Mewsyngs of an Upstart Feline Miscreant

Beware the Ides of April... Tax Day!

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So what's next? I plan to continue writing Shakedown Cruise. I should finish the cover for the Rose's Crime Spree in Nova Paree, and either get a first reader or two, or start posting it on Royal Road to drum up interest in my other books, or something.

If my primary interest is just getting people interested in my words, I don't think self-publishing and then flogging it with a post or two on social media is cutting it... Royal Road is oriented more toward progression fantasy though. It's kind of difficult finding the right place to get my words out there. I don't have a great answer yet. (for those advocating traditional publishing, if you have links to people who would be interested in my work specifically, I'm certainly all ears!)

But first and foremost, more words!

... and I should schedule an annual physical exam too.

Whew, it's been a month into the mew year already, time sure flies! Into the teeth of all the terrible things happening (in general, not in specific) I managed to get my first book out, and I have been pleased by the handful of reviews I've garnered so far--it is actually readable. Excellent!

( So what have I been doing this month? )

What's next? Probably edits on the Rose's Crime Spree, the cover for the same, and working on the outline/breaking ground on the Timecrossed Engineer sequel, Shakedown Cruise.

That's November in the bag!

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So plan for December... Finish editing the Rose in Nova Paree novel and then start looking for first readers. Try and make the ebook for Timecrossed Engineer so I can give it a last read-through in "finished form." There may be a family Christmas get-together or not, I don't really know.

Maybe I'll start on a new novel... either late December or early in 2026.

Another month has gone by...

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The end is in sight for the novel I've been working on... After that, I think I'll try to finish up that illo for Archangel Beth, edit the Star Trek-like novel I finished last year, finish up the cover picture for it, release it for cheap and maybe serialize it somewhere for free. Then I'll edit the SF heist novel and release that as well.

Then I'll want to start thinking about the next book I'll be working on...

Some candidates: a sequel to the Star Trek-like novel, trying once again to make an Alien Tastes standalone novel, doing something with superheroes, doing something else entirely...

Well, July has been a month! Let's see... ( What happened in July? )

In sad news, Tugrik, a friend of mine, passed away. Watts Martin wrote a short note on the subject.

This does cause certain complications because he was the DNS provider for some domains I own, so I'm going to have to figure out who's taking over that role.

August, I need to start looking at health care insurance to replace COBRA which I've been on for the last 18-ish months. "Whee," says Tufty.

I am approximately 2/3rd the way through the novel I've been working on, and I hope to have it done by the end of the year.

Re: my last report, I wound up with Trader Joe's chicken enchiladas for Cinco de Mayo, but made myself a BBQ cheeseburger for Memorial Day which was good, though I should perhaps have gotten some french fries or onion rings from TJ's as well. I'll have to keep that in mind for July 4th and Labor Day. For June, it's the usual home cooking; I'll be doing a Korean-themed menu for the first two weeks, then my usual Chinese-themed menu for the second two weeks, in preparation for an American themed menu in the first two weeks of July.

Physical exam went fine. My cholesterol is a bit high but less high than it was the previous year, so that is a positive trend.

HVAC checkup. I've agreed to have them replace the filters and add a purifier to the heat pump itself, which sounds like a boost for overall house air quality.

I wound up writing a 9k word "heistcute" to test out my ideas for the Scofflaw Villainess. The couple of first readers who have peered at it seemed to enjoy it, so on we go! I wrote 22,429 words in the novel itself, tentatively titled "The Chameleon Rose Takes Nova Paree."

I did some further inking on the Treasure Island picture. Maybe I'll get it done sometimes in June? We'll see. I've been focusing on the writing.

I reread Timecrossed Engineer to make sure it's still holding up, then sent it off to archangelbeth to be another first reader.

I also poked at my website a bit to try and get things in order so I can put shorter stories that I've decided to make free there. You can see that here. There are a couple of short stories in the writing section now if you're interested!

The newer short stories (Last of Her Kind, Two Bucks and a Soul, the Chameleon Rose and the Firebrand) I might try and shop around to magazines, we'll see how it goes.

March was kind of a distracted month. So many crazy things happening in the real world.

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I should try and schedule a physical checkup soon!

Still have to finish up with Timecrossed Engineer. I want to reread it at least, and finalized the cover.

My older bro has purchased a house and is in the process of moving, so soon we will be in the process of moving my aunts into his current house so they can empty out my local aunt's house.

Well. It has been an interesting month.

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Well! That was certainly a month.

For various reasons, I decided to renew my passport, which is expiring in the next two years-- if you're not aware, if you plan to travel to another country, it's best you do so when your passport has at least a few years on it. I still have ambitions of visiting Japan someday, and it wouldn't be bad to visit other European countries.

After going through the rigamarole of taking my passport picture at a Walgreen's and then taking the application to the post office, I discovered belatedly I could have done the whole process at the post office, with an appointment. Next time!

I commissioned a new computer from Central Computers. It arrived midway through November, but while trying to set it up this last weekend, I discovered it lacked a secondary hard drive-- miscommunication between myself and the store. I'll be taking it back to get that remedied this month. I prefer to have an SSD for just the operating system and critical applications, and most other things living on the secondary hard drive.

I also picked up a Chromebook from Best Buy. This is now my main non-gaming computer; the intention is that my new Windows PC will be strictly for gaming, owing to Microsoft's intentions of making Recall (which saves screenshots of users' Windows frequently) a part of their Windows 11 users' lives at some point in the foreseeable future. Needless to say, I don't approve of their intrusive manners or their decision to opt users in by default.

I deleted my Tweets from Twitter ahead of the threatened deadline at which they would assume all users had given tacit permission for their Tweets to be used in whatever fashion they pleased, including feeding them into LLMs for training purposes. If you're looking for mew on social media, Mastodon and Bluesky are my hangouts of choice.

I reread Timecrossed Engineer and made various changes. Once Rowyn is done with making her word count goal, I'll see if she wants to be the first reader!

I began working on concept sketches for the book cover. It looks like this will be a long and complex process that will last through December, but I'm hopeful that I'll get good enough results to be able to publish with a self-made cover.

I began planning for the next book to work on... While I have a few outlines I could work on, I decided on a complete change of pace-- it'll be a fantasy heist story, "Grand Theft: Dragon." This is turning out to be quite complicated but I find it the most interesting project at the moment.

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Another great month of writing! 59,421 words on the Timecrossed Engineer, which is in the final stretch.

Cancelled Disney+ and subscribed to Netflix for the next while, so I could watch Star Trek Prodigy's second season and catch up on other things.

Labor Day marked the last day I normally have a hamburger for the year-- that'd be Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day. There's nothing actually stopping me from having one anytime I want, but those are days it's most appropriate, and otherwise, there are plenty of other dishes I could be having for my 'Cheat Mondays', like okonomiyaki or curry udon. Though I've been more often just having a Trader Joe's Chicken Burrito Bowl, with a fried egg on top.

Other than that, things seem to be going well. Planning to get my COVID and flu shots in mid-October.