Busy days

I intended to blog yesterday. I even began composing entries in my head. But then things happened. They weren’t big things, just one little thing after another. Then the day was gone. Most of the things had to do with either kids or the cover for the next Schlock Mercenary book. The cover is almost done, but the kids are no where near finished yet. This is fine. I always knew parenting was a long-haul project. This week’s kid issues mostly have to do with Gleek. She has been noticeably harder to manage for the last month or more. I’m not sure whether that is due to the schedule disruption due to the end of school, or because the days are longer and so she’s getting less sleep, or just because she’s turned a developmental corner into a pushing-the-limits phase. My best guess is that all of these things are factors. So I’m trying to make changes to the things I can and I’m breathing deep to practice patience. In the area of “kid things going well” Link’s tumbling lessons are being perfect for him. I love to see Link pushing himself physically. He isn’t naturally good at sport suff, so I’m glad that he has something that motivates him to practice. Kiki and I are working together to reset her biorhythmic clock so that she’s sleeping at night instead of all morning. Patch has been skating under the radar lately. I should probably pay more attention to him.

Up next for this week are final layout and edits for the interior of The Teraport Wars. We are on the very final leg of the book-creation marathon. We have to get this book done and gone before Howard leaves for the first of his Summer conventions. Yesterday we printed out the cover so we could see it on paper. I cut it out and folded it into a little book. It was oddly satisfying to see it in my hands book shaped. In the business spaces not occupied by Teraport Wars, I’m still working to promote Hold on to Your Horses. The orders continue to trickle in, but I need to do some legwork to make sure that they continue to do so. One of the things I want to do is post translated versions as PDFs. Angela’s native language is Russian, so we’ll start there. I’ve lined someone up to do a translation into German. But there are so many other languages out there that it would be wonderful to have. I can’t afford to go to print with the translations, but creating PDFs only costs me a little time.

And now I have to go make dinner.