A Time For Everything

Aside from attend the conference of course.

As I mentioned last week or the week before, I wanted to go on the Sandia Peak Tramway and so I did.

The top of the tramway sits at 10,378 ft. above sea level. I'm not one for heights--I mean being on the solid ground of the mountain was fine, but the dangling from a few inches of cable to get there part was a little nerve racking. But you're reading this, so that means I survived the trip. :0)

Here are some pictures.

Going up...


See that little brown dot in the low center? That's the shadow of the tram car!




The view to the east of the Sandia Mountains...


The view to the west of the Sandia Mountains, basically Albuquerque and surrounding communities down there.



The view going down...


Sandia Peak was Thursday afternoon after the book signing. On Saturday morning, I went to see some petroglyphs. It was a gorgeous morning with a gorgeous blue sky, a fresh breeze, and good friends.

And just FYI--my camera's phone does none of these places justice.



You can't really tell in the photo, but the contrast of the yellow flowers and the green foliage against the dark rocks was spectacular.


 Gorgeous blue sky!

Various critter tracks...

And those were my two adventures into the surrounds of Albuquerque.

One thing I found amusing during my drive into and out of New Mexico were the signs along the highway (where there were no cities and therefor no bars) that continually asked people to report drunk driving. (Not that drunk driving is amusing of course.)

Hope your week is going well. Catch you on Friday.

The conference was busy and fun and here I am at one of the author book signings...




The main doors were just to my left, so I got a good spot. This is my view of the rest of the room...




And for a nice change of pace, ballrooms with windows...!




Going to these things is always a marketing-learning opportunity. How are other authors presenting their books? What kinds of swag do they offer? How do they present themselves? I made a few notes.

Next year's con will be in St. Louis. I was hoping it was someplace too far away and that I didn't want to go to, but then they had to pick a city I could drive to again (it's 10.5 hours) and more compellingly--a city with a hockey team. The home of this year's Stanley Cup champions, no less. So I guess I'm going.

The question becomes--do I want to be a featured author rather than just a supporting author. The difference is about $100 and two additional opportunities to get in front of potential new readers. I have until February when registration opens to decide...

Hope you've had a great weekend. I did. I'll share pics of my adventures around Albuquerque on Wednesday...

Day 2 of the Great Albuquerque Road Trip...(Wednesday)

After enjoying the hotel breakfast, Pauline and stopped to see the Cadillac Ranch on our way out of Amarillo:





You just walk up, take a look, add your mark if you like, take pictures and head out. It was fun to see.

A little farther west, we hit the geo-mathematical mid-point of Route 66--not that we traveled the whole thing, but it a neat thing, so we stopped.





And then we arrived safe and sound in Albuquerque mid-afternoon.

Have a great weekend and I'll share more next week once I'm home.

GRL is the conference I go to. This year it's in Albuquerque. I've never been and looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to the drive--I'm gonna take the more northern route and check out some Route 66 tourist spots--namely The Cadillac Ranch. I haven't decided about the drive back--if I want to take the more southern trip and hit Roswell, although I'm not much into aliens and such. So maybe not.

In the mean time...

I mentioned the other day I'm trying to get two books out, so there are plenty of things to populate my TO DO list.

Things like write the book / back cover blurbs for both books. Assign ISBNs for various formats of each book. And by format I mean the epub, mobi, pdf, and print formats. Yes, an ISBN is required for each one. After that, I have to create said formats, except for print right now. And you know, finish that second book. :0)

I'm so close to finishing the second major proofing pass. I'll read it through one more time to address any last notes I've made, but there shouldn't be anything major left. I've addressed them all during this second pass.

So far, in each book of my Ten Rigs series, I had the first chapter of the next book to use as a preview. I have a first chapter for book two of this new series, except I wrote it so long ago when I was still writing heterosexual couples. I don't know if the plot line as written will convert easily as a pregnancy is involved. So do I add an extra character or do I remove the pregnancy angle? Things to ponder. There will be no chapter preview in the short anthology book.

Other things to prepare for are the book signings--do I have all the SWAG I need as well the signing accoutrements needed? That would my table signs and table runner, pens to sign with, etc, etc, etc...

Sounds like I need to borrow my kitchen table at some point and do a mock setup.

Hope your week is going well!

Catch you on Friday.

By the time the Blues scored their second goal in the first period, I was pretty confident they were taking home the Cup. Now, even TWO minutes in hockey is a long time wherein anything can happen. My beloved Stars scored three goals in seventy-one second just this past February. But sometimes you can tell whether a come back is possible. And many times we've heard that the team who scores first generally wins the game. You get an insurance goal and, well...

The joy of the winning team doesn't hit me nearly as hard as the grief of the losing team. It's one thing if you get swept in four games. It's hard, sure. It's heartbreaking to a degree. But when you duke it out to a game seven, trading wins back and forth and then you lose. That's heartbreaking. To see grown men, kneeling on the ice, shoulders shaking as they cry... wow, pulls at the heartstrings even if you don't like the team.

And the losing team can't leave the ice until the handshake line which takes a few minutes to get to while the winners are jumping around hugging, yelling, celebrating.

~

Scrivener is the writing application I use and I've had issues with it off an on for months. Nothing serious, I just feel like there are little bugs cropping up here and there. I'm waiting for the new Windows version to be released, so there probably are a few bugs since they're not updating the version I have.

Anyway... my word count for my book--I switched from the book I've been complaining about to the other half-done book I mentioned a while back--was reported to be 38K-ish according to Scrivener's word count tabulator. I didn't think that was correct, but once I exported the thing into Word, I was very pleased to see I have indeed written that many words. After a read-through, it's missing a few scenes and things, but it's way more complete than I remembered, so YAY! I also have a book cover for it already, so I don't have to spend money on it at this point.

I've reached out my editor for a slot on her calendar in August, and between now and then it's going to be nose to the grindstone to get the book complete. Minus the holiday and Sonshine's visit of course.

~

And today is Friday, tomorrow is writers group, which I'm looking forward to as usual.

Have a GREAT weekend!!!

Happy New Year!!

Hope you had lovely and fun celebrations. As usual, I was helping DH sell fireworks, but this year we had Sonshine with us so it was just like old times. :0) I'm not looking forward to putting him back on a plane bound for Seattle, but once he's gone, it'll be time to knuckle down, get back on the wagon, yada yada yada.

But what does that mean for me in terms of specifics?

1) I absolutely have to write my Grandma on a regular basis. I still have the post cards I bought last year, and it was a good idea, so I'll stick with it. I mean, sometimes writing a letter seems both daunting and tedious when nothing much changes from month to month. The specific goal is to send a post card monthly and a letter quarterly.

2) Still gotta call my mommas too. The once a month timing seems good for this task too, so we'll stick with that.

3) Walking the dog...yup. She needs the exercise and quite frankly so do I. The specific goal to start is to walk her Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I generally work from home those days, so I will take a 15-20 minute break and get the dog and myself out of the house unless it's raining.

Looks like most of last year's goals are being carried forward. But, as I've done for the first three goals, I'm going to set specifics. On we go...

4) Cook and eat better. Meaning no more bread-based carbs for awhile. And then just maybe my carb-lite tortillas at some point. Other than that, more protein and green veggies. More fish if I can track it down in my WalMart that has been re-arranging foodstuff again. Less red meat. More keto, maybe.

5) Re-institute the cleaning plan. I really wanted to hire someone to come in and do some stuff like mop the floors and scrub the bathrooms, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, so that means I have to make a concerted effort myself. So I'll be digging out the box of index cards and scheduling chores. This system is from a book called "Sidetracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise" by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. It was recommended by a friend many moons ago.

6) Reduce body fat and maintain current body weight. Losing the four pounds I've gained over the holidays isn't going to be too difficult, so I'm not overly worried about it. Losing the inches is going to be a challenge. The first little bit probably won't be too hard, but once I reach that plateau again...ugh.

Part of the plan involves not eating after 7pm and not eating before 9am. I might extend that daily fasting stint by an hour for a week or so to jump start everything. I don't often eat after 7pm regardless, although I have cheated a bit and have eaten my morning meal anywhere from 7:30am onward. Warm water is a really helpful way of feeling full and defeating the hungries. I'll be drinking a lot of warm water in the next couple of weeks.

7) Work on the writing career, such as it is. I'm not trying to make a living wage off the writing, but I would like to make enough publish a couple of books each year as well as travel to the GRL Conference each October. So the goal for 2019 is to publish at least two books. I have book 7 of the Ten Rigs Texas series 1/3 to 1/2 complete. I also have book 1 of another three-book series at some partial point of completion, not to mention an epic historical (that does need a lot of editorial work) at about 75% completion. I also need to flesh out all the recurring characters for the next 6-9 book series I'm planning.

~*~

Okay, so, the first seven goals are carry-over/repeats from 2018 as well as one or two that are from as far back as 2017 or 2016. I don't need to make "attend more Stars games" a goal again, because just finishing out the season with the current tickets I have will be enough and I can't imagine that we won't remain partial season ticket holders for next season. :0)

That means I need three new-for-2019 goals. Let's see what we can come up with...

~*~

8) Get some stuff around the house done. Aside from the general housekeeping of #5, I have a few projects that I'd like to get done. One such project is the hallway bathroom. I think I mentioned I want to paint all of the tile eventually. Unfortunately, there's a lot of tile so it will have to be done in stages. The toilet will probably have to come out because there's tile halfway up the walls. Most of the other projects are smaller and require less effort, but it would be nice to finally get them taken care of. I can enumerate them all later so I have a place of reference.

9) Expand the sampler pattern offerings at my Etsy store. Let's shoot for minimum of one new pattern a month. It helps that I have a handful at various stages of completion and quite a few additional ideas. The biggest hurdle is that I like to have real life samples to take pictures of instead of just the image the pattern program generates. As you can guess, that's the most time-consuming part.

10) Spend more time together as family, including DD. I was recently reminded of how much fun it is to play board games. As a result, I bought a new one--and funny enough it was one we had years ago but that we never apparently figured out how to play. DD and I both got games for Christmas as well. So I'm going to shoot for one game night a month to start an we'll see how it goes.

So those are my goals, with specific measurables, for the new year.

How about you?

First, here's the obligatory celebratory fireworks image:


Now, it's time to rate myself on my goals for the year 2018.

1) Regularly write to my Grandma in Denmark. -- BIG FAT FAIL. I completely dropped the ball on my poor Grandma. She got one letter from me this year for Christmas.

2) Call my moms monthly. -- I didn't do it monthly, but we connected often enough. On the other hand, the phone works both ways. Anyway, I give myself a C.

3) Walk the dog three times a week. -- Another big fail. I don't think I walked her but a handful of times.

4) Cook and eat better. -- I think I did alright, but not the better I had been intending. And I really fell off the wagon once the holidays hit and Sonshine came home. So giving myself a B-.

5) Re-institute the cleaning plan. -- Another F. I didn't even pull the box of cards out of the draw.

6) Work on my writing career--such as it is. -- Not as much as I should have. I stalled out in the writing in February and was never able to get back into the swing of things. I tried over the summer, but then prepping for the conference in October took precedence and that was all she wrote. Or didn't "wrote" as it were. Grade D.

7) Reduce body fat and maintain current weight. -- I actually did okay on this one. Again until the holidays hit. I've only gained maybe three pounds, but too many inches. Grade B-.

8) Take dance lessons with DH. -- Didn't happen. I can't take the full blame for this because DH wanted to wait until he lost some weight and, well, that didn't happen. So we'll call this ... I don't know what to call it.

9) Do more crafts! -- I cross stitched more and expanded the offerings of my Etsy store, but I didn't branch out and do stuff other than that. So D?

10) Take ballet and/or ice skating lessons. --  Didn't do this. Didn't even research it. Grade F.

11) Attend more STARS games. -- The only thing I exceeded at and that was because DH bought me partial season tickets. So A+++ .

What a horrible report card.

I'm sure y'all made better progress on your goals.

Have a great New Year's Eve. Stay safe and all that jazz. I'll see you here on Wednesday.