Merry Christmas!

So I…still have a website, I guess?

Some days I have spikes that suggest attacks, but so far so good. I’m hoping to enable my shop again next week and see what that does to CPU usage. My apologies to any potential readers in Russia, Serbia, Hungary, and China, but I now have challenges on visitors from all those countries via Cloudflare. I’m not sure that I’ve ever had legit traffic from those countries and it’s not worth risking my site.

Happy Whatever-You-Celebrate today/this time of year. I’m a godless heathen but call it Christmas anyway. Christmas Eve I finished writing a long-ish short story (first writing I’ve done in months and it did me a world of good) by the light of my Christmas tree while watching Dirty Dancing. One of the perks of living alone is that you can happily recite the dialogue ten seconds before the characters without driving anyone else nuts. Today was brunch with Mum, Die Hard, Gremlins, and making treats to bring to see family tomorrow.

My eldest cat is…not well. I strongly suspected an oral tumor but we’ve been trying him on antibiotics in case it’s an abscess. There hasn’t been a change, though, so the likelihood is that I’m right and it’s a fast-growing malignant tumor. He’s nearly eighteen and there’s nothing to be done now except ensure he’s comfortable and pain-free as long as possible.

I expected to be worrying a lot but I think after this past year, I’m just…done. I have no space left in my stress compartment. I live in a state of high anxiety anyway–one can’t help it when freelancing and writing pays the bills–so I’ve accepted his poor health quite well, all things considering. I feed him every time he yowls for food and he drapes over my chest at night when I’m reading, happy as can be.

To quote a movie that no one seemed to like but me, a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts. Hopefully he has a few months left before his bad days outnumber the good, and for now at least he’s happy.

That’ll mean more vet bills to pay as well. I’ll be out of the office until the middle of next week, so anyone ordering any services (which I highly encourage), please have patience.

There is a temporary sale on my stuff over at Payhip–buy ANY of my ebooks direct and you can get 20% off with the coupon code xmas2015 at checkout. The coupon is good until January 2. All common ebook formats are available–epub works with Kobo and Nook while mobi works with Kindle. You’ll find them all right here.

This is currently the only place you find 9 Crimes and Damaged: A Zara Lain Novella. EU countries can shop at Payhip as VAT is automatically collected. You can pay by PayPal or credit card. Readers get to save money and I don’t have to wait two to four months to get paid.

I have a post about stuff I dug this year probably going up next week, and otherwise I’ll see you in the New Year (hopefully with news).