Housekeeping

What I did in my 6 weeks off:

• I tried (and failed) at something, but am so much richer for the trying;
• I threw up a few blog posts (I don’t know how to quit you);
• We lost a feline friend to cancer, nearly lost another to kidney disease, and put the dog through chemo;
• We nearly finished building on our house and moved into the new quarters.

Yes it’s been a busy month and a half. The thing I tried and failed at was NaNoWriMo, where you try to write a novel in a month. I wrote about half of one, but worked out some really major issues with plot and characters and structure, so it’s all good.

One important thing I learned is that writing a novel requires absolute, 100% focus on a daily basis. I could not write a novel and blog at the same time. I tried it and it doesn’t work. So if blogging gets light, you can assume I’ve gotten back to my manuscript.

There will be some other changes to the blog in coming weeks. For one thing, I’ve just learned that Haloscan, my commenting program, is about to go permanently kaput. I’ll have to find another commenting program; not sure what that will do to my comments archive but I assume it will go away. Apologies ....

I will also be adding a tip jar to the blog, to make it easier for George Soros to send me my Liberal Agitator check. If anyone wants to pop a tip in the jar, that would be greatly appreciated.

Several people have asked me why I don’t have ads on my blog. It’s simple: as much as I rant about how I hate being marketed to, I feel like that would be a little hypocritical of me. Yes, I’ve actually turned down several offers to accept money to “mention” a product on my blog--I mean really, I may blogwhore but I’m not a complete sellout. Someone else offered me money to host “a very small link” over here--well, that’s advertising. Nothing against the folks who do have Blogads and whatnot, it’s just not for me, not at this space, and not at this time.

So, thanks for reading, and let's see how this thing shakes out over the next few weeks.