Foovay’s Cauldron

Archive for February, 2009

Okay – there’s not much dancing – but there is lots of happiness. And some damn good advice, in fact, on acheiving happiness in your life. So watch and enjoy.

Meanwhile, here on the ranch; it is warm and nice outside and both men have better things to do for the next few weeks than mess with me. Ahem. Which leaves ME free to write. Cool.

My first writing project was to grab two stories, one finished and in fact once published as an ebook, the other almost but not quite finished. The plan was to finish one, polish both and submit them for print as a single book. After some thought, I decided to also include a third story I started long ago and never finished as it was clearly going to be too long for the contest I had envisioned it for.

While searching for those stories on my poor almost dead desktop computer, I discovered so many finished stories and articles that are not currently on line anywhere. They are good work, and deserve to be appreciated, one way or another. With all the other blogs off line now – many of them are just wasted. So for the next few weeks, interspersed with snippets of the new book, I’m going to post those articles and stories here. I plan to put up one a day, but you know how plans go for me. But that’s the plan.

I am also going to be doing a daily art piece. True, those ATCs have been filling that niche for some time, but I am cutting back considerably on the swapping so that I can actually work on what I’d like to be learning as far as painting, skyscapes, landscapes and such. I still think it will be easily a year before I have work to sell, but I’ll post what I’m doing here. I also finally upgraded my DeviantArt account, and will be posting work there, too.

Viva la creativity! Or something like that.

See ya

Summer Fey Foovay

I haven’t been keeping up well lately and I apologize.  i’ve been working away at web based things such as monetizing some other blogs (and this one too a bit) so that I can spend the next several months writing and doing some artwork, as well as enjoying some of the great outdoors I love so much here.

Swapbot has been down for me for the last two days.  Weird.  I am, at long last, pretty well caught up and maybe – by tomorrow – a bit ahead on swaps.  Whew.  I don’t think I’m going to sign up for any more public swaps at all.  I’m even dropping the Animal Alphabet series.  Seems like if I send digital work I get a minimum rating and snarky comments.  If I send carefully handdrawn work – I get no feedback or rating at all.  It’s been real, it’s been fun.  It hasn’t been real fun most of the time.  I did meet some great people though, and hope to remain friends with them.

The older computer is really wrestling me over opening a manuscript written on an even older computer.  If I ever get it open, I’ll have to wrestle it onto this newest computer so I can edit and I think finish it (I seem to recall it doesn’t have an ending).  The writing, in the long run, may take the least amount of time!  Once this oldie is finally finished and edited, I’ll start shopping for a publisher for it, and chose my next project.  Meanwhile, I’ll be doing short stories and articles for the blogs.  I’m thinking about an agent…let someone else fight those publisher monsters for me.

I woke up early today.  Maybe that means I’ll accomplish something other than just watching the race

Have a great weekend

Summer Fey Foovay

I am SUCH a Godzilla fan. He is the coolest monster ever. Not the new Godzilla – no, no, no – the OLD Godzilla. The guy in the funny suit. I was so delighted to find this fantastic video of Godzilla doing a happy dance I can’t stand myself! Apparently, it can’t be embedded – but if you like happy dances, want a smile, or love Godzilla, you’ve GOT to click on the link and go watch!

The site it is on, Manic World, looks pretty cool. Lots of videos, games, and otherwise just interesting goodies to browse. If it wasn’t Happy Dance Monday, I’d go mosey around for a while myself.

I’ve got such a list of things to do today. My personal deadline of Feb. 20th seems to be roaring down on me like a freight train. I still want to do some more promotion on my book, add some Squidoo lenses, do some work for a new sponsor that looks VERY cool…

PublishAmerica is having a sale for author ordered books, so I grabbed up eight of them! One copy will go to the library, and several more to reviewers. I am thinking about having contests to give away some of the other copies, and maybe swapping some away in private swaps. I’m open to ideas if anyone wants to make a suggestion or beg for their own signed copy.

MoreNiche is the new sponsor and it looks very exciting. The payouts are very high, and the products are some of the most popular on the web – things like male enlargement, diet aides, money making on the web, and gambling – online casinos. They offer a ton of support and learning tools for people who are not familiar with affilliate marketing so they would be a super beginners program.

If I get everything done today that I have (ever so hopefully) in mind, I’lll probably be back in a little while to share some new links. Meanwhile, go watch Godzilla and be happy! It’s a new week! I’ve seen a new life bird – the Pyrrhuloxia – and a pair of Downy Woodpeckers outside my kitchen window this morning. It was nice enough to sit outside with my coffee this morning and I’m thinking good thoughts about the whole car loan thing. Life is good!

Summer Fey Foovay

Love my Pixar. I oughta do a lens on them. Instead – I’ve done a lens on Fairy Coloring Books which was fun. Now I DID manage to make that one in just about an hour. Aha.

Got a major winter storm on the way according to the weather report, so I had a bit of ranch work to get done – batten down the hatches. Finally got some of the photos of ATCs uploaded to the computer. I’ll share those tomorrow, k? So yeah, mostly working on swappage stuff. Hope to get another lens or two done today, too – but that depends. When the wind blows and the storm clouds roll in my internet gets slower than slow.

Summer Fey Foovay

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Where did the week go and what did I get done? *blink* Um – I reached a whole new level on Zoo Tycoon… LOL.

Really, I have gotten a lot done, but it has been in the area of house cleaning, bathing the Harry dog, and making a lot of ATCs to catch up at Swap-bot. I’m finally caught up with all the public swaps. I am not officially behind on any of the private swaps, but I feel like I am because we always give ourselves a lot of extra time to get them completed and I haven’t even started some of them.

I had a bunch of fun doing the Goth Valentine swap though Really let my inner punk loose for an hour or two to scribble on a commercial card with Sharpies. I’m thinking about dropping two more of the series I am in that I had planned to keep though. With the weather getting warmer, I’d rather be outdoors doing ranch things. As I say that – there is a cold front blowing in. Brrrr… (LOL – brr here meaning it’s only 50 degrees)

The deadline for “Internet stuff” is going to be Feb. 20th. Until then I can Squidoo, blog, work on websites to my hearts content and then I’m going to take a break except for the basics – you know, Bella Sara, Sandbox Farm, swaps and Friday blogging – and sit down and WRITE. Probably still add some coloring pages at Color-Your-Own.com as I will still be doing the daily drawing.

And Plinky – I will probably still go play at Plinky now and then. I find it sort of gets the writing juice going, which is why I joined in the first place.

Recall when you first started using the Internet regularly

I was dragged onto the Internet kicking and screaming in 1999. My typewriter croaked and my husband refused to pay for repairs, because we had the computer and a new printer would cost less than repairs to my old clunker typewriter. He dragged me onto the Internet – and then I discovered Pagan chat rooms. At last, people I could really talk to!

Recall a bizarre gift you received

Years ago I was dancing at a beer bar in Oklahoma. This old gent took a liking to me and asked what I liked as a gift and I said Smirnoff Silver vodka, which is what i was drinking at the time. After that, once a month he would roll in carrying what was obviously a liquor bottle in a bag. I would run to him, hug him and grab the bag to hide it because at that time if you were caught with liqour in a beer bar they’d close the bar down. My boss used to have a monthly heart attack when the old man came in. The worse part was the gent was buying Smirnoff blue which is like 180 proof or something and even I, lush that I was at the time, couldn’t drink it. Freaking lighter fluid (shudder) so I usually ended up pouring it down the sink. But he meant well and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how awful it was – LOL.

Next thing you know, I’ll be posting quiz results…

Have a great weekend!

Summer Fey Foovay

This has got to be the best happy dance I’ve found in weeks! I laughed my head off – especially when she is chasing the dying of too cool-ness teen around the house. Hot Mama!

It is also Brighid’s Day to many of the Pagan persuation – and I hope you are having a lovely holiday. I usually do a mad house cleaning and invite the lady in – and bless the garden in the early morning light. I don’t know quite where our garden is slated to be at the moment, although I think we are supposed to have one this year. As far as the house – sigh. I’m working on it. It is much better than it was when we moved in. Too many people and animals in too little space. I did get a couple of those lingering major issues cleaned up today. This may just have to be a little at a time all week project.

Meanwhile, all my partners on the “get exposure for your blog” swap had sent me their blogs to peruse – so I went blog surfing. They are all great, but my favorites were Pagan Homemaking blog, and Suburban Composition. If you’ve got a few minutes to spend, drop by and visit them. All of the blogs were great, though. I’m a bit inefficent today and didn’t save a list of them to share – I should have.

I did get one more swap mailed out so that I am exactly one swap short of being all caught up. Unless something wild and wooly happens I believe I will get that one finished tonight to mail tomorrow. Then I’ll be down to a few private swaps, one of which is done just not packaged up to mail yet and back on a better footing altogether. I broke down and signed up for the writing prompt journal, just because I couldn’t resist. I bought the journal Friday and already have several pages done. Seems I just keep running into inspiring things. I especially liked this quote:

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible – Vladimir Nabokov

Isn’t that marvelous? Makes me want to leap onto the computer and reveal them. I was staring at some random thing on the TV late last night – and they interviewed an author who said she was 39 before she began writing, and the novel that she had just received the award for had been submitted over and over to publishers for THIRTEEN YEARS before it was finally accepted and put into print. Since then it has won several awards and all of her books are getting recognition. The main problem seems to have been that her books (like The River Way) don’t fit into any particular genre and so the publishers say they don’t know how they would promote them or where to sell them. Overall, the whole interview made me feel much better – and I can’t even recall the woman’s name or the name of the book *blush*.

I’ve decided that I will give myself a period of time to spend working away on blogs and Squidoo and promoting The River Way and all this Internet gobbledygook. I am going to choose a date that I think I can live with. From that day I will concentrate on nothing other than finishing “Silent” and polishing it up, then packaging it with “Cutting Away The Pain” for a publisher. This time we’ll start at the top and work our way down. While that’s going on, perhaps another period to work on Internet things again – then back to strictly writing. I think perhaps I will finish “Dominique” as it has generated a lot of interest among the people who have seen it and it would fit neatly into genre fiction. Still it has that very dark vibe continued on from Cutting and Silent. Yes, I’m going that direction for a reason – the Hunter/Predator series is ever percolating in the back of my mind. I think most of the characters and timelines will reveal themselves to me in bursts and once that background is down and all is ready, I suspect they will hold a gun to my head until I am done writing continuously first through last books. After which I will probably be admitted to a mental hospital if not charged with some serial murder or another – LOL.

Bet you think I forgot the daily drawings. HAH. No – but what I have been drawing of late is ATCs and I have this odd sort of rule that I do not post the ATC on the Internet in my Flickr account or here, until it has at least been mailed. Just some weird thing that I don’t want to reveal it to the world before the person it was created for has a chance to see it in person. That said – I will probably post some art tomorrow.

I have some Bella Sara cards that I am thinking of putting up on eBay. I have this nutty idea that I ought to make a few horse ATCs to go up at the same time. You know, in case someone goes to “see all auctions by foovay” and sees not just the Bella card she wanted but also a couple of neat horse ATCs she’d really like to have… Its just a thought. I’m in no big hurry to sell the cards so they could wait until I have some ATCs ready to go.

My hens are laying again! Yay chickie girls! I had two scrumpdillyishus egg sandwiches today with the first two eggs. Altogether they only took about a month off. I know that I could “force” them to keep laying right through the winter with a light in their coop, but I feel like animals deserve vacation time, just like we do – and are healthier for it.

Off to do more happy dancing for <a href=”http://foovaysfloozies.com”>Foovays Floozies</a> and the <a href=”http://demented-pixie.com”>Demented-Pixie blog</a>.

Summer Fey Foovay