Lilac Thoughts

I just thought this was a pretty picture of a western bluebird on a lilac, so I'm sharing it.

Lilacs have to be my favorite flower, and, as all of them, they don't last long. And watching birds is a favorite past-time, since our yard is surrounded by the forest preserve on 3 sides. Watching the male cardinal feed his female is a sweet thing to see. It's like he's saying, "Here, you need this more than me, you have to feed 4 or 5."

There's other things on my mind. I've just sent off an application for my copyrights. I don't know how this slipped my mind but I want to thank Katie Salidas for reminding me (all of us) on this post she did on copyrights. We might all want to take a look at this post for sure. It answers the business about piracy of books by unscrupulous people who try to sell other (self-published eBooks) author's works as their own. It is important to get the copyright put through as soon as possible. I don't know why I waited on this. I sure won't wait on the next one.

But if you are at this point with a book. Congratulations. You'll want to go to www.copyright.gov and got to the TX file. You will be able to print out the whole PDF file, which includes the instructions which you will want to read very carefully. I remember doing this with my Spell of the Black Unicorn book--my first book. That was pretty exciting in itself. The cost for the disk copyright is $35. I'm glad I don't have to send in a big heavy paper copy, like before we had this option. That's $50--plus the mailing of that thing! But just like Katie explains--much better than I could here--this will protect you should someone lift your eBook and begin selling it as their own. You only need to notify the copyrights office and they will put a written notice of infringement on it and you shouldn't have to spend a dime on lawyer fees. Katie has a very good couple of posts on this and you might want to check them all out.

And, I'm still somewhat distracted. Mainly because I want to finish the edits on Vampire's Trill, and get on with writing the third book. After that one, I'm taking a little break. I'll be hoping that three books might begin pulling in more notice on the book. I hope. Besides, promoting three books will become very difficult, if I can't quit my day job.

Just for fun, I caught the revelation on the plot of the Dark Shadows movie at Suburban Vampire, and if you are looking forward to this movie you might want to see how they are going to put the story together. Sounds good to me.

We didn't go shopping today--both of us just a bit tired from our week, so we may just go tomorrow. No big hurry. We can't move back in until everything is finished. Next week the windows will go in and the cabinets have to have a clear coat put on, plus the hardware. We still don't know what will happen with the stove, but we will have to get it replaced. The fumes on this one was so bad, it left black on everything--you could definitely see it on the walls when we removed the clock and other things hanging. It's a definite health hazard. I don't know why we didn't tell the appliance store to take it back when it wasn't working right to begin with. We're hoping for an electric oven. Since you can't get one without an electric ignition, anyway, it doesn't matter if you have gas or electric. And propane is so dirty, we're pretty much fed up with using it for our stove. But they'd have to run a different line up and I don't know if they'll go to that expense or not. I don't know what electricians get now, but if a painter got $45/hour, it's gotta be pretty high for an electrician now. (I'm sure in the wrong business!)

Well, those are my thoughts for the day that I thought I'd share with you on the day the world is supposed to end. I'm not even going to go there.