From my desk to yours …
Well, it’s Tuesday. We’re having another smoky day here in Southern Ontario, the sun rose very red this morning from my vantage point on the couch after I came down for my coffee this morning. It’s finally getting warm though, which is such a nice change.
Over the last week, I have diligently brought my plants in on cold nights and watered them in the evenings or the mornings when the sun is not too high, and so far things are growing! I’m very pleased to report.
Last week, on Wednesday, I did something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time and got my nose pierced. Hilariously, pretty much everyone I’ve told has mentioned they thought my nose was already pierced, which I will take as a compliment.
We went up to the lake on Sunday to visit my parents. The pair of us haven’t been up there together since last July, so it was time to go and see them and the house. As usual, they had things to show us that they’d worked on and we went for a long wander along the streets nearby. I’m always looking for turtles, which we didn’t see any of, but we did see a pair of Sandhill cranes, which is always fantastic. They’re such cool birds.
They make this really wild noise. These two were being harried by a red-winged blackbird who was presumably trying to herd them away from its nest, and we got to watch one of the cranes turn around and give the blackbird a bit of a retaliation display, which was very neat! They are an endangered species, I believe, due to being hunted to near extinction.
My parents have cranes, egrets and the big herons up at the cottage, and I always love to see them. They’re such interesting, prehistoric birds.
I can’t believe we’re almost all the way through May and we haven’t had a single, wicked spring thunderstorm yet. Last year, on the 21st, we had a derecho. I was outside in it, sheltering under the lean-to in the back of our apartment’s yard, thinking that I’d made a very poor life choice as the wind hit 120 km/h and took a bunch of neighbourhood trees with it. And yet, this year, we are closer to the lake, and we have had only one good storm and it was at 3am. Please can I have a shelf cloud?
What am I watching?
Still working on Disco! I’m so close to the end of season four now and I think Nancy was right when she said this season was maybe the best. I feel like the character arcs are really arriving and the story is great and I can’t wait to see how they wrap this all up. The next thing on my list is to go through and watch all the short treks, which I know I will also very much enjoy.
Otherwise, I’ve learned today that the Chocolate Guy has a cooking show on netflix, so I’ll be watching that as uncomplicated TV in the next few days, I think. I like a cooking show that doesn’t turn into a yelling match.
What am I listening to?
Nothing special again! Just my usual library of tunes. We did put the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack on yesterday afternoon while my partner was cooking dinner, as it is an eternal favourite that we can both almost always agree on.
What am I reading?
I’ve been reading! I’m still working on The Winter Sea, but I’m most of the way through now and I really do like it.
Yesterday, I finally remembered to update my library cards onto libby and then I went on a spree of putting things on hold and also discovered that The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea was available so I sat down and blew through that, and it was great. I really enjoyed the story, and the mythology of it and I would like to read many more words about the characters in the story. What a good little novella.
Upon finishing that, I downloaded Rust in the Root, which I have also gotten stuck into yesterday afternoon and I know I’m going to love it. It’s got such a neat magic system.
It feels good to read again.
Writing (or the lack thereof)
Still working on the anthology piece, but it’s coming together in a way that I reallly like, finally. So, I think that’s good. I’ll continue picking at it and then be able to hand it in for a round of real edits. It has a working title but eventually I’ll have to decide if that title is what I want to keep or if I want it to be something else. There’s some big sections that I’ve taken out, in order to bring it under word count and I’m going to have to start slicing down the smut scene next, since it’s part of why the story is so long. Probably there doesn’t need to be 4k of sex, but I mean, maybe there does.
The other thing I’ve been doing is working through updating a spreadsheet that I’m going to start using to track all my various works in progress. It’s been fun to actually open up all the documents that I have lying around in my drive and see what’s in them and whether or not they’re something I am going to continue or not and what all is in them.
Wish me luck on my editing, everyone!
Miscellany
SFP continues to publish books on Amazon! We would love it if you’d read them. Also, we were very excited to announce the title of our upcoming sci-fi anthology!
My mother and I made these potatoes on Sunday night and they were super good and I am going to make them forty more times this summer, I think.
I will no longer be asking people how they are, I will instead be starting all conversations like this.
Hope you have an excellent, short (if you’re in Canada) week!