Finished Third Book in Cosmic Cat Collection

I've finished my third book in the "Adventures of Curtis, Connie, and Cosmic Cat," collection. This one takes the trio to a logging town. Where they suffer through many adventures as they explore the town and its surrounding attractions. It's over a hundred pages long with twenty-seven illustrations. It will be around 200 hundred pages long when it's reduced to its publishing size. I don't know whether I should start on the next one or go back to the book on witches I'm working on. I need to do about ten to fifteen illustrations to finish it. The text is basically done. I also took some time to put flowers in one of the beds in front of the house. I'll do another one this Thursday if nothing else comes up.

Science Fiction Author

I've finished writing my third novel in "The Adventures of Curtis, Connie, and Cosmic Cat." I'm now working to clean up the drawings and merge them into a single whole. As soon as this is done I'll send it out to couple readers working as my editors. I've also spent the last few days putting my garden together. Mostly tomatoes and bell peppers with a few added egg plants. I spent most of today putting a new hot water heater in my Mother-in-laws house. I'll finish the garden, hopefully, tomorrow and get back to my writing and marketing my completed works.

Getting Published

The hardest thing is not actually writing a book, it's getting it pulished. It's necessary, with the present state of our society, that every effort be taken to put our works in the hands of readers. The more people that are exposed to our work the more likely it is that it will be successful. It does almost no good to spend a lot of time attemped to get a work published by submitting it to publishers or agents. It's first necessary to establish a name for ourself in the local area. If we can sell enough locally the work will be noticed and sold nationally. It's just setting the time aside to dedicate to its selling that is difficult. We just have to do it.

Section of new book

I thought I'd post a short section of a book I'm getting ready to submit for publication. I seem to have a case of "rewritise." Everytime I look at one my writtings I want to improve it. At some point I'm going to have to be able to say, "It's finished."

It took them a half hour to get to the falls but they had to stop and talk before they reached this point as the noise of the falls would prevent them from hearing each other. “When we get outside of the valley you two,” Joseph said as he looked alternately at Cephas and Jael, go up the trail where the trees come together and set up the net. We'll get in the bushes along the way and observe our young hunters as they approach. If we decide they should be captured I'll whistle like this. If they’re not to be captured Adina will jump out, making a lot of noise and run down the hill. She’ll slip as she runs along the narrow path above the deep water below the falls, where the surface of the water isn’t smooth. The path turns and will hide her from them. She’ll scream and fall into the water. She’ll stay under and swim behind the waterfall and wait for us. Hopefully the young men will think she has drowned and will go home.”
They managed to get into position before the two hunters could get past them.
As the young men came abreast of the bushes Adina, Jabin and her father were hiding in she jumped out before her father could stop her. She did this quickly and bumped into Abram, knocking him down. Shad attempted to leap over Abram to grab her, but in his haste to catch her he knocking Abram down, just as he was starting to get up. This resulted in both hunters being piled on top of each other on the ground. This gave Adina over a hundred feet head start.
“Well Jabin it's apparent that she didn’t take a liking to them,” Joseph said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, but it’s sort of strange for her to decide so abruptly and risk so much by almost getting caught. She doesn’t always seem to have good judgment," Jabin said.
"Let's wait and see what she has to say," Joseph replied.
Following a fruitless search for Adina the two hunters left the area. Everybody else stayed where they were until they left. When all was clear the men left the bushes and started towards the waterfall where they met Adina as she walked towards them from the direction of the waterfall.
"Adina, you have long been known as a woman of quick decisions but did you have to reject the two young men so rapidly,” Joseph said. “Did they have the wrong color hair or something? Perhaps they had the wrong type of clothes on?" This was asked with more than a bit of sarcasm in his voice. His daughter had disappointed him. He truly wanted her to accept one of the young men as her mate. He wanted her to take over as head of the group; he knew Jabin really wasn’t capable of running the valley and city properly, at least in his opinion.
"Father you saw what I did and yet you saw not,” Adina said. “While we were setting up our trap for the young men I got to thinking what would we do with two of them? Won’t their group come looking for them? It would be a catastrophic blow to them to have two young men missing at the same time. Also they appeared to be heading directly towards our eastern entrance. Even though the entrance to our valley is hidden behind the waterfall they could find it if they looked hard enough. I do like the looks of one of them. I’d be prepared to accept either one. I think we had better try and lure just one of them here. I don't know how we're going to do it yet, but I think we should discuss ways. I’m sorry to have messed up your capture but I feel it may be best this way.”
"Yes, your reasoning is sound, but you should have let us handle scaring them away," her father replied.
"If I'd have let you scare them away they would have found out something about our group. It’s best they only saw me and they think I'm dead.”

The Logging Town, an Excerpt

I'm going to post excerpts from my latest book concerning the Adventures of Curtis, Connie, and Cosmic Cat. If anybody finds them interesting let me know. In any case, have a good day. The book involves the family's visit to the small logging town that Dan, the father, works in.


The bear reared up on its hind legs and growled at them. Curtis told Connie not to move. The bear would chase them if they ran. It continued to stand on his hind legs and roared once in awhile. Connie and Curtis stood where they were and watched the bear. The bear stood and watched them. They didn’t know what to do.
“Connie, hand me the string of fish. Do it slowly,” Curtis whispered.
“Here,” Connie said as she placed the string in Curtis’s left hand that he had stretched back to her. When he got the string of fish, he slowly pulled it up to where he could hold the string just a little ways above the fish with his right hand.
“If this works we’re going to turn around and climb up on top of one of these big rocks. Be ready when I say go,” Curtis said.
Curtis, without making too quick of a motion, flung the fish at the bear. The bear caught them in his mouth. At the very same moment, that the bear caught the fish in his mouth, Cosmic Cat leapt off a tall rock beside the bear and landed on the bear’s head. Before Curtis and Connie could successfully get out of the way, the bear let out a tremendous muffled roar, lowered his front paws to the ground and ran forward over Curtis and Connie with Cosmic Cat still on his head.
“Connie, are you hurt?” Curtis asked her.
“I don’t think so, at least not very much. I don’t seem to have any broken bones and I don’t think I’m bleeding. What about you?”
“I’m not sure. I have to look and see.”
They took turns looking at each other but could only find scrapes and abrasions with what may turn into some big bruises later. It was difficult to tell as they had cuts, abrasions and bruises on top of their old cuts, abrasions and bruises. As they were finishing their examinations, Cosmic Cat showed up. He was dragging the string of fish behind him. Members of his pride caught the fish and he wasn’t going to let the bear keep them if he could help it. He was a proud cat as he dragged the fish up to Curtis and Connie. He had saved the fish and provided food for his pride. He had done good.

Spent part of the day out in the garden getting it ready for a hard freeze tonight. This doesn't have a lot to do with writing but we all have to do odd chores. I'll be going over to a Wounded Warrior's facility tomorrow to help decorate Christmas trees. I did it last year and it was very worthwhile. I'm about half way through editing the third book in The Adventures of Curtis, Connie, and Cosmic Cat. It's going smoother than I expected it to. I put it aside a couple of months ago to give it time to be somewhat forgotten so I could address it afresh. It seems to have helped. I hope that everybody had a good Thanksgiving and are looking forward to a great Christmas.