Testing it out

I mentioned Halloweenapalooza was coming up. No. I haven’t tested those stickers yet, haven’t had time, but I did get the new display stands for the books.

They’re actually cupcake stands but I’m gonna replace the plates with black painted boards and then maybe drape some lace over it. I had hoped to have the display stand in front of the books, but they’re so tall they block the row behind them. Oh well. We’ll see how this works.

Speaking of Halloweenapalooza, autumn is finally here. We have pumpkin spice coffee, pumpkin donuts, and actual pumpkins. The thing that makes me sad is that pumpkins have become so mainstream now that it’s almost a meme. Why is that sad? Because I’ve loved pumpkins since before they were popular. But now it just looks like I’m tagging along with the masses.

*sigh*

And here’s a bonus kitty photo.

And now I end this and try to get some work done.

Have a pumpkin kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Stickers and a New Squishable

So, with Halloweenapalooza coming up, gotta start figuring out my table. I can’t do the selfie thing thanks to covid and people frowning on putting fake teeth in their mouth (so glad I spent a fortune on it to get to use it for one season!) So we bought one of those game wheels from Amazon and are going to do a wheel of fate game where you spin to find out what happens to you after you meet a vampire in an alley. I’ve got the stickers designed now, but I need to test print tomorrow on paper, then try a test print on the sticker paper.

Three of the eight options

So we’ll see after the test whether they are the final versions or not.

We got our new squishable today – a friend for Nostradom the plague doctor. It’s the plague nurse.

I think we will name her Florence. That’s also a bit of the newly redon bookcase in there. Waiting until I get the handles for the dresser to post them both, speaking of them, they are supposed to be here Friday now, and here is what they will look like:

Hmm. Not much else of interest. Had some more of that delicious homemade salsa last night. I don’t think I mentioned it in here, but I got a bunch of tomatoes for free from the lady who runs the gun store in Clarinda and since I know we’d never eat them that fast and we also don’t eat canned tomatoes, salsa seemed like a good idea. First time I’ve ever made it and canned it, so I was quite happy with how well it worked. We’re down to five jars left, lol!

salsa is in the bowl, obviously.

And that’s what I’ve got. We did get the top of the desk cleaned off – had to take the veneer off of it because those fuzzy bastards ruined it. For now I’m just going to put contact paper on it and later we will buy some new veneer, stain it, and glue it on and all that jazz, but I don’t have the time right now to mess with it. Ergh.

Gotta go. Have a homemade salsa kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Stickers!

My Cricut printable sticker paper came yesterday. I’m not normally anal about having the name brand, but this has a kiss setting built into the program that will cut just the sticker and not the backing and it was almost 50% off. Can’t beat that.

What do I need stickers for? Halloweenapalooza is coming up and I have a vendor table. The last time, I did the selfie banner and gave away fake vampire teeth. Well, with covid, no one is going to want to pop vampire teeth in ans out of their mouth now. So, instead we’re doing a wheel of fate. The premise: you run into a vampire, what happens? Are you drained? Taken as a slave? Do they fall in love with you? Spin the wheel and find out. Yeah, I bought a wheel via Amazon. Who knew you could get them there?

So, the stickers. Originally I wanted to do tiny buttons that will say whatever your fate was from said wheel, because you can save buttons forever and they’re cute, but they’re pretty pricy and so tiny there’s barely room for my website address and, let’s face it, advertising is the point of this. Instead, we’re going with stickers, qhixh can be bigger and cheaper, but have the problem of being disposable. Guess you can’t have it all. Anyway, I need to design and then print and cut them sometime soon. I’m planning circles because they’re cuter, though I suppose squares would have more room. We’ll see.

What else that’s interesting? Not much, actually. Need to order spiders today, since I didn’t get my giant one, and get the rest of the Vella chapters posted.

Looks like my coffee is done, so calling this a blog.

Have a sticker paper kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Tags & Such

Yesterday I was grateful for the brother’s help. We made a semi-complicated dinner and made two batches of different cookies at the same time. I couldn’t have done it on my own, that’s for sure!

Today I was thankful for hearing from Teresa. I have been worried about her, and in fact was just thinking about her last night, and she popped up in my PMs today! So here’s hoping she continues to get better.

As far as what I’ve been doing…not much that’s worth sharing. Cooking. Cleaning. I did get some tags made the other day and I guess I should share them just because.

(If you wanna check it out – this one is kinda funy)

(if you wanna check it out – this one is kinda sad)

(if you wanna check it out – this one is twice the length of the other two.)

(If you wanna check it out – this one is seriously modeled off of a Hallmark Christmas special – but with vampires!  WARNING: unlike the others it is pubbed direct through Amazon who half time won;t set it to free but it is ALWAYS free on Smashwords)

(If you wanna check it out – it’s got unrequited love)

And now I need to go work on the TTC page for the week.

Have a happy tag kinda day!

Jo 🙂

 

Thankfulness #132: Fan Message

Today I am thankful for the super amazing fan message I got on Facebook. I won’t lie, I’ve been feeling kind of down. A sort of postpartum always happens after a book release but it’s worse this time. Maybe because it’s the end of the series (though no the universe or characters), maybe because it was so rushed that I didn’t have any preparation time, maybe because I haven’t engaged in a whole lot of fanfare; no blog hops, or tours, just the one Facebook party (because, you know, everything was so rushed I was out of time). Or maybe it’s the lower sales numbers. I’ll usually sell about 85 the first week (including pre-orders) but my total so far after twelve days is still sitting at 61. There are a ton of factors that could contribute to this: It’s the last book so some people have admitted to putting off buying and reading it because it’s the end – my brother actually owns series where he’s never read the final book for that exact reason. There’s also that lack of fanfare, the different season –  I usually release in March when it’s still crappy out, but now it’s warming up, people are outdoors more, not reading as much as they do in colder months. It’s also graduation/end of the school year and people are busy. The market has been trending down for all authors since 2014 and keeps going lower and lower thanks to a glut of free books caused by KDP Select and then the Amazon Unlimited subscription service – which my books aren’t in because I refuse to go exclusive. On and on.

Anyway, the whys are not important, what is important is the funk is real, so the fan letter really made my day and reminded me why I started writing the books in the first place. When I published book three I had 12 fans and knew each by name. So, downward trend from book eight or not, that 61 is still a huge improvement on those 12. That’s the kind of thing I need to tape to my wall somewhere – If I had an office wall, that is. Mostly I have walls that need the wallpaper stripped off of them so we can paint.

And now I need to get the Turtles page done for the night.

Have a fan mail kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Song going through my head STILL: Closer by Saliva – Repeat #362. Literally.

Thankfulness #131: Successful Release Party

Today I am thankful to Book Born and to everyone who attended my Goddess of Night release party in Book Born, and everyone who was there in spirit. There was pretty good attendance. We had a lot of fun, played some games, and generally had a good night.

Not much else. Went to Orschelns for the bro today and I got to play with the baby chicks and ducklings, so that was also fun:

It rained all morning so we had some nice clouds this afternoon:

And now I am hoping to write a little on the Vampire book I’m working on with Jonathan.

Have a baby chick petting kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #130 & Union Station

Today I was thankful for getting things ready for the Facebook party tomorrow. I have all my prizes and images and script all ready to go. (The party is 6pm – 10pm in the facebook group Book Born.)

Some of my snazzy graphics:

And while I am sharing snazzy things…I mentioned the Pompeii exhibit a couple of days ago. As I said, it was held at Union Station in Kansas City which is an old – but still functioning – train station that is beautiful! Seriously:

I didn’t have the Nikon because we didn’t know it was in a train station and didn’t think we’d be able to take photos anyway (ha!) But I did get some snaps with my cell phone worth sharing:

And now I go to watch Hell on Wheels and hopefully get some work done on the fantasy book.

Have a train station kind of day!

Jo 🙂

 

Thankfulness 124:Lots of Stuff

I’m thankful for lots of stuff today.

#1: Today was my book launch. Goddess of Night is available everywhere and goes up to $3.99 tomorrow. The awesome Book Born group is hosting a giveaway for a chance to win one of three free copies via Amazon, so check that out. <—click that link right there or this one to go straight to Amazon.

#2: Today was WWE Payback and I was very happy with it as a PPV! (So I’m sure everyone else is mad). Everyone I wanted to win won (except Roman vs Stroman, but you knew that was coming.) I was surprised to see Jericho win, given his album drops May 2nd and his band is on tour after that. Neville winning was fine – I kind of like this evil Neville character. I like both Shaemus/Cesaro and the Hardy Boys, so either winner was cool with me there (though his tooth! My god, he lost his tooth, had a big hole in his gum, and just kept going! Where was all the blood? Was he swallowing this stuff?? Insane!) but I did think the attack at the end was unwarranted. I liked the  better as good guys, though I guess Cesaro is due for a heel turn. Unbelievably, I was rotting for ALexa Bliss – she has grown on me. She’s such a little b**** and she’s just so evil…I dunno. I admire that. I hate Samoa Joe so was glad to see Rollins beat him. And the House of Horrors match – the first half was a lot of fun, with all the horror gimmick things (though it would have been snazzier had they been able to set the house on fire, but I imagine the owners weren;t keen on that, and that that was the point of the red lights at the end to make you think of fire without having to use it.) I was also delighted to see Bray win, BUT he could have won all by himself without interference. I realize the point of the interference is to end the Wyat/Orton feud and push the Orton/Jinder feud because of the shake up and Orton and Wyatt being on different shows BUT I think it took away from Bray, who I think WWE under-utilize as it is. But, I did mention the other day that I like those Rotunda boys, so…

#3: I got Paint Shop Pro x9 Ultimate set up. Finally. I know, I have been hanging on to X2 for years but the time has come to upgrade. Anyway, I spent a couple of hours setting it up (my toolbars and all of that). I’m having an issue with the tool options palette. I like it floating with auto-hide but I can’t seem to get it to auto-hide…and without rolling up it is 100% in the way. I’ve tried docking it right now, but my active area is practically non existent that was, so…

I did try out their new “templates” and made a “scrap book page”

Fun, huh? Probably took me longer to use their template than it ould have to make it from scratch, but what the heck.

And now I need to go to bed!

Have a House of Horrors kind of day!

Jo 🙂

 

 

Thankfulness #123: Graphic Art Fun

Yesterday I promised to share my new teasers, so here they are!

I’m reasonably happy with them. I also remade the slides for my slideshow on my website. Check ’em out maaaaaaaaaaaan….

Yeah, I love my Boxshot program. Worth every penny, though I was disappointed that almost none of the updates ever applied to my version. My free updates have run out now, though.

Hubby was still sick today, so we mostly just bummed around on the couch. We watched Silver Streak (with Gene Wilder) from ’76 and…and something else that I can’t remember, then started the newest FaceOff series. While I had coffee today, I opted for real sugar after the warnings I got yesterday, LOL!

Not much else to share. It’s after midnight so the new book is live. I hope people like it. Or at least don;t hate it. I had 22 copies pre-ordered on Amazon (oh wow.) See? That sarcasm right there is why I need to get out of publishing. There was a time when 22 copies would have felt amazing. Now it feels like why bother? Everyone else is selling hundreds, or looks like they’re selling hundreds at least. *Sigh*

Need to update all the old books now with new “also by” info.

Have a grapically fun kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #122: Coffee

Yesterday (I think it was) my brother got my Ninja Coffee bar to stop blinking the clean light, so I felt the need to drink copious amounts of coffee today to test it out. It was all tasty, hot, and delicious. Also I used some snazzy sugar-free latte foam I picked up at wal-mart, so no sugar (I really need to kick the sugar in my coffee). It’s sucralose (or something like that) based, so maybe it won’t kill me as fast as aspartame. (No, I haven’t actually researched this). I need to learn to drink it black, but I think that is going to take some time. I have cut down on the sweetner/sugar, so plus there.

Dad brought a movie home tonight:

I’d give it 4.5 stars – it doesn’t get 5 because it wasn’t as cheesy as I had hoped. It does get points for counting bullets/ammo – they ran out of ammo multiple times when they were supposed to! Also because Miz actually *grabbed the guns* from the bad guys after he took them out instead of walking off and leaving them (That annoys the crap out of me) and because when chasing people in a dark parking garage, the bad guys used their brains and turned the lights on instead of running around in the dark like most movies! Oh, and they get props for giving the biker gang radios – that was intelligent. Most movies just have a bunch of disorganized bumbling bad guys, so it was nice to see some thought put into it. Of course, the final points go to Bo Dallas’ hair. It was looking especially fluffy and wavy. I’m afraid if he’d captured me I’d have smiled and said “Anything you want, sweety”. But then I have a thing for those Rotunda boys… (Yeah, Bray Wyatt too… though that beard could use some trimming… snip, snip.)

While I’m on TV, Dad and I are on season five of Hell on Wheels, the last season I believe. I think we’re getting close to running out of episodes. I have lots of varying opinions on things. I will say they do a good job of not making anyone 100% likable or 100% unlikable – except Swede. I hope he dies soon. But they get points for realistic layered characters.

In other news, I got Turtles done today – yay – and the new page is posted at TerribleTurtles.com . I also got some teaser tags made for Goddess of Night, which releases on Sunday. No, I am not doing much on the release day. It’s WWE Payback, y’all. Did you not see where I mentioned Bray?  He’ll be wrestling in a House of Horrors match.

Gotta have priorities.

Maybe later in the week. I’d have to try to throw something together and set up an event… I dunno. I might ask Book Born about it…We’ll see. Maybe I’ll crash Terrible Turtle Tuesday… how weird would that be since I an half of Terrible Turtle Tuesday? Ha ha! (I’m probably not going to do that, FYI).

Tomorrow is grocery shopping day (if hubby is feeling better – he’s sick tonight) and hopefully I’ll get the front matter updated in all the books and reupload everything. That’s always fun to do.

And now I leave you with a weird coincidence. I’ve been listening to 30 Seconds to Mars all say on YouTube – so they randomly drop in “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers, just as I get to this page in a clickbait article:

The chorus was literally playing as I read it. OOoooOOOoooOOOooooOOooooOOOoo.

Have a Bo Dallas with good hair kinda day!

Jo 🙂