Snow Day in the Sunroom

We're having a blizzard today in Wisconsin, so I'm having a snow day. Right now giant poofy flakes are falling from the sky, and some anonymous neighbor has already snowblowed (snowblown?) the entire sidewalk for our block. So I get to hang out in my recently-completed sunroom--now with Christmas tree!--and sip hot cocoa and watch the snow fall.

The sunroom used to be our main bedroom, but we always had heavy blinds on all the windows. The room has the most windows in our whole house--two south-facing, and one facing east and one facing west. Sun all day long. So we painted the walls a light, bright orangey yellow, and the floor a coordinating light sagey green, and the trim is a color called "almond toast." And we put in a bunch of full-spectrum lights, and comfy seating, and a lovely grandfather clock. The room was a big hit at our recent Christmas party.

My depression has definitely improved since we finished the room. Even outside of the extra light (which I am not in any way discounting), it's so pretty that just looking at it makes me happy.

I'm not working out regularly yet, but I did start going to physical therapy to help with my tension headaches. I've been doing some neck-strengthening exercises five times a day while I'm at my day job. I had to set Outlook reminders to go off every couple of hours so I would remember to do them, and it's been working great. My headaches are a lot less frequent. So I'm going to keep up with those exercises even though I'm technically done with PT.

My next goal is to get into some regular workout routine. Even if I'm just doing 10 minutes a day on the rowing machine, or doing some light free weights while watching The Daily Show. Gotta start small and build up from there.

My received gross writing income for 2012 should be just over $830.00. Not enough to quit my day job, of course, but I'm pretty happy with it. This is just year one. I'm hoping to have grossed $5000 by the end of year three. I have 24 titles out there, and I'm still hoping to get an anthology or two up before the new year. I also want to start a mailing list, and put links to my other works in my existing books. I'm hoping that will boost sales a little bit, but mostly I just want to make it as easy as possible for my readers to find more of my stories.

Maybe I'll get that done today. After I go hit the rowing machine.

Image courtesy of [image creator name] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

New Release and Poet is EVERYWHERE!

Welcome to December! Released today is a Lovecraftian weird tale. "The Thing in the Water" is an homage to HP Lovecraft's story "The Thing on the Doorstep."

Artist Daniel Bradshaw didn’t want to take a Halloween cruise with his sister CarrieAnn and her husband Tommy, but it seemed like a great distraction from his pending divorce. Unfortunately, nothing can salve Daniel’s bitter attitude until he meets Cliff. The old man’s interest in Daniel’s art is a much-needed ego boost. Cliff even charms worry-wart CarrieAnn and takes the uncouth Tommy under his wing. In short, Cliff seems like a godsend…and he is. Just not the god any of them expected.

"The Thing in the Water" is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords, and will soon be pushed out to all the usual ebook outlets.

The Once and Future Poet is out of KDP Select (which I'm never doing again, blarg) and is now available at Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, and will also soon be pushed out to all the usual ebook outlets, as well as at Amazon.

I've managed to publish at least one thing a month this year. I'm pretty proud of that, but I didn't get nearly as much writing done as I'd hoped. I'll do a full roundup later this month.