

On the plus side, if I connect my phone to power, I can say “Hey Siri” and ask her some useless question. Might be cool in the car, but it has to be connected to power. Yay, that works just as advertised. (worthless, but it works.)

How about you guys? Are any of you Apple users having any problems? Call them out in the comments, and offer solutions if you have any.

Update: I sent an email off to Feeddler. They have a Feeddler Pro 2 under consideration in the app store right now. This one should work with iOS 8. Nice folks, quick answer back for a $4 consumer.

Mojo Chicken – Caveman Style

I’ve about promoted my novel enough this week. Let’s have a little fun tonight. This is my Mojo Chicken – Caveman Style. I was first exposed to Mojo Chicken on a business trip to Florida. It isn’t widely available in Idaho, so I had to make my own. I googled and tried several recipes, and the first successful one used frozen grapefruit juice concentrate. I use fresh now. First the basic ingredients:

Ingredients

This involves citrus and heat. That friendly little vegetable up front is a habanero pepper. Treat it with respect. I use a blender and put in the lime zest and juice, the grapefruit juice, dry spices, a glurg each of water, corn syrup, and oil. Set it aside.

Spatchcock

Use poultry shears and remove the spine from tail to neck. Discard any giblets if your chicken came with them. Flip the chicken over and spread apart while pushing down. He should make a noticeable crack. Use the paring knife to remove the breastbone and keel. Poke a hole at the back of each thigh and push the knob of the opposite drumstick through. This is called a spatchcock. (Thank you Alton Brown.) it makes the whole thing about the same thickness for even cooking.

Marinade

Pour the marinade over the chicken, and make sure to work some under the skin of the breast and thigh. Make sure you wash after this. It’s not only because of raw chicken. That habanero is nothing to trifle with. If you rub your eyes, or manage to touch other sensitive places you’ll never forget again. Shove him in the fridge overnight.

The next day, we’re inviting some more players to the party.

More tools

We need a cast iron pan, two potatoes, some fireman’s gloves and a twenty pound slab of soapstone. Soapstone is like a battery for temperature and holds the temperature for a long time. Today we’re using heat. Shove the rock in the oven and set it for 450 degrees F.

In the mean time, brown the chicken in the skillet and set it aside. Slice the potatoes about a half inch thick and layer them in the skillet. Potatoes are salt suckers so I salt both sides.

Potato Layer

Put the chicken on top, skin side up. This part is controversial, but I add the marinade to the pan. I know it’s a poultry thing, but I like stuffing inside my turkey too. Besides, it’s what makes the potatoes amazing and I’m going to cook it.

Rock on top

Adjust the temperature to 400 degrees F. Oil and place the hot rock on top and shove it in the oven for one hour, ten minutes.

Mojo Chicken

Potatoes and Sauce

We spoon the sauce over both the chicken and potatoes. I’ve added other root vegetables and they work well. Tonight we had broccoli in the house, so I didn’t. It was awesome, and there’s enough for tomorrow too.

I’ve grown disillusioned with the Apple WordPress app. This is my first time using BlogPad Pro. It’s kind of confusing, but seems to do a lot more. I’ll know how I like it once I see this online.

Edited with BlogPad Pro