I’m sitting in the multipurpose building at MOERA during a lull in the action. The action is Atlantic Hope, a humanitarian training exercise for emergency and disaster management students.

The scenario of Atlantic Hope is an earthquake in a second-world country on the brink of civil war. The setting includes tense relations between northern and southern factions, gunshots, and paramilitary forces.

I’m the moulage coordinator for the exercise, which means I manage and run the casualty simulation with the help of my husband. In other words, I turn volunteers into victims. Gunshot victims, victims of illness, impalement victims, victims with cuts and contusions and bruises. This takes a combination of theater makeup, homemade prosthetics and a bit of know how.

When I do moulage, I’m in the zone. Time flows, and I find I have put makeup on 20 people without really noticing it. Gunshot wounds are new to me, so they present a bit of challenge. The challenge is part of the experience.

The lull will be over soon and more people will come in to be made up. I am in my element.

A Cup of the Perfect Coffee Drink

My husband knows I’ve been cranky. Yesterday was a frustrating day as I prepped for Atlantic Hope, a humanitarian simulation to train students in Emergency and Disaster Management. My job in this simulation is Moulage Coordinator. I make the magic happen, if by magic you mean turning volunteers into casualties using stage makeup and props.

Prep for a major event like this includes making skin-colored gelatin for burn effects, inventorying impalement prosthetics and making new ones, making fake blood from liquid starch and food coloring. Yesterday’s prep, unlike most years, was disastrous. I couldn’t find the impalements. I couldn’t find the sponge applicators I use as a base for new impalements. I couldn’t find the makeup for making the skin-colored gelatin. I couldn’t find the red food coloring, and it turns out that we’d finished the last bottle (a quart) because fake blood takes a lot of food coloring, a cup per half gallon of starch. This made me very cranky.

I made do on making the impalements. I bought cheap makeup to set up the burn gelatin. Then, our event caterers had a 3/4 full bottle of red food color.

This morning, after packing the car, Richard came back from an early morning errand with “emergency coffee”, which was my favorite: flat white with chocolate malt powder.

That coffee just made everything better.

I think all will be okay.

Playing with Loomly

I have a couple of books out there. You can find all my books here. They’re all in the fantasy romance/romantic fantasy area, although I would recommend Gaia’s Hands to those who aren’t into fantasy as well. I’d recommend Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Universe (Kindle Vella book) to those people as well.

Most potential readers haven’t found this blog, so I can’t promote my novels through here and expect a lot of new readers. Therefore, I have to reach out to my social media accounts and talk about my books.

I know I can’t afford those promoters who keep sending me emails, so I have to promote myself until I’m rich enough1 to afford one. The problem is that I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a writer, not a promoter.

For a while, I used free Hootsuite to post little ads on multiple platforms — Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It was convenient, even though I didn’t know what I was doing. Then Hootsuite dropped their free plan, and the cheapest plan for users was the $1188/year2 Professional tier.

I partook (is that the right word?) in free trials for two competitors of Hootsuite: Buffer and Loomly. I chose Loomly because it gave me one feature that the others, including Hootsuite, did not: coaching.

Loomly will give you advice as you are crafting your post to each of the social media outlets that you’re linked to for the post. Loomly tailors the advice to the specific outlet — for example, Facebook favors posts under 50 characters while Twitter readers want longer posts. They suggest better times for posts. They suggest when hashtags or exclamation points/question marks may increase engagement. Little things that are helpful in making a post stand out that amateur social promoters may not know.

In addition, Loomly features possible topics to post on daily, because posting about your project daily gets tiring for readers. Some of these are weekly items like #HappyFriday; others are one day only celebrations like #HappyGirlScoutDay.

I don’t pretend that Loomly is teaching me everything about social marketing, but I have more than I had before. It’s easy enough to use that I actually enjoy using it and my calendar is full through the first of July. It’s relatively painless to learn new strategies, unlike reading dull books on the topic. And it costs $312/year2 for the Basic (about equal to the Professional Hootsuite) tier.

  1. Not going to happen.
  2. These are billed yearly prices. The billed monthly prices are higher.

What Would I Do For Coffee?

I am not a coffee addict — I can quit anytime I want to. That’s a joke. I believe I am addicted to coffee, being unable to function in the morning without it. I can dress up my addiction with styles and flavors of coffee — my current favorite is a flat white with chocolate malt powder from Starbucks — but as my day can’t start without it, chances are I’m addicted to coffee.

This morning I fell asleep after my coffee anyhow while sitting upright in a chair, which is what happens when a 12-oz mug is not enough. After waking myself up a few times, I tried to make myself coffee in our old single-serve Nespresso. We’ve buried the Nespresso, like much of the rest of our coffee station, as my husband makes pour overs with our hot water dispenser now because we’re coffee snobs in this house.

I just couldn’t deal with the Nespresso, not with my lack of caffeine. So my husband just ordered me a flat white from Door Dash.

Yes, it’s true. My husband just Door Dashed me Starbucks. I was too busy to go out, so he called in an order for delivery.

Writing this down makes me embarrassed, because I can summarize the entire story as First World Problems. Having Starbucks delivered to my doorstep, however, is the closest to luxury I’m likely to experience, so I might as well enjoy it. That cute little brown bag in front of my doorstep feels like a holiday — and it has caffeine in it. If it doesn’t happen very often …

Coffee beans close up. Lots of coffee beans

The Wren of Amusing Email

Today has been relentlessly dreary, with the mist throughout the day finally resolving into gray. I mention this because I have had the afternoon to work, and instead I have been falling asleep sitting up. I suppose this is a sign that I need sleep, that I have been working too hard, or that it’s just too dreary of a day to stay awake. I need something to do besides laundry, which is putting me to sleep as well.

Surveying my more imaginative side, I’ve decided I need a visit from the Bluebird of Happiness, or at least the Robin of Mildly Positive Affect, with wild news or mild news for my life. In my wildest dreams, the Osprey of Capital rescues me from this drudgery with an ostentatiously generous Powerball win. Maybe the Seagull of Exquisite Dinners will bring a menu from Waldo Thai, and somehow I’ll have the time to go there. The Blue Jay of Raucous Laughter? I could use a good laugh right now.

I may have to settle for the Wren of Amusing Email, as the other birds seem not to have found my house. Let me go read my email …

Feeling the Flow Again

I have been writing on Avatar of the Maker after a hiatus (with other projects) and I am glad I’m revisiting it. Writing is once again a flow activity!

I’ve talked about flow before, but I might as well talk about it again. Flow is a concept originating with Mihalyi Csikmentmihalyi, and it involves being so engrossed in an activity that time flies by, yet one’s perception is of timelessness. Flow happens when the activity is neither too challenging nor too easy, but at an optimal level of difficulty. To experience flow, one must have mastery over the activity and be able to grow while doing it.

Photo by Aleksandr Neplokhov on Pexels.com

Flow is one type of engagement, and engagement is one aspect of well-being, according to the PERMA model. So, literally, when I engage in successful writing, I feel better, more complete. When I do not achieve flow in my writing, I am grouchy and unfulfilled.

What are your flow activities?

Maybe Finally Spring

Photo by Daniel Absi on Pexels.com

After a weekend of snow squalls, the first day of Spring is bringing us a high of 59 degrees and a soft blue sky. I can feel myself stretching toward the sun like a flower. (What kind of flower? I’m not sure. The obvious would be a sunflower, but I’m trying not to be obvious. A daisy? An anemone? Maybe a tulip. I like that idea …)

After a winter that I thought would never end, I’m feeling giddy. The weather might disappoint me next week with ice and wind, but at this point I believe Spring will come if it’s not here already.

This is a time of year I struggle with some difficult anniversaries in my life. So I cling to Spring as a distraction. The remaining chill is not so bad if blue skies promise that life will be better. The rain is better than the snow I just lived through. I’ve survived another winter.

When I go to work this afternoon, I will do it with a lighter step, and a feeling that everything will be okay.

A Failed Book

I have been unhappy with Kringle on Fire since the first draft. This is not usual for me, as I love my first drafts with the drunken happiness of accomplishment. I have to work to be critical in the edits.

But I didn’t experience that with Kringle on Fire. It felt flat. It felt trivial. It felt wooden. It felt all the things you don’t want to see in a romance novel. I thought I was missing something until I started writing again on Avatar of the Maker and it sparkled. I had characters who responded to each other and action that flowed. I liked the characters. I felt like I wanted to write it (although I had taken a break from it to write the Kringle novel.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I let Richard read through it to see what was wrong, and he picked up on the same thing. The book just didn’t sparkle.

What happened to this book? I think it was a combination of factors that were bound to doom it. First off, the female main character is a 22-year-old single mother to a two-year-old. Given that, she needs to be very cautious about exposing her son to potential male partners so as not to confuse him with father figures. (Staying the night is a definite no-no.) So that part of the relationship has to go slowly. It’s a Christmas season instalove novel, which is the defining factor of the entire series. Instalove is the polar opposite of cautious. This puts me into the situation of either putting the son in an unhealthy place or stretching out the action for longer.

There may be a way out, but I don’t know if I want to take it. I have written four Kringle novels, and I think that may be enough if the muse leads me this badly astray. I would be better served by finishing Avatar of the Maker and the other novel I have started. I feel guilty about abandoning a novel, but the Kringle book does not speak to me.

Maybe later.

Sixteen Years Married

This is not us.

Today is my sixteenth wedding anniversary. It doesn’t seem that long ago, but again it seems like the forever of brief moments, many of them spent laughing.

We got started late in marriage — I was 43 and Richard was 38. We were definitely late bloomers, as he had never been married and I had previously married the wrong person. I’m a nerd and Richard’s a geek, which might explain the late bloomer part.

We are not the perfect couple. We are the couple for whom people say “I cannot imagine you being married to anyone else” which means I’m a nerd and he’s a geek. I get it, though. I write romance novels about quirky people, and we could be one of those couples.

What are our secrets to longevity?

I’m pretty sure this list looks like the lists of other successful couples except maybe for the last point. And I’m not kidding, I think that is the key to us staying together for 16 years.