No biggie here. I just want to see which blogging software will work better for me – Blog Jet or Zoundry Raven. This post was done with Blog Jet.
Here’s a test image to see if this works:
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Author: Cynical Woman
Episode 40 – Occupational Hazzards
Yes, this really is a problem around this household. Finding time for… well, let’s just say finding time for what’s important.
It’s hard for me to find time alone with the Hubster. In addition to the kids, we both put in a lot of hours at work, and since I’m usually up two hours before Hubster is, I’m usually out cold two hours before he is. We really do have to schedule sex if it’s going to happen. Oh, and buy a nice bottle of wine so I can relax, because between work and chasing after the kids, I’m wound tighter than a cuckoo clock by the end of the day.
Anyway, speaking of work, I have four new stories for sale with Logical Lust. These stories originally ran on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast, they are scorching hot, and I think you will enjoy them. Check them out here!
Move It Mama Monday! What Wii game should I get next?
Well, I’ve had a week with Wii Fit Plus, and I do enjoy it, but I have to admit to some disappointment. For starters, I was expecting to be able to access all the different exercises and games in the “Make My Own Routine” section. No such luck. For some reason, Wii Fit Plus only lets you build personal routines using the yoga and strength exercises it seems, in spite of the fact that the mini routines already built into the game include the original cardio games and the new Wii Fit Plus games. I was also hoping for more cardio activities in the new Wii Fit Plus, but there seems to be a real lack of those. The closest I’ve found to new cardio games is the bicycle game (which lets you race all over the island searching for flags to tag before racing to the finish line) and the rhythm kung fu, which really isn’t all that cardio intensive. There is a variation on the running in the My Wii Fit games, which offers new routes to run and then quizzes you on what you saw while you were running. That’s nice, but would it have killed Nintendo to include new boxing and step routines? Aside from the Island Lap in the run, the boxing is the most cardio intensive game they’ve got, and I do it so frequently I can pretty much do it with my eyes close now. And the step routines never, NEVER change. These two things both need a serious update.
Having said that, I’m thinking of picking up yet another Wii fitness related game, and I’m trying to decide which one to get. There are four I have my eye on, including:
ES Sports Active: More Workouts – True, the original game did kill my knees, but EASA definitely has more upper body strength building exercises in it, and I like the sports drills. It’s a bit expensive ($36.99 on Amazon.com), but I hear the new version includes stretching exercises, which would be a serious bonus. The game is only available for pre-order right now. It comes out 17 November.
My Fitness Coach – I’ve seen this online before, and wondered about it. Apparently, if you’ve got a step, a balance ball, a heart rate monitor, and hand weights, you can get a real workout with this game. I have all these items, so this would seem like a good choice. The game doesn’t make much use of the Wii balance board according to reviews I’ve read, and it’s an awful lot like a gym workout, but those people who like it swear by it. It also includes stretching exercises, again something I would like to see show up in exercise programs. The cost on this one is much lower, $19.49 on Amazon.com.
Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout – the companion game to My Fitness Coach. This one does use the balance board, and looks to have lots of boxing games in it, along with some other exercises. The emphasis does seem mainly on boxing, from the reviews I’ve read, but as I mentioned above, the boxing in Wii Fit is one of the most intense cardio workouts available in that game, and I get a decent workout from that, so I’m not adverse to trying more boxing games. This one also gets pretty high ratings, and the price is $19.49 on Amazon.com.
Yoga – a fitness game that looks to include as much game as fitness. From what I’ve read online, you can choose to play the game whereby you explore the yoga temple and unlock new yoga challenges as you seek to gain the level of yoga master. There are a variety of settings to work out in, and the game definitely uses the balance board to check your balance and steadiness in each pose. The pluses on this one? I like yoga. I think it’s a great strength and stretching workout, and this game looks to offer many more poses than the ones that show up in Wii Fit. I really like the idea of having an exotic environment to explore as well as a game goal to achieve while I work out. The cons? I hate the look of the stick-thin supermodel who’s the spokesperson for this game. Honestly, I’m a generous size 12. I work out and I eat healthy and I have been a size 12 since my early teens, and all I can think when I see a model that thin is, “Someone’s been starving themselves!” Thus I despise having emaciated runway models tell me how to be fit and healthy. It smacks of hypocrisy to me. If she shows up a lot in the game, it’s going to be a real turn-off to me. Like EASA More Workouts, this game isn’t out until 17 November, and it’s the same price($36.99 on Amazon.com).
After looking through all this, I think what I’ll end up doing is order My Fitness Coach and Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout at the beginning of next month. The fact that I can get both these games for only a few dollars more than one of the other two games, and the fact that My Fitness Coach and Gold’s Gym Cardio are already available make them the obvious choice. I’ll try them out, see if I get the kind of workout I want with this combo, and then reconsider how badly I might want the other two games.
Sunday Contentments – Chilly weather
The weather outside isn’t quite frightful, yet, but man is there a nip in the air! I’m snuggled up on the couch in one of my favorite sweaters, contemplating throwing one of my mom’s crocheted blankets over top of me for additional warmth. The tip of my nose is cold and my fingers are a little clumsy. Methinks it may be time to tell Hubster to turn up the heat. I wonder if he will interpret that message to mean, “Sit the kids down in front of a movie and carry me up to the bedroom, you steamy hunk of stud-love!” One can only hope. In the meantime, here’s this Sunday’s contentments:
Healthy children – Pixie came down with strep throat earlier this week, and boy was that ever fun. Not. Her temperature got as high as 104 degrees at one point, and she had more than a few crying jags and melt downs because she didn’t feel good. She stayed home from preschool two days, spending her time in a bean bag chair in front of the TV. Both evenings, she crashed on the couch, a sure sign she didn’t feel well. That kid doesn’t nap for anything! But now she’s up and running around, keeping pace with Princess, and in general driving me nuts.
“Mama! I’m sick!”
Mommy moments – one night, while Pixie was sick, I woke up at 3AM to hear her crying in her bed. I got up, took her temperature (this was when it hit 104), gave her a little Children’s Motrin and brought her into bed with her father and I. She could never quite settle down, but didn’t want to go back to her own bed. At one point, she turned to me in the dark and asked, “So how was your day, Mama?” “My day was just fine, sweet heart,” I replied. “That’s good,” she said, and then she finally decided she wanted to sleep back in her own bed.
Reading to my kids – I found my copy of “Where the Wild Things Are” this week and read it to Princess. She was fascinated with the artwork, and had all sorts of questions about the monsters and Max., then wanted to know if she could write a book of her own. She’s already written a couple of books, collections of drawings with some words scribbled in them. We staple them together, but I think the next time she does one, I’m going to scan it into the computer and make it a PDF to send out to family and friends. The Princess can claim she’s “self-published!”
Speaking of being published… Yes, work accomplishments are qualify as contentments in my opinion, and I’m very contented to note that this week I had four stories published with Logical Lust. What makes this especially sweet is that these are some of my best work ever, but two of the stories were usually rejected by anthology editors because the tone of the stories is rather tragic. Apparently not many publishers like to take a chance on tragedy, even when it’s well written. However, Logical Lust was more than happy to work with me, so these stories and two others (those two are comedies) are now available for sale. I hope they do well!
Local festivals – we missed the Greek Festival this weekend, due to the fact I wasn’t feeling so well yesterday morning, but we did get out to the local Egyptian Fest. It was much smaller than the Greek Fest (which is huge), and we got there pretty late, but we managed to pick up some food to take home to eat. Actually, what we did was go through their cafe line and wipe the whole thing out! The food was good, and exactly what I needed that evening. We had a friend over, and spent the evening eating falafels and kashta and stuffed grape leaves while watching the Virginia Tech game (VT lost, but oh well). A wonderful evening, if I do say so myself.
There’s lots of other things to be content about, like the art projects the kids and I have been working on, and the costumes we’ll be sewing later this afternoon, but I think I’ll stop here for today. I want to curl up with a hot cup of tea now and just enjoy a few moments of quiet.
Saturday Art – Summoned and Bound
There’s something very naughty and very pretty over at my erotica blog today. It’s a bit of artwork I did yesterday, a male nude. You can find it here. Enjoy!
Freaky Friday – I’m not the only freak in the neighborhood!
I love my neighbors. Love, love, love them. From the nice lady who lives across the street and gives my girls books and dolls to the couple next door who’s kids have babysat for us since Princess was a tiny tot to the woman down the street who runs Pixie’s preschool, I love them all. I live in a great neighborhood, and I’m very grateful for the good neighbors I have who never once complain about my freakish ways.
During the month of October, however, I am especially grateful for the family who lives next door to us, because they put up one killer Halloween display.
They start decorating their yard at the beginning of the month, but honestly, preparations start long before then. All through August and September, whenever I’d walk by their house and see the garage door open, I’d catch glimpses of stuff being built – tombstones, graveyard fences, an animatronic witch. My neighbors do buy some of their Halloween stuff, but a lot of it is home made, and the stuff they buy they tend to modify to make it even better.
All through October, their yard just gets creepier and creepier. Every afternoon when the girls get home from school, they ask if they can go next door and see the neighbors’ yard (there is always something new). I’ve told my neighbors they need to sell tickets to people for tours of their display, and my girls would be first in line to get season passes. We really can’t stay away from their yard!
They also decorate inside the house, which has given me a heart attack on more than one occasion. Every year, without fail, I look next door and see someone dark and disturbing lurking in their sunroom. I get all panicked, thinking either a burglar or a serial killer has broken into their house. Then just as I’m about to dial 911, I realize it’s October and the strange man in the dark trench coat and black hat is just one of their animatronic figures they’ve put up inside the house.
The decorations in the yard are usually done to a certain point by the last week of Halloween. Then the day of Halloween, my neighbors pull out all the stops and set up all their animatronic, life-size figures in the driveway, or else they convert their garage into a haunted house that visitors can walk through. One year, they set up their entire house as a tourist attraction. It was nuts!
This year, my neighbors have outdone themselves. The graveyard in the front has a large “stone” entry way, decorated with skeleton bones and body parts, topped by a vulture. They’ve got an evil zombie scarecrow in one corner of the graveyard, and lots of new tombstones and skeletons and ghosts set up. I’m still waiting to see the animatronic witch. From what my neighbors tell me, she’s going to be spectacular!
Here are a few pics of my neighbors’ freaky yard 
You see how huge this is? I want a front yard just like this someday!
Latest releases – Mundania e-books are now on sale!
Last month, I podcasted four unusual stories for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast. These were the Mundania stories, the only stories ever to appear on Heat Flash that were not science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Yes, I actually wrote four, count them, FOUR contemporary erotica stories, and they were just released for sale today in e-book format from Logical Lust Publications.
You can buy the stories here at Logical Lust, either individually for $1.99 or the entire set of four for $4.99. Not sure if you want to buy these lovely, lusty, scorching tales? Then listen to them here first on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast! The stories are:
A Man in a Kilt – Jimmy’s a rough and tumble Scotsman who thinks he can handle any woman. Then he meets Nan, a friendly domme who teaches him otherwise… (Fem domme; BDSM)
Rapacious Mrs. Horner – Diane Horner is a forty-something divorcee with a serious addiction to gay porn and painful broken heart. When her son’s best friend comes onto her, what will she turn him away or eat him alive? (F/m; older woman/younger man)
Diablo – Spoiled rich kid Randall wants one thing and one thing only – Pony Boy, the hired hand at Polk’s Stables, down on his knees and ready to please. When Pony Boy refuses to be tamed, will Randall break him instead? (M/m; warning – scorching hot m/m erotica but also controversial)
A Room with a View – With the economy in the toilet, Darcy Daniels has lost her job, her car, her apartment, and now her pride as she’s forced to move back in with her parents. Then she discovers her old bedroom window looks right into the window of the boy next door. Is he watching her at night? Is she going to watch him? And if their fathers hate each other, do they even have a chance at getting together? (Older woman/younger man; voyeurism; sex toys; even a touch of romance in this one!)
A note about these stories: if you’re looking for humor, definitely check out A Man in a Kilt and A Room with a View. If you like your erotica edgy and dangers, then go for broke with Rapacious Mrs. Horner and Diablo. And remember, you can also get all four books together in one collection, and listen to them on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast before you buy!
Blog up!
Okay, I’ve spent months saying I need to integrate my various websites into one site so I can manage them better. Right now, I’ve got www.helenehmadden.com for the erotica stuff and www.cynicalwoman.blogspot.com as my usual day-to-day blog, which sort of works, accept that it’s giving me a split personality complex (am I a mom? an erotica writer? which one am I today?). Plus it also makes it a real pain in the assets to maintain two blogs and two sites (yes, there was originally a much different site up at this URL, with all sorts of cool flash animation that I found to be a huge pain in the ass to maintain).
To make life easier for myself, I’m building a new site that includes both sides of my life (Only 2 sides? Does that make me only 2 dimensional?). This is meant to be a website for adults, okay? Yes, we can talk about family stuff here, but the thing is, this is meant to be a place where parents, especially me, can be an adult and talk about adult things and share my very adult work. If you have a problem with the idea of a mom being an erotica writer, then please go bury your head in the sand some place else!
For the time being, I’ll continue to make my usual blog posts to the other two websites, while also making them here. The appearance of this blog will be making changes over the next month or so until I’ve got the final look, but for now, I just want to kick things off by saying, hello world, the blog is here.
Writing Wednesday – Pimping one’s self
Over the summer, I spent some time trying to do a bit of promo for my work. If there’s one area where I really fall down as a writer, it’s promotion. Yeah, I blog and I twitter and I podcast and I do the web comic, but there are facets of promo that I don’t do often enough, like participate in Yahoo groups or hold contests or send out for reviews.
So I’ve been thinking lately of ways I can improve my promotion plan. Yes, I have a plan, or rather, I should have a plan. I sort of have a plan, but I need to sit down and redo it and make it better – easier to execute, defined goals, etc. The problem is finding time to do all this planning of promotion and executing of promotion and still get my writing done. So I’m looking into simple tasks that I can do that won’t tax my time or my brain. My initial ideas so far are…
Send out one of my books for review every Friday. I have a list of review websites, and if I just took 30 minutes each Friday, I could send these books out and maybe get a slew of reviews. It takes time to get a review done; most places take 8-12 weeks to get a review done. But if I start sending out now, I could have a ton of reviews coming my way in a couple months. That can’t be bad.
Continue to blog. Right now, I’m doing at least 3 regular posts a week here and my weekly post on Oh Get A Grip. I’d like to add one more regular post to this, and then I think my blogging efforts would be complete. A good blog would (hopefully) keep people coming back for more, but a good blog has to be maintained with regular content. I want to be certain I provide that content.
Continue to cartoon. Since the start of school, I’ve set aside one day a week to work on the web comic, and so far I’ve been able to keep a regular schedule. Hopefully, with regular drawing, I’ll get faster and better at producing the comic, so I won’t have to spend an entire work day on it, but for now, I’m willing to spend a day to get this thing done!
Revamp the website. I’ve talked about this before, but now have finally started to take action on it. On Friday, I set in motion a transfer of all my domain names to GoDaddy.com, because I know GoDaddy plays nice with WordPress (it better play nice!), and because I can host multiple domain names on one hosting package. Once the domain name transfer is complete, the actual website revamp begins. I’ve got the domain name www.cynicalwoman.com, which I’ve used for years for a flash website I did way back when. I love the work I did on that, but updating a flash website is a bitch and a half for me, especially since I no longer understand the latest version of Action Script (a situation I’ll need to correct very soon, it seems). I want an html website with a WordPress blog, and I want the website to combine most of my current websites – www.helenehmadden.com, www.cynicalwoman.blogspot.com, www.theadventuresofcynicalwoman.blogspot.com – into one place. I’ve pretty much stopped posting anything over at www.helenehmadden.com because it’s too much effort to maintain a separate writing website from my personal blog. And besides, I’ve pretty much effectively branded myself as Cynical Woman, stay-at-home mom and erotica writer, so why not go with that?
Once the website revamp is done, I’ll add to my list of promo goals. But for now, I think this is enough. Hopefully, I can get a working website up and running by Halloween. Let’s see what I can do.
Now, I want all of YOU guys to tell me something. If you’re a writer, what kind of promo do you do that works well for you? What promo have you done that turned out to be a huge waste of time? And readers, what kind of promo would you like to see me do? Give me some ideas of things you would enjoy, because one thing I don’t want to do is annoy the crap out of readers with bad promo. (Please, please, please leave comments on this one, because I really do want to know!)
Episode 39 – Who’s Yo Mama?!
One day, this is going to happen to me. It just has to. In addition to reading my stories aloud to catch mistakes, I also record most of them for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast (which is a free weekly audio show I do that you can download to your MP3 player or listen to on your computer, and if you’re not listening you should be!). Most days I only write or record when the kids are in school or in bed. When they’re home and awake, I’m so busy taking care of them, I don’t have time to do anything else. But mark my words, one of these days they’re gonna walk in on me while I’m working…
You may have noticed that this cartoon is done “old style,” which is to say I did it on the computer using Manga Studio 4. I still love MS4, and much prefer the way the cartoons look when I do them on the computer, but the fact is, it takes too long to do the cartoons this way. This particular cartoon was penciled back in April, and then inked yesterday morning. Had I done this by hand, it would have taken me an hour at most to do the inking and then the cartoon would be finished. In Manga Studio 4, the inking takes longer, plus there are extra steps I do to add the tones and text balloons, which is part of what makes the digital cartoons so pretty. What to do? Continue drawing by hand, but draw better! It’ll come with practice. Meanwhile, I’ll just use Manga Studio for other projects, since I’d really like to do some Manga style artwork, and this is the best program I’ve got for inking.
Anyway, here is this week’s cartoon, and I hope you enjoyed it