It’s been a week of catching up on things after several busy weekends, and of harvesting.
Last week, I had family over to celebrate three birthdays–my daughter’s, my brother’s, and my dad’s. All went well and we had a good celebration. The Black Forest cake I made with homemade cherry pie filling was a big hit, and was requested for all future parties for these three, as it’s when cherries are in season.
This tomato’s taste was comparable to its size
It was also time to break out the pickles I made a couple months ago. They were a little salty, but good! Too salty, because I used regular table salt, and should have used kosher salt–a coarser grain that would have equated to a bit less overall. But the pickles were tasty enough I’d consider them a success. Glad I got those pickles too, because a couple weeks later, the cucumber plant succumbed to powdery mildew. š
The tomatoes have had no such issues, and have been producing like crazy, especially the Beefmaster. One tomato was bigger than my hand! Okay, my hands aren’t that big, but still! We ate part of it in a big, salmon salad tonight, and even then, the rest almost wouldn’t fit into the food keeper we had.
Tennessee Update: Nothing new here – still waiting for the bank. The loan originator tells us they’re waiting on the title company. It’s frustrating, because we just went through that exercise aĀ year and a half ago when we bought the land, and the title was clean then. But the banks always have to dot every “i” and cross every “t.” Hope to get a closing date this week!
What I’ve been Reading: Still not done with that novel, but not because I’m not enjoying it. The reason? Because it’s paper! I have tons of paperback books I’ve collected over the years, mostly conference freebies, but some gifts and some I’ve bought. I noticed one of the latter a couple weeks ago as I was thinking it’s waaaaaaay past time for a newsletter, and a giveaway. Then I realized I hadn’t read that book, and decided I really needed to go through the paperbacks and read some before I give them away or move them.
See, ever since I got a Kindle four or five years ago, I much prefer ebooks. The main reason is that I like to read fiction in bed, before I go to sleep, and with ebooks, I can read in the dark. Sometimes I go to bed first, sometimes my husband does–and if that’s the case, reading with a light is a total non-starter. But I do have a bunch of paperbacks I want to read, so I’ll just work through them slowly on the nights I go to bed first.
What I’ve Been Writing: My goal last week was to get back on my WIP, and write 100 words a day. Well, I missed a couple of days–really, I should have allowed for that–but I overshot the 100 words without a problem on most days, and wound up with a total of 900 for the week. Doesn’t sound like much, give that I can write that much in an hour if I get going on it, but with so much going on, and just getting back to the WIP, I’ll harvest those 900 words as a win. For this week, I’m going to shoot for an even 1000 words total, however it breaks down into number of days written.
How about you–have you harvested anything exciting lately? Have you read anything good recently?Ā Ā Do you prefer to read print books, or ebooks, and why? And how are you doing on whatever goals you might have, writing or otherwise? Please share in the comments–I’d love to hear from you!
Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.
Back in May, you released your first indie title, a short story called “A Walk in the Rain” (also a good read). What made you decide to go indie?
With ebooks, printing, shipping and shelf space are no longer applicable. A longer book may take up a few more bytes of disk space, and a couple more seconds for the reader to download, but disk space is continually becoming cheaper, to the point that itās negligible. With increasing bandwidth and cell phone network capacity and speeds, download speeds donāt matter so much either. Where most publishers of genre fiction hesitate to take on books much longer than 100,000 words (epic fantasy and historical fiction being the main exceptions), publishers and sellers of ebooks arenāt operating under the same constraints. Likewise, few readers will plunk down enough cash for it to be worthwhile for a publisher to print a single novella or short story, but with production and shipping not part of the equation, ebooks are a viable medium for short fiction. So does word count matter?
