Friday 4 August 2023: Friday already! 😱

Friday! Well, that came around quick… I don’t want to get ahead of myself, though. Here’s how Thursday went.

We had a good night. The dog stayed in his basket for much of it again. And we were all up in time to start our days on time.

My day started with me hanging washing out. I hung out three washloads in the end. The conservatory already has two clothes horses filled with washing that’s dry now, actually. But as we finally had a dry day forecast, I thought it would be a good time to get the bulk of the last of the washing on the line.

I fed the garden birds and moved the floor feeder and the bird table to share out the mess around the patio. We already need to jet-wash the corner where it all was during the weeks and weeks of rain. It’s bad enough when the birds make a mess, but when it’s constantly raining too… We had a massive puddle of gunk there that’s mostly dried out now, but I still slipped on some of it yesterday morning.

I went to see if the reading list was up yet for the study along Romance Ghost writing workshop, but it wasn’t. So that task moved along another day. At least this one’s moving along through no fault of mine. I shared the gig list post then did a quick round of the blogs. And I kept half an eye out for rain, so I could bring the washing in again.

I decided to back the latest Kickstarter from Dean Wesley Smith and WMG Publishing. I haven’t linked to it here because it will have finished by the time this is posted. They were less than $150 from the final stretch reward with just under 15 hours to go, so I shared it on Twitter and Facebook instead. I’m not affiliated but as a backer, if the stretch rewards are met then I get them too now.

This isn’t because I want to send short stories to Pulphouse Fiction, it’s because I do want the six-month subscription. Due to ill health, I think they still owe two issues from the last subscription drive, and we’ll still get those. I’ll have a read of a few issues and look at the guidelines we get sent as backers, but I don’t think my stories are clever enough or deep enough, or even sufficiently fantasy-esque, for the magazine.

The next thing I did was update the images in the sidebar of the blog (at the bottom on mobile devices, unless you turn it on its side). I had to move the pussycat cover to the top, remove the title from the project management cover, and ensure both images linked to where to buy the books. And I added the paperback link to the pussycat book.

Over dinner, I played a game and I revised another of the pop-up workshops (publish your own magazine). I kept checking the Kickstarter to see if there were any more backers. One appeared over dinner. And I updated my power board with this month’s new stories, plus another I’d like to submit in October.

As of yesterday dinner time, I had seven short stories in ‘percolating’, two in ‘brainstorming’, two in ‘writing’ and four in ‘revising’. Those I’m revising are ones I’ve done for assignments that need revisiting and making suitable for market.

Once that was out of the way I started work on brainstorming this month’s story for 12 Stories in 12 Months, and I went straight to my dates resources for October. Which reminded me that I haven’t done a dates article for October. The individual dates do take a long time to note, but the feasts and special days are a bit quicker. But I thought I may as well do a quick dates work session while I was there.

Only it wasn’t very quick. It never is. But after a few hours I had enough for 25 ideas to throwaway, including the ‘take one idea’, and 5 ideas to consider for myself.

The poet came home from work and went out again. But I packed up at 7:20pm.

I still have a lot of work to do today and Monkey Dust has a gig on Saturday. We need to do something in the garden, though, as it’s been neglected for several weeks, due to the weeks and weeks of rain. If it stays dry, that is.

Oh, the Kickstarter hit its maximum target around mid-afternoon… so now I have to add the magazine to my reading list in case I do feel like submitting a story or two between August and December. That’s five individual monthly submission dates for those who want to, to a magazine that doesn’t usually have open submissions.

Have a great weekend.

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