Worded Wednesday

Just some quick updates:

1. The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice is now my most voted review on Goodreads.  I hate that most most voted review is for a book I disliked.
2. My review of The Bookman over on my book blog was linked to by both the author and the publisher, Angry Robot.  However, Angry Robot referred to my book blog as Desperate Dan's Book Blog.
3. A bit more forward progress has been made on getting Bullet's Don't Blink published.
4. By changing my lifestyle very little, I've lost fifteen pounds since January and am just two pounds heavier than I was when I started my current job ten years ago.  And they said I was mad to hold on to my old 30 inch waist jeans!

Query Queasiness

Over the past few days, I've been pecking at a query letter in my spare time.  Actually, I've been spending 95% of my spare time on Query Shark and similar websites but the remaining spare spare time has been working on the query letter.  When I'm not reading.

So many query dos and don'ts, not to mention conflicting pieces of advice, are swirling around in my head that I'm having difficulty pressing forward.  I finally got the short synopsis where I'm relatively comfortable with it.  Now the brief biography is slowing me down.  The biography.

What do I include?  Do I bother including anything that isn't book-related?  Should I mention that I'm holding the #9 spot on Goodreads or have a long-running blog (that has been mostly pictures lately)?  Right now, all I've got is "I'm currently employed as a computer programmer," which is much less depressing than "I've been a computer programmer for almost ten years."

In other news, I found a new pair of sunglasses and a penny that's so corroded it looks like it might be the first one ever minted while walking my dog yesterday.

And the most interesting search term of the first quarter of 2012 is...

... cocoa puff nipples!

Since I don't want that to be the only thing in today's post, here's something hilarious I ran across earlier today, The Dollar Shave Club.

Nachos Picantes

Every have one of those days when you have a snippet of a song in your head and no idea what the name is or who the artist is?

Last week, I went through yet another bout of this, going to far as to imitate the trombone part on the phone to my friend Greg.  I had a feeling it was either a song by the Moon Invaders or the Caroloregians and he led me into kind of the right direction.  Parts of the song sounded a hell of a lot like Organic Coal Beat From The Groovy Mines but it just wasn't the tune that was lodged in my brain.

Just before bed, I remembered that the Mr. T-Bone and Friends record had songs featuring members of both the Moon Invaders and The Caroloregians.  Unfortunately, my copy of the cd was in Greg's possession and I had to wait.

Long story short, I arrived at Greg's for a show Friday and knew I'd guess right in the first few notes of the song.  It only took a damn week to figure it out. 

A rare non-photo post

Some updates:

1. My interview with Benjamin Whitmer is up on Dangerous Dan's Book Blog.
2. I'm almost halfway through The Girl Who Played With Fire.  It's good but has the same slow-paced first half as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
3. Instead of working on expanding Bullets Don't Blink like I should be, I've been kicking around new plot ideas.  Nothing like putting off needed revisions for new stuff.
4. There will be a photo post later in the evening, weather permitting.

Where did the weekend go?

One of the greatest injustices in the history of the world is that the weekend passes by so quickly compared to the snail's pace of the work week.
Looking back, I don't feel like I did a whole lot besides read and take pictures.  I did manage to force myself to do my taxes and I finally entered the Missouri Depertment of Conservation photo contest.  Voting doesn't start until July so I have plenty of time to change my mind/second guess myself.  Here's a link to my photo set.  Many of the pictures will be familiar to long-time readers of my blog.

Speaking of photography, I think my camera is going to be walking off into the sunset soon.  Something's really wrong with the zoom.  It extends fine but makes an awful clicking sound when it retracts and has some kind of system error on occasion.  Shouldn't a relatively expensive camera last longer than three years of heavy use?