And Otto goes berserk

I got through a couple of my projects, then we paid the bills and managed date night. We had a couple of errands along the way, one of which involved stopping at Pet Smart for dog food. Lo and behold, pumpkin balls are available once more.

Otto is bouncing off the walls with joy. Frankie doesn’t know what to think. She has only had tennis balls, and these don’t have fur.

Ever since he was a puppy, the pumpkin ball was his favorite toy. They have a squeaker inside and they flash when they bounce. Otto is a simple soul. It doesn’t take much to make him happy. Maybe I should take a lesson from him.

A positive step back

I spent the dark morning hours going through The Hat and tightening things up. This needed to be done, and I feel much better about moving forward now. There were some good suggestions from some of you about my section-break symbols. Jan Hawk encouraged me to try modifying a png file and seeing how it looked. I’m going to post what it looks like now, and hope to get some feedback from you guys.

In this scene, the hat is playing his bass, but Lizzie is providing the hands. It’s more important that she’s learning about the symbiotic nature of their relationship. If I leave the section breaks like this, would any of you find the bass clefs distracting somehow? Do they enhance the story at all?

Right now, I love them, but it could be the simple act of making them successfully and not how they might influence the story.

We finally got the dining room table assembled and but back in place. It looks beautiful on the new rug and the grey floor. We still need to get the rug for the living area, but it’s looking pretty darned good around here.

This afternoon, I assembled this week’s Lisa Burton Radio and sent the authors an advance link. I count that as forward progress too.

In other news, the annual pumpkin beers are starting to show up in force. I love this time of year, and can’t wait for it to officially be Fall. Oh, and the pet stores got a few pumpkin balls in. These are a lower quality than last year, but they said their stock is just starting to come in and there will be more stuff later on.

Partial chill today

I don't know that I ever take a day for myself, not completely. I decided not to hit it too hard today though. This is my flex day for the week, and I had the house to myself.

Otto hasn't been sleeping at night this week. Is suspect my son makes him sleep all day so he doesn't have to walk him or deal with him. Otto started his day at 2:00 AM today. I decided to get up with him, so my wife could sleep. She had to answer the alarm clock about an hour later, but I did what I could. I'm going to be talking to my son.

This led to hours of pumpkin ball play, and I decided to try out the slow motion video on my new camera. It works better with a thrower that just lets me film. I posted one on my own and one after my wife got home. You can see them at the Entertaining Stories Facebook page.

Of course, after my wife got on the road, Otto went to sleep. Why wouldn't he, he'd been awake all night. I took advantage of the time to finish reading a book. There is something so perfect about the dark hours before sunrise.

I woke him up for another game of pumpkin ball, because I want him sleepy tonight. While we played, I turned on some Loony Toons cartoons, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I don't think I have to have children in the house to watch Wabbit Season.

During the cool down, I took advantage and worked up three shticks for Lisa Burton Radio. Once those were in the mail, we played with another of Otto's toys for a while. When I checked the mail, one of the radio interview is already back.

I did my typical blog skimming, checked Facebook and Twitter. Then I wrote out a bit of micro-fiction. This is for my possible baseball book, called The Enhanced League. I'm trying to make all the stories fit together, albeit loosely. This makes it hard to use the twist endings I enjoy so much. There are a few, but not as frequently as I'd prefer. I have no idea what I'll do with it eventually. Right now it keeps me in fiction until I can dedicate some real time to my novel.

I also scheduled my next post over at Story Empire. It's kind of a loose assessment of all the things I tried during October to get readers to look my way. These things are beyond what the Story Empire crowd is doing together. The post is scheduled for somewhere around midnight on Halloween.

Speaking of Story Empire, the big tour is still going on, and so are the scavenger hunts. If you haven't entered yet, all you have to do is answer a couple of questions you can find the answers to on our site. You don't have to actually visit all the tour host sites. Ten gift cards and five ebooks are up for grabs, and you could win from multiple authors.

Also speaking of Story Empire, we are doing a couple of book blasts on Halloween. They're all paranormal stories to some degree, so it makes sense. For one of the blasts, they require either a discount or a free day. I hadn't planned on it, but I set Will O' the Wisp up as free all that day. The links will be in my post at Story Empire after it loads. Reminder: I also set it up in the UK store, because I love you guys too. So if you didn't win in the giveaway, I'm giving you an unplanned second chance.

I managed all this before 2:00 this afternoon. You can get a lot done when you start at 2:00 AM. I'll probably take a nap, and tonight we're having date night somewhere. No doubt the World Series will be involved somewhere along the line. Maybe I can find my own version of pumpkin (beer) along the way.

The Ballad of Monday

Otto wanted to get up at 5:00 this morning. I walked him, but convinced him to go back to bed for another hour or so. Sometimes it works, and I got lucky today.

I ran through my favorite blog sites, checked and answered emails by the ton, and flipped through a cool magazine my mother sent me. I may save the magazine for inclusion in a future Idea Mill post.

I started a special project with a fellow author, but it really requires a minimal effort. We're still working on it, but it won't require a ton of time.

Sean Harrington shared a book cover he made on his Deviantart site. This one is for the Zombie Zero series, and the specific title is The Zombie Killers. I want to share it here, but respect that the art doesn't belong to me. Therefore, I'm including the link. (Link)

Sean is good at his job. I love the contrasts between light and detailed vs dark and foggy. The allocation of space makes the girl feel more trapped. The thin door, the look on the character's face, it's just wonderful.

Along about mid-day, I'd played about four rounds of pumpkin ball. The bottom is nearly torn completely off. I put Otto's harness on and we both went to PetCo. It's about a 40 minute drive, and another 40 to get home again. (Depending upon the traffic.)

He really enjoyed everyone who wanted to see the bulldog, and the smells of the dog food aisle. He checked out a plush toy in one of the bins, but never got too excited … until we found the bin of pumpkin balls. This time I grabbed two, and a squeaky rat just for good measure.

I'll hold one pumpkin ball in reserve, and gave him the other one right away.

I don't know if it shows up, but there is a flashing light inside a new pumpkin ball. It activates with motion, and makes Otto pretty crazy. The old one wore out after about a week. Turns out, he really likes the rat too. He keeps bringing it to me, but doesn't seem particularly interested in fetching it. Apparently, that activity is reserved for pumpkin ball. I don't know what the rules of rat play are, but am trying to learn.

After a few more rounds of pumpkin ball, and being required to squeak the rat, I decided to check my Amazon Giveaway. I set this up to last two weeks as a way of supporting the blog tour over at The Paranormal Bar & Grille. It isn't going to work out quite that way.

As of a moment ago, I've already given out four of the five available copies, and expect them all to be gone tomorrow morning. If you want to try winning a copy of Will O' the Wisp, you'd better enter PDQ. Here is the link.

The giveaway worked better than expected. It's hard to complain when something exceeds my expectations. Five new people will get a copy of Will O' the Wisp, and the giveaway netted exposure.

So what amazing stunt can I pull to bring my promos up to Halloween? The blog tour is ongoing, and I entered a book blast on Halloween day. The blast requires a discount of some kind, so I need to figure out what I'm going to do there. I don't feel inclined to run another Amazon giveaway. It worked, and it worked out better than the 99¢ sale did.

I really don't have any Thursday guests for the immediate future of Lisa Burton Radio. I may shoehorn something together with Patty Hall just to keep the posts going, but it might spread the love for Lisa Burton Radio and for Will O' the Wisp.

One of the takeaways here is to contact me if you want to have a character interview on Lisa Burton Radio. The spots have been growing in popularity, but you have to step up.

Back to the paycheck job tomorrow. I goofed off compared to my normal weekend routine, but I managed to read some short stories and wrote one of my own. I had a lot of fun with Otto, and I worked on several Lisa Burton Radio posts for the November timeframe. Not a lot on the writing front, but I kind of needed a weekend like that.