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Dina James

Chronicler of the Paranormal

Holiday Wrap-Up 2022

Here we are, at the end of the year, and boy has it been absolute chaos here in the James Household.

Earlier this year we started work on converting our detached garage/workshop into a studio space, not only to give me a dedicated place to both write and craft (I have become a quilter as well as a knitter, and craft supplies take up a lot of space, no matter how much of it you store in twelve gallon totes). While the exterior (new roof, siding, and windows) went smoothly, once we got to the interior (electrical was already installed, but there was no plumbing whatsoever) things started to spiral. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say what should have been finished in October has now stretched into December, and will very, very likely go into the New Year. I keep telling myself that it will be beautiful and amazing once it’s finished (it will double as a guest house for any visitors needing a place to stay while vacationing out here on the Oregon Coast once the pandemic is in the rear view mirror), but given all the delays and obstacles, it doesn’t help much. I am homicidal on my best days, and those are far, far behind us now, so you can guess where I’m at when it comes to enthusiasm for the project.

September brought us a foster cat who ended up staying with us far longer than planned as our local shelter has been full to bursting all year. I was calling every other day to see if they had space in the adoption room for them, but had no luck. One of our friends saw the cat’s picture on our social media and made arrangements to bring him home, but logistics were fouled when Mr. James was involved in a car accident in November (he’s okay — the other driver ran a stop sign) resulting in a total loss of the vehicle that was supposed to transport our foster to his forever home. Other arrangements were made, but the accident and everything it entails has taken a toll on both our mental and physical health.

October brought us another foster in the form of a single abandoned ten-day-old kitten. Longtime followers may know that a few years ago, the James Household specialized in fostering neonatal/orphaned bottle-baby kittens, and though we had ceased operations due to COVID restrictions and protocols, the shelter (being chock full and every foster family unavailable) pulled our name out of mothballs and asked if we “still did that.” As it was a single orphaned kitten and not an entire litter, I said yes, despite everything that was falling down around us. After three days, we knew Her Majesty Queen Penelope wasn’t going back to the shelter, and once she was of adoptable age, we filed the paperwork and made her an official member of the household. She’s now ten weeks old and driving her older brothers and sisters insane with her bouncing. (I swear, she has one speed, and it is 175MPH.)

Given all the above, the idea of putting up a giant cat toy in the form of our customary Sithmas tree for the kitten to destroy throughout the month just didn’t appeal to either myself or Mr. James, so we tacked up a holiday fabric panel from my quilting stash and called it good. (It needs ironing, but that will happen later.)

While Her Majesty Queen Penelope is an absolute joy in these chaotic times, I have been running on fumes the last couple months, so work on Death Knell (Stranger Things #3) has come to a standstill. It was supposed to be polished and released the 20th of this month, but given everything going on around here combined with my chronic illness (Multiple Sclerosis – please consider a donation to your local MS society for the holidays thank you), I just haven’t had time or energy or the coherence to put in the work it needs before publication. I’ve pushed the pre-orders back 30 days on Amazon (that’s what they allow without penalty), but even that might not be enough. We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

So that’s where we stand for the end of the year. Once the dust settles around the car accident thing, we’ll have to set about getting a new one, and car shopping is one of my least favorite things to do. Both Mr. James and I are severely demoralized over the loss of his vehicle. We’d had it just over a year and it was much loved by both of us. There will never be another one like it, but I have a call into the salesman that found it for us and told him to find us as close a match as he can. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Mr. James will get a new car he loves for Sithmas.

A new studio for me would be nice, too. They were hoping to have it done by my birthday (yesterday), but yet again things got in the way.

I realize this post is full of doom and despair, but the sign on the door reading LAIR OF DOOM isn’t there for funsies. The James Household is also fairly demoralized at this point, and I have to admit missing the release date for Death Knell doesn’t do much to improve my mood.

Here’s hoping your holiday season, whatever you celebrate, is all you wish it to be, and that the coming New Year is kind to you and yours.

Best,
Dina

P.S. There’s a snippet of my first sci-fi novel, THE SILVERTHORN PROTOCOL up for PERCEPTION CHECK (and above)-level tiers over at Patreon. If you’re not a Patron, maybe think about becoming one for the holidays so you can access shiny things like that and more depending on how generous you’re feeling.

New Book Annoucement!

News, I has it.

Yeah, I was supposed to write this post before April 29, when I had a guest interview at the lovely Sarah-Jane Lehoux’s blog (thanks again for the fun, SJ!) that announced a new shiny thing, but I got busy with things and before I knew it, it was April 29! I was industrious and got the interview done early, but um…kind-of neglected to post to my own blog about it.

What am I talking about? Here…I’ll excerpt the part of the interview that I was supposed to blog about.

… “Light in a Dark World: Legends of the Destrati.” It’s a collection of my short stories focusing on the vampire clan Destrati. Clan Destrati is unique in that the whole of its members have turned away from the one they traded their soul to in order to gain immortality. Destrati feel that the parasitical cost of their existence is too high, and have sworn to redeem themselves in the hope that the soul they traded for immortality might find salvation. Destrati work to keep others from being coerced into trading their own souls, alone or with the guidance of others. These are their stories. Coming from Mundania Press, January 2012.

Yeah. Um…Dina!fail on the announcement there. Time just got away from me. I still need to update the website and send a newsletter and and and….

But! It’s announced now! Here, as penance for my tardiness, I’ll give you a little more detail about this upcoming project.

Light in a Dark World: Legends of the Destrati will be Kyle-centric, but will also feature others associated with Clan Destrati. There will be five or six short stories (this still hasn’t been decided yet – it will depend on my verbosity and the wordcount I end up with) set in various parts of the Destrati world, told from various points of view.

I’ll give you all more specifics as they develop. I know January seems far away, but in the writing world it really isn’t. A lot has to happen between then and now, and I have other projects I’m working on as well.

I love it.

I Suppose I Should Say Something

Alliteration, FTW!

Anyway, yes, it’s New Year’s Eve, and I will not bore you with another post on your f!list about all that this year has encompassed for me.

I do not have extravagant plans for the evening (I had made reservations at a local restaurant I like, but I canceled them yesterday as the weather is just horrific here on the Coast and I honestly just don’t feel like going out in it), nor do I have profound end-of-year reflections to share with you all.

There were Things That Happened, Things That Didn’t Happen, Stuff Went On and I Did Things and Went Places.

That about sums it up.

How exciting. Maybe I’ll write something next week about Stuff I Did In 2009 and Stuff I’m Looking Forward To For 2010 and Goals I Have For The Year That Aren’t Resolutions Because Those Get Broken And Goals Are Better.

As for tonight, I’m going to not change into nice clothes or go out. I’m going to sit around in my pajamas, work on my next scene of this latest revision of my WIP that’s being strangely uncooperative, finish setting up my refurbished laptop (still a few things to reinstall – like my printer), eat this phenomenal chicken pot pie I have baking in the oven (from Costco of all places – if your local Costco makes a chicken pot pie (in the deli section), go and get one and bake it for your eating pleasure. SO FREAKING GOOD!), and maybe watch a movie or take a nap.

Or maybe I’ll just eat and go to bed and when I wake up, it will be 2010. That sounds so futuristic! So…“The Year We Make Contact”.

Whatever I’m going to do, it will be to ignore the horrible storm going on outside.

Cheers,
DJ

We’re Sorry

The person you have reached is experiencing technical difficulties. If you feel you have reached this message in error

GUESS WHAT? YOU HAVEN’T!

/frustration

Anyway, yeah. My laptop is fried. It’s a long story, but the short of it is that it has to go in for repair, and that will take anywhere from two weeks to a month to get back. Hopefully – HOPEFULLY – it will be done and sent back in a week or so, but this being the holiday season, “7 business days after we receive it” may as well translate to “don’t expect it anytime soon”.

But there’s always hope, right?

Right?

I mean, the laptop is less than a year old and still under warranty, so I’m not going to have to take out another mortgage or anything to pay for it, or buy a new one (that I know of…yet). I don’t even have to pay shipping, so that’s good. This came at a seriously unfortunate time, but it’s not the end of the world, no matter what it feels like (and it does feel awful – everything is on that laptop, but the really important things are saved and available, namely my manuscripts! Weekly external hard drive backups FTW!).

So it’s not the end of the world. It’s just the (hopefully very temporary) end of the lifestyle to which I’d become accustomed. Yeah, I’m bummed bigtime – I has a BIG sad 🙁 – but I’ll bounce back soon enough.

I’m trying to look on the bright side of this crisis/fiasco/craptasticness (and believe me, I did NOT need this today on top of a few other…issues I’m dealing with that I won’t detail here.*sings* “Always look on the briiiiiiiiiiiiiight side of life!”) – lappy is under warranty, I don’t have to shell out big bucks, it will come back nice and shiny and fixed, it’s good that it’s in because there’s obviously a big problem that needs serious attention, I have the most important things backed up or otherwise available, I have access to other computers, etc. – but anyone who knows me knows I’m a pragmatist, and I adapt well and make the best out of a situation and make do with the tools I have.

If that means mustard ends up on the ceiling, well, that’s your fault for letting me in the kitchen, isn’t it? It’s not like you weren’t warned! It doesn’t mean I’m unaffected by the situation or that I won’t complain about how much it sucks before I get on with it.

Sometimes “getting on with it” isn’t ideal, but it’s what you’ve got, so stop whining already and go. I believe the phrase is “suck it up and move on”. I’ve had my frustration vents and moved through the stages of grief already. This note is just to let you all know, really, that I’ll be scarce the next however long, as I’ll be borrowing computers and connections to get what needs doing done.

So being a pragmatist helps. As do cupcakes and a borrowed laptop.

Cheers,
DJ

In Which I Recycle Last Year’s Post

Like I need to add anything else to the upcoming busy month, but hey, I’m apparently masochistic at the moment.

Okay, yes…I’m one of those people who has started listening to Christmas music already. I know, I know. But I really love the holidays. Halloween used to be my favorite until I came out of my Goth closet and could dress how I wanted to every day of the year and not care about being seen as a freak (for the record, I was 25), but now Christmas is my favorite.

Thanksgiving, however, was not overlooked. I mean, a foodie like me ignore a holiday that’s all about FOOD? PIE? LOTS AND LOTS OF PIE?! (Not to mention leftover pie!!) And turkey and mashed potatoes and corn and stuffing…. At the moment, I never want to eat again, though I know I’ll make a plate of leftovers in a few hours.

Anyway, what was I writing about? I mean, before my stomach started doing the writing? Oh, yeah! Masochism! I mean, the holiday spirit!

Okay, here’s the deal. It’s not like a contest or anything, because I don’t have the time or energy for that, but I’m making an attempt at initiative and preparedness and updating my holiday card list.

Yes, you heard right. No, I’m not too early. It’s after Thanksgiving (just)! I mean, by the time I get the list done and cards mailed, I’ll be right on time! Theoretically.

If you want to be on my holiday card list, post a comment here (don’t worry, these will be screened!) or e-mail dina [at] dinajames [dot] com with your snail mail addy, and I’ll send you a holiday card.

If you received a card from me last year, you’re still on the list, unless for some reason you annoyed me between the last time I made the list and now (or I’m just a techie prat and somehow deleted you by accident or never put you on it to begin with – which I’ve done). If you received one last year and don’t want one this year for whatever reason, let me know that, too.

If you’re feeling in the holiday spirit yourself, or are one of those people who will torture yourself with guilt and angst if you don’t return the favor, my snail mail addy is:

Dina James
P.O. Box 574
Astoria, OR 97103
USA

I keep this list for subsequent use, but will remind you all yearly to send me any updates. I realize people move about and change names and such, so let me know if your address has changed from the last time I sent you one, if that’s happened!

And just to let people know up front, the card design will once again be drawn by the very talented Becky Hitchin, NOT by me. I, personally, can’t draw anything beyond what I learned to do in my high school art classes, so before you even ask, NO, I did not draw the picture on the card you’ll receive.

I’m setting you all a deadline of December 15 to get me your address. This will (hopefully) give me time to get my act together and send them on time.

And so to work.

-DJ