We had a Very Busy weekend.
Saturday
On Saturday, we took our Covid tests, and once we had the go ahead, we went out and did the shopping, via the butcher’s and the home supplies store. We were late up, though. Very Late. And the shopping took up most of the day.
The poet made a crustless quiche with some cooked gammon we had left over. He chopped some bananas and put those in the freezer, so we can make banana ‘ice cream’. And he emptied our first patio potato tub. All week we’d been taking it in turns picking blackberries, and every batch he froze on a tray before putting into containers. Those containers went into the freezer in the garage.
The shopping wore us both out, so we took it easy for the rest of the day. Or what was left of it.
Sunday
On Sunday, he collected windfall apples while I spent a good hour tidying rose border #1. I had to dead-head the roses, some of them right down to the base of the stems, and I weeded around them. It’s only a short border, but it took the full hour. I don’t know. I do this job every year, and every year those pesky roses keep coming back. And I have to do it all again!
When I’d finished, the poet got the strimmer out to tidy it up. He started to take the strimmer around the garden, but his cable snapped and he couldn’t be bothered to thread in another length. Instead, he hand-weeded the patio and applied some wildlife friendly weedkiller.
I made an Eve’s pudding with the windfalls, and he picked and froze another full trug of blackberries. When the freezer’s full, we’re going to have to ask the kids if they want to come and do any blackberry picking for themselves. He made a roast chicken dinner and he cooked our first potatoes. They were lovely and even tasted like potatoes!
I spent an hour or so devising a flylady routine. Kitchen & conservatory on Mondays, living room on Tuesdays, and so on, including some daily tasks like putting a washload through and hanging it out, or emptying and refilling the dishwasher, and so on. I figured that I could kill 2 birds with one stone by having a flylady hour every day: housework/chores + moving my body.
Monday
On Monday I was actually up only 10 minutes after my alarm went off. I put a washload through then sat and enjoyed my dirty cuppa. The poet went to collect his repeat prescription from the doctor’s, then headed off to work. Ten minutes before the end of my ‘dirty cuppa hour’, I got dressed. I can’t keep doing things like feeding the birds in my nightie and then sitting around in my dressing gown for most of the day. It’s lazy and it makes me lazy. I want to be dressed before I set foot outside the house.
I got dressed, and then started my first flylady hour. I opened curtains and windows in every room. (Often, curtains were being left closed if I didn’t go in the room.) I fed and watered the birds. I hung the washing out. I did an ‘appreciation’ walk around the garden, dead-headed a few roses (just the heads, taking them right down is a weekend job), picked up some windfall apples.
I emptied the dishwasher and filled it with the morning things. I went around emptying the bins, emptied the dog poo bin in the garden, emptied the 2 kitchen bins, changed the liners, and got the grey bin ready to pull out later on.
And that was it. The hour was up! But everything I didn’t get around to will still be there this time next week and I can try again then. Emptying the bins wasn’t on my Monday list, but the wheelie bin does have to be taken out on a Monday evening. So already I need to move this forward and push something backwards. I’m expecting the rest of the week to evolve and change too, as I work through.
I ran a drink of water, because I was dripping with sweat, and went straight to my desk. No hanging around in my nightie, ‘lolly gagging’ on the settee, wasting time playing games or surfing social media. I went to my desk, where the first job was this week’s diary. I had a bit of time left at the end of that hour, so I finalised and posted yesterday’s blog post and started today’s.
Next job on the list was Bookazine #4 novel extract. I’m afraid it was time to step away from the new writing for Catch the Rainbow and just bite the bullet for Part 1. I thought I only had one scene left to write for Part 1, but actually, I now think it’s going to be in Part 2. That gives me 3 months to write it and any others that still need doing. For now, though, I had to leave it and just get on with the bookazine.
The first instalment is just under 18,000 words. I didn’t have time to read it properly again. But any mistakes or typos I noticed while I was checking the layout and format were corrected in both the Libre Writer file and the Scrivener file, the latter so it’s there for when I carry it over to the actual master Scrivener file for the Rainbow Chronicles.
Once the excerpt was set in place in the Scrivener file, I went to the credits page to update the copyright information. And I went through the Scrivener file to ensure the fonts were consistent throughout.
By then it was time for my breakfast. So I moved my body again, from office to kitchen, made my breakfast, and brought it back to my desk. I’ll eat dinner away from my desk, but while I eat my breakfast, I can do the daily competitions. And again, once the time is up for that, I’ll stop and start again the next day.
After my midday breakfast, the next job on the list was Bookazine #4 complete novella, and for this issue it’s Stevie Beck and the Body in the Lake. Because I’d created that within Scrivener, it was easy enough to copy over. I still had to format it to match the other bookazines, though.
That took me to my light dinner, and after that I went through The Ace of Pentacles before copying that into the bookazine file too. My last job on the bookazine was the credits page, then I exported it all out to a word processing file and published it.
In between publishing the bookazine on Draft2Digital and Google Play Books, I brought the washing in and put it away. Then I finished today’s blog post and scheduled it for today. Oh, and the bookazine is out on Wednesday and not Tuesday…Yay!
The magic bakery
A few years ago I stumbled across a book called The Magic Bakery by Dean Wesley Smith. Originally written in 2017, this book turned on a lightbulb inside my head and enabled me to see copyright in a whole different glow.
One of the first things I did, after reading this book, was start my own magic bakery. And in one 12-month period, I published around 56 books: short stories; collections; novellas; novels; and non-fiction books. Fifty-six of ‘em. I’ve added to them since, but those books now provide me with a steady trickle of income. Passive income.
Well, the magic bakery is back, but this time Smith is updating it, chapter by chapter, first on his website, then in a class, and then in a new and updated book. Here’s chapter fourteen.
I’ll carry on linking to the chapters, as they appear, so that you guys have some understanding of what I’m banging on about when I persist in talking about my magic bakery. And I’ll repeat this bit of blurb every time for first-time readers.
For those of you who’d rather read them as Smith posts them himself, rather than when I get around to it, you can go straight to his website here.
Well done! I can’t work in my pajamas. I have to put on “writing clothes” which are comfy yoga-type clothes, or I can’t concentrate.
Blueberries are doing really well here this year, but the blackberries are late. I hope I can get some for Aug. 1!
Apparently, we’ve had a really good spring for soft fruit. UK blueberries are bigger, fatter, juicier, and more abundant than they usually are. So we think that may be why our blackberries are early and abundant too.