Another launch! Drawing Teddy Bears

Yes, I know I’ve been neglecting this blog while gallivanting off and doing other things, but I wanted to let you all know about my new sketching blog: http://drawingteddybears.wordpress.com/

Here’s a quick sample: 

Launched: My new author blog!

Hey everybody! I know it’s been months, but I just started my brand new author blog, and I’m doing the A to Z challenge over there this year. Find it at http://chriskelworth.com/blog/

Follow Fest – around we go again!

Thanks to Natasha for posting her Follow Fest entry so soon and reminding me that it was time again.

What is your name?
Chris Kelworth.

Do you write fiction or non-fiction?
Generally fiction, or at least, that’s what I’m concentrating on writing and publishing here.

What genres?
Umm, science fiction and fantasy of many flavours and varieties, with some mystery and romance thrown in. For readers young and old, not always all at once.

Are you published?
Not yet.

What else do you do besides write?
Hmm. I program computers, both as a day job and a hobby. Listen to country music, walk up city streets, cook a fair bit, collect small electronic gadgets, watch lots of TV and some movies, read and listen to audiobooks and podcasts.

Tell us a little about yourself.
Umm, what else do you want to know? I’m the baby of the family, with a big sister and older brother–also a brother-in-law, two nieces and a nephew who are getting bigger every time I get a chance to visit. I live by myself in Hamilton, Ontario, and love travelling and going to writing workshops. I’m an Odyssey class of 2013 survivor.

What are you reading right now?
Well, I just started ‘Esrever Doom’ in the Xanth series, from the library. On the audiobook front, I’m reading Dune and Lani Diane Rich’s “Time off for good behaviour”. I’m also reading some Crossed Genres stories on my Kindle, and just discovered the Toasted Cake podcast. (Thanks for that go to Elizabeth Twist!)

Which authors influenced you the most?
Jim Butcher, Diane Duane, and Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Where can people find and follow you?
Right here on the wordpress blog–wordpress.com still doesn’t have a Google ‘army of followers’ widget, but the top three widgets down the right side of the blog are all followy: WordPress.com follow, RSS feed, and NetworkedBlogs.

Twitter: @ChrisKelworth, http://twitter.com/ChrisKelworth

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chris.kelworth

Do you have a newsletter?
I don’t think I generate enough news for a letter. 😉

Is there anything else you’d like us to know?
For his coronation, Napoleon summoned the Pope to Paris, then took the crown out of the Pope’s hands and put it on his own head.

Go here to see the Follow Fest list!

Call this my thousandth post…

After all, what’s a post or two between friends? 😉 In fact, I’m not quite sure exactly how many posts I’ve put up here at the Kelworth Files, but it’s definitely in the quadruple digits now. So, in another little retrospective, I’ve come up with a semi-random list of ten posts for your regularly scheduled walk down memory lane.

1. Feedback Swap Update
2. Nanowrimo Day 23 – jumping from story to story.
3. Crossover Banner: The Wizards of Roswell
4. Blog the Cat: Chapter Eight and wrap-up
5. NanoEdmo Update Week 3 (2011)
6. C is for Critters (A-Z challenge 2011)
7. J is for Just a Dream (A-Z challenge 2012, Script Frenzy)
8. Nanowrimo Spotlight 2012: Rhianna. Also, check out my guest post in Rhianna’s Bag of Holding!
9. A Day to Rest. (Sabbath thoughts.)
10. Nanowrimo Spotlight 2013: A Fairytale Heart Races Through November

So, thanks for hanging in with me. Stay tuned for the next thousand posts!

I’m not one to ‘quit the day job’, I think.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about that sort of choice, the notion of leaving the safety net of a nine to five gig behind and having more time to devote to your creative dreams. With the new year, lots of fellow writers are trying to spend more time drafting, revising, and submitting, and talking about their choices and trade-offs with the other things they’re spending time on in their lives.

It’s even come up on the TV show, ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ Starting with the January 2nd episode, Penny (Kaley Cuoco,) went through some high highs and rapid lows in her quest for success on the small screen, and ended up deciding to give up waitressing at the Cheesecake Factory so as to put more time and effort into looking for gigs and taking acting classes. (Which freaked Leonard out, because he couldn’t identify with taking such a big risk himself.)

I think that on the whole, staying with the full-time day job is the right choice for myself. I’m blessed to have an opportunity to get a good, steady paycheck doing something I love, with people who don’t generally drive me too crazy, and there’s a lot to be said for the value of peace of mind. But who knows, maybe someday I’ll find myself out of a job and pouring my heart into writing all day every day will be the right thing to do!

One more reason to save a little money in the rainy-day fund I guess. What about you? Have you made the big choice one way or another, or taken a third path like some of my good friends here in Hamilton?

Happy Holidays!

As I write this, my Christmas vacation, such as it was, is pretty much over. It’s 6pm on Boxing Day, and I’ll be working from home tomorrow. But it’s been a good couple of days.

Late on Christmas Eve, my brother called me up with some last minute change of plans. He had to work through the week, including Christmas Day, and the original plan was for the Hamilton branch of the family, (the two of us and Mom,) to go up to Kitchener early and then drive home in time for him to get to work for the afternoon shift, which would mean me leaving at seven thirty in the morning and having just about enough time to unwrap presents and have turkey brunch at my sister’s place. The change in plans was that I drove up separately in my car, which my brother borrowed after brunch when it was time for him to leave. Mom and I stayed, played some cards with my sister and my two nieces, enjoyed a light lunch of desserts, then I drove Mom home in her car, and switched to mine, which had been dropped off at her place.

The gift exchanges went pretty well too. I kept to a tighter budget than in years past, but managed to come up with some stuff for all of my family that they seemed to like. Myself, I scored some gift cards, chocolate treats, three new books to read, and a cool decoration with quotes about writing that I’m going to keep on my desk. Oh, and a wizard’s staff that my Mom made for me! 🙂

Today I did the budget Boxing Day shopping. I picked up a cool new Modern Family calendar for my 2014 goal tracking, and a fancy Bluetooth mouse to use with my Nexus 7 tablet. One of my gift cards helped pay for the mouse, and I used another to download some new music, including albums by Great Big Sea and Amanda Stott.

And I walked to all my shopping; four and a half miles round trip, which is a lot longer than I usually walk in a day, but I feel good for having done it.

So, how were your holidays?

That’s Super Sweet!

Well, deep in the midst of Nano, I got tagged with a Blogging Award meme, the Super Sweet Blogging Award. Thanks very much to Natasha Hanova for nominating me! Sorry it took me three weeks or so to answer, what with the Nano Spotlights and then getting distracted by the time Nano was over.

Award rules: Answer the following five questions, and nominate five bloggers.

1. Cookie or Cake? Hmm… cookies are good, especially vanilla wafers, (need to make time to make some this holiday season,) but I have to go with golden cake. Delicious!

2. Chocolate or Vanilla? Vanilla! I love chocolate sweets, but in any case where it’s a choice, I’ll choose vanilla. (Or maybe strawberry.)

3. Favourite sweet treat? Hmm… that’s a tough one, there are so many possible sweets. A Tim Horton’s Maple Dip donut gets honorable mention, as does strawberry syrup ice cream sundae, (which I just had as a bedtime snack,) but I have to pick a Cadbury creme egg!

4. When do you crave sweet things the most? Well, I’ll grab a sweet any time of day or night, but early in the morning is probably the time when I can least resist. I love donuts for breakfast, and if I have chocolate on hand, I’ll have some well before noon.

5. Sweet nickname? I don’t really have one, that I know of. Oh well.

And my sweet nominees are:

• Elizabeth Twist
• Fantasy Writer Guy
• Fuzzy Mango
• Trisha
• Jaime  Morrow

Stay sweet, everybody!

Follow Fest

Well, I seem to be following Natasha Hanova to some interesting blogfests recently, and one of these is the Follow Fest 2013! Check the linky lists to find tons more great authors.

Name: Chris Kelworth

Fiction or nonfiction? Fiction, if you please!

What genres do you write? Mostly science fiction and fantasy. I’ve dabbled in modern romantic comedy, I guess.

Are you published? Nope. Need to submit my writing places for that. 😉

Do you do anything in addition to writing?

Well, I do a lot of other things, but not really ‘writing biz’ stuff.

Where can people connect with you?

Right here at https://kelworthfiles.wordpress.com/ , and there are options in the sidebar to follow me via wordpress.com or NetworkedBlogs

You can follow me on twitter @ChrisKelworth

Facebook doesn’t do the follow thing, but you can friend me on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/chris.kelworth

Is there anything else you’d like us to know? If you’re doing Nanowrimo this year, I’m going to be looking for new Nano spotlight interview participants soon!

Possibly my most enthusiastic feedback ever!

It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button! I’d without a doubt donate to this brilliant blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to brand new updates and will talk about this blog with
my Facebook group. Talk soon!

Too bad it’s from an obvious spammer, sigh. 🙂

In a related off-topic rant, Gmail is pissing me off just a little. Not only do they appear to be dead-set to ram their tiny ‘New Compose Window’ down my throat, even though I really don’t like trying to organize an email in such a small space, but when I tried to send them feedback, their ‘Send Feedback’ window was so freakin’ huge that I couldn’t see or find the SEND button on my netbook. I managed to send it off by clicking on some text and then hitting the Enter key, but that’s not really a good user experience, Google guys.

I understand that you’re excited about rolling out new toys, and that it makes support harder if the users have hundreds of different interface choices, but I like the Old Compose Window!

My ISP is doing the same thing with their webmail – they got rid of the nice, simple, quick, easy to use mail interface and replaced it with some complex monstrosity that’s trying too hard to look like Outlook and requires Java. Sigh. At least I can simply access my ISP email through my iPhone.

My 750th Post count party!

Hey there, friends and followers. Today is my 750th post for the Kelworth Files, and even though it’s not a hugely round number, it’s a cool one, so I thought I’d throw a little party for it. Help yourself to anything at the bar, and there’s some pretty good cupcakes and pizza out on the coffee table. 😉

In case you haven’t heard it, ‘post count party’ is a term I came across on the SDMB message board – the forum software keeps track of how many posts members have made, so some people make threads just to congratulate themselves on their five thousandth post or whatever – and the mods do not always take kindly to them. 😉

So, it’s been about two and a half years since I started blogging, and I’ve had a great time here. This may not be the most successful blog in the whole world, but I kinda like it, and the friends I’ve made. I should probably concentrate on keeping up with some of my favorite bloggers, rather than just sitting here and doing my own thing… (Checks a blog randomly picked from memory in another tab, Trisha’s WORD+STUFF…)

Oh, man! Overcoming Adversity is today! Maybe I should wipe out this post and start working on a flash fic… I signed up for that, didn’t I?  Okay, yes, I signed up for it, but it spans two days. So stay tuned for my flash fiction on the subject of Overcoming Adversity, tomorrow on the Kelworth Files! 😀 We now return you to your regularly scheduled party.

Yeah, hmm… I do want to keep doing the blog hop thing. ‘Blog hop’ as a term seems to be getting more popular than blogfest, doesn’t it? That’s a good thing to keep in mind as I search for writers’ blog hops in 2013.

I’m looking forward to the craziness of the A-Z challenge, and I’m wondering if there’s going to be a Platform-building Campaign this year. Rach from Rach writes hasn’t posted anything since October.

And on that somewhat sad thought my train of thought rumbles to a stop. Except I still have enough brainpower to ask – what are you looking forward to, blogging-wise, for the rest of the year?