He showed up at the kitchen door at the house in Guerneville in 1996. He could be cantankerous and at times a bit of a bully but I remember a time, a dark time, that his crackling meow, much like the sound glass might make in cracking, kept me in the here and now instead of the hereafter. 12 years he’s been with me. I have no idea how many years he’d been with himself before that. I’ve gone through many a trial and tribulation in those years; job stress, a near fatal car crash, the loss of my job, the near loss of my house and a long trip to Albuquerque that he hated every moment of, financial disintegration, a near loss of hope and through it all he’s been there.

He grew old, cast aside his bully ways, became something of a grandpa to the three sisters, the little kittens my kitten quite accidentally had. He had a stroke several months back and I thought we’d lose him then but he fought his way back. A little jerky in his walk, his meow even hoarser than before, a bit of a space cadet at times but he learned to get around, to climb up on the bed and settle down in his favorite spot.

But age will take you down, no one gets out of here alive. And I swore I wouldn’t let him suffer.

Booth went to Blue at 4:30 today. I am thankful to Dr. Walker of Cat Clinic for her kind and gentle ways and to Scott for the ride.

Gone to Blue. There is no more pain. No chance of suffering. He’s gone to be with Asher who he never knew, with Mooch and Feral who he tangled with from time to time, the Doubtful Guest and Smokey and Dinger who were all a little on the weird side and scared him a bit, with Puss and Pug, the Albuquerque cats who he never got along with well but respected their territorial rights, all cats who have crossed his and my path these last 12 years and Gone to Blue themselves. And I know Neb and Pink and Treacle will be there as well, though he may not find the company of dogs as enjoyable as those of the cats.

When it’s time for me to go, I want to go where they’ve gone.

So, you may be asking yourself what publishing and plugins have in common. Well, nothing really, except I have news about both. I was just kind of stuck for a title for this post and liked the idea of the double p sound.

First, the publishing part. My story The Dance has finally found a home. This is one of my favorite stories and I’ve had a devil of a time getting it published. Not, IMHO, because it’s poorly written, but due to a problem I seem to have with many of my stories, and novels, come to think of it. Namely, what the hell genre is it?

When I first started sending it out, I sent it to places that took mainstream fiction. They sent it back saying they didn’t accept romance. Romance? Well, I suppose one could see The Dance as a romance. I didn’t really think of it that way but what do I know? So, I sent it to some places that accepted romance. Guess what? They rejected it because it wasn’t a romance.

Go figure.

Anyway, I let it sit for a long spell after that as I had a lot of other things going on. Recently, I’ve been using Duotrope’ Digest. What a great source that site is. I researched a number of publications, making a small favorites list and started sending out some of my stories. I remembered The Dance and figured, what the hell, and I found a place that might be interested, sent it their way, and heard this past Friday that they were interested. Whooopee!

So, The Dance will be published in the December issue of The Battered Suitcase. I’ll post a link when it’s online.

Ok, so what about plugins? Well, as every writer knows, writing means never having dirty dishes, which is another way of saying that writers tend to get distracted when they’re suppose to be writing. This happened to me this weekend. I started thinking how cool it would be to know what authors were born on the current day. I figured there had to be a plugin for such a thing. Hell, there are plugins for most everything you can imagine. But nope, no plugin, so I decided to write one.

I spent a day researching and compiling a list of authors and their birthdays and started formating the list. I wrote a basic program to create the database, populate it and display the current day’s birthdays in a blog sidebar. I’m about midway through with it and plan to offer it up as soon as all the testing is done. It only works with WordPress as far as I know. But then, if you ain’t using WordPress you really ain’t blogging anyway.

It’s a simple program, easy to style, and I’ll give it away and ask for a donation if the user finds it useful. It’s over there in my sidebar. No birthdays listed yet cause I’ve only formated up to July so far. It’s a big list and I plan on adding some writers I know to it. Look for a finished product in about a week or so.