Daily Exercise with Books!

I have been making a very strong effort to do some type of exercise for at least 30 min every single day. I've been doing this for long enough now to really feel the difference between when I'm on it, and when I've slacked off for a few days. My go-to exercise is walking. I love walking, and it isn't too strenuous so I won't try to avoid doing it.

One other habit I've developed, sort of accidentally, but it's working so I'm going with it, is that I save my audiobook listening time for my walks. Now I've made it a rule. I can only listen to my book when I'm walking. Now I enjoy walking enough that this rule has never gotten me out walking when I otherwise would have shirked. It has, however, encouraged me to take a longer route, or keep going around the block one more time if I'm at an exciting spot in the story and don't want to stop yet.

I'm currently on book three of the first Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. These are big books so even with hour long walks these have lasted me a nice long while. The narrator, Michael Kramer, is amazing. There's a large group of characters and they all have a distinct voice that adds to their personality. I highly recommend the book, or the audiobook if you want to try the walking thing.



Now my only problem is that now I'm doing the Couch to 5K running program three days a week, and I've learned I don't listen well while trying to run. So I really miss my story on running days. I'm debating about changing my rule to compensate for this somehow. Still thinking.

New Short Story Collection - Get it for Free!

Eye of the Beholder and other stories by Kara Hartz

I have put together some of my favorite short stories as a short ebook. These are Science Fiction and Fantasy stories:

An astrobiology team discovers a planet with disturbingly familiar aliens.
A middle manager finds out who has been stealing office supplies but knows no one will believe him.
A cleaning robot is much too efficient.
A little boy id desperate to acquire superpowers.
A military robot fights to deliver vital information before time runs out.
A translator under pressure makes a fatal mistake.

This collection qualifies for the KDP Select program, so I'm giving that a try as an experiment. So for now it is only available at Amazon but it also allows me to offer a limited time FREE! promotion.

You can get the collection for free for three days at the link above beginning tomorrow, Friday February 5th thru Sunday the 7th.

This Year's Christmas Pokemon

It has become a bit of a tradition over the past few years for me to crochet Pokemon for my girls. This year is Pachirisu and Oshawott. I think they turned out cute and the girls seem to love them.

I always get the Pokemon crochet patterns I use from WolfDreamer 
Someday I'd like to try to create my own pattern, but that day is not today.

I've Released an eBook: 'Love Thy Enemy / The Way Home : Two Short Stories'

I've complied two of my short stories, one previously published and one new, into an eBook.  These are both primarily Romance stories with Sci-Fi settings so I thought they would fit well together.

For awhile now I've wanted to try my hand and creating an eBook, and these short stories felt like a good opportunity to try out the process. Obviously, going forward if I do more of these I will need help making covers - this one is not spectacular to say the least - but will have to do for the moment.

I'd originally wanted to try out Amazon's Select program to get into the Kindle Unlimited lending system, but they require digital exclusivity for that. 'The Way Home' is still published at Voluted Tales Magazine so this book would not qualify. Maybe another time with another book.

However, that means I am free to distribute 'Love Thy Enemy / The Way Home' to other stores as well. In addition to Amazon (link above) it is currently at:

Apple iBooks
Inktera
Scribd

and should be up at a couple more places, including Nook and Kobo, in a few days. I will edit this post with links as they become available.

Yea!

Almost NaNoWriMo Time Again

I'm signed back up for NaNoWriMo again. I feel more determined to do well this year, so we'll see how things go.
I have a couple of possible obstacles - one is that I'm taking an online writing course at the moment. It's from the University of Iowa and called How Writers Write Fiction. It's been more time consuming than I had anticipated and I've had some trouble getting all the assignments in on time. As this relates to NaNoWriMo - the class will still be going on in November so that adds another layer of writing to do. I plan to just go ahead and count my class writing in my NaNo word counts even when I don't write a scene from my novel for my assignment. Still, there are the video lectures to watch, the reading and critiquing that will also need my time. Hopefully I can pull it all off.
The second thing -  I guess it isn't an obstacle really - is that I plan to keep working on my novel in progress first. I don't think it has a whole 50,000 words left in it however, so if I finish it before the end of November I will start a new story. This plan is slightly off from the NaNoWriMo guidelines, but I'm not concerned about the novel police coming after me. I just want to boost my word count.
Stranger things have happened!

 

Things I Love - Orphan Black

I first heard about this show on Wil Wheaton's blog, and shortly thereafter I read an article about it titled something like, 'The Best Show You're Not Watching'. (I would link to it, but I can't find it again now).  It is an amazing show, and I agree that not enough people are watching it because I have trouble finding people to talk to about it!

The tag line that comes up with a Google Search for Orphan Black is :

"An orphaned outsider witnesses a woman's suicide and decides to assume her identity."

What lets our orphan, Sarah; assume the woman's identity is their eerie similarity in appearance. Before long Sarah finds out the reason for the similarity is that she is a clone - and there are more out there just like her.

The lead actress, Tatiana Maslany, who plays the clones, just blows me away with her talent. While I'm watching I often forget that these characters are not actually different people, so completely does she give individual personality and mannerisms to each clone. There are many scenes over the course of the series in which one clone steps in to impersonate another, and even then, she doesn't just act like the impersonated clone. She maintains the layers of both, so that it is clear to the viewer that this is not clone B, but actually clone A pretending to be clone B. (I'm trying to avoid getting spoiler-y here. They aren't really called clone A or B, they have real names.) 

Maslany isn't the only great talent on the show. The entire supporting cast is fun and diverse and wonderful. 

If you are interested in watching, and you should be, this is definitely a show to start at the beginning of season 1. Right now there are 3 completed seasons available, so it shouldn't be too hard to get caught up. I should also probably note that this is not a child-friendly show. Lots of sex and violence.

I confess, I actually wrote this several weeks ago, but was slow in posting it but since I did, now I can add that recently Orphan Black won the Hugo award (a science fiction/fantasy award) for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form. While I voted for Orphan Black, I didn't expect it to actually win since it was up against episodes of Doctor Who and Game of Thrones which I believed were much more popular. So - Yea!

Daycare Isn't Dull now up at Aurora Wolf

I have a new short story up over at Aurora Wolf : A Literary Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
It's called Daycare Isn't Dull.

For a time, I took care of my infant niece. She was not a fan of naps and it was a great source of frustration for us both. Later, when she went to daycare, I wondered how the caregivers there managed with so many children all with their own problems. Then I started to wonder how they would handle a child with even bigger problems. . .

So go check out my story, as well as some of the others over there. It's a free site for readers, but I did notice a 'Donate' button if you like what you find.

Things I Love - Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

When I find something I love, I have the urge to share it with someone. It occurred to me, that would be a great use of this blog.

So, to begin with, I give you Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman.

Shadow Scale is the sequel to Seraphina: the story of a young musician (named Seraphina) who is in a unique position to bridge the increasing divide between dragons and humans at a time when years of peace between the two groups is growing strained. In Shadow Scale Seraphina has to take her mission even further and travel to other lands in search of other half-dragons like herself.

I loved the first book so much that I was waiting with great anticipation for the second. Part of me was a little disappointed in the sequel, but for a strange reason. In the first book, I was captured by the wonderful world and characters, and a decent amount of the text is spent on developing and introducing this world as Seraphina goes about her business. It's the sort of story world I love to just wallow in. I had looked forward to that same feeling in the second but didn't quite get it. We are introduced to many new lands and a lot of fascinating characters, but I didn't get to wallow. So much happens that the story doesn't pause enough to just lounge around in this beautiful world as much. Seraphina moves on a to a new place and new characters before we ever get to feel settled. Although I feel like complaining that the story moved along too well as a backwards sort of complaint. Instead, I will fill my need to spend time in this world by rereading both books at some point.

I believe these are marketed as Young Adult books, but I feel like there is more than enough depth for full on old adults like me to enjoy. I have a dragon-loving tween who I think would enjoy it a great deal, but I think I will wait a few years before offering it to her. Not that I don't think she could handle any of the content or follow the story, but I think there are things (like the innocent, bitter-sweet romance) that she would appreciate more a little later on.