Chiseled in Rock Tuesday

I’ve posted a piece at Chiseled in Rock blog on creating fictional characters using my own experience with The Desert Hedge Murders to illustrate my methods. The covers for the ebook versions of both Sylvia and Willie mysteries are there too, and the new author photo as well.

Thursday’s Guest

My guest blogger this Thursday is Tim Northburg, who writes about what got him going in the first place and what keeps him working toward publication. Tim recently self-published the novel Otterocity! and the Otterocity! Field Guide to inspire and motivate others during rough times.

Walking the Cat

We don’t let Katie Kitty go outside on her own, but we do take her out with her harness and leash…she loves it so much that it’s hard to get her to come inside after thirty minutes or so. She likes to hunt, torture, and eat grasshoppers. She enjoys going into a stalking stance when she sees a bird. And she even gets a kick out of sprawling on the sidewalk and taking it easy.

I take a cup of coffee with me, and sometimes I set my lawn chair out in the hopes she’ll spend a lot of time relaxing instead of prowling. Taking a little time out is a good thing.

Updating my Website

I’ve been having trouble accessing my website to make changes and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. It wasn’t a big deal at first, but now that I’m ready to upload The Desert Hedge Murders as an e-book for Kindle and Nook, I really needed to solve the problem.

It turns out that Yahoo! SiteBuilder has some incompatibilities with the new Windows 7, and guess what my new desktop computer has. Yep, Windows 7.

I took my husband’s old laptop with Vista and installed the latest version of Yahoo! SiteBuilder, and now I can save my changes without getting an error message. You can guess what project just moved to the top of my To Do List. Yep, it’s time to spend a couple of days transferring photos to the laptop and making all the changes I need to bring the old website up to date.

What I’m Reading

If you saw yesterday’s blog post, you know about my “rereading the classics” problems. I decided to go a totally different direction and read a fun piece of nonfiction loaned to me by a cat-loving friend. The book is My Cat Spit McGee by Willie Morris. It’s about a dog lover who finally learned to love cats, which describes me as well. It’s a lovely change of pace.

The Tuesday Question

Do you have a pet or pets? If so, tell us its name(s) and what you love most about this creature.