Still Going Up

Part of me hates to keep tooting my horn but another part of me is so gobsmacked at the success of my Freebie Friday promo that I can't stop. The totals today are 9,127 FREE The Seaview downloads, 649 Open for Business sold, and 636 Spies Don't Retire sold. Just wow. And there's one more day left. I get paid for the sold units, I don't know what percentage of the retail, but something, way more than nothing. Even if I only get half, it'll be amazing. Whew.

 

My butternut squash soup was a hit with my knitting friends at Zambaldi this afternoon. I will say that taking a hot slow cooker of soup down there was a trick. I padded it on the floor of the backseat with a big, thick beach towel so it wouldn't tip and I drove like I had fragile glass things in the car. CS made homemade, crusty bread that was still warm, and brought Kerrygold butter to spread on it. DM made cherry bars that were so delicious. Once again, we did not starve. I got some looks when I carried in the crockpot, but I didn't care. I know that they don't mind if you bring food so I brought food. One thing that surprised me was I bought Chinet bowls because I didn't want to haul breakable bowls down there. The hot soup seeped through the bottom of the bowls so we had to double or triple them. It was a good thing they came in a stack of 60!

 

I knitted the last inch of ribbing after the soup was eaten so now I can knit a couple rounds of stockinette stitch before I start the crown decreases. 

 

Instead of drawing a flower, I painted one. It's an Allium, a member of the onion family but prettier. I've been so consumed with writing and marketing lately that I've fallen down on the painting part of my life. I'll try to do better.

 

After supper, I drew a gratitude journal page for today. I was grateful for having the last slice of homemade bread from CS to have with another bowl of squash soup. I didn't have that fancy butter but the plain bread was almost as good, especially when I dunked it in the soup. Besides there's enough butter in the soup to make up for it.

 

This morning I printed off the three pages of comments from the Writers Helping Writers blog contest I won a couple weeks ago, read through her comments, and made changes. I'm especially grateful for her comment that my dialogue can be heavy at times and she said, since it's the fourth book of the series, I don't have to include all of the minute details of every day. That's going to streamline the story. It'll be better.

--Barbara