February’s Off to a Pretty Start

Just a few photos from the last two days, driving in to work. Nice to see a bit of blue sky, it’s been so dark and rainy for so long.

 

November Collection

I can’t believe it’s been a whole month since I posted anything.

I threw in the towel on NaNoWriMo again. I’ve been sick for a week and it sort of took the wind out of my sails. I’m about 10,000 words into a new thing, my first attempt at a YA novel. But fear not, the vampires are never far from my mind and plan to get back to them ASAP because I miss my fanged friends.

Here are a few shots from this month, and I still have more to process and upload.

The black speck by the tree is an eagle

Geese from below 11-15-15

11-15-15

Leaves of gold 11-15-15

Lots of geese 11-15-15

Sunrise 11-16-15

Puffy cloud 11-9-15

Japanese maple 11-6-15

11-06-15 Fog Sun Trees

11-6-15 backlit leaves

11-05-15 oak tree

11-04-15 maples and oak

11-04-15 foggy sunrise

11-04-15 foggy pond at sunrise

11-04-15 fog in the preserve

11-03-15 walnut tree at sunrise

11-03-15 gold in the fog

11-02-15 morning moon

Autumn’s Early

After a lengthy, extremely dry summer filled with excessive heat during which the record for number of days above 90F was broken, our rainy season seems to be off to an early start. Beginning last weekend, August 28, when a large storm blew into the Pacific Northwest, disrupting the Hood-to-Coast run, and forcing campers off the beach, causing power outages, tree limbs crashing into cars and homes, it has been unseasonably cool with rain nearly every day. It doesn’t always amount to much, mostly just wetting everything down a bit, but my lawn is greening up again (I never water it in the summer). It’s in the low 40s now in the mornings, and I’ve had to break out my boots and warm clothing. Forecasts call for temps back into the upper 80s, possibly even 90 by next weekend. Well, that could change (and probably will). We’ve already had fog in the mornings, which we don’t normally see until late October, and I think last year not until November.

September 3, 2015

September 3, 2015

September 3, 2015

September 4, 2015

September 4, 2015

September 4, 2015

Mostly I’m writing this for my own benefit to keep track of when the bad weather started this rainy season. Goddess knows we need the rain and cooler temps to help fight all the fires, so I’m not complaining. It’s just in a few months, or a couple years down the road I won’t remember when the summer ended and the rainy season began. Well, we’ll see how long this lasts.

But we have had some fabulous clouds as a result.

Here’s hoping for a wetter, cooler winter than we’ve had the last couple years. I’m sorry for people who struggle to pay heating bills, but we’re running out of resources to fight wildfires that have destroyed dozens of homes.

I think I will go crochet some more hats.

‘Cause I Just Don’t Have Enough To Do

So my latest thing is I’m thinking about doing a newsletter focusing on my book and the upcoming sequel as well as other writing, and offering some exclusive content (backstory on characters, new stuff related to the Revenants series and other projects), contests and giveaways. Yeah I know, like I don’t have enough to do already, right?

If you’d like to sign up you can do so here. Unfortunately with WordPress.com sites you can’t embed the forms so I have to have an off-site page for it. I’ll be moving the blog to a self-hosted site soon, though. I’m not sure when I’ll start sending out the newsletter, and it will be monthly if I can keep up. Otherwise maybe every other month, so you won’t be inundated with stuff every week.

The white flowers below are Oregon’s state flower, the trillium. It’s protected, so don’t pick them if you see them.

Entmoot

Outstanding in its field

The eagle is landing

fine specimen

wild herd of trillium

We’re still getting a lot of fog in the mornings, as you can see.

Oregon Spring

I’ve been taking loads of pictures lately, just no time to post. Here’s a selection the last week or so. Some of the dates are wrong, typos, ya know. But just in case spring is late in your part of the world, enjoy these pictures.

Not much else going on. Still working with CreateSpace to try to get the cover image for Revenants Abroad printed right. They’ve sent me two proof copies and both were so dark you could hardly see the details and colors in the background. I’m very frustrated. It’s not brain surgery, it shouldn’t be this hard. Let’s hope third time’s the charm.

Revenants Abroad – Chapter 23

Chapter 23 is up now on Wattpad! Only five more to go. And as I’ve said I will be removing it from Wattpad entirely about a week after the final chapter posts so I can make it available on Amazon, so not too much longer until the paper copies will be for sale.

So today started out incredibly foggy, cleared later, then the fog was starting to come back on the way home. I really liked the clouds that look like a halo around the tree. It was so odd, lined up just right for that shot.

Revenants Abroad – Chapter 18

Chapter 18 posted this morning on Wattpad! That leaves ten chapters to go. At this rate of two chapters per week I anticipate pulling it off Wattpad around February 7. At that point I plan to have it available in paper format on Amazon, so the free read has to end. According to Amazon’s terms, if the book is available for free elsewhere, they will also make it free.

I haven’t worked out pricing yet for the paper copy, but I anticipate it being in the range of $12.00. It’s kind of sad how little of that I’ll actually get. If I price it much lower I’ll have to pay Amazon for each sale. Yup, no kidding.

I do plan to buy (yes, I have to buy them from Amazon) a few copies for giveaways and a couple of people who have already requested autographed copies. Please understand that if you request a copy directly from  me, I will have to charge for shipping. Unfortunately I can’t absorb those costs the way Amazon can. The ebook will remain available from Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc.

I really appreciate everyone who’s already been reading and especially those who have bought the ebook. Thank you so much. When I started the book, I had no idea if it would ever be published, and if anyone would like the characters as I’d hoped. So special thanks to those already asking about a sequel!

All these pics were taken yesterday morning on the way to work. The fog was patchy, but thankfully not as bad as it had been earlier in the week. Makes for treacherous driving.

Some Consolation

This is what I get for going to work when most people are on vacation/holiday.

It’s a driveway at one of the farms I pass, with their own streetlight, but we’ll just pretend it’s the moon, ‘k?

And these trees on the hill. I like silhouettes.

I did not set the camera to black and white, that’s what it looked like.

I did start to see some colors in the clouds a little further down the road, in places where the fog parted a bit. Mostly it was thick and gray this morning.

And here’s a thoroughly beautiful piece played by Portland guitarist Scott Kritzer. David Andrews’s “Christmas Youth” which was playing on the radio when I took that top pic. For more amazing music AllClassical.org is into their Festival of Carols. It’s four full days and nights of incomparably beautiful holiday music. If you’re not in the Portland area, you can click on the “Listen Now” and live stream it.

I Will Never Get Tired of Autumn

Small selection of photos from different days. The close-up of the red leaves, and the geese against the dark clouds were taken yesterday. The powerlines in fog is from this morning. The bottom two are from October.

 

Country Life

Maybe one of these will serve as inspiration.