Never Laugh at a Cheesy Catalog until You’ve Seen Every Last Item

Lately I’ve gotten a huge influx of mail-order catalogs. The kind with bizarre items you can’t believe someone thought up, let alone had made into an actual product.

Rosie has this silly and adorable habit of paging through those catalogs and giggling as she finds gem after gem.

Like this…it’s called the Butt Putt.


Image source

Can you believe that name? And to top that off, it farts when you sink the ball in the hole.

So, there’s my sweetie sitting on the couch, turning pages, laughing, and showing me item after item while I was trying to read my email. Good thing I find her laugh infectious and her 12-year-old-boy humor cute.

Then she stopped laughing and said, “Oh, that’s kinda cool.”

I was scared.

Seriously scared.

I didn’t want to end up with some sort of farting alarm clock.

Then she showed me this…


Image source

And she was right, it was kinda cool. Of all the things I’ve looked at to hold my Kindle while I read in bed, I think this one looks like it might be both useful and comfy.

Anyone have anything like this? Or something similar you can recommend? I’m not sure I can bring myself to order from the catalog with the Butt Putt.

Ah, maybe I will.

 

Website updated with new files for my free stories

 

Uh-oh…It looks like several of the links to my free short stories were not working for the past few weeks. I think some of the ebook files were inadvertently deleted from the web server (the PDFs worked fine but some of the others were gone). Sorry for the inconvenience to anyone who wanted the mobi, epub, or html formats. All of the links are working again.

I also took the time to redo the files. They are the same three stories. I just recreated the various ebook formats to correct a few formatting issues and to include the updated cover for Swept Away.

I also added new web pages to my site with the full story for each, so now you can read the short stories right on the site, instead of downloading one of the ebook formats.

Here are the direct links to read online:

Swept Away
A Lesson in Truth
The Break In

You can also check out my serial story “More Than Just a Good Book” here. I’ll be starting on part 5 shortly. Not sure when that’ll be out yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I’m still plugging away on revising Walter and Kevin’s story.

Jay’s bisexuality, the inspiration behind the story & other questions about Breathe

Jay Miller

(c) istockphoto.com, Yuri 2009

The fabulous Ethan Day has interviewed me about my Rainbow Award-winning book Breathe and the moment in my own life that led me to the story.

I adore Ethan and his writing, so to hear he enjoyed Breathe was quite a thrill. Thanks for the thoughtful questions and such kind remarks about this book, Ethan!

Read the interview at Ethan’s blog

Reader Survey & Chance to Win an Amazon Gift Card

Calling all romance readers:

Rainbow Romance Writers, the LGBT chapter of Romance Writers of America (I’m a member of both), is interested in your opinions. Our research committee would like to ask you some questions about your reading and buying habits. At the end of the survey you’ll get the chance to enter a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift voucher.

If you’re interested, you can take the survey here. Thanks so much for checking it out!

Friday Photos: Game Night

Haven’t shared any game night pics in a while. Here’s what we’ve been playing…

The first one’s an oldie from my childhood. My sweetie and I are going through our games to see which ones we want to keep. Hadn’t played Life in years, so we thought we’d give it a go.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Mine’s the car with the 2 hubbies and a daughter. Rosie’s is the one with 2 wives and a son. She didn’t want the kid (I guess she thought he’d mess with her girls’ honeymoon), but the game made her take him so the poor kid had to sit all the way in the back.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

The 3-D version of Blokus is tough!

The rest of the games are from my uncle’s game club. Thanks for teaching us new games, T!

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Coloretto is a great little card game. Easy to learn and the version we bought has a set of rules for two players.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Vikings is one I did not expect to like, but I just loved it. You can play it with two people (we are always on the lookout for new 2-player games), but sadly we can’t buy our own copy. It’s not available for purchase anymore.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Jaipur is another card game that allows for two-person play.

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

For Braggart, you make up a “story” with the cards in your hand, and it can be quite humorous to see what people come up with. Or what they are forced to play. Great for a group.

This was the best hand played all night:

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

“While wearing nothing more than my boots and a smile…I covered myself in oil to wrestle with…a party of drunken dwarves…and I am probably a better person for it.”

(c) Sloan Parker 2012

Acquire is another one I did not expect to like. It was fun predicting where the board was going and which companies would hit it big. Sometimes your plans worked out. Sometimes you got screwed. Sort of like real life. There were five women playing with one adorable young guy that looked half my age. He was sweet and patient as he taught all of us newbs how to play. I didn’t tell him I was already writing a story in my head about him meeting someone special during an all-nighter at the gaming club. I could see them sitting across from each other, some very sweet touches between them under the table as they tried to flirt with serious gaming still going on all around them.