Raven's View

Yes - heat wave has broken, we've had rain, and it's cool out. Good day to stay in and work, so of course I'm heading out to visit grandkids instead. 

But first an update. Focus was to be on fitting in time for the course I mentioned, by cutting back on editing (not a sacrifice), and counting reading time in with time already scheduled for that. Do have all the books on my iPad, as epubs so that I can easily add notes while I read. I also moved all my stories from Simplenote to Evernote. It gives me better indexes, and I can add a lot more, like web page clipping for later, and images. Import sort of worked, but resulting notes would not stay synced. Searched, found in a support forum that fix was to edit each note's header in the file to change enml to enml2. I know, sounds cryptic, no idea why it worked - magic I guess. Thank the gods for Google and geeks.  

Since last check in:

• blogs - still caught up on reading, and commenting, but still in fits and starts. Recommend a post from a few days ago by Krissy Brady, on several ways to manage your submissions. Will try one or two - the first step of course being to actually make some submissions. Keeping up on Facebook writer groups too, but probably could do more.
• editing - actually added some notes on things to consider based on the above reading.
• Flash Fiction - submitted two. One to Writer Unboxed, and one to Flash Fiction Friday. Have another one due for this Friday, for Terrible Minds, on Time Travel. Have an idea already, a beginning and an end, just need to do a bit of an outline and go.
• reading - fiction - had an ebook from the library to finish before it deleted itself - Running With the Demon, by Terry Brooks. Good one, will get more in the series. As for the course reading? Nope.
• reading - non-fiction - finished and did a review of How to Love Your Job or Find a New One, by Joanna Penn. I recommend it, even if you love your job, even if you're retired. 
• Fantasy and Sci-fi course - lots of interaction in the discussion boards on the site, as well as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Skype activity. Students from around the world - no idea how many but the structure scales up well - could be a thousand. Many might not make it, but it's a low risk way to try a course. My challenge will be to balance all these interesting interactions with actually doing the assigned reading and essays! 

Focus for the next few days will be on this course mainly. First essay, on the Grimm tales, due Tuesday. Flash Fiction due tomorrow, and some other fiction on the go, as I find time.