Little happy thing first. It's been a great week for suburban wildlife spotting. Two foxes, both in broad daylight, three separate flyovers by migrating sandhill cranes, and all kinds of blue jay and crow friend activity.

Seeing critters out and around my neighborhood always brings me an absurdly large amount of joy.

Another exciting thing, slightly bigger and more writing-related: Spouseman reminded me of yet another story that I'd already forgotten I wrote and stuffed into a folder. Now I've tracked down the file and added it to the growing collection manuscript, which means that project is progressing and on track to publish next year despite all my assorted distractions this fall.

Revisiting my older stories is...weirdly enjoyable. I was kinda afraid I would be embarrassed by them or find they were not at all good, but that's not been the case so far. I suppose it might be a massive case of "blind to my own flaws," but I still like them all.

In big writing news, I had a meeting (online) with my audiobook producer. Trimmed the list pf potential narrators she's collected Five will advance to a second round of sample recordings. We also signed a contract and had a great chat about life, the universe, and voice stuff.

The project is finally feeling real and official. I'm upgrading from hopeful to actively believing Weaving In The Ends will finally get its audio soon.

A related note: it has belatedly dawned on me that I should keep an ear out for actors who sound like the way I think my characters do, to help voice actors get a better idea of what I think my characters sound like, same as I keep an eye out for celebrities who are face matches as artist references. (I mean, now that I've thought of it, it seems so damned OBVIOUS, ya know?)

So, anyway, I'm having a lot of fun working on a list of sundalikes for my Rollover characters.

The biggest news this week is that I have a NEW CAR for the first time in 16 years. It's a sweet not-so-little new Kia Niro, plug-in hybrid edition. My choices were ugly silver, white or black, and the black was the shiniest. So. It is mine. Details took a few days to work out--started with making dealer contact Monday, spent most of Tuesday at the dealer doing test drive, final decisions, and All The Paperwork Things. And finished today (Thursday) with delivery of new license plates & arrival of the car insurance card. Quest Complete!

The top image on the post is a glamour shot from the website. It looks exactly like mine, but mIne's in the garage where the lighting is crappy.

The old Mazda is still going strong, considering its age, so instead of trading it in, we're selling it to a friend's son who needs wheels. It's more than reliable enough for puttering around locally.

In summary, it's been a busy, hectic week, but I feel a lot lighter at the end of it. Crossing things off the to-do list always feels good. Wrapping up things that have been on my lists for years feels really good.

Now I can start putting more energy into all the other projects I want to do. Because of course I still have a million things I want to write and create and work on.