So, I'm not the kind of person who believes in this stuff. Seriously. I'm just going to lay out the facts as they happened.

I got into my mom's jewelry box because I'm totally broke and need to sell just a few more things. I hated to do it but I'm kind of out of options.

I take out her charm bracelet, which is so heavy there's no room for any more charms on it. The charms are from all the places she went to from the mid 80's till the 2000's. They're sterling silver. Okay, I decide to bite the bullet and list it on Ebay.

I'm halfway through listing all the charms that are on it when the computer freezes. I mean locks down. I mean I have to hard boot it with the button and the middle finger. That's how hard that went down. And this computer is only over a year old; it does not freeze. Firefox can freeze sometimes, der... but not the actual computer.

So while I'm rebooting it I say out loud, "okay Mom, I get it, but you better show me where the money's going to come from."
 
Anyway.

Two hours later, literally, I get my NV Energy bill. I have not paid the electricity bill for two months. I don't know where this month's payment is going to come from, let alone the amount owed.

I look at the bill, and I have a $28 credit.

That's right, not only is the past due amount gone, I have next month's payment taken care of too.

Apparently that was the deposit I paid when I moved in here, totally forgot about it.

But still. Two hours later and I had one bill totally taken care of and then some.

That charm bracelet is going into a shadow box and I'm putting it on my living room wall.

A deal's a deal.

The first one used to run frequently between feature movies in the early dinosaur days of Showtime. The theme song is so catchy I still hum/sing it! All of a sudden I remembered it, went to Yahoo, and hey presto!

Embedding is disabled for this one, so, here's the link: The Daisy

The second one is probably one of my favorite animated films ever. And I mean ever. When I was looking for The Daisy I thought "hey, wonder if the other one is there too?" and of course it was because this is the Internet!

People of the journal, I give you: Skywhales

That's right, I'm doing another Nano. There's a couple of them this summer, Camp NaNo. Still 50k words, and twice: June and August.

I'm going to use this time to write the last two PauC books.

Yeah, let's see how well this works (sarcasm)

Please feel free to send encouraging words. Because if this works, the entire series may be done before the apocalypse.

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." -- Goethe

So, today I learned that Disney, in conjunction with yet another studio they control (in India), are making...



It's the frackin' Mahabharata! India's great epic! My favoritest epic ever! And that includes both Lord of the Rings and Les Miserables! (which are much smaller book btw)

My day has been made infinitely more awesome.

ETA: Just learned, this movie has been in production for a few years now, but Disney has recently acquired UTV (the company that's been making it), so now it's finally getting a release. Don't know the date yet. Or if it will be released outside of India. But if they don't they're making a massive mistake.

I am noticing some slight editing changes between the master files and the printed versions of Sanctuary... and it may take longer than I thought to parse between them. I did make a few editorial changes, like that terrible horrible song the kids sing about Valjean and his stalker friend. :-)

Other than that, it's going well! I'm selling more stuff on Ebay to make up the lost pay from being sick, but I'm looking at another $30 for another awesome cover. April is getting better than March! Hopefully May will be better than that, and so on and so forth...

Here's to today being better than yesterday!

Home sick again. Losing money like crazy. This sucks.

I have to figure out something more to do. Can't sell my whole apartment on Ebay...

and in about two hours reformatted and created a cover for my little happy short work "His Best Weapon", the one that won the WOTF award way back in the way back of 1996. It's up for reading and downloading, and best of all, it's FREE.

So if you want a nice little sci-fi space military opera odd couple story between a very tall blond gay man, a short Jewish/Italian American woman, and an airlock, I recommend it highly! :-) Or in other words, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle liked it enough to give me a trophy and a big check for it, so, why not? It's free!

Follow the link

Pont-au-Change Volume I: Resurrections is now LIVE on Smashwords and available to download on basically ANY e-reader platform for the super cheap price of $2.99! Please to check out nice writings!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/144870

I can't even tell you how glad I am to have this all going again! Happy dance!

Oh, and here's the cover art. Looks much better than the original one, heya?



Book 2 should be up sometime in April! Woo Hoo!

Okay, so a few weeks ago I transferred some money from a prepaid Mastercard to my Skylight bank account. The money got put on a hold. I called to ask why, they said that instead of putting it in my name, I put the bank itself as the owner of the account. I told them fine, send the money back to the Mastercard, they said it would take 3-5 business days.

Forward to 3-5 business days later, I see the money is still in there. I call, they say "oh it's because you put the name of the bank as the account owner, not your own name" I said "I know, send the money back to the Mastercard" they said "3-5 days."

Here it is 3-5 days later, I call again, they said "oh it's because you put the name of the bank as the account owner, not your own name" I said "I know, send the money back to the Mastercard" they said "3-5 days." I said what about the last guy who said 3-5 days, they said BUH.

Lather, rinse, repeat. I asked to speak to a supervisor. I'm on hold now half an hour. Then they sent me back to the operator.

Fuckers.

Skylight won't send my money back to the Mastercard and won't release the hold so I can use it. The Mastercard cannot get the money back; Skylight has to release it.

And now when I call in, they reroute me back to the automated system. I can't get a customer care agent. I

I just want my damn money.

Their website is Skylight.net. They don't apparently have a twitter account.

Please send out the signal. I want my damn money.

UPDATE: well the bad news is I still don't have my money. The good news is that I achieved what I thought I wouldn't be able to do again due to some stupid bank tricks 10 years ago... have an actual bank account again. Turns out I can, so I do, so my direct deposit is now rerouted to an actual bank, not that frickin payroll card I had, so now I am like a grown up again! And Skylight can kiss my fat white American-made ass, as soon as my balance drops to thirty pieces of silver ten dollars I'm cutting them loose. And then let them try to explain how they can keep my money from being refunded if I no longer have an account with them.

So, by the end of this week (or early next week) Pont-au-Change Volume 1: Resurrections will be available again, as a downloadable ebook. I don't know exactly when the formats will be available for which e-reader, but at least it will be in the pipeline. More details as I finish them. Right now I am coding the text so the links to the chapters work and meanwhile I am having someone who does this sort of thing professionally redesign the horrible cover to look more like I wanted it to look in the first place. SO!

Here we go again! And I should be able to re-release the other two volumes in the next two months, with the purpose that finally FINALLY Honor will be out at the end of the year.

I feel like the girl who cried wolf, but you know, this time I think it's actually going to work out. Because I believe in myself. And I want this to happen.

More news later, or check the Other Blog over at pontauchange.blogspot.com!