Sherri Cornelius

I can feel the weather change right between my eyes. It’s been a spring-like few days—I wore shorts yesterday and today we’ll have a chance for thunderstorms. Not that it’s unusual to have ups and downs through the winter here in Oklahoma, but this year I have whiplash from our quick-change weather pattern. Whiplash and migraines.

But anyway, yesterday was awesome weather, a day not to be wasted by sitting indoors, a day to frolic in grass and flowers (of which there are neither, but our Bradford pear trees did start to bud). Gorgeous day. So what did I do? I sat indoors and got a new li'l shorty* ready to put on Smashwords.

I CAN FLY: Warren’s pickup line gets him nowhere—until he meets Edith. When he confides his power of flight, they know they’re meant to be together. Too bad not everyone sees it that way, but whatevs.

Since I only uploaded it yesterday it’s still not in the Premium Catalog in Smashwords, which only means it won’t be distributed to other online retailers yet. I manually uploaded it to Amazon this morning, but they also have a review process. So for now it’s only available on Smashwords.

This is an old story, but then again all my stories are old. I haven’t written with any kind of purpose for a couple of years. I feel like getting these old stories out there, for good or for bad, is a turning point for me. A slow awakening of my creativity, long dormant. Clearing the cobwebs. Of course it would be lovely if I got a ton of reviews and shared a million times, but that’s not why I’m self-publishing. Once I have Black Veil Angel on there, that will be the last of the work I would feel comfortable having online. It’s like I can feel new stories waiting for the older ones to be put to bed, and the only way I’ve found to do that is to publish them.

So look for Black Veil Angel to be published soon!

 

*I’ve been calling my short stories “li'l shorties” lately, and the novels are “wordy bastards”. Who knows why, but I like it.

I sit in a quiet house for the first time in a week. A crazy blizzard plus several atypical days of subzero temperatures kept the entire family huddling in a thankfully barely-warm-enough house, but today, finally, our routine is back to normal. Finally, I get some alone time.

Until Mother Nature puts a stop to that nonsense on Tuesday night.

That’s right, we’re getting another (possibly crazy) blizzard which will lock us all in together for at least another couple of days, and possibly for the remainder of the week.

My children will have forgotten how to add and subtract by the time they get back to school on a permanent basis, but at least they’ll get their Little Big Planet pods just the way they want them.

Thank God for video games. And electricity, and heat, and snacks. And running water. Three days, I melted snow for washing. I don’t recommend it. The ratio of frozen pounds to melted gallons doesn’t work in our favor.

Anyway, the family will have a much-needed return to normal before we are hit once again. I have to go to Wal-Mart and elbow my way through the panicking hoards in order to restock my dwindling supplies; get all the laundry finished by tomorrow night in case the drain freezes again; gas up the car—and I hope I’m not forgetting anything.

Wish me luck.

I know we don't get as much snow as some places, but come on. Misery is misery. It's eight degrees with snow like tiny ice pellets. Winds 30-40 mph, pelting any foolishly exposed skin raw within seconds. I don't even know what the wind chill factor is, but it's definitely well below zero. As the leading edge of the snow passed through last night, we had thunder and lightning because a severe storm from the south collided with a snow storm from the north. Apparently the Gulf of Mexico and Canada are having a turf war right on top of us.

The snow doesn't look that deep, but that's because the land's been scoured. The drifts are waist-high.



As crappy as it is here, I know it's going to be worse as the system travels toward New England. Y'all stay safe.