New Logo for Witty Librarian at Cafe Press

Having received some concerns about the legibility of the text on my original design for the Witty Librarian store, I looked into creating a larger logo with slightly bigger text:

How does this look to you?  Please comment.

One Problem With Being a Librarian During The Winter Festivities

...is that when I offer people a wonderful "Io Saturnalia!" almost none of them get what it is I'm saying.

Sigh.

Okay, here's the Wiki entry on Saturnalia:

...A number of scholars view this festival as the origin of later Christmas celebrations, or at least as contributing to them. Others point out that the Christian feast of Christmas on December 25 does not coincide with the date range of the Saturnalia, and that Christmas in any regard has not always been celebrated on December 25. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that church's view on the matter by saying that while midwinter pagan feasts such as Saturnalia may have helped influence the eventual choice to fix the date of Christmas, this does not mean that Christian Christmas traditions find their origin or inspiration there: "though the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too."

Just remember these three things:
1) Say "Io Saturnalia" a lot;
2) Find out which Roman Pagans are still around to answer back;
3) Celebrate.

To The Seven People Who Read This Blog: Cafe Press For the Holidays!

If anyone's got moneys to spare, and any friends or relatives who work as librarians, I do have that Cafe Press store of Witty Librarian gear. 

I just added some Christmas ornaments, a vanity plate for cars, a few more shirts and sweaters, and ereader (Kindle and Nook) sleeve covers!  If you are looking for any fun merch for Festivus/Saturnalia/Christmas please check it out!

Why I Failed NaNoWriMo This Year

Well...

1) Personal issues such as the loss of my poor Silly Kitty Page, whose cancer got bad enough to take her to the vet for one last visit...

2) Problems with my story's narrative, even with trying to correct some of the character introductions and opening action scenes.  Things felt heavy-handed or operating on poor assumptions.

3) Chronic Depressive Mood and growing stress from job-hunting as I close in on my third year of full unemployment... :(

All apologies.  I am thinking of getting some short stories or novella-type work done in the coming days.

One Week In On NaNoWriMo 2011

...and I am above 11,000 words.

It's a story idea I've considered before, which had some big flaws about halfway into it, about a university librarian and his crazy student workers who have various "spooky" adventures involving ghosts girls, clones, aliens, and whatnot (various plot ideas from back when I was a huge X-Phile).

I've rebooted the start to be more action-packed, and looking to streamline some of the character introductions.

Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo 2011

Yes, I will be doing NaNoWriMo this year.

Yes, you can track my efforts here.

Yes, I will get this damn novel finished for once.  We'll see how it goes.

A Gift To The Seven People Who Read This Blog

A FREE download of The Hero Cleanup Protocol!

1) Visit the Smashwords' website for the estory.
2) Select Add To Cart button.
3) Use the Coupon Code JJ47F.  It should drop the price of the estory to FREE.
4) Follow the download instructions for the version of ereader you have.  There are separate versions for Kindle, ePub (covering Nook, iApple and other readers), and more.
5) Install the story file to your reader and enjoy!

If you can, please give the estory a review (and be gentle!).  Thanks!

EDIT: The code is good until November 1st.