Conventions, book signings, promotions, advertising, creating book covers -- I've been doing all that and more lately along with some writing as well. But it's not all Author Stuff. In the meantime, Ordinary Life and The Day Job continues to chug along in the background. Ordinary Life is great, and The Day Job is okay, but something happened this month that was downright horrible. We'll call it Frosty Attack.

I'll say up front that she's fine today, well on her way to recovery. But we weren't sure for a while there.

This is Frosty:

We have four cats. Biscuit and Treacle are 18 years old, which means they're pensioners. Twiglet is middle-aged. And Frosty is the youngest. She's lovable and mischievous, the sort of cat who puts up with toddlers yanking her by the ear. Of all our cats, Frosty is by far the most expensive. We rescued her when she was a kitten, and she broke her leg soon after, which meant vet bills and a cast and a special cage that I built... and a couple of weeks ago, she got her butt ripped open by a pack of dogs.

It was serious. They have a cat flap in the laundry room in the basement, so all four cats have access in and out of the house at night). Our small dog is down there too. He started barking early one morning, and I went down to find... nothing. All was quiet. I told him to shut up, and I went back to bed. Not long after, he started barking again, and I was too sleepy to care.

I wish I could travel back in time and do this differently.

When I came down in the morning, I found blood all over the laundry room floor. All the cats were agitated. I assumed they'd killed a bird or chipmunk or something, although that was a lot of blood... Meanwhile, Frosty limped her way up the stairs behind me. When I went to check on her, I saw ruffled, wet fur but no obvious signs of injury. But when she sat down and got up again, she left behind a small pool of blood.

Then it was panic-stations. I woke the wife and told her Frosty was hurt. We both got down on the floor to check her over without picking her up. Yeah, it was bad. So off she went to the vet. She had serious, deep puncture wounds, and the dog had shaken her so bad that her skin on her back end, though intact, had become detached from her body -- ugh, I don't even want to describe it. It's a common thing in shaken animals, though.

When she came home, she had fur shaved off and a drain sticking out of a hole near her butt. She also wore a collar to stop her pulling the stitches out. The bill was $1100.00. All seemed okay for a few days, and she continued leaking fluid from the drain, but then the fluid got really smelly, so back she went to the vet for a thorough "clean out" and a 14-day antibiotic. Another $350 later, she came home again... but the vet had given her the same antibiotic as before, and it didn't seem to help, so back she went again for another clean out and a session in a hyperbaric chamber. That was another $350, but what an improvement! She went back for another session in the hyperbaric chamber, and since then has been improving rapidly -- no more smells, no more leaking, stitches out, collar off, and just a simple pill once a day (in a pill pouch).

She's back to her usually happy self, and she can jump up onto the back of the sofa again where she belongs (to sleep).

She's now our $2000 cat. And that doesn't include when she broke her leg as a kitten.

The thing is, those dogs are still out and about. A week before attacking Frosty, they attacked my brother-in-law's cat -- and killed her. But we all thought that was an isolated attack by a coyote or something. On the night Frosty was attacked, my brother-in-law's other cat was also attacked (injured but not too bad). At this point we knew it was the three dogs that come from the woods across the road.

Two are probably fine on their own. The third, a white dog with black patches, is a biter. In a pack, I think it's probably teaching the others bad habits. We called the pound, and they came out and investigated the houses down a lane where these dogs lived, and they warned people there to keep these dogs inside or risk being prosecuted. Then, a few days ago, those dogs went crazy again and were barking their heads off at a kid waiting for the school bus at 6:30 AM. I heard a woman yelling at them. I think she must have called the pound as well, because it seems that white dog has gone, and maybe one of the others too.

All this has got me building a "cattery" or a "catio" out back where the cats can get outside at night but not really outside -- protected from dogs and coyotes and even owls (we're pretty sure an owl attacked one of our cats years ago). So... that's another $250 easily.

But they're worth it, right?

Helping to Build a Book Convention

A total change of subject now. After going to several sci-fi and fantasy conventions and wishing people came for authors rather than artists, to buy books rather than cool superhero paintings, the idea of a new convention came about -- one that's geared around books and authors.

Actually, it wasn't my idea at all. It was a friend of mine. Young adult urban fantasy author Kenyon T. Henry got it into his head that he'd like to establish and host a books and author convention in our local area, and so Next Chapter Con was created. It'll be held in Ringgold, GA, this September and will feature a pretty large bunch of authors and panels. More on that as I develop the website -- and yes, that's my contribution, since my day job is a website designer.

Does Unicorn Hunters Need a Different Title?

I've struggled with this one for a while, ever since I heard a girl at one of these sci-fi and fantasy conventions glance at this book on my table and say, "Ooh, I love unicorns! But I don't want to see them being hunted." She quickly moved on, and I thought, Hmm, maybe that title puts people off.

Then a woman came by and made a similar comment, that she loves horses and can't stand the idea of harm coming to them. I tried to explain that the whole point of the story is for the hero, 12-year-old Travis, to rescue the unicorn and a load of other mythical creatures from captivity, and it's a story of adventure and magic.

But if the title doesn't suggest that, then it's a problem. So I'd like to ask you, anyone who's reading this, what you think. If you haven't read Unicorn Hunters, does the title put you off in any way? If you have read it, what would work better? Unicorn Rescue? Something else?

(I may have asked this question before. But it's come up again after doing some recent ads and finding them to be ineffective. The read-through on this book is great, in that people who read it immediately buy the second and the third and so on... but getting new readers to pick it up is proving difficult.)

And finally...

I Just Published My Biggest Ebook Yet

Yep. Speaking of Unicorn Hunters, I now have a box set containing all five Island of Fog Legacies books, the entire series so far. This book will keep binge-readers busy for quite a while!

It's available for USD $19.99 on Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple.

But NOT on Amazon.

Why? Because Amazon has this silly little bee in its bonnet that limits book prices to $9.99 at the standard royalty rate. Above that, and the royalty rate drops to a pitiful 35%. Seriously? So, if you're an Amazon reader and want a copy for your Kindle reader or app, you can get one at good old Gumroad. Same price, exact same book.

That's all for now, folks!