Uprinting Business Card Giveaway (Abridged Moby Dick)

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Today,  I’m using a rafflecopter link to give away an order of Uprinting.com’s  business cards. As I said yesterday, this is a prize worthy of any blogger or writer. Or, come to think of it, literary character. These cards aren’t so non-standard that they’ll be hard to hold or store in a card container. But they aren’t just squares, either. They’ll stand out when presented at conferences to colleagues, agents, editors, and, hey, potential sponsors.

There are five styles, illustrated below. You can customize what information appears on the card and where you put it. You can also include images from your computer. However, One of the coolest features from my perspective is the availability of inexpensive stock images you can add to your cards and position according to your own desires.

You do pay extra for such images, but not much. The ones I chose for the below examples would add between one and five dollars to an order (price depends on image size, and you have a certain amount of control of image size). AND you only have to pay for an image once. So if you pay to use the image, you won’t have to pay again to use the SAME image the next time you want to include it in a card.

Just to be clear, these images are owned by fotolia. I haven’t paid for them; I own zero copyright; and quite frankly I didn’t even ask permission to use them in these illustrations. I’m going out on a limb for your amusement folks.

Now, I have designed these cards completely in Uprinting.com. I made j-pegs out of them with the always fashionable print-screen-then-crop method. And besides showing you some of the fun things you can do with UPrinting’s die-cut business cards, I do hereby illustrate for you Moby Dick. Consider how much SHORTER that novel would have been if all of the characters had just carried business cards. I think it would have gone something like this.

Meet the author

 

Oh – by the way – these things are double sided

Introduction

Middle

Yes, they named a coffee chain for me.

Ascending Action and Climax

Climax and descending action

Conclusion

 

 

Continue reading →

SITS Girls Spring Fling

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Welcome to the Jester Queen for a second time this Monday. Sorry, I couldn’t leave the first post up on the front page for very long. And I have some exciting news to replace the Monday blues. Starting tomorrow, the Jester Queen is holding her first ever giveaway. I don’t anticipate transforming my blog into a different kind of place. I’m just adding some fun to the mix. Is it advertising? Yeah. It is. But it’s FUN.  I heavily weighed this. And I ultimately decided in favor of it.

I will never write content that is less than honest. (Yes, I know. Everybody says this. But look through my blog. I do not pull my punches for anybody.)

So if you do see a giveaway or review of some kind on my blog, then it’s something that I genuinely fancy. Although this will be my first giveaway, I have written sponsored content before. (A week ago. I’m seriously new to this aspect of blogging. Anyway.) Eden Fantasys gave me a gift card for writing about their company. And OH MY GOD, what hilarious fun we all had with it!

The giveaway starting tomorrow is for custom business cards from Uprinting.com, and I really hope you’ll come visit and enter to win. I’ve seen these cards. (I get a set for giving away a set! I’m in love with the leafy shaped ones.) They all look so nifty. They are the kind of cards a writer or blogger would want to carry.

Enough of that for now. Come back for more tomorrow (I plan to make Moby Dick into a comedy). In the meantime, here are some great ways to get to know me. If you’re here from SITS and want to find out who I am, check my about page or this blog post.

For my tenth anniversary, I blogged about my wedding.

 

If you’re here to learn about my kids on the spectrum, here is one of my favorites about Caroline and a recent romp with Sam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you enjoy fiction, try a short story like this one.

Whether you’re a regular visitor already or brand new today, please know that I value you more than I can say. This has been a year of change for me, and it will continue to be one, not only on my blog, but in real life as well. I have unparalleled support in the real world in the form of good friends and an awesomesauce husband. But having a supportive group of online friends, writers, fellow bloggers, and visitors is a constant source of wonder and strength for me.

Thanks for visiting everybody!

Jessie the Jester Queen

Thank God For the Fireflies

Posted on by February 25, 2020

The super moon has turned Sam into a super monster. Seriously. He’s been on a rampage today. He isn’t normally all that talkative, but today? It’s been nonstop words. We took him to the zoo this morning, and I swear to God he woke up every snake in the reptile house bellowing “HERE I AM,” as he ran in the door.

When we got home, we tried to slow things down with a viewing of Wall-E. Scott and I enjoyed the movie. What little we saw of it between “hug attacks” and “What’s that?” bombardment. (NB: This is a kid who can follow Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen so I know he’s full of piss and vinegar when he claims to be unclear about a Pixar plot. Lord.

And then, when the movie was over, he just went into all out Momaholism. Sweet JESUS, he was all over me. He battered me with his adoration, requiring me to lie on my back and hoist him in the air on my shins until my abs hurt. Then, he catapulted into my arms until I was ready to cry. Scott took over just before I broke, but within forty five minutes the kid was back to clinging to my legs like a little limpet laughing madly and screeching at the room. We took him for a twenty minute bike ride around the block, but it had no impact I could see.

So he barnacled for another twenty minutes. Then I stuffed him in his sisters shoes (his own being quite well hidden) and took him on another walk. I am not making it up to say he hop-toaded the first quarter mile of the hike on concrete. You know. Moved on hands and feet together. Seriously. He decided we were making Grinich Spinach and plucked random grass from neighbors’ yards for the next half mile or so. By the final quarter mile, I was looking for my elderly neighbor to see if maybe he needed a personal weed trimmer. One who could pluck the grasses one by one.

And then, in a flash of green, the lightning bugs came out. The first ones of the season. The first ones in Sam’s memory. (Last summer is gone for him. Just gone.) He knew what fireflies were, but had never (as far as he was concerned) seen them before in his life. He chased them through yards and up the sidewalk, and into someone’s open garage. And for just a few minutes, he stopped acting like a complete banshee. For that tiny span of time, he was just an ordinary little boy, chasing fireflies, wearing his sisters sandals as he jumped over every crack in the sidewalk.

Take care you lie well

Posted on by February 25, 2020

 

Engine thunder preceded the motorcycles. One, two, three, the machines curved into the lot.  The first rider, a big man in a leather coat, unholstered a pistol as he jammed down his kickstand. He took a small glass vial out of his breast pocket.

 

“I warned him.”

 

“True.” The second rider took the vial, sniffed it, then sniffed the air.  “Go up the back. Watch out for Flori.”

 

Upstairs, a young woman not much larger than a child stepped out of a door.  Flori said, “Cal’s down here.” When none of the riders moved, she said to the group’s lone woman, “Leave the men to mind the hall. They’ll catch him if I’m lying. You look at me like I’m the one as stole your drug.”

 

The woman rider walked to the open door and looked in. “She’s speaks truth,” she called to the others.

 

Cal lay on a bed in the small room, his body trapped between human and feline, one giant hand sprouting from his warped body.  “Do you have antidote?” Flori asked. “Or will you murder a cat?”

 

“We don’t kill the helpless.” The woman thumped down a pack and removed a syringe. At her jab, the cat-man yowled, then popped, and Cal lay on the bed fully clothed, and screaming. Flori threw herself across him, but the first rider hauled her up, mindless of how she fumbled with Cal’s jacket as she was dragged off her lover.

 

“Shut up and speak your last.”

 

“But I am helpless,” Cal protested.

 

The rider forced his pistol into Cal’s hand by way of answer, and the woman rider drew another gun out of her pack. Then Flori’s body popped. Before the bikers could react to the enraged gryphon she had become, she flew up, knocking out half the ceiling with one wing.

 

She seized Cal, who snickered and twitched in her talons. “They should know I’m never helpless with you,” he sang as they flew, the animal easily dodging the humans’ gunfire.

__________________________

They’re playing three truths and a lie over at Trifecta this weekend. But I’m a terrible liar and a worse guesser, so I just wrote a story connected to this one in which everyone but Cal is telling the truth. If she continues in this direction, Flori’s little life is not liable to end well. But she refuses to behave.

For my part, my obsession with honesty stems as much from the fact that I can only rarely pull off a lie with any degree of plausibility as it does from personal integrity.

Anyway, I’m gullible, and nearly everyone I know lies better than I do. Scott LOVES to torment me by making some impossible statement in conjunction with say a news article and waiting for me to say “Really… now waaaiit.” It has never backfired on him, and I have only had revenge once that I can think of.

 

Guesting at Cameron D. Garriepy’s Story Circle

Posted on by April 27, 2020

Good morning, everyone. I couldn’t stand to leave the letter to Fudge on the front page more than a few hours. Fortunately, I didn’t have to! I have a guest post up today. I’m starting the May Story Circle over at Cameron D. Garriepy’s web home.

I can’t even begin to say how thrilled I am. I first read something of Cameron’s when she posted a Linky over at Write on Edge. Proving that I live under a ROCK, I didn’t realize that she is one of the Write on Edge site editors for several weeks after that. What I did realize was that this woman is a writer.

It was reading Cam’s fiction online that first made me feel the stirrings of willingness to post my own fiction on my blog. Although the Write on Edge prompts didn’t get my initial fiction, it was absolutely one of their editors who first inspired me. In fact, that linked fiction was so powerful that it led me to troll stalk search Cameron’s site for more. One of the things that wasn’t there yet for me to find was the story of  Roxanne and Frost. (It’s serial and continues in Christie’s Sandwich Shop, Frost Again, and I’ve Got Wheels and You Wanna Go For A Ride. But even without that particular story, I realized within about ten seconds that she had a short story for sale on Amazon.com, and that this was a writer worth paying for.

I’m not an impulse shopper. But the price was reasonable, I have Kindle for the PC, and Requiring of Care was worth every penny. I actually sent her gushy fangirl e-mail after I finished. I’ve also seen parts of her story Parallel Jump on her blog. It’s mind blowing.

She is, quite simply, one of the best writers on the web. And she’s letting me start her story circle today! She is listening if you are interested in launching one some week, so check out her site and drop her a line. You know you’d like to, and you can cook up some awesome stuff when you write for her.

A letter to my dog, who is dying

Posted on by February 25, 2020

 

Sorry for the eyes- the 'fix animal red eye' function of Picmonkey leaves much to be desired

Dear Fudge,

Thank you for eating today’s hot dog. You’ve bought us all twelve more hours until the inevitable. And maybe twelve more after that, if you’ll let me feed you another. This morning, when it took two of us to guide you to the door, and still your legs splayed out four times, I thought we had run out of time. But you revived. Found your footing. Ate the hot dog. The walking, at least, would be simpler if you stayed on the carpet or your bed.

You are old. Eleven. You have dysplasia in front and back. And yet, you will sleep on the hardwood.

Every morning still, you tack down the hall, asking to go to the bathroom at three or five, your bladder still waking you before dawn. The sound rattles down my spine. And yet I will miss it. And the tick of your walking is nothing to the thunder of silence that will be your absence. I will tear a hole in this green earth asking why. Why the thunder? Why the thunder? Why the thunder?

But there is no question I can ask, no song I can sing, no food I can feed you that will reverse this . And the thunder echoes so loudly here. I can barely hear you for the silence.

__________________

As you can see, the computer dudes at Office Depot have gotten the motherfucking Pink Slip virus OFF MY machine. The computer is better. The dog is … not. This has been coming, and Scott and I are looking at things pretty clear eyed. The time will come soon, very soon, when we have to admit that we can be kinder to our pets than to each other. (Those are my mother’s words, by the way). The kids are sad. We’re sad. The dog is…flipping hilarious. Is it OK if I admit he made me laugh out loud twice today?

Like when he took the hot dog. He’d been rejecting things. Dog food’s been off his menu for a week. But he turned down Lunch meat. Plain broth. Everything. And then, I wandered through the room eating MY lunch, and suddenly the dog was scrambling up to standing, and he devoured it and half of another in two giant ‘Jesus, there’s the dog I knew’ gulps. Even though he rejected the hot dogs as beneath him just yesterday. Whatever appeals dude.

Then heading out, he was in a hurry, didn’t want to wait for me to support his legs, and so he kept going faster like maybe speed would fix the sliding. And for reasons I cannot fathom, it worked. And when I got to the door to open it, he looked back at me like, “See, I got this Mom.” But then it failed colossally the next time he tried it, and he looked so damned apologetic.

Anyway, this is my extremely weird and metaphorical thunder for Trifecta.

 

The Jester is Temporarily unavailable

Posted on by May 2, 2012

Sorry folks — I’ve picked up a computer virus. The machine is in the fixing stages. Should be back to normal tomorrow.

A week in pictures

Posted on by February 25, 2020

So, the last time you heard from them, our caterpillars had just arrived. They came with a note that said they would start to form chrysalides (John Wyndham fans kindly note the extra ‘e’) in five to seven days. Clearly, somebody informed these guys of the meaning of “make them wait in anticipation”.

To remind you, here was day 1:

Not the greatest picture, but I’m sorry to say none of them with my big camera have been. (Aside. Scott, I know we never exchange whatever day gifts. BUT. If you were so inclined, a fisheye lens for my rebel would be just the perfect mother’s day gift.) Ahem. Where was I. Oh yeah.

By day two, we had reached this state.

And here we are at day three.

And day four.

By day five, every time one of the little buggers climbed up to the ceiling, we were all just SURE it was getting ready to pupate, but it was like Braxton Hicks or Something.

Because it wasn’t until about 11PM on day six that four of them abruptly dangled in the appropriate J shape:

They still looked this way when the kids got up this morning.

But by 1PM of day seven, they suddenly looked like THIS.

And tonight, the other two are getting ready to go. For the curious, we got these things from  Nature Gifts. (No – this isn’t sponsored content. Unlike my racy post from the other day, this is just fun with the kids.) The kit promises five Painted Lady caterpillars. We got six, and all six are so far thriving.

Note that they aren’t that shiny, but the flash on my phone made them look that way. (And it’s this phone shot that really gives the best details.)

The Summoning

Posted on by February 25, 2020

This weekend, those madcap editors at Trifecta want us to write the same exact scene from three different viewpoints, each only 33 words long.  So. This scene follows several hours after this one, from another extremely short Trifextra prompt.

___________________________

“Remove the cats!” I shrieked. “By the third thunder, the demon box should be empty until I finish the casting!” I raced to finish chalking the sigil that would keep the monster trapped.

When the demon arose choking and spluttering, the child and I dashed around the wizard’s studio madly gathering kittens. But the mama cat arched her back and hissed, ready to battle her foe.

Dander choked me like poison. The time to force this puny wizard’s spell and break the box had arrived, but my eyes watered and I gasped instead for reprieve. Thwarted by a cat!

Curing the Ramsays with a little help from Eden Fantasys

Posted on by February 27, 2020

Holy cowabunga people. This is going to alienate some of you, and I apologize. Because this is TOTALLY a sponsored post. I am not selling out. This is just completely irrefuckingsistable. I get to blog about sex toys.  This is going to be fun. I have read about Eden Fantasys and their products over on Blogging Dangerously.  And here’s the cool part. The folks at Eden Fantasys don’t expect me to blog about their products. They don’t want me to review jack shit. All they want is for me to’ talk about their company in a way that’s ‘comfortable for me’. And link to some of their pages. (In return, I get a fifty dollar gift certificate to buy … umm. .. MAKEUP. Did you know they sell MAKEUP on there? First person to point out I don’t wear makeup wins a prize for admitting they actually know somebody as weird as me in real life.)

So anyway, I’m a word nerd. And I’m reading Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which makes me realize that sexual repression is a very real problem for literary figures (and sometimes their authors). So I’m going to help. I’m going to propose the appropriate Eden Fantasys products to help these characters move out of their stereotyped roles. If this goes over well, I’ll do it {why yes, you can start reading sexual innuendoes into everything  I type starting now} once a month or so. Because these people may be totally imaginary, and they may live in an era that would make these things impossible. But they obviously need my help, so I’ll find a way to overcome those problems.

Assuming it doesn’t go over like a lead balloon, I’ll call this series Sunday Sins. (Hey, I live in the South. I gotta get my kicks where I can.)

And I’ll  start out with six characters from To the Lighthouse, three women (Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe, and Minta Doyle) and three men (Mr. Ramsay, William Bankes, and Paul Rayley). Since they are presented as couples in the text, I’ll consider them as couples (though that will be a bit tricky with Lily and William) here.

Starting off, we have Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, as stodgy a pair as ever we’ve met. Although they have eight children, they are now too busy being archetypes of maternity and manhood to actually get down with each other.  There is no “Love in an Elevator”, and Mrs. Ramsay hasn’t told Mr. Ramsay to “Walk This Way” in probably ever.

I think a little roleplay might do them some good.  I don’t typically like “sexy” costumery. For one thing, I like to dress up for Halloween, and some of the things that pass for women’s Halloween costumes these days are just degrading. But this particular set is as embarrassing sexy for the man as for the woman. Besides. It’s not going to stay on long. Once these two remember what’s so fun about seeing the other one naked, the story should take a dramatic turn for the better. And in case they need a little more help than that getting things off the ground, I propose a good lubricant, because seriously. Eight kids? That’s got to take its toll.

Lily Briscoe and William Bankes aren’t a couple per se. They’re good friends who Mrs. Ramsay tries heartily to marry off to one another. They don’t ever sleep together or seem to need to, so it’s clear that they need some help spending time alone. For William the Botanist, I prescribe sexy underwear and <ahem> a sleeve. He might just let his inner lion roar if he had secret power drawers to put under every outfit. I’ll let you figure out what sleeve might be his best match . If you’re feeling particularly naughty, tell me in the comments what you decide.  Lily is a painter who needs to learn to relax and trust her own instincts. She needs to take a bubble bath by candlelight  with, well, one of these. Again, if you have a naughty streak, feel free to tell me which one in the comments.

And finally, Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle. Newly engaged, but not new to hiding behind rocks on the beach together, they need some tools to take their passion to the next level. Position support could be just the ticket for them (maybe if they had the right pillow, Minta would never have lost that brooch), and maybe somebody will get them a sampler kit like this one for the wedding shower.  And since Paul has a hero complex and Minta gets easily excited, they might get a thrill out of owning one of these.

I hope you have enjoyed this first edition of Sunday Sin. Like I said. If it doesn’t bomb, I’ll do this often. It suits my twisted sense of humor to a T.