#midnightmousers — Public Fediverse posts

MIDNIGHT MOUSERS Release Day!

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Waxing Moon

Pluto, Neptune, Saturn, Chiron Retrograde

Cloudy and cooler

I hope your week is off to a terrific start.

You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here.

Today is the release day for the anthology MIDNIGHT MOUSERS, cover above. It’s published by Thalia Press, and has a dozen noir stories built around cats. My story, “Gorgeous Mess” is included, with three cats, one of whom is inspired by my friend’s cat Slick, who brought Bea home (and yes, there’s a cat inspired by Bea in there, too). And a cat inspired by all the lovely black cats we’ve had through the years. The cats in the story, however, are named for film stars. Anyway, mine is comic noir, and a little zany, so I hope you enjoy it. You can get it in print or digital.

Friday was a pretty day, and the weather had broken overnight, with a big rainstorm. But it was sunny by the time I headed out. I am so sick and tired of the musical chairs in the parking lot, and the dudes who car-spread all the time.

I got my table assignment for the author fest in September. My hope is that it doesn’t rain that day, and I can bring everything I need for the fest up in the rolly cart, rather than drive. There won’t be any place to leave the car, and driving it back and walking back to the library will just be too much. I’d rather rolly cart it all up and rolly cart it all back. We’ll see. So much of life around here is decided by weather.

I have most of the event materials ready, from previous events. I don’t think the copies of VICIOUS CRITIC will get here in time, so I’ll just have TAPESTRY and MURDER BELLS. I think I have a single copy of CELLULOID CRIMES left I can sell.  I won’t be able to get copies of MIDNIGHT MOUSERS in time either, so I’ll have a postcard about it. And sell sheets for the Topic Workbooks. I have the book stands, I have the sheet with my payment information if they want to pay digitally. I have to decide on the background cloth. And I’ll make up a bunch of business cards for different sites. I’m not expecting a huge sales event anyway, more getting out knowledge about my work and my sites. Most of my focus will be on moderating the panel at the end of the day anyway.

I went to the pharmacy to let them know that my mom was taken off one medication, so they don’t refill it. I did a decent sized grocery shop (and even stayed in budget), meal planning on the fly as I decided what looked good and what to pair with the CSA vegetables. I ran a couple of other errands on the way home, hauled everything up the stairs and put it away.

I did some work on poems for the residency and on the ghostwriting. That was pretty much the day. I find I need a lot of mental and emotional space to work on poetry, which is interesting, since poetry is so intimate. I’m playing with a piece of erasure poetry, which I haven’t worked in before, which is a fun challenge. I’m also working on an ekphrastic piece inspired by a soft sculpture by one of my colleagues at the gallery. I want to have these pieces in good enough shape by mid-October to bring them into the residency workshop.

Cooked salmon for dinner, making a lemon-dill butter for it with the dill from the CSA box. It was really good. Read and  played with the cats in the evening. I started reading ALAN OPTS OUT by Courtney Maum, which is very funny. I know that fictionalized area very well – Greenwich, CT. It was two towns over from where I grew up, and several of my mom’s pet-sitting clients were in Greenwich and Cos Cob.

Woke up once in the night, went back to sleep, and got up around 5:30 on Saturday. It cooled off both Friday and Saturday enough so I didn’t need to run the fans in the morning.

Saturday would have been my dad’s 105th birthday, if he was still alive, so I honored that. He died at age 50.

Saturday was also the 365th day of the morning free-write, which was something to celebrate. It began as a 90-day experiment. It’s not quite Morning Pages in the sense of Julia Cameron’s, although I usually do them in the morning. But it’s not 3 pages. It’s 15 minutes of writing, sometimes notes for a specific project, sometimes brain dump, sometimes practical planning on the business side of the work. I mark the project names in the margins, so I can find things, and I mark off in red if I’ve either typed the notes and put them in a specific folder (with a “T”) or a red checkmark if I’ve actually done/finished a draft of the project for which I used the notes. I’m almost at the end of my third notebook. I use the inexpensive spiral bound notebooks that I always buy at the back-to-school sales, college-ruled. I’ve been using green notebooks so far, but there’s no rule that they have to be a single color. I write by hand, because it connects me more to the work than typing. It keeps the body and the brain connected in a different way and I slow down and think differently and more creatively.

At some point, I will probably have to skip a day for some reason and have to start over with Day 1 again, but I was consistent for 365 days, and that made a positive difference in my overall work.

I ran an errand on foot after breakfast, then sat down to catch up on marketing (which I dropped again), and to start marketing MIDNIGHT MOUSERS. I hope we get more than an Amazon link for it, since I’d rather not direct people there, but it’s not up to me, it’s up to the publisher. I also added the blurb to the Anthology Marketing document, so that it goes into regular rotation once the initial release push is done. Pretty soon I’m going to have to think in terms of the September marketing content calendar, and then sit down and do it.

I did a quick drop-off/pick up at the library. I’m reading the books by the panelists, and the panel is large, so I have to get to work on it.

I sat down and finished the draft of this year’s program for the Boiler House Reading, and sent it off for proofreading.

Did a second round of marketing (I have two weeks on which to catch up, I really dropped the ball again).

Read the plays for literary committee, wrote up my notes, and filled out the reader reports.

Did the third round of marketing.

Did some other stuff on various projects. Not a whole lot anywhere, but a little progress in different things. Finished reading ALAN OPTS OUT by Courtney Maun, which I really enjoyed. When there’s a lot of fuss around a book, I am often skeptical, but this was worth the read.

Made a dish with the dragon beans, pancetta, mushroom, and onion for dinner, which was quite good. Dragon beans are a runner bean, and remind me a little of wax beans, but better. I have awful childhood memories of frozen wax beans in Chicago.

There were some elder care challenges in the evening, and I am tired.

Slept reasonably well, and didn’t get up until 5:30, much to the dismay of the cats. Morning routine was fine, and started the second year of the morning free write sessions.

Baked biscuits (the American kind) for breakfast. After the breakfast dishes, I got the crockpot set up and put in the ingredients for a beef stew. We don’t eat much red meat anymore, for a wide variety of reasons, but every few months we crave it. So I got a good deal from the local butcher, and have it in the crock pot with onions, garlic, carrots from the CSA box, and some celery and mushrooms. I marinated the meat in Worcestershire sauce, red wine and spices before browning it and tossing it in, so it should have a richness to it.

This will probably be the last red meat we eat for the year, with what That Thing has done about beef. As the farmers and ranchers whine, let’s remind them, “Yes, you voted for this.”

And as far as the wild horse slaughter goes, may every individual who participates in any portion  of the chain of this obscenity suffer the same fate as the horses.

I cleaned out some stuff that had accumulated and we don’t need, and had a couple of trips to the dumpster, which is always pretty full by Sunday. I went to do the Community Tarot Reading for the week, which you can read here, only to learn the internet wasn’t working properly. My modem isn’t even turning on, and the router was going in and out.

Now, Joe Spectrum has been on the street constantly working on lines, and every single time it gets worse. Maybe pay attention to other people’s lines and not just the single wire on your call?

The Spectrum app was useless (of course it was, all apps are useless). I finally got enough juice back, even with the one box down to get on the chat. Once I’d eviscerated the chat bot and gotten a person, I learned I have to have a service call. Now, Spectrum has promised me a new router box for TWO EFFING YEARS and I never get it. Instead, they shrink the range (it’s supposed to be 1800 feet, and this apartment is far less than that) because they want us to rent pods for different parts of the house and pay monthly. You know where they can put those pods, right?

Anyway, a service call was set up for Monday afternoon. And I managed to get things working long enough to schedule the post. I couldn’t do much more, because the internet was intermittent for the rest of the day.

So sick of all this.

Read MAD MABEL by Sally Hepworth, which was also very well done.

The crockpot stew turned out very well. Read in the evening. It rained most of the day.

Hit Day 14 of Legs Up the Wall pose, and I’m still not sleeping through the night. I sleep very well for 2 hours when I first go to bed and wake up thinking I’ve slept all night, to find it’s only 2 hours after I went to bed. I manage to get back to sleep, sometimes until about 4, sometimes waking up another once or twice. The quality of sleep is somewhat better, but it’s still not ideal.

Up at the usual time on Monday. Morning routine was fine. Started rearranging the office so Spectrum can get to the wires. I had to pause and go down to CVS in person and rip them a new one, because my mom was trying to sort out one of their numerous mistakes on the phone, and they made her cry. We’ve got it sorted out, there were apologies involved, but I am still filing a complaint with the executive office. This is unacceptable. If it happens again, I will rip that place down to the studs with my bare hands. I’d prefer to move all the prescriptions up to the pharmacy at the hospital, but it’s difficult to get there in bad weather, and I can always walk to this CVS if I need to.

I got out an LOI. I heard back from an LOI I sent out last week, to a company I thought was interesting. They don’t have the right fit at the moment, but my rather unusual array of skills got the founder thinking in some new directions. So we will stay in touch every few months, and see how things shake out. Always a positive to have another good contact in the Rolodex. (Yes, I still use a Rolodex).

Hakeem Jeffries meeting with Jared Kushner proves, yet again, that Jeffries is unqualified for leadership, is selling us out, and must go. I contacted my Congressional rep to request that he stand loud and firm to call for Jeffries to step down. His “contact me” doesn’t work. I fully expect him to lose his primary (and I voted for his challenger). I think he knows he will lose, and doesn’t particularly care about doing his job anymore.

That golf ad about a man assaulting and threatening a woman for “touching” his golf clubs is unacceptable, on so many levels. This early 1960’s mentality that they think is “funny” is merely condoning the rising violence against women. How could this get through all the levels of approval it needed to get through? Oh, yeah, misogyny. Like Target having a minstrel costume for Halloween. Racism. Since Target went full right-wing, they figured why not flaunt their racism. It’s ridiculous.

Spent a good portion of the day tidying up my office, vacuuming the whole house, and rearranging things so the Spectrum tech could get at the necessary wires. Got a little bit of ghostwriting done, and caught up on some email, but that was about it.

He came within the window and was very nice. He fixed the line problem with the modem (which just needed a cable extension), agreeing it was crazy short, and swapped out the router for a new one. There are still line problems on the street that are getting ongoing work, but for the moment, things are working on the new router (with new network name and password) he set up. I’m sure the dingus who drove down the street the wrong way a few months back and hit one of the poles factored in.

Bea becomes invisible when new humans enter the house. Tessa was annoyed because she wanted to nap in the computer chair and I moved her to the porch. Willa came to say hi, and then went back to whatever she was doing. Charlotte decided it would be a good time to hurl a furball.

You know. Cats.

Cooked dinner. Read in the evening. I’m reading the books by fellow panelists so that I know what I’m talking about when I moderate.

I actually slept through the night until Charlotte woke me around 3, which is an improvement. Let’s hope it continues. Moved to the couch and dozed until just after 5. Excellent free-write this morning, which should also help set me up.

Today, I have to make up for the writing I didn’t get done yesterday, and move forward. I also need to get through a bunch of email and do a bunch of filing. Hopefully, I can make it to yoga tonight.

I put my notes for tomorrow night’s literary committee meeting in A Very Safe Place, so I better figure out where that is today.

Have a good one!