Polls and Patreon

star

Winning Stuff

The results of the Strange Horizons 2015 Readers’ Poll are in. The piece I did with Bogi Takács (article here) came joint first in the articles category. The other first place article was by Rose Lemberg (article here). This is apparently the first time there’s been a tie.

It’s also the first time I’ve sold non-fiction, so that went pretty well, all things considered.

 

Patreon

I’ve started a Patreon. This is a tip jar, rather than a rollercoaster of nifty rewards. The main reward is it means I can keep doing stuff. If the Patreon does well, it’ll give me space to get my longer work complete (that includes novels and writing short stories for the next collection). It will also help fund the things I don’t get any payment for, like the blog. For example, it can help cover web hosting fees and pay for review copies (where free ones aren’t available).

Here is my Patreon: Support Polenth and get a warm glow every month!

 

Reviewing

I’m now on Netgalley, so there will be even more reviews with the little disclaimer so that the American government doesn’t try to sue me. Honestly, I don’t think anyone would think a free copy changes my view of the work, as I don’t gush unreservedly about everything I review. But you can’t be logical with bureaucracy.

Something I hadn’t realised is some books are available for all Netgalley members, without needing approval. These are their ‘read now’ books. I’d have signed up earlier if I had known this, as it’s obviously a great way for new reviewers to start getting review copies. I thought I’d pass that on for anyone else who didn’t know that.

Bobble Robin Cupcakes

‘Tis the season for festive cupcakes. This year, I went for making cupcake toppers, rather than elaborate edible decoration. These cakes have white chocolate and glitter coating, with bobble robin toppers. I made the robins from felt, beads and cocktail sticks (I’ve been getting into the whole handmade felt thing… it’s a great material to work with). Managed to stop anyone trying to eat one of the robins…

Here they are in their birdly glory:

robincake

WordPress Blog Move

This post marks the date when I moved my blogs from Blogger to this blog. The change will be invisible to anyone who visits via the web, as it’s the same address. It just points here now. But you might wonder why it suddenly looks different and uses different credentials for commenting. I’m hoping this change will make it easier to organise content, as I have categories for all the reviews, my news, and anything else I need in the future. Commenting had also become difficult on Blogger (the last time I tried to leave comments there, it failed for no apparent reason). Blogger just hasn’t kept up.

Anyway, enjoy the somewhat bare-bones layout of the new blog. Comments welcome.

Solstice Octopus!

I got an Amazon giftcard for the solstice and I used it to get this octopus. It’s very soft! And made by Wild Republic.

Cuddly octopus

Cuddly octopus from the top

Cuddly octopus is watching you

(The photographs show a realistically-shaped octopus toy. It sits resting on its tentacles. The main part of the body is short fur fabric, with a mottled light brown and black pattern. The underside of the tentacles is pale fur fabric. The eyes are light brown with black horizontal slit pupils, like real octopus eyes. It’s sitting on blue towel fabric, and is well lit.)

New Fighter Fish – Shimmer

My new tank now has a resident. Shimmer is a female fighter fish, and is probably between six months and one year old. She’s white, with iridescent blue highlights on the fins and tail. As it’s her first day, I didn’t hassle too much with photographs. The best I got was this one:

White female fighter fish by an anubias plant

I also took a few videos, which I’ll likely put together later in a setting-up-a-tank video series. But here are a few still shots from them. The last shows how blue her tail can look as she moves:

White female fighter fish with light shining through her

Back view of white female fighter fish, with her tail shining bright blue

She’s generally settling in well. She’s clamping her fins a bit (not so much in the shots, but other times), which is usual after a scary day moving to a new tank. She’s really enjoying picking off little critters from the driftwood and plants, so I can recommend spending a little extra time on setting up a proper soil-based planted tank. It’s not that my previous fighter tanks were bad, but this one is much more awesome for the fish.

In about a month, I’ll introduce amano shrimp. The place I get my fish keeps the fighters in with other fish, so I’ve had a chance to see how she deals with tankmates. She had some very tiny fish in with her and was ignoring them, which is a good sign for being a tankmate-friendly fighter.