I wanted to let you know that the annual Smashwords Read An eGook Week Sale starts tomorrow, with thousands of books at discounted prices, many free, including my own.
Check it out at http://www.smashwords.com/
Or go directly to my books via my profile at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/toriz
There’s not much to say, but here are a couple of random updates.
If you saw last week’s post you’ll know this, but “Pawfect Pet Poems” is now available everywhere my books are sold, in all formats my books are made available in, which includes audio, paperback, and various eBook formats.
Speaking of books, I finished reading “Howl’s Moving Castle” and moved on to “Castle In The Air” which is the sequel.
In other news: I tried joining Dad and Kelly for roleplaying with some friends this past Monday, but it didn’t go to plan. I think it’s just too much for me to keep up with these days. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.
We were meant to get more snow. We didn’t though. I’m not surprised, but am a little disappointed.
A short collection of poems of various lengths and styles, all with one thing in common: they were written for - or about - some of the various pets my hubby and I have had.
The poems in this collection are mainly about chinchillas and dogs, though other types of animals – in particular degus - sometimes make an appearance too. All poems are captioned with details of the pets they were written for or about.
"Pawfect Pet Poems" is now available as an audiobook, narrated by Chanelle Marie Allen.
If you'd like to grab yourself - or a family member, friend, neighbour, or whoever else you might want to buy one for - a copy of this audiobook, you can get it via Audible, iTunes, Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada, or the Amazon sites for many other countries.
However, if you'd prefer an eBook, you can grab your copy from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada, or another version of Amazon, as well as from Apple iBooks
., Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and a few other online retailers.
Alternatively, if it's a paperback you'd prefer, you can buy that via Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada, or some of the other versions of Amazon.
Also, if you'd like to add "Pawfect Pet Poems" to your Goodreads to-read shelf, you can find the book's Goodreads page here, where all available f ormats will be listed.
*~*
Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but this book was entirely written, recorded, and produced by visually impaired individuals, since both my narrator/producer and I are totally blind.
The snow stayed longer than I expected. It was lunch time before it melted. I went to the door so Kelly could help me see some of it before it had time to fully melt in his hand. It would have been nice to go out in it, butI got to see the snow as best as I could under the circumstances, which I was pleased about.
In other news: the audio version of “Pawfect Pet Poems” will hopefully soon be available for sale. In fact, it might already be. It just finished going through the last of the checks it has to go through to be available for sale. So, watch out for my official announcement post, or look for it on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon.
Despite still feeling pretty unwell, I was determined to try and do a little something to celebrate Samhain )otherwise known as Halloween, or Nos Calan Gaeaf in Welsh). So we hung up an Autumn themed reef on the door...
Kelly helped me make sure there was a Mr. Pumpkin-Head (what I always call my carved pumpkins, ever since I wrote the poem of that name years ago) to put in the window...
And I enjoyed some tea in my new 'Witches Brew' cauldron-shaped mug (brought a couple of months ago, but not shown to you at the time, to match the teapot I got a couple of years ago)...
While we watched episodes of "Wednesday" on Netflix and waited for trick-or-treaters.
There were very few trick-or-treaters (even when compared to recent years, when we've had less than there always used to be when I was young) between the rain and our minimalist approach to decorations, but I'm sure Kelly doesn't mind finishing off the Halloween chocolates.
I was interviewed as part of Robbie Cheadle's "Growing Bookworms" series recently.
As well as the interview, the post includes reviews of a couple of my books from Robbie.
The post for it went live this past Wednesday (August 9th 2023).
If you'd like to check it out, you can do so by going here:
It’s Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in the Southern Hemisphere. That means it’s time for Smashwords’ largest mega sale of the year, The 15th annual Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale, which runs July 1 through July 31.
In other words, all this month, you can find most of my books – poetry collections and children’s stories - available for a promotional price at Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale!
Find my books - and many more - at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos all month!
Or go directly to my Smashwords author page at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/toriz
And remember: Smashwords makes their books available in multiple formats, which means there will be a format that works for you, regardless of your preferred method of reading eBooks. In fact, since one of those formats is html, if you can read this post, you can read my books!
Tell your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, pets, random people you meet on the street... Basically, tell anyone and everyone you think might be interested, or who will listen while at least pretending to be interested.
It’s Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in the Southern Hemisphere. That means it’s time for Smashwords’ largest mega sale of the year, The 15th annual Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale, which runs July 1 through July 31.
In other words, starting tomorrow, you can find most of my books – poetry collections and children’s stories - available for a promotional price at Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale!
Find my books - and many more - at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos all month!
Or go directly to my Smashwords author page at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/toriz
And remember: Smashwords makes their books available in multiple formats, which means there will be a format that works for you, regardless of your preferred method of reading eBooks. In fact, since one of those formats is html, if you can read this post, you can read my books!
Tell your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, pets, random people you meet on the street... Basically, tell anyone and everyone you think might be interested, or who will listen while at least pretending to be interested.
We're already a couple of days in to June. Can you believe it? Where has this year gone?
Thankfully, we haven't yet seen any extremely hot
weather, though the weather has remained warm. I mean, it is sticking
around the high end of my tolerance for heat, but hasn't yet gotten
beyond that point. It's been around 20C in the day, and around 11C at
night (that's somewhere around 70F for the daytime temperature, and
somewhere around 54F for the nighttime temperature). I've got no complaints about the nighttime temperatures, and I'm even OK with the daytime temperatures at the moment, but my preference for cooler weather means I don't want it to get warmer. This is perfectly fine, thank you very much! If it was up to me, it would stay like this until it's time for the cold Winter weather to return. What? I can dream... Can't I?
Anyway, if I could have done exactly what my body wanted to during
the past week, most of the time would have been spent in bed, resting. The trouble is, when you spend an extended
period of time – such a s a couple of weeks, for example - neglecting any task
that isn’t completely essential, you eventually find yourself needing to tackle
many of those tasks, with the addition of any that crop up while you’re trying
to catch up. And that’s the position I
found myself in, so that I spent the week alternating between trying to rest enough to at least recover enough spoons to function, and trying to actually do all the things. Resting enough to regain a few extra spoons would have been even better, but I’m
just
grateful I was able to manage to rest enough to get enough spoons to
have the
energy to just about cope with doing what I did. I feel like I've been stuck in survival mode
to make it all happen, which isn't ideal, but it got things done.
Sometimes that
has to be good enough, and this was one of those times.
So, despite everything, last weekend was mainly devoted to catching up on housework and blog posts and such, with a couple of phone calls and Zoom calls thrown in, and rests where and when I could. I might have skipped the Zoom calls, but they were my book clubs, one of which I actually facilitate myself, so I didn’t want to not be there. I mean, even the one I facilitate I could have skipped; I could have had someone step in for me and facilitate the ACB Crafters book club in my place if I needed to. But I wanted to be there, exhausted and in pain though I was.
If you're interested: we'll be reading "The Chocolate Bear Burglary" (A Chocaholic Mystery, #2) by JoAnna Carl in June for the ACB Crafters book club, and the June book for the 18th and 19th century book club is "False Colours" by Georgette Heyer.
Then, with the weekend not even completely over, my Mam ended up back in the hospital.
Still being beyond exhausted from about two weeks of dealing with both Mam’s dogs on top of our own, I knew there was no way I could deal with both of them coming here again. But Izi is a relatively calm dog as a rule, so we agreed - with some reluctance, I admit, due to my level of exhaustion - to take her back if someone else would have Cai. I mean, I feel bad for Izi and Cai having to be separated from each other on top of being pulled away from Mam and their home again, but Cai is a very energetic pup, who becomes very easily overexcited, and having him here again when I’m already so drained from the last time would not have been a good plan. So Izi came back to stay with us Sunday evening, while Cai went to stay with someone else. At the time of writing this, Mam is still in hospital, and Izi is still here.
Lilie and Logan are accepting the situation, though with some reluctance. They like Izi, but are clearly not happy about their play date and sleepover lasting so long. All three dogs are wondering when Izi will be going home, and hoping it will be soon. They really don't understand.
Anyway, since I was hoping not to fall behind on things again, the rest of the week basically continued in a similar manner to how the weekend had gone, with trying to catch up on – and keep up with – things both online and offline, attending a couple of Zoom calls, and resting when possible - which rarely seemed to be. Only from Sunday evening onward we were doing so while having an extra dog around the house.
Despite somehow - and please don't ask me how - being reasonably successful at getting things done, I feel like I've been stumbling through the past couple of weeks in a haze of exhaustion, and would just love a few days where I can just rest and not need to worry about doing anything else. Unfortunately, things need to be done (and the things I'm doing by choice I feel like I need to do to retain enough of my sanity to be able to deal with the rest) so I don't see that happening any time soon.
*~*
In other news...
Just like basically everything else in the universe right now (or, so it seems) KDP printing costs are increasing, which means the price of the paperback versions of my books will need to increase to reflect that if I want to get any royalties from paperback book sales, which - though I'm not publishing with any hopes of becoming rich - I would like to do, as I'm sure you can appreciate.
Thankfully, they had a “bulk update” option they were offering on the author dashboard, so I was able to take advantage of that, rather than needing to update the price of around 60 titles individually. I do wish it hadn’t been necessary though.
I had hoped to say something before the update to the prices was completed, and to give you a chance to grab them at the original price before they actually increased in cost, but I forgot to mention it in last week's post, and then they did the update quicker than I expected after I clicked the "bulk update" button (they said it would take a couple of weeks, but I got an email saying it was done within a couple of hours). At the time of writing this, the changes haven't been reflected on their pages, so they're still at the original prices, but the price may have increased to the new list price before you have a chance to see this and grab them. Sorry. If you hurry though, you still might be in time to grab them at the old price...I mean, it couldn't hurt to check, could it? If you want to grab copies, that is.
