the latest happenings, including writing updates

Summer is here. It came pretty fast, but everything goes faster as you get older.

Horsing around again

Life and weather, and dangerous smoke from Canadian wildfires (last weekend was awful!)... combined to keep me from seeing my horse for longer than I would have liked. Yesterday, I finally went to see him again. He's in a pasture at the boarding facility, has fresh water and friends and gets checked on, so I don't have to worry. He's a tough boy and knows how to cope.

I trimmed his hooves, which were just starting to get long but not terrible and had no chipping or cracking yet. The big issue was a bunch of ticks under his anus (and, I suspect, the same with other pasture horses who were rubbing and rubbing to no relief). My poor guy was miserably irritated by a cluster of ticks. They are terrible this year! I doused them and the rest of him in a strong bug repellant before trimming his hooves and managed to find someone who wasn't squeamish about ticks to pull them all off. Buddy was so relieved afterwards and almost fell asleep with no more flies or ticks irritating him. He enjoyed the process of having the ticks removed too; his expressions through it were hilarious. 🤣

I didn't ride him. I knew I'd be sore after trimming hooves, and riding after that long would only compound my soreness. I started feeling it last night and still feel achy today. I gave Buddy treats, love, and a hoof trimming. He enjoyed that. No work. He's a pasture pet, but he enjoys it and is good when I do get on. Since I'm not competing, we can take it easy. I hope to get out more regularly, but then stuff happens, some of it the same stuff that interferes with my writing.

Cats and crystals

I thought only male cats had issues with bladder crystals.

Nope.

We noticed our old girl (13 years) had bloody urine. Our oldest cat (male) as a kitten did that and had to be put on a special diet for a while, then grew out of it before developing other issues that required him to be on an even more restrictive diet. Boy cats have narrow urethras and are more prone to crystal issues. But female cats can have urinary crystal problems too. I didn't expect that. They just don't have the same trouble with blocked urethras that boys do. A blocked urethra happened to the other old boy (third oldest) several years ago, and he would yowl while in the litterbox and continually lick his sheath area. That clued us in then that he also had crystal issues, but he was already in later maturity when it became an issue for him.

Now, we have three cats who have to be on special food. Only the newest is free to eat anything... so far.

The good news is that our girl, for as old as she is, has healthy kidneys and no infection. None of our kitties are diabetic. They may not like the special foods for their issues, but they're healthier and happier than the alternative. A day after switching to the special foods given to the old boys, she was already getting back to being her chipper self (*sarcastically speaking* - she has tortitude in full!). She was playing again, instead of grumping around in pain. I expect this will clear up quickly for her.

We only knew she was having issues because of a couple of times that she urinated outside the litterbox and it was bloody. It was difficult to confirm which cat it was initially because we have four, but the boys have never gone outside the litterbox. Still, we had to wait until we could observe it so we wouldn't be paying for multiple cats to unnecessarily be taken to the vet.

We caught it and only had to change her diet. She's already doing better, so yay!

Light and Shadows

That is the title I'm sticking with on Book 22 of Forgotten Worlds. The word count is around 30K now and I'm hoping to finish by the end of the month, but that only holds up if life doesn't get in the way.

I still need to figure out a cover, but I know what would work. I just have to find the right image, or multiple images and compile it. It may take some Photoshop work to get something more representative of this story. 

Print Books

Since I read through Forgotten Worlds books 1-10, I fixed some things that I couldn't leave alone. (Book 6 was a mess, like the final edits didn't save or got overwritten until this update. I'm still beside myself since discovering that in the read-through this past year because the bad version was the one that had been available for a few years.)

I love reading my books, but I always see something to tweak. I started reading as a refresher and knew there would be some fixes. Updates have been uploaded for the individual ebooks. I just need to update the print files. I have the print collections for this series unavailable until the updates are ready. It hasn't been a big priority, since print doesn't usually sell for me, and I hate formatting those.

It's something I do plan to finish this summer, at least for Collections 1 and 2 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds. I'm still working my way through books 11-15 when I have time. Once those are done, I'll re-release Collection 3 as well.

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That's all for now. I'll post more when I have updates, like a book cover.

Thanks for reading!