Chapter 5 and 6 of Facilitate Your User are posted.

Chapter 5 was uploaded last Wednesday but I didn’t make a blog post so it wasn’t sent out. Some of you have already read it. I did just post chapter 6 today. In this chapter, Paul and Keylee finally meet each other. First meetings can be rather awkward . . .

Some readers from fanfiction have said they’re having trouble finding the website. Today I’m posting it with the latest update on that Inuyasha story so hopefully those who want to visit here can do so.

Today’s picture is courtesy of my back yard and one of the many squirrels invading my bird feeder – sigh . . . I actually really like the squirrels but they are getting more creative (as squirrels are known to do). I swear, it looks like Midwest backyard wild kingdom back there when I open the door. Birds, chipmunks and squirrels go scurrying. I posted on my Instagram account how this squirrel scuttled off after I let Fennik out. If anyone is interested, my Instagram is fenfensfollies.

That’s all for today. I hope you are all well and enjoying your summer (for those in the northern hemisphere 🙂

Chapter 4 of Facilitate Your User is up

Happy Father’s Day to those celebrating today. I’m fortunate to still have my father with me and perhaps even more fortunate to have a great dad. The older I get, the more I realize how truly lucky I was being born to parents who wanted and loved me. I am still very loved by them despite the fact that I am far from a “child” anymore.

In celebration of the day, the picture on this post is of flower boxes my dad built for me to place outside the large window in my living room. For the past few years I’ve been able to look out my window every Spring, Summer and Fall I see a plethora of colorful flowers, making my life a little more beautiful.

As the title of this post says, I put chapter four of Facilitate Your User up. I’m still debating whether or not to post my fanfiction stories on this website or not. I’m leaning toward the yes department but time will tell.

Hope you all are well and wishing you a good day.

Chapter 3 of Facilitate Your User is up plus the first short story in the Reaping Covetous series is posted.

Good evening all. As you can see from this blog’s title, I posted the third chapter in the Facilitate Your User story as well as the first short story in the Reaping Covetous series. Just click on the links at the top or bottom of the page and it will take you there. Unfortunately you have to scroll down to find the newest info. I still haven’t figured out if making more links is possible or not. Sorry if it’s not as user friendly as we’d all like.

Tonights picture is of Fennik. Summer has brought about a new issue for us as Fennik and I have differing opinions on where the bathroom rug belongs. He works vigorously moving it from where I believe its correct position should be to where he wants it. I suspect he likes laying on the cool tile floor. When he’s not by my feet, I can normally find him there, snoring.

Not much more to post tonight. Work is still hectic and I believe people are getting crabbier. When COVID first hit and we were on lockdown, the clinic remained open. We went to curbside service and for the most part, clients were very kind and thankful. But I think we’ve pushed human tolerance to its limit, which evidently has a one to two month span if my calculations are correct. I’m sure somewhere down the line there will be a more official study on the social dynamics of COVID. Thankfully, I will not be collecting that data.

As always, stay well and I hope happy or at the very least content with life. MJ May.

Indoor Starry Night

Recently I ordered one of those little machines that puts little light dots on your ceiling to mimic the stars. The one I purchased has something that looks like a nebula too. Well, I set it up in the computer room, which also happens to be what I call the “cat room” as it has their cat tree, window seat, food and litter box. In short, both cats went kind of nutty. See, I didn’t figure on the “stars” moving and basically being thousands of little, shifting points of light. I have some video of the cats chasing these lights around the ceiling – jumping from their cat tree to the window seat and back again. Thankfully they settled fairly quickly. The picture and video didn’t come out the best, but I still thought I’d use it as it made me smile.

I added chapter 2 to my story, “Facilitate Your User”. By the way, I’m not that thrilled with the title. I feel I’m normally better coming up with titles, but have been racking my brain for several weeks and that’s always what I default back to. Maybe I can come up with something better in the future. I was hoping that when I updated the page, it would send out an alert, but apparently that’s not how it works. I believe you just get an update when I post to the blog . . . hmmm . . . still working things out. This might be as worked out as it gets, at least for now.

I hope to get one of the short stories from the Covetous series up soon. It’s written. I just want to tweak it some more. Speaking of, I think I should have the second book in the series done and languishing on my computer within the next couple of weeks. One way or another, I’m determined it will see the light of day.

With that, I’ll close this post. I’m wishing you all as well as you can be in these uncertain times. I keep trying to come up with a different word for it. “Uncertain times” is overused on every bit of media I see, but maybe that’s because they can’t come up with anything better either. I have different words for what’s going on in the world, but many are inflammatory and I don’t think the world needs any more gasoline on the fire engulfing it. I’m far from naive. I have trouble sleeping and my thoughts most days are dark. This comes through in my writing, but there is always hope too. After all, that’s the beauty of writing fiction – we get to choose the outcomes of those often bleak times.

Take care, be well and thanks for reading.

MJ May

Fingers Crossed!

So, I think I might have actually figured some things out regarding my website. I’m sorry to those few of you who’ve subscribed and have probably been getting all these e-mail updates while I’ve been going back and forth with the help staff at WordPress. I’ve been trying to figure out how to configure pages for my writing so people can view my stories and that has had me pulling my hair out. I still don’t have it exactly like I would like, but I think it’s manageable, at least for now. I think it could be more user friendly, but again, hopefully what I have going on will work.

Wow, that was a struggle. I am so not tech savvy and this has been a force of wills for me. I’m one of those people who “just want it to work” when it comes to anything tech based and I go from zero to homicidal within the blink of an eye when trying to figure things out. This post is going to be a bit of a test, to see if it just goes to the general blog, and not everything else and if the configuration stays the same. So, as I titled this post . . . fingers crossed!

This has been especially difficult for me today as I received another, “thanks, but no thanks,” from one of the agents I queried. Rejection is rough, even if they tell you not to take it personally, it’s difficult not to. I realize it’s part of the process, but that doesn’t exactly make it easier and admitting that it bothers me is even more difficult. But there it is, all the same.

Well, here’s hoping this works when I post it! BTW: The picture today is of my cat, Newton. He got ahold of a roll of paper towels and well . . . he acted like a cat and tore the hell out of it.

Spring Has Arrived! Finally

This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago and unfortunately the candytuft and phlox aren’t blooming as pretty now, but that just means it’s getting even warmer. I can’t even begin to complain about that.

Just like the toad (or maybe frog) picture I posted last time, these flowers are in the rock wall lining my driveway. This had to be put in a couple of years ago (long and expensive story) so this is year two of the plantings. I think it’s looking better than last year and it is the easiest thing on my property to weed because a lot of it I don’t have to bend down to do. So that’s a big plus. The other big plus is that with the rock wall in place, the ground is no longer threatening to swallow my driveway and garage whole.

I’ve been trying to decide how to format my blog and what to do with it. I’ve decided to post some writing and am currently trying to figure out the logistics of setting up my website to handle that and make it easy to read stories and chapters. I think I might have the beginnings of it sussed out but I’m sure it will be an evolving work so please bear with it. I have a completed M/M story that I will hopefully start posting a chapter a week this weekend. I’m also trying to write some shorts/filler chapters to the book I’d like to publish. The bits of writing will focus on pivotal (or what I feel are pivotal) moments in either a character’s development or the storyline’s development. I’ve got the first one written. It needs editing and I’ll read over it a few more times but hopefully I can get it up either this weekend or over the following week. That main story will probably not be posted on this site. If I can’t get it “officially published” then I’ll look into self publishing so it can see the light of day. The tentative title of that story is Reaping Covetous and it is a paranormal/urban fantasy romance that is M/F. I welcome constructive feedback on stories as well as hearing if you like them or not.

I’d love to write and work on this more, but work is busy and very stressful right now and I find my brain busted by the time a day off rolls around. Creativity can be difficult to come by after having to tell a client, or some days, several clients, bad news. In the time of COVID, it is even weirder because I can’t offer the level of comfort I’m used to. It’s wearing but at least I’m still working. My heart goes out to all those struggling right now.

Hopefully this weekend will prove fruitful and I’ll start getting some writing posted. Until then, keep well and lower your mask long enough to smell a flower or two.

A Sunbathing Toad to Brighten Your Day

I found this little guy sunbathing on top of one of the boulders holding back the ground from invading my driveway. He (or she – no idea how to sex toads/frogs) stayed there quite a while. I thought I’d add this into the post today. Most likely I’ll try and add pictures to most posts. I’ve found that I have precious few pictures of me and most are of plants and animals. I had to scrounge a bit just to find the one for my icon.

I finally signed up for Facebook last week. I feel like I might have just sold my soul. Time will tell. One thing I hadn’t been expecting was connecting with classmates from veterinary school. One of them had even started a group just for us. It’s been interesting connecting with people I haven’t seen since graduation eighteen years ago. Veterinary school was such an odd four years of my life. I look back on it now and wonder how on earth I made it through without becoming an addict of some sort or another. Well, I suppose I am addicted to carbs and sugar, but in the big scheme of all that could have gone wrong, I guess I’ll take that. I’ve often said that going through vet school was kind of like surviving a natural disaster with a select group of people. You may not like everyone in that group, but if push comes to shove, you’ll defend almost all of them with your last breath.

When being a veterinarian isn’t kicking my ass, I try writing as much as possible. My goal on my days off is to write at least 3,000 words. I’m not really sure if that’s good or not but that’s been my routine. I’ve been trying to find comparable published books and am having almost no luck. I’m not exactly sure what that means except for a lot of head scratching on my part. I never dreamed this would be the difficult part. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent putting in different search words and criteria, reading exerts and sometimes whole books only to think that it doesn’t really fit. I’m not gonna lie, it’s frustrating. I don’t know if I’m being too picky but I don’t want to falsely advertise my writing style/content either.

And so, I keep writing. I’m about 80% finished with the follow up book in the series I’m trying to find representation for. I figure if I’m lucky enough to ever find an agent, I’ll probably have the third book done. On the flip side of that, if I never do find an agent and try and self publish, I’ll probably also have book three done too. Cue the long sigh . . .

Well, that’s it for tonight. I’m still not sure if I’m doing this blogging thing right or not. Mostly this sort of feels like a journal entry for others to possibly read. If anyone out there is reading it and cares, I also have an Instagram site called fenfensfollies that basically has pictures and videos of my dog and cats. Sad, but that is what makes up the bulk of my life. Then again, not so sad because I really do love my furry kiddos.

Take care and stay well.

First Blogging Post!

Whew (wipes brow), setting up a blog is a difficult thing for a first timer like me. I decided to start this because I am an aspiring fiction writer. I’ve been writing fiction for over fifteen years. About ten years ago I discovered fan fiction and fell in love with it. I’ve written several completed stories with mostly positive reviews. Fan fiction is wonderful, at least to me. It allows one to write fresh stories about characters they love, driving the storyline in a different direction. As much as I love fan fiction, I’ve gone back to writing my own characters and story lines. I’m weeding through trying to find an agent who might be willing to take me on. It’s a daunting process, especially for someone who doesn’t know anything about the literary world.

My youth filled dream was becoming a veterinarian. There was a road to follow to get to that goal. Sure, the road had a couple of optional stops to refuel, but overall, it was a fairly straight forward path and if followed correctly, led to that golden ticket otherwise known as an acceptance letter. The road to getting published seems tangled and more like a loose suggestion rather than a well paved layer of concrete. Getting lost and taking the wrong exit are much more likely and the destination keeps getting further and further away. But I’ve got a lot of gas in my tank and I’m meandering as best I can.

I’ll try and keep up my thoughts on being both a practicing veterinarian as well as a hopeful writer. If I have any sanity left in life, I give full credit to my pets, writing and exercising (most likely in that order). If anyone is reading this, I hope you have a good day and are staying well.