(no subject)

Ugh. I'm not going out today. It's not reclusiveness, it's a zillion degrees out. I'm going to stay in and bond with the air conditioner.

I've been alternating between cleaning and creating, which sounds nicely pithy, though at this point cleaning mostly involves Roomba supervision. While the Roomba was running in the kitchen, occasionally bonking into my ankles, I made ice cream; I forgot to chill the mix before I put it in the machine, but it came out all right anyway, and while the machine did its work I did some messing around with the cover for Trace.

And then this got very philosophical, so I'll toss the rest under a cut.

( Cover design, professional publishing, and the everlasting issue of gatekeeping. )

(no subject)

In that post I made earlier about publishing, I mentioned I'd read a crapton of books and gave a ballpark percentage of enjoyability. I actually went back and made a list, now that we're halfway through the year, and that helped a great deal in calculating my success rate.

In the last six months I have read my ass off. Perhaps not compared to some of you -- and not compared to my reading habits when I was younger -- but compared to the last few years, the volume has picked up sharply.

( 26 weeks, 31 books. )

My reading list still has 65 books on it. For the love of god, if you care at all about my sanity, do not take this as an opportunity to suggest more. If I read "I know you said not to suggest anything but", I may be forced to throw a book at you. I HAVE A LOT OF THEM TO THROW.