Ten days ago I celebrated my 41st birthday. Time to update the image to reflect a more mature me, I guess.
Kyoto in sakura season. One of the rare images without a billion tourists taking selfies. Get up early enough and they are still in bed and it’s only the million or so photographers with the same idea!
That was a month ago and it was heaven there - crowds aside - but oh, how things have changed since!
Not quite a mid-life crisis but my home life has been interesting with the arrival of an elderly relative and the consequent rearrangement and remodelling of the facilities.
Not a lot of work has been happening but I’ve had tradies in and I’ve been assembling furniture with allen keys and humping boxes here and there and Princess Fluffypants has been relegated to a comfy blue cushion - now quite white with cat hair - sitting on top of a heating pad in the sunroom where she pretends that all the uproar and mayhem isn’t happening around her.
I rather wish I was at liberty to do the same, but no …
My office space has been relocated twice. Just what I don’t need with two major writing projects on the go and a genuine need for focus.
Things are beginning to calm down slightly and I’ll get back into making some progress. All told I’ve put down something like 75 000 words over the past few weeks and I’m at that delicate stage where what I’ve written is incoherent rubbish that I’d be ashamed to publish and I need to chase down all the loose ends and make sure all my characters retain the same names from one end of the story to the other and deal with significant locations moving around the countryside of the notional landscape I’ve created.
More on these projects in due course. I need a few uninterrupted days to get the outline of the second draft sorted out - it’s a romance novel and hitting the right beats at the right times is crucial - and I haven’t had an uninterrupted hour for far too long.
In other news
I got an email from a website design mob in the middle of the night. I blame you, Scarlet Ibis James.
Naturally my first thought was that it was a scam of some sort and I spent a midnight hour looking into the thing.
As it happens, I’ve had a domain name reserved for a couple of years and I might as well get some use out of it. This Tertulia crowd seem to have their ducks in a row and they are part of a wider book promotion ecosystem and heaven knows I could use some help in that direction.
Scarlet Ibis James used them to make her author website. Over the years I’ve seen various claims from various firms that they do a fabulous job for authors and they rarely deliver.
This lot looks like the goods. Simple to use for both author and reader, tied into a sales and review system, not too expensive.
I ran through their test drive made a site I was happy with, handed over my credit card, followed the instructions on transferring my domain, and here’s the result:
BritniPepper.com, ladies and gentlemen!
Watch this space in a month or so. Yes, it’s going to take me that long to get my current books published, and that’s assuming all goes well.
Oh, I hear someone calling my name and it’s not the cat, who can be fobbed off with a dollop of sour cream. Must go!
Britni
Happy Birthday!!!!
Kyoto? Sounds divine!
I too was lamenting to hubby that I have no space in this apartment. City life without tons of money—woe is me.
Does the elder has good stories you can tell? My grandmother was hilarious in response to my questions. I based Cecil from my last book on her descriptions.
Yes, yes—Tertulia won me over. They are legit easy to work with and the real deal.
This was a lovely update!!!!!
Happy belated birthday, Britni